Dust and Light (10 page)

“I am an artist,” I said, pointing to the pen. “
This
is my chosen weapon.”

The knife shriveled, while the pen flew upward and sketched a silver tree that shone bright against the lingering night above my head.

“I am also pureblood, as you see. The law of Navronne declares I pass unhindered wherever I choose.” As I spoke, I moved around a broken cask left to rot alongside the path, my footsteps marking a circle in the snow. “Some who dwell here may not be aware of the king’s law, and I dislike having to prove my right again and again.”

The tree collapsed in a shower of sparks. With a quick second infusion of magic, I triggered a voiding spell, the only serious enchantment I knew outside my bent. The earth inside my circle collapsed inward; the cask toppled and crashed to the bottom of the hole.

Gasps sounded here and there, quickly muted.

“Whichever of you is Demetreo the Ciceron, hear this. It is your responsibility to see that the arché, the grave sign I carelessly lost here when passing last night, is left where I’m now standing before I pass here again.”

No one in such a place would have challenged a pureblood without the headman’s permission.

With that, I unraveled the inflation illusion and the void spell in one move. The pen and the gouge in the earth vanished. Tossing pen and knife alongside the splintered cask, I continued on my way, ears pricked for any movement at my back. The only person I passed was a crone in a bone necklace, stroking a dog’s back. Her black eyes followed me onward.

As I passed through Caedmon’s Wall and the slot gate, I traded one anxiety for another.

Frosted mist hung over the world like a curtain of grace to hide its ugliness. It also left me the familiar sense of a presence just beyond the range of seeing.

Trying to ignore it, I hiked across the burial ground to the nameless grave where the snow had buried my eating knife. The taint of death seemed multiplied a hundredfold on this morn. Perhaps because I had touched the field or simply because I now knew what kind of place it was.

“Forgive my faithless promise,” I said, pressing a hand to the mound. “I’ll return your marker tomorrow.”

As I trudged onward toward the gates, a bright blue gleam flashed at the corner of my eye, as if the sun had sent a stray beam ahead of its rising and found a bit of lapis on a woman’s wrist or a sapphire ring on a man’s finger. The second time it happened, certain that I felt a person hidden in the mist, I called out, “Halloo. Who’s there?”

No one answered, of course. Giaco had likely sprinkled my clothes chest with herbs, accounting for the hint of rosemary intruding on the stink of death.

Another hundred paces and I halted. Blinked. Squinted. Two tall, slender shapes strolled down the cart road away from the necropolis. Human shapes. They carried some strange lamp that illuminated the intricate designs of their garb in hues of cerulean, lapis, and sapphire. Or perhaps a merchant had formulated some kind of luminous ink that could be transferred to his fabric . . . or directly to . . .

I blinked again, this time holding my eyelids closed for long enough to ensure I controlled my own seeing. But it was not simple weariness or living dream.

Truly the work at Caton must have drained me past reason. My mother’s family had portrayed mythic beings—gryphons, dragons, angels—in artworks for generations, but my historian kin had never found evidence of them. Only a madman or a fae-struck child would believe two Danae walked naked on the Caton plateau on a winter’s morn, their bare skin etched with exquisite line drawings that shimmered with indescribable enchantment.

A gust of wind-driven snow obscured the sight, and when it had passed they had vanished.

My long-held breath released. I needed to get on, yet my feet would not move. I stared into that pocket of night until my eyeballs near froze. But by the time the temple bells pealed, I was no more enlightened and shivering uncontrollably.

Feeling entirely foolish, I hurried my steps through the last hummocks. The sixth bell chimed as I rushed breathless through the open gates to find the courtyard awash in torchlight and corpses.

I
n a da
wn grayness brightened by a ring of torches, Constance and Garibald had marshaled their troop of laborers to deal with the savaged remnants of the royal brothers’ war. Broken bodies lay everywhere, lifted from five half-emptied wagons.

I had studied the history of war. My grandsire had taught me to examine a battlefield, to hear the clamor and feel the horror of brutal death, to taste blood on the air, to see images of ruin, and use these things to make sense of the past. But never had I seen the actual carnage laid out before me. And these were only a few, the wounded who had died along the way home.

