Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (59 page)

“What did you say?” asked Moreth, whose ears were sharp.

“Thackery. That is what the servant called him. I remember that. I feel as if I have heard that name before,” said Augustus.

“You very well could have,” whispered Moreth with a genuine and rare frown. “He is the cursed blood of Thule. The cast-out brother of our Iron Queen and the one who sought to unmake the order of Menos.”

Slinking back to his seat, Moreth asked to hear the master’s entire account, and listened to every word from Augustus’s misshapen mouth with the greatest severity.

XV

WELL OF SECRETS

I

M
enos was the coldest place Morigan had known at night. Although the winter realms that Kanatuk had come from were certainly colder, the spiritual chill could not have been greater. Staring out the window pane into the man-made nightmare valley of black peaks and feeble yellow lights—less than a mole would need, surely—it was a wonder to her that people chose to live in this place. Or that they would stay and not choose to flee, though perhaps Thackery’s misadventures had put an end to that. To leave, one had to get past the Iron Wall, which dared the brave with its ever-present horizon of blackness, no matter where she looked across the city. It was as permanent as the Crucible, but all the more daunting because she knew that she would have to challenge it.

With a whisper, Mouse left them, saying something about a contact and that she wouldn’t be long. While she was out, Morigan explored the musty chambers of the manse, slinking through ghostly dormitories, hollow classrooms, and chambers that stirred her head with flashes of children. In a dilapidated studio, she saw dancing phantoms, as plumed and marvelous as exotic birds. Later, she saw a line of children practicing their makeup before mirrors in an empty lavatory. Chased by these ghosts, she hurried to find
attire less red and more subtle to wear than her promise gown. Between a bedroom here and a closet there, she discovered some bloomers, a blouse, a cape, and even a pair of boots. Moth-eaten and a pinch small was most of it, but she beat it free of age and mites and made do. When she returned to the classroom where her companions were waiting, Vortigern and Kanatuk were studying the cobwebs and inextricable spirals of dust on the blackboard as if it were a profound equation. She could tell that they had hardly, if at all, spoken to each other. She returned to her watch at the window.

“What is this place?” asked Kanatuk, who was more comfortable speaking with Morigan around. Living under the whip of the Broker allowed one to see many places in Menos, though he was not quite certain how this building was used.

“Menos’s attempt at mercy,” said Mouse.

Unseen, unheard to even the acute senses of an assassin, reborn, and seer, Mouse had manifested in the doorway. Her fancy dress had been discarded for sleek black garments and a sweeping cape. Mouse glided over to the abandoned desk at the front of the room. Textbooks were concealed under a gray blanket of years, and she brushed off their covers and examined them.

“The children that lived here were taught mathematics, sciences, and the languages of Geadhain,” she continued, her head down. “Along with performing arts and lessons in society and grace, skills to make them sophisticated and intelligent companions.”

“Companions?” asked Kanatuk.

“The finest courtesans in Menos,” said Mouse. “In a city of only slaves and masters, an indentured life is the nearest one will find to freedom. Work long and hard enough and you can—theoretically—buy the chain off your neck. More often than not, this is a dream to distract from one’s prison, not a reality that can be attained. Most indentured never make it. If disease doesn’t kill you, one’s master or clients are the next surest bet.”

A flash of insight stung Morigan.
An old man with a gold-capped smile is leering in the vision; the glint of the knife he holds complements the malicious sentiment of his smile. He is going to cut Mouse with it, somewhere lower, for he traces the cold steel tip down her abdomen. And scream or struggle as she might, she is bound and gagged as a slaughterhouse pig and there is nothing she
can do about it. “Bear it out, Mouse. Swallow the pain. One day it shall be you holding the knife,” the host tells herself
.

The first warm thrust is so excruciating that her head floods with stars and she blacks out
.

“I’m sorry,” said Morigan.

As if sleepwalking, the seer had drifted from the window without any recall and was standing by Mouse. Morigan put her hand on Mouse’s shoulder and could taste the sour nectar of her despair. That despair suddenly festered into anger, and Mouse grabbed the hand that was upon her and pulled Morigan close. Mouse’s stare was hollow as she whispered, “I see you’ve been poking about, and I don’t need your sympathy. I am one of those who
won
. I earned my freedom in this shiteheap of a world. I saved every crown; I abstained from every indulgence that pleasure folk drown themselves in. I thought only of who I would be, not who I was. I paid my debt to my master. The first in my lifetime to have done so, I am told. I am a survivor, and if you pity me again, you will see how strong that has made me.”

The rage fell away and Mouse released Morigan.

“Back to your question, Broker’s man,” she said. “These orphanages never worked as well as they were intended to. A few generations after the Cost for Freedom Charter was penned by the
philanthropic
Gloriatrix herself, it was dismantled. Masters quickly realized that it was cheaper and more efficient to purchase hopeless slaves than to deal with the blight of optimism in their houses. Furthermore, the taxes paid by indentured servants were better thought to be in the greasy hands of their masters, who could obscure these costs more efficiently when the money was not monitored by the city. Thus, no more indentureship contracts were drafted, charterhouses like these were left to fade into history, and I would think that if one has not earned his freedom by now, he never will.”

Gloriatrix wrote the law on indentureship?
thought Morigan.
She couldn’t possibly have seen that far ahead, could she? No, surely this was a welcome coincidence. Though why spare the child? A queen of iron
and
mercy?

