Ash and Silver (13 page)

But I stayed behind, squinting into the patchy night.

The cart road had split, the main branch servicing the once impressive gatehouse to a walled compound—a temple perhaps. The siege had crumbled the top half of one gate tower and knocked holes here and there in the compound's wall. But stone cauldrons flanking the gatehouse blazed with wind-wild flames, illuminating the undamaged statues of two gods grappling—Deunor, Lord of Light and Magic, and Magrog the Tormentor, Lord of the Underworld.

“What is this place?” I said softly, though Morgan was well out of hearing by now. Familiarity teased at me, like a strand of hair flapping against my cheek. I had been here since my change. As I'd never traveled so far from Evanide, I must have been here on that first confused journey to the fortress. Yet even to consider what place it might be set off warning thunder in my head. Which meant that this was a part of my past, as well. Was that how Morgan thought to make me remember? To shatter my skull?

The lesser branch of the cart road extended into the blackness east of the compound—the side away from the city—most likely to service a side gate or postern. The worst of the stench came from that direction. Horribly fascinated, I continued straight on toward the source of the stink, using my body to shield a soft magelight from any watchers inside the compound.

Quiet clicks and rustling, and soft whapping sounds slowed my steps as I reached the rim of the plateau and looked down. Tatters and scraps of rotted leather and linen fluttered in the wind amid piles of . . . bones.
Goddess Mother preserve!
At my feet lay a hillside of skulls and bones, heaps and piles of them, most picked clean by crows or the scuttering creatures whose eyes gleamed in my light. Here and there someone had thrown dirt on more solid remains, for some were not so old as the others. Had I not seen people at the city gates, I would have thought the entire population of Palinur lay dead on that hillside.

Scritching feet or wind set a skull rocking—a skull half-cleaved through by axe or blade.

Hair rose on my neck. The brutality of combat was near surety in an
eques cineré
's future and such a sight could not but feed the doubts grown so large these past days. How could I aspire to such a life?

Yet this display was Prince Bayard's doing and Sila Diaglou's and surely that of the weak-livered Perryn, as well. The weapons the Order provided to the cause of right were extraordinary, and despite my novice faults, I knew I was good at what my masters taught me—both magic and war. And if I was suited to such skills, how could I refuse the call to use them? Someone had to stand in the way of tyrants and fools.

Had I not known better, I would have said Inek had brought me here instead of Morgan. Morgan . . . First things first.

I doused my light and retraced my steps.

“Over here,” she called softly.

I joined her at the verge of the road.

“I thought I'd lost thee,” she said, as we hiked across a lumpy field.

“I need to know why you've brought me to this cursed place.”

“Soon enough.”

We squeezed through a narrow opening in the thick city wall. Massive bars of iron and wood were set into the mortar—enchanted in place—making it impossible for beast or armored soldier to squeeze through. Beyond the narrow gate a twisting footpath plunged steeply into a dark tangle of scrub that stank of sewage and sodden ashes. The foul wind rustled new-leafed trees.

Before I could demand better answers, Morgan lifted her head and cupped her mouth. “Yai! Yai! Yai!”

The rapid biting cry mimed that of a white-tailed eagle.

An answering cry came from the trees below—along with the shimmering of blue fire. Danae.

Fingers ready on my bracelets, I backed away from her. “What have you done?”

She raised her hand to stay my flight. “No, no. This is Naari, my partner, come to help. We shared the watch on thee after we left Montesard. He more than I. We'll not approach Tuari till thou'rt ready.”

The Dané who climbed up from the tangled darkness was tall and well-made, his sinews taut, his long hair caught in a braid. Every quat of his flesh, even his privy parts, were scribed with drawings of light. A white-tailed eagle wrapped his pale brow, sculpted cheek, and long neck, as if drawn in ink compounded from sapphires. He smelled of rosemary.

Chilly eyes took stock of me as he left the steep path. “I didn't think he'd come. Our last meeting was not so friendly.”

Unlike the structures beyond the wall, naught of this Dané felt familiar.

“He has agreed to answer to Tuari, as I told thee he would.” Morgan touched the Dané's arm. “
Envisia seru
, Naari.”

“'Tis delight to see thee, as well, sweet Morgan.” His expression warmed.

My magelight caught Morgan's smile. Brilliant, intimate. Foolish that it should cause such a tightness in my chest. I didn't know her. They were not human.

