Flesh and Spirit (36 page)

The lantern dangling from a fleshy hand illuminated a thickset man with a fat black braid and a drooping mustache. He wore his black silk mask in the horizontal fashion, covering only his eyes and brow as some pureblood families prescribed. Caphur and his partner stood behind the newcomer.

Stepping out of the shadow, I dropped the blanket and bowed to my principal Registry overseer, Sestius de Rhom-Magistoria, some colineal relation of my grandfather's family. “
Domé
.”

“Prepare to go out.”

“Of course,
domé
. If I might inquire—”

“You may not.”

Of course he would answer no question of mine. I could imagine the instructions of the Registry judges.
Keep the prisoner ignorant. Keep the prisoner frustrated, isolated, and on edge, not knowing what humiliation will befall him next. Prove to him that he has no control over his life.

Suppressing pointless fury, I laced up my damp boots, snatched the yellow cloak from the hook, and fastened its clasp at my shoulder. Then I turned to Sestius, the silver mask in my one hand, a silk one in the other, and the inquiry posed on my face.

“Use the silk. We're in a hurry. But bring the other. You are not finished with it yet. More insolence and you will be wearing it for a year.”

I bowed and slipped on the silk mask. It felt like a second skin compared to the silver. But I did not escape every discomfort. Caphur brought out his roll of silk cord and bound my hands. Tighter than other days. Showing his teeth, he also made sure that the silver mask came with us. Bristly hair poked through the silk of his own mask around his bulbous chin. Likely his family discipline mandated a clean-shaven face, else Caphur could have grown a beard the size of a hedgehog in three days' time.

They whisked me down the stairs, where a party of two torch boys and eight or ten armed ordinaries waited. Only an extraordinarily dangerous night would occasion purebloods to call in extra escorts.

We hiked briskly through the deserted city, skirting the main streets and marketplaces. Ice coated every blade, twig, gutter, and cornice. I shivered in my ermine-lined cloak and thanked the Lord of Sea and Sky that the wind had abated.

I could not imagine where we were off to so late, until we climbed a long flight of worn steps to a crossing lane that bordered an ancient wall. The otherwise straight bulwark of stone, the remnant of some early defense work, had been designed to circumvent a notched pyramid of native rock. In the notch, water bubbled from moss-lined cracks and dribbled into a pool the size of a wide-brimmed hat. The pool, called the Aingerou's Font, never dried up and never froze, and every spring a different variety of flower grew out of the cracks in the rock. Even lacking the Cartamandua bent, I could have found my way to this lane from the depths of the netherworld. For fifteen wretched years I had resided not half a quellé from the Aingerou's Font.

The tree-shrouded lane followed the ancient bulwark past the Font to a walled stone house built in the grand Aurellian style. Large airy rooms enclosed inner courtyards, the sprawling structure ornamented with pedimented windows, meticulously designed gardens, fluted pillars, and brightly painted arches. A bronze gryphon, grasping a rolled map in its claws, loomed above us from the iron gate. As Sestius rang the bell, my entire being felt as hollow as my growling stomach. I was home.

The gate swung open before the echoes of the bell faded. A man in green livery motioned us into the snow-draped courtyard. Caphur dismissed our escorts, dropping a small pouch in their gawking leader's outstretched hand, while the man in green exchanged a private word with Sestius.

I stood stiffly by, my mind skipping from one thing to another, unwilling to acknowledge the arrival of a moment I had dreaded for so many years. Three lamps hanging from iron posts lit the path to the front door. Lights shone from a few rooms: my father's study to the left of the entry door, the reception room to the right, my mother's bedchamber around the corner on the right. Horses had been here before us. Four or five. They'd been led around to the stables. The hedges had grown tall. The ancient lime tree had lost a limb; it would never survive this kind of cold. The green livery…one of Thalassa's men from the temple then…Was she here?

Focus, Valen. You must keep your wits. Keep your temper. Control your tongue. Submit.
I had to convince them that I was chastened, else I would spend the rest of my life in silken hand bindings and silver masks and ankle shackles.

I gazed longingly through the gate that was closing behind me, back down the lane where the Font bubbled quietly in its niche. Someone now sat in the niche beside the mumbling spring. Startled, I squinted down the dark lane.
Holy gods!

The gate clanged shut, closing off my view.

“Move along, Magnus Valentia,” said Sestius, opening his hand toward the front door in invitation.

