Flesh and Spirit (34 page)

“Do you think us fools,
recondeur
?”

I charged upward, barreling into the man, but at least three more bodies flung themselves on top of me as I tried to choke the life out of the one under my chest. It took them little time to wrestle me off their comrade, back down the stair, and into the cell. While two men held me down, two more folded my hands, fingertips interlocked and tucked inward, and bound them with silken cord, effectively precluding any application of magic. By the time they had unraveled my voiding spell and slammed the iron door behind them, the bells rang Matins.

Once I stopped fighting, Brother Robierre's draft drugged me out of thought. The image of a gawky youth with a slow head and a ready grin quickly became tangled with that of riders in wine-colored cloaks and a naked man glowing with blue dragon sigils…

When the bells rang for Prime, the two purebloods arrived to release my hands and bring me a cup of small beer. They found me awake already, sitting on my palliasse, attempting to formulate some grand speech to throw at my captors or some scheme to get free. But thoughts of a dutiful boy who was not where he was expected had distracted me. Which made no kind of sense. Gerard had likely had enough of bells and prayers and righteousness.

The window slot yet gleamed gray when Thalassa swept into the cell impeccably coiffed and gowned—today in vermillion that set off her black hair and acorn-colored skin. Gold disks at her temples held back her veil and accented the thick black lines curving about her eyes. She dismissed her men to wait outside and close the door behind them. “Stand up.”

Sadly, my morning's meditations had revealed naught to say worth the effort of irritating my throat and naught to do worth the trouble of remaining seated. As a boy I had fought until they forced me—to eat, to dress, to stand, to yield—the forcing far more horrid than whatever submission I had refused. Somehow I had lost that kind of resilience. I could not bear the thought of my sister's pureblood lackeys laying hands on me again. I stood.

“A few rules before we go,” she said, nodding in approval at my wordless acquiescence. “No matter how you have abased yourself in these past years, you are pureblood, and you will remember your manners and discipline on this journey. The majority of our escort will be ordinaries, and you will maintain distance and detachment as you were taught. I see no need for you to speak at all, in fact, but I will leave you capable lest you fall ill again. I expect no repetition of your foolish escapade of last night. I would prefer to have left you unrestrained for the journey, but that is clearly impossible. Until you give me your word that you will not attempt escape, and convince me that you mean it, your hands will remain silkbound and your feet shackled.”

She paused, chin lifted, as if waiting for me to lash out. But this was not the day to fight. My knees felt like mud. I needed to eat. I closed my eyes, longing for her to vanish.

She didn't, of course. “Punishment and restriction await you in Palinur, as you well know, but your behavior in the next days will influence my recommendations as to their severity and extent. And despite what you would prefer to believe, my opinion
will
carry weight with both the Registry and Patronn.”

“I have no doubt of that,
Sinduria serena
.” I bowed from the hip and touched my forehead with my fingertips, as was proper to a pureblood of superior rank—which was any one of them at present.

Clearly my intonation of her title and the proper female honorific struck her as insufficiently reverent. When I straightened up again, her full lips were tight, and her dark eyes sparked like struck flint. “You
will
submit, little brother. You have squandered your life and your talents. The time has come for you to focus your attention on something beyond your own pleasure. And we will begin that return to discipline now,” she said, and handed me a small piece of embroidered white silk.

I unfolded the fabric and stared at it for a moment, my fingers tingling with the minor magics woven into it. One edge straight and slightly stiffened, the rest irregularly shaped. One oval opening for the eye, its borders elaborately embroidered in white thread. Neatly sewn tucks to shape it around nose, mouth, and chin. A mask, or rather a half mask, for purebloods covered only one side of the face when appearing among ordinaries. The half mask was a symbol of our second self, the sorcerer within us that “ordinary” eyes could not see. The mask set us apart, enhanced our mystery, and gave us a certain anonymity among those we did not care to have know us. Only ones like Thalassa or the Gillarine pureblood, whose positions mandated other facial decoration or required family dispensation, were exempt from the discipline of the mask.