Naari jerked his head my way. “Is it shame makes them hide their faces?”

“Custom, not shame,” she said. The last of her smile vanished. “Hast thou word from Tuari?”

“Not yet, though the night suggests he is on his way. Our source is in place. Shall I trick the man to come out or show thee where he plies his watch?”

“What man? Source of what?” All I could think of were the thousands rotting on the hillside. Surely no one
lived
in this cursed place.

“Show us,” said Morgan, eager. “Thou'rt certain he's the one?”

“Certain.” Naari pointed through the gate back toward the temple or whatever it was. “Every nightfall he comes out and prowls round the outside. Then he retreats, fixes a lock on his gate, and kindles a fire just within. He fancies himself the night lord of this dead ruin.”

“If we're to learn secrets, we need Tuari delayed,” said Morgan. “Wilt thou venture it, Naari?”

“He'll not hold long, but for thee I'll try.” Naari touched Morgan's cheek, then gestured the two of us toward the gate and dissolved into the night.

As I yet gaped in wonder, Morgan took my hand. “Come, Lucian. We're off to find thy remembrance.”

We moved swiftly back across the muddy field toward the gatehouse. An orange speck glimmered behind the spiked iron bars of the gate.

“Who's in there? A priest? A diviner? A sorcerer?”

I reached to catch her arm, but she swept onward with all the force of Evanide's tides. So I matched her stride for stride, trying to slow her with words. “You must understand, lady, no common magic can change what was done to me.”

“We've no idea what kind of person waits behind that gate. Nor if he knows aught of magic. But he knows
thee
. In the winter before thou didst make a home in the sea fortress, 'twas thy habit to frequent this place of death. After only a few days, thou didst vanish, and for a long while, we
thought thee dead, too. I was near lost in grieving. But then thy magic manifested stronger and more intrusive than ever, and Tuari sent Naari back to find thee. Naari watched
this
man fetch thee back here from the city, bound, muted, and ill. And ever after, he—the one who waits yonder—kept thee in rags and chained. He is thy enemy.”

“Chained?”
I had been a prisoner?
Here?
That fit no pattern I understood. Pureblood sorcerers were not kept prisoner save in the Registry Tower, and I could not even state an explicit reason
that
might be so. The most terrible crimes—treason, kin-murder, using magic for murder, torture, or rape—reaped swift execution.

You are not a murderer.
The fragment the Order had given me sounded a fragile reassurance.

Lesser crimes were settled by swift punishments—whipping or public humiliation—and unrestricted contracts. . . .

My feet kept moving over the rough ground, while I worked to create order from throbbing chaos. If I reached too deep, the pain in my head would put me beyond reason, but Inek had revealed something of my last contract.

A
place of death,
Morgan had called this compound. What if it was no execution ground, but rather a
necropolis
, a city of the dead? Its size, the crowded roofs and pinnacles outlined above the compound wall, would make it the principal burial ground of Palinur. I had been a man of wealth, the Order had told me, a pureblood fallen on hard times and contracted to a necropolis. They'd
not
told me I'd been kept in chains. Madmen might be kept chained.
Great Deunor preserve!

“We thought confronting thy enemy might jolt thy reason,” said Morgan with soft urgency. “He's not like to recognize thee, fully masked and changed as thou art. And even if the memories we need remain hidden to thee,
he
might know these things.”

“Yes. Questioning could be useful.”

Nothing in me could confirm that I had once lived here. And I had no naive imagining that laying eyes on a person—even a hated jailer—would undo the magic that blocked my memory, but I could surely squeeze out some information.

“We can restrain him, if need be. But a story might get us past his gate. Travelers lost?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I'll do this. Just follow my lead.”

After two years with the
Equites Cineré
, I was not the same man who'd
been kept prisoner here, but I knew a great deal about his world. Indeed from the moment we'd sighted Palinur's walls, the truths, habits, and understanding of pureblood life, which for two years had seemed as remote as information read only in a book, had infused me like new bones.

Few men were bold enough, skilled enough, or vicious enough to chain and mute a pureblood. Either this man waiting was pureblood himself—which these vile surroundings made ludicrous—or he was a bold, devilishly wicked, and dangerous kind of ordinary. A contract for a madman's services would be quite inexpensive if one had stone walls to confine him and some use for his particular magic.

