Ash and Silver (4 page)

“Dalle cineré.”

From the ashes.
The emblem of the
Equites Cineré
ought to be a phoenix, as we were each of us built anew from the ashes of the past.

•   •   •

S
leep eluded me. For seven nights I flinched at every sound, afraid Inek had come to throw me in the bay or sentence me to the Disciplinarian's lash for my lies. Days were filled with training in magic and combat, with running, with practicing veils that even Cormorant, the parati-exter—the next to be knighted—could find no fault with. But through the long nights, my mind revisited the woman's words, analyzing, questioning until they felt graven in my skin.

The full moon brought the highest tides to the bay. No matter my frenzy to be gone, I spent a pre-dawn hour in the chart room studying, and presented myself to old Fix at the docks as if this were no more than the navigation practice Inek had scheduled.

Fix was one of those servitors who must have been at Evanide since its founding. His weather-scored face was not masked, so he was no knight. And no one addressed him as adjutant—one of the skilled trainees who had failed to reach knighthood, but chose to stay on and serve the Order. He was just Fix, who knew everyone who resided at Evanide and everything that went on. I tried always to take a moment to exchange a word with the old man. His knowledge of the sea and boats dwarfed even Inek's. This day it required patience to heed the boatmaster's gloomy predictions that storms inevitably accompanied the demon tide.

As I crossed the bay to the estuary where I'd met Kitaro and the woman, I could afford thought only for rampaging sea, spell-wrought beacons, and faint lines of magic that stretched between submerged rocks. But as I entered the river Gouvron's mouth, dismay slapped me in the face like a dead fish. The demon tide had spread its waters deep and wide. There were no more muddy banks. The half-drowned reeds were arm-high, not man-high, and all looked the same.

Cursing, I trolled up and down the lower estuary but the sea had washed away all remnants of Kitaro, donkey,
cereus iniga
, and magic. No one lurked but birds, insects, and sea creatures. How could I imagine the woman would
be waiting? This was surely Inek's test. So simple a mission. And so abject a failure.

Mind numb, stomach in knots, I tied the skiff to a random clump of reeds. My shoulders were afire, and surely a giant had battered my back and legs with the trunk of an oak. Like a raw tyro, I'd eaten nothing that morning and drained my water flask early on. To find any water fresh enough to drink on the day of the demon tide would mean rowing upriver past the salt boundary, another five quellae at least. But I'd need every scrap of my strength to get back to Evanide alive. How many names were there for fool?

I would rest for a quarter of an hour, then head back. . . .

•   •   •

A
hard edge rapped my skull. I jerked instantly awake, sprawled in the bottom of the skiff. The restless river had tumbled me from my seat, cracking my forehead on the sternsheet. Great gods, how long had I slept?

The painter angled sharply upward. Either the reeds had grown dramatically or the ebb was well begun. At least Fix had called the weather wrong. Blue sky teased behind thin, high mist, and the reed shadows had begun to stretch across a golden world of water and marshland. Past time to go. Time to survive the passage, confess my sin, and take my punishment. Inek would likely be waiting at the dock, coolly disappointed that his test had snared me.

As I stretched out cramps and reclaimed my seat, a black cylinder rolled along the bottom of the bobbing skiff. A spare water flask, I thought at first, as pleased as one could be when facing such an ordeal. But the shape was wrong; it was straight sided and tied at both ends. The leather covering was not stiffened and hardened, but wrapped about something else and sealed with resin.
Proof of our friendship
 . . .

Cold fingers fumbled with the damp leather ties and pulled a rolled parchment from the casing. Magic assured me there were no enchantments to harm or trick, no poisons or pricking needles. But certainly a deeper enchantment suffused the fine parchment, heating a knot just behind my breastbone. My body named the spellwork benign, though reason could not explain why. I spread the page.

The world paused. Surely the squalling gulls were halted mid-flight, their rapid hearts stilled . . . as mine was. An ink drawing depicted a naked
woman reclining on a grassy hillock bathed in afternoon light. The lines of her hip and thigh were long and elegant, her legs firm and powerful, her thick hair a cascade of curls over her shoulder. The drawing itself was masterful, assured and balanced and so real . . . so true . . . that I could smell the meadowsweet and sun-warmed grass her body crushed. The very woman I had met here.

But unlike the previous day, her bare skin was marked with fine and elegant drawings. Luminous images of honeysuckle vines entwined her arms and legs. Simple threads wrapped her fingers. A butterfly graced one hip. A lynx curled amid a stand of aspens on her back, and a nightingale on her cheek spread its wings across her brow and down her neck. Danae . . .

