by Cate Glass
The world went black. Howls of obscene joy rose in the distance.
I had time enough to know who I truly was.
To comprehend Donato’s words of dismissal and sending: Begone, broken spirits; your true mistress awaits.
Time enough to feel Dono grasp me in his arms and drag me up and sidewise. To understand what was to come and beg Dumond to be ready with the boat—
My mind dissolved in voices. Choose this one. Hold me; keep me; send me. So warm … so living … hot, hot. So near the maker. The source. He wants us … needs us … wants you. Twist this body … break it. Reach for the maker. The walls be thin here, push, squeeze, rip … Let us through.
Demons crowded into my lungs, crushed my heart, my gut, clawed my spine, tore at my hands. Howls and screams hammered on the back of my eyeballs. I thrashed, fought, wrestling the living body who held me. I needed to get away. But where? I couldn’t see; the moon and stars had winked out. I couldn’t breathe.…
“Uff.” Someone dragged the one holding me away. I staggered and fell into chaos.
This one is mine own, the doorway to the maker … No me. No me. The wailing shredded my spirit.
And then the temptress whispered, You know what they want, beloved. Send them to me; let them bring me solace for lost companions. Come with them and bring me delight for a new era. We shall talk of stars and music, of mysteries those beneath us shall never know, of truth and gods and lightning. Take my hand and pain will vanish forever. The woman stood before me in her diaphanous gown. Exquisite. So luminous my heart ached for her beauty. Her lips parted, revealing pointed teeth. She was so hungry.…
I blinked. It was the man now. He had the most beautiful hands. Graceful, strong. If I dared touch them, yield to his will, they would be deliciously warm as they swept away this heaviness in my heart, the grieving.…
Romy. My name was Romy. Dono had said it before chaos fell, before he was ripped away. What are your true surroundings, Romy? You are not blind or deaf. What do you hear? Let your senses bring you back to where you are. They’ll protect you.
I heard countless beings crying for help, every one of them different.… No, no that was inside.
I crouched to the hard surface of the bridge, patting the rough stone as I struggled to get my bearings amidst the noise and chaos. Hard fingers dug into my arms of flesh.
“Stay still, little filth. Sagano, fetch one of your praetorians to bind this wench before she runs away. If she won’t tell us who employs her, tear out her hair, her fingernails. What’s holding up Bieneto?”
“They found two men in a boat. Think they might be more of the snatch-crew. What of your son, Director? Looked like he was about to kill this one! These snatchers must have brutalized him.”
Men in a boat? Cold fear sliced through the din … and was quickly drowned before I could consider it. Push, squeeze, hurt, and this one will let us go. The maker beckons … so near the fire …
Touch my hand, lovely one … yield to me and all will be right with the world.
Silence, spirits, I pleaded. Silence, beckoner. I needed to listen. To attend my senses. To understand.
“… turtle shell. When Bieneto returns, we’ll get the dullard to his feet. Fetch him a cloak. My son is the First Defender of the Confraternity, beaten by sorcerer-brigands. Who knows? They might very well have poisoned him.”
Poison! No, no, no. I told myself to keep aware. In control. My knees and chin grated on the paving. My foot was caught between narrow uprights. My arm felt like to be yanked out of its socket as the arrogant speaker tried to drag me away. Bastianni.
Let me set you free of pain, beloved. You invited me, now take my hand. Do not toy with me. This time my own hand brushed my face. Pressed on my eyes, grinding in mud and grit from the paving. Why would I do that? Why couldn’t I stop?
“Let me go, brute! You’ve no right to hold me!”
That was Livia, angry. Good. My hand fell away from my eyes.
“Dono, wake up!” she yelled. “Time for vengeance!”
The names glared through the storm like lightning bolts, amidst the thunder of lust, the battering wind of hunger and loneliness, the floodwaters filled with broken bits and jagged pieces. My lungs filled with the debris.…
I commanded myself to fix on the names and to breathe. Force air in and out.
The cruel hand dropped me on the paving. But his cold body crouched beside me and that hard hand gripped my chin, trying to force my head up. No. I alone controlled my thoughts and my actions, and this man must not see my face. Focus on surroundings. Sensations. Think.