We halted a dozen paces from the gate. The fire from the stone bowls lit a brass plate above the arch. It read
NECROPOLIS CATON
.

“Who's out there?” The challenge from inside the gatehouse rang so loud it could have waked the bones on his hillside. “If ye think to rob the dead, be assured 'tis already done.”

“We're no grave robbers,” I said, masking everything but pureblood hauteur. “I am a traveler passing through this city with my maidservant. We've had an unfortunate incident on the road. I wish to know if this place can provide proper grave rites for a pureblood.”

“
Pureblood
rites? In the middle of the night? And so I must let you inside—in
these
times?” The bellowing laughter threatened to bring down the rest of the broken gate tower. “That's the damnedest ruse I've heard since a lackwit constable demanded to inspect the tombs, claiming Harrowers had taken up residence inside them. 'Tis almost enough to let you in just to see what kind of lackwit
you
are.”

A touch of my left bracelet snapped the lock on his gate. A second in quick succession exploded a bouquet of five cold torches waiting in an iron cask into flame. My boot's harsh impact swung the iron gates open.

“Bring a torch, Fanula,” I said, giving Morgan a gentle nudge. “The good man will show us in or find his gatehouse crumbled on top of him.”

M
organ played her part to perfection, dipping her knee and fetching a torch.

A thickset fellow waited just inside the necropolis gates, behind a flaming brazier. Steady, thick-fingered hands held a well-maintained sword at the ready. He'd once been a soldier, I guessed; his stance was expert. Though his height did not top my own, the breadth of his solid chest, shoulders, and arms would lend significant weight to his blows. I would not count him out in a test of arms alone. As for his nature . . . a tangle of wiry, sand-colored hair and beard, threaded with gray, left his features unreadable, save for a pair of eyes that burned with the same heat and color as his fire.

For certain, he was no pureblood. Not only was his hair entirely un-Aurellian and his garb laughably unfit for Registry standards, but the only magics anywhere close were my own. A brittle emptiness where I would expect threads of magic suggested the compound had been stripped clean of enchantment at some time not so long past.

“I am no lackwit, ordinary, but neither am I overzealous.” I opened my arms in largesse. “The times are unsettled and the hour late. Sheath your weapon, and I shall overlook this impudent violation.” To draw on a pureblood was to beg a hangman's attentions.

He lowered the sword, but did not sheath it and did not relax his posture. Morgan remained near the gate as I encroached farther on his demesne.

“You've violations of your own that might draw interest, pureblood,” he said. The hot eyes flicked from me to Morgan and back again. “No proper cloak . . . and a most unusual mask. No brocade, no pearl buttons, no jewels, no escort save a fair young woman who wears no mask. Sneaking about in the night. A man might almost think you were . . . ordinary. Or hiding. Or
renegade
.”

Which was exactly what I wanted. Let him believe I had dangerous secrets. I'd rather tease information out of him than use force. As expected, neither sight nor sound of him caused a miraculous resurrection of memory.

“So you're familiar with pureblood customs,” I said. “I was told that might be the case.”

Had I not been watching for it, I'd never have noticed the slight lift of his head and hardening of his shoulders. “Who told you that?”

“Being a stranger in the city and tangled in a . . . family difficulty . . . I made discreet inquiries. I was told Necropolis Caton had a pureblood under contract.”

“And so I do.” His inspection slid quickly from my mask to my hands and Morgan. “Family difficulties can be a bother. My pureblood taught me that right enough. Why are you here?”

I held to the story that had popped into mind as Morgan and I crossed the field. His belief was not so important. I needed to learn.

“A traveling companion was taken ill on the road and died. He must be buried according to his station, so that his family may offer prayers and libations when they learn of his end. But I cannot afford delay.” I peered into the murk beyond the brick tunnel. “Is there a priestess here? Or do you take care of everything from anointing to digging? Surely this pureblood doesn't dig. . . .”

He glanced behind me, in his turn, and then rested the tip of his blade in the dirt and folded his hands on the hilt. “Oh, I can see to a pureblood burial with proper rites. Where might we find this unfortunate friend? I take it he's not in company with you right now, unless your
maidservant
carries him in her pocket.”

I fidgeted with my rucksack. With my knife sheath. I bit my lip. If he thought he could learn something profitable, he might reveal enough that I could formulate useful questions. “Prove to me you know enough of our customs. If I'm satisfied, I'll send my servant to have him brought. Naturally, I'll pay well for proper attention and . . . discretion.”

