by Cate Glass
“I’ve other things to be about,” spat Donato. “Pick up a sword, young woman of the shining intellect. You can fight this annoying gentleman. Men don’t understand how much you disdain them.”
Placidio attacked, keeping Donato’s attention on himself.
“Come to me. For Marsilia,” I yelled, choosing a name Livia might heed. “For your father. For all of us. Help me put an end to this.”
I set down the flasks, buckets, and skins, ready to fetch her and force her to act, but after a shuddering breath, she clambered round the perimeter of the tower. She climbed over the chests and bags rather than taking a shorter route through the splashed blood or nearer the duelists.
Placidio taunted and darted away from the doorway where I waited for her.
Indeed, to get in the way of the battle, defenseless, would be a mortal mistake. Placidio was clearly the more accomplished duelist, but Donato’s strength—the Enemy’s strength—was wearing on him. Few of Donato’s blows landed, but those that did were punishing.
“We need to cool down Dono,” I said softly, when Livia reached my side. “Get as close as you dare and throw water on him, as if he were a blaze destroying your home. It’s the only way to weaken him just now. Do it and don’t ask why.” Not that I could tell her.
It was a measure of the fracturing this night had wrought on Livia’s certainties that she did not argue or question such mad instruction. She simply grabbed a bucket.
It was a pitiful battle we fought. No more than half the drops we dispensed reached Donato’s body. The rest just made life more miserable for Placidio as the drying blood became puddles that muddled dismembered corpses with the supplies we’d left in the keep—blankets, bandages, linked sausages, bunches of grapes. In moments our buckets and flasks were empty.
“Another round,” I said, and we gathered the emptied vessels. Livia followed me out of the keep. Fog drifted through the courtyard, hiding Teo and the carnage. Not daring to linger, we hurried down the stair.
Neri and Dumond had filled the remaining containers. Even Dumond’s shirt had become a water bag, albeit a leaky one.
“I’ll take these,” I said to Livia. “You help them fill the rest, and then bring all you can carry. Flowing water is anathema to the thing that has Donato in thrall.” Mages of fire, mages of water, as in Teo’s story. “These actions, the words, the horrors … they’re not of Donato’s doing.”
“He saved me,” she said, her long face stricken with shame and guilt and terror. “How is that? All was well. He was playing tartaruga, as always. But as the brigands got drunker, they surrounded us, brandishing weapons, calling us fools and pigs, screaming that my father and the Confraternity were the very ones who had murdered their leaders and comrades and forced them to run. Then the woman captain, drunk as the rest, ordered them to tie us to the wall, lash us, and cut off our hands and ears. She would deliver them to our families herself as proper revenge.”
A sob did not slow her tale. “They cheered and bound me, but Dono fought—throwing things at them. He moved impossibly fast. Weapons, flasks, stones, flew about the keep, but then this sorcery fell over him. He got loose of them and began … taunting … the Cavalieri to fight each other.” Her voice trembled, teetering between lecturing and lunacy.
“Don’t think of it now, Livia. His body is burning from the inside, and we’re cooling him off. That’s all.”
Neri hunched over, coughing and clutching his shoulder. “I’ll come … soon’s I get over—” He broke into more horrid hacking.
“Nay, I need you here with me, lad, so’s my door will be right ready when they come,” said Dumond, laying a hand on Neri’s heaving shoulder. “With only one working leg, half a hand, and eyes that see two of everything, I would be far more hindrance than help up there. And I need you to tell me which is the true and which the double of anything.”
Neri couldn’t get a breath to argue.
Grateful beyond words, I ran.
Placidio’s back was pressed to the broken stair. Donato thrust, slashed, and whipped his blade with little precision, but the quickness of the blows required Placidio’s every skill to counter, and their power shivered Placidio’s arms.
“Look here. Confraternity boy!” he yelled. Every word grated as if passed through crushed glass. “Will you—allow—a pitiful drunk like me—to take you?” A few more blows and he’d be dead.
With a bucket and an uncorked waterskin, I crept up behind Donato and sluiced his back.
Snarling, he flailed at Placidio.
