The Soul Consortium (12 page)

True words, Daughter. He has made something of his life. You have done nothing with yours.

“Well?” Livio asks. “Are you going to light the fire?”

“Yes, of course,” I say, and I wince from the renewed pain in my head as I move toward the fire to add coals from the sack.

“Wait.” Livio holds out a hand and squints at my face. “Is that … blood?”

I touch my cheek, then study my fingers. Dried blood flakes against my fingertips, and I feel there again, flinching at the bruise that has bloomed.

“Whatever have you been doing? And what’s that on your hand? A burn? Come here. Let me see.”

That’s right. Go to your brother. Deceive him with your petty pains and leech the sympathy from him. Bleed the rest of your family dry now that you’re done poisoning me.

“Poison you? No! I wouldn’t ever—”

“What?” Livio looks up at me as he holds my palm ready to inspect it. “Poison me? What are you talking about?”

The pain. The torture of Mama’s accusations. Livio’s blunt questions. I try to hold it all in, try to control my failing nerves, but it is too much for me.

“Has someone attacked you? Did you fall in the snow and hurt your head? Why are you crying? It really doesn’t appear to be that bad, just a superficial—”

“Mama, she … I … Keitus Vieta took her and I—”

Livio’s face stiffens. “You know about Vieta?”

“I’m sorry. I just—”

“How?”

“The two men that came for Mama, they told me his name, so I went to see him.”

“You did what?” Livio stands. He towers over me with balled fists, and for a terrible moment I think he will lash out, but he turns from me and glares into the fireplace. “What did you tell him?”

I wipe the tears from my eyes and stare at the floorboards, watching misty clouds of my breath puff outward. I didn’t realize how fast I was breathing. And I cannot understand why my brother is so angry.

Because he lied to the old man. He told him that you had consented to sell me. Your brother is afraid he will have to return the money he has already promised his debtors … And it will be your fault, Dominique.
Mama’s scornful words cut into me like icy talons.

“Well, Sister? What did you tell him?”

“You have debts? I thought you were rich.”

He turns, and with his deep brown eyes twitching as he moves slowly to sit on the stool again, I know Mama’s words are true.

“How much do you owe?” I ask. “Do Fran and Arrigo know?”

“Who told you?” Fear dominates his frowning face. “Mama told me.”

“Mama? But she didn’t—”

“She knows now.”

Yes, yes! I know many things about him now. There are others here too, and they know all about him. They tell me things. They even know about his affair with the duchess.

“The duchess?” It flies from my mouth before I even realize.

Livio shakes his head in disbelief. Even in the cold, sweat beads across his brow. “What is this? How could you know?”

Again the tears well up within me, and I so desperately need my brother’s comfort. I show him my trembling palm, words ready to babble from my lips, and his wide, terrified eyes look at the burnt disc of raw flesh.

“Keitus Vieta,” I whimper as if the name were a curse. “The cane, his … the sculptures … witchcraft.”

“Witchcraft?” His eyes change again, as if I have given him all the answers he needs. “Witchcraft indeed. So Vieta has found a new apprentice.”

I sink to my knees, the throbbing in my skull reaching a bone-splitting crescendo as Mama rips my mind with a piercing cackle. “Please help me. Don’t leave me.”

Livio nods, stands again, and goes to the door. “Repeat nothing of what has been spoken in this house today, and I will get help. I hope you will learn from this lesson. Fool with the devil and your hands will get burnt.”

He steals one more glance at my palm, then leaves.

S
everal hours come and go before I see anyone else. I cannot eat, drink, or sleep because of the throbbing in my head, but as the time passes, I listen to the voices running back and forth through the corridors of my mind. Mama’s screeching accusations remain constantly at the fore, never lacking in venom.

But as I learn to focus my thoughts and untangle the many threads and tones of speech, I hear dozens of other men, women, and children, discovering all of them to be deceased and able to converse with one another, as though my soul has become a great, dark purgatory in which they can linger in debate.

