The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  Vargo started cutting Serrado out of his clothes. Any other time, he would have taken a perverse joy in destroying a set of dress vigils—but when the shirt fell away, shock overrode everything else. Alsius, is that—

  ::The same curse that killed me. Yes.::

  The traceries shimmered through Serrado’s brown skin like stretch marks of iron-dark hematite. Ninat, attacking his life energy; Quinat, sapping his health. Even just touching the lines, though, Vargo felt the difference: not just physical pain, but the inescapable agony of the spirit within.

  The sort of agony that could only be created by eisar. “Renata,” Vargo said softly. “Is there a reason why Captain Serrado would have enemies among the Illius Praeteri?”

  The answering silence stretched long enough that he glanced up. Renata looked utterly stricken. At his pointed glare, she stumbled into speech. “I—no. Not that I’m aware of. This… Is this like what Diomen put me in?”

  ::If Ghiscolo wanted him gone, there are easier ways to do it.::

  “Not important right now,” Vargo snapped, at himself as much as anyone. A distorted gap centered on Serrado’s left shoulder and dragging down his arm explained how the curse hadn’t killed him before Renata discovered him. He’d somehow managed to tear through a section of it as it dug in, slowing its effect.

  But a slow death was still death.

  Varuni returned with the restoratives. While she propped Serrado up and enlisted Renata’s help in massaging tonics down his throat, Vargo escaped to his workbench, putting his back to the room while he thought.

  ::You know those medicines won’t slow it for more than a bell. We’ve never tested our theories for how to counteract this, and even you on your most reckless day can’t freehand a numinat fast enough to save him.::

  So we let him die? Vargo started assembling his tools. Ink and brush instead of chalk. A soft cloth for blotting. A thin metal drafting template so he didn’t have to resort to compass and edge for his basic geometric forms. What focus would be best? Svalthu was an aspect of Tuat, the one Alsius had used on him sixteen years ago. Vargo sorted through his chops and found the right one, fingers brushing over the raised, wax-stained marble.

  ::There’s no ‘letting’ involved.:: Alsius’s voice was gentle, and full of regret. ::The curse has drained too much. Unless you propose to sacrifice Renata or Varuni to buy time, he will die.::

  “Not them,” Vargo whispered. Aloud. To make it real. Because he couldn’t believe he was even fucking proposing this. Setting the Svalthu chop back in its box, he pulled out the chop for Teruv instead.

  Teruv, an aspect of Tricat. Because what would kill one or two, three might survive.

  Alsius’s voice became shrill. ::Have you gone completely mad? Stop. Put that down. I will not countenance this. You could kill us both!::

  We’ve survived worse. And it would give us the time we need. Vargo swept his tools onto a tray and carried it over to the lounging couch. Varuni had finished cutting Serrado out of his breeches, leaving only his smalls, and now was cleaning up the various bottles. Renata sat tense, watching Vargo with an odd look. Half-worried, and that made sense—but half-wary, as if she were afraid of what he might do. She must have heard about Serrado punching him.

  Alsius saw the connection, too, but from the other side. ::Just because you feel guilty about his brother—::

  “I do.”

  “Vargo?”

  He ignored Varuni’s prod. I won’t do this if you don’t agree to it, he told Alsius. It took all his will not to add that it was more choice than Alsius had given him.

  But then, guilt had motivated Vargo the first time, too.

  He stalled, setting out the ink and the other tools onto the table Varuni had dragged up for the medicines. Alsius?

  ::It… would be a chance to examine the death numinat at our leisure. Well, not leisure, since we’ll be in considerable pain and metaphysically bleeding like slaughtered pigs, but you understand what I mean.::

  Vargo choked down a laugh. So, we’re doing this?

  ::Why do I let you talk me into these things?::

  Because you’re a softhearted old man.

  ::Softheaded, more like.::

  Vargo uncapped his inkwell, raising his voice to spin a lie for Renata. “I’m going to inscribe a temporary Quinat numinat on him. It should keep his health stable while I remove the curse.” He took one of the half-full bottles from Varuni and downed it, ignoring the vile taste. A moment later his senses shocked awake like he’d drunk a whole pot of coffee in one gulp. Serrado’s pallor, Varuni’s scowl, Alsius’s skittering, Renata’s masklike tension: all were cut as sharp as panes of glass in the Sebatium.

