Shadows of Ivory

by T L Greylock

  They worked in silence until the ball of light above them began to fade. Manon snuffed it out and called a new spark to her fingertips to survey their progress. The grass within the stones was a ruined patchwork, holes scattered here and there, some deep enough Manon could have stepped in up to her knee, others much shallower. It looked like a wild animal had gone on a rampage.

  Manon laughed. “Now if this is not the handiwork of a Barca, I don’t know what is.”

  Luca raised an eyebrow in her direction but said nothing. He began to rummage through his pack, pulling out a bedroll and a small parcel tied with string. He checked the horses, who were grazing outside the circle, then settled on his back on his bedroll, hands behind his head, the parcel resting on his chest.

  “Out with it, Luca,” Manon said. She sat against one of the stones, her back aching, her hands raw from the shovel.

  Silence from the big man. The parcel moved up and down on his chest as he breathed. Then, “Before I was a hunter at Pontevellio, I was a member of a wealthy merchant’s private militia. We protected convoys, stood guard on his estate, that sort of thing. There was an old soldier, trying to put together enough coin to buy himself a few peaceful years and a quiet death. Only every time we got into a skirmish, he’d come out of it with this smile on his face. And this laughter.” Luca paused. “He liked the killing, you see. Liked the blood.” Another pause, this one longer, as the hunter stared up at the emerging stars. “One day the merchant brought in some new fellows, young and strong, and the old soldier’s time was up. He knew it. He went away quietly enough. But that night, he strapped on every bit of armor and every weapon he owned and walked into the middle of the largest, most vicious bandit camp I’ve ever heard of.” A third pause, so long Manon wondered if Luca had fallen asleep. “They carved him up before he could touch any of them. And his corpse was smiling that smile.”

  Manon frowned to herself, trying to work out the story’s relevance. She laughed again, unable to repress the giddiness that had bubbled within her since riding away from the charred remains of the hunting lodge. “If you’re trying to convey something to me, I’m afraid you’re being far too subtle.”

  “That’s just it,” he said, his voice quieter. “You nearly died today and you’ve been laughing to yourself ever since.”

  “Ah.” Manon shifted her weight against the stone and lifted her face to the night sky. “And you think I’m mad. Looking for a reason to die.” Manon sighed, preparing to refute it. But then she hesitated, the words falling to pieces in her mouth. “Perhaps I am,” she said, her voice shrinking to a whisper. “But if I’m the old soldier in your story, you can be damn sure I’m taking some of those bandits with me.” She meant it, and for a moment, she thought she knew who those bandits were. The Archduke. Eska de Caraval. Her father. But then she saw Julian Barca’s face behind the bars of his cell at the Hibarium and she could not have said if she wanted to laugh or cry.

  “Cheese?” Luca’s voice came to her out of the dark. Manon had never shed a tear over cheese before. But she did that night.

  ***

  In the morning, Manon’s eyes were dry as she watched Luca bend down and pick up his shovel. They had shared a small meal in silence as the sun spilled across the stones, sending their long shadows westward.

  “Luca.”

  The hunter looked up.

  “You should go. Go home. Go back to your forest, your wolf packs and your herds,” Manon said. He opened his mouth to respond, but she hurried on. “I know you feel responsible. I know you feel a need to make amends. But you’re not wrong about me.” She took a deep breath. “I am drowning. Surrounded on all sides by forces I can’t control, can’t even make out with any clarity. I can barely keep my head above it all and even if I find what I’m looking for and take it back to Arconia, the city is a web and I am caught in too many places. You don’t want to be a part of that.”

  Luca sighed and looked out over the sea, his hair ruffling in the morning breeze that blew off the water. “Justina will have reached Pontevellio some time in the night. She’d have insisted on waking Marveaux, the estate’s master hunter. And she’d have told him enough to get him and half a dozen other hunters on horseback before dawn. I misjudged her and it’s too late for me to turn back.”

  “I expect no mercy for myself, but would she betray even you?”

