Dust and Light (41 page)

Panicked screams shrilled from every side. I needed to move, but my body just hurt. . . .

Someone nearly wrenched my arm from its socket.

“Don’t touch me.” But I’d no strength to draw my arm away. “The law . . .”

“I
am
the law. Remember?” Bastien’s growl in my ear would have made me smile, had my knees not taken that moment to collapse and my stomach to empty itself of pignut bread and bile.

The world spun and jostled and settled upside down with a boulder in my belly. My lacerated face bounced on leather that stank of horse muck.

“Over here!” Bastien’s bellow rumbled in my ribs. Yet I seemed to be
here
already, wrapped around his broad shoulders.

Jostling. The clash of steel very close . . . how was that possible? Bastien’s arms—both of them—pinned me tight. Had he grown extra?

“Stand down, all of you!” A new voice, scarce distinguishable from the steel. “Stand down and move aside, by order of Prince Perryn’s
consiliar prime
!”

Registry servitors? Tremayne the devil?

I yelled at Bastien to drop me and run, but it came out a muddled
mumble. He only yanked my arm and leg tighter over his shoulders and around his chest until I thought my side must rip.

“One of the gods’ chosen has fallen in service to his prince,” spat the steely commander. “Get him to his people. A madman’s on the loose inside the walls. Bar the gates behind us.”

Deeper darkness. More jostling. Hands grappling and then a dreadful sensation of slipping . . . falling. My limbs refused to answer my commands. Magic sputtered through my fingers and fell dead. My tongue produced gibberish.

“Silence, conjurer.” A snappish whisper. Strong arms held me up from each side as if my rescuer had split into two. “Get him over behind the stables, and, for gods’ sake, hide that cloak and mask.”

A hand ripped off my mask. A whipping of cloth, and a mantle fell over me. My feet whisked and bumped on the ground. Two men, then. One on each side, breathing hard. One of them smelled like fresh corpses. I knew him. I wanted to ask who the other was, but my tongue was a dead fish. The night grew darker, interminably.

“His head’s bleeding, lord. We ought to take a look.”

“Time enough for that. I’ve a horse kept here for dispatch riding. Have her back here by dawn.”

“Done.”

They propped me up against a splintery wall. I promptly crumpled. On the way downward, my throbbing side struck something very hard. Pain obliterated thought and sense entire.

W
ater splattered and dribbled over
my back. Hot water. Blessedly hot. My head—or the pounding granite knob that had replaced it—rested on two bony lumps. Knees. My own, I guessed, though the knees themselves gave no evidence of it. I couldn’t feel anything that far away. Ridges of metal dug unpleasantly into my upper arms—my naked arms—propping me up, but everything beyond my elbows was dead, too.

“This’n? Are ye sure? Seems cruel with slush floatin’ in it?” The woman’s voice bounced about the bottom of a well, and I was—

A frigid downpour atop my head robbed me of thought, though it confirmed I was, indeed, naked as a babe. “M-m-m-erciful Mother!”

“Ah-hah! You see, it worked.” The man bellowed from a barrel. “Just as the young lord told me. Do it again. From the front this time.”

Wait!
A scalding flood on my legs and feet that—gods in all heavens—splashed over my groin. And before I could beg mercy, another dousing straight from Magrog’s icy heart stole every whisper of breath and shriveled every quat of my flesh.

“Again!” said the cruel man, laughing as a flashing pitcher emptied its hellish liquid on my head.

And with the slurry of snow and water that quickly followed arrived the snap of a fire, the smells of ale and wet wood and greasy smoke, the sounds of muffled laughter, the stomp of boots in rhythm with a trilling pipe, and a murderous ache in my side. Water slopped just behind me—pitchers being filled.

“Wait! Stop!” I yelled. “No more!” I would have leapt up and proved my state, but the female tittering all around kept me crouched in— My half-frozen, half-scalded forearm blotted my bleary eyes. I crouched in a bathing tub scarce bigger than Maia’s largest cookpot.

Shrinking into a defensive knot, I glared at Bastien, who stood at the foot of the tub, grinning through his thicket of beard. Though chips of stone and wood were yet stuck in his tangled hair, he appeared to have suffered no injury from the exploding gate.

“Welcome back,
servant
. And say thank you to the gentle ladies of the Bucket Knot, the finest sop-house in Palinur, for rousing you from your
drunken stupor
.”