Gods' witness, the image was truth, and tales of the world's creation—knowledge the Order had not taken from me—spoke of only one sort of creature whose body gleamed with nature's own artworks. Danae—the earth's mythical guardians. Tales said the exquisite lines would gleam every shade of blue—lapis and azure, cerulean, sapphire, and indigo. Legend explained how she could be here and then not, for Danae could travel at will through the world and dissolve into earth or sea. Gods and myth held no sway at Evanide, but this . . .

Yet it was neither divine revelation nor sheerest wonder that made my hands tremble. As my fingers traced the curves of her shoulder, her neck, and the perfect wing scribed on her brow, I knew what ink had been used, the width of the pen, the technique used to shadow the cheek to reveal the slender bone beneath or to reveal the brilliance in her eyes. Magic swelled in my breast, where the fiery knot burned. With a touch I should be able to quirk her lips as I'd seen them the previous day, for that, too, would be truth, or extend her finger as she had done to touch my mask . . .

My bellow could have roused every bird that nested in the Gouvron Estuary or the coastal marshes. This drawing was a fragment of my soul as much as that chip of stone hidden in Fortress Evanide. And yet I could not remember her name, nor what we had done together, nor how I could possibly know a being of myth. If this was a test, then it demonstrated a measure of cruelty that could change my every perception of the
Equites Cineré
.

The discipline that embodied my present life quickly tamed inner chaos. Yet as I rolled the page to store it away, one more detail of the drawing leapt out at me. In the lower right corner, the artist had scrawled his name. I touched that, too, and it felt as familiar as the ink and parchment.

Lucian de Remeni-Masson.
His name. My name.

Evidently I drew portraits and my magic instilled them with truth. Yet I could not remember doing so, nor when or where I'd learned the skills. Save for the burning in my chest, all of it was gone.

A
ccording to Fix the boatmaster, Knight Commander Inek could be found in the sparring arena with Dunlin and Heron, the third paratus of my cadre. But when I reached the arena, Inek was nowhere in sight. Dunlin knelt beside our grimacing third, tightening a bandage about his bleeding thigh. Patchy enchantment mottled the air about the two, so I didn't interrupt. Healing enchantments were a critical portion of a knight's training, though mostly futile for anyone who wasn't born with the bent for it.

Like Lucian de Remeni, who instead carried a bent for portraiture.
I crushed that thought. No more thinking until I spoke to Inek.

“A rugged session?” I said when Dunlin sat back on his heels and tossed the roll of linen into the wooden box.

Dunlin crooked his head in distinct mockery of our swordmaster. “Is it possible we forgot our nether limbs again, Paratus Heron?”

Heron, a scrappy, spindle-limbed fellow with sinews like drawn steel, hopped up from the blood-spattered stone muttering a curse upon Dunlin's unknown heritage. He wiped down his sword and sheathed it, and waved off my outstretched hand as he hobbled away. “I'll be in the infirmary. This hamfist's bandaging will likely have this cursed leg rotted by morning.”

“Now you, Greenshank, a bit of extra work?” asked Dunlin, making a great show of wiping the blood from his blade. “You seem a bit soggy.”

I shook my head. “I'm yet in-mission, hunting Inek.”

His face sobered immediately. “Blessed return. Inek was summoned to the Marshal not a half hour since.”

“I'll be ready for a match later,” I said on my way out. “
Any
weapon.” My swordwork was ever in need of extra practice, but it was the fight I needed more. The hard row back had kept inner turmoil at bay, but since I'd left the boat, guilt, desire, and confusion raged inside me in a whirlpool worthy of Evanide's storm tides. I had to tell Inek the truth. Perhaps having
the unsanctioned knowledge ripped out would keep my skull from cracking. Yet I wasn't sure I could allow him to do that.
Danae.
Holy Deunor . . .

•   •   •

T
he Knight Marshal of Evanide had no name. At the Rite of Breaking, when the knight-in-waiting smashed the fragment of stone that held his past, he announced the name he would carry for the rest of his life.
Unless
he was eventually named Knight Marshal. When the knights chose a replacement for a deceased or retired Marshal, only the Knight Archivist, the caretaker of our memories and the Order's history, knew the identity of the one selected. If the man chosen accepted the office, his former name was marked as
knight-deceased
throughout the archives and excised from the memory of every member of the Order—including his own. Anonymity meant freedom to make hard decisions for a man who must send his knights into the most dangerous places in a dangerous world.

Early in my residence at Evanide, our Knight Marshal had died of a fever. This new Marshal had appeared at his vesting wearing a full mask and robes of pure white. He even wore white silk gloves so that no one could identify him by scars or marks or any trace he left that might be detectable by magic. Every quat of his flesh was hidden, save eyes and mouth. Eerie to imagine I might have met him, trained under him, or studied his deeds as I viewed the missions stored in the Order's archives, yet neither of us would know.

