Ash and Silver (28 page)

“Is it possible the person who created the spell was a linguist?”

He glanced up at me sharply. “You speak of this outsider the Marshal favors. Do you have evidence to make such an accusation?”

“Not unless you've detected—”

“Then how dare you besmirch his honor—or, by implication, the Marshal's which is the honor of the Order itself?” His anger set his magelight quivering. “Any further such nattering will earn you more severe consequences than the seaward watch. I can leave your mind like seaweed. I can seed dreams that will stain your every waking hour. I can have you looking over your shoulder, forever convinced you're being followed.”

His blistering fury left no doubt of his will or his capability to do as he said. His jaw iron-like beneath his rust-hued mask, he carefully rolled the papers and portrait together. “I will continue seeking the solution. You and your two orphaned parati will meet me in the study chamber on the second level every day at ninth hour of the morning for memory work.”

“We'll be there. Is there anything else, Archivist?”

He tapped the rolled portrait on his palm. “This is useful. I don't see why you're here and not contracted to some devilish ordinary.”

“It mystifies me, as well, Archivist,” I said. “I've been thinking of trying another portrait of Inek. To spark my bent I'd like to examine historical information about this kind of spellwork.” Surely that would lead me to mentions of Xancheira, the source of our memory magic. “If you could direct me—”

“Ridiculous!” he snapped. “You will pursue the proper business of your training, and that does not include lending your superior intellect to matters you imagine I've overlooked!”

“I meant no offense, Knight Archivist. And I've one more inquiry.” I yielded no time for him to refuse. “Inek's log mentioned a meeting with a knight called Bearn on the same night as he was stricken. Perhaps Inek told him of his venture to the relictory, of his plans or suspicions.”

The Archivist's anger vanished in an eyeblink. “Bearn? The name's not familiar.”

He pondered, his brow creased, while idly fondling the silver medallions on his breast. Perhaps
not
so idly. As his thumb rubbed one of them, a spark of magic stung my skin. Were the pendants some extension of his archives?

“We've no knight named Bearn—never have. Is this
another
outsider?”

Surprise nearly choked me.

“He must be,” I said, though doubting it. “Boatmaster Fix would never have named him a knight if he weren't. Perhaps Bearn isn't his real name. Perhaps he's one of the Marshal's spies.”

“Spies?” The door he'd slammed on his anger burst open again. “The Order is the last bulwark against chaos. Now we've outsiders sneaking around the halls. The Marshal's honor questioned. Relicts destroyed. Insolent parati strutting their talents. Great Deunor raise our Knight Defender!”

“Thank you, Knight Archivist.”

I left him fondling his medallions. Perhaps it had been foolish to ask him about Bearn, for his eyes burnt holes in my back all the way to his door.

An altogether unsatisfactory meeting. I trusted the Archivist to care for Inek, and he seemed to accept my story about my returned bent. But his testy defense of the Marshal left me wary of telling him anything more of my other business. Neither Damon nor the Marshal had demonstrated any awareness of my involvement with the Danae, and I had few enough secrets.

So where was Xancheira? I headed up to the map room. The Marshal's story of the Order's founding and Bastien's and Morgan's mentions of Montesard placed the city near the coast of the northern sea, which agreed with my observation of the five-fingered land. . . .

Another wasted hour. The archive map room had no detailed coastal maps. Fix's chart room held the portolans detailing Evanide's own bay and Navronne's western coast that we studied every morning. Perhaps he kept all of them.

I'd promised to return and explain my borrowing the squinch. I could ask him then. But I'd go after nightfall. Better to spend the daylight hours demonstrating my devotion to rigorous training. Damon would be watching.

•   •   •

T
he day was full to bursting. My three-man cadre viewed a short mission study Inek had scheduled to demonstrate the virtues and pitfalls of lightning shocks embedded in a blade. We followed it with two hours' work
with a spellmaster and three with the master Armorer to create such a blade. My meeting with the Marshal to report my cadre's activities was brief and allowed no opportunity for further confidences or questions. Damon was there. He did not speak.

After a hurried meal and a few hours' sleep, I sped through the quiet fortress and down to the docks. The north-side dock lamp burned red, so someone was out on the sea this night; Fix would be awake, waiting. Lantern light gleamed inside his stone cottage at the south end of the quay.

But I didn't make it so far.

“Thinking to take old Dorye out again, paratus?”

The dark shape that stepped from behind the boathouse was almost invisible in the gloom. But the voice was unmistakable.

“Nay, boatmaster. I've come to speak with you, as you said. My new responsibilities complicate my days.”

“Aye, they would,” he said. “Come along. With Inek downed by this mysterious
rebounding enchantment
, curious eyes are everywhere. Many of them on you, which I doubt you want.”

