The Spirit Lens (7 page)

“The noble investigator has no theories?”

And so to the next element of the mystery. “A month after the attempt, Michel de Vernase wrote a letter to the king stating he’d found new evidence and hoped to have a solid case before too many more days passed. He said he planned ‘a second visit to Collegia Seravain.’ No one has seen or heard from him since.”

“Mayhap he found the villain he was hunting.” Dante’s attention shifted to the spyglass. “And this?”

I swallowed hard and glared at the instrument, its tarnished surface gleaming dully in the light. It seemed wrong that such a fine invention, a marvel not so many years ago, could so strike my heart with dread.

“Naught is known of its origin or purpose. But when you sight through it, you’ll understand why our dilemma is so much more than marital disaffection, more even than the revival of such evil practice as blood transference. And you’ll see why we need a talented mage to help unravel this mystery.” The memory of my own looking made me wish to creep into a cave and hide.

Dante drew his fingers along the artifact’s tarnished case and around each of its knurled grips. He brushed dust and damp from the lenses, and while bracing it awkwardly with his scarred right fingers, he examined its construction, expanding and collapsing its length and twisting the grips.

“This was not expertly made,” he said. “Its mechanisms are unbalanced, its material impure.” He glanced up. “This takes no magic to learn, if you’re wondering, but only the teaching of a skilled instrument maker. But the making shapes its keirna, and it’s nae possible to comprehend keirna without understanding function and composition.”

Stepping back from the light, he balanced the brass instrument in the claw of his ruined hand and peered through the eyepiece. The color drained from his cheeks as it surely had from mine. He set the instrument gingerly upon the stone table and snatched his hands away, breath rapid, lips compressed, his eyes squeezed tight as if a dagger had pierced his skull.

Dante did not tell me what he’d seen. But as we locked the cell door, I guessed that he, too, had glimpsed a scene beyond this life—a scene not even the most sophisticated enchantments should be able to show us.

“The Veil teachings have never made sense to me,” he said. “Why would a god who bothers to create living persons suddenly decide to ship them off someplace worse than this life when they’re dead, all in hopes of some heaven that no one can describe? If I have to depend on my kin or some benevolent stranger to get me through ten gates to a paradise that might or might not be better than this, I might as well give up right now. Dead is dead, or so I’ve claimed. . . .”

I disliked such bluntness. In my youth I had accepted what I’d been taught at the temple: that the Blood Wars had brought humankind to such a state of depravity that the Pantokrator had altered his creation, setting the bleak and treacherous Ixtador between the Veil and Heaven. Those souls who journeyed the trackless desolation and passed Ixtador’s Ten Gates would be well purified, worthy of the Pantokrator’s glory. Those who failed would be left for the Souleater to devour on the last day of the world.

Unfortunately the dead could do little to further their own cause. The honor and virtuous deeds of the family left behind must provide the strength and endurance for a soul’s journey. As I came to see that my weak family connections were unlikely to provide much support for Ixtador’s trials, and that my prospects for improving the situation were exceedingly poor, I had shoved such concerns to the back of my mind, unwilling to relinquish either hope or belief. The spyglass insisted I confront the issue.

The mage rubbed the back of his neck tiredly and tugged at his silver collar again. “But then we must ask what is this devilish glass? Gods, if you think I can answer that for you, you’ve less wit than that rock in the garden. It would take a deal of study. Experimentation. So that’s the job, is it? To find out the use of these things. Or, I suppose, it’s truly to tell your employer, who is the
king
, I’m guessing, and not his treacherous wife”—he paused and waited; I nodded and shoved open the outer cell block door—“what sorcerer in this blighted kingdom could create such enchantments and why an assassin—a voiceless mule—would carry them.” He ground the heel of his staff into the stone. “Did anyone see the mule
use
the glass?”

“Not that we know.”

“His Dimwit Majesty ought to question his queen. I could do
that
for him.”

I had no doubt he could. His rumbling undertone shook me like the earth tremors I’d felt when I was a boy, on the day a godshaking had razed the city of Catram eight hundred kilometres away.

