Dust and Light (34 page)

Who and what were the Cicerons? My vision in the Tower said they had once been warriors, wearing their shield openly. More important, I had found them while seeking Aurellians, the ancestors of all pureblood families. Were we kin? And did the Registry know they could work true magic or did they only suspect? If purebloods were not the sole receptacles of the gods’ gift of magic, then what were we?

And how was it possible that my magic and this extraordinary artifact were so like? Only the dual bent set me apart from other purebloods. Had others in the past risked madness to retain and wield two bents? My grandsire, the historian, claimed not—my grandsire, who had dared thwart Registry restrictions on my behalf, until he turned on me. . . .

P
ale sunlight invaded the Ciceron
commons house. The humming had yielded to soft murmurs. A sharp laugh pierced the frigid air . . . and the answer struck me like a spear in the gut.

Xancheira!
I sat bolt upright. Threw the itchy rug askew. My bleary eyes were not yet focused, save on the unlikely, astonishing link. Xancheira, my grandfather’s last historical investigation. Xancheira, the lost city of elegance, grace, and good governance, whose emblem had been a white
tree with exactly five branches . . . something like a white hand with five fingers. Was it madness to think the two emblems were related? Surely it was lunacy to believe that my grandsire’s investigation of an ancient massacre and a city that had been wiped from the earth was tangled with Ciceron magic and Registry restrictions and enchanted portals and Danae and cellar prisons.

And yet my life—my whole world—had changed in Montesard, but not when I had lain with Morgan. My small sin had not caused it. While I dallied in the university cloisters, Capatronn had pursued the mystery of Xancheira. And when he rejoined me in Montesard he’d told me
nothing
.

If Bastien was right, he had reported my dalliance himself. He had not only stuck me with a contract where curators could observe me, but he had resigned his post and never pursued an investigation again. Because he was afraid. For me. For himself. For our family. My vision of Tower history had shown me the fear on him as he tried to rip the magic out of me.

I’d thought Pluvius’s visit to the Tower cellar a dream, a sign of madness, but what if it wasn’t? What had he said to me?
You took something . . .
his greatest discovery . . . something of extraordinary significance, something most secret and most dangerous because it propounded a great and terrible historical lie.

Xancheira. What had Capatronn discovered?

“Are you revived?” Demetreo’s braids and dark mustache obscured his expression as he stood over me. Naught could obscure the anxiety in his voice.

“Yes,” I said, my emotions surely a match for his. Discovery was so near, my spirit rumbled like approaching thunder. If I could unlock this portal’s secrets, the storm might break.

The headman and I were alone in the commons house. The hearth was cold, but the lamps sparkled. The magical portal remained unmasked, its weaving a riot of purples and blues.

“Best be on with the work, then. The coroner will be most annoyed if we keep you much longer. Scouts say Prince Perryn’s only a few quellae from Palinur. Betimes, we’ll see chaos in the streets and the deadcarts will roll.”

And chaos would fall worst on the wretched corners of the city like this.

“Did Bastien send what I asked?”

The headman’s expressive chin directed me to the dice players’ table. My writing case, an ink horn and cup, and a single sheet of parchment sat waiting.

“And the permission?”

“Given.”

“Then I need Oldmeg back here,” I said, climbing to my feet. “I want to do her portrait.”

“You
what
?” As a sword drawn from its sheath was the headman’s true nature laid bare. Sharp-edged and dangerous. “Do you think to take her likeness round the city and see what witnesses make of her? I’ve heard what you and Bastien do, and you
will
not
—”

“The portrait will go nowhere,” I said. “It’s but a way to access my most powerful magic.”

Oldmeg’s people believed the mantle of the Goddess Mother enfolded her. And the old woman had spent her life hunting for this place; she believed the portal was her magic to use. I believed that, too;
her
fingers did not burn when she touched it. She would be welcome, as I was not. Not until I proved my worth.

A first principle of historical study:
Impassioned belief
shakes kingdoms. And
belief
was the foundation of a sorcerer’s power.

“Let her decide,” I said. “If she says no, I’ll go and our bargain is finished. Bastien would be pleased.”