My skin prickled as Fix led me down the quay. I'd come ready to ask his help, but if he believed I was involved with Inek's wounding, I daren't reveal anything. If only I could see the old man's expression.

“No one could possibly believe I was responsible for Inek's injury,” I said. Though I feared I was.

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “But most believe Inek is the least likely sorcerer in the Order to stumble into a magical rebound. What do you think?”

Fix pulled the door open and light flooded onto the quay, illuminating his face—masked! The perfectly fitting slip of linen was deep blue—as were the shirt and breeches that outlined a body entirely unlike the hunched boatmaster. His hair was not mottled with gray but black and thick, yet if I closed my eyes I knew it was Fix. The smell of him was brine and ale, tar and rope. The voice grated with the raw edge of a man constantly exposed to cold, salt air, and rough weather. Alertness wreathed him like a lamp's glow—an alertness I'd always thought admirable for a man of his age. But either I had sorely misjudged that age or this mask and garments bore some illusion. . . .

His
garments
. Their blue was the particular midnight hue I'd seen in the mosaic in the Marshal's outer chamber—the depiction of the Order's three ruling Knights. Of a sudden my whimsy took on an astonishing logic.

“It might be more important to know what
you
think . . . Knight Defender.”

“I detest believing one of our own might have done such a crime, but . . .” He lifted his shoulders and motioned me inside.

No clear answer save a hard gleam in his dark eyes. Fix's eyes.

“Now what did you wish to talk with me about, Greenshank? Or were you really hoping to speak with someone else?”

A glib response stuck in my throat when I saw the dirty white-haired man bound and seated on Fix's floor. He wore an Order cloak and mail shirt, and a full-faced mask lay scorched and shredded on the stone beside him.

The prisoner's first glimpse of me had him grunting and straining at his bonds. He was certainly a sorcerer. Cords of silk bundled his fingers, ensuring he could not feed a spell; a rag binding his mouth ensured he could shape no words of magic. Shackled feet and sturdy ropes ensured he was going nowhere.

“Greenshank, meet Knight Bearn—or, as you might know him, Curator Pluvius of the Pureblood Registry.”

“P
luvius!” I said, once I found my tongue again and suppressed an urge to kick him in the balls. “I heard that name in a relict-seeing . . .”

In which the old man had expressed sympathy and regret while forcing a naked, half-mad Lucian de Remeni to hide his particular secrets.

“Why would he be here disguised as one of us?” demanded Fix. “He came asking for you, Greenshank—in particular. Perhaps you summoned him. You've been alone off-island. Could have sent messages. Could have betrayed us, betrayed your oath, your commander . . .”

The keen-edged words slid over my cheeks, burning like the kiss of a sharpened blade. Fix was the true danger here. I met his hard gaze.

“Everything I've done has been with Commander Inek's approval and with the Order's integrity in mind. I've no idea why
anyone's
interested in me. Likely you know far more of Curator Damon's intents than I do.”

Fix had not denied what I'd named him, so let him digest both Damon and Pluvius. I needed to know where the Knight Defender's loyalties lay. With Damon? With the Marshal, who partnered with Damon but so pointedly distanced himself, as well? With the Archivist, who seemed fiercely loyal to the Marshal, yet friends with Inek? Or was the Knight Defender loyal only to the Order?

Arms folded, Fix peered at his agitated prisoner. “He insists he's come to bring warnings from a colleague who cares greatly about your welfare. He claims
he
does, as well. But he's refused to tell me more. I had to ferret out his identity for myself.”

A shudder rippled through Pluvius like an earth tremor.

Coroner Bastien said Pluvius had made these same claims of concern for my welfare. He'd also said that Lucian de Remeni had never trusted Pluvius. But I greatly desired to know his secrets.

“His concern, at least, is a lie,” I said. “From what I've seen, Curator
Pluvius cares not a whit for anyone's welfare but his own. Damon might tell us why this man's here.”

The prisoner shook his head vigorously, and his wordless grunting became angry, bawling insistence. Was he truly at odds with Damon or was he but Damon's partner, terrified for his coconspirator to learn he'd gotten caught?

“I knew from the first our impostor was a Registry man,” said Fix. “Not so much as a polite good morning for the boatmaster. I'd hopes Inek might ferret out his intent. But Commander Inek fell victim to a vile enchantment before he could tell what the villain had to say.” Fix squatted in front of Pluvius, who shrank backward as if to embed himself in the stone wall. “I've a special place I drop murdering sorcerers into the sea. They can usually keep themselves alive for an hour. Until the cold and dark get to them. And doubt creeps in as the chain on their ankles just won't break. Then fear begins to sap their magic.”

Sweat beaded on Pluvius's brow. He was right to be afraid; every trainee spent his time at the bottom of the bay.

“Where has he been these few days?”