  “I have my compass, my edge, my chalk, myself. I need nothing more to know the cosmos.” Vargo set his template and brush to Serrado’s bare shoulder.

  The cold sweat made things harder, threatening to blur his ink. Without being asked, Renata used a cloth to blot it away. Vargo worked fast, both from a sense of urgency, and to keep himself from reconsidering. Quinat for health—a mere handkerchief to stanch the sucking chest wound draining the life from Serrado—balanced by Tuat and both linked to Illi, joining Serrado to the inscriptor’s self. Or in this case, selves. He didn’t use a wax seal for the focus; instead he painted the Teruv chop with ink and printed it directly onto Serrado’s skin.

  Despite everything, an odd pride glowed through him. What he was about to do, no other inscriptor in Nadežra could do. Not if they hoped to survive.

  He closed the circle of Uniat, and the mark on his chest seared like someone pressing a branding iron into his flesh. For an instant he went blind with pain—just like he’d done in an Eastbridge study, sixteen years ago.

  But Serrado’s breathing grew steadier. Now Vargo had time. “Let’s get him onto the floor.”

  This time he let Varuni and Renata do the carrying. With his and Alsius’s joined life energy pouring into Serrado, Vargo didn’t trust himself not to drop the man, and he didn’t want Varuni realizing what he’d done.

  After that, the process shattered into moments of hard-edged focus, each one careful and precise, but disconnected from the others. A step, and a step, and a step. He etched two wax blanks with simple Quinat figures, leaving the Uniat line just short of closure; he would have liked to make three, but he couldn’t craft one small enough for Peabody, not with sufficient precision. The connection between him and Alsius would have to be enough. The growing pain was an odd sort of blessing: There was no chance of Vargo losing himself to imbuing anything, not when each breath carved its way into his lungs before rasping back out. When the blanks were prepared, Vargo began scribing a counter to the curse, a complex net of lines through the prismatium framework laid into the floor.

  Then he had to pin the curse down on Serrado so it could be countered.

  That was a bad moment for everybody involved: Vargo bit down on a scream, and Serrado went into a seizure. So did Peabody, twisting onto his back with legs twitching, but fortunately neither Renata nor Varuni noticed; they were too busy holding Serrado down, keeping him from spasming right out of the numinat.

  Pinning the curse made the pain more visceral, a Primordial agony Vargo couldn’t ignore. Blood welled in his nail beds, and he had to hold one hand steady with the other to join Ninat to Illi, passing the energy of the curse back into the cosmos while a recursive loop fed Serrado’s life back through Illi to Uniat.

  Simple, really. The only way to remove a death curse was to let it finish what it started. The only way to survive it was to be reborn.

  Varuni saw the bloody fingers and the shaking of his hands when he passed her one of the prepared wax rounds. Vargo spoke before she could say anything. “In a moment, you’ll need to put one of those on Serrado’s chest and one on mine, over the heart, and close the circle. Just press your fingernail into the gap.”

  Renata pulled off her gloves and took the other round from him. “Why? What will this do?”

  “Restart our
hearts,” Vargo said, and activated the numinat.

  Eastbridge, Upper Bank: Canilun 3

  Varuni was lunging for Vargo even as he collapsed, filling the air with what Ren presumed were Isarnah curses. That left her to dive for Grey—and for one horrible instant, haste made her hand slip, the wax sliding from his chest to the floor. But she slammed it back in place and dug her fingernail into the gap in the circle, and the jolt that ran through her hand was nothing, because Grey gasped in a sudden breath of air, and he was alive.

  She wrenched around and saw Vargo was breathing, too, and something like awake, because one blood-smeared hand batted feebly at Varuni as if that mothlike touch could move the very angry brick looming over him.

  “Peabody,” Vargo managed, more groan than word, and flinched when Varuni scooped the limp spider off the floor and dumped it into his lap.

  “Can you believe this asshole?” she ranted at Ren. “Cares more about a bug than his own life!”