I doused his leg with the contents of the waterskin. Ducking, I snatched the poignard from my boot.
Donato spun to see where the water was coming from, ready to swat me like a mosquito, I guessed. But I stayed low, moving with him. I needed to slow him down. When the next attack from Placidio drew his attention, I jabbed the well-honed poignard into the back of his thigh.
With a growl of rage, Donato twisted around and raised his sword. Livia flung Dumond’s dripping shirt over his sword hand and hurled an uncorked stone flask straight into his face. He stumbled. Bellowing in pain and fury, he dropped the sword and grabbed for the dagger in his thigh.
I scuttled away from his thrashing and grabbed more of Livia’s pots and botas, emptying them on his foot and ankle, anywhere I could reach and escape before his fist could smack my head. Was it imagining that his skin began to steam? Recalling what my friends had done for me, I decided not.
Placidio retreated up the stair and raised his beloved spada de lato, only to behold a jagged stub.
With a triumphant yowl, Donato yanked out the bloody poignard and launched it at him.
The stub was enough to bat the dagger aside.
“Swordmaster!” I yelled.
When Placidio’s eyes flicked to me, I tossed him the arming sword I’d drawn from my belt.
He grabbed it just in time to counter Donato’s next hacking blow.
Vessels empty, Livia and I backed toward the doorway. At the same moment, Teo climbed through the broken south wall of the keep. Changed.
His ink markings had blended together, gleaming as if he were armored in a skin of engraved silver, even to the twining ring about one eye. He seemed taller, slimmer, his fine-boned features even more spare than those so familiar. His fair hair had become a floating tangle of silver.
“Paré, Macheon! Begone! Leave this soul to its own life and return to your rightful dwelling.” His voice thundered like the Falls of Rodhlann, the birthplace of the Venia high in the mountains of Argento.
Not only his voice recalled the wonder of Rodhlann. When Sandro took me to the falls to see the roots of his beloved city, I had never imagined anything so powerful or so lovely. The stepped cascades gleamed silver, blue, palest green, colors that shifted in the light of sun or moon or stars. But that luminous cataract would pale beside the radiance of a thousand hues that shone from Teo—masking the bloody horror of the keep with glory.
Donato peered closely, his forehead creased. Puzzled. “A Vodai Guardian! Here? But what kind are you … an initiate? Has the caste of the Great Fish become so degenerate it must send its roe into battle?”
“This is no battle, prisoner,” said Teo. “You stand not on your own feet, but on those of stolen flesh. No Guardian would desert the Timeless Watch to shoo a fly. I’ve come only to cleanse the ground poisoned by your foul burning.”
Teo … or whoever he was … spread his legs and raised his spread arms skyward, as he had done those months ago on the docks of Cantagna. “Me to dóro pou mou édose, Theíko Patéra, katharíste aftó to dilitiriasméno chóma.”
The words rang like Cantagna’s bells in times of celebration, when their tuning and sequence and joyous exuberance could swell the heart. As to their meaning: I recognized the initial phrase, by the gift granted me, as it was the beginning of every signature on Typhonese artwork—a humble acknowledgment that talent was the gift of the gods or the universe and not the artist’s own doing. And Teo had lon
g acknowledged that Theíko Patéra, the divine father invoked in his first cry for help those months ago, was the Lord of Sea and Sky we named Atladu. Of the rest—well, he had already spoken his objective. Cleansing.
Bellowing in rage, Donato slashed at Teo. Sparks glanced off the silver armor once and then again. But as Donato kept up his attack, dancing around the motionless Teo, one strike and then another that could dismember a human body left thin lines of blood in the silver. The next left a deeper stripe across Teo’s back.
Teo did not falter.
Donato laughed and slashed again. Only this time, his sword met steel—the Tibernian arming sword in Placidio’s hand. The moment’s respite had given my swordmaster new legs … or perhaps it was the rising wind or the first rain shower of a new storm that blew through every hole in the old keep’s thick walls—no matter whether it faced east or west, north or south. A freshet poured through the broken roof.
The duel shifted away from Teo and then close again. Still he held position. The rain washed his blood from a dozen cuts.
