“How did you know about this?” the man barked.
Trying to keep his throat free of the blade, Elisha grated, “Harald the steward told me they brought von Stubben. Von Stubben works for the enemy; he’s been poisoning the queen. Please.”
Agnes shot out her hand to catch Elisha’s and pull him up, past the startled soldiers, earning him a nick on the cheek as the captain tried to get his blade away. “Come on.”
“My lady!” the captain cried, but Agnes ignored him.
Her nose wrinkled as she pulled him inside toward the back of the house. “You’re covered in blood,” she said.
“Tell me what happened.”
“She retired after the feast, feeling ill again, and Emerick went with her, but she seemed well enough after a bit. The emperor’s riders had got here, and we expected him any minute. I sang to her—then Katherine arrived, exhausted, and said her sons needed a doctor. The empress sent Emerick, of course she would, but she started with the pains after that. Von Stubben arrived with the emperor’s men, hoping to re-ingratiate himself. What were we to do?”
“You did your best. I need to wash.”
“Of course.” She stopped her tugging long enough to bring him to a basin stand where she poured water over his hands and he wiped off as much blood as he could.
Strange how, so far away from his own place, he suddenly found a moment so dreadfully familiar. Even as he dried his hands, he felt the cold tug of the Valley and slammed open the door. Beyond, the empress lay propped on downy pillows on a low bed marked with blood and water while a pair of women cleaned and clucked over her. “My baby,” she said.
“He’s with the doctor, Your Majesty,” one of the women answered.
For moment, Elisha couldn’t move—a familiar moment indeed. With vivid clarity, he saw his brother’s wife lying there, in a pool of blood, her husband already dead, her baby dead—both of them torn from her because of Elisha’s own arrogance.
The empress’s eyes opened and saw him—and his paralysis broke.
Elisha ran past her to the open door beyond. In the small chamber, the balding white head of Doctor von Stubben bent over a table. He jerked upright at Elisha’s approach and turned, his back to the bundle on the table.
“What have you done?” Elisha demanded, the slight black shade of the infant rising up alongside the doctor’s right hand.
“I’ve done all I could,” von Stubben stammered. “The baby was born weak, he struggled, and I—”
Elisha reached out to move him aside, and he need not touch the man for the force of his rage to be felt. Von Stubben crossed himself and backed off, glancing from Elisha to the child’s swaddled form. Elisha gathered the baby close to his own warm heart, touching its throat gently, but the lips looked blue, even in the ruddy face. A few feathers clung to the damp, still chest, reminder of its mother’s vain comfort. Even that faint sense of life that lingered at Gilles’ beating heart was gone here, and his breath could do nothing. He wanted to scream. Instead, he went after.
Elisha leapt into the Valley and commanded the infant’s return.
Chapter 27
The child’s shade, so slender, not yet rich with the attachments of a lifetime’s experience, swirled quickly into the Valley’s glow and tumble. It did not howl with pain or fear, it knew nothing of those things, not yet, and so as Elisha reached after, he found the Valley calm, radiant, its tumult more a waterfall than a whirlpool. The Valley once opened to him that way, inviting him to rise from the flesh, and he had almost gone . . . beyond. For a moment, Elisha glimpsed a web of contacts, arcing out in response to the baby or to his own presence, then, between one breath and the next, all sense of the baby was gone.
Expanding his awareness, Elisha searched, his attention bringing the flickering shades into focus here and there, the sinuous shreds that clung to his own presence, spreading. Gaps pierced the Valley, tiny places where the shades were still. He searched through knowledge, calling up all he knew of the empress—strong, beautiful, joyous; of the emperor—hard, angry, fierce, and powerful—as if to find the child through some union of its parents, but he found no sign.
Elisha howled into the empty Valley, and there was nothing he could do.
His own presence pulsed in mad rhythm with the Valley as its chaos returned, overwhelming the peace of the child’s death. The place once more wailed with terror and despair. It urged him to let go whatever bonds still held him to the earth. Just as earlier he had torn the shades from that place, now the strength of the Valley threatened to tear him free and plunge him forever into this maelstrom. His heart thundered, his muscles tense against the terrible strain as if he lay upon the rack.
