Children of Earth and Sky (8 page)

It was all so amusing, in memory. It was also a world he seemed to have left behind step by step as they climbed the dark stairwell. No statues here. Damp stone walls, archer-windows, worn, slippery stairs.

The guard in front of him had stopped, so Pero did. The man opened a door with a heavy key. They'd come out into a handsome, well-lit corridor with tapestries along the walls.

More guards, and someone in very good clothing, conveying with his manner the disdain peculiar to higher-ranking civil servants.

“You are hardly in a condition to be brought before the council,” he sniffed, eyeing Pero with impressive hauteur for a short, plump person.

“Fuck yourself,” Pero had replied. “Or get one of these guards to do it to you against the wall here.”

There had been no further conversation.

But he'd grasped an essential thing: he
was
being taken before the Council of Twelve. At night. People disappeared when that happened. It was madness. Pero Villani was no one who mattered at all.

He'd attempted, with complete lack of success, to imagine what they could want with him. His father's debts from last year? Paid! And the council would never descend to such a trivial matter . . .

The Citrani husband? No. Not that either. That one, if he'd learned what had happened, would have simply had Pero killed, or castrated, or bundled in a sack and placed on a galley—whatever aristocratic vengeance occurred to him. It would not have been done like this.

Whatever this turned out to be.

They came to a pair of doors. The arrogant functionary took another contemptuous look at Pero. He gestured, and a servant pushed them open. Pero Villani had entered the chamber of the Council of Twelve for the first time in his life.

He surprised himself. He hadn't expected to be bold here, but he was frightened and angry, and it seemed these emotions could make him behave in unexpected ways.

He stepped briskly into the room, head high. He strode past the functionary as the man paused to bow. Pero didn't bow. He stopped between two lamps on stands. He proceeded to upbraid the Duke of Seressa—gaunt, austere, face shadowed—at the head
of the table. He did so with an aggression that wasn't really in his nature. Or so he'd always thought.

There was silence when he finished. In the stillness, Pero heard a door close, off to his right. He had a sudden image of himself being tortured underground, in a room lit by red and yellow flames so his pain could be observed and enjoyed.

—

JACOPO MIUCCI
THE PHYSICIAN
was happily leaving that audience chamber through a side door. He offered silent thanks to Jad it was not the door at the back that everyone knew led to the covered bridge and the cells. The woman was beside him. Right beside him, a hand on his arm, as if they were truly a couple. Married.

He was a long way from being able to deal with that. Or with, to be honest, the scent she had elected to wear. Daughters of Jad in their retreats did not wear perfume. They didn't marry. Or simulate that state. They served the god with prayer by day and night. They nursed the sick (after adequate endowments were offered, of course). They chanted invocations (also after donations) for the souls of the dead, that they might be gathered in light. They sheltered young women, invariably wealthy, who needed to be hidden away for the honour of their families. There were, of course, stories about other sorts of activity in some of the retreats, but Miucci had never been a man to dwell upon carnal anecdotes.

As they exited, he heard a loud, angry voice behind them in the room. The council's next visitor was—evidently—not best pleased to have been summoned. With alarming assertiveness he raised his voice in complaint.

“Wait,” said Leonora Valeri, stopping. “This might be interesting!”

“It is none of our affair!” Miucci snapped.

She smiled at him. She was slim, fair, undeniably aristocratic. Full lips. Young. Scented. “But I am to develop my skills in this sort of affair, I believe.”

“I am not,” he retorted, and moved on.

She followed. The door had closed, in any event. They couldn't hear anything. Miucci had no idea who the man behind them was. He didn't care.

The woman fell into step with him, along the corridor and then down the Stairway of Heroes. She took his arm again, descending the marble stairs, the way a wife might do.

Miucci stole another glance at her. Her gaze was lowered now, either submissively, or watching where she stepped, or upon some private amusement. He was very much unsure which.

