The Universal Mirror (9 page)

“You can barely see the platform from here,” he muttered as he caught up with Catharine.  It was an elevated stage to which he referred, crudely built with a block at one end of it.  Hands or heads—it was one or the other that the Council would take.

“I know.  Why do you think I came back here?”  She glanced with disgust at the place in which they were standing.  The stone was covered in wet straw and flies, the scent of urine rising in fumes from the gutters.  Catharine tugged at her skirts to jerk them out of the mud as she glanced around the two of them.

“The company?”  He gestured to a couple of young boys taking turns spitting at the wall, then to an old woman who was winking at him with her one remaining eye.  She stopped the leer when Catharine looked over at her, replacing it instead with a smile made of rotted, black teeth.

In spite of herself, Catharine laughed.  “Well, I do have you, Quent.  Perhaps I can arrange a trade with that one-eyed woman.  I’ve always wanted a chicken.”  The redhead looked back over at the woman to see that she did appear to have a mass of feathers poking out from a bag she’d slung over her back.  He shuddered.

“A chicken?”  He danced lightly around her, finding a barrel and wiping rainwater off the top of it.  He gestured to Catharine, bidding her silently to sit down.  “I’m worth two goats at least.”

“You’re as much trouble as four, for cert.”  The woman replied as she sat, smoothing her skirts out as if they were sitting in a parlor.

Her light tone took effort—that, Quentin could see by the tightening of her smile.  He admired her for it even as he silently cursed himself for being so careless with his nights.

“Exactly,” he said, careful to maintain their pretense of friendship.  Even if Catharine was reserving her kindness for public appearances, it was still kindness that he longed for.  “So, why settle for a chicken?”

“I always wanted a chicken growing up,” she flashed him a smile that bore no rancor, lost as she was in a fond memory of childhood.  “Father would never have stood for it, of course.  So I used to—”

What Catharine had done was drowned out suddenly as the clarion call of trumpets announced the coming of the Council.  She slipped off the barrel and stood next to Quentin, both of them hushed with the crowd.

The Council of Magicians numbered five men, all of them masked.  Their identities were the subject of constant rumor at every dance and gathering.  Who the men truly were, no one could be sure although all had their theories.  Old and young alike, as the Council mounted the platform, it was impossible to distinguish one from one another.  Each man was cloaked in black, his face and head hidden by a raven’s head mask.  Quentin wondered as he stared at the dark figures whether the men even knew the identities of one another.

The magicians stood in a line, creating a billowing black wall as their cloaks fluttered in the wind.  The sky above them was stark, no clouds remaining to filter the harsh gray light from the face of the man that the executioner led in front of them. 

The prisoner was the only man who wore no mask or hood.  He was not much older than Quentin who heard Catharine’s breath hiss next to his neck as she leaned forward.

“It’s one of the Nestors,” she whispered.

“The Nestors?”  He craned his head forward, blurting out, “But I went to university with one of them…”  The same reaction was racing through the crowd as hushed voices all lifted, whispering of their own connections to the family.  Cercia was a small island and the Nestors not an insignificant part of it.

“Tammas Nestor,” the executioner bellowed and Quentin heard nothing more as his eyes fixed on the man who was walking the stage a second time.

“It is him,” he whispered.  “I know him.”

Quentin couldn’t stop gawking at Tammas, his mouth wide open in horror as what little he remembered of the man came to mind.  His curiosity… the fact that he liked cats and the color orange… these and a hundred other simple facts were what ran through his mind as the executioner began to read the charges against the man.  Tammas’ face was bone-white as Quentin stared at it, his black hair matted to his scalp with sweat.  In unison, the Council turned their backs and walked off the platform, moving as one into the building behind.  They had passed their judgment already, it seemed.  By turning their backs, they signaled that the punishment was to be carried out to its end.

“What did he do?”  Quent found himself asking though it was apparent from the faces around him that the audience had just been told.

“He tried to leave the island,” Catharine whispered and her hand slid down to take his, her grip stronger than his own.

He couldn’t see Tammas as the man made his way to the block.  Quentin’s eyes were too blurred with tears, knowing what they all did.  No magician was allowed to leave Cercia.  To leave was Heresy and heresy was just another name for treason in the end.

He would give up either his life or his magic.  To Quentin, it was one and the same.

“Quentin, you don’t have to watch this.”  Catharine’s low voice insisted, her hand pulling at his.  He felt her fingernails dig into his skin but he didn’t turn, unable to look away.

Others around them were pushing forward.People shoved their way towards the platform, to join the throbbing, hungry mass at its foot.  They thronged the space below the block, some raising their fists, others chanting.  A few watchers had already taken out their handkerchiefs, pressing their noses into linen and peeking out cautiously.

Quentin didn’t look away and neither did his wife.  She stepped in front of him as if she could shield him with her body, still clasping his hand, the pressure of hers so tight that he could feel the blood draining from his skin.

Tammas was several feet away but Quentin thought that he could see the other man’s lips move.  His lower lip appeared swollen, blood trickling down his chin and dripping against the wood below.  The executioner said nothing in response but simply, quietly nodded.  Then Tammas knelt, his knees lowering themselves into the bed of straw that had been placed next to the block. 

“He’ll kill himself by the end of the week,” Quentin heard a voice behind him say.  “They always do.”  He recognized the speaker but did not turn.  Felix, he thought.  Why come over to speak with me?  What purpose can it possibly have?

Tammas was holding his arms up towards the sky and a collective hush came over the crowd as the executioner pushed them down on the block, tethering the man’s hands with rope.  Catharine made a choked sound in the back of her throat, balling up her fist and biting it.  She stepped forward, the hair slipping from her braid as her head whipped around to look at Quentin with frightened eyes.  He said nothing, not knowing what it was that she feared.  It could very well have been him.