  Luca shrugged. “The way I see it, she told Marveaux one of three things.” He held up one finger. “You burned down the lodge and I helped you escape.” A second finger. “You burned down the lodge because I took away your Carrier gift and then I chose to follow you, which you and I know to be the truth.” A slight hesitation, a heavy inhale and exhale, and then a third finger. “Or, you burned down the lodge, I tried to stop you by taking away your gift, and then you escaped and I chased after you.” He dropped his hand to his side. “If it’s one of the first two, I’m as guilty as you are. And if it’s the third, she might be trying to spare me, but I’ll never be a free man again. If the Principe learns what I can do, even if he doesn’t lock me in a cell as a danger to others, I’ll be a creature for him to control, like one of his hunting dogs.” Luca looked across the circle at Manon. “I’m not wise. I haven’t traveled the Seven Cities, much less the world. I can write enough to get by, but nothing more.” His gaze dropped a little, as if in shame. “I’m just a man who knows his forest,” he said quietly. But then he looked up again and Manon could see the determination in his eyes even from that distance. “But there is one thing I know without a doubt. Twice now I have taken a Carrier’s gift—intentionally. I will never let anyone use me because of this thing I can do.”

  Manon looked down at her hands. Tender blisters had formed overnight. “How long do we have?”

  “Not long.”

  Manon picked up her shovel and, stifling a gasp against the pain, began to dig.

  The shadows of the stones had grown considerably shorter and the holes within the circle considerably deeper by the time Justina came into view across the wind-buffeted moor. Luca saw her first, as though his hunter’s instinct had sensed a change in the air. Manon saw him stand and squint into the distance.

  “She’s alone,” he said, surprise making his voice quiet. Manon lifted a trembling, bloody hand to brush a strand of hair from her face. Justina approached slowly, letting the horse amble toward its fellows without any apparent desire to hurry. When she reached the circle, her horse bent its neck to sample the grass and Justina watched Manon and Luca from the saddle in silence.

  “I rode ahead,” she said at last, then dismounted, her metal foot clanking slightly as she hit the ground. She had eyes only for Luca as she entered the circle, making a point not to acknowledge Manon. “A horse came up lame. They won’t be long, though.”

  For once Luca didn’t appear to have anything to say. Manon turned away and resumed her digging.

  “I don’t want to see another partner destroyed in front of me.”

  “Then why did you do it?” The words came out of Luca’s mouth in a rush and the pain in his voice nearly made Manon flinch. She dug faster, her palms screaming in agony.

  “Because I owe everything to the Principe. For whatever fucked up reason, he let me keep this position after I lost my foot. Probably thought it’d be fun to watch me limp around and fall getting into a saddle and run as slow as a wounded animal. But I won’t turn my back on that.” For all the hardness in her words, Manon could hear the quaver in Justina’s voice. “Besides,” the huntress went on, “you’re a shit partner. Half the hunter Beloque was.” Manon knew the manner in which Justina was forcing the brusqueness into her voice—knew it because she had done it countless times.

  Manon flung her shovel to the earth, sending a clod of dirt flying. She rounded on the pair across the circle and fixed Justina with a hard stare. The spark beckoned to her, begged to be released, but Manon pushed it away. She closed the distance to Justina and didn’t stop, forcing the huntress to take several hurried steps ba
ckward until she bumped up against one of the tall stones.

  “He doesn’t deserve your insults.” Manon leaned in close, her nose nearly touching Justina’s.

  “What do you care?” The huntress breathed back the reply with ferocity, but Manon could see the hurried pulse at her throat. “You’re just using him to get what you want.”

  “Better that from a stranger than cruelty from someone who ought to be looking out for him.”

  “Are you going to burn me for it?”

  “I won’t waste my gift on the likes of you,” Manon snarled. Some quiet part of her realized it was true, realized she didn’t feel the need to let her anger win. She held that thought for a moment, unsure where it stemmed from, unsure what corner of her to stash it in. In the end it fell away as softly as it had come.