Kings and emperors had always sent their ducs and barons home from war to heal or be buried. Common battle dead were buried where they fell. Most of the wounded were left behind, as well, to heal if they could or die at the enemy’s hand. But King Caedmon had believed that every man should have a chance to die on his home ground. Thus he had brought every one of his wounded home, despite the risks of pursuit and thin-spread lines. As ever, many—most—had died along the way, but his soldiers adored him for it. As in most things, all Navron kings had followed Caedmon’s example when it served them. Prince Perryn must have won a decisive victory in the north or be a truly courageous man in the mold of his great-great-grandsire.

Uncertainty paralyzed me. If anything was to be done about the
contract—my future, my sister’s future—it needed to be addressed right away. And I longed to contemplate what I’d just glimpsed outside the walls. Danae—myth become real? Who else could they be? And yet a man could not encounter such a display as lay in this courtyard and turn away to private grievance or even his soul’s wonder.

Constance waved a hand and hurried over, dodging laborers with litters and shooing the coffin maker’s girl away like a pesky fly.

“Coroner’s off to the Council District, arranging with lardships about their kin-dead. Da rathers Bastien do it.” She brushed away dull strings of hair that had escaped her skimpy braids and eyed me with a gleam of avarice. “But he’s left tha orders. See those six rowed nearest the steps off rightmost?
Mysteries worth solving
, he says of ’em. Ye must have a drawn of each by midmorn. And he’s set an inside for the doing.”

Her grin spread ear to ear. “Coroner said ye must do as Da or I bid.”

Indeed he had, and, for now, I was bound to his word. Yet neither the onerous contract nor personal discipline nor any threatened consequence induced my obedience. In that busy courtyard were overwhelming pain and sorrow made visible. A few sketches were simple enough.

I would redo the girl child’s portrait today, as well, as much for my own peace of mind as Bastien’s. I didn’t plan to return here another day.

“When the coroner returns, tell him I must speak with him.”

Constance dipped her knee and pranced away.

Once I retrieved two sticks of plummet and a stack of parchment scraps from Bastien’s book press, and a dusty folio of a size and stiffness to use for a lap desk, I headed for the victims Constance had indicated. They were laid out like pens in a writing case, their death pain writ as clear as their blue-gray flesh or their filthy garments.

Why were these six singled out? Out of scores of new arrivals, surely half could not be named, and it wasn’t as if any of the deaths were suspicious. The battle woundings were dreadful—no simple stabs or slashes, but brutal hacking and mutilation, most around the head and face, far beyond what would bring down an enemy.

A stroll down the row spoke the distasteful answer to my curiosity. None of the six had weapons remaining, but one wore a sword belt of excellent quality, another a single fine boot I would have been happy to own. An intricately embroidered silk shirt was tucked under layers of another man’s shredded leathers. Two bore a crest or insignia on their garb—a sure
sign of a family or lord who might claim them—though the badges were damaged beyond easy recognition. One had pinned a wealthy woman’s lacework kerchief inside his shirt. Each displayed evidence that someone would pay well to learn who he was.

Swallowing disgust, I waved at two of the laborers and told them to carry the man with the boot to whatever chamber the coroner had set aside for me to work. An inside room, I guessed. Constance’s contorted verbiage recalled Bastien’s stricture and the idiotic accusation that had prompted it. Solid bodies—even those of sorcerers—did not
flicker
.

They led me to an upper chamber at the rear of the promethium. A clean room, thank all gods. Waiting in quiet dignity were a stone bier, a washing trough, and a beautifully carved laver protruding from the wall. A shelf held a variety of jars and oil flasks. A preparation room, then. For nobility, I guessed, from the privacy and the quality. Perhaps for purebloods.

The best furnishings were the two windows, one north, one east. Opening the shutters left the room frigid; neither glass nor even horn or oiled parchment served as panes. But the extra light was well worth the cold.

Settled on the stool next the bier, I pushed aside every concern save the gift I had been born to share. I touched the soldier’s cold face, and opened myself to magic. . . .