“Milady, methinks you should sit,” Felix said quickly.  He reached out, stepping around Quentin to grab Catharine’s arm.  To Quent’s surprise, she didn’t stop him.  He noticed then that she was trembling, her knees swaying as the executioner readied his axe.  Her head turned back towards the platform despite Felix’s attempts to move her away from the crowds.  Her arm jerked away from him and she slipped between people, nearing the stage as Quentin watched.

Then the axe fell.

Screaming followed it. First Tammas shrieked, than others in the crowd did the same, watching as blood flowed from what was left of his hands.  The executioner jerked him up sharply, half-carrying him towards a man who had come up to the platform, bandages in hand.  Catharine had turned and Quentin chose to focus on her face rather than the aftermath of the mutilation.  Her cheeks were damp as she walked back through the crowd, ducking her head.

Felix touched his shoulder.

“Don’t,” Quentin said.

“I think we should talk.”  The other man kept his voice low.  Catharine hadn’t quite made it over to them yet.  “About the other night.  I want to know what business you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“None of yours,” he snapped.

“Your—fri—Asahel came to my door well past nightfall asking for my help.  I don’t know whether you’ve regressed since university or not, Quentin, but I assume you’re still smart enough to know that his actions make it my business now.”  Felix crossed his arms, the irritation palpable. 

“It stopped being your business when you were too highhanded to walk me to my front door,” he said as Catharine came towards them, uncertain whether or not she could hear.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Carnicus, I need to escort my wife home.”

“Of course.”  Sarcasm dripped from his tongue as he swept into a low bow, snatching Catharine’s hand and pressing his lips against it.  Quentin scowled but said nothing, even as his wife gave Felix a warm smile.  “Catharine, it is lovely to see you again.  Your husband?  Not so much.”

“Oh, Felix,” she sighed.  Quentin noticed, however, that she gave no pretense of defending him.  He tried to stiffen his face into a smile but failed, the scowl instead deepening.  He noticed that Felix’s face had subsequently brightened.

“We ought to be going,” Quentin said, daring Felix to challenge him. 

Catharine was not unaware of the tension between the two men.  He could see her looking at them both, clearly measuring them up.  Felix had straightened up and dropped her hand—it was the same fingers that reached out to him now in a rare gesture of affection as she squeezed his palm. 

“A Judgment is hardly a happy occasion.”  Her eyes narrowed as she said it.  “I don’t want to linger here.”

“I had that sense,” Felix replied.  “I do, however, have some business to discuss with you, Quentin.”

“Later,” Catharine said, her voice steady. “You can discuss it later, perhaps when I’m not present.  I have no head for it now.”  Quentin could feel his stomach sink as he realized that she had, perhaps, heard far more than he’d intended.  Her hand was slipping away from his, returning to her dress and smoothing the folds out in a nervous gesture.

“Perhaps.”  Felix offered her another bow, then turned to Quentin with a curt nod of his head.  “Think about what I said.”

“I don’t think you’d allow me to do otherwise.”  For once, there was no retort and he sighed as Felix walked away, his shoulders jabbing at others as he pushed his way to the street.  Catharine was looking at him when he turned back, her eyes a little wider than they had been. 

“I… let’s go home.”  The space between her words struck him as suspicious.  He opened his mouth to say as much but stopped.

“Yes.  Let’s.” 

There would be time to sort this all out later.  Or not at all.

It had been a month since they had gone into the ground but Asahel still felt the weight of it. As he stared down at his blunted nails, kept perpetually bitten to the quick, he expected to see earth beneath their ragged edges. It had been days until the dirt had completely shaken loose, clinging to the skin with a tenacity that had evoked inevitable comment from his mother.

“Wash your hands, son,” Mariel Soames had said, her voice not that of a loving mother to an adult son but of a watchful eye to a heedless adolescent.

If there was one thing Asahel was not, it was heedless.

It was caution that guided him as he walked up the giant marble steps that lined the exterior of the castle. The Winter Court was situated just below the highest point of the island, faintly overshadowed by the mountains.

He saw the nobles entering above him and Asahel paused, his way barred by a pair of crossed lances. The guards stared at him with expressionless faces and he doubted that they had ever been inside the maze within, a labyrinth of stone and shadow into which few were granted entrance. He himself only held it because of his magic- had he wished to bring Mariel, she could not have come. It was rare that Asahel used the privilege. He noticed that even here, the peers passing by gave him hardly a glance. As he stared upwards, he could not see either Quentin or his wife and so, with a long sigh, he began to make his way towards the lower entrance.

There were fewer guards at the bottom of the stairs. The doors that welcomed were thin and tall. The women who came through this passage were dressed simply, although still richly. Gems did not sparkle in hair but instead hung demurely from a slender neck, where they hung at all. A few nodded as he passed although he did not recognize them.

The ballroom yawned out before him as he entered, his heavy frame feeling slower as he compared himself to the graceful dancers on the floor. Dresses swished together, the rustle of fabric where it touched like a whisper on marble. Pushing through the crowd, he walked over to the table where the matrons hovered like a murder of crows, dark dresses making harsh faces harsher still.

“Soames,” one greeted. “I hadn’t expected to see you.” The tone of her voice told him quite clearly that she disapproved of his presence, something that did not surprise him. The others at the table turned to stare at him, a merchant at their table. Straightening his back, he took a glass, managing to look resolute as he nodded simply in reply. Clucking her tongue, the woman returned to her glass with a sniff. Inwardly, he groaned. He should have thought of something clever. However, clever was one thing he was not.

The glass chilled his fingers as he walked to the wall, pressing his back against it as he drank deeply. The taste was sour and he winced at it. There was no one near who would know Quentin and his eyes sought the man himself, knowing that he would be at the far end of the room.