Ash and Silver (27 page)

“I swear to give you my best,” I said, “to drive you hard and myself no less, to judge in equity, and to refer all questions of technique to an appropriate master. If you've a difficulty with my appointment, go to the Marshal now. I'll not interfere and will bear no grudge. But once you accept the state of things, that will change. That is, I'll consider any complaint offered to the Marshal and not to me as deception, and it will reap appropriate punishment.”

“I hope you'll take better care with our lives than you do with yours,” grumbled Dunlin, nudging Heron. When they broke into laughter, I laughed with them. It would likely be the last time.

“Inek gave me a hard lesson about that,” I said. “If you're stupid, I'll pass it on to you. So?”

Heron, naturally more sober, straightened his back and sank to one knee, fist to his breast. “I accept the Marshal's wisdom and your vow, First. Command me.”

Dunlin followed. My hand gestured them up as if it already knew what it was supposed to do. The weight of the moment settled on my shoulders right beside Inek's fate, my sister's, Bastien's, Morgan's, and perhaps a bit of the world's.

“Your orders, First?” They spoke in unison.

“Proceed today as you would any day Inek is away. I'll review our schedules, speak to the Archivist about our additional memory work, and post any changes before tomorrow morning. At sixth hour I'm going to bed, as I've had no sleep in more than two days and I've the seaward watch at midnight. Inek's unable to rescind the order, so I'll finish out the remaining nights.”

“But that's daft. The Marshal could—”

One twitch of my finger silenced Dunlin's natural outburst. We were no longer equals.

I would miss that. Did knight commanders ever join together in
comradeship? I'd never witnessed it. Every time I'd sought out Inek, he'd been at work with his students or alone.

•   •   •

M
y application to see the Archivist before supper was refused, so said his edgy assistant. The slender Second Archivist's hands reached for things that weren't there, and the eyes looking out from the dusky blue mask darted hither and yon, as if he were missing something.

“He'll see you tomorrow at midday in the place he saw you last.” His off-kilter face twisted into even more confusion. “I s'pose you know where that would be?” Clearly
he
didn't.

“Yes. Thank you.” Who could forget the dust of one's past? Which reminded me I needed to dispose of that dust safely.

With no memory work instruction scheduled, I saw no need for Dunlin, Heron, and me to deviate from Inek's plan for the next day. So I stopped into the barren little cell where Inek had shredded tyros' fears, squires' foolish pride, and parati's doubts and prepared to scrape the wax tablet he kept for schedule changes. Two entries remained on it in Inek's slashing script.

KC. 1M Aerie—Corm

KC. 11E SW—Bearn

This would have been changes for that last day.
KC
meant Knight Commander. Cormorant's vigil in the Aerie began at first hour of the morning watch. When Inek abandoned Cormorant in the Aerie, he had gone to
SW
—the southwest tower? the seaward wall?—and met with this same Knight Bearn who had been pestering Fix about me. Curious that Inek had given him some of the precious time he'd arranged for his venture into the archives.

The Archivist was the person most likely to know about this Bearn, and I couldn't query him until the next day. As I scraped the tablet and wrote my own brief status message, weariness took hold. Even scribing the cold wax was an effort.

Unfit for service?
Close to it. I planned a long, hard night and could not afford to be dull. So I skipped afternoon sparring and the regular run on the mudflats. Rather a visit to the kitchen garnered a massive wad of bread and butter and a bowl of whatever was in the pot on the hob. It might have been washing water, but vanished too quickly to judge. I took extra bread for later, then went to bed.

• • •

T
he tide horn woke me, as I'd planned. The single short blast—high tide. Eleventh hour of the evening watch.

I ate the extra provision I'd brought from the kitchen and prepared what was needed for my night's venture. Armor for the seaward wall and my spare cloak, three flasks of water, two of ale, and some dried fish I kept handy for missed meals went into a leather bag. Then the bells were ringing the second quarter before midnight, and I had to don the damnable armor.

By my reckoning this was my twenty-second night on the seaward wall. I believed I was the only one counting. We would see about that.

If anyone was interested, they could have watched me charge through the Hall cursing Inek's nasty punishments and clattering helm and mitons against the plate pauldron because I'd not put them on as yet. I wanted to be noticed heading for my useless duty.

As I ticked away the endless first hour, focusing on darkness and balance and staying alert, I brought Inek to mind. Ever straightforward and supremely skilled. Exceptionally private. Though he spoke of how a knight's bent could shape his service to the Order, none of us even knew what Inek's bent was. What had brought him to his state?