“Yes, the king wants to know who’s responsible for transference and attempted murder,” I said. “He wants his queen exonerated. He wants to know how this instrument can show him a sixteen-year-old battlefield disgorging its dead men, many of whom he knows, into a wilderness that perfectly fits every description of Ixtador Beyond the Veil. And he very much desires to know what’s become of Michel de Vernase. Though he’s received no demand for ransom or favor in exchange for Michel’s life, he refuses to accept that his friend is dead.”

We started up the dungeon stair.

“Beyond all that lies his duty to Sabria. The king believes magic is dying, and he bids it good riddance. He sees it as a chain that binds us to superstition and causes us to descend into myth-fed savagery such as the Blood Wars. This event tells him that someone is attempting exactly that, seeking power of such magnitude as to touch the demesne of the dead. But for what purpose? As Sabria’s protector, he must understand what’s being done and by whom and why. He doesn’t trust the Camarilla . . . the prefects . . . any mage . . . knowing how they resent him.”

“But for some reason he trusts you, who lives and works among them. You’re his spy.”

“I prefer the title
agente confide
.” It bore a certain gentility; less resonances of ugly execution. “As it happens, I am His Majesty’s distant kinsman—fortunately for you,
very
distant, so I’ll not take exception to your loose-tongued name calling. Though we’d never met until a half month ago, my cousin subscribes to the old virtues in the matter of family, thus has charged me to protect his life and search out the answers he needs. He believed I was—”

Again came the uncomfortable confession. Nine years previous, Master Kajetan had first forced me to admit failure aloud. As my mentor, he had insisted I speak the verdict to my parents, else I would be tempted to live forever with a delusion. My father, who had ever lived in his own delusions, had taken umbrage. I still wore the scars—within and without. The ugly episode had left me shy of discussing my paucity of talent.

Dante waited. I inhaled deeply. “As you judge correctly, Master, I cannot even begin to unravel such magic. Though I have informed the king of my lacks, he insists he trusts me to solve his mystery. As for the spying—well, for that we must include the chevalier in our conversation. Are you willing to go on, Master Dante? It is time for yea or nay, in or out.”

The lamplight scarce touched the bottomless well of the descending stair, and the sinewy, black-haired mage with the unsettling gaze might have been Dimios himself, returning to the world of light for his annual visit, the blighted hand the manifest evidence of his corruption. He halted just below me.

“I doubted you could present me a mystery that I would take on—a librarian with self-loathing so exposed as to make him bold. But I don’t like events that contradict my view of the world. So, go on, tell me the rest.”

I took that as a
yea
.

CHAPTER THREE

36 TRINE 61 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

I
lario’s lanky frame sprawled like a creeping vine over an armchair at Lady Susanna’s card table. He was spinning his crocodile charm above his head like a pinwheel, occasionally rattling a crystal-globed lamp or clinking his wineglass. The lady herself, a serene, intelligent beauty with the most luxuriant black hair I had ever seen, laid down her fan of cards when I tapped on the open door. She was a gracious hostess indeed to tolerate Ilario for more than a tennight without the least ripple of aggravation.

“Pardon, my lady,” I said, bowing. “I’m sorry to steal your company. Chevalier, you wished to speak to our visitor. . . .”

“No matter,” said Susanna, shifting a richly colored shawl to her shoulders as she rose. Her smile illumined her large eyes and the deep cinnamon glow of her complexion. “I am a hopeless night bird. My husband is long to bed, and I have teased poor Ilario into one game too many in search of evening’s amusement. Though he carries the most perfect tenor, he will sing only when we play at cards. Alas, he seems to have run out of cheerful ditties.”

Indolence abandoned, Ilario contracted his spread limbs and slithered to the edge of his chair, peering curiously through the empty doorway behind me. “Your exceptional loveliness demands excellence, dear lady, a responsibility that weighs heavy on my bardic soul. My supply of drivel is endless; my supply of poetry not so, especially when awaiting a visit from a fiend. My companion Portier, as you see, is of a depressive cast of mind, but this fellow who’s come to visit us makes Portier appear but a frippery. Where is the devilish visitor, good curator?”

“He awaits us in the wild garden,” I said.

“You must persuade him to come inside,” said the lady. “The night closes very dark. If he prefers more privacy, Hanea will open the guesthouse.”

Ilario got out an answer more quickly than I. “Lovely Susanna, I fear indelible bruises on your innocent soul must result were his company forced upon you.”