“Naturally. I've a decent room to lay him out, a few stone vaults that have space proper for elevated folk. I've a box of ysomar that looters haven't found, so we can anoint his fingers that carried his magic, and a resourceful sexton who can likely find silk to wrap them. And if his own clothes happen to be fouled, she can find some to make do once he's washed. It's not likely she can find quality to suit you, but being travelers, you surely have extra. Mayhap his own. What else do you wish to know?”

“Good. Those things are good.” Certainly he was no fool. I fidgeted a bit more. “But this pureblood . . . I wish to consult him before we fetch my poor friend. That would tell me more. Yes, I insist on seeing him.”

A grin blossomed in the thatch of his beard. “That won't be possible.”

“But you said—”

“I said naught of any pureblood
being
here. You see, I am a loyal servant of the king—whomever that might be at the moment—and his law. And I've been especially well trained not to run afoul of the Pureblood Registry. Just think: You might be an ordinary yourself, a felon teasing me with illicit magics you've bought in an alley.”

“I'm certainly not. How dare you—?”

“Or you could be yet another bothersome Registry inquisitor come to discover if I've by chance encountered my
recondeur
”—his right hand flew up as for an oath—“and as I've sworn up my granny's sagging ass to the full count of her three-and-ninety years, I've neither seen a nose nor heard a spit of the snake-tongued blackguard. So you may take that back to your masters and leave me in peace with the dead.”

“Your pureblood is named
renegade
?” Shock and dismay near choked me.

“He vanished two years ago during the Great Siege. The Registry brought me notice that the cursed spelltwister had gone rogue after murdering one of their own, and that if he ever showed his nose in Palinur, anyone who listened to a word he said would be dead in the next hour. I told them I'd kill him myself if I ever ran across him.”

Named murderer
and
a
recondeur
, though beside the second, the first was nothing. To run away from the responsibilities that came with the gift of magic was the most abject betrayal a pureblood could commit.
Recondeurs
condemned their kin to everlasting disgrace, and brought a death sentence to any ordinary who might possibly have aided, condoned, or merely failed to notice the escape. For themselves they reaped the most severe Registry punishments short of death, forbidden to marry, to sire children or bear them, to negotiate their own contracts, to walk free, to speak with other purebloods, to teach or study . . . everything a person might desire from life. They were forever subject to unrestricted contracts. Masters could confine them, work them to death without consequence.

“I think he's more likely dead,” said the man. “Three thousand citizens of Palinur died that first month of the siege, most in the first three days. More than half the people who labored in my yard here. But I never saw his body, and you can be damned sure I looked for it. Still, a Registry inquisitor
comes nosing around here on and off, and I have to dispatch another complaint to the Tower, lest they forget I'm an aggrieved customer, owed for the unfulfilled contract.”

He squinted into Morgan's torchlight as if to see me better.

“But you're not one of
them
, are you? And I'm thinking you'd not wish me to file a complaint this time.” His gaze slid away yet again.

“No . . . I'm no inquisitor.”

If the Registry had declared me renegade, rather than dead or traveling or held out of contract by my family—whatever story my family and the Order had arranged—then every moment I took a breath outside Fortress Evanide was a dreadful danger. The Registry never stopped hunting
recondeurs
.

Though my every muscle twitched, I had to stuff myself back inside my playacting—which at the moment was uncomfortably near truth. “And no, don't contact anyone. Just . . . don't.”

Had I run before? Was that why he'd been allowed to chain me? Or had I run from his cruelty? And how could the Order think to make a knight of one so despicable as to abandon his every kinsman and acquaintance to disgrace or death? Unless the man's aberrant magic—two bents grown to maturity—had driven him mad. The Order likely had ancient knowledge of how such an affliction might be amended.

Learning about my history was rapidly losing its allure.

“I am not a trusting soul.” His fingers flexed about the hilt of the sword. “Unless you're a murdering devil like a number of your kind, willing to magic me to death right in front of this lady, who does not in the least fit my notion of a maidservant, much less the escort of a pureblood man who is strictly celibate until his family tells him whom he must marry”—he bowed mockingly in Morgan's direction—“you'd best explain a bit more.”

Morgan laid a hand on my arm. No words were needed to tell me of her growing anxiety. I was near drowning in it.