“It won't fit as your own should and will. But Silos had an extra and was willing to loan it until we get to Palinur.”

No restraint they would use to bind me would be so loathsome, as she was well aware.

“You believe you know me, Lassa, and in some things”—I flipped the mask between my fingers—“your judgment is correct. But I will
never
be like you or the rest of our kin. I have walked free in this world, and I won't forget it.”

But this was not the day to fight. So I lifted the scrap of silk to my face and aligned the stiffened edge down the center of my forehead, nose, and mouth, feeling the spider-thin fabric tighten across my left cheek and brow. Its spelled weaving caused it to adhere along its borders and around my eye and hairline and lips, imperfectly in this case. Silos's face was clearly wider than mine; the thing reached halfway across my left ear. The silk smelled of his cheap perfume.

Thalassa cocked her head to one side as I lowered my hands. “Not comely, especially with your ridiculous hair, but sufficient to remind you of who you are. Perhaps, with a return to discipline and some time for thought, you will come to appreciate your position.”

She summoned her two guards, short, sturdy men with the straight black hair and deep skin color typical of purebloods. They wore green half masks trimmed in purple to match their livery and wine-colored cloaks. They silkbound my palms together, fingertips tucked in, as they had in the night. Then they affixed a lightweight shackle to my left ankle, draped the dangling end of the chain over my wrists so I would not trip on it, and led me up the prison stair.

We emerged in the yard between the library and the abbot's house whence Prince Perryn had ridden out with the Hierarch of Ardra. A party of horses and ten leather-clad men-at-arms waited near the front door. What appeared to be the entire complement of the abbey—monks and lay brothers—filled the rest of the yard. Many somber. Most gawking. Neither Stearc nor his daughter nor his secretary was present.

A new storm was upon us. The sharp wind tore the layers of scud that fronted massive gray clouds. Cloaks and gowns flapped like pennons.

Abbot Luviar and Prior Nemesio stepped from the front rank, exchanging farewells with Thalassa. I gathered that my sister's public business at Gillarine had something to do with sheep breeding contracts for her temple's flocks.

Jullian stood alone between the lay brothers and the monks, staring at me in shocked disbelief. His eyes traveled from the mask to my bound hands to the loop of metal about my ankle and the slender chain draped over my wrists. I tried to catch his eye…winked at him…but it was as if he could not recognize me behind the mask.

The face that had drifted in and out of my troubled dreams all night was nowhere to be seen. Young Gerard, great of heart, but slow of eye and head when it came to reading, was not there.

I turned to the abbot, interrupting the inane formalities. “Is Gerard not found yet?”

Thalassa stiffened and raised a warning finger. “Silence,
recondeur
.”

“Please, he is a friend…a good boy. Father Abbot—”

“We have a party searching,” said Luviar. “You indicated you had not seen him.”

“Not since dinner on the day I returned from Caedmon's Bridge. If I could help…Lassa…
Sinduria serena
…perhaps my skills could—”

“You might possess the skills to search for the boy, Valen,” said Thalassa. “But you have long since squandered trust. I cannot permit it.”

“But—”

“Silos, see the
recondeur
onto his mount. Bind his wrists to the saddle, his foot to the stirrup, and his horse to mine. Then you may aid Abbot Luviar in his search as we discussed.”

The abbot said nothing.

Hatred flooded my veins in that moment. I hated Thalassa and her purebloods and their smug righteousness. I hated the abbot and his single-minded passion. I hated past, present, and future with equal bitterness, and I hated the estrangement I saw in Jullian's eye. I hated that they would not allow me to help one of the few people in the world I'd give a pin for, and I hated that my sister's warning stayed my feet—if I misbehaved again, the future could be even worse. The desire to run was an arrow piercing my lungs. Most of all I hated that after twelve years of running, I could think of nowhere to go but away.