  ::Alsius?:: Vargo’s mental call was as weak as his physical voice.

  Two fuzzy legs lifted and waved like surrender flags. ::Mm’fin. S’rado?::

  Vargo struggled to sit up. “How is he? Serrado? Did it work?”

  “He’s alive,” Ren said, and felt her own hands tremble. “Unconscious still, but the lines from the curse are gone.”

  Relief and exhaustion made her stupid; she pronounced the r’s too distinctly for a Seterin accent. But Varuni was occupied with chewing Vargo out, and Ren didn’t think either he or Alsius were in any state to notice.

  “Good. That’s good.” Vargo nodded longer than he needed to, cupping his spider carefully to his chest. Without bothering to rise, he wiped away a portion of the circle on the floor, then rolled a bottle of liniment toward Renata. “Use that to remove the numinat on him.”

  ::Does it matter? It’s ’nnert.::

  ::Do you want a hawk listening in on our conversations?::

  ::Hmm. Point.::

  She dragged her gaze away from Vargo—from the layers of clothing that covered the brand on his chest. A brand Tanaquis thought connected him to Alsius. And they had used that connection to save Grey, risking their own lives to keep him from dying before they could undo the curse.

  The same curse that had also killed Alsius.

  She had a thousand new questions, and no chance to ask them. Instead she found a rag and wiped the ink from Grey’s skin, as gently as she could, even though there seemed no risk of him waking.

  By the time she was done, Vargo had regained his feet. Even without Alsius offering commentary, Renata could tell it must be sheer force of will that pushed him upright; she knew all too well what it felt like to hide the full extent of one’s weakness.

  Before she could speak, Vargo said, “You promised whatever I like in return.”

  She stood, hiding the knot of worry that tightened inside. “I meant it.”

  “Then you don’t tell Serrado I had anything to do with this.”

  She was too tired not to gape at him, and gaping was the appropriate response anyway. “What?”

  “Not a word. I don’t care what you say. It’s possible he won’t even know what hit him. But you weren’t here, and I didn’t do anything.” He scowled down at Grey, absently rubbing his own stomach. “It would be awkward, and I don’t need that shit.”

  Awkward? It might be the one thing that could ease the fury over Vargo’s involvement in Kolya’s death. But Vargo hadn’t hesitated before issuing his demand, even though he had leverage to get anything he wanted out of Renata.

  Just like he hadn’t hesitated before throwing that letter in the fire. Or before risking himself to save Grey.

  They needed to talk. She had no idea what to say, though, nor the energy with which to say it—and Vargo, she suspected, needed to collapse as soon as possible. “Understood,” she said faintly.

  “Good. Varuni, can you handle delivering Serrado to his house? I trust your discretion.” Lurching to a sideboard, Vargo splashed something the mellow gold of warm honey from a decanter into a glass.

  “Sure.” Varuni’s expression didn’t change, but she waited just long enough for Vargo to lift the glass to his lips—deliberately, Renata was sure. “As is, or should I put some clothes on him first?”

  16

  The Constant Spirit

  Isla Traementis, the Pearls: Canilun 4

  Ren meant to stay awake after she climbed back through her window, even though the hour was appallingly late. It seemed impossible that the ball had been earlier that same night; so much had happened since then, a month might have passed. She needed to think.

  She changed into her sleeping robe, sat on the floor at the foot of her bed to dangle and drag the sash for Clever Natalya’s amusement—and woke to find a snoozing ball of fur in her lap and Tess and Suilis exclaiming in concern.

  “The letter from Seteris?” Tess whispered urgently once she’d sent Suilis off to refresh the washbasin water and get breakfast for the kitten.

  “Destroyed,” Ren said, wincing at a series of thumps just past her door.

  “Folks moving in, folks moving out. ’Twould save our bones a lot of aching if the new cousins were the ones going to Quientis’s villa,” Tess said briskly, just as one of the other maids came in to ask whether the alta would be coming to see Era Traementis off.

  Downstairs, Renata found a scene too well-organized to be called chaos, despite its flurry. Colbrin was directing it all, instructing an ant brigade of footmen, some in Quientis livery, carrying trunks to a cart waiting outside. Bemused, Renata said, “Is Donaia going to the bay for a rest, or moving to Seste Ligante?”

