Dust and Light (9 page)

No one followed. Yet as I gripped the broken pillars at the top of the ascent, relieved and gulping air into my starved breast, robust laughter drifted out of the hirudo, and an unmistakable white fire blazed in the depths of the ravine—my own magic shining undimmed
.
How was that possible?

T
he bells pealed eleventh hour
by the time I trudged across our inner courtyard, exhausted and wholly confused from the events of day and night, groaning at the thought of retracing my steps not six hours hence. I would have welcomed one of the invisible arrows of my haunted imaginings.

“Luka!” Light streamed around Juli’s stark outline in the open doorway. “Where in Magrog’s own hells have you been? There were fires in the Oil Merchants’ District, but of course, you never deigned to tell me where you were going, and Soflet, the god-cursed wretch, barricaded all the doors when I threatened to go to the Registry to find out. He wouldn’t even let me send a message. ‘
Unseemly
,’ he said, which is the most despicable word in any language. If you don’t dismiss the vile scarecrow at once, I’ll put a knife in his neck while he sleeps. And now Maia’s feast is ruined, and I forgot to decant the wine—”

A pause for breath revealed a sob. But when I reached for her, she recoiled. “Aagh! Get away from me! What is that stink?”

“Just let me in, Juli. Move aside.”

My head weighed like a cannonball. My feet were frozen. And to think what I must smell like.

“I’m truly sorry I’m late . . . and about the stink . . . about everything. Please, I need wine, then food. Doesn’t matter what. And, yes”—in our overheated reception room, everything from my frost-rimed hair to my mud-crusted boots began to drip, and the stench of Necropolis Caton rose from me like the fumes of the netherworld—“a bath first of all. If you could call Giaco and tell Maia. Please . . .”

To keep my eyes open through the wine and the bath was near impossible. At first more nauseated than hungry, and then light-headed with the stout vintage, I could imagine nothing finer than my wide bed and its thick quilts. As ever in cases of magical depletion, I had the shivers.

But I owed Juli an explanation. It had been prideful and selfish of me to leave her in ignorance.

Wrapped in a robe of padded wool and my thickest quilt, I found her in the oriel—once our mother’s favorite room and now Juli’s refuge. It hung out over our gardens, and its myriad window panes were the best glass in the house—astonishingly clear. Not that there had been so much to see in any garden these past few years. Unfortunately it was also the draftiest room in the house, having so many windows, no fire, and naught but air underneath the floor. A spread of overcooked fowl, a congealed pie of minced rabbit, some straggling green things, and bread—already stale—adorned a low table alongside cheese, olives, and pickled fish.

I poured half my cup of wine into the bronze libation bowl in the middle of the table. Juli did the same. We maintained the custom, though neither of us felt friendly enough with the gods to muster proper prayers.

“Thank you for this,” I said, settling on the thick rug beside the table and wrapping the quilt tight enough to suppress my shivers, if not cure them. “It was impossible to eat at my new master’s business. Only one of many things I didn’t know . . .”

As I savaged the cold, leathery feast, I told her everything. Almost everything. Far more than I would have done if I’d not been half sotted with wine. I told her of my dismissal and my shame and Pluvius’s odd visit. I told her of Bastien and Constance, de Seti and the hirudo. Good sense pricked my stupor and prevented me speaking of the strangled child or what act the barber-surgeon actually performed to determine that de Seti had not died of wounding. Everything else escaped me in a septic flood.

“That woman’s voice was truly so dreadful? . . . And why did the surgeon’s hands shake? Was he afraid of the dead man’s spirit? . . . This Garen sounds deliciously handsome. Do you think he has an eye for Constance? . . . You said there were other girls there. What tasks did they do?”

I relished her questions. She’d not shown so much interest in anything since she’d walked up the hill at Pontia and seen our home a burnt-out ruin. Like me, she’d held some hope that the reports of horror were wrong, that someone had surely escaped. The sight had left no fantasies of hope or dream in either of us.