He'd planned the venture to the archives for days—to take my relict or borrow it to review—for he'd told Cormorant to choose me to stand his vigil. The meeting with Bearn had not precipitated the act, for he'd told Cormorant of his destination well before he'd met with the mysterious knight. And he'd left the message for me,
knowing
something was going to happen to him.
Then why did you touch the dust, Knight Commander? Of all people, you would have noticed its virulence.

Gods' grace . . . had he done it apurpose? He'd wanted me to draw him. Not just to find the way to save his life or reveal that someone wanted my mind wrecked. I was certainly the logical person to examine my own relict, yet I would have listened to any warning he spoke. No, he wanted to
demonstrate
something. About the Archivist—whose loyalties were so oddly tangled? Or did he think his portrait might reveal more than just how to cure him? I needed to examine it again.

But that had to come later. Some matters could not wait for another opportunity. I needed to warn Bastien that Damon was destroying all links to my past. And if I could get a look at the Xancheiran artifact he'd buried, perhaps we'd know why. I knew only one way to get a message—not to mention a coroner—halfway across Navronne in time to help.

When first hour struck, I shucked my armor and left it tucked in the
slightly wider spot on the wall. A dollop of magic doused the weak torch in the courtyard below. Wrapped in my spare cloak, I shouldered my provisions bag and crept carefully down the wall stair, through the quiet fortress, and down to the docks to steal a boat.

F
ix was nowhere to be seen when I slipped away with the ancient flat-bottomed squinch he kept in the back of the boathouse. It was the only boat that might not be missed should sea or circumstance make me return later than I planned. The squinch was watertight, but could tip easily if not well laden. But that was only one of my problems, rowing from Evanide to the Gouvron mouth in the nightwatches.

What little light the crescent moon provided was unreliable thanks to the patchy fog hanging low over the water. The crossing stretched my navigational skills beyond comfort. I had to depend on magic, locating the beacons affixed to rocks drowned by the high water, drawing theoretical lines between them, and using the familiar patterns to navigate between the bay's multitudinous hazards. Sea and storm could displace the beacons at any time or distort their lines of magic. Magic is of nature, too.

At least twice while fighting the drag of downspouts, I lost hold of the patterns and had to rebuild them quickly before my sense of where to look escaped me. Errors likely wouldn't drive me out to sea, but grace of the Mother, I'd rather not be plowing up and down the coast until dawn, searching for the estuary.

After the long, nervous row, it was good to feel the deep undercurrent of the Gouvron joined with the growing ebb in its battle with the sea. The whisper of reeds and dank, ripe odors of fish and sea wrack welcomed me to the estuary. Morgan had said I'd find her there.

Steady rowing and an occasional push off intrusive reeds kept me moving up the deeper channel. No need to go far, just enough to prevent getting lost in the reed forest and find a semblance of solid ground. Time pressed hard. The trip back was always longer than the outcrossing.

A little way upriver, I found a placid shallows and planted an oar in the
mud. Holding tight with one hand, I dipped the other in the water. “Morgan!”

A hurricane of squealing birds erupted right over my head, startling me in turn, so that I lost my grip on the oar. My anxious grab tipped the boat.

Righting the cursed squinch before it took on too much water, I grabbed the planted oar before the lazy current could swirl me out of reach. Boots and cloak slurped up more water than I could bail. Between sweat, spray, and flooding, I was drenched. The night was dark as pitch and the scent overtaking the sweet rot of boglands warned of rain in the offing. Heart thumping, I rowed farther up, until I could tie off to a clump of reeds.

The scheme had seemed so simple. Slip across the bay in the middle of the night, stick my hand in the estuary water, and a naked woman of surpassing beauty whom I dared not touch though she made my body hunger so fiercely I could scarce breathe, would instantly appear and agree to take my urgent warning halfway across Navronne, convincing a man to bring a mysterious bit of my past all the way back here. Next time I visited Inek, I would tell him of my plan. Surely the shock of my idiocy would force his disciplined mind to function, just so he could wake and assign me a lifetime on the seaward wall.

The imagining roused a hoarse chuckle. I could be a fixture on the damnable wall, like old Fix at the boathouse. Navronne might go up in flames, but no marauder would dare attempt Evanide's western flank, for Greenshank's armor has rusted and holds him there for all time.

What would Damon think of his
righteous voice
and
strong right arm
foundering in the Gouvron Estuary, his great plot to reform the Registry undone by a flock of birds?

