The Soul Mirror (26 page)

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Authors: Carol Berg

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BOOK: The Soul Mirror
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“Ambrose,” I whispered.
He did not move, and for a moment, my fear returned.
But then Pognole widened his vile grin. He sidled up to the man leaning on the wall and brushed his hand slowly across the quivering shoulders and down the rigid spine to his buttocks, where it lingered just long enough to claim possession. “Is the boy not well disciplined, damoselle?”
Even yet, Ambrose held still. I prayed he was responsible for the scar on Pognole’s cheek.
The warder almost danced back across the stone floor to the door. “At ease, prisoner. Enjoy this happy hour.” He slammed the iron door behind me and locked it.
“Forgive me,” I whispered to that rigid back. “Saints forgive me, I didn’t know.”
CHAPTER 15
SOLA PASSIERT, EVENING
T
he prisoner’s splayed hands curled into fists. Then he drew in his arms, folded them around his chest, and swung around to settle his back against the wall. Ankles crossed casually, as if he were waiting for Melusina to set his place at supper, he nodded in emotionless greeting. “Good afternoon, Ani. You look well.”
I ached to embrace my brother, to comfort, to soothe, to erase the loathsome history so callously exposed, to convince him it changed nothing about his worth. But naught in this man’s manner invited intimacy. I could not comment on his knuckle-length hair, his bristling chin, or his impressive height—grown almost half a metre since I’d seen him last—any more than I could have tweaked Duplais about his scrawny body or teased Chevalier Ilario about his long straight nose. We were strangers. Even the common greeting wish of the Creator’s grace seemed presumptive, and most assuredly a mockery in a place so utterly alien to grace.
“My first visitor in four years and she does not speak. Is this
Pig
nole’s idea?” His voice had settled into a timbre deeper than my father’s. Arms, legs, and spirit displayed a web of scars. A few inconspicuous iron loops and hooks fixed high on the stained walls glared at me in accusation. Ambrose would not have been tamed easily.
My arms clutched the materials I carried as if they were the keystone that held the world in place. Ambrose was a
hostage
, not a prisoner. How could I have known what he lived with? And even if I had, what could I have done differently? Yet excuses were dross.
“I’ve so much to tell you,” I whispered, choking. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“Sit if you wish.” He jerked his head to the thin pallet. “Do not assume privacy.”
Indeed the metal plate over the door grate remained open, and I could almost hear Pognole’s sibilant breathing outside it. Vile. Disgusting. Imagining his eavesdropping began to transmute loathing into anger and resolution.
“I doubt the good warder would be listening in,” I said, stringing a warp of lies and hoping my brother could interpret my truer belief. “He has no wish for me to report a gift of Castelle Escalon’s finest vintage stolen. Her Majesty has sent a flask of wine, and the gentleman has promised to decant it into a skin and bring it here. He seems to think a glass container might incite you to misbehavior. Could that be true?”
Ambrose snorted. “Did you not witness, damoselle? I am well disciplined.”
He existed beyond bitterness. Had anyone cut him, he would have bled sand.
In the hard silence that ensued, my senses, so heightened in these past days, noted soft steps descending the stair. Clutching the paltry comforts the warder had allowed me to bring, I surveyed the barren chamber that would be a sultry furnace in summer, and a cold, wet, windy agony all winter. I could not believe our goodfather intended this deprivation. Not for a youth who had committed no crime.
“They would not allow me to come before now,” I said softly. “I tried. I wrote everyone who might have influence. Every plea was returned. I paid a lawyer”—who had taken the fee and done nothing, claiming that no one would hear a petition from Michel de Vernase’s kin—“as I wrote you . . .”
His expression remained blank.
My brother’s few letters had never mentioned his situation. Nor had he responded to my questions or complaints, to the news of our mother’s illness, to anything specific.
“Ambrose, did you get
any
of my letters?”