Demetreo slammed the door as he left the house, but in only a few moments, he returned with Oldmeg. She carried a bowl containing another portion of her tasteless soup. She looked more like Maia, our family cook who had died in the fire, than a temple priestess or a sorceress like my mother.

“Eat before magic working,” she said, crinkling her eyes as she appraised my bedraggled turnout. “We’d not wish you to collapse again.”

“Maybe after,” I said, pushing the bowl aside and pouring ink into my cup. “We’ve people waiting on us. Sit in your chair.” The tall-backed chair would be the symbol of her place in the clan. The bone necklace was likely the same, as was the woven robe she donned as she took her seat. I had placed the chair close to the portal.

“Naema,”
I said, bowing. “May I touch your hand? It serves—”

“I understand how it serves you.” She held out her hand—coarse, dry, chilled, but steady, and when I squeezed it slightly, she squeezed back with an extraordinary grip and a twinkling eye.

With a fervent invocation, I began to sketch the seams and crags that defined the landscape of her face. The curve of her hollow cheek. The
checkered brow. The sun creases at the corners of her eyes. The sagging lids above and the smudges of worry and short nights beneath. The heavy braids entirely gray.

A few strokes added the knife that had pricked her hand and mine. She was Ciceron as well as
Naema
.

The fire built inside me.

Even with her seated, I sensed movement in her posture. Alert, not at rest, not in that chair. Age had neither shortened her long legs nor curved her back, nor had time withered her will.

My own will summoned the pent flame in my breast, but before releasing it, I touched the center between my eyes and reinforced the web that linked my two bents. Nothing must be left to chance this hour. My own body as well as hers told me time was short.

For a moment my left hand moved from Oldmeg to the cool bronze arch and the scalding field of light. A radiant enchantment flowed through my arm and joined seamlessly with my bent.

Now!
As liquid enchantment surged through my fingers, ready to transfer the true image to the mundane page, I shoved aside concerns of life and breath, mystery and spirit, and when I had reduced all the pieces I had assembled to their most elemental forms—dust and light and magic—I released the raging glory of my art.

“W
ell, what is it, pureblood?
Failed, did you? I never believed this was going to tell us anything.”

I passed Demetreo the portrait. He wasn’t going to like it. The woman sitting in the chair would know it was true, though. As I did.
Naema
. She had been wrapped in magic and wonder since she was a girl.

The
sengé
’s
dusky skin grew as dark as old blood. “A Registry man after all,” he snarled. “Only one thing on your mind.”

“Show her,” I said, louder, where the woman could hear. “Ask her.”

“I’ll not!”

“You will.” No fear or anxiety sullied Oldmeg’s command. Perhaps she had felt the truth as I worked. She who had recognized how my magic and that of the portal fit together long before I did. Did anyone in the world comprehend the boundaries of her insight and her skills? If the time was as short as she believed—and the stench of war now assaulted my nostrils, too—then I would have no time to learn. One regret among many.

“You were right about the portal magic,
Naema
,” I said, inclining my head to her.

She acknowledged in kind, eyes bright and pleased. For that moment we shared the exquisite sweetness of mystery and magic fulfilled.

Demetreo fought the truth, even as he dropped to his knees beside her chair and passed her the portrait. “He is pureblood,
Naema
. He is
Registry
. He’s tricked us and thinks to steal our strength.”

But the headman’s insistence held no conviction, because he saw her face as I did. Her smile lit the room beyond the magic of the lamps.

One steady hand held the portrait and the other stroked Demetreo’s gray-streaked hair. “Will you not stand in the vanguard to save us, boy? Of course you will. Why would you deprive me of the same joy? And, truly, it is not today.”

It would be soon, though. There was no discrepancy of age between the woman and her portrait.

Demetreo kept trying to deny the tale of the portrait, even as his expression crumpled into sheerest grief. Oldmeg’s joy made sense to me. She had searched for her path for a century.

The woman in the portrait sat straight and unbowed, as regal as any queen on her throne, as assured as the Goddess Mother herself. The knife had not remained sheathed at her waist, but lay in her lap, stained dark with the blood leaking from her wrists and heart—the same that smeared three precise places on the bronze arch. With the light in her eyes almost faded, a throng of people wearing dangling earrings of false gold and ribbons braided in their hair passed through the arch to a landscape we could not see. Beyond the commons house, the hirudo was ablaze. And apart from it all, a man in a half mask and a ragged pureblood cloak sat head on his knees and very much alone.

