The Soul Mirror (43 page)

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Authors: Carol Berg

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction

BOOK: The Soul Mirror
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Wide-awake now, I watched the scattered lights of Merona winking in the night. Which lamp or candle was his? He was out there somewhere, my friend of the mind. A teacher, he’d said. Duplais might name himself a teacher after all his years in Seravain’s library. I imagined my friend to be a serious, scholarly man like Duplais, though my sensibilities placed him closer to my own years. Certainly he was not some balding elder, but a fair and fine-looking fellow with frayed cuffs and ink-stained fingers, studying by candlelight at the Collegia Physica, perhaps, or more likely the Collegia Biologica. He had been going out to study night-blooming plants, after all, an area of interest that seemed unlikely for Duplais. Of course he valued my friendship, alone with this gift that no one in the world shared, that no one would believe and many would call madness or daemon-touched. How fortunate I was that he’d been there to guide me through the terrors of beginning. Unless it was all a lie.
No, I could as soon believe this court life a lie. Our friendship had skipped the fripperies and formalities of society, the layers of family and manners and rank that conspired to hide the true person. This had not begun in artifice, but deep in our centers . . . my fear . . . his solitude . . .
The dome of the temple major swept a dark arc from the star-filled sky. Scarce a kilometre distant. If my instincts were true, in less than an hour, a runner would be waiting there for the teacher’s friend with a white ribbon in her hair. And if I did nothing, I might spend the rest of my days not with a quiet scholar who loved books, or even a warrior/diplomat who relished learning, but with an obscene and mindless grotesque. His food-flecked beard would brush my face, his leathery head lie on the pillow next to me. . . . Heaven’s gates, I could still smell the stale wine and sour body.
Banishing doubt, I downed two drops of Lianelle’s potion—enough to get me out of the palace gates and through the city. A white lace pulled from my spare chemise would suffice for a ribbon. As the smeared colors of the world took on their blue-limned mystery, I threw on a dark cloak and hurried through Castelle Escalon and into the night.
 