Two stringy-haired girls in wet aprons held dripping pitchers at the ready, while a third poked at a blazing fire. A tall girl with red cheeks and red-gold curls stood by with a length of not-so-clean linen, inspecting me with an experienced eye and a friendly grin. “Seem he has ’is wits back, Coroner. Do you s’pose ’e rathers the towel or should we get ’im up dancing to get him dry? Your runners always like the dancing and drinking well enough, though they never seem to fancy us girls!”

A sop-house. Baths, beer, and bawds. A haven for thieves and twistminds and other low sorts, so I’d been warned. But the girls looked cheerful, the hearth fire merry, and the low-ceilinged room, lit with the smoky yellow glow of rushlights clipped in brackets around the walls, felt safe and friendly. Inexplicably so, when all the forces of Magrog’s hell were after us.

“Mayhap we’ll have a dance later, sweet Tansy,” said Bastien. “For the present, give us the towel. And draw us a mug of whatever’s decent, now the fool’s breathing. We’ll come out to fetch it and celebrate the
news
.” He
waggled his eyebrows as he did whenever he wished me to take especial note of his words. He thought I oughtn’t mention that it was magical thunderbolts from the Registry had paralyzed me. As for
news
, I wasn’t sure.

The giggling girls bustled out, leaving only the ruddy-cheeked Tansy. She tossed the wadded linen to Bastien and winked at me before strolling out. “I’ll be waiting!” she called over her shoulder. “Dorrie’s a merry piper.”

A man with more wits and fewer enemies than I would surely find her airs most inviting.

“So, you’ve bones again, eh?” said Bastien, dangling the towel over my head.

“B-brutal,” I croaked through chattering teeth. “That was brutal.” Thoroughly chilled, I sat in a finger’s depth of cold water. Every shiver wrenched the pain in my side.

He dropped the towel over my head. “But you can move now . . . control your limbs, you see. Such paralyzing magics are oft thrown in battle, and his family’s pureblood told him hot and cold dousing was the only way to shake them off in a timely fashion. We owe him in a number of ways.”

I climbed out and blotted myself, happy to note my garments draped over a wooden rack next the fire and that my forehead was the only part of me seeping blood. “
He
 . . . the swordsman with the horse? The one who got us out.”

Bastien leaned close and dropped his voice. “Fallon de Tremayne. When his father’s men barged into the Repository in search of us, he sent them off one way and followed us out the other. Said he wasn’t going to let his da get away with another murder tonight.”

“Gods, he could hang for thwarting the Registry’s hunt. And his father’s wrath could be worse.” Such courage was humbling. He didn’t owe me anything.

“Aye. I’ve already sent his horse back to the stable. It’s trusty folk here at the Knot.” Good cheer fallen away, he passed me the warmed clothes. “More so than my own people, I suppose.”

I’d no answer for Bastien’s angry hurt. I laced the baggy chausses around my waist and pulled on the stained shirt. There was no sign of my purple cloak or mask or the threadbare brocade doublet I’d worn to the palace. “I take it that
this
servant is to remain half-naked.”

“Aye. I told them you gave your outer garments to a starving lady, as
you had no food to offer. The girls think you’re one of these Karish saints. Tansy will cobble up something for you before we go; she’s near as good as Constance at providing what’s needed.”

“We need to go now. Your people at Caton are in terrible danger.”

“I sent Garibald a warning soon’s we got here—two, three hours ago. We’ve no chance to get there ourselves just now. The celebrations have clogged the streets worse than the famine riots.”

“Celebrations?”

“The criers are out. Despite the
mad Harrower who used stolen magics in an attempt to fire the palace this evening
, the chancellor of Navronne has announced the discovery of King Eodward’s will. Seems it names Perryn, Duc of Ardra, as his heir.”

Expecting Perryn’s victory didn’t make it more palatable. But the other part . . . “They named me a
Harrower
using
stolen magics
?”

“Several onlookers reported the dastard wore an orange scarf, though others swore he was a dragon, breathing fire. Certainly it couldn’t have been a true sorcerer, as the Registry is entirely loyal to our new king.” Bastien wagged his head wearily. “For our safety, Servant
Filon
, I believe we should remain in this merry company and drink to King Perryn—at least until the rest of Palinur falls down drunk and allows us safe passage to our beds.”