The perfumed man in the green mask and wine-colored cloak took my arm, but I shook off his gloved hands for one moment. For these past weeks, the men of Gillarine had given me a place, and I could not depart without acknowledging their kindness. Touching my bound hands to my forehead, I faced the brothers of Saint Ophir and bowed from the hip. Then I allowed Silos to lead me away.

L
ukas, the sallow valet, scraped the last hair from my chin and dabbed at my face with a damp rag long gone cold. It was tempting, as always, to poke him in the ribs or let fly a particularly foul obscenity, just to see if he would flinch. He wouldn't. Of years somewhere between forty and fifty, the dried-up little ordinary had likely come into pureblood service when he was twelve. He knew very well that his position and livelihood depended on absolute discretion and perfect deportment in the face of temperamental fits, sorcery, and even forced service to a creature of such reprehensible character as a
recondeur
.

Released from his unwelcome ministrations for the moment, I drifted over to the window, rubbing my head that still felt itchy and odd. Almost three weeks had passed since leaving Gillarine, and my hair was at last the same length all over. Scarcely a knucklebone long, of course. Lukas had trimmed all of it to match my regrowing tonsure. Neat. Seemly. Like my shaven chin, clean, trimmed fingernails, and the plum-colored silk shirt and unadorned pourpoint of sober gray velvet Lukas laid out on my bed. Like my temporary accommodation here in the Registry palace—a small, barren chamber, high above the unhealthy airs of the streets, its window discreetly barred, its door firmly locked, and its walls wrapped in spells that made it impossible I work any of my own. The molds of pureblood custom and protocol were squeezing me back into the shape laid out for me before my birth. No blood, no mess. No breath. No life.

I pressed my forehead to the glass. Snow again today. Frosty Palinur sprawled down the hill toward the river, the unfinished towers of the cathedral protruding like bony arms reaching for heaven's mercy—only too late. The groves and vineyards that blanketed the gentle hills, rolling toward the horizon and beyond, were buried in killing frost. Sky, cloud, and horizon formed one chilling mass of gray, a pure reflection of my spirits.

“Your shirt,
plebeiu
.” If such a stick could be said to enjoy anything, Lukas enjoyed addressing me by the low title, reserved for purebloods in disgrace. He assumed I cared.

Lukas dangled the silk shirt from his bony hands, playing another of his games by remaining stolidly beside the bed, so that I must walk over to him to be dressed. If I stood my ground, I would be late. Yet to dress myself in the presence of a servant was a breach of pureblood protocol. Either offense would reap punishment: a meal withheld or reduced to bread alone, an extra hour added to my day's humiliation, or my lamps extinguished an hour early. Every infraction, no matter how small, earned its consequence. Brother Sebastian would approve.

I crossed the room. As I stuck my arms in the soft sleeves of the shirt, the locks on the door snapped open, and a chill draft blew in a thickset man muffled in a claret-hued pelisse. He whipped off his mask, and snowflakes flurried from his hair and shoulders onto the polished wood floor.

“Magrog's prick!” The oath burst out of me like an untimely belch. Though I was working with great diligence at discipline, I was not yet ready to face more of my family than my excessively prim, excessively hostile elder sister. Besides, I had last seen my brother, Max, on Black Night, attending Bayard the Smith. “What the devil are
you
doing in Palinur…here?”

Lukas scurried to take Max's things and hang them on the brass wall hooks. With a drawn-out sigh, Max pulled my one chair out of the corner and sat down, raising his thick, bristly eyebrows. “Manners, little brother?”

Blast him to the fiery pits!
To abase myself to my brother soured my stomach. But Lukas would relish reporting any lapse in protocol. Gathering up the personal opinions I'd strewn about for public viewing, I clenched my teeth, touched my fingertips to my forehead, and bowed deeply from the hip. Purebloods did not reveal emotions. Purebloods did not develop friendships. Purebloods must remain detached from other people so that their magic, which belonged to their family or contracted masters, would not be tainted. Every human relationship must be rigorously shaped and strictly constrained by manners, protocol, and titles awarded according to rank, gender, and kinship.