A drenched Donato howled and charged at Teo, but Placidio sloshed into his path and took the blow.
Livia tugged my arm, pulling me away from the courtyard doorway, for the drainage from the courtyard had become an ankle-deep river gushing through the keep—blood-red murk that cleared as we watched.
Soon the deluge from every side made swordplay impossible. Neither Placidio nor Donato could land a blow. Shielding his eyes with one arm, a heaving Placidio sheathed his sword and slogged through the rising water toward Donato. Before he could get there, a wooden shutter tore away from its rusty mounting, flew through the air, and glanced off Donato’s brow.
With a cry of pain and terror—human pain and terror—Donato staggered. A thundering blow from Placidio’s fist … and then another … and he collapsed, face down, in the flood.
“Help us, Livia,” I said as I sloshed through the knee-deep water. “You and the swordsman bring Dono; I’ll get this one.” For Teo, too, had expended everything.
Bleeding from multiple wounds and—Mother’s grace—his flesh cold as death, our friend stood motionless, scarce breathing. His arms had collapsed; his pale, soaked hair hung down over his face and shoulders. His brilliant armor had returned to ink marks of pale gray. I caught him under the arms just before he toppled.
“The lady’s hand would be most appreciated over here,” said Placidio. He squatted in the knee-deep water, supporting Donato’s head while trying to extract him from under floating chests and sodden blankets.
Livia placed her hands on her slim hips and said, “Are you a lunatic? Why aren’t you putting that sword right through the devil’s heart?”
“Because he is not a devil,” I said. “I’m not sure why or how, but he’s been holding that particular devil off since he was a child. That’s why he would leave, I think. And if you heard his last cry…”
“A human cry,” Livia said, yielding.
“Aye. So get over here and help me get him on my back,” said Placidio. “I’ll carry him down to the grotto, assuming it’s not washed away. Find some of that rope’s been tangling my feet, and we’ll make sure of him before we let him wake up.”
Livia sloshed and stumbled through the flood.
“Síko páno,” I said to Teo, grabbing him as he slumped. Stand up.
I knew only a little Typhonese, and had no idea if I pronounced it correctly. A thousand years had passed since it was spoken in the Costa Drago.
“Remember when I pulled you from the river last spring?” I said, draping his arm over my shoulder. My arm went around his waist. “You were just like this. Cold and limp as a … dead fish. And as on that night, I cannot bear your full weight. You have to help. One foot…”
I waited and slowly he moved one forward.
“… and the next,” I said, exultant. With so much water dripping from my hair, I could scarce see anything … nor could anyone accuse me of letting tears fall. I refused to be a weeping ninny.
His other foot moved forward.
“I’ll get you out of the wet, though it’s clear that water is where you flourish. But I certainly can’t bear any more of it myself. And I know that if I get you warm and feed you my swordmaster’s salt tea—which if Lady Fortune is kind, will have survived this storm of your making—you’ll be able to heal yourself.”
I hoped.
22
THE FEAST OF THE LONE PRAETORIAN
PERDITION’S BRINK
AFTER MIDNIGHT
We had no choice but to shelter in the grotto of the spring long enough to rest, dry out a bit, and make a plan. Neri was feverish; Dumond battered, broken, and asleep; Teo and Donato insensible. All of us were at the edge of exhaustion.
Quick and careful, I drew the Lhampuri dagger down a cedar limb, shaving bark we could dry for tinder and hoping to find some burnable kindling underneath. Neri sat beside me, huddled tight about his knees.
“Will you be able to help me get this soggy mess to stay lit?”
Neri had worked all summer on using his magic directly for fire or light and not solely for his walk-anywhere talent. Only one torch yet burned and it was flickering wanly toward its doom.
“I’ll try,” said Neri. “I’m just cold. Can’t stop the shivers.” I had applied Vashti’s salve to his hot, swollen wound and left it open.
Earlier, while Placidio guarded the sleepers, Livia and I had retrieved a heap of the driest wood we could find, Vashti’s wound salve, and a few other oddments that had somehow escaped the bloody floodwaters. But we found no dry shirts, blankets, cloaks, or gloves. No dry bandages. Worrisome. We needed the fire.
