Daughter of Mystery

by Jones, Heather Rose

  Muller’s drug seemed to do its work eventually and she fell quiet for several long hours. Margerit prayed—to God, to Saint Benedict, to everyone—and for the first time wished she knew all the little charms and rhymes that every dairymaid and scullery girl seemed to learn. Against burns, against the scab, against bleeding, against the wet cough, against the cramp. She’d always considered them little better than fortunetelling, but what good were grand cathedral mysteries when what you needed was to close the cut of a knife? Barbara looked so pale. Another hour passed, then there was wakefulness and pain once more. More broth, more drug.

  Sleep failed to come this time and to distract them both, Margerit began asking questions—meaningless everyday things at first. Why was the house named Tiporsel? For the crest of the first owner carved over the gate. You could still trace the outlines of the bears in the worn stone. Who had it belonged to before the baron purchased it? She didn’t know. The drug slowed her answers but not her wits. What would the garden look like in the spring? Rows of tulips and daffodils lining the paths. It was left rather wild down by the landing because of the floods. In summer the lavender filled the air, but the household was rarely there in summer. And then the question that had been teasing at Margerit ever since the evening they first met. “How did it happen that you became my godfather’s duelist?”

  Barbara closed her eyes and for a while Margerit thought she might have fallen asleep again. The story, when it came, chilled her. “I was…oh, eleven? Twelve? Barely of an age when the first signs of womanhood might appear. Estefen had newly decided he was a man. And he had decided that his uncle’s possessions were his to play with. I was lucky—someone happened by before it went too far and the baron took matters in hand. He gave me a choice. He would order that I was never to be alone with Estefen and he would make sure that I was always protected. Or he would have me taught to fight and I would have his authority to do whatever I needed to protect myself. I chose the second.

  “My teacher—this was my first teacher, not Perret—my first teacher was a thug who specialized in dark alleys and tavern brawls. The next time Estefen laid a hand on me I nearly killed him. He’s never forgiven me for that. I couldn’t have done it a second time at that age; surprise is a powerful weapon. But once was enough. When the baron saw that, he put me in training for an armin.

  “I was just a girl. I worked hard—I always worked hard for him. But what he saw at first wasn’t strength or even skill but the sheer bloody-mindedness necessary to kill a man if that was what the moment called for.” She opened her eyes but stared off at the ceiling rather than meeting her gaze.

  “People don’t understand. It isn’t about being strong. I’m not—not compared to most men. Nine times out of ten, being an armin is just a matter of being there. And in that tenth time, nine times of ten it’s your wits that win the day. I’ve only ever killed two men: one for him and one for you. And the one for him was more a matter of honor than protection. But when I had to, that’s what I did. That’s what keeps you safe. This—” She reached up to touch the bandage on her head and winced. “This wasn’t about you. This was someone telling me ‘I want something from you and I can hurt you if I don’t get it.’ I made a mistake. I thought they only meant to scare me. Now I know better.” She was quiet again for a while and this time her breathing slipped into the slower cadence of sleep.

  Margerit rubbed a hand across her cheek to smooth away the moisture there. She had always thought there was something silly about the obsession Barbara put into her training. The near-daily lessons. The repetitive drills, alone in her room, when she could be studying or resting. She’d never wondered what it might take to keep yourself at that edge of readiness every moment of every day. And all to keep someone else safe with no shield left for yourself. No shield…but there were other kinds of shields.

  She picked up the notebook she had been studying before to pass the time and turned to the section where she had been analyzing Saint Mauriz’s ritual. There was one section that she had traced back to an ancient lorica quoted in Pontis. Only the words were there, but loricas had a typical shape and form and Antuniet had shown her the way. She might not have the original mystery, but she could build a new one. She glanced over at the medallion of Saint Margerit that she’d been fingering during her prayers. Mauriz had been a soldier and the symbols of armor came naturally for him. Margerit had survived attacks as well—though it wasn’t part of her usual patronage. She knew all the standard mysteries for her namesake. There were parts that could be interwoven into the lorica easily. The first step was a fair copy of the text with room to note her experiments. There was a pen and ink on the table and a third of the night yet to fill.

  In the hour just before dawn, at the twentieth variant, the charis rose up under her hands as she invoked the saints’ names. She watched in awe as it spread in a golden shell to cover Barbara’s sleeping form. And then, with the final words of the prayer, it coalesced around her, sinking in past the bedclothes to form a second skin just under the fleshly one—a breastplate and shield to keep her safe from harm.

  Margerit stared at her hands as if they belonged to someone else. A wave of exhaustion passed over her—and no wonder; she’d been awake the night through. But this—this was what Fortunatus hinted at. This was what Gaudericus struggled to describe. This was what had built Tanfrit’s reputation. She had created a new mystery and called on Saint Mauriz and Saint Margerit and they had answered her and lent their grace to her will. And now that she’d done it once, she could do it again. From now on, whether she knew it or not, Barbara would no longer be standing alone against her enemies.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Barbara

  The surgeon had ordered she was to do nothing until he had come again, so Barbara decided to be up and about as usual by that time. But even leaving the bed for necessary things left her with a pounding headache and every movement clutched her ribs like an iron band where the bruise was taking on the color of raw liver. She had woken at dawn, groggy and suspicious of the surgeon’s remedies, to find Margerit curled asleep in a chair at her side. Some of the night came back clearly; other parts were blurred.