T
he gray morning was well advanced by the time I climbed out of the hirudo. Thanks to Oldmeg, strips of dirty linen wrapped my hands, legs, and feet, and the flea-bitten rug was pinned about my shoulders. Thanks to Garen, my mask was in place. Thus protected against cold, threatening rain, and wandering pureblood investigators, I could prepare what to say to Bastien.

He wasn’t going to like hearing that I couldn’t tell him what I’d done for the Cicerons. Even less that I would be of no use to him this day. Two hours’ sleep was not enough after my misadventure in the temple, much less to sustain me past the magic in the hirudo commons house. No enchantment of my working had required so much of me, summoned from so deep. Complex, intricate magic. Wondrous magic. A harmony I’d not felt for a long time, as Oldmeg’s joy at the result balanced my own at the doing.

But as I threaded the muddy trenches between nameless graves, long-denied anger swelled in me. What
historical lie
could have driven my grandsire to destroy such a gift? If Capatronn had but trusted me, he might yet be living, for his attempt to excise my second bent had failed, and, as sure as my name, some unexpected detail in a curator’s portrait had condemned my family to the fire and me to the dark.

Which ones of the six? Pons was so easy to blame. But Gramphier and Pluvius had witnessed the mutilation of my bent. And Pluvius had dogged me about the Xancheira artifacts, implying he had to destroy them to
protect me. On the day I asked Gilles about the “flickering,” my town house had burned. Whom had he told? His severe, traditional uncle Albin—or perhaps Damon, who valued loyalty from those beneath him, or Scrutari, who was ever coveting political advantage?

I had to question Pluvius. I had to see those portraits.

“Come back, have you? We were beginning to think you’d turned tail and hared back to your own kind.” Garibald waited at the necropolis gates, long arms crossed over his gaunt frame. “Done damage enough, don’t you imagine? Sent our runner back here ruint? And consorting with pickthieves and hoors—didn’t think the likes of you would stoop even lower than dead-handlers.”

Garibald had never been easy around me, but he’d never insulted me to my face. Perhaps the rags I wore made it easy. Perhaps it was the chains awaiting me in the prometheum. My hands clenched, aching to cast some astonishing enchantment to silence him. But discipline was not just for easy times. The sexton was Bastien’s man and Garen’s friend.

“Garen was brave beyond measure,” I said stiffly, as if I wore brocade and fox fur instead of blood and threadbare linen. “His wounding grieves me. I was responsible and I failed him. As for the Cicerons, they saved us both. But then again, their business is none of yours.” No stapled tongue in my plans.

Summoning what I could of dignity while wrapped in a rug, I hurried past Garibald through the gate tunnel. Bastien was waiting just inside, a steaming pot about to blow off its lid.

“Please tell me the runner is healing well, Coroner.” Might as well get this contentious accounting over with. “Give me a moment to fetch water from the font, and I’ll put my feet in your shackles willing and answer all the questions I’m permitted. Just don’t ask me to do magic today.”

“Insufferable, arrogant dunderwit, marching in as if you own us all.”

Teeth clenched over his growl, Bastien grabbed my arm and dragged me around behind the merchant stalls, through a side door, and into Bek’s windowless surgery. Only then did he speak again. “I’m sorry to tell you, O high and mighty lordship, that we’ve a small problem you must deal with right away, lest
I
get hauled off to your Tower and installed in your cellar dungeon or thrown off the top or whatever they do to people like me who
misplace
people like you. Now rid yourself of the rags and wash. You might dip your fingers in that ink horn as well, as I’ve put him off two
hours claiming you’re in the midst of sketching corpses out at the Hallow Ground. Summat’s told him about my spyhole, so I couldn’t claim you were in your regular place. Gods save me, I detest purebloods!”

Purebloods! And I just come from working enchantments for Cicerons after murdering a temple guard while using magic to attempt a burglary. Mighty gods!

A washing bowl and a mostly clean towel waited on Bek’s bloodstained surgery table. Blood pounding, I stripped off the rags and the filthy remnants of my temple clothes and scrubbed at face and hands. Shirt and chausses had been left beside the washing things. They were dry, at the least, if not particularly clean or well fitting.

