Ash and Silver (56 page)

She didn't flinch. “But your bents, you still have them?”

“Yes. Indeed”—I fetched parchment and a stick of plummet from my pack—“I wanted to use them today. Two purebloods were here the night this happened, and I intend to discover who they were. To make sure justice is done. I thought perhaps I could draw something for you, too. If I search the history of this place—
your
home—and you told me something to look for, I could sketch it for you. A gift. A memory, since I've none to share with you.”

“But it wouldn't put the memory back in your head where it belongs.”

“No.”

“Then there's no use to it. Everything I loved here is graven in my heart forever, including my eldest brother Lucian, who was supremely talented and brave, but a bit of a prig. So, go ahead, do your investigating.”

My laughter made her smile. I'd not thought there would be any of either on this day.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I touched the ground and searched for what had happened here. As the terrible scenes raced through my head and my joined bents answered my call, I opened my eyes and began to draw.

If I needed any confirmation of what I'd done at Cavillor, it lay here. I grieved for those who died and felt horror at the manner of it, but even with my deepest magic, I could not say the victims' names or recognize their faces. The villains, though . . .

“Who were they?” asked Juli, when I was done.

I showed her that justice had been satisfied.

“Pluvius, the lying wretch!” she said. “And—”

“Attis de Lares-Damon.”

What was I to think of Damon? He had countenanced savagery and brought a murderous tyrant a handsbreadth from Caedmon's throne. Yet, would the Fifty have dissolved the Registry and set purebloods on a new, albeit rocky, course without Damon's impassioned case? Would I have found my way to the Xancheirans without the strength Damon's horrors forced on me?

Mayhap. Yet I refused to believe that slaughter was necessary to evoke
changes in the world. If I'd recognized the wily curator in the relict-seeing, I might have killed him, and the Marshal would almost certainly be on his triumphal journey to Palinur right now, the Order, the Three Hundred, and his murderous slave, Axe, at his beck.

As the sun moved inexorably upward, Juli told me of her plans. Pons had found a distant Massoni cousin who had married into another family several generations back. She wanted Juli to adopt their name and pursue her studies until she was ready to forge a contract on her own. “. . . so I'd get to keep one of my names at least. But I've decided to go back to Xancheira. Think of the skills I can learn there—even if I only have the one bent. Signé and I are great friends, both of us cursed with over-righteous brothers. She'll likely enjoy imagining that someday you'll come back to see me. But what of you, Luk— So what
is
your name?”

“Aros,” I said, “though I may take on different names from time to time. Your eldest brother is dead and must stay that way. To raise him, even in memory, puts us both in danger.”

“So what will you do? Vanish into the sea fortress and let them take away all memory of me? How can you spend your talents—your kindness—your loving, generous spirit—only to be a warrior, even an extraordinary warrior?”

“I'm not going back, for a while at least. Damon plowed a furrow amongst our kind thinking to grow a new world. Instead, it could divide us for generations, perhaps become a morass to drown our gifts. I'm going to dig a little, toss a few stones aside, plant some seeds, and, yes, fight a little, if necessary . . . to see if something worthy might grow in that soil.”

“So you're going to wait and watch, like you said on the ramparts, and do the work of justice.”

“Yes.”

“That's all right, then.” She took my scarred face in her small hands. “Goddess Mother protect thee, beloved. Deunor, Lord of Light, be thy guide. Kemen Sky Lord give thee strength. And know this: Even without a shared name, or blood, or hearth, shall I ever be thy sister.”

I helped her mount, firmly removed her hand from my hair, kissed it, and gave it back to her. As she rode away, I fingered the wooden token in my pocket, the match for the one I'd just left in her fist. But in the end, I
burnt the disk to ash, which would do the same to hers. My boot ground the neutered splinter that remained into the soil that had once been my inheritance.

Some things were too much to yield.

•   •   •

T
he wind howled across the white wilderness as I emerged from the slot gate in Palinur's outer wall. Across the plateau, mounded with graves of the unknowns, the gates of Necropolis Caton stood tall, the towers broken and lopsided. Flames shot high from stone cauldrons flanking the gatehouse, lighting the statues of Deunor and Magrog, yet grappling in their endless duel. The flames told me the coroner was at home.

Someone else lurked about Caton, as well. A tall woman, luminous with traces of sapphire and lapis, stood at the outer edge of the plateau. I did not go to her, nor did I call out. She soon vanished in a gust of winter wind and a swirl of snow. Perhaps she didn't recognize me anymore, now Lucian was gone.

Regret, but no sadness, followed me across a graveyard toward the necropolis. I paused once to pour out the dregs of my ale flask as libation to the Goddess Mother, thanking her for bringing me here safely. No familiarity, no echoes of chains or prisons or other times greeted me, even when I considered what had happened to Lucian here. And my head did not ache.

No one sat behind the gates when I rang the bell. But at my third ring, a shutter flew open above me and a shaggy head poked out. “What's your business so late of a night? The dead are not in so much hurry.”

“I'm looking for work,” I said.

“One man is useless. I need twenty washers and twenty diggers or no one at all. Go away.”