“Which are likely not safe, either.” Nor would they ever be, my gut told me.

“Likely not. But the sexton will see our people safe. And, I’ve a notion where we might take refuge and assess the outfall from our day’s work . . . our cursed, lunatic,
useless
work.”

Face twisting into righteous rage, he lifted the copper tub and threw it into the wall. The dregs of my dousing extinguished half the rushlights and dripped in ashy rivulets to the floor.

I
t was in the sop-house called the Bucket Knot on the night after the inquest into Ysabel de Tremayne’s murder that the Pretender to Eodward’s throne was born. This fourth royal son was strong, intelligent, courageous, and nurtured far from Navronne, destined to be the hope of all who learned the truth of Perryn the Weasel, Bayard the Smith, and Magrog’s rival, Osriel the Bastard. Of course, this virtuous youth was not birthed of a human mother and good King Eodward, but of a disgruntled coroner and a drunken pureblood.

I’d been starving and tight wound as a crossbow, knowing half the city was after us with murder on their minds. In a few short hours I was to sneak into the Tower, and examine the curators’ portraits to learn who wanted me dead. Meanwhile, I had to sit, unmasked, amid a taproom full of ordinaries, expected to talk and jest as they did. And though my side seemed only bruised, it hurt fiercely, worse even than my head. Concentrating on the cups of stout ale rosy-cheeked Tansy kept setting in front of me eased all these discomforts. I’d never imbibed so much with a gut so empty. An hour in and I was giggling like the sop-house girls.

Bastien whispered that he’d best get drunk like me or he’d be hauled out for the happy mob to dismember. He was furious with himself for expecting better of the loathsome Perryn.

When Tansy’s mistress arrived to complain that we had dented the Bucket Knot’s prized copper tub, Bastien waved toward me, mumbling
that his servant had some delicious gossip to repay the debt, and somehow in my onrushing inebriation, I came up with the rumor of Eodward’s fourth son. Bastien pounced, imbuing our creation with the necessary virtues. As the night wore on and everyone in the common room grew louder and unlikely to remember their own names, much less ours, we’d thought it a great joke to whisper of it with each of the sop-house girls, swearing each to forget where they’d heard it. Soon everyone in the house was talking of the Pretender.

Yet in the pitchy hour before moonset, as the two of us stumbled down the hill toward the hirudo, I could not imagine why the prank had seemed so amusing. The moon’s dull light stabbed my eyes like a poignard. My mouth tasted like a stable floor. We had to stop every few steps to gather our wits, get a better grip on each other, or puke. I repeatedly asked Bastien where we might sleep that we wouldn’t be slaughtered in our beds. He kept answering, “Head homeward.”

That
homeward
should lead me toward a city of the dead seemed a kind of blasphemy.

“Halt!” Three Cicerons stepped out of the brush at the base of the slope. Lantern light revealed bloody knives and clothes, and a smoking rubble where two huts had once stood. Reason rushed back.

“Fetch Demetreo,” I said, swallowing bile and hauling Bastien’s heavy body upward yet again. “Tell him it’s the coroner and his servant. We need a safe place to sleep.”

B
astien’s snores could have waked
the entire population of his necropolis. The dawn that reddened the sky had not yet reached the hirudo when I wandered outside the flimsy lean-to in search of quiet. I found a piece of broken wall to sit on and pulled my grandsire’s canvas-wrapped spindle from under my baggy shirt. Bastien had kept hold of the rucksack through magic and melee, dousing and drunkenness. He felt no sensation from touching the spindle, which was astounding. Even yet, its enchantment had me wanting to claw the skin from my bare hand.

The whole was no longer than a woman’s hand, wrist to fingertip, the cross-section no thicker than my thumb. Only the outer wrapping was sturdy canvas, the material my grandsire used to protect fragile documents when he had no supple leather to hand. Examining the end of the tight little roll revealed a more fragile fabric underneath the protective sheath.
The frayed edge and mottled color spoke of age. Carved into each end of the wood spindle was a five-branched tree. Xancheira.

I exhaled a pent breath and began to work on the layered protections. First my grandfather’s knot spell that locked the ribbon tie, easily countered. The canvas sheath bore a protection against fire, but naught else. I removed it, exposing a roll of fragile linen.