  The day dragged out in fretful inactivity and she tormented the housemaid who came to see to her needs until Margerit returned, still yawning and pale, to scold her and require obedience.

  “You aren’t going downstairs today, so there’s no point in demanding help to do so. If there’s anything I need, Marken is here full time for the moment.”

  That was hardly what she wanted to hear. She slapped at the bedclothes in frustration and winced at the effort. “There’s no need for that. I’ll be up and about by tomorrow for certain.”

  Margerit stood over her, making her feel like a petulant child. “You won’t be on watch until you’re properly healed.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Barbara burst out. “This had nothing to do with you. I won’t let it interfere with my duty.”

  Margerit stared at her in bewilderment. “Nothing to do with me? Anything that happens to you has to do with me.”

  “No.” Barbara fumbled to explain. “I mean, I had no right to be injured on my own business and deprive you—”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Margerit interrupted. She sat down on the edge of the bed. Barbara looked away, uncomfortable at the scrutiny. “Something you said before, about not crossing the line. Is that…did he know he could push you into that trap last night? Because you were afraid—not afraid, but reluctant to defend yourself from the start? Because it wasn’t in my defense?”

  It was a surprising insight. Barbara thought back on every move she had made since that day in the warehouse. “I don’t have a legal standing,” she explained once more, “to attack in my own defense.”

  “But you do in my defense,” Margerit countered. “And if I lose your protection, that’s an attack on me. It doesn’t matter what they intended.”

  Barbara considered the argument. It might hold
before a judge if it came to that, but she wasn’t sure she cared to test the case.

  “From now on, you do whatever you need to in order to be safe. If it ever comes to a matter of law, I’ll swear it was by my orders—and it’ll be true. Whatever comes after can fall on me.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand what that could mean.”

  Margerit’s response was sharp. “I understand what it would mean if I lost you! Promise me. Promise you won’t let yourself get cornered again out of some mistaken fear of bringing trouble on my head. You told me last night that when the baron trained you to fight he gave you permission to do anything necessary to protect yourself. Why won’t you take that same permission from me?”

  Because you aren’t the Baron Saveze. You have no power, no influence to let me get away with murder. But did it matter? Money could buy a great deal of forgiveness. And these thugs weren’t courtiers with friends in high places like Estefen’s friend Iohenrik had been. “I promise,” she said at last.

  * * *

  The first week, it was easier than she would have thought to do nothing. The stiffness made it a challenge simply to dress and manage the stairs. The dull throb in her head made books no comfortable refuge. And the constant sullen drizzle of the rain ruled out the gardens as a safe place for slow limping walks. She had quarreled with Margerit once more on the question of leaving the house but the risk of encountering her creditor’s men while still lame won that argument. It was still maddening to stand idly by and watch another take her place, however temporary it might be. The only thing that sealed her obedience was the promise that—barring reinjury—she would be back at her duties by the time the Christmas guests descended on the household.

  By the second week she had returned to her own studies and noticed how empty the house seemed when Margerit was out and about. It was Marken who saw her to all her lectures and kicked his heels at the afternoon teas and mingled with the other armins at the evening affairs. She would have felt a twinge of jealousy except that he was as eager as she was to get back to sharing the rigorous schedule of looking after a scholar-debutante.

  In odd moments that week her mind went back to the problem of how to settle those shadows from her past. She looked again for the copy of the debt tract that Margerit had brought but it was gone. Only borrowed, no doubt, and returned. So she found herself setting out the key points anew on paper.

  Item: Her father had died encumbered of a large debt. Large enough to swallow not only his own wealth and his wife’s dowry but enough of his family’s resources that their name itself was abandoned as poisonous. Large, but not unusual. The last generation had seen many upheavals and turnarounds and not all the fault of their victims. Most such debts were pursued for a time then abandoned as the potential targets fell away or disappeared. If it were only the sum involved, it might make her worth the trouble of pursuing, but there had to be some hope of payoff. Chances were the debt itself had changed hands more than once. These things were bought and sold in hidden markets and not always only with gold in mind.

  Item: She had been protected from the liability for that debt by virtue of having no resources to pursue. It had been a brutally crude method, but not originally by the baron’s choice. Indeed, it had only been made possible by her father’s last act of greed. By selling his child—however base his own motivations—he had set a wall about her. For nearly twenty years that protection had held with no assault. Or had there been? She couldn’t know what sorties might have been deflected over the years. No, there would have been some sign. The sort of man she was dealing with now would have had no compunction about exposing a child to his maneuverings. No, there had been some other bar. And why now? When the same legal shield still stood? The answer was no doubt the same. Whoever it was—perhaps several whoevers—had feared the baron. Margerit was not the least frightening. Whether they thought to work on her by threats to Margerit, or work on Margerit by threats to her, they believed there was some hope of gain.