“The pig said I could read them when I stopped trying to tear his eyes out,” he said, quiet and harsh. “And then he said it could be when I stopped trying to rip a hole in these walls with my fingernails. And then it was to be when I chose to eat again, as he hated the mess of forcing me. And then it was to be when I licked his boots. And then it was to be when I would lick . . . whatever he wished to be licked. Always another condition. So no. But I always appreciated the intrinsic heat of paper and ink. You see, he would burn them a centimetre or two from my hands or my eyes or whatever he chose that day. But always”—one small, shaking breath—“I recognized your hand, Ani. I knew you had—”
He slammed the back of his head to the wall, jaw clenched, nostrils flaring. He might have been formed of that very granite.
So he knew nothing of Mama or our struggles at Montclaire or how sorely he was missed. Pognole had likely told him every kind of lie. Ambrose wouldn’t have believed him, but in the absence of any alternative, the lies would have eaten at him. So long not knowing.
“You have been in my thoughts every day, brother. Every single day.” I propelled each word across the chamber with the force of a mangonel slinging stones. “Only fourteen days ago was I brought to Castelle Escalon, where I at last found an advocate. I’ve so
much
to tell you. We’ve only a few hours.”
A heavy breath slipped his tight lips. “He’s not found, then.”
Of course Papa would be foremost in his mind. Ambrose could not be free until Papa was arrested, if even then. And angels’ mercy, that was not the hardest thing I had to tell. “No.”
“But you’re not held? Nor Mama nor Lianelle?”
“No. But I have to tell you what’s happened to them. . . .”
Perhaps it would have been more merciful to keep the news from him. Yet he deserved honesty, and whatever lie I told gave Pognole another weapon for torment. Perhaps anger might give him something to hold on to, something to live for, even if it was hollow vengeance.
But his hands did not so much as twitch. His face did not sag or twist or reflect the slightest pain. His silence frightened me. It felt as if I’d murdered what splinters of him remained.
It did not ease matters that the warder’s boots rang on the stair just then, and a mocking command accompanied the rattle of keys. “Discipline, prisoner!”
Ambrose flushed, closing his eyes.
As he spun face to the wall, I moved to one of the window slots. At least sixty metres of polished granite lay between the barred opening and the cruel rocks below. The city sprawled along the riverbank and bluffs, barely visible through the afternoon haze. The caravel in the harbor might have been a toy ship.
A groan of iron hinges, and the warder sauntered in, swinging a wineskin. “Here you are, damoselle. As promised. Are you two getting on? Remember, I don’t reward misbehavior.”
“My brother was always ill behaved, Warder. Wild. Stubborn. Your results are impressive.” I snatched the wineskin from his fingers. “Now you may leave us. I’ve estate business to discuss . . . vineyards, tenants, my marriage portion. In a few days I’ll be sending a lawyer with documents for him to sign. It’s why the queen agreed to send me. I’d not waste your time with such tedium.”
I doubted Pognole was fooled, but at least he didn’t argue. And when I called after him to request a lamp, as the days were getting shorter, and it would be unseemly for a queen’s maid of honor to be closeted in the dark with an unmarried man, even a kinsman, he grumbled but set a blazing torch in the bracket outside the door.
Having no illusion that we were left unsupervised, I moved to the pallet and smoothed the filthy, rumpled blanket as if it were Eugenie’s silk sheets. I sat back to the wall, skirts spread modestly over my knees, which I’d drawn up in front of me. “Come sit beside me. I’ve brought you a book.”
“He won’t allow them, Ani. As soon as you’ve gone—”
“You could study it
now
. It would give you something new to think on.” I propped the rare folio of river birds on my knees and leafed through the wide, expensive pages. Expanses of unmarked space set off the short descriptions and delicate sketches. Shielded from the open door grate, where only Ambrose could see, I produced a stick of plummet from my pocket. “It’s important to make good use of time.”
The man’s eyes met mine for the first time. Nowhere in those deep, cold layers of despair could I find the bright youth I had known. He joined me on the pallet, though maintaining a solid distance between us. I could understand his need to keep his armor intact. I would have enslaved my soul to Dimios himself to have some hope to offer.
