Ash and Silver (46 page)

He paused, unfinished. Even in the dark his gaze burned my face.

“. . . but as you'll never in this cursed world do such an intelligent thing, here's what I propose. Set up your meeting with this Marshal. But I'll go instead of you, stay out of sight, see what he does. If all's well, he'll leave, imagining you're delayed, and you can set a new one.”

“Tempting, but no. I'll meet him. You watch. If something happens to me . . . give it a few days. If you don't hear anything more from me or Juli, get back to the Gouvron Estuary. Persuade Hercule to go with you. I'll wager he can hang a bit of red fire in the air on and off three times every hour, until an old boatman shows up. His name will be Fix. Be sure, he'll sound fierce—and he is. But tell him everything I've told you. Everything you saw. He knows about you, about the plots, about everything.”

“And what of the Xanch—?”

“Ssss.” I laid a hand on Bastien's knee. What was it? A sound, a scent, a shifting of the air? Likely it was Bek. But it had seemed . . .

Magic infusing a large spell structure whispered cold, like falling snow.

“Get out,” I breathed in Bastien's ear. “Silent. Fast.”

I shoved him off the bench toward the beast yard and stepped through the leather curtain into the alley, just in time to touch my bracelet, raise a shield of magic, and absorb the firebolt that would have slammed shed and the two of us into the back wall of the yard.

I fell . . . forever it seemed before I slammed into the ground. At some great distance, as if I looked up from the bottom of a well, stood Damon and at least twenty men clad in black and scarlet, bristling weapons like great hedgehogs. As sight collapsed, words drifted down on me like falling leaves: “Lucian de Remeni-Masson, in the name of the Pureblood Registry, I arrest you for the crime of murder of the gods' chosen.”

“O
n your feet, Remeni.” The terse command issued from the last voice I wished to hear.

“Curator Damon. Was on my way—”

“Yes, yes, I know. On your way to dally with an
ordinary
woman in a pigsty! It's not even a violation of orders, as who would think to command a pureblood warrior in-mission to contain his bodily urges? Or to avoid besotted babbling to a twistmind procurer?”

I squeezed eyes and lips tight. No more speaking. No more listening if I could help it, lest I discover I'd truly gone mad. Nothing made sense. I was alive, but lay prone on a very hard stone floor, and somehow the phrase
very ugly death
kept bobbing up in the dark behind my eyelids like a wayward boat on the demon tide.

But the more I fought to stay insensible, the more Damon's clipped annoyance cut through the fog like a honed blade.

“Your orders were quite simple and clear,” he said. “Twelve days. Speak to no one. Wear no mark of the Order. Bring only your godforsaken bow. Yet you arrive without the bow and before deigning to report, you choose to spend an hour drinking and whoring. Did you think I wouldn't notice? How stupid do you think I am?”

Not stupid at all, save that he had the story all wrong. Dally with a woman? Twistmind procurer? Bek! The damnable, treacherous bastard. I should have seen it: the cut hand . . . the bruised face . . . the vanished tremors . . . A moment's ecstasy and an hour's pleasure wrought with self-inflicted pain and the enchanted nivat paste he'd likely bought with my life. And he knew of Xancheira and Juli. . . .

To my astonishment, I was not bound. I drew my knees up under me and sat back on my heels, assembling my shredded wits. The cold, hard floor was rose-threaded marble. The curved walls were not iron, but polished stone hung with vividly colored tapestries. Damon, robed in dark red, paced
in a tight circle around me, arms folded, his over-bright, disturbingly hungry eyes never leaving me.

“I never imagined a crack in my cursed bow would gain me a reprieve from
execution
,” I said, making my accusation as sharp as his. “Perhaps I needed a bit of human solace before I gave myself up for gutting by
Domé
Canis-Ferenc. You made me believe you cared about Registry corruption, and now we're back to secret executions?”

Damon halted, disdainful.

“Of course you're not going to die. You gave me your submission. You agreed to let me guide you to our shared purpose. Discipline is your joy and your strength; how could I imagine you would abandon it so near our goal? You can thank that twistmind's unholy need for getting our great ship back on course. In exchange, we've provided him a supply of extraordinarily potent paste. He'll not be able to form a cogent thought before summer.”

It was difficult to muster sympathy for the traitorous Bek. But he'd provided a story, perhaps a caution for Bastien's sake.

“I was attempting to find out whom I was supposed to have murdered. Harlots know what gossip's worth hearing.”

“You'll learn everything soon enough. Today is the day of our triumph, Lucian.” Indeed Damon was cranked tighter than a crossbow.

“Today?” I shifted my joints, which were giving me notice that I had lain on that cold marble unmoving for too many hours. “You have me wholly mystified. You seem to take especial delight in that.”