The overseer trudged through ankle-deep snow toward the skewed rectangle of light that streamed from the now open door. I followed dutifully behind him. But somewhere deep inside me rose a tickling sensation that quickly spread to my chest and throat and mouth. My cheeks quivered. Droplets pricked my eye. I pressed my lips together, but to no avail. At last I slammed my fists to my mouth, attempting to muzzle the laughter I could not stop. How foolish…how wondrous was life.

Sestius halted and narrowed his eyes. He laid a hand on my arm. “What is it, lad?” His testy authority yielded to a gruff sympathy. “No need to be afraid.”

No need…
Another quake of hopeless hilarity shook me and I tried to wipe my eyes with my wrist. Sestius appeared confused.

“What has possessed you,
plebeiu
?”

“Ah,
domé
, pardon…please. It's just”—I pressed my wrist hard against my mouth—“no one ever calls me
Magnus Valentia
. Any more than they call my brother
Maximus Goratia
, or my elder sister
Thalassa Minora
, or my younger sisters
Phoebia Terrae
or
Petronilla Terrae
. You see, my father named us all after geographical features, and it was left to us to dig around in them for names that didn't sound ridiculous. And you tell me not to be afraid…so kindly…and here I am coming home after twelve years away, looking like some gangle-limbed canary and with my hands—”

He did not understand in the least. How could he? He had not seen what I had.

“Please forgive me,
domé
. I am just inexcusably ill-mannered, and lightheaded as I've not eaten since morning and these days have been exhausting, as is only right, of course.”

I needed to stop babbling. And I should very likely beg some god or other to remove the grin that would not leave my face. Life was as sublimely absurd as my name—some barren little island off the coast of Aurellia, inhabited entirely by great gawky birds. Why else would I imagine that I had seen the intricate outlines of a brilliant blue dragon coiling down the bare limbs of the man sitting beside the Aingerou's Font? Or that I would swear that he wore green ribbons plaited in his curling red hair and had met my gaze with eyes the color of aspen leaves in autumn? I had not been mistaken. I was being followed by a Dané.

Bowing respectfully to Sestius, in whose word lay the power to extend my unfortunate exhibition in the city, I waved my bundled hands toward the door. He huffed a bit, and looked at me as if I were a lunatic. Which I supposed I was. But perhaps, if the world was going to end sometime soon, it didn't really matter.

We walked down a short brick passage, Caphur and his shadow trailing behind us. I was still smiling when I stepped into a vine-hung courtyard with a giant lily-shaped brazier blazing in the center. My father was waiting.

T
he little courtyard had only a latticework roof of scrolled iron, yet the colored flames that danced in the lily-shaped brazier left the enclosure excessively warm. Appropriate, I supposed, as the courtyard was dedicated to Deunor Lightbringer. Lamps hung from iron posts, adding yellowish light to the orange and red firelight.

My first glimpse of my father sobered me quickly, causing a certain constriction in my chest I had experienced since I could remember. In the view of the world and more particularly, the Pureblood Registry, the powerfully compact man standing beside the flaming brazier held my life in his hands.

Oh, he could not kill me without consequence. A pureblood, even a
recondeur
, was too valuable an asset to dispose of without extreme justification. But pureblood heads of family, male or female as lineal customs or contracts dictated, wielded the power of a despot over their offspring by way of the entitlement to negotiate unbreakable contracts for those children's professional services, marriages, and rights of procreation. They could even sell their services to a murderer, as long as that murderer agreed to abide by the terms. Unless one became the head of family or achieved extraordinary rank in the ordinary world, as Thalassa had done, a pureblood never lived other than as a bound servant—a cosseted slave.

My father's appearance had changed very little in twelve years. Though he must be approaching sixty, he was as broad through the shoulders and as tightly built as Max. His wide hands and short thick fingers that could wield pens and brushes with elegance and precision had once choked the life out of three Hansker raiders…as he had reminded me on many unpleasant occasions. His long straight hair, gathered into a thick horsetail in the back, remained solidly black, though his forehead, always high, now extended halfway across the top of his head—a tonsure of a kind, to be sure.

I pressed my wrist to my mouth. The fey humor had not deserted me entirely.
Concentrate, Valen. Manners.

“Patronn.” I dropped to one knee on the brick paving and touched my bound hands to my forehead.

Though I knelt to acknowledge my father as head of our family, my resolution to mind my manners did
not
extend to the words of honor and respect a son would normally offer at such a time. He would not believe them anyway. Neither did I wait for his permission to rise. He was not a king.

“It seems the gods have granted you good health,” I said, once on my feet again. I kept my tone neutral. “I presume Matronn fares well also.”