This man was not at all what I expected. Dangerous and wily, I had no doubt. But perceptive. I welcomed the dancing shadows and the way the
obscuré
shoved his eyes away from my face. But I needed more information before we ran.

“You're correct that this lady is neither pureblood nor servant. Rather, I am her protector. I hoped that a sorcerer contracted to a necropolis might be willing to help me with certain matters. Private matters.”

“Because he must be a sorcerer of poor talents or poor judgment to be
contracted to this kind of place?” Scorn and bitterness tainted his tongue. “You believed he must be lax in your pureblood discipline, a ne'er-do-well who could be hoodwinked into doing some magic you need done without questioning. Or mayhap, a man of no honor, who could be paid to violate his contract.”

“I didn't say that.”

“'Twould not be so foolish an assumption.” He glanced around, as if assessing what a stranger might make of his strange haunt. “You just could not be more wrong.”

And there it was—a contradiction that set my blood racing and my head pounding its warning.

“Then why would anyone believe he turned
recondeur
?”

“That is a very long story.”

All calculation fled, I seized the opportunity. “I'd be interested to hear.”

The sword returned to its sheath, the man squatted beside his fire and pushed a battered pot closer to the pulsing coals. “Aye, you would. No doubt of it. But even the troublesome spelltwister himself would say it's not your business, save perhaps as a warning not to get crossways with the Registry. Though you likely know that already, what with a dead pureblood out there waiting.”

Fragments of history—gleaned from the Order, from this man, from Morgan—glittered in the dark like shards of the Marshal's colored glass. Only no matter how I rearranged them, these made no sensible picture. Even if this fellow knew so much more than he was telling about his pureblood—about me—was it possible I would have told him about some encounter with
Danae
? Who knew what a madman might babble?

I had to know.

“Without the benefit of your pureblood's magic . . .” I shrugged. “Truthfully, the man is not dead. Not yet. Only devilishly persistent.”

Making a show of reluctance, I retrieved Morgan's torch and took her arm. “We'd best be off before he finds where we've gone. Unless . . . Might my lady rest by your fire a few moments before we go? We've had a long journey already, and must make it to our refuge before dawn.”

Surprise drove his wiry eyebrows upward, yielding quickly to calculation. “If you think to squeeze out a bit of my pureblood's story, then be sure I'll want to hear more of what use you thought to make of him. Tit for tat. Untimely death, whether actual or contemplated, holds a particular fascination for me.”

“If my lady agrees.”

I drew Morgan close. “I doubt he can help with Tuari. But he can tell me things. . . .”

“I understand thy need,” she said softly into my shoulder. “But I fear to stay. Naari cannot long delay the archon.” The anxiety pouring from her body chilled my blood. But information given willing was always better.

“Until the bells ring the next hour and then we go,” I said, shifting round to our host. “My name is Viridian.” He would take the giving as a measure of trust.

“As you say.” He grinned and shrugged, as he filled a mug from his pot. “I am Bastien de Caton, Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur, paid by the Crown to investigate suspicious death. Sit,
Domé
Viridian and his lady. If you've a cup, you can share my posset. Alas, it's but a bread posset and the bread was acorn bread, but 'tis made from sack, which makes up in potency what it lacks in spice.”

A coroner . . . not just a gravedigger, but a Crown official of the same ilk as local magistrates. That likely explained his cleverness and his ambition to own a pureblood contract, though it said naught about what work a pureblood kept in chains might have done for him.

I gave Morgan a hand to sit on the filthy cobbles next the fire, then retrieved the cup hanging from my belt. As I held it out to be filled, Coroner Bastien's eyes remained fixed on the spot from where I'd taken it—the slight bulge where my cloak had fallen back over my knife sheath.

“Might I see that dagger?” The half-strangled words were his first that lacked perfect composure. Though his mouth and chin were tight as a tabor, his extended hand shook a little.

I passed it over, curious as to what had caught his interest.

The knife's only distinguishing mark was the white-on-black symbol of the Order on its hilt—the quiver and its five implements symbolizing magic, arms, discipline, memory, and justice. We did not expose the emblem gratuitously, but like the mask we wore to prevent recognition, we felt the value of its use outweighed the risks. Even in the frenzied confusion of combat, one could recognize a brother knight who carried the blazon on his weapon or his tabard. For any person not privy to Order secrets, the image would be quickly forgotten. It carried its own kind of
obscuré
.