Some said the Marshal walked the fortress unmasked from time to time to observe its workings. I doubted that, but certainly straightened up whenever I encountered anyone halfway familiar whose name eluded me.

Hurrying through the Hall and up the South Tower stair, I prayed Inek's business with the Marshal would be short, lest I lose my nerve to confess my deceit. The sheathed portrait, tucked into an oil-dressed sack, weighed on my shoulder like an iron plate.

The Marshal kept his eye on the world from a series of chambers on the southern flank of the fortress. It seemed strange that a man who rarely left the citadel could gather sufficient information to choose our tasks wisely, but as Inek had often reminded me, the Order was hardly isolated from the world. Knights brought back detailed reports of their missions before their memories were erased; we were trained to be observant. Parati-exter who chose not to be invested as knights left Evanide with honor and served as good sources of information. And the Order maintained a wide network of well-paid informants who knew nothing of who we were, just as we
maintained a network of factors for our business interests. Squires' gossip whispered that a few Order knights served as spies, too, but no one knew for certain.

Thyme and rosemary scented my path across a courtyard garden to the far colonnade where a guard paced. The knight pivoted smartly at my approach. I halted, touching fingertips to forehead, then fist to heart, eyes lowered.

“Ah, Greenshank, I do so appreciate your fine discipline. I assured Commander Inek that no search parties were required, as you would dutifully seek him out no matter the lateness of your return.” The Marshal's doorward, a jovial knight-retired named Horatio, knew the name and status of every trainee who'd been at Evanide more than a month. “They wish you to go right in.”

“Go in?”

Naught could measure my dismay. I'd been planning to snare Inek as he left, not intrude upon his meeting with the Marshal. And
search parties
? Deunor's fire, were they ready to dismiss me even before my confession?

Horatio rapped twice on the thick oak and pushed the door open. “Retain your mask.”

I hooked my cloak at the shoulders, straightened my mask, shirtsleeves, and leather jaque, and cinched the ties of the leather sack. Best not have the portrait fall out in front of the Marshal. Goddess Mother . . .

I had met Evanide's Knight Marshal exactly twice. Once at the rite that advanced me from squire to paratus, and once shortly before that occasion when I had sat with him for a personal interview to judge my readiness. With a voice as mellow and mysterious as a night breeze in softer climes, he had probed my perceptions of the Order and our mission, my experiences during my training, and the seriousness of my intention to pursue investiture as a knight. I had come away stripped bare, and yet strangely exhilarated, the way before me clear. And now, so short a time later, all was murk and confusion—the true penance for lies and dissembling. Never again.

That interview had been held in the Marshal's outer chamber, so the hard benches and lack of a fire to chase away the damp did not surprise me. The beautifully rendered map labeled
The Middle Kingdoms and the Known East
yet held the place of honor at one end, while at the opposite end was a shimmering mosaic of our three ruling Knights in full armor: the Knight Marshal in white and silver, the Knight Archivist in deep red-gold, and the
Knight Defender, his mail and helm gleaming black, his tabard, cloak, and mask of midnight blue.

These three knights were the bones of the Order. The Knight Marshal focused his eyes outward, presiding over our missions and training. The Knight Archivist gazed ever inward, ensuring the integrity of the Order's history and our memories. And the mysterious Knight Defender had eyes everywhere, for he saw to our security and integrity, and no one had any idea who he was. Though it was assumed the three consulted one another, their demesnes were separate and inviolate.

The door leading into the Marshal's inner chamber stood open. I swallowed hard, told myself that despite this one transgression, I remained a worthy warrior, and entered.

I had never visited the inner chamber. Though it was no less plainly furnished than the outer chamber, its prospect must steal the breath of any person with eyes. Across the far wall stretched an expanse of windows measuring five times my armspan. Its center span, paned with remarkably clear glass, gave view to the crescent spit that cupped Evanide's bay to the south and the lighthouse that marked its tip, already afire on this murky eve. Beyond all lay the gray, heaving expanse of the Western Sea and its seamless joining with the sky.

But at either end of the clear window was an equal wonder—glass panes stained the colors of emerald, sapphire, ruby, and citrine, cut and joined to shape images. On the right they depicted the fortress, stark against a field of pale blue sky, surrounded by the swirling waters of the bay. Centered at the bottom was the small white-on-black emblem of the Order—the quiver and its five implements.

On the left, the panes shaped a woman—a goddess, by her haloed face. Her finger pointed to a twin-peaked mountain, though her eyes were turned away, weeping. Sprawled across the slopes was a city of graceful towers, bridges, and flowered boulevards. Atop one of the mountain's peaks stood a modest keep and its three towers. Its twin was crowned with a ring of standing stones. People crowded the ring of stones and others streamed up the lanes and boulevards toward it.