Twisting my neck to relieve the soreness revealed vertical slots spaced evenly around the ceiling vault—arrow loops. Arrows aimed in my direction protruded from at least three of them. Dared I imagine others might have firebolt spells trained this way as well? And I . . .

“You've taken my bracelets.” And Fix's too. Regrettable, but not exactly surprising. I wriggled my toes. The Marshal's token remained in my boot.

“You presented yourself combatively, and I wished no accidents. They'll be returned to you in due time.”

“So if I'm not to be executed and I'm clearly not to be your strong right arm until
due time
, then what?” I said, standing up slowly, hands visible to all who might be observing. “I am at your service,
domé
.”

“If your petulance is properly satisfied, come. And quickly. The house will be stirring soon, and no one must see you. Put on your mask.”

I did so. My spirit sighed with relief, which was wholly ludicrous. Damon had arrested me for
murder of the gods' chosen
in front of some twenty
witnesses. That was not anything that could be dismissed with apology or eradicated with explanation. Nor could I ignore the seven guards robed in black and gray who appeared behind us. They wore hoods, so I could not see if they wore full-face masks. But I'd wager so, and that their bows and blades were marked with the Order blazon. If I was to get out of this, I'd need to pick my time and place carefully.

“I'm not exactly garbed for a lord's house,” I said as I matched Damon's brisk pace. I couldn't get filthier than the ten days traveling had left me, but being blasted into the beast yard had left my cloak missing, and breeches and hose ripped. My hair was crusted with stinking mud, and twelve days growth of beard itched under my mask.

“There will be a time for silks and velvets,” said Damon. “Later.”

We left the circular chamber by way of a vaulted passage. Jewel-colored mosaics adorned the walls. Another time I would have stopped and looked closer, but Damon's urgency drew me onward into a long gallery overlooking a hall of vast proportion.

A colonnade of slender, close-set pillars screened observers from below; bronze grillwork screens had been built perpendicular to the colonnade to shield observers from one another. Perhaps halfway down the gallery, I dodged into one of these viewing alcoves to peer through the colonnade.

The hall below displayed appropriate grandeur for a Sitting of the Three Hundred. Marble mantelpieces, carved in great elaborations of gods and beasts, soared three stories high at either end of the chamber. The Hearth of Memory at Evanide could have fit inside their cavernous maws. In between sat a great table in the shape of a horseshoe. At the focus of its arc, between its two long arms and clearly visible from every seat at the table—forty or fifty of them—was a simple square dais, bordered by wood rails at waist height.

But my eye was captured by an exquisite mural of Kemen Sky Lord and Mother Samele that centered the high wall above the table. The brother and sister divinities were each engaged with a Danae partner, the sapphire, lapis, and indigo of their exquisite gards exactly as I knew them. Legend said those couplings birthed Deunor, Lord of Fire and Magic, and Erdru, Lord of Vines. The artistry of that painting . . . the muscular vigor of its subjects . . . the lines and shading that revealed such passionate intimacy that my flesh and blood heated . . . could make anyone believe such tales.

“Come along. Your aerie is a little farther.”

As I followed Damon back to the open aisle of the gallery, my fingers
glanced along the grillwork. His voice had sounded dead inside the alcove, and indeed subtle magics had been woven into the bronze screens. Those inside would not hear the comments from their neighbors, nor would their own be heard outside the space. A nice deterrent to spies.

“Here is where you will view the proceedings.” Damon indicated an opening.

That the viewing alcove selected for me had a gate to close it off from the open walkway did not surprise me. Nor did the circumstance that these screens were wrought of iron, not bronze. The gate bore locks of spellwork so intricate even a paratus of Evanide would require a significant time to undo them. What kind of madman was I to walk in?

I halted. “Am I your prisoner, curator?”

“No.” Yet seven hooded guards stood just beyond range of hearing. “You are my willing instrument. I need you to observe and learn—is that not what you desire? I also need you to remain silent, and refrain from any detectable trace of magic. Should any person down below have occasion to look up here I will have you bound and muted as befits a man accused of murder. Should we do that as a precaution?”

“No.”

I could not leave. Not here, on the brink of enlightenment. Damon himself was so near bursting that I knew he spoke true—this was the day, whether of triumph or ending or simple understanding. Serena Fortuna . . . the Law of the Everlasting . . . whatever it was that determined the course of human fate . . . had driven me to this moment. I was not mad. The divine gift lived in me in a form that had shaped terrible events and it was my duty to serve its call, both here and in Xancheira. Even if it meant stepping into a cage.