Lady Susanna laughed, a throaty ripple that issued from a deep center, and then kissed the fop on his flaxen head. “Sweet Ilario, innocent? Me? You must quit all indulgence in wine. I’ll leave you to your fiendish visitor, but rest assured, naught can bruise my soul. I am well hardened.”

She had scarce vanished, when she poked her head back around the doorjamb, her eyes glimmering with pleasure. “One matter of interest, Sonjeur de Duplais. Our son, Edmond, returns home tomorrow on leave from his posting in the south. You needn’t fear; he is reliable and discreet. Yet I would not have him . . . compromised . . . by awkward situations. You understand.”

She didn’t wait for confirmation, but glided out of sight in a whisper of silk. Ilario gazed after her, as if admiring the afterglow such a luminary must leave behind. “Is any woman so much a vision of Heaven’s angels? How fortune leads us. . . .” Then he lifted his head abruptly. “I could have had her, you know. She wasn’t highborn. Even an offside pedigree such as mine would have raised her up. Yes, she’s a few years older, but egad . . . this fossil she’s got instead! Eugenie says Conte Olivier was His Majesty’s first commander. Taught him everything about leading troops and bedding down in muck and staying on his feet in a battle. He was Soren’s first commander, too, but I doubt he taught the shitheel much. Soren believed he knew everything already.”

Eugenie de Sylvae—Ilario’s half sister—had been but a child when wed to King Soren, Philippe’s predecessor and an even more distant cousin of mine. When Soren fell in a miscalculated raid on the witchlords of Kadr, he had not yet bedded the girl, much less begat an heir. Through a happenstance of Sabrian custom, my fifteenth cousin, a wild young duc entirely unprepared for the throne, had inherited the demesne of Sabria. To preclude any dispute of his position, Philippe had immediately wed Soren’s child widow, inheriting her virginity, the support of her powerful relatives, and her bastard half brother, Ilario. My overly sentimental mother had insisted that political necessity had grown into a true love match between Philippe and Eugenie—despite the burden of the ridiculous half brother. But who could say what love meant, especially in such rarified circles? I doubted my mother knew.

“Thanks be, young Edmond got his mother’s wit as well as her looks,” mused Ilario. “Old Olivier has the cleverness of a turnip in anything but war making and wife picking.”

Feeling the press of time, I dropped my voice. “I’ve judged that Mage Dante’s talents will . . . suffice. And he agrees that the level of magic the glass signifies is extraordinary.”

Ilario bobbed his fair head and clapped his hands. “Excellent, Portier. I knew he would work out.” As if he’d thought of it. “Go to it.”

“If we are to be partner
agentes
, the three of us must agree on our next steps.”

He flared his straight nose and stretched his long saffron-colored legs in front of him. “Heaven’s messengers, I near piss myself when he glares at me, and these are my favorite hose.”

My royal cousin had insisted that Ilario was trustworthy and that his close bond with his half sister could help us discover the truth. I could accept that, but playing nursemaid to the fop would test a saint’s patience. “You must attend, Chevalier. It is your duty as a Knight of Sabria, your sister’s champion, one might say.”

“Oh. Quite right.” He jumped to his feet and inhaled until his bony ribs threatened to pop the buttons on his gold waistcoat. “You understand, Portier, Eugenie could not have done this thing—conspired. It is not in her nature.”

I had never seen him so somber when he wasn’t frighted out of his wits or reeling drunk. Thus I found myself believing him—which was entirely foolish so early on. I had vowed to withhold judgment in
all
these matters until evidence led me to the truth.

“I understand, Chevalier. We do this for her safety as well as His Majesty’s . . . and Sabria’s.” I didn’t think a reminder of our larger purposes would go amiss. Uncounted thousands of Sabria’s people had died in the Blood Wars, the flower of her nobility, the most powerful of her magical families. A second orgy of death and ruin would destroy us all.

 

 

THE EVENING HAD COOLED. SCENTS of thyme, lavender, and waking earth rose in the spring damp, and the soft rasping twitter of tree crickets engulfed the trees. Ilario steeled his courage by clutching his spalls—the shards of onyx and jade he carried to remind him of the ancestors he held sacred: surely including the father he shared with Queen Eugenie, and her mother, who had so generously taken her husband’s bastard infant into her home and raised him as her own.