“It’s not a group of them, is it?” I said as I fumbled with loops and laces. “Armed servitors in livery?”

“Stop dawdling or I’ll drag you in there naked. It’s only one and his servant, but I thought he was going to cut off my balls when I dared tell him for the fourth time that he had to wait longer.”

Only one and a servant. Not so terrifying. But who? And why?

I pulled on the cheap cloth slippers, then thought better of it and settled for swabbing most of the dirt from my feet. If I’d been in the Hallow Ground, my shoes would be wet and muddy. No time to make these look right. As Bastien locked on my shackles, I ran conveniently ink-stained fingers through my matted hair.

“Enough,” said Bastien, shoving me toward the door.

I slipped on my mask and clutched my pen case tightly enough none could notice my hands trembling. Bastien led me through the rotunda and around the right-hand passage. Only one visitor. I’d give three ribs for it to be Pluvius.

But the man in the pureblood cloak who gazed out Bastien’s window was shorter than the Master of the Registry Archives, leaner, tidier, and his well-trimmed hair was solidly black. He pivoted sharply as we entered. His ivory silk half mask set off deep olive skin, a long Aurellian nose, and ungraceful ears slightly too big for his head.

“Why in holy Deunor’s light does it take two hours for you to sketch a dead
ordinary
?” First Registrar Damon, the second-most-powerful man in the Registry—or third if Gilles’s uncle Albin had anything to say about it. An extremely impatient curator. The one I knew least.

Touching fingertips to forehead, I bowed deeply, using the time to
swallow my surprise, consider my response, and note the bulky bodyguard beside the door. Perhaps I should bend a knee. But Damon prized personal discipline, so I’d always heard, and discipline included pride and exact protocols as well as proper submission.

Thus I stood up straight and opened one hand to Bastien as if to receive a grant, hoping he would understand.

“You may speak,” he said. Not for the first time, I felt thankful that Bastien and not dullwit Garibald had pursued my contract.

“I’ve had to adjust my technique in working with dead subjects,
domé
. As ever in matters of my contract, I do not withhold or offer less than my best. Though it takes more time than he expected, Coroner Bastien is patient. He, of course, must speak to his—”

“I am not come to this place to investigate contractual matters.” The curator tightened his lips and waved a hand to dismiss the subject. I’d have wagered his annoyance was with his own display of annoyance.

Both Bastien and I held our tongues as the curator’s silent gaze traveled my length, from my unbound hair to my shackled ankles. He squinted like a man who had spent too much of his life reading in weak light, and his eyes narrowed even tighter when he reached my bare feet.

“Do you allow him no boots, Coroner? You said he was working outdoors. Surely no such deprivation was specified in his restrictions.”

“Boots were muddy.” Bastien’s complexion was far cooler than Damon’s. “Bare feet seemed more respectful to your presence than graveyard filth or further delay. I understand he was kept naked in the Tower.”

Damon’s flush deepened to a new intensity.

Careful, careful!
I could not but applaud Bastien’s cut, especially as it struck a tender mark. But the line between plain speech and insolence shifted when addressing a curator of the Pureblood Registry, and Damon would not have considered it necessary to inform a mere ordinary of either his name or his rank.

“I would advise a study of respect, Coroner.” Damon’s clipped tone was cooler than his cheeks. “I will speak to both of you and then to Remeni alone.”

Bastien bowed agreement without a hint of apology.

“Perryn of Ardra, the presumptive heir to the throne of Navronne, is but a few days from taking up residence in Palinur. He intends to solidify his support from the Pureblood Registry, the temples, and the Karish
hierarchs by participating in various celebrations of Caedmon’s Writ of Balance. One of these celebrations will bring the prince to the Registry Tower to offer his condolences on the death of King Eodward’s late Royal Archivist, Remeni’s grandsire—a historic link between Registry and Crown.”

Though my heart’s tempo increased, I kept my gaze politely lowered and nodded slightly. Perhaps Pons had failed to mention she had already informed Bastien of the prince’s visit to the Tower. Why was a
curator
come to tell me this? That my grandsire had been a favorite of King Eodward would certainly not move the Registry to take sides in the ordinaries’ war.