“Greetings,
ancieno.
Please forgive my humble welcome after so many years. Alas, I've no refreshment to offer, no gossip to share, and you have already found the only seat in my apartments save the bed. And having no idea of your current title, I can add no more honor to the greeting. Are you as elevated as our sister?”

I chose not to mention I'd seen him with Prince Bayard. I was falling easily into pureblood habits. Secret knowledge was liquor in our veins.

“You tread a bridge of sand with speech like that,
plebeiu
. Did they permit such impertinence in the Karish monk-house?” Max grinned and propped his muddy boots on the bedcovers, just missing the gray velvet garment. “Damn, I wish I'd seen you gowned and shorn! The mere consideration of our wild, truculent Valen all prim and prayerful has me thinking gatzi have turned the world backside before.”

“
Willing
submission comes easier,
ancieno.
Would you mind very much if I continued to dress? I am required to be ready at Terce—third watch.” He'd likely not know the Karish term that came so naturally to me now.

He waved his hand, weighted heavily with a ruby and sapphire ring. “Wouldn't think of interfering with your duties. Pardon me if I enjoy the sight overmuch. I certainly don't want to be seen out there in the streets gawking at you, but it quite thrills me to watch you brought to heel. You've caused us all inordinate trouble.”

I motioned Lukas to continue. He dropped a second shirt of fine wool over my head and then added the pourpoint with its interminable buttons down front and sleeves.

“I arrived in the city late last night and heard the news,” Max continued. “The infamous Cartamandua
recondeur
brought to heel at last. Our family disgrace—well, not lifted, but relieved. Nothing can erase what you did. Did you know you cost Patronn his royal appointment? Twelve years he's lived now without a contract of his own. If you thought he detested you before…well, you surely know more than I about that. Do you think he still has the strap?”

Clearly my sins had not taxed Max's humor as sorely as they had my elder sister's; he had always enjoyed my punishments and humiliations inordinately. Yet I could not help but feel his excessive good cheer rooted in some circumstance beyond my capture. “You appear to have prospered despite my transgressions. What kind of contract do you serve? Lassa's given me no news of the family.”

In fact, my sister had hardly spoken to me in our eight miserable days on the road. And though she had hovered about me like a bee on clover during my two days' testimony before the Registry, taking every opportunity to warn me against demonstrating my tongue-block in front of my questioners, she had not visited me since the judgment.

“I've a respectable contract, though it's paid less than half what a Cartamandua of my skill should command.” Max pulled off his gloves one finger at a time. He fondled his grand ring, turning it to catch the light. “At least it's active scouting and advance work, not scrawling maps. Bia's taken the Cartamandua bent as well and is working for Patronn, inking his revisions or some such tedious task. Nilla has entered the eerie realms of divination. Two and two…so the family balance is left to you. Or do you still resist the call of your blood and the demands of discipline, presuming to some profession beyond the family bent? You've skills in so
many
areas, as I recall. Perhaps you've developed healing powers, or you've chosen to teach fertile young minds to read…”

As he rattled off a list of scholarly and magical pursuits, I stood mute. Every response that leaped to mind would reap more punishments.

He shoved the jeweled ring onto his thick finger and raised his eyes to meet my own, his smile as gleeful as that of a huntsman who bends his bow at a hobbled buck. “Come, tell me. What are you, Valen? You've surely not taken the bent for divination, else you'd hardly have let yourself be captured. But then again, why would I expect you might be competent at anything?”

His were but a child's barbs, no matter that they stung a nerve grown raw. If I refused to let him see more, perhaps he would win only a child's pleasure from them. So I changed the subject. “I can't imagine the twins grown enough to choose their bent. They were what…eleven last time I saw them…twelve? All ribbons and sulks.”