“D
amn and blast! Well done!
You see them without their wounds. Never imagined that.”

Bastien found me seated on the floor beside the prometheum font. Sometime in the past hour, I had staggered out of the preparation room and down the stair. After washing my hands, I had slid to the floor and forced down a cupful of water and the cheese Maia had sent with me that morning. My head rested on my knees.

“May it p-profit you,” I said, teeth rattling with my shivers. “And if you have more work for me, it will have to wait.”

“A bit testy today, are we, pureblood? Have I worked you too hard? Constance said you had ants up your backbone when you first came in. So, what is it?”

Parchment rustled above my head.

Oh, aye . . . the contract. I needed to be out of here. Merciful gods, my true life seemed a thousand quellae distant.

Many times I’d done six or more portraits at a sitting, but never had I emerged so drained. And never had I experienced
pain
as I worked. So strange . . . with each drawing the discomfort had grown worse than the last. By the time I finished the sixth, my jaw radiated torment throughout my skull, and my right leg felt as if it had been ground in a mill wheel. Which made no sense at all, save that an axe had cleaved the soldier’s jaw clean through his cheek, and that his right leg was yet bandaged in rusty linen.

I’d never heard of any such manifestation of an artistic bent. But with all those horrid wounds waiting in the yard . . . Truth be told, my shivering was not solely from magical depletion.

“Did you have something to say to me?” Bastien’s enthusiasm had vanished. Surely his humors were as variable as the colors of sunlight.

The future . . . Juli . . . our family’s place in the world . . . I needed to direct my attention to what was immediately important. Even the chimera of the Danae must wait. “I must speak with you about the c-contract.”

“The contract is settled,” he snapped.

A glance upward registered the stack of new portraits in his hand and a somewhat startling change in appearance. The coroner’s sand-colored hair had been oiled and tamed with a green brow band, his exuberant tangle of a beard trimmed close around his mouth, and the rest of his jaw shaved. A spruce green velvet tunic, trimmed with black embroidery and buttoned from just under his chin all the way to his knees, was bursting at its threadbare seams. The garment, no doubt quite fashionable when my grandsire was a boy, displayed Bastien’s chest as wide as his book press.

But it was one of the portraits that seemed to have frozen his satisfaction as solid as Valdo de Seti’s heart. And my scrutiny only soured his face the more.

“It’s just”—now I’d come to it, I wasn’t sure how to couch my inquiry—“a curiosity. I understood the year’s stipend was left open in your initial bid. I wished to know . . . the negotiation. You must be extraordinarily p-persuasive.”

I bundled my cloak tighter, despising my stammering weakness.

Bastien snorted. “Here’s how it went, my fine gentleman, so’s you’ll not bother whining at me again.” He squatted beside me, a cloying perfume clogging my nostrils. “You’d best figure out what you did to stir that woman’s bile. She asked what you were worth to me. I told her a price,
starting with half what I thought I could muster. She wrote it down and had me sign. There weren’t a cat’s whisker of
negotiation
. You could have stole my teeth.”

No negotiation? Was it exhaustion or sheerest disbelief set the world spinning? Everything—the foundation of the pureblood compact with the Crown, with the gods, with ourselves, our independence paid for with obedience and strict discipline that forbade us friends and choices, even the choice to marry, love, or have children—all of it rested on the sacred nature of our contracts. Otherwise, what were we?

The coroner continued his crowing. “Best deal I ever made. Already sent a purse to take up your contract for a second year. She’s offered three for the price. And from what she tells me, you’ve naught to say about it. Four years. I’ll have my due.”

If Bastien spoke true, Pons had sold me like a slave for a year, now stretched to four, when at last I would be old enough to negotiate for myself. Yet my elevation to Head of Family at thirty required Registry consent as well. Surely Pons was not so powerful as to override that? Surely . . .

Bastien stood up again, his glare scalding my head. “Now, what’s
wrong
with you? It’s not so frosty as all that in here, and you’ve a cloak a man would sell one of his brats for. By Iero’s holy balls, if you’ve brought a fever to Caton, I’ll bury you with these fellows.”