She said, eyes still down, “We had best become adept at walking this way, don't you think?”

He couldn't think what to say. He seemed to have agreed to present himself in Dubrava as married to a woman he'd never seen before this day. It was astonishing how a man could be drawn into something mad, at speed. So much speed! You didn't have any proper time to think. Perhaps that was deliberate. The duke and council pressed you so swiftly that careful thought was impossible. In his life, in his practice, Jacopo Miucci had greatly valued time to think.

But he wanted this posting. Of course he did. Every young physician coveted these positions. Dubrava paid exceptionally well for doctors. You could come home after two years with the money to buy a very good residence and practice chambers, and with your reputation made—as a physician the council had deemed worthy of sending across the water.

But you needed to be married to go to Dubrava now, since an unfortunate incident some time ago.

It seemed, therefore, that for the benefits the position offered he was to simulate the state of marriage. And the woman assigned to be his wife would have tasks for the council. It was dangerous, surely, whatever the duke said. It
had
to be dangerous. He ought to have refused. But then someone would have said yes, loyally
aiding the republic, seizing the posting and all the good things that followed.

The woman had yellow hair under a green cap. He looked at her again, on his arm. They would be engaged in a profane violation of the Jad-blessed state of matrimony. His cleric back home would be aghast if he knew. So would his mother.

The cleric—and everyone else—would be caused to believe Jacopo had met and swiftly, unexpectedly, married this woman. Documents would reflect as much. She was from Mylasia, apparently. The story would have to do with his gallantly rescuing a transgressing woman from her sad state, after being called to offer medical services at a sanctuary.

It did happen. Not every aristocratic girl who'd borne an inconvenient child was suited to the life of a retreat, and since she could no longer marry among the nobility . . .

This particular transgressing woman said, a hand gripping his arm above the elbow, as if for balance and support, “I understand we are to spend tonight at your home. I am much looking forward to seeing it, and to learning more about you, Doctor Miucci.”

Unmistakably, her fingers tightened on his arm.

Equally unmistakably, Doctor Jacopo Miucci, who had led a studious, unadventurous existence until this day and night, felt the stirrings of desire.

It was the perfume, he told himself. Scents had power. Doctors knew it. They could aid in healing, soothe the distressed . . . contribute to suborning the most disciplined of men.

Other aspects of the woman besides her perfume contributed to further suborning later that night after they reached his home.

He explained to his manservant when the door was opened to his knock that he had married that day and would be going abroad to work. No point waiting to say it. He presented his bride to his three servants. They were visibly taken aback. Astonished would be the better word. Of course they were.
He
was. Three mouths
fell open, one man reached out a hand to support himself on the wall. Miucci supposed this could be seen as amusing. Leonora Valeri—Leonora Miucci now—laughed, but gently. She greeted the servants, repeated their names.

The night unfolded surprises, like a silken cloth opening, on display. There came a moment, after they'd dined and gone upstairs together, when Jacopo Miucci realized, in the darkness of his bedchamber, that he had surrendered fairly comprehensively to the idea that he and this woman were to be man and wife in Dubrava for the next two years.

It occurred when she whispered, with what appeared to be unfeigned pleasure as she caressed his sex anew, bringing it back to life, in ways only purchased women ever had, “Oh! How delightful of you, doctor.”

—

SORROW IS ENDURING.
It can define a life. Leonora had come to understand this through the course of a year. It could be deep as any well, cold as mountain lakes or forest paths in winter. It was harder than stone walls, or her father's face.

Her child had been taken away at birth. She has barely any memory of seeing it. The boy who fathered it had been killed by her family. She had moved through the days since then among the Daughters of Jad, waking or sleeping much the same to her, sunlight and rain much the same.

She'd been a girl, then a young woman, of spirit, laughter, cleverness. Sources of her trouble? They'd said that in the retreat. They'd said so at home. She needed to learn submission: to the god, the world. To her father's will, which had placed her there.