Damon nodded, meeting my gaze, not with gloating, but with solemn understanding, as if he'd listened in on my argument. “I expect this session to last late into the night. Food and drink will be provided you. You will neither touch those who bring it nor speak nor expose your face to them. There is a slops jar for your use. This is not the Tower cellar. You are neither naked, nor stupefied by potions, nor subject to the other indignities of that prisoning. And no, I do not expect you to thank me for that. I accept responsibility for those conditions as I do for these. But your life will change today. One way or the other for the greater glory of Navronne . . .”

He turned to go.

But my patience was too much frayed. “Good gods, curator, just a hint.
What are these
proceedings
?” My muddled reckoning said the Sitting was not to begin for twelve days yet.

“Our trial. The Fifty are assembled to weigh judgment.”

The gate slammed behind him and the lockspells settled into place.

•   •   •

T
he Fifty. The Fifty Judges, to be precise. Every year each of the three hundred original pureblood families designated one of their own to serve at the pleasure of the Registry to determine guilt or settle disputes in matters that involved more than one family. Most occasions required only one judge or three. But for the most serious adjudications, a random fifty would be chosen to hear arguments and witnesses.

Not long after Damon's departure, the judges arrived in solemn procession and took their places at the table. All wore robes the same blood-red as Damon's. Hoods hid their faces. No one knew which fifty families were represented at any hearing or which member of a family was designated its judge in any particular year. Yet I did not doubt that Damon knew exactly who sat on those fifty stools. He would have left nothing to chance—not with the folio of my portraits in hand.

It made sense that the Fifty would meet before a Sitting. The Three Hundred decided how pureblood society was to move forward in perilous times. But the Fifty had to lay the groundwork, determining what circumstances mandated change. Fallon had told me this Sitting was meant to address matters of corruption in the Pureblood Registry.

A very large man swept through the door trailing wine-hued velvet robes. A wool-cart's worth of black and gray hair was bound into ten fat braids. Kasen de Canis-Ferenc welcomed the noble judges to his demesne, and with a brief ceremony involving invocations, fragrant smokes, and a magical font of crimson and silver light, formally opened the Convocation of the Fifty. He paused for a moment, as if waiting for an invitation to stay. When all remained silent, he swept out, followed by quick-stepping attendants in crimson-and-silver livery.

One judge rose from his seat at the end of the curved table and walked around to stand beside the small dais. “Heed me, worthy Judges, as I present to you a case I have assembled over more than twenty years, tragic violations of law and custom that reach from the deeps of history to our present day, that touch on human wickedness, on greed and murder that have sullied our divine gift, and held us back from the fullness of destiny the gods intend for us. . . .”

Damon. He wandered as he spoke, sometimes drawing near the table, sometimes standing back and gesturing as he laid out a background of the perilous times. The everlasting winter. The ordinaries' war. The scouring madness of the Harrowers.

“. . . and how have we—the Registry, the children of Aurellia who've come to this wondrous land where the gods infuse our magic with majesty and brilliance—responded to these perils? We look the other way. We hide inside fortresses of riches, citing the Law that keeps us separate from the world of ordinaries. Where is the advancement that should demonstrate the gods' favor? We preach of nurturing our gifts and sharing them impartially to better the world, but where is the magic? Where is the glory? Rather, behind our bastions of comfort and our prattling of duty, discipline, and distance, corruption festers. Centuries of corruption . . .”

His voice and his body bespoke passion, compelling every eye and ear in that chamber to heed him. He told the story of Xancheira, much as the Marshal had told it to me. He did not speak of the Order, nor mention the poisonous secret of dual bents. But he told of the city's death in a ring of fire, and the warriors who had never gone home from the shame of that day.

Perched on a stool that had been left in the viewing alcove, I took in every word as he moved on to other history I'd never heard—of the extermination of other magic wielders, of settlements razed, of caravans bringing new Aurellian settlers attacked and the travelers massacred.

“. . . our lives and fortunes built not on divine magic, but on blood. And what have we done for the world but foster corruption that reflects our own? Consider our own day. Three princes vie in savagery to replace a great king. And among our own? All here know the name of Remeni. Vincente, whose bent for history was so powerful he became King Eodward's Royal Historian. Elaine de Remeni-Masson, whose glorious artworks grace these very halls . . .”

His hand pointed to the painting of Kemen and Samele—my grandmother's? My mother's? Gods!

“. . . of countless others whose work stands amid the greatest of our kind. And the last of them, Lucian the portraitist, the quiet, impeccably disciplined young artist, whose deft hand and incomparable magic produced portraits of almost every pureblood man, woman, and child in Navronne over the span of five years. Ah, yes, I see some of you squirm. No matter what is spoken of the man now, no matter rumor or innuendo, Lucian de Remeni-Masson's portraits bore the glorious, undeniable aspect of divine
truth in ways we have not seen in uncounted generations. And what did those portraits reveal?”