  The two women stared hard at each other, neither blinking, neither backing down.

  “Stop this,” Luca said. His voice was strangely distant. “Manon. Look.”

  Manon tore her gaze away and turned. Luca was kneeling in the overturned earth, one hand on the shovel Manon had discarded, the other hovering over the ground.

  And there, gleaming through a dusting of black earth, as bright and brilliant to Manon as her father’s stolen ingots, was a piece of pale, dirty linen.

  Manon was on her knees next to Luca before she could take another breath. She thrust her bleeding hands into the dirt, raking it away with her fingers, trying to uncover the rest of the object, then cried out in pain, her torn hands protesting.

  “Let me.” Luca lifted Manon’s hands by her wrists and set them in her lap, then began to use his own to scoop the dirt away. It wasn’t long before the rectangular shape of the object could be seen and Luca reached in and lifted a linen bag cinched with rope from the ground. He set it in front of Manon with reverence and looked up at her. “Is this what you came for?”

  Manon took a deep breath and loosened the opening, revealing a plain wooden box. She pushed back the linen and ran a hand across the pale grain of the wood, leaving behind a streak of blood. It wasn’t locked. Just a simple clasp of dull, hammered bronze. Manon hesitated.

  “If I open this and it’s what I think it is, there’s no escaping him,” Manon heard herself say, not caring that Luca heard it too. “There’s no release from his yoke.” The truth of it was like a weight settling on her shoulders. For a moment she was back in the Archduke’s garden sipping rosé, and she realized that she had held out hope that there was no reliquary in the stone circle at Pontevellio, that she would fail at the task the Archduke had given her, and by failing she could find Perrin and disappear, like her mother four years before.

  Manon lifted the clasp and the lid of the wooden box. Within, nestled in a bed of straw, lay a box of ivory and gold, and Manon knew there would be no disappearing.

  Interlude 13

  A letter from Celestine de Remaux, Tribune of Cancalo during the Great Rising, to Godefroy Elmina, Tribune of Toridium, dated three months after the death of Varin II

  My brother-in-rule,

  This must not continue. Varin is dead, Elysium is shattered. We have earned our freedom at great cost—and now that cost ought to come to an end. And yet I hear of death after death, executions carried out in all manner of hideous methods, methods learned from the very tyrants we sought to destroy.

  You must cease purging your city of those who Carry. I beg you to hear me, for the love we both bear for our Seven Cities, for the honor of those who died for this cause. Do not punish the innocent for the crimes of dead kings and queens. Have we not lived through enough bloodshed? Enough hatred and fear? Enough cruelty and oppression? Do not become what we fought so hard to eradicate. Do not let Varin and his ancestors rule us from beyond life. Those who Carry do not choose the gift and many fought with us. They must be given a place in this new world we said we would forge, not be feared and persecuted.

  Do you remember the day we stood beneath the Sungate? We knelt and joined hands, we Tribunes, speaking a vow that made us the enemy of our king, a vow that pledged our lives to the people of our cities. Do you remember what that moment felt like? Sometimes I forget. It was so long ago, and the endless dark days that followed crushed the spirit of what we shared that day. But when I catch moments of silence and peace, I can still feel the sunlight on my skin, hear the birdsong and the voices of my fellow Tribunes. And my heart soars at that sound, Godefroy, as I remember what hope we carried within us. I pray that you, too, can remember that hope and find it within yourself once again.

  Hear me, Godefroy. But if you cannot, I will be forced to invoke the ancient summons of the Tribunes, a law far older than the Alescus. And let this be a warning to you, my brother-in-rule, I will not hesitate to see you expelled and exiled. I will do what I must to preserve this new world. Do not doubt me.

  For the Seven Cities and for freedom,

  Celestine, Tribune of Cancalo

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “We hardly know each other.”

  The knocking woke Eska from a dreamless sleep. She stirred, extricated herself from Eden’s arms, pushed hair from her face, yawned.