“I thought you might have an opportunity to observe these birds while you were here and record the sightings to keep the family records complete. I’ve left a fresh supply of ink and paper with the warder, and I’m sure he’ll allow you to have them. Now I’m resident in Merona, a member of the queen’s household, I’ll be checking up on you more often.”
Or so I hope and pray
, I wrote above a hoopoe’s beak, angling the book where he could see.
Thus I continued for two hours, speaking of birds, Montclaire’s grape harvest, and court life, while filling the pages with what I knew of Lianelle’s murder, Mama’s illness, the Gautieri books, and the strangeness in the city that everyone linked to Papa’s sorcerers. I regaled Ambrose with details of my “honored” position as the king’s gooddaughter and queen’s maid of honor, but at the same time sketched out the cipher that was Duplais, and the circumstances of Lady Cecile’s murder and Antonia’s complicity, and I affirmed his suspicions of the hooded mage who had visited Montclaire.
Dante
, I wrote.
All of these events are connected, and they all come back to this Dante. At the trial they said the conspirators’ purpose is chaos severe enough to topple the king. But there must be more. Why else manipulate the queen? She has little actual power.
When I came to the tale of Lianelle’s magic trinkets and my certainty of Papa’s innocence and captivity, I would have sworn my brother stopped breathing.
“Examine this heron’s configuration,” I said, while sketching the odd diagrams I’d seen on Lianelle’s bit of paper. “Have you seen this one here on the river? Or any of these species?”
“Spirits and daemons, Ani,” he muttered, “when could I have seen anything?”
“Time is what you have, Ambrose. Eyes and ears. And a mind to focus outward . . . or
inward
. Have you seen
anything
like? A purple heron? A Louvel tern?” I brushed my hand over the filled pages detailing magic and conspiracy. “Any marvels like these?
I
never cared for rare birds before. I didn’t believe they were real, because I hadn’t seen them for myself. But that sole glimpse . . . I believe it now.”
“Let me see the cursed book.”
I shifted the book to Ambrose’s knees and the stick of plummet, more than half worn away, to his cold hand. Torchlight streamed through the door grate, the pattern of the bars growing ever more distinct as evening faded into night. He flipped pages until he came to an inked sketch, labeled PIED AVOCET.
“This one. I might have seen this one. . . .”
He tapped on the page but quickly sketched a hand, then overlaid it with an
X
. I touched the blood family mark on my left hand, and Ambrose dipped his head.
A sorcerer . . .
“It settled on one of these ledges one night. Stupid bird, to visit here, as I had nothing to give it. Kept coming back, always at night. Not sure of its markings or . . . decorations. I was . . . sick . . . in those days. Wasn’t seeing so well. But I’m sure it was one of them.”
“To know the markings would be essential,” I said. “The decorations, too.” As in whether the visitor wore a mage collar.
As Ambrose rambled on about birds supposedly spied through the slotlike gaps, he scribbled notes on the page, desperately fast. Stark, bleak notes that curdled my blood.
Wanted to die. Tried starving. Almost worked, but then he came . . .
He tapped a finger on the marked hand.
Never saw his face. He taught the pig how to force food down me. Came another time and cut my thigh. Used a . . .
His hand paused. I could feel him searching for the word.
. . . bladder to squeeze something into the cut. Thought my leg would fall off. Wished for it. Sick for months. Dizzy. Puking. Pissing blood. Lunatic dreams. Saw things couldn’t be real. He came again and again. Always in the night. Sneaking. Always asking what I saw. But I wouldn’t tell him. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Drove him loony. One night, a different one came—a mage with a white staff, just like the one who came to Montclaire. Said he’d been told to get some use out of me. He tried. Felt as if he boiled the inside of my skull. At the end, he said I was worthless. Broken. He was right. Haven’t dreamt since. Haven’t seen anything, anyone. Can’t think straight anymore.

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