The fingers were long. Well-manicured. His heavy gold ring bore the engraving of a book, a flame of tiny rubies, and a sharp gold pin, the Confraternity lance—extended outward. Poison …
“Look up here, girl. Let me see the devil sorceress who dares challenge the Philosophic Confraternity. There is something so familiar about you.”
In a moment of clarity, I reached for the Lhampuri dagger and slashed it across his curled fingers, scraping off a few rubies, the poisoned gold pin, and the skin of his knuckles.
He yelled in pained fury and leapt to his feet, clenched fist dripping blood. Quivering, I scrambled backward, away from him. My back met stone posts, a railing, just as his boot slammed into my side. All breath left me.
Movement and pain drew down the curtain of blackness again. Writhing, weeping, snarling beings squeezed my lungs as I strained for breath. Hundreds more, raw with hunger, churned my stomach. My skull was cracking with their pleas, their bargains, demands, but I had to push back. I could not let them go; the only way out was through the door gaping open in my soul. That’s what they wanted. Please, please, please, send us … we are so cold … so hungry …
Stay present, Romy. You have to do this. There is no one else.
Steel clashed in the distance. A sharp yell was followed by pounding boots.
A scrambling body took my arm gently, but was wrenched aside.
“Get out the way, young master, damizella. This witch cut the director.” Someone grabbed my hair. “Who might you be, girlie? One of these snatchers?”
“She’s one of them,” said a woman—Livia. “She’s the one who tormented Dono and me.”
The boots arrived. “Get away from her.”
Steel crashed right beside me. “Move aside, young master. This is no time to cower, else you’ll get cut with these accursed snatchers.”
I buried my head in my arms, unable to care. The harrowing inside was what would kill me.
“We come for our own,” bellowed the newcomer between breaths and grunts of effort.
As crashing swords, sliding boots, and angry growls sketched the bloody fight, a woman’s quiet voice said, “Now. Together.” Icy hands grasped me, wrists and feet. Lifted me.
My back rested on a stone rail.
Then the hands let go with a gentle push, and the bottom fell out of the world.
Surprised rage howled from the dark …
Wailing, crushing terror bursting my head …
A glimpse of starry ripples below … No boat.
My own terror joined the madness, but I remembered to hold open the way. Master … Mistress … I bring you these servants … But not yet.
A flash of silver moonlight and the icy water closed over my head, yet still I plunged, down and down, faster and faster. I needed to go up. Swim …
Water rushed past my face, tugging at my hair, at my heavy clothes. It snagged my boots and swooshed them away and made my arms’ flailing useless. My chest burned. Panic demanded air. Which way was up?
Faster still through the torrent, and soon all I could think of was the cool flood. Rage faded into the depths. The mad wailing inside dissolved into gurgling. The heated voice faded, the open doorway washed clear. Then the world fell quiet save for an occasional muffled slurp.
So deep. The weight of the river comforted and soothed, holding me as I plunged. My lungs no longer burned, though my mind claimed t
hey should, nor did I feel the need to gasp in the airless dark. Had time stopped? Stretched? Or was I drowned already? The rushing water felt so lifelike on my skin. Speculations rippled through my mind … unobstructed. My head … my soul … emptied.
The darkness gave me pause, but this was no heated vision. No seductive voice teased my ears; no exploring finger violated my skin. No begging, threatening mob clouded my senses. The door to that other place, washed clean, was firmly shut. I was Romy, and this formless, watery darkness …
The cool water rushed past, faster than any current. How could I still be falling?
Keep all of your senses well-grounded in the place where you are.
My eyes were closed, of course. I squeezed them tighter, then opened them a little. A sting of rushing water and I closed them again. I had seen enough. This was magic, and the silver brilliance that surrounded me, bore me up, and propelled me through the Venia’s heart, washing me clean of demons, could be none but Teo.