Teeth clenched, Elisha forced himself back to the land of the living. Turning from the Valley, he bowed his head over the child and wept. The rough edge of the table pressed into his hip, the baby’s cooling body filled his arms, the power of the Valley briefly sustaining him.
“I—where—?” Von Stubben’s wondering voice broke the silence, and Elisha turned on the doctor: the tool of mancers, the agent of death.
“To Heaven,” Elisha said, “to see him home.”
He wreathed himself in righteous fury, harnessing the child’s peace and innocence. With a blast of strength from the collapsed Valley, Elisha blew forth wings. He conjured them from the downy feathers clinging from the mother’s pillow, from his anger, from his grief. They towered behind him, their tips bent forward by the room’s close walls, his back and shoulders aching. Elisha’s cheek flared with warmth, recalling the touch of an angel’s wing from the fire of his youth.
Von Stubben gave a strangled cry and fell to his knees, hands upraised and pleading.
“And you”—Elisha’s word fell with a dread power—“will tell his mother why.”
“Elisha?” Katherine’s voice joined a clamor outside.
“Is he here? I must thank him,” said the hoarse voice of Brother Gilles.
Elisha raised his head, and let the wings vanish, a few soft and tiny feathers drifting down. One of them touched von Stubben’s hands, and he flinched, blinking up at Elisha through glistening eyes. “Go on,” Elisha said, barely a whisper.
The doctor scrabbled away, pulling himself up at the doorframe. Katherine and Emerick stepped aside to let him return to the bedchamber, though they did not take their eyes from Elisha. Gilles stood behind them, positively gaping. “Of course,” he whispered, crossing himself. “I should have seen.”
Exhausted, he leaned back against the table. That had been too much, too strong. His fury had overcome him, the child’s death one blow too many on this night of sorrows, and he had given them all a show he had not intended. Now Gilles would never give up his testament.
In his arms, the baby looked at rest, aside from the wrong color of its lips. Likely, the doctor had simply covered its mouth and nose with his own great, clumsy hand, not knowing the emperor was already dead and they need torment his wife no longer. “I came too late to save him.”
Emerick winced sharply, squeezing his eyes shut, pressing his fingers into them. “No, it’s me. You told me to watch over her—I didn’t think the birth would be so soon.”
“If anyone is to blame,” Katherine said, “it would be me. I took you from here for my own needs.” Slipping from the young doctor’s shadow, Katherine came to Elisha’s side. She stroked a hand over his shoulder.
“But your sons?” Elisha asked, torn between the desire of his body to give in to her comfort, and some vanity whispering that strength required him to reject her.
“My sons are well, thanks to you,” she answered. “Daniel and I went to Heinrich, the old salter, and he believed my story of your death long enough to turn over my sons. Then we—took care of him. My sons are weak from bleeding, but they will be all right. Doctor Emerick assures me so.”
Emerick’s throat bobbed, and he said, “Yes. They’re young
and otherwise healthy. I’ve tended their wounds.” He pushed off from the door and held out his arms, taking the child from Elisha. “We met Steward Harald and your friend the friar on our way back. We know . . . the outcome.” He took a corner of the swaddling cloth and draped the child’s face, then turned away and left them.
Gilles blinked, then said, “I should go, yes, forgive me. But thank you. And may God be with you.” His head bobbed as if he were uncertain whether to bow or to cross himself, then he hurried from the room and out into the corridor beyond.
In the chamber, Margaret’s voice rose to a wail, then to scathing rebuke of von Stubben, then to stern command. The Valley snarled open, but Elisha stayed as he was, the black strength of another death eddying around his ankles as the Valley seared shut. He breathed in the cold, but it gave him no urge to face whatever awaited. “Will she slay me, too?” he sent to Katherine’s steadying hand upon his cheek. Just now, the prospect seemed both fine and fitting.
“No,” she answered aloud. “It will not be so.”
At the door, a man cleared his throat, and Elisha finally lifted his eyes to find Harald there waiting, looking as grim and weary as Elisha felt. “Elisha Physician, you are summoned.” He held out the fur cloak, dark with mud and other stains.