But then matters became most discouraging. The harsher enchantments that pierced and itched my hand were bound to a locking spell so complex I wasn’t sure I even knew how it worked, much less how to undo it. Cursing, I set to work . . .

. . . and at the first touch of my magic, both spells vanished. A delicate flap of linen fell loose, inviting me to look. Such an odd combination of spells—the fire that pained only me, a lock that kept no one out, unless . . .

Without magic, I touched the linen wound on the spindle. Pain coursed through the sinews of my arm. The hem of the fabric began to smolder. But with the slightest infusion of my power, both pain and thready smoke vanished. Magic was as distinct as an artist’s brushstrokes, thus it did not seem farfetched to conclude that my grandsire wanted me, and no one else, to notice the spindle.

Excitement sharpened my attention.
O Serena Fortuna
,
let this not be some ancient house dam’s inventory!

I unrolled the fragile linen, spreading and folding it over my knees, ensuring its trailing ends didn’t fall into the muck. Bordered in intricate spirals of gold thread, it was longer than my estimate. Surely it was a
stola
, an Aurellian ceremonial scarf made to hang from one’s neck and invoke blessings or interventions from the gods. Fine stitches of colored silk formed fans of words and symbols along its length, arranged from the center so that both halves of the array would appear right side up when the garment was worn.

Hope of enlightenment faded as my eyes devoured its length. The inscriptions were no household inventory, but almost as mundane. At the tail of each half was a single name—one side
Domenica
, one side
Eruin
. Stitched above each was a genealogy, each fan marking a generation of parents and children. This was certainly a wedding
stola
, worn by a Xancheiran woman of Aurellian heritage—a pureblood woman—as she assumed the responsibility of carrying on her new husband’s bloodline as well as her
own. It was a beautifully crafted record of a sacred heritage, for each name was accompanied by the symbol of a pureblood bent, just as Registry documents would display my own lineage. Here was an eye for a diviner, there a loom for a weaver, crossed chisels for a sculptor, and—

I shifted around so that the rising sun would strike the fabric more directly. Some symbols were missing. Not worn or rotted away, for the threads where the symbol should be lay flat and smooth beside the names. Henik, the great-great-grandsire of the bride, had no designation. Either the sewing woman had been careless—difficult to believe with such exquisite and significant work—or the
stola
had been wrought before the Registry formalized the breeding laws, for indeed Henik was a Moriangi name, not Aurellian. He was an ordinary.

Henik’s wife, Neria, was a pureblood sculptress. And the same symbol appeared beside the name of their daughter, Regan. Their
halfblood
daughter, if I was reading this correctly.

My skin prickled. In the next fan down the
stola
, Regan’s name was linked to one Philo. The mark of the sculptor’s bent was repeated beside Regan’s name. And beside the name of her husband, two marks had been stitched—the pincers of a goldsmith and the quill of a scribe. Two marks—a dual bent.

My gaze snapped down to the names of Regan and Philo’s children. And there, the tiny stitches of this ancient garment proclaimed the impossible. Marcus, a scribe. Philomena, a sculptress. And Jullian, no mark. Two grandchildren of a pureblood and an ordinary were marked as bearing pureblood bents. Impossible.

My gaze darted to another name that lacked a mark. The bridegroom Eruin’s grandmother, an ordinary named Cymra, had wed a pureblood, Leonid, who bore the dual bents of a linguist and a singer. Each of their five children had been gifted, and so, too, their grandchildren, including Eruin himself, a singer—one whose songs could make his listeners see visions.

The Registry declared our blood sacred, because no descendant of a halfblood could carry the bent. Never could purebloods and ordinaries interbreed without committing the blasphemy of destroying the gods’ gift of magic. To protect that gift, we had devised the disciplines that kept our kind separate, that forbade us simple friendships and the choice of what life to pursue or what person to love, that allowed the Registry to punish any
of us who strayed from our rules and destroy any ordinary who dared interfere in our ways or claimed to work magic. This simple fact of nature had created a way of life that kept our gifts precious . . . and rare . . . and our family treasuries full, and the Registry powerful enough to rival and balance Crown and Temple. Only that
simple fact
was a lie.

“Great gods, sorcerer, you look as if you’ve seen the end of the world.”

I glanced up, vision blurred and mind slowed to a crawl as two centuries of history and lies and vanished cities and massacred populations clogged my thinking. But as surely as the indistinct features resolved into Bastien’s grimy curiosity, so did the fullness of our danger strike me harder than any magical thunderbolt ever could. The end of the world indeed.
Holy Mother! Lord of Light!