28
AVANCI BRIDGE
He nudged me gently onto the embankment nearest the cityside abutment of the bridge, steps away from the path to the secret stair. By the time I’d wiped the streaming water from my eyes, he was gone, so I never saw his shape. Nor was I sure if the silvery streak upstream was him or the moonlight.
Not dead. Need fed. Name’s Teo … for now.
I laughed and wept when the whimsical phrase whispered through my head, miming the first words of comfort he had given me all those months ago.
“Thank you, whatever-your-name-is-to-be,” I whispered in return, though I had no notion he could hear. “Come back when you can.”
Grim truth quickly overtook that magical moment. I’d no idea where my brother or partners were. Dumond had promised to be waiting close by when I fell from the bridge, with Neri along to help fish me from the river. But in that instant of chaos and terror, they were not there. Certain, there was no sign of Dumond’s dinghy upstream of the bridge right now. Gardia wardens with torches patrolled both banks. A flotilla of small boats downstream of the bridge appeared like a bobbing field of fallen stars between the bridge and the flickering lights of the docks in the distance. Which left me with the praetorian’s worrisome report of detaining two men in a boat.
Shoeless and dripping, I scrambled over the false buttress to the hidden door. Disappointment struck again when I found none of the Chimera in the hidden stair. But I wished Fortune’s blessings on dear Vashti, as I rummaged through her supply of dry clothes. Shapeless tunic and trousers of nondescript brown, a short, ragged cape of fir-needle green, boots I recognized as belonging to her daughter Cittina. An oversize brown wool toque contained my tangle of wet hair. Once I belted a short sword at my waist, I charged up Sandro’s stair to the bridge level.
Muffled voices snapping orders outside the stair alcove kept me moving upward, taking the tower steps two at a time. The turret door stood open, and a careful survey showed the roof deserted. The sleepy warden was gone, the ropes left in a heap. The ransom remained, but a loose coin in the corner and a knot that was not my own in all six bag closures told me he had taken a share from each before a hasty exit, thinking no one would notice what was missing. Fair enough; Vashti’s drops left a wicked headache. He had likely not summoned a replacement, hoping to come back for the rest.
The view from the parapet was astonishing. The hunt was up. As always, even in the middle of the night, such doings had drawn a noisy mob. Onlookers crowded the bridge, shouting and pointing at the water. Illumination spread slowly across the river as lamplighters fired the dead lamps. Small boats with running lamps crisscrossed the river and trolled the banks, occupants poking the shallows with sticks. Searching for me? Perhaps someone had glimpsed something in the river far more wondrous than a woman thrown off the bridge.
At the far-side end of the bridge, a circle of blazing torches and gleaming helmets surrounded a small knot of people. Livia and Dono? Director Bastianni? Let it not be my brother and Dumond in chains. Or Placidio dead or prisoner. He had been dueling praetorians when I fell.
Other helmed praetorians and Gardia wardens strode through the crowd on the bridge, accosting onlookers here and there. No doubt they were alert for white-skull-marked clothing or perhaps a sodden woman crawling back up the bridge piers.
Like the current of the Venia when a barge approached the docks, the crowd parted to let a sniffer pass, dragging his nullifier. Did the Enemy or his creatures leave traces of magic behind as sorcerers supposedly did?
Nauseating memory near dropped me to my knees. I shook my head and rubbed my arms, as if the sudden movement might dislodge a squirming being left behind by the rushing water. A deep breath in and out and moment of contemplation revealed naught but my own self occupying my skin. Reassuring, though worry for the others still rattled me.
Not daring to stay long atop the tower, I scanned the crowd once more, frustrated until I spotted a tall fellow with broad, slouching shoulders and an old-fashioned, wide-brimmed hat plodding slowly along the railing. The sight might not have been quite so compelling had the hat’s overlarge feather not been so bedraggled as to hang down over his face in just such fashion as might hide an old dueling scar. I knew that hat.
I raced down the stair and out of the alcove, dashing past whatever guards lurked in the tunnel. Once deep into the boisterous melee, I slowed my steps and kept my head low, making as if I were attached to one party of chattering gawkers or another. It might have been noonday, rather than the first hour past midnight.