Centering the lower glass was a cruder version of the Order's emblem, the five implements no more than sticks. About the mountain city was laid an array of slivered panes of ruby and citrine. One might think the slivers benign—the artist's suggestion of enchantments or the divine—and the goddess's tears a mystery. But it struck me that when the sun made one of its
rare appearances and shot its beams through that window, it would set that glorious city afire.

Such a horror rose in me, I could not drag my eyes from the image, even when a man cleared his throat behind me. I didn't understand it.

“Greenshank, attend!”

My gaze snapped away to two men seated beside a small hearth and a third, a glaring Inek, who stood to one side of them. I dropped to one knee, touched my forehead and heart, and lowered my eyes. “Knight Marshal, Knight Commander.” I nodded to the seated man in the white hood and mask and to Inek in turn. “I report my mission complete.”

“Blessed return, Greenshank.” The two said it as one, though the voices were entirely distinguishable—the Marshal's deep and mellow quiet and Inek's that might have been hammered in the armory. Neither of them said
speak
, the command to continue my report.

I stood. My stomach—which had lodged itself in my throat—settled a bit.

“Have you met our guest, Greenshank?” The Marshal opened his hand to the man seated beside him. “Attis de Lares-Damon, respected linguist and a curator of the Pureblood Registry—a leader among the pureblood sorcerers of Navronne.”

No wonder I'd been told to retain my mask. Ordinarily one bared one's face before the Knight Marshal, but not with an outsider present.

“I've not been formally introduced, Knight Marshal, but the curator has queried me on several occasions.”

This Damon was a frequent visitor to Evanide, one of the few outsiders permitted here and the only one I knew of allowed to speak directly with those in training. He observed our work with sharp interest, yet his questions were mundane.
Are swords or polearms easier to enhance with spellwork? Is your combat training more involved with pureblood opponents or ordinaries? Do you focus primarily on individual combat?
Inek could have answered more completely than I.

“Damon has requested an interview with those new raised to the paratus rank,” said the Marshal. “Answer without reservation.”

Without reservation
 . . . meaning without protecting what I knew of Order secrets. Who was this Damon? A glance at Inek's lean face illuminated nothing, though as one who had spent two years with my life hanging on his whim, I detected an unusual fury smoldering behind his chilly shell.

Damon rose and bowed to the Marshal. A small man, he affected a
particular neatness about his hair, close-trimmed beard, and plain garments. His complexion was the hue of olives—visible because his mask covered only the left half of his face. That named him pureblood.

All men and women born with magical talents were descendents of long-ago invaders from the Aurellian Empire. Purebloods were those whose magical lineage had not been diluted or obliterated by familial interbreeding with common Navrons. Surely most of us at Evanide were of pureblood descent and would have been raised among people like this Damon—in a society almost as restrictive as the Order. I could list the rules and disciplines of that life, but to think about it too closely made my head ache in the way it had when I'd first been brought to Evanide. I had learned to hold such matters at a distance.

“I regret the unfortunate timing of our meeting, paratus,” said Damon. “You've just returned from a rigorous exercise, and I understand your desire to deliver your report and be off to rest and replenishment. My questions may seem frivolous, but I assure you they bear upon the future of our beloved kingdom and thus upon the future of us all.”

I inclined my back, deferring to the Marshal's obvious respect for the man. For the moment, curiosity shoved aside my personal concerns.

“Know, first,” he said, “that I am aware of what is done to the minds of those who train at Evanide. So tell me, what do you recall of the war that rages in Navronne?”

His manner invited answers as sober as his questioning. My recollection of history was extensive, but I began with a summary.

“The noble king Eodward died some three years since without a writ designating which of his three sons should inherit his throne. The eldest, Bayard, Duc of Morian, is accomplished in arms, but considered brutish and poorly educated, ill-suited to rule. Osriel, Duc of Evanore, son of Eodward by a pureblood mistress, is a reclusive halfblood, reputed variously to be a weakling cripple or a dangerous madman who practices demonic magic in his mountain strongholds. Perryn, Duc of Ardra, seems nearest his father's son, and yet demonstrates signs of weakness . . . cowardice, dishonesty, guile. The bitter contention of Perryn and Bayard gave rise to this war that ebbs and flows across the kingdom to its sorrow. It grants opportunity to Sila Diaglou and her murderous Harrowers, who seek to raze our cities and send us back to living in caves. She preaches that such groveling misery will appease some nameless gods who have sent us these years of plague and relentless winter. I could give more detail. . . .”