“He spent a great deal of the time crawling about the cellars. And foraging. Trying to catch you alone, I'd think, and find a way off-island. Your hours on the seaward wall—or wherever you've taken yourself during those hours—have likely frustrated him to his marrow. He thinks you don't sleep.”

Pluvius latched his gaze to mine and growled, not pleading, but demanding. He was confident he had information I wanted. Though Damon had named Pluvius an idiot, he had also named him
Pluvius-the-not-so-much-a-fool-as-he-pretended
. My portrait had shown Pluvius guarding a gate marked with Xancheira's tree. He could have knowledge of
that
mystery, as well as Damon.

“You didn't question him yourself that night?”

“No,” said Fix. “I let him think he'd played us. I hoped he'd help me discover the secrets gnawing at Evanide's foundations.” The blue-masked face turned back to me. “
Your
secrets. Inek's secrets, such as silver bracelets left for you, one sigil containing only one of two names. Secrets in our highest ranks. Discipline must bend from time to time lest it grow brittle, but of late, lapses have become a dangerous habit at every level.”

Even Pluvius quieted at Fix's menace. And both of them waited for me to break the silence.

Fix had told me he was not bound to the Marshal. That might mean he was Damon's man. But the more I saw, the less inclined I was to believe that.

“I would hear what this curator has to say,” I said. “If you are what I named you—with all the implications of that office—and if you are your own man as you told me this morning, then I would be willing to question him in your presence. Once you've decided whether or not to drop him in the sea, I'll answer
your
questions.”

One side of Fix's mouth curved upward beneath the dark mask. “You are a brassy whelp.”

With a sharp pop, the scarf that silenced the curator split into scraps that drifted onto the ill-fitting mail shirt. My breath caught. Fix hadn't even twitched a finger.

“Spirits and demons!” Pluvius rubbed at his mouth with the back of his silkbound hand.

He had aged a bit in the two years since the scene in the Registry prison. Unless he was fooling me as Fix apparently had, he was surely well into his eighth decade.

“Must this blackguard stay with us, Lucian?” he said. Pompous, for a man yet bound and shackled. “My information is for you alone.”

“He stays,” I said. “For now, at least, I am his brother, and he outranks me.”

Fix perched on a stool to one side like a cat ready to pounce. The lamplight dimmed to a pool that encompassed Pluvius and me—and left him shadowed. But Fix hadn't touched the lamp . . . or any kind of bracelet or token . . . which hollowed my chest a bit. What kind of power did the Order's most formidable warrior bear?

“He has no respect for an old man,” said Pluvius. “And my bones could use a softer seat and looser bonds. I couldn't outrun that decrepit boatmaster, so I could hardly best either one of you. Wherever would I run?”

“You're not a
simple
old man,” I said. “An old villain, I think. A wily one. I wouldn't trust you bound by twice this weight of chains.”

Though intensely aware of Fix at my shoulder, I settled on the floor in front of the curator and gave him my attention.

“You asked for Greenshank,” I said, “and that's who sits before you. I no longer answer to that other name you speak or adhere to that man's
loyalties. If you know enough to ask for me by my current name, and to dress as an Order knight in order to weasel into this fortress, then you know something of our practices. How is that possible without Damon's aid?”

“A colleague, a
noble
personage—unlike the perfidious Damon—sent me here. This colleague was once Damon's closest ally and so learned of this fortress.” His gaze flicked nervously to Fix. “Damon confided his connection to a mysterious knightly brotherhood and assured his loyal partner that the Order's dedication to justice would ensure the success of their vision of reshaping pureblood power in Navronne.”

Reshaping, not just purifying. What did that mean?

“His ally believed sincerely in that vision. And then you came on the scene and changed everything.”

“I.”

“Lucian de Remeni-Masson. Yes.” His watery eyes squinted at me in a sly and probing way that made me happy for my mask. “You may not acknowledge that name, but it does not surprise you, and you recognize my own. If I'd not witnessed a bit of Damon's skill, I'd never believe they could erase a person's entire past. But you've regained yours, it seems. So you must surely recall all that happened in Montesard, your devotion to your grandsire and his to you, and how he brought you to me at the Registry, entrusting me with your first contract. You know that Vincente and I were close friends, longtime colleagues. . . .”

“My memory has
not
been restored,” I said. “Curator Damon has chosen to share with me a memory of his own that revealed the Remeni name, my bent for portraiture, and how, with his assistance, my gift was perverted by his fellow curators—including you. That is the extent of my knowledge of Lucian de Remeni. If this grandsire contracted me to the Registry, then he must be my Head of Family, the same who consented to my presence here—a harsh and dangerous education to be mandated by one so
devoted
.”

Fix's curiosity burned on my left. Let him hear. Let Pluvius prove his honesty against those things Bastien had told me.