“What concern is that of mine?” said Bastien. “The dead take no holidays for such frivolities.”

“Indeed.” Damon’s nostrils flared. “The prince has requested the curators to deliver a message to Lucian de Remeni-Masson. He is summoned to attend the prince in the Royal Antiquities Repository at fourth hour of the afternoon on the day of the ceremony. The prince wishes to review the historical collection with young Remeni, reminisce about his own youthful encounters with the grandfather, and then travel together to the Registry Tower for the official ceremony.”

“No. The contract states—”

“This meeting will
not
happen.” Damon cut off Bastien’s indignation with the decisive efficiency of a headsman’s broadsword. “Remeni is specifically and absolutely forbidden to attend it. The curators would not expose our prospective king to aberrant behavior or distress him with stories of murder or madness within a family he respects so highly. We have informed Prince Perryn that the grandson Remeni has been sent away to recover from a fever.”

Cowards! Did they think I would so violate custom by airing their ignominious behavior before Perryn? Even if I’d reason to think the prince would care about my difficulties, I had not forgotten myself so much as that. Whatever was wrong at the Registry was not the king’s to put right.

“Do both of you understand and agree?”

“Suits me well,” said Bastien. “And my pureblood has no say, so what does it matter if he agrees?”

“
Honor
matters,” said Damon, cold now, as if lecturing an idiot child. “Even with madmen. If Remeni says he understands and agrees, I will believe him.”

My breath slowed.
Honor?
Belief
in what I said? A desire to hear
me
speak? Did he mean it? It seemed so unlikely, yet might explain why he delivered the prohibition in person.

“Well, tell him your thoughts, Servant Remeni,” said Bastien, flailing his arms as if to say purebloods were impossible idiots. “I’ve five more corpses out there need drawing before you’re finished for the day.”

I looked straight into Damon’s eyes, a flagrant breach of protocol, but of all times, this communication must be clear. “Honor and truth matter a great deal to me,
domé
. I understand your message, and in faithful submission to the curators’ command, I agree that I will not attend this royal meeting you speak of. My contracted master is my witness in this matter. As is the shade of my late grandsire.”

Fitting that Capatronn should be witness to a swearing that was true but not entirely the truth.

Damon did not avert his gaze. Nor did his expression register disapproval—or anything at all—when I refused to drop my own. “I would speak with Remeni privately now, Coroner. The conversation will not concern you, thus I prefer we remove to his studio. I understand it was not entirely secure when my colleagues inspected it, and would ensure it has been improved.”

“As you like. We’ve buttoned up your madman quite fine and keep the shackles on for extra. Show him the way, Remeni. I’ve work to do here.”

I bowed Damon out of the cluttered chamber. The bodyguard remained with Bastien as I led the curator around the passage and up the stair to my little domain. As ever, the hobbles made my progress slow and awkward.

It would have been easy to let expectations rise at a chance to speak with a curator who seemed open to listening, but Bastien said the visitor
knew
of his spyhole. So did Constance and Garibald, Garen, Pleury, and gods knew who else. Whatever we said would be no more private than what was spoken in Bastien’s chamber.

Once we were alone, I removed my mask. Damon did not. Clearly, manners were not on his mind. He swept briskly about my little chamber, taking in the shutters, locks, and furnishings.

“Need for the bier is obvious, but what purpose does this other table serve?” he said. “Loose planks and bricks in the chamber of a sorcerer under restriction are not usual. And these materials on the shelf . . .”

“I must lay out my drawings to dry,” I said, “and to remain dry until
the coroner collects them. The shutters leak, you see, and puddle the floor. The materials on the shelf are cleared away at the end of the day’s work, lest I be tempted to corrupt them with wicked enchantment.”

His attention reverted sharply to my face. “And are you tempted?”

“To afflict or harm or frighten the people here? Never. To escape this restriction—the shackles, the silkbinding, and the leather mask, which is Magrog’s own invention—and the consequences that could result in the end of two most honored bloodlines? Every moment of every day tempts me. But will I ever succumb to that temptation? No. I have sworn on my beloved dead to do what is required of me until I can convince the Registry of my honor, sanity, and innocence. I did not commit the crimes of which I am accused. I am not mad.”