So many confused souls wander my mind confessing their woes. Most came to a tragic and sudden end, but some pull at the strings of my heart more than others. There is a small orphaned boy named Renee who managed to travel all the way from France only to become frail from exposure and die by the jaws of wild animals on the cold hills just outside our town. A Spanish soldier shot by accident during a training exercise just a day after he announced his engagement to a woman named Bessie who lived not far from my own street. And many villagers who were crushed in the rioting over the last few days.

There is also Duke Lexington, the English nobleman who married in Rome and traveled here on business only to discover that his wife was having an affair with Livio. He committed suicide several weeks ago, but through Keitus Vieta’s terrible witchcraft, his lost spirit is able to pass on this information to Mama using me as a channel.

I wonder what I have done to deserve such a curse.

At dusk the door opens without ceremony. Half awake and tremulous with fatigue, I say nothing when Livio, Arrigo, and Fran bustle inside, carrying an assortment of items. Fran immediately busies herself preparing vegetables and stewing meat whilst Arrigo goes to the fireplace to start a fire and build up the coals. Livio, an expression of wary incredulity toughening his gaze, takes his position opposite me with his chin resting on interlaced fingers, examining me as though I might jump up at any moment, frothing at the mouth and spouting blasphemies.

I suppose he is right to be cautious—I have, after all, been tainted.

You know how much I despise him, Dominique,
says the duke.
Tell him! And go tell the priesthood. They must
know of his terrible disgrace.

Speak nothing more of his affair,
Mama tells me.
You have done enough damage already. My eldest has always been my favorite. If you ruin him I will torment you in the next life as well as this one.

No,
says the Duke,
justice must be served.

With the two voices vying for recognition, I allow them their fight. I am too weary to speak or acknowledge either of them.

“You’ll be warm soon enough, Dom,” Arrigo says, fanning a new flame on the coals, “and Fran will have some hearty stew ready for you in no time.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, feeling a new warmth and strength, not from the newly stoked fire but from the rescuing presence of my brothers and sister.

“Livio,” Fran barks, “stop staring at your sister and find a blanket to put around her until the house is warm.”

Without removing his gaze from me, Livio stands, then walks toward the stairs. “Watch her,” he says before disappearing to the bedrooms.

“So, Dom.” Arrigo sits in Livio’s seat with his arms folded and a smirk hinting on his lips. “Livio tells us you’ve been learning a few tricks from that creepy artist in the old market house. Is that right?”

Arrigo’s lightness of spirit might be another medicine to aid my recovery, so I try to smile. “Not willingly and through no fault of my own. Keitus Vieta is a strange man, and I believe I may have unwittingly fallen victim to his witchcraft.”

“So he
is
a witch then?”

“I can think of no other way to explain what I saw and felt or the things he said to me.”

“Told you, Fran,” Arrigo says. “I
told
you that man was a witch. There’s something not right about him.”

“Nonsense!” Fran turns, pointing a meat knife at Arrigo. “She’s playing for attention. The biggest mystery here is why Livio has fallen for her deceit. I credited him with at least a seed of intelligence.”

“If you don’t believe her, why did you agree to our little … party this evening?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We have to find out how she knows all of our brother’s dirty secrets.”

And she’s scared you’ll know hers too,
says a voice from the back of my mind.

“You don’t have to talk about me as if I’m not here.”

Fran looks at me, and I meet her gaze. She seems surprised at my sudden boldness.

Somehow I sense there are more important things to worry about than accepting my sister’s judgement. Or perhaps the pain behind my eyes is sapping my humility. “I’m not lying. Something happened to me at Keitus Vieta’s house, something … devilish. I
know
things now.”

For the first time in her life, Fran looks away first, then turns back to slicing meat. “That remains to be seen.”

Silence prevails for a few more moments before Arrigo, looking apprehensively from me to Fran, slaps the table. “Well! If it’s any consolation, Dom, I’m reliably informed that Mr. Vieta’s lease on that property is ending soon. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the fellow turned up here just so he could watch the riots.”

Arrigo’s comment is welcome, but a sudden escalation of pain prevents me from answering. I barely notice Livio coming back down the stairs carrying a large woolen blanket. He lays it carefully about my shoulders.