But then again, on the afternoon I'd come here to find Morgan's portrait, I'd hit my head on the gunwale. Perhaps
I
was the one lying naked in the infirmary and everything that had transpired since was a concussive nightmare!

I reached over the stern, both hands this time, and splashed as hard as I could, soaking the last few bits of me that were dry. “Morgan! Come find me! If I'm in a dream I need to know it now!”

“Tsk! Art thou a husk again, Lucian de Remeni? Come, sweet friend, let me tend thee. . . .”

No need for magelight. She sat crosslegged on a sandy islet in the middle of the river, the blue flame of her gards painting streams of sapphire and
lapis in the flowing river. Her invitation arced across the water to my boat like the token magic and erased every thought in my head.

Never had oars dug so deep into a river. Never had boat moved so straight across a current. Never had wet clothing been shed so swiftly or bone-deep hunger been so gloriously satisfied.

•   •   •

“I
shall convince the worthy coroner that his safety is precious to thee,” she said, kissing my fingers and bundling my hand in hers. “And I shall bring him to speak with thee and ensure he carries thy grandsire's artifact of the lost city.”

I unwrapped her fingers and gently extracted my hand, so that I could continue pulling up my soaked woolen braies. But in a lissome glide, she curled around behind me and traced a finger up my spine. Such heat spread across my back that the thought of dragging the cold, sodden wool shirt over my skin was near unbearable. “Lady . . .”

“Recall, my name is Morgan, not
Lady
. And it grieves me sorely to see these ugly, stinking garments cover thee. Do I not protect thee from the cold?”

Her arms twined round me, crushing her breasts to my back, nearly losing me in frenzy yet again. But the islet had not changed in size. Every moment I stayed made my return to Evanide riskier. The tide charts testified this ebb would not leave the mudflats barren. But rocks one could ignore in the flood became your enemy when exposed. Did I dally too long, I would face the rise.

“Would that I could offer you half what you've done for me,” I said, pressing her glowing hands to my brow before disentangling her. “You've warmed me in uncountable ways. Gifted me a new memory that is not terrifying, but kind and generous, and most assuredly warm—everything of beauty. You've no idea what that means. . . .” Words were insufficient to explain how low I had been. “You remind me of why I must make these terrible things right. But to do that, I have to go. I just— If I've made matters worse between you and your father—”

Her finger silenced me. “This was no simple lusting, Lucian. Never think that. The long-lived nurture and heal the living world, and we are free to choose the recipient of our gift, whether it be a field, a grove, or an
estuary. Why should I not choose a human man? Tuari cannot blame me for doing what I have been birthed to do. Go with my blessings. Come back after the moon is reborn, and if thy worthy ally Bastien is not too stubborn, he shall be here. I know a sea cave where I can house him if he chooses not to bide in the estuary.”

Her eyes sparked like new stars. “Didst thou not think Bastien very like an otter with all that hair? He might well be content to burrow in drowned roots!”

Laughing as I'd never laughed at Evanide, I pulled on clammy tunic and shirt and fastened my cloak, then pulled her into an embrace I wished might never end. “Very like. But I think the cave might do better . . . if his offer of help yet stands. Tell him I could dearly use a friend.
Another
friend.”

“I shall ever be thy friend, gentle Lucian, delighted to ease thy sorrows. Someday, perhaps, we can talk again of history and why humans do the terrible things they do, or argue how matters might be different if everyone had magic or no one, or if artists could actually paint what magic looks like. Our discussions in Montesard were always lively.”

“That would please me, as well,” I said. “Bastien said I didn't know much about friends. But perhaps that was only because I'd already found one who could never be matched.”

Morgan had warned me we could never be together, different as we were. And I scarce knew myself. But if I satisfied her father . . . made him understand my good intentions . . . friendship could grow.

As I loosed the bowline from a clump of gnarled roots, she bent over the gunwale and pulled me to her again. Her lips brushed my ear.

“Not at all a husk,” she whispered. “Not this night.” Then she gave the stern a shove and sent me on my way downriver laughing.

•   •   •

T
here was nowhere on Evanide's perimeter to land the boat other than Fix's little bay. Which meant I'd no way to avoid the hunched figure silhouetted by the graying light. What could I possibly tell him?

“Blessed return, Greenshank,” said the boatmaster. “How has old Dorye performed this night?” His question lacked the gentle jabbing of other returns.

“I tried to sink her, but managed not,” I said, knowing the jest would fall flat. “Fix—”

“You've duties elsewhere just now. But before another night passes, you
will
sit with me and explain.”