  “I didn’t know what she’d want.” She turned to find Giuna hovering nearby, hands twisting. “It just seemed easier to—well—pack everything.”

  The hand-wringing wasn’t all for Donaia’s departure, though. More quietly, Giuna said, “The problem I told you about last night. What are we going to do about it?”

  We, not you. Ren still struggled with hearing that kind of speech from anyone other than Tess or Sedge. Too many years of only having those two. And Giuna hadn’t once asked what in a letter from Seteris could be used against her.

  “It’s been taken care of,” Renata said, and then Alinka’s arrival gave her a blessed excuse not to try and explain what had happened in Whitesail.

  “Please forgive me for being late,” Alinka said, shepherding her children ahead of her. Yvieny immediately went bounding off, shouting for Meatball, while Jagyi sucked his thumb in quiet wariness. Directing her words equally to Colbrin, Giuna, and Renata, Alinka explained, “My brother by marriage was… not well this morning.”

  As Giuna went to corral Yvieny and the dog, Renata drew Alinka to the side. “I hope it’s nothing too serious.” He must be all right, or surely she wouldn’t be here.

  Alinka laughed awkwardly. “No, just—worse for the wear from drink. Which normally is not his way,” she added hastily. “He said he had an… unpleasant encounter last night.”

  Relief unfurled inside Ren. He’s awake enough to talk. And perhaps to lie. While she didn’t know what had transpired between him and Vargo outside the manor, in his shoes, she would have blamed everything on that.

  But a bitter thread wove through the relief. Yes, Grey Serrado was a very good liar.

  “He asked me to give this to you,” Alinka added, handing over a sealed envelope.

  Renata shoved the envelope in her surcoat pocket before anyone else could note it, just as Donaia wandered in blearily. She held her head as though she wasn’t quite sure it would stay on without help. “And people accused me of having too good a time last night,” Renata said with mild amusement, helping Donaia sit away from the commotion and fetching her a pot of strong tea.

  “You are a malicious spirit, sent to torment me,” Donaia grumbled, crouching over her cup as though it contained the elixir of life. “How can you be fresh as a flower when I feel like a trampled weed?”

  “Youth,” Renata
said succinctly, and Donaia laughed so hard she snorted her tea.

  “Forget a spirit,” she said as she wiped her chin. “You’re one of the Primordials, set loose from the gods’ binding. Go do something useful, since you’re so young and spry. There’ll be time for goodbyes later.”

  Renata circled her fingers the way a Seterin would to banish the ill luck of naming the Primordials—and interlaced them like a Vraszenian once Donaia couldn’t see. Then she went to help organize the chaos.

  Donaia had perked up by the time Scaperto Quientis arrived a short while later. Renata gathered that he’d escorted Donaia upstairs the previous night… then left soon after, having seen her safely into the hands of Suilis. His manner as he led her out the door to a waiting carriage showed a similar mix of concern, courtesy, and gentle teasing. Giuna followed, to see them off at the dock.

  With the villa party gone and the new cousins yet to move in, the manor seemed very empty. As Renata sat at her desk to glance through the morning’s messages, a crinkle from her pocket reminded her of the envelope Alinka had given her.

  She pulled it out with reluctance. So many things it might hold, and so few of them anything she wanted to see right now, with her feelings so tangled. Grey Serrado was the Rook; Grey Serrado had tricked her. The old hurt rose up, choking her, and she swallowed it down. This is probably instructions for returning the hood.

  But there would be no rest while she wondered at its contents. Steeling herself, Ren broke the seal and unfolded the envelope.

  Something fluttered loose, and she caught it by reflex. A rectangle of stiff paper, painted on its back with the spindle, shuttle, and shears of the three threads. A pattern card. And when she turned it over—

  The Constant Spirit.

  Ren almost dropped it again. That wasn’t a usual part of a pattern deck, not anymore. It was one of the seven clan cards, which had fallen out of use after the destruction of the Ižranyi—when, according to the legends, every Ižranyi card had gone blank. After that, most szorsas had stopped using the clan cards entirely.