“I’m guessing the surgeon is a drunkard or a twistmind craving his nivat. Or perhaps he’s ill. He didn’t seem fearful. As for Constance . . .” I had to smile. “She is a strange one. Works very hard and is quite observant. And, well, I suppose a girl would consider Garen a goodly fellow, but he never looks at Constance in the way you mean. He’s clever. Diligent. Bastien relies on him.”

But Juli’s mind had skipped onward. “It’s good Pluvius offered to help, though I’ve ever thought him a fool. This Bastien likes you, doesn’t he? Whatever would we do if he reclaimed the stipend? The servitor brought it, you know. Perhaps we should hide it.”

The stipend! Mighty Deunor, I’d forgotten. “Where is it? And he left a copy of the contract, yes?”

“He left a scroll with the purse. They’re in the counting room.”

As if Karish angels lifted me with their spread wings, I was on my feet. “Stay here. I’ll fetch them!”

Renewed, I raced down the stair. With even a modest stipend I could hire a bodyguard for my daily walk to the necropolis. Get new boots made that would not leave my feet like clubs of ice on such a day. Recall Juli’s tutors. Set aside a marriage portion for her. Summon my old swordmaster; gods knew such skills seemed more and more necessary of late, even for purebloods. And I’d heard of a new kind of brush from the ice lands north of Hansk—made from the fur of a black weasel, wonderfully fine and resilient. They were horribly expensive, as they had to be smuggled through the rugged island routes held by Navronne’s perennial foes. I coveted such tools to complete my grandfather’s portrait. If the fee was slightly more than modest, we could begin to think about rebuilding the house at Pontia.

I darted across the ground-floor reception room and through the small door at the back. This had once been a wealthy vintner’s house. The
reception room had held his casks and samples, ready to be brought out to the inner courtyard on fine Ardran days that never seemed to come anymore. In the small room at the back he had counted his gold. And now it held ours.

The fat gray purse sat on a black enamel table, the rolled contract beside it. If the former was sufficient, the latter didn’t matter.

The bag was nicely heavy. I closed my eyes, blessed our family’s patron, Deunor, and poured out my father’s ruby ring and the chinking load . . . of silver.

“No! No! No! Bastien, you scurrilous, vile, wretched cheat!” In no way this side of Kemen Sky Lord’s halls could a fistful of lunae be an entire year’s stipend. A purse this size should have been packed with gold. I leapt to my feet, ready to head straight back for the necropolis. Had Leander not even looked? Surely he had taken the Registry’s tithe. . . .

My heart near seized. Or was this Pons’s hand?

“
Aperite!
” Spitting out the Aurellian word for
open,
I shattered the spelled wax seal and spread the parchment scroll open. The ornate script flowed beautifully. Perfectly. Outlining my perfect and permanent ruin.

. . . for the consideration of One Hundred and Sixty Lunae.

L
unae, not solae. Silver, not gold. Every prospective master looked at previous contracts. And no master in Navronne could look at this contract and believe I could be anything but an undisciplined and untalented idiot.

Juli and I had no treasury to tide us over a thin contract. A hundred and sixty
solae
would have been slim enough. But a solé was worth four hundred coppers, a luné forty. This house alone cost us eighty lunae a year, our servants forty more. That left forty silver pieces for food, clothes, coal, and everything else. For a year.

Not only did this contract preclude rebuilding our home or reinstating the life we knew, not only did it fail to provide the secure foundation that allowed purebloods to concentrate on their duties, but we would not even be able to live as we had. There must be some mistake.

I sank back to the floor, eyes fixed to the document. To the amount.
To the signatures: my own, Pons’s, Albin’s, Bastien’s. I knew pens and ink, lines and curves. There was no irregularity.

At last Pons had given me the future she believed I deserved. But why would she ruin my sister, who had not mortgaged her future for a moment’s pleasurable companionship? How could she so dishonor the memory of my family?

“So can your master beat you or can he only make you stink?” Juli appeared in the doorway, wrapped in her own quilt. “I hope you’ll not be so stingy with the coal, now we’ve good coin.”