The big man with the drooping feather leaned his elbows on the downstream railing. He bore every aspect of a curious observer, except for the tight knot of his huge hands as he stared at the rippling water.
He moved on, reluctantly, it seemed. Assuring myself that no one else was paying him any mind, I quickened my steps.
“What news, swordmaster?” I murmured, as I came alongside and matched his long strides.
He kept his head down. “Atladu’s holy, everlasting balls, woman,” he mumbled. “You are the damnedest.”
“For a while, I felt like the damned or the drowned, but then … oh gods…”
A quick glance my way. “He was there. Our friend.”
“You knew he wasn’t dead,” I said, forcing my head down and my feet to keep walking rather than shaking my swordmaster until his hair fell out. “I thought—”
I’d thought I was going to die with a thousand demons in my head—or worse, not die, and remain in thrall to the Enemy.
“He wasn’t sure he could recover; Romy, he was so low there back at Villa Solitor. We dared not let you think it.”
Of course they couldn’t tell me that a Vodai Guardian might be waiting to catch me when I fell and ensure I was washed clean of demons. I was planning to open myself to the Enemy and would need every scrap of my own discipline and strength to accomplish my task. Still, I hated that they hadn’t told me.
“We will talk about this,” I said. But at the moment, only one issue truly mattered. “Dumond and Neri? I heard—”
“Last I saw they were drenched and bloody and being dragged into a crowd of about fifty praetorians and at least three sniffers. Too many for me to take on.” His fists and jaw hardened at the admission. “I’ve not seen ’em hauled off. Not this direction at least. Now the crowd’s thinned a bit, I was headed over to see what’s what.”
“Let’s go then.”
We squeezed our way through the gawkers, louder and more numerous at this end of the bridge. A few steps on, progress became even more difficult. Armored praetorians leveled their spears, shoving the crowding citizens to the railings and yelling, “Move aside, move aside, let them through! Make way for your betters!”
Standing on tiptoe, I watched the small clot of scarlet-robed philosophists as they passed. Livia’s limp red curls peeped out from under a voluminous gray cloak. At her side shambled Donato, cloaked in red, hollow-eyed, but otherwise without expression. On the other side of him strode his
father, the director, one hand wrapped in a swathe of stained linen, the other gripping his son’s shoulder. Protectively. Possessively.
The posture made my skin crawl.
Placidio nodded. “Both still living and unbound. I think we’ve carried off this part of our bargain at the least.”
“And one villain wounded,” I said, willing the damage to Bastianni’s knuckles to be painful. “Virtue’s Hand, let those two be wary. Bastianni was ready to poison one or both of them.”
There were no prisoners in the group. But two sniffers trailed along behind, their featureless faces turning from side to side, silk-clad hands held high as if to grasp magic from the air. Slaves. Demons. Could Dono hear them—those silent wails and moans that had clogged my veins and choked my breath? Spirits …
At least they didn’t turn our way.
Once the party had passed, we pushed our way through the milling onlookers. Gardia wardens tried to disperse the crowd. “Get to your homes. Naught to see here.”
Three rowdy sots hurled pebbles and mud clots at a kneeling praetorian who was sifting through a heap of sand. A warden bawled at them, “Move along or we’ll have ye on charges.”
A praetorian leaned over the parapet, shouting to someone below. “Tonight, fool, not a month ago! Nothing newer afloat?”
The reply was indistinct, but elicited no excitement from the soldier.
By the time we reached the steps that led from the brightly lit bridge down to the inky lanes of the Bottoms, we’d seen no sign of Dumond or Neri, no evidence of any arrest or execution. But then, summary justice would be rendered down in the dark, not under the blazing lamps.
Grim and wordless, we sped down the steps, past the bundled beggars preparing to occupy the wide stair until the Gardia chased them off at sunrise.
There was no tidy common riverside path on this side of the river. Between the crumbling backsides of old warehouses and tenements and the slopping eddies of the Venia lay a dark, muddy embankment of slimy weeds, unrecognizable refuse, and frequent, dangerous entanglements of mysenthe sellers, smugglers, thugs, and rats.