For a moment, Katherine tried to keep him, but Elisha rose and followed, accepting the gift once again, though it no longer looked so regal.
“I have told her Majesty what I know of the battle down below and of his Majesty’s death in defense of his crown and of his men. Von Stubben admitted his own role in the empress’s ill health and in the murder of her child.” Harald ushered Elisha forward, directing him toward the bed while a pair of soldiers dragged von Stubben’s body across the floor, a single neat hole pierced at the back of his skull. The steward—slight and still clad in his royal finery—acknowledged Elisha’s glance with the slightest quirk of his lips.
“Kneel, Doctor, so that I may see you,” the empress directed, allowing Agnes to take from her the tiny, swaddled form of her son.
Little room remained at her bedside, and what there was had recently been vacated by the executed physician. With a series of precise movements, Harald stepped away, rounded the bed and stood by the door, tipping his head to Elisha to show that he was out of range to strike. So if the empress would kill him, it would not be Harald’s poniard that took him.
Wetting his lips, Elisha lowered himself as she commanded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“You rushed here from the battle where you were to die, to be at my childbed, and my men stopped you at the door.”
This did not require any reply, and so Elisha stayed quiet, but she said, “Look at me, Doctor.”
Pale, nestled in a tangle of dark hair, the empress regarded him coolly, though her eyes gleamed and spots of color marked her cheeks. He guessed her earlier outburst had been unusual, the remnant of her labor and her grief—but an empress did not throw tantrums or wail, even at the death of a child. Even, it seemed, at the death of an emperor.
“These sorcerers are strong. No matter your power, I am not surprised you could not prevail in battle and prevent my husband’s death. But young Ludwig,” she swallowed, and her hands edged together, the one covering the other, tightening. “If you had been here, you could have prevented it, is that not so?”
Elisha’s knees ached. He longed to lay down his head, and half-wished she would simply order his execution and have done, however unfair that might be. “Anyone could have prevented it who knew the truth of von Stubben’s intent.”
“We suspected von Stubben had done something to the medicinals, Your Majesty,” Emerick blurted, coming forward. “Forgive me, but Elisha does not bear full blame for this—”
“Hush,” she said, lifting her hand, and Agnes touched the young doctor’s shoulder to draw him back. “I agree with you, Doctor Emerick. It was I who gave the orders my men so fervently kept. Only my companion, Agnes, saw the need and the danger, and dared defy them for my sake and that of young Ludwig.” She returned her dark eyes to Elisha’s face. “It is as if I stood by that door myself, Doctor, and barred your way to saving my son’s life.”
Katherine bent her knee in a curtsy and straightened. “Your Majesty, you acted to try to save my honor. You did not know what lay at stake.” She took a deep breath. “It was none of Elisha’s doing that we became as lovers. I was commanded to this by the necromancers, who stole my children as hostage against my obedience. Elisha responded to me only because I begged it of him, in mercy to help me save my children, which he has done.”
“They commanded you? Then von Stubben was not the only traitor among us.” Empress Margaret’s mask of stone descended once more.
“It was my rebellion against that allegiance that brought my punishment, Your Majesty.”
“I see. I will need to consider what your involvement means.” Turning from her friend with a flash of new sorrow, the empress pushed herself up, her maid leaping to prop the pillows higher to support her. “Bring me my altar, would you?”
The girl did as she was bid, with the help of another servant. The rosewood chest, marked on top with a cross, smelled of death and shifted with shades to Elisha’s keen senses. Running her long fingers over the surface, the empress said, “You believe the battle moves to Rome, that those who slew my husband and supported the man who slew my child will use the Eternal City for their evil.”
“I do,” Elisha said, blinking away the shades, beginning to think he might come out of this with his neck intact.