You adulterous bastard, Livio.
That was the duke, and with his voice projecting such malice in my head, I jerk my head up as though a puppeteer yanked a cord fastened to my scalp. There must have been murder in my eyes for one terrible moment, because Livio stumbles backward, sending a chair clattering to the floor. It is all I can do to press my eyes shut and hold my mouth from uttering the spite of the dead as they try to use my tongue.

Did she love you, Livio?

“Did she love you as much as I hate you?” And then I scream, not knowing whether the voices I hear are my own or those of the dead.

“Dominique! What are you—?”

Adulterer! Adulterer!

As if the duke’s rage has carved a path through my head for the others to flood through, a tumultuous gabble of panic, fear, and misery surges forth. My lips, a feeble dam holding it all back, shiver as I claw at the table, fighting for control.

Hold your tongue!

Let us out!

“Let us out!” And I can hold them no longer. A thunderous crack like a fissure ripping my skull sends a bolt of pain through me, and I lurch forward vomiting bile onto the table as my head smashes into the wood. It could be the devil himself tearing a hole in my mind to release his hordes on my waking thoughts, for I cannot stop the contortion of my limbs, and the nearness of the voices comes with such violence, rushing in sudden unison, I am aware of little else but the babbling of my lips.

“Adulterer! Kill the adulterer. Make him suffer for taking my wife. I will cut off your hands. Yes, cut off your hands and pluck out your tongue. No, say nothing, Dominique. He has repented and, oh, the jaws, they snap and they bite, help me help me the wolves have taken me and the crowds press upon me with their heels on my head and I know what you do in the dark Fran and how you practice the dark arts and seek the knowledge of demons and dance under raining blood and how Arrigo preys upon the weak and lowly to feed his pocket …”

I lay panting. The soft ripples of my breath disturb the stinking vomit against my cheek, and though the voices do not stop, my voice fails me. My brothers and sister, as still as the statues in Keitus Vieta’s house, stare at me in silent terror as if a rampaging bull has been shot down in the center of the room.

Fran is the first to speak, but her voice is uncharacteristically weak. “We need an exorcist.”

“I will speak to Father Pirellio and—”

Arrigo cuts Livio off with a wave of his hand but keeps his wide eyes fixed on mine. “No, I beg you to wait. I have an idea.”

A
n idea he called it. Livio said it was the most dangerous proposition he had ever heard coming from his brother’s lips, and Fran was beside herself with rage when Arrigo set his plans in motion. Their objections soon mellowed, however, when the first shower of coins splashed before their feet.

And me? I became so distressed by my brother’s new venture that I almost died of shame. I would have killed myself, but I had been caught in the grip of blackmail, threatened with a witch’s fate. Knowing now the destiny of those who die without salvation, I would suffer any torture this life has to offer rather than spend an eternity like those who live inside my head as nothing more than voices shouting in the dark.

But at least my life serves a purpose now, and perhaps, even though my own soul is cursed, I can in some small measure turn the devil’s own weapons against him. After all, it was not David’s sling that killed Goliath but Goliath’s own sword after David felled him. My sword is necromancy. With it I hope to bring some comfort to those who mourn and so turn Satan’s power against him.

But day by day my sin grows as I fail to take a stand against my family’s scheme, and three months after Arrigo bought my compliance by agreeing to buy Mama’s body back from Keitus Vieta and provide for her a proper burial, I fear all chance for my redemption is lost. At the time I was desperate, and with still no sign of my fiancé’s return, I agreed to go through with it. Now that day seems so distant, and my fear of the consequences looms over me as though Keitus Vieta’s long shadow is cast across the sunset of my life, for I know it is coming. I feel it.

And so tonight, as the clock chimes midnight, my brother ushers in yet another griever, summoned to our home in secret, filled with awe at the reputation I have acquired and the pedestal Arrigo has placed me upon. Like all the others, this man paid handsomely to seek an audience with me for the chance to hear a word of comfort or closure from a lost loved one, and he will not leave disappointed.