My father perched half sitting on a stone altar where the household left platters of bread and pots of honey as feast gifts for the god. His dangerous, well-groomed hands were loosely clasped at his firm waist, where a belt of gold shells draped handsomely across a tight-fitting pourpoint of purple and gold brocade. The hands and posture were deceptive. He was not at all relaxed. His dusky complexion, typical of purebloods, had taken on a ruddy cast, and his full lips, so like Thalassa's, formed a thin straight line. No mistaking his state of mind.

“Your mother has no desire to see you.”

Not surprising. Seeing me, she might be forced to acknowledge my troublesome existence, a task she had avoided diligently since my earliest memory. “That's unfortunate. Please convey my salutation.”

Petty as it was, I could not subdue the satisfaction that coursed through me as I stood before the man I had once named Magrog the Tormentor's twin. I now stood a full quercé—four hands—taller than he. His seed might have grown me, but I liked to think I had taken naught of my parents but the black color of hair and eyes, the straight nose, and the magic of their blood.

A fidgeting Sestius, having removed his mask and retrieved a roll of vellum and the silver mask from Caphur, interrupted this tender reconciliation. “
Eqastré
Cartamandua-Celestine, we must complete the prisoner transfer. I cannot comprehend why the
recondeur
's punishment has been interrupted…and at such an hour…”

My father snorted contemptuously. “It was certainly not my doing. Evidently someone in the Registry, higher placed than you,
Eqastré
Rhom-Magistoria, felt it risky to have any one of us exposed to the rabble during this unsettled time.”

He motioned Sestius to the table beside him. As the administrator unrolled his scroll, my father's cold gaze traveled over me. His nostrils flared as his eyes fixed on my silkbound hands. “No surprise to hear that Valen has shown himself insolent and violent,” he said to Sestius. “But I'm surprised you found it necessary to curtail his use of magic. He was never competent.”

“We've witnesses that he cast spells to aid his escape from the Karish abbey and attempted more on the journey to Palinur. He is completely untrustworthy. Here—” Sestius tapped a spot on one of his pages. “You must acknowledge the transfer of custody, though, as you were informed, we will keep our men here.”

“I don't like strangers in my house. My daughter, the Sinduria, has insisted on providing Temple guards as well.” My father pressed his thumb on the page, triggering a spell that would identify him to the Registry. I felt very like a hanging goose at the poulterer's.

“Though I am sure the Sinduria's attendants are well qualified, the Registry must supervise the
recondeur
's restriction until his sentence is completed.” Sestius rolled his papers back together so tightly he could have used the roll as a cane. “Your son has three days' punishment to fulfill, at the least. And as he physically assaulted and verbally abused one of his overseers today—a man protecting him from harm from a rapacious mob—I intend to see him flogged before we're done. I advise you keep him on a short leash.” Sestius never allowed sympathy to interfere with discipline.

My father brushed his wide fingers over the silver mask that lay on the table. “Valen will not escape his duty again. If I have to pry up every rock in this kingdom, I will secure him a contract with a master who can control him.”

Of course, Patronn would wish to remind me. The Registry inserted certain standard clauses into pureblood contracts. Clauses requiring adherence to Registry breeding rules. Clauses requiring recognition of the Registry as arbiter of all contract disputes. And protective clauses ensuring we were maintained in safety, dignity, and luxurious accommodation appropriate to “extraordinary beings of proven magical lineage.” In running away, I had forfeited my rights to those protective restrictions. Whatever master he selected for me would be permitted to ensure my faithful service in any way he chose—confinement, whips, isolation, starvation…

Sestius took his leave, ordering Caphur to cooperate with Thalassa's temple attendants and to report any conflicts. I remained standing near the brazier, sweating beneath my fur-lined cloak, my face itching beneath the silk mask. My good humor had completely faded.

As the outer door closed behind Sestius, two men in green livery appeared at the inner door. A whiff of cheap perfume identified one of them as Thalassa's temple attendant Silos, the observant fellow whose hands wielded paralyzing firebolts and whose nose sniffed out spellmaking. Worse and worse.

“You may escort the
recondeur
to his quarters,” said my father, walking past me as if I did not exist. “I've no need and no wish to see him any more than necessary. He is not to wander the house or grounds unaccompanied. His meals will be taken in his quarters unless I specifically summon him to dine. Work out your guard schedule with these Registry people.” He waved at Caphur to join the two in green and then flicked a wrist to dismiss us all.

A hundred retorts popped to mind as my father left the courtyard. At fifteen I would have spat them at his back, sauced them with curses and obscenities, and forced the guards to drag me to my bedchamber. But I held my tongue. I had tasted freedom, and until the day I lay rotting in my grave, I would not give up hope of regaining it. If yielding present satisfaction to lull my captors was the price required, I would pay it.