“Listen to me, lad, your grandsire considered you the gods' greatest gift to him—beyond his own prodigious talents, beyond his own children, parents, brothers, and his other grandchildren, all of whom he adored. By the
gods, Vincente de Remeni served as King Eodward's Royal Historian! But
you
were to be the work of his life—honorable, disciplined, talented beyond measure. . . .”

My kinsman, Eodward's Royal Historian? Despite mistrust, I was caught up, grasping at the image he sketched, willing it to feel familiar. And more than ever my own ignorance of the past gnawed at my certainties. Perhaps such a connection to Navronne's seat of power could explain Damon's choice of me for his scheme.

“Tell me, Lucian, are you aware that you were born with a second bent?”

This interview was very like running across the mudflats, dodging sinkholes. I sped through everything I knew—and Fix might know—to ensure I hadn't mentioned the dual bents myself.

“A second—”

Pluvius pounced, gleeful. “Damon didn't tell you that, did he?”

“No.” Even in the relict-seeing, Damon never thought of my bent for history. “What difference would that make to anything? Second bents are excised in childhood.”

“But yours were art and history,” said Pluvius, relishing his little triumph. “An ideal combination, supremely powerful if you could learn to manage them together. Think of the insights—investigating a historical artifact or ruin, while using your art to interpret, to discover more. Vincente allowed you to pursue both
into your twenties
. He got waivers for your Declaration of Bent—and planned to get a permanent—”

“Whoa!” Fix was off his stool, a warning hand raised to his prisoner. “You have no leave to reveal Greenshank's past. It's not your decision to do so—nor his—nor even mine.”

“No matter what kind of wharf thug you might be,” said Pluvius, sneering, “you'd be a fool to silence me. Lucian de Remeni will destroy your Order and everything it stands for if you prevent my telling. These walls can hold back the sea, but they cannot withstand the corruption Damon brings. It is already here and growing; I learned that from Lucian's silver-haired commander. And be sure I laid no wicked enchantment on him, but only this same message I speak here. If Lucian could remember, he would tell you of my lackluster spellwork.”

A leash of fire from out of nowhere circled Pluvius's neck. “Speak only what is necessary to the warning,” said Fix, “else I'll lay a
wicked enchantment
on you both. And be sure, I am a most competent wharf thug.”

Pluvius choked and growled as foam spewed from his mouth—a silencing spell beloved of children. It wasn't going to kill him.

I inclined my back to Fix. “I shall keep my questions strictly contained to the matters of concern to Commander Inek.”

“Waste no time.” Fix withdrew the leash, leaving a trail of gray smoke and a distinct odor of singed meat. Though I saw no evidence he'd actually burnt Pluvius, the old man's bundled hands blotted furiously at his brow and neck.

“Two mature bents lead inevitably to madness,” I said. “Was that why my Head of Family sent me here?” Would he admit that wasn't possible?

Pluvius snorted. “Vincente didn't send you here. He indulged your talents, but that was not his mistake—his terrible, tragic mistake. At King Eodward's behest, he went looking for the lost city of Xancheira. And he told First Curator Gramphier he was going to do it.”

“King Eodward and Xancheira . . .” An entirely new connection that made a kind of sense. Besides its magic and sophisticated arts, Xancheira was renowned for its just law and reasoned governance. Eodward, the noble soldier, had worked to bring such to Navronne.

Pluvius gave me no time to consider if or how that might redirect what I knew.

“After three years of investigation, ostensibly with no result, Vincente abruptly dragged you back to Palinur and excised your bent for history. He claimed it was because of— Well, I can't say.” He cast a hate-filled glance in Fix's direction, as if the Defender might plant a fiery boot in his mouth at his first misstep. “But it seemed a mighty coincidence. Vincente contracted you to me at the Registry, so all could witness your reformation. But the excision didn't hold.”

Another link in the chain snapped into place. Morgan said my disgrace was for my dalliance with her. But this hinted that
Registry secrets
were more likely the cause.

“If Damon showed you those most astonishing portraits of the six of us, then you saw the result of your two bents working in harmony. But the devil had taken an interest much earlier, when I, the fool, first showed him your drawings. Did you never wonder why you had to make copies of so many? Well, of course, you can't recall, but Damon required a copy of every drawing you did. Though truly, it was the curators' portraits made the danger insurmountable for those who keep Registry secrets—and thus for you and your family.”

A folio of portraits to be used as blackmail, just as Fallon suggested, and a confirmation that the curators' portraits had caused my family's slaughter. Though it still didn't explain why so many had to die. Was it to disconnect me from the past so Damon's version would be my only truth?

Yet Pluvius's story was convincing—and its mesh with Bastien's account made it dreadfully plausible. So much so that I had to remind myself of what else Bastien had told me. I had not suspected the risk of my work as I did it. I had
not
invited murder by flaunting my power or being careless of the danger.