  Question: Would there be any use in identifying her father by name? Her father…well, she hardly had any fond thoughts for that unremembered individual, but she cherished the promise of a return of her name as she hoped for salvation. And the baron had promised she would know. But he’d made other promises that lay broken. Was there a point to waiting patiently for another year—just a year and a bit? Would anything change? Why wait? That name was her only inheritance. Why not claim it for herself?

  Item: She had been born at the end of the year in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of the current prince. There would be a record of baptism some time in the month following. At some church. Somewhere in Alpennia. Listing as father some now-forgotten nobleman—and many had been forgotten in the time since then. She knew nothing of her mother’s family except that they had abandoned her in her time of need, but the clues were there. It wouldn’t be the first time a family of wealth and ambition had married off a daughter in the hope of buying nobility for their grandchildren.

  So all that was needed was to search in one month’s records in the entire country for an entry recording the baptism of one Barbara, daughter of a now-extinct line, who could not be otherwise accounted for among the Barbaras now living. It was a name neither common nor unusual. And many families had vanished during the war or the chaos that came after. Prince Aukust had found those gaps very useful for renewing the ranks of the nobility from the ablest of the middle rank.

  Barbara sighed. Well, perhaps it was simpler than that. Most likely, she had been born here in Rotenek. And if her father’s family had been prominent, there were only certain churches that would have been sufficiently dignified for his child’s baptism. It wasn’t such an impossible task.

  She was still poring over her notes when Margerit came in, excited to share the latest arguments from Dozzur Mihailin’s lecture on the new philosophers. And how he had led one pompous student into such a tangle of argument that he ended up denouncing Aquinas by accident. Barbara unobtrusively slipped her notes under a ledger to take away later. This was her puzzle, for her to solve.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Margerit

  Margerit wondered if Aunt Bertrut had been overly cautious in timing the wedding itself. She’d declined to send announcements of the betrothal to Chalanz on the technical grounds that such notices were really invitations to the wedding and no general invitations would be issued. The wedding itself was held a bare week before the Fulpis were due to arrive, guaranteeing that the personal announcements would cross on the road, giving Uncle Mauriz no opportunity either to cancel the visit or to complain of not being told. In the hubbub of arrival and introductions Uncle Mauriz kept his response to a startled silence. Afterward, his ability to rage about it was damped by Mesner Pertinek’s calm insistence on staying at Bertrut’s side and doggedly repeating, with no wavering of the cheerful expression on his pleasant round face, “The matter is really none of your affair, Fulpi.” Short of destroying Aunt Honurat’s and the girls’ enjoyment of the visit, that left nothing but acceptance.

  With the family crisis past, Margerit was free to enjoy playing hostess and showing off what the capital had to offer. Sofi and Iulien were too young for there to be any question of begging invitations to formal dances at the grand salle but there was the opera and the lesser theaters. There was shopping and the exotic sights at the Strangers’ Market in the wharf district. There was the simple opportunity to walk out and see people and things that were only fairy tales back in Chalanz. Even the excitement of coming across a formal duel one afternoon in the Plaizekil, though Aunt Honurat hurried the girls away in an excess of caution. And above all there was the unmatched pageantry of the seasonal celebrations at the cathedral.

  With her newly sharpened perceptions, Margerit found the holiday services fertile ground for new questions. Was there truly a distinction between mysteries of worship and petition? The joyful Mass of Christmas Day produced the same dizzying effects of sonitus and visio that the
more purposeful ceremony on Mauriz’s feast had. Yet in several sessions of close observation on ordinary days, it was only—or mostly—the petitions whose answers could be perceived. Perhaps it was an effect of numbers. A packed crowd of worshippers each contributing his mite, blazing like the Milky Way to a single star. Perhaps that was the reason for the guilds—beyond the simple human desire to gather in groups. Even those blind to the immediate response of the saints might have found that the petitions of groups were more often answered than solo ones. Yet the visions seemed tied to purpose. Where was the purpose in celebrating the Nativity? So many puzzles still to solve! In the ordinary way of things, she would have closeted herself in the library afterward with only Barbara and her books for company, hunting down what this author or that might have opined. But there were few quiet moments with the house full and entertainments to organize. And there were entire days when she didn’t see Barbara even in passing.

  Margerit stretched the rules sufficiently to invite Amiz and her parents to a small dinner party. There was no bar of rank between the Waldimens and Fulpis and one could make allowances for the charm of country manners on occasion. Even Nikule brought little awkwardness and both of them were able to pretend that day in the parlor on Chaturik Square had never happened. On the last day before the visit was to end, when Nikule was making noises about returning to his lodgings for the evening—for even student rooms were more spacious than what he would have gotten at Tiporsel with all the visitors—he took her aside and asked to speak with her privately.

  “I have a…a proposition to pass on to you,” he began and then hastily protested, “no, no, nothing like that!” at the wary look in her eyes.

  So she went aside with him to a corner of the drawing room to listen.