 
LITTLE TIME WAS REQUIRED TO have me questioning the wisdom of the excursion. Only a few passersby peopled the streets of Merona—a guardsman here, a hard-breathing laborer hauling a coal barrow there, a gentleman on horseback who, from his wandering path and mumbled singing, had indulged excessively in the pleasures of a Riverside tavern. But I might have been pushing my way through thousands of souls, with their stinks and spittle, their resentments and anxieties. Hungers. Spite. And fear everywhere. Lianelle’s magic left me naked. I could not get this done fast enough.
The mindstorm receded as I passed the gates of the temple precincts and entered the desolate gardens. The air stank of dust and urine and sour vegetation.
Visible now, I tied the white lace on my braid and ran up the wide steps. After scouring the portico from one end to the other, I stood next the bronze doors in the wavering torchlight, caution thrown aside. Not a soul moved on the porch or plaza. Weeds torn from the deadness skittered past, joining a thorny pile at the far end of the porch.
Common sense demanded I retreat. But this opportunity might not come again.
“Fine lady, has you a kivre for a girl’s not et a bite this day? Or a charm or trinket a body might sell to quiet the gnawish?”
Though prepared for a sudden appearance, the brassy greeting sent a cold shock across my nerves. She sat in the shadow of a column not twenty steps from me.
My one hand slipped the zahkri from its sheath. The other clutched a potion vial. Invisibility would serve me better than my fighting skills. “I’ve naught to give,” I said. “I’ve come to meet a friend.”
Far across the temple plaza, a hobbling, lumpish figure dragged a small wheeled cart. The wheel squeaked in a slow rhythm.
When I glanced back at the girl, she stood at the edge of a different column’s shadow. Tall as Ambrose, whip slim, her gleaming skin the hue of walnuts, she must move quickly as a hummingbird. A crimson shawl sagged in large, graceful folds about her arms and shoulders and down one side, caught up at her waist with a silver link belt on the other. The asymmetric garment revealed long, slim legs sheathed in well-worn boots reaching to her thighs. Fassid, surely. Cazars were said to have a trace of Fassid blood, an exotic beauty visible in my mother and Ambrose and entirely lacking in me.
“Mayhap your
friend
would have a coin,” she said. “If the friend be a live one. A lady-born wandering the city at night might pretend a friend or seek out ghosts.”
“
You
travel alone in the city.”
She had circled around so the torchlight glared in my face. “Indeed so. But I be customed to it. And not defenseless.”
“Nor am I defenseless.” I shifted my position as well, backing up to the very column she had deserted, stretching my ears and eyeing the rest of the pooled shadows for any hint of movement. I raised the zahkri.
Her sidling steps halted. “Mayhap . . .”
“
Feste kistaro ju!
” I said, which meant “Leave me alone unless we have business
.
” It was my only Fassid phrase. My grandmother had used it to scatter annoying children.
The girl, perhaps my same age, burst into full-throated laughter. “What a fierce little creature! So, tell, who sends tha?”
I inhaled deeply. “The son of Salvator.”
“Very interesting, serious friends have tha,” she said, the torchlight glinting on silver earrings. “One, certain, who thinks of tha highly. Raissina Nialle’s services do not come light. Fortunately for a lady-born having a tight fist and no silver, such a friend has covered thy fee. Though I do not think he comprehends thy full state.”
In a seeming eyeblink, she had bridged the gap between us and was fingering the emerald silk of my court gown. “Perhaps the fee should be larger.”
“Your mistress decides that, I’m sure,” I said, yanking the skirt from her fingers and berating myself for not taking the time to change clothes. “Take me to her, if you please. I’ve little time.”
“Testing for a fight, ben’t tha? Tha’rt quite the little scrag-dog. Come.”
She led me across the wide portico, down the steps past the tangle of dry weeds snagged by a short fence, and into a small fountain court. Water trickled from the moss-slicked statue of a sinewed woman locked in an endless struggle with a sea monster. My skin prickled.
My guide sat on a bench facing the font, spread her arms along the back, and stretched her long, booted legs in front of her. “Welcome to my abode of business, girl wearing the white ribbon. None shall overhear us in this place. Speak your need.”
For a moment, I was fooled, hunting the source of the deeper, richer voice. But only the runner and I occupied the fountain court, as solitary inside the dribble of the water as we might be in the cave behind a waterfall.
Then I understood. I sheathed the zahkri and extended my open—and empty—palms in her direction. “Raissina Nialle, may the winds of war and commerce fill thy sails and coffers. May our exchange be of honor and to our mutual benefit.”
“Better! A start more friendly than fierce.” Here where the torchlight scarce reached, I could not read her face. But the air seemed less taut between us.
“I am to be betrothed to a man I despise. I wish to stop it.”
Her arms swept a gesture large enough to signify me and my situation. “Marriage is difficult to counter if law permits and those who rule the family decide. Yet, occasionally, obstacles can be found. The son of Salvator specifics I cannot ask the lady’s name. But I must know the man’s.”
“Derwin de Scero, Barone Gurmeddion.”
Her hand clapped over her mouth. The odd noises squeezing past her fingers told me variously that she was in the throes of a fit or choking on her dinner in compatible revulsion. But before very long her shaking shoulders clarified her reaction. She was convulsed with laughter.
I located a nearby bench, sat down, and waited for her to regain composure. “Ah, poor dearie, dearie, dearie. Be tha a devil spirit? Whoever pawns this loathsome mate on tha must think it. Weren’t I a businesswoman, I’d do this for naught but air and glory!”
She dealt with a fit of the hiccoughs and wiped her eyes. I waited, hopes rising, relishing what she might tell.
“Be tha easy, lady-born. The ways this marrying can be obstructed are numbered more than Riverside rats. No need to consultate my sources. To begin, this Gurmedd lord has a wife living. Not pleasured about it is she, but breathing, nonetheless . . .”
The Fassid woman reeled off a history of murder and larceny enough to fill Spindle Prison were each offense committed by a separate man. Surely Derwin’s wife chained in his cellar must be sufficient to halt any marriage contract.
“. . . yet tha knowst a scurrit lord so large as this one is crafty, else he’d not have so long a tally for the Fallen to punish. So I’ll advise ta move with caution, else ye’ll join poor Elliana in his cellar. He’d lick his lips at that.” She shuddered, all laughter spent. “And now you’ve what I can give. To diddle the law on your behalf would be a new tally on your own account.”
Her warnings were well given. I’d need to use this information with care, else I could end up in Derwin’s custody with vengeance to be served on top of lust—a prospect to make a future with the Souleater a pleasurable idea.
I rose and opened my palms to her again. “My need is served, Raissina Nialle. Our commerce ended. No diddling required just now.”
“Ah, but ’tis wise to deposit a bit on account with me. Naught but a name . . . a demesne . . . for a fierce little lady-born pledged to the Gurmedd snake . . . who comes fearless through the middle-night, knowing a smat of the Fassid tongue and politenesses of my kind. The prospect of your tale curls my toes. Be certain ’twill be held in trust until you’ve need again.”
“Or until someone pays you for it.”
“With no deposit made, the cost for service in the future grows higher. A kinsman’s name, perhaps, or a bit of gossip gleaned in your . . . very high . . . circles. Tell me a name friendly; then I’ve no need to go hunting for who might be talking of Gurmedd links.”
“I admire an honest broker, Raissina, but you are a broker nonetheless. I’ve no wish to make a deposit just now. I shall report our satisfactory dealings to the one who sent me. He swore you’d hold these ‘smats’ of knowledge about me to yourself as part of his payment, yes?”
She drew in legs and arms, as if closing her shop. Slow and sinuous, she rose to her full height and bowed deep. “It is so. Tell him we are square, all bargains held.”
I’VE DONE IT
, I SAID, my shaking hand covering my eyes.
I’ve arrows now, but no idea how to loft them.
Good. That’s very good. You’ll find a way. You didn’t . . . give . . . her anything? I should have warned you she’d try to wheedle. . . .
She tried. I refused. Nor did I ask for more information than your bargain with her specified.
You
can rest easy about that.
I wasn’t
—He bit off the blurted denial, the lie so easily recognizable.
Sometimes it’s difficult to trust.
And that was truth.
CHAPTER 25
22 OCET, MORNING
O
n the morning after my venture into Raissina Nialle’s shop of bargains,
Prayers
appeared on Queen Eugenie’s schedule yet again. Again Antonia informed me I would not be needed after supper. She did so as she held my arm and guided me into the reception room off the east foyer for our meeting with Simon de Bois and the king’s secretary in residence. I’d not even had time to decide how to use the information my friend of the mind had bought for me. Accusations must be supported by proof—records, witnesses. I could get them, but not quickly.
It is intolerably easy to sign away a woman’s life. Indenture for debt requires an appearance before three magistrates on three days running. A tenancy agreement with a lord requires five witnesses from the community, only two of whom may be the estate’s current tenants. But a marriage contract requires only a representative of the woman’s guardian and a representative of the prospective husband. My presence was no more required than my consent. Antonia’s presence was to ensure the event took place. Simon’s presence was, as Antonia indicated, to raise any assurances that the king might have given my father when the Ruggiere grant was made—a formality at best.

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