Mouse rolled out the schoolmaster’s chair and sat upon it, obscured by dust for a moment. “That should settle any questions on where we are. Now we wait.”

“Wait? For what?” asked Kanatuk.

“A former associate of mine,” answered Mouse. “He has helped me before, and I believe he will again. I left word for us to meet at one of our contact points.”

In a swirl of silver, Morigan is transported elsewhere. To a gloomy rooftop with chattering cages and a carpet of pigeon shite. Mouse is present, skulking near one of the aviaries. She does not claim a bird to convey her message, but stoops and scrawls a tiny pattern at the speckled base of a cage: a pigeon print with five, not four, toes. An ambiguous mark, yet this is how she and her mentor communicate—through signs that do not appear as signs—and it is all she needs for Alastair to reach her
.

One of Mouse’s talents was the reading of lips, and she noted the shape of Alastair’s name as Morigan mouthed it, as well as the distant cast of the other’s face.
For fuk’s sake, stay out of my head!
she wanted to shout. Mouse was frightened and a bit annoyed at how loose and fast the witch’s powers were, once she was out of feliron.
Too bad we don’t have a spare set of chains at the charterhouse. I thank you for your contributions to my freedom, but you certainly need a leash
.

Morigan caught a hint of this attitude, and she left Mouse and her scowl at the desk and went once more to the window. Kanatuk came from his seat and followed her like a dark-eyed puppy. There was an affection that he had toward her that was platonic and tickling to her extrasensory abilities, as if feathers were brushing her heart. He stopped beside her, and they were quiet for some time, making ivory clouds on the windowpane and brooding together over the Iron City’s grotesque grandeur.

“Where will you go, once we have left the Iron City?” he asked.

Back home
, she nearly said, when she realized that her home would no longer accommodate her—not without many compromises.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I shall see what my bloodmate thinks. I cannot make decisions for us both. We should decide together.”

Earlier, Morigan had shared what she knew of Caenith’s progress into the West with those who were not informed of his journey.
My bloodmate, Caenith, and a powerful ally of mine—a sorcerer—are en route to the Iron City. If we have not found a way out by the time they arrive, I am certain that they can show us how they got in
.

Kanatuk squinted. “Bloodmate? Is this the man you say is coming for you?”

“Yes.”

“What is a bloodmate?”

“When two people who love each other swear a covenant in blood, they are bound as bloodmates. It is an old and sadly forgotten ritual,” explained Morigan, as if teaching a young man, for aspects of Kanatuk were childlike.

“That sounds quite special.”

“It is. Caenith and I are together forever. In our hearts and minds.”

Kanatuk pondered this. “Is that how you can tell where he is?”

“Yes. Though there is something in Menos that hinders that awareness.”

“The wall.”

“Yes, the wall.”

“How will
he
make it past the Iron Wall?”

“He will. He’ll leap it if he has to.”

“Leap? How can a man do that? Leap over a wall?”

She smiled, and Kanatuk puzzled over what kind of man—or sorcerer—this bloodmate of Morigan’s was. Morigan turned the original question back to Kanatuk.

“Where will you go?”

As he said
north
, a drift of white washed over her vision, and she saw the frozen veins and woolly vales of the North. More striking than the imagery was the sense of wholeness among the cold: a furious regard that the Broker’s abuse had concealed but never really smothered in Kanatuk.

“The North, yes,” she agreed. “I think that is where you belong.” She waited a speck before tactfully adding, “Do many of your people remain there?”

“Possibly,” said Kanatuk, and his scarred face lit with the gleam of happiness. “We never know what the spirits will bless us with. If those of the Seal Fang still hunt the North, then I shall find them. If not, then I shall discover happiness down another path.”

“I think that you will find them,” she said. “Or this other happiness.”

Her hunch was deeply gratifying for Kanatuk to hear. Particularly from the woman who had pulled him from darkness and returned his name to him. They weren’t looking at each other, but Morigan could see his contentment
reflected in the glass: an unshakable optimism, the spirit of a child.
I found that spark
, she congratulated herself with a humble enjoyment.
I helped him remember who he was. This gift is far, far from a curse
.

In the smog above the city, a star pricked the darkness and glimmered like a silver bead. The two wished upon it for good fortune, although neither said for what. They were pleasant and quiet company after that, and sands upon sands trickled away along with their worries. In this state of tranquility, then, Caenith’s clear, loud shout to her soul struck her without warning. She understood that he was somewhere in relative danger and that there was a sad, precious child—her sullen and beautifully pale face revealed in a shimmer of sight—whom he wanted to help. She Willed a reply to the Wolf.
Save the child. What we save today brings us salvation tomorrow
. How many of her words made the distance to her bloodmate, she did not know, though she felt that the essence of her feelings, at least, was conveyed.

As the panting subsided, she tried to relay the strangeness to Kanatuk. “I am sorry. That was unexpected. It’s Caenith, and he’s stirring up equal amounts of mischief and virtue somewhere. I don’t think he’s far away. A few days, perhaps? He may arrive before Mouse’s friend can.”

No one else had come to her side except Kanatuk, and as she mentioned their sly companion’s name, she realized that Mouse was gone. The dead man had joined her in absence.

“Where did they go?” she wondered.

“We should find them,” suggested Kanatuk.

The bees disagreed with his advice and stung their mistress in protest.

“No,” she winced. “I think that they are meant to be left alone.”