I had rinsed the blood out of Teo’s shirt, slops, and eye patch and put them on him for modesty’s sake—and privacy’s—to hide his marks. He couldn’t be any colder than he was, lying on the cool stone in his deathlike stupor. The gashes in his flesh yet gaped and bled. His ink marks were all a dead gray; the silvery one about his eye had lost its glint, no different now from the others.
Donato had not stirred, either. We’d bound him and sat him against the wall. He appeared unwounded, save for the split lip and swollen jaw from Placidio’s last blows—and whatever damage the Enemy left behind after occupying a soul. Would he ever open his eyes again?
Livia had refused to touch Teo or Donato, either one. I didn’t blame her. Her life was grounded in a view of the world drawn from reason, logic, and experience. The events of the night had proved that view a lie.
Now, Placidio had gone off to salvage our scattered weapons and anything else useful from the dead, and to make sure no Cavalieri had escaped. Livia had gone with him, claiming she couldn’t bear to sit still. We’d given her to think we were a full day’s walk from the city, fearing she might take off on her own just to be shed of us. That must not happen until we had convinced her not to speak of what she’d seen. It was only hours, if even that much, until her wedding day.
My knife released another curl. Neri piled the thready cedar inside a raised stone ring and laid out what twigs and slivers I’d thought might be coaxed to burn.
“I hate to think of you running around in the rain all night while you were fevered,” I said, “though a hand was never so welcome as when you pulled me off that cursed rope ladder.”
“Didn’t run around, and wasn’t me p-pulled you off the ladder. It was all I could do to get the shackles unlocked. If those keys hadn’t been dropped an arm’s length from your head, you’d still be there. On my way b-back here after getting you loose, I near passed out. Got to asking myself what would happen if I did that when I was neither here nor there? Scared me shitless. Once I got back here, I wasn’t going anywheres. Sorry. D-damned useless.”
“Clearly not useless,” I said. “We’re all alive. And that was no certain thing.”
So it must have been Teo. I should have known by the coolness of his hands and his lack of stink. Why had he not spoken? So I wouldn’t expect more from him?
�
�Try it now,” I said, tossing the shredded branch aside and starting on another.
After a few moments’ concentration, Neri held his quivering hand over the tangle of tinder. My knife paused.…
Nothing. Not a flicker. “Cripes! I’m so cursed feeble, I can’t hold my hand still. It’s got to be steady.”
“Maybe together.” I laid the knife aside, knelt up, and cupped my hand beneath his wrist and hand. When my fingers sensed the molten silver flow of magic that was distinctly Neri’s, I reached for the pool of magic that lay waiting in me. With will and intent, I focused on the cedar strips and their tendency to burn when dry, and on the need for warmth to soothe Neri’s feverish trembling, Dumond’s aching body, and Teo’s depletion.…
“Oh!” Neri jumped. A small green-and-orange flame sat atop his hand.
I used a twig to pick up the tinder clump as if it were a bit of meat to roast, exposing its underside and then its edges to the flame above Neri’s hand. We needed spark, not smoke. Patience. Patience.
When the tips of the threads began to darken, I set the clump back in the fire ring. We let his little flame lick the edges of the clump as I laid a few of the twigs across it. A trail of smoke rose straight up. The tips of the cedar curls glowed orange. Neri blew on them gently, while still holding his green flame close, and in moments the little heap of bark and twigs burned. One by one, I fed twigs to the flame. Eventually the blaze was hot enough to sustain itself. The last torch winked out and we still had light.
“Let it go,” I said. “Rest if you can. We can’t stay here long.”
He didn’t need me to tell him. He curled up as close as he dared to the snapping flames and was asleep in an instant.
As warmth crept around us, I moved to Teo’s side. His hand was stone-cold and heavy as lead. His breathing was undetectable. I blamed the snap of flames and wet branches for my inability to hear a heartbeat. I thought I detected a slight gleam of silver in the lacework about his eye, but a few drops of water dripped on his lips and down his cheek, inciting no movement.