She pressed on the cross and a drawer popped open at the front of the altar. Drawing it open, she moved her fingers over a series of small, silken pouches and crystal vials, laid out like a medicine chest of bones. “These . . . they are recent gifts, to aid me in childbirth, or so I was told.” She made a little pile of them in his hand—four relics in silk wrappings. “From what you say, their authenticity is in question, if nothing else.” Then her hand hesitated. She selected one more from the row and lifted it free, then offered it to Elisha, a clear vial containing a shard of wood about the length of his thumb. “And this. Let this protect you in your journey. It is a sliver of the True Cross, from the piece at Rome. Ludwig cut it with his own hand to be my wedding gift.”
Within the cool crystal, the wood hummed with power. True Cross or no, a man had died upon it. He thought of Simeon hanging helpless in the dark over him, about to be made a martyr. Elisha closed his fist around the vial. “Thank you, Your Majesty. This is more helpful than you know.”
“My door shall no longer be barred to you, Elisha Physician, if there is anything that can be done to aid in the destruction of such evil.” She held out her hand, and Elisha took it upon his own, lightly kissing her knuckles, then drew back. “For myself, I can fight no more today.” Her eyes fluttered shut, and she said, “Go with God, Doctor, and with my blessing.”
Elisha withdrew, bowing himself from the empress’s presence, and moving carefully toward the corridor. His muscles shivered with the night’s exertions, but he did not know where he could find rest. Where had Gilles gone? Probably to the chapel, to thank the lord for sending his angel.
Elisha’s stomach churned. For a moment, he recalled his brief elation when he saw the battle was won, but the memory shone only distantly, as if he had felt no joy since childhood. He came to the continent to share his knowledge, to gain allies in war against the mancers, but the ally he sought was already a mancer prize. Elisha failed him, and failed his family. Rome awaited, stocked with savage relics, taunting him, but would it be only another failure?
Katherine emerged behind him, shutting the door softly. “My Raphael,” she called, and he hesitated.
“Come.” She walked up to join him, close enough to touch. “There will be a bed for you tonight—what is left of the night, in any case. And then, to Rome?” They walked to a narrow stair and climbed two floors to a broad
loft, where they passed silently through a phalanx of slumbering servants to a smaller room at the back containing a rope bed with a straw mattress. “It’s a recovery room for the injured, but it should do. I’ll find you blankets.” She rubbed at her arms in the raftered space, then dug into a chest by the wall to find blankets.
Elisha sank onto the bed, resisting the urge to simply collapse. He had taken to sleeping on graves, allowing the dead to conceal him. How long had it been since he had been offered a bed? But he forced himself to focus a little longer. “Do you know anything else of their plans?”
“Something is due from Kaffa.” At his blank expression, she continued, “That’s a trading port to Cathay. You don’t suppose they are importing oriental necromancers?” She shuddered and dropped a pillow at one end of the bed, then let her hand stray to his shoulder. “I should like to stay with you.”
“I could use your help in Rome,” he answered, though the drift of her emotions told him that was not what she meant. Her hand grew heavy, hanging onto him, or anchoring herself.
“I can’t.” Her lips trembled. “Elisha, I wish I could go with you into danger, but to do so, I would have to abandon my children again. They’ve already taken my daughter, I must protect my sons. As soon as they are well enough to travel, I must find them a sanctuary before I can help you defeat the enemy.”
“How will you hide?” He tried to stop the surge of ferocity that accompanied this question, but she flinched and drew back. In the air, he continued, “They know you, Margravine. They know now that you’ve lied. They won’t rest until they’ve slain both you and your children. Any place the mancers’ relics are, you are not safe.”
“Then I must find a place without relics. A place unstained by death.”
Silent, Elisha dropped back onto the bed, the rafters dark and soaring overhead.
“Yes, I know it’s madness—impossible! You don’t have children, Elisha, how can you know how it feels to lose them? To know that you, yourself, have put them at risk? What would you have me do, bring them to Rome to fight the mancers?” She thrust up her hands, displaying the sharpened nails, now washed clean of her deeds. From her left hand, swirls of shadow rose like smoke to accuse a killer. “How would you be safe in my company? It might have been you tonight.” She closed her right hand, the left outspread as if it still carried the poison that might have killed him instead of his enemy. “I will find a way to continue the fight, but I dare not go with you, Elisha. No repentance would save me from that crime.”
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