Her family were important in Mylasia, among the most powerful aristocrats. A grand palace in the city, a castle outside, a hunting lodge farther out. Her father enjoyed hunting. He had once enjoyed taking her with him, proud of her skill. The family's
significance was another source of her trouble, of course: the Valeris are too prominent. Have enemies who would relish her disgrace. She'd been sent north, away. Entirely and eternally away until she died behind those walls. Removed from sight and memory.

They had probably told people she'd already died. Illness, they will have said: sent in search of a physician who could cure her. Seressa was said to have the best doctors. So sad, they will have said. A beloved child, even if a girl.

She will never know where her own child is.

She doesn't even know if it was a girl or a boy. They'd moved quickly, claiming it from her body. Someone else has named it, someone will watch it grow, laugh and weep, see the moons change and the seasons return.

Paulo Canavli, who had touched her heart and awakened her body, has no burial place. He had been cut into pieces and left for the wolves outside the walls of Mylasia. Her eldest brother had told her that, viciously, while bringing her to Seressa.

He hadn't said any other words to her on the way, or at the end. No farewell. Her father's orders, very surely. He never disobeyed their father. None of her brothers did. Erigio Valeri was accustomed to being obeyed, within and without his family. Her brother had taken her to the gates of the retreat and left her in the roadway there. He had turned and ridden away, towards home, to the richness life held for him.

Eventually, she had pulled a rope that rang a bell. They'd been expecting her. Of course they had. A very large sum would have been provided to ensure she was admitted—and never left. Leonora had gone in, heard an iron gate close behind her.

Time had passed in that place. Her body grew. A child was born and was taken away. There were prayers at dawn and sunset. Awake, asleep, seasons and sorrow.

The Council of Twelve sent two men to speak with her.

She hadn't been sure how they even knew she was there. Now, she is certain she is not the first woman brought to the retreat to have been asked to assist the council. Money will have changed hands for this, as well. The retreat is extremely wealthy.

She never asked about this, but it makes sense, and after that visit, after what was carefully hinted at then directly queried, she'd begun thinking in terms of what made sense in a life. Of choices and chances, decisions to be weighed.

The same two men had come back from Seressa a little later, after giving her time to consider what they offered—which was an opportunity to be in the world again.

She had accepted. She'd left the Daughters of Jad this morning at dawn. They'd had a horse for her. She was a Valeri, she had hunted from childhood, of course she knew how to ride. They'd known that, too. She'd looked back once in misty greyness: the stone walls, the sanctuary dome, the bell by the gate. The gate had already closed behind her.

And so now, that same night, she is in Seressa, away from that solitude and judgment and false sanctity, the pinched, fearful bitterness. Not all, to be fair—there were genuinely pious women in that place, kind ones. They had tried, but had been no help to her at all: she was never one of the bitter, she was simply claimed by sorrow.

And she doesn't want to live her days under the god's sun that way.

She'd needed to be out from those walls. And if her new path—offered by these endlessly subtle Seressinis—might, at its end, bring more shame upon her, upon her family, at least it
was
a path. It went somewhere. Her mind would be engaged, her spirit. And she wasn't going to spend a single morning, not the length of a dawn prayer, not a candle-flicker moment, dwelling on her family's pride or shame or her father's views about what she did.

Did she love Seressa? The republic she was now to serve? Of course not. She wasn't sure most Seressinis did, though she might be wrong about that.

They were proud of their independence, their republic. They valued power, wished to defend it and extend it, were aware of threats moving through the world. They were no worse than anyone else, she told herself, perhaps better than some. She could help them, in exchange for a gate unlocked. She would do that, and let no one judge her but Jad, who sees all with mercy and understands sorrow.

She had taken herself to that place in her mind, while preparing to leave the sanctuary.

And then, so unexpectedly, the doctor she was to pretend to have wed turned out to be a shy, decent man. She thought there might be kindness in him.