I ground the heels of my hand into my eyes, trying to crush the hammering ache in my head. “Perhaps we need a smaller place to heat. . . .”

“D
omé
Lucian, it’s the hour
you specified.” I didn’t break the hand shaking my shoulder. Some god should reward my restraint. “I’m sorry,
domé
. Here’s your wool shirt. And Maia’s sent up a tisane, fresh brewed and quite hot if you down it right now.”

I squeezed my eyes tighter, in hopes the ever-mild Giaco would vanish. He repeated his gentle prodding and gave me his hand as I emerged from the cocoon of quilts and abject stupor—or a sea of mud, as it felt. The wool shirt was a pitiful substitute for the quilts. But the tisane infused a bit of life. Blessed Maia.

The outrage of the previous night came flooding back. How in the name of all gods was I to tell our servants I could no longer pay them?

Sometime after midnight, Juli had laid a charm on me to make me sleep. Livid at the hints of deprivation to come, she had made me beg her for it, as well as insisting I forbid Soflet to barricade the doors to keep her in the house as if she were “a madwoman or a leper.” I’d done as she asked. I’d have done anything for sleep.

And now I had to face the wretched day.

Did Pluvius know the disgraceful terms of this contract? I’d certainly need his help. For the Registry to overturn a signed contract was rare in the most compelling of circumstances. We would have to plead Pons’s bias, my awkward family situation, my grandfather’s memory, Juli’s needs, even if it brought a Registry minder into our house. But I would see it done. Yet it couldn’t happen immediately. I would not disobey my master’s command to attend him before dawn, violating the contract even as I demanded to have it voided.

“The tisane and the shirt are most welcome, Giaco. My boots?”

“They’re as dry as I could get them,
domé
. I’ve had them next the fire all night.” With his quiet competence, he had me shaved, dressed, fed—I was no such fool as I had been the previous day to let nerves hinder reason—masked, and out the door before I could blink. I would miss him—all of them—and not just for the comforts and care they provided. They had come from our house at Pontia. My parents had trained them. Their memories and good service were our inheritance. I’d need to contact acquaintances, find them good positions, while I found us a new place to live.

The inner turmoil was a blessing in a way. No phantom archers or windswept voices plagued my nerves as I traipsed through the waking city. I had no difficulty ignoring the cold seeping through my boots, the filth and debris piling up on boulevards that had once been pleasant, or the pent violence in the crowd gathering in the
pocardon
. No one bothered me. The contract did indeed include a clause permitting defensive magic. I’d need to learn some this winter; no sword training was in my future.

When I reached the broken brick arch and the descent to the hirudo, I did not hesitate. If the laughing thief knew my name, he likely knew about my bent, as well. Perhaps he thought a portraitist an easy mark. Even with my limited skills, I’d show him elsewise.

Though the night had not yet begun to fade, the hirudo was already stirring. Torches and cook fires pushed back the shadows. A woman fried dough balls over a dirty fire pit. An emaciated dog nosed through a pile of indeterminate filth beside a collapsed shed. An ebony-eyed Ciceron with a mottled beard and thick mustache played a wild farandole on a syrinx. At any moment I expected a chain of drunken men and women to dance through the forest of hanging laundry in frenzied answer to his piping.

Watchers were everywhere. A bony young Ciceron with hooped earrings. A graying, hard-faced woman in leather jaque and breeches, idly twirling a well-used sling. Two ragged men dicing in the light of a barrel fire, one observing the tumbling dice, one watching the lane.

Some halfway along the ravine path, I halted. Pointing my finger, I pivoted just fast enough to billow my cloak, waiting until every watcher’s eyes were on me—even those I couldn’t see.

When the syrinx fell silent, I raised a pen in one hand and a small knife with a broken hilt in the other. With a spark of will—drawing full upon my seething anger—I released magic into the two implements and the
shaped inflation spell waiting on each. Then I tossed them onto the frozen muck. In a hiss and flash of light, they grew until each was a forearm’s length. None could mistake their shape.