Dizzy and nauseated, I squeezed my eyes shut. Surely Pons had already buried me.

But discipline, unthinking habit, forced breath in and out of my chest. This Bastien was an ordinary, a clever, despicable, volatile pickthief, who used the law and families’ grief to line his purse. Yet he was merely the beneficiary of my downfall, not the cause. Rebellion would certainly make matters worse.

“I’m quite well,” I said. “Show me the girl child. I can redo her portrait before I leave for the day.”

“Then come along.” Bastien led me through the vaulted colonnade where I had first encountered him, behind the prometheum. “We’ve put her in the Hallow Ground.”

Moving made it less tempting to plow my hand into a marble wall. It gave me time to summon self-control, to remind myself that the life I knew, that I believed in, was worthy.
Pons
was the betrayer. Not this greedy man.

Halfway down the colonnade, the coroner unlatched a low iron gate. As so many things in Necropolis Caton, the place beyond the gate was wholly unexpected.

The snow lay deep, shielded on all sides as it was by high walls, imbuing the enclosure with a deep and peaceful quiet. It recalled the pureblood necropolis in Pontia, though instead of grand marble monuments bearing storied family names, the crowded headstones that peeked from the snow were modest, adorned with carved images of birds or gods or nothing at all—the Hallow Ground, not the Hollow Ground as Constance named it.

Our boots crunched on a well-trod path. In the corner farthest from the gate, they had piled snow and ice as high as my head, packed and shaped it, and cut a door through the side. Sheltered from the sun as it was, such a frozen barrow could last well into our weak summer.

“We’ve a few special cases we keep here,” said Bastien. “’Tis a luxury of a rotten winter. When you deem your fine self in the mood to work, tell Constance, and she’ll have someone pull the girl out. No tricks, or you’ll regret the day you ever heard the name Bastien de Caton.”

The pleasure of telling him the current extent of my
regret
was not worth the dregs of my pride. Perhaps a little while alone in such a peaceful surround and I could regain some sort of balance. “Give me half an hour.”

But Bastien didn’t leave. Instead, he folded his velvet-sleeved arms and stared grimly at the mound, as if his vision might penetrate its walls and the mystery inside. To escape his company I’d have to plod around him through thigh-deep snow. So I waited, seething, surprised when he spoke up again.

“On my visits in the Council District this morning, I let slip a few mentions of the king-to-be and his heirs.” His bellicose basso had yielded to a quieter tone. None but I and the sleeping dead could have heard him. “Perryn’s acknowledged five children of his wife, three boys, two girls, all aged under seven years. None’s counted his by-blow, of which, gossip says, there are many. That seems likely, with a wife producing five live brats in eight years.”

His silence extended a goodly while, his thick fingers tapping their opposite elbows. I cared naught for the royal family or its breeding habits, and tried to focus inward and rebuild my power. Breathing deep, I forced mind and body to let go of the day’s annoyance. Closed my eyes. Closed my ears.

But Bastien mumbled on. “Prince Bayard has two strapping boys of ten and twelve. No girls. And he’s spent the most of his days since age fifteen on his warships, chasing Hansker raiders, keeping Navronne’s coastal cities safe and his wife lone. None knows of Osriel the Bastard’s couplings any more than they know whether he’s yet a human person or has truly forfeited his balls to Magrog in return for sorcery. But he’s no marriage nor heirs recorded and, as far as anyone knows, hasn’t left Evanore’s mountains since he was a boy. I doubt this girl is his. For certain none but a child in the direct line could wear the tri-part lily. Thus she’s likely Perryn’s.”

“You believe what my drawing showed!” My every sense flared alert. He’d been so certain of my scheming. I wasn’t even sure that
I
believed the dead girl had royal blood.

“Didn’t say that. I deem you a pompous pureblood twit who believes he’s been ill-used because he’s got to smell shite. I believe you’d do just about anything short of cutting off your hands to weasel out of this contract. But none’s ever said Bastien de Caton fails to take advantage of what it might profit him to know, and it’s not every day I earn favors from those who can tell me of princes and their get. And now these”—he shifted his gaze to the stack of portraits in his hand—“are shown without their woundings.”