“What of a sketcher? I've heard you employed one in the past, someone who can draw a dead face so it can be recognized. Folk pay well to know how their kinsmen die, who did the deed, and where they're laid. Folk pay to know their enemies are dead, or their neighbors' farm has no man to work it anymore. Nobles pay decent. Merchants pay better. If they learn the news before—”

“Sky Lord's everlasting balls! Lucian!”

“Name's Aros. Traveling artist . . .”

But he didn't wait to hear my pretty story. He trampled down the gatehouse stairs like a herd of goats, wrenched away a barricade, and unlocked the gate. Lantern raised, he stared as I lowered my hood. “Stars and stone, did the headsman miss with his axe?”

I wore no mask to hide the scars.

“Lucian's death was a part of Damon's plan, and he must stay dead,” I said. “Forever. I can make it easy for you to forget him, but I'd prefer not. I've work to do in Palinur, and thought I might apply for his former position.”

“If
making it easy
means erasing memories, then, no. I'm moth-eaten enough. Don't need extra holes. And I wouldn't want a sorcerer unpracticed at the art to miss what he's aiming at.”

My spirits lightened with every moment here.

“Actually, someone more proficient worked the token magic.” I flipped his token into the air and frizzled it with a thought. The silver bracelets were sometimes annoying, but I'd grown to like them very much.

“All right.” He looked askance at the drifting ash. “I saw the masked sorcerer on the ramparts of Cavillor. Rumor named him Caedmon's heir. But it was you, wasn't it? Should I be afraid of you? Are you still working out of the sea fortress?”

“I am not Caedmon's heir. As to the fear . . . yes and no, as I'm a great deal quicker with magic than I used to be, and I'm still getting used to it. And yes, my roots are still at Evanide. But I'm on a special mission, having to do with what was spoken at Cavillor. I thought a man of the law who liked a bit of adventure might be just the partner I need. Besides, you're owed three years and ten months service and a great deal more. Such debts must be paid.”

“You'd do portraits for me . . . help investigate?”

“Yes.”

He pretended to consider it. But his face was already sparked brighter than his gate fires. “When Bayard took the city, the Harrowers ran wild, but now the war's down to the south, it's quieter. We could likely take up where we left off. A few of the magistrates have come forward to keep order, hoping to find favor with the new king, whoever he might be. We
could get Constance back to run things. She's sewing for a living now, but hates it. And what else would we be doing?”

I peered beyond him into the dark courtyard. “Maybe we could have a seat and a drink of something? I've just walked from Evanide without any Danae to shorten the distance. And first off, I need to bury a few things where no one's going to run across them.”

“Good enough.”

He locked the gates and led me through a strange courtyard filled with stone tables and columns and water troughs, through a bedraggled prometheum, and into a small burial ground. “Here,” he said, and pointed to a small, snow-covered grave with a simple headstone marked
Ysabel
. From the back of the headstone, he removed a piece that revealed a deep cavity. “It's where I kept the spindle after I dug it up and before the Danae woman fetched me. The girl child kept it safe.”

“The girl child,” I said. “Fallon's sister.”

“Aye.”

Curious how the world ran in circles. If ever I needed a reminder of how small works of justice could change everything, I had but to come here.

I pulled a canvas packet from my rucksack and stuffed it in the hole. It held a slip of purple silk and a gold medallion. “If Serena Fortuna is kind, these will never see the light of day,” I said, as he replaced the stones and I sealed it with magic. “As to our work . . . Damon, the Hand of Magrog, convinced the Sitting of the Three Hundred to dissolve the Pureblood Registry. He was well on his way to installing a sorcerer on Eodward's throne, when his Pretender—legitimate blood-kin of Caedmon and a halfblood mage—was proved worse than the three aspirants we've got. He tried to force someone he liked better into the role, but the stubborn prig he chose didn't like the idea . . .”

As we climbed the stair to the chamber beneath the dueling gods and between the blazing cauldrons, I told him of the strife among purebloods.

“. . . and so your commanders sent you here to do what you could to dissolve the Registry.”

“Works of justice,” I said. “Some not exactly small. Those who want to go backward have made the Registry Tower their headquarters. At some time in this coming year, the One-Who-Waits is going to bring that Tower
down. When it falls, a piece of this will come to light”—I pulled the
stola
from my jaque—“and as Benedik and Signé return Xancheira to glory, another piece, and then another. Someone once told me that perfection was ephemeral, but if the person who sits Eodward's throne thinks to take up wicked habits of whatever kind, his dreams might take such turns as he cannot imagine.”

Bastien poured two mugs of new ale. We toasted our partnership and talked late. Neither of us could sleep. It was the night of the winter solstice and the world seemed restless. Yet even surrounded by the unquiet dead, I was at peace. I knew who I was—a man with such friends and such purpose as could fill a lifetime of magic. If I needed to don the mask again, I would, but for now I would watch and work and hope.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C
arol Berg
is a former software engineer with degrees in mathematics from Rice University and computer science from the University of Colorado. Since her 2000 debut, her epic fantasy novels have won multiple Colorado Book Awards, the Geffen Award, the Prism Award, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. Carol lives in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies with her Exceptional Spouse, and on the Web at
carolberg.com.

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