The east wing was the oldest of the sprawling house, little more than low, musty chambers with small windows huddled along two sides of an overgrown court, on that night draped in snow. The walls were thicker there, and consisted of irregular, alternating layers of brick and rock that gave them a rough appearance. I remembered the rooms as being filled with broken furniture, old carpets, spiderwebs, and beetle husks.

Most of the windows gaped darkly. The low-pitched wavering mewling of a cat in heat came from one dark corner of the square. Silos dispatched his companion to show Caphur his quarters and the facilities of the house and then motioned me toward a section where light gleamed through thick shutters. I had to duck my head to enter.

Despite the rough exterior, a habitable apartment awaited me—two connecting rooms, a bedchamber and a sitting room, cleaned and furnished. Though not the broken sticks I remembered, its accoutrements contrasted starkly with those of the main house. A plaited wool rug on bare stone instead of thick carpets on mosaic and tile floors. An earthenware basin for washing instead of Syan porcelain. A hard chair instead of velvet lounges. A small eating table with two backless stools beside it. A coal scuttle beside the hearth. No hanging maps or exotic artifacts to remind visitors of the Cartamandua talents. No magical cards or bronze water bowls left easily available for Celestine divinations.

Coals blazed in the sitting-room hearth. A kettle hung over the fire, and a bathing tub sat beside it. A shirt of fine linen lay neatly over the chair back. My sour-faced Registry valet stood beside the hearth, eyes unfocused, hands clasped properly behind his back.

“You must be Lukas,” said Silos, latching the door behind us. “Assigned for personal service by the Registry.”

The valet bowed stiffly.

“As I am sure the Registry overseers have informed you, the Sinduria Cartamandua-Celestine has arranged for me to supervise the
recondeur
's confinement while in this house,” said Silos.

“Yes,
domé.
”

“Overseer Caphur will be taking his orders from me as well.”

“I understand, sir. I was told to see to the
plebeiu
's bathing upon his arrival. Do you approve?” I enjoyed seeing Lukas's face darken and shrivel like an old grape at Silos's assumption of command. My valet clearly did not believe a Registry employee, even an ordinary, should be taking orders from a temple attendant, even a pureblood.

Silos was unfazed. “Proceed with your duties. Unfortunately this wing has no piped water, but you'll find the household staff efficient and accommodating. You've been shown the kitchen?”

The valet nodded, bowed, and departed through the courtyard door. A soft whining and a skin-prickling heat burst infused the room as he passed through the door. They hadn't bothered to mute the door ward, designed to alert my guards that someone had left the room.

Fine as a hot bath sounded, I wasn't sure I could bear another hour with Lukas. At least the rules of household privacy would keep both Registry and temple guards at bay while I bathed.

“I'll take those off now,” said Silos softly, pointing at my hands, startling me out of my murky deliberations.

The temple guard had slipped off his mask and hung it over his belt. Large ears poked through his dark straight hair. Though his address was proper as always, his wide face expressed neither gloating nor severity. Perhaps forty, he seemed a bit soft around the edges for a Sinduria's bodyguard. But our confrontations at the abbey and on the journey to Palinur had taught me not to take him lightly, despite the unprepossessing body and his fondness for flowery scent.

“I'd be grateful,” I said, extending my arms. “I hope you've less constricting means to ensure my good behavior while I'm here.”

As Silos unwrapped the silk-clad lump joining my arms—I could no longer swear the bloodless bundle was hands—one side of his mouth curved upward. “You wouldn't be imagining I'm going to tell you about our precautions, would you? I've not forgot you had the better of me on the road.”

“I didn't escape,” I said. Happily for me, Silos's skill at spell detection lagged his skill at hurling paralyzing firebolts, else I would be a madman already. On that night of my last doulon, somewhere between Gillarine and Palinur, my spellworking had not waked him. He'd only detected the magical residue in the morning. For the rest of the journey, he had mumbled curses at himself.

“I was too slow picking up on what you were about. That won't happen again.” He slipped off the cords and tossed them on the table. Then, kindly, he peeled off my mask and threw it down beside the bindings. “Tell me what spell you worked that night, and I might tell you some of the ways we have to keep you from running away from this house.”

“Ach…” The cords had left deep grooves in my flesh. I fumbled to unfasten the clasp on my horrid cloak, but my fingers felt like clubs. I shook them vigorously and moved closer to the fire. As my fingers throbbed, I shot him a halfhearted grin. “Tell me what protections you've set up here, and I might tell you what I was doing that night.”