No wonder Capatronn had stopped speaking to me. No wonder he had tried to excise my second bent—the very talent that might reveal the truth he’d learned—in front of the First Curator of the Registry. No wonder he had buried me in the Registry portrait studio, where all could see how ignorant I was. He had been terrified the Registry would find out what he knew and assume he had told me.

This flimsy bit of cloth explained the Registry suppression of a second bent. For if those with two bents could reinvigorate a broken bloodline, we could make the impossible possible. The gift of sorcery could spread outside pureblood families. Loyalties and disciplines would be upended. The Registry would lose its stranglehold on magic.

“This is—”

No. Bastien could not know. He could not even suspect. If he and his friends were to survive, he had to be able to swear without hesitation that he had no idea what I might have discovered about my grandsire’s investigation. They would question him under enchantments of confusion; they would probe his mind and memory. The least glimmer of this truth, and he and anyone he might have told would die . . . as my family had died.

“A sample of Xancheiran needlework,” I said, rolling the fabric on the wooden spindle and relocking its protective spellwork.

“So I’m naught but a rock-headed ordinary again. Good for swordwork and rescuing, but not to be trusted with pureblood business.”

“I trust you beyond anyone in this world. With my life. With my sister’s life.” If I so much as hinted that the scroll was dangerous, a Registry investigator would ferret it out . . . and assume I’d told him more.

Closing my eyes, I pressed the spindle into his hand. “Bury this with the lily child to remind us of our failures. My grandsire thought me useless and ignorant, and so I am. If Tremayne or the Registry doesn’t clap me in a dungeon, you should see to it yourself.”

“You’re a wretched liar, and I’m not stupid!”

“No, you’re not. That’s why I will
not
speak of this again.”
Think, Bastien. Use your logic, and draw your own conclusions. Then you can say
truthfully
that I told you nothing.

I set out through the hirudo’s narrow lanes, leaving Bastien to follow. I regretted his bitterness, but I couldn’t apologize and I couldn’t retreat. The knowledge I bore could change Navronne . . . the world . . . forever, and once changed, there would be no going back. The word
pureblood
would have no meaning.

Who at the Registry knew the truth? Gramphier, most likely. And Pluvius. Albin? Pons? What if my portraits of the curators had not exposed
personal
faults at all, but rather which of them knew the truth, and thus bore the stain of my family’s slaughter?

“It’s even more important I see the portraits tonight,” I said. “If the curators tell Perryn I’ve gone crazy, Tremayne will never wear a noose.” Nor would my dead ever have justice. As for the lie . . . and changing the world . . . I’d have to consider what to do about that.

The hirudo was awake and wary. Every shadow held an armed man. There were no dice players. No children. No laughter. No syrinx. Even through my own fear and tumult, the air felt taut. When would they go? Would Perryn’s ascension and the promise of peace keep them here a while longer? To pass through an enchanted doorway and into an unknown realm was no easy choice, no matter legend or promise or a mad sorcerer’s assurance.

We’d just reached the piggery when Demetreo took shape from the crowded trees.

“We thank you for the hospitality,” I said. “Our eyes are open and minds unclouded this morning.”

Perhaps the Cicerons
were
Deunor’s lost children. Had their own ancestors worked the true magic in their commons house?

Demetreo’s dark eyes darted from me to Bastien. “Just thought you should know, Coroner, your messenger passed through safely yesternight. But not long after, we turned away some dangerous men. Some insisted on
passage . . . to their sorrow. Others retreated. But of course, we could not prevent those from taking other paths to the dead city.”

Not even casual admission of killing could astonish me anymore. Nothing could.

“Wasn’t born an idiot,” grumbled Bastien. “We’ll not go prancing through the front gate.”

“No insult meant. Only concerned for those who’ve done amicable business with us. Being of sneaking, suspicious minds as we are, Cicerons pay attention where others might not. The world grows more dangerous by the hour. We hear Prince Bayard doubts the newfound writ and will fight on.”

“We appreciate the warning,” I said, before Bastien could interrupt. “How fares your granny, headman?”

“She holds,” he said, “but not for long. She sorely mislikes the state of the world and fears the coming dawn beyond any change she’s known. If need be, she will act.”