“Please, Fix, the Marshal must not—”

“I am not bound to the Marshal. This is between you and me. Now be off. Sixth hour's gone.”

Astonished, disbelieving, grateful, I raced through the fortress like any other trainee returning from a hard night's work. I narrowly avoided crashing into Dunlin and Heron. Their voices flattened me to a pillar outside the Hall, heart pounding.

“. . . so where's his ass?” grumbled Dunlin. “If we're still to run or swim before eating, how is it he's not out?”

“Maybe he fell off the seaward wall.”

“He'd never. Wouldn't be righteous. He'll be made Disciplinarian before he's knighted.”

“Or Knight Defender, securing Evanide by keeping us all fit and pure, every knight taking his turn on the seaward wall!”

Choking back a laugh, I ran on as soon as they'd passed headed for the eastern wall to swim. No mudflats today. We needed fast hard work, not just slogging through chest-deep water.

Only as I balanced on the wall, struggling to buckle on chausses just so I could be seen before taking them off again, did Heron's mention of the Knight Defender wake a mad notion. Evanide's cliffs and seawalls made it near invulnerable save through the sheltered inlet, the only bit of the islet that was ever connected to the mainland by land. So the Knight Defender . . . Fix?

I dismissed the idea in the next breath. It was true Fix said he was
not bound to the Marshal.
He could carry a filled water cask with ease and drag even the larger skiffs about like toy boats. And there were his pointed insights, his awareness of everyone in the fortress, his convenient skill at notifying whatever commander was awaiting you. I certainly needed to talk with Fix. What might he know about the old Marshal and the current Marshal, or the Archivist and Inek?

But truly my whim was ridiculous. The boatmaster was not a day younger than seventy years. No matter what his other skills, a Knight Defender was the last defense of Evanide. He chose his own successor from the elite warriors of the Order—those who could best any opponent with or without magic. Not even an exceptional man of seventy could do that.

The seventh strike of the bells jolted me. I dumped the rainwater from my helm, abandoned mitons to retrieve later, tossed the lance into the courtyard below, and hurried—carefully—to the stair. Within the hour I
was swimming in the bay, racing with Heron and Dunlin. Heron reached the lonely rock called Doom's Knob first, but I beat the two of them on the return, even in the face of the incoming tide.

“I'm speaking with the Archivist at midday about our lessons,” I said, still breathing hard. “Instead of sparring later, let's do this again. One of you had better beat me. I've been awake since midnight.”

“Standing still on—” Heron's kick made Dunlin bite off his jab. “As you say, Paratus Commander.”

“Now!” Grinning, I dived from the seawall into the swirling water. Energy and resolve pounded through me. For the family I'd once loved and this family at Evanide, I was going to make things right.

•   •   •

T
he fortress bells struck midday as I crossed the unoccupied Seeing Chamber heading for the Archivist's quarters. Even after the night's bay crossing and two hard swims to Doom's Knob, my steps were brisk.

Only when I reached the cellar relictory's iron door—closed tight—did my rosy outlook fade. All the bits of information I needed from the Archivist thronged into my head like hungry tyros: Inek's progress, tales of Sanctuary, of Xancheira, Knight Bearn's identity and purpose. Allowing my near useless magelight to die, I yanked the bellpull.

Latches and bars clanked on the inside, and the hinges ground noisily as the door opened a crack. And then a little wider. I shut my eyes. Magelight flared bright as clear sunlight through my eyelids.

“Reporting as ordered,” I said.

“Come, come.” He left me to close and bar the door. The enchantments crashed together behind me like steel gates, as I caught up to the angular figure in rusty red.

“A terrible crime was done you, Greenshank, leaving you bound to silence about the event and lacking a guide. I should have had you back to speak of it, lest you do something stupid.”

The frosty assessment chilled my remaining good humor, holding no more concern for my well-being than a hail from a watchman at a city gate. “I believe I've come to terms with it, though I would dearly like to know who did it and why.”

He blew an impatient note. “I can't help you with that. I still don't understand what makes you of such interest.”

Nor did I. “For today, I'm more concerned with Commander Inek. How does he fare?”

“The puzzle is most complex. No approach has made improvement as yet.”

Inek's portrait lay on his desk amid a clutter of parchment sheets. The pages were entirely covered with little diagrams paired with lists of words, some of which I recognized as Aurellian—the language of all pureblood ancestors—and some not. He had circled some twenty-five or thirty links on Inek's habergeon, each of an unusual shape and a slightly brighter shading than the rest.