  The knocking came again, louder, reminding her why she had awoken. Eska leaned over Eden’s sleeping face and kissed him lightly on the cheek. His eyes opened and he smiled.

  “You have visitors,” she murmured.

  “I heard. I was rather hoping they would go away.”

  A fist fell on the door again, heavy and forceful. Eden frowned.

  “Stay here.” He rose from the bed and pulled his robe over his shoulders, tying the belt as he left the bedchamber. Eska waited a moment, then, draping herself in another robe, stepped out onto the balcony. It was from that vantage point that she saw Eden traverse the courtyard, his bare feet padding silently, then saw him stop abruptly. Eska’s gaze narrowed as she tried to gauge what had caught his eye in the opposite portico. She drew in a breath, her heart suddenly racing. The pounding continued and now she could hear faint shouting.

  “I don’t suppose you know what I’ll find when I open that door,” Eden said.

  “Seven or eight soldiers, give or take,” came a voice from within the portico’s shadows.

  “Why?” Eden’s terse question bit through the gentle sound of the fountain. A tiny boat on its course whizzed by Eska’s feet.

  The figure that stepped into the courtyard was as disheveled as the last time Eska had seen him.

  “You know how it goes,” the Tortoise said. “Found something they wanted more than they wanted me.”

  Eska ducked and crawled off the balcony, hoping the thief hadn’t seen her. Moving as silently as she could, she rummaged through Eden’s wardrobe and a chest of clothes, searching for anything she could use as a weapon.

  “And what is it you told them I’ve done?” Eden’s voice drifted up from the courtyard.

  “Well, to begin with, there’s the Delucca, of course. You’ve got it hidden away behind one of these other canvases. But we’re talking bigger. The deed you stole from Magistrate Umbero, for instance.”

  “I won that,” Eden cut in.

  “In an illegal game.” The Tortoise’s voice was unwavering, far more convincing than Eska had heard at any point during their previous encounter. “And I didn’t even need to provide the Tribune with the rumors about your forbidden activities in the lake yesterday. He’d already heard. And he wasn’t pleased.” The thief paused. “But it’s not just you they want, as it happens.”

  Eska froze just as her hands came into contact with a piece of leather. She pulled it free from the bottom of the chest, finding herself in possession of a coiled whip. It looked old, the handle fraying, but it was better than nothing.

  “I begin to think I might get a straighter answer from whoever is trying to break down my door,” Eden was saying. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m willing to ask what you want.”

  Eska moved across the bedroom and through the bath chamber, then crept down the sta
irs as the Tortoise began to answer.

  “You can’t do better than what they’ve promised me.”

  “Ah, a full pardon, then. But you can’t really think they’ll be willing to overlook your entire career.”

  “It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  Eska moved through the house, choosing a door to the courtyard that kept her out of the Tortoise’s sight. She slipped through, hoping the steady noise of the fountain would muffle any sound she might make, and emerged in the portico the thief had vacated a moment before. The knocking had ceased. A reprieve only, Eska knew. Eden’s gaze remained fixed on the Tortoise, but Eska knew he could see her.

  “The woman,” the Tortoise said. “They want her, too.”

  “What woman?”

  “Don’t play the fool with me. We both know you’re not. The de Caraval woman.”

  Eska’s breath caught at the sound of her name.

  Eden sighed and spread his hands. “Fine. But you truly have me at a loss. Eska de Caraval is a guest.”

  “Regardless of what you two were doing in the lake, she’s also wanted for murder in Toridium. But I gather she didn’t mention that. Her uncle has been good to me, but I can’t refuse what they’ve offered me, not for a murderer.”

  Eska stepped out from behind a slender pillar and let the whip uncoil. It whispered against the slate tiles beneath her feet. The Tortoise began to turn. Eska snapped the whip, cracking it through the air.

  And missed—whips were apparently more difficult to wield than she had imagined. She grazed him, though, as he ducked away, and it was opportunity enough for Eden to hit him with a wave of water from the fountain.