Lips pursed in discontent, he settled back in his chair. “Our little sisters have grown up. Nilla is the beauty, as you might guess. Her looks got her a decent match—Luc de Galeno-Mercanti, a physician thrice her age who is contracted to the Duc of Avenus. Her divinations focus on her husband's patients—a bit unsettling for them, I think. Perhaps now you're back under discipline, the Registry will allow her to birth a child before her husband is wholly incapable. Bia's minor rebellions ceased when she saw what happened to you—or perhaps when Matronn locked her in her room for half a year lest she follow your course. Patronn has not yet found a husband for her. Neither girl is happy with you. I'd recommend you stay out of their way. Easier in Nilla's case, off in the damp of Morian as she is. But Bia—”

“I'll watch my back.”

Lukas knelt to tie up my hose and lace my boots. I scarcely knew my younger sisters, Petronilla and Phoebia. They had been but wasps in the garden of family. Max and Thalassa had been the snake and the shrew. So what was the snake doing here?

“Who is it holds your leash, Max? Your master must be headquartered in Palinur. Or has he loosed your golden chains so far as to permit random family visits?”

“My master's business has brought me to the city,” said Max. “Business of critical importance to Navronne's future. I've no leave to discuss it—or him—with anyone save family. Yet I doubt such exceptions should be extended to
you
. You might be tempted to use the information to buy your way out of your unhappy lot. Only a sadist or a halfwit is going to consider a contract for a twelve-year
recondeur
. You know nothing of leashes, little brother. Not yet.”

My brother rocked the chair back on its rear legs, his bulk overflowing it. From the time I shot past his height at age ten or so, Max had always managed to be sitting when we were together. And he had always enjoyed taunting me with the privileges he earned from being the dutiful elder, while I suffered the consequences of my errant nature. Evidently, nothing had changed.

“Keep your secrets,
ancieno,
” I said. “I am, as ever, hopelessly unreliable when it comes to family loyalties.”

Having finished with my boots, Lukas picked up a hinged contraption of delicately engraved silver from the small table beside my bed. With perfect patience he waited for me to kneel before him so he could slip it over my head. He could not completely hide his delight in this particular duty.

“You must excuse me from any further conversation,” I said, as I dropped to my knees. I thought I had managed the encounter well, but it was impossible to hide bitterness at this point. Not with Max here.

My brother lowered his chair legs to the floor with a jolt, watching goggle-eyed. “Ah, fires of Deunor, they have done you proud, Valen,” he whispered. “You, the lad who threw fits when locked in his bedchamber ten times the size of this room.”

A delicate silver band three fingers wide encircled my throat. From it graceful silver coils stretched up my neck to support a mask that covered the left half of my face. This mask was not smooth, accommodating silk, but rigid silver that sealed my lips closed, blocked one nostril and one ear, and obscured one eye. Lukas latched the cursed thing at the back of my neck and fastened the thin metal strap that held it over my head. The Registry judge who had insisted on the mask had been most annoyed that in all my tedious accounting of my twelve uncontrolled years, I'd not implicated any ordinary he could hang.

A grin materialized on Max's broad face. “Does it close in on you, little brother? Does the world appear warped, with only one eye to observe it? Can you feel the restraint, the control? Spirits of night, how you must loathe this.”

I ignored his baiting as I rose from the floor, fighting the urge to ram my head into the wall, practicing Brother Sebastian's lessons to shift words from tongue to spirit and allow them to float, discorporate, into the ether. Lukas settled a garish yellow cape lined with ermine about my shoulders, adjusted its drape, and pinned it to the left with an amber brooch just as the cathedral bells struck nine.

The key snicked in the door lock again. Two snow-dusted men in wine-colored cloaks and silk half masks entered, carrying deceptively plain bronze staves. Without meeting my brother's eyes, I touched my fingertips to my forehead—half flesh, half metal—and bowed to Max and then to my jailers. The Registry men quickly silkbound my clenched hands—we were all quite experienced at this now—and I followed the two down six flights of stairs and out into the street.

Our boots crunched in the frozen muck. On this, the tenth day of my punishment, our route led to the Stonemasons' District, a familiar haunt from my days working on the cathedral. There I was to spend the hours until sunset exhibited on a public platform, my foot shackled to a loop of iron.