Flesh and Spirit (37 page)

He shrugged in mock apology as he unhooked the clasp for me and threw the yellow cape over a chair. “I'll say only this. There's only the one passage out of this courtyard, and you will be sure to meet either me or my partner, Herat, or this Registry man, Caphur, if you should venture it. This door will remain locked—only a formality, as your father requests it—but we will know of any comings or goings. You may walk in the yard in company with one of us. Your needs will be taken care of. The Sinduria sent a personal attendant for you…an ordinary…but this Registry fellow, Lukas, was here already.”

His equitable manner emboldened me. “Can you tell me, good Silos, what news in the realm? I've heard naught of the world since we left the abbey. But Prince Perryn's banner no longer flies above the citadel.”

Silos went to one of the windows and ran his fingers along the iron frames—checking the locks, I assumed, or installing wards. Though common wards could prevent spellworking, they could not disrupt a pureblood's bent. Unfortunately, tracking and route finding in this chamber would lead me nowhere but to the door.

“I'm sorry,
plebeiu
,” said Silos. “You remain under Registry censure, thus are not privy to news. Your sole task is to attend your own behavior and submission to your family.”

Ludicrous. The world was crumbling and I was supposed to be concerned with masks and manners. “Of course, that's true,” I said, straining to remain civil. “And you are pureblood and must serve the Registry's wishes, as well as my sister's. But even the Registry does not interfere with a man's duty to the gods. So surely then, as a servant of the goddess Samele and her high priestess, duty-bound to reclaim a soul who has been dabbling with Karish ways, you are permitted to discuss matters of worship…of the temple. Such as the rioters today…some of them Harrowers…so many…”

“Once Sila Diaglou declared for Prince Bayard, Prince Perryn gave her Harrowers the run of the city to appease them. But they've no loyalty to buy. Instead they've put themselves on every district council. They run out the magistrates and judges with fearmongering and threats of burning, then name their own to fill the places. And they're doing the same in the temples.”

He moved to the door and ran his fingers about the perimeter. “Three months ago, Jemacus, second to the high priest of Erdru, burnt his temple in Trimori and declared himself a Harrower. We've heard he's on his way here and that half the priests in Erdru's temple are his men. Every temple staff is eating itself with suspicions and examinations. Chaos, that's what the Harrowers want. All of us eating roots and cowering in caves. What ‘purity' lies in chaos and ruin?”

I shook my head, trying to recapture a memory as fleeting as starfall. Jullian had once said something…that someone had told him everyone should be made pure like him and Gerard.

A sudden anxiety stabbed through every other concern. How could I have forgotten? “Silos, did you find Gerard—the boy at the abbey?”

“Is
this
a matter of your soul as well,
plebeiu
?”

“Yes. Well, of course it is. He is my vowed brother.”

He raised his eyebrows, but did not argue. “The boy was not within the abbey precincts. We found his footsteps mingled with many others outside the walls, but could discover no definite direction to them. We've no reason to believe he's harmed.”

Likely the boy was tucked safely in his own bed back home, having decided that girls were more fun than celibate monks or studious Jullian. Likely. So why couldn't I believe it? Ready to be done with this wretched day, anxious for Silos to depart, I squatted and held my hands closer to the little brazier.

The temple aide brushed the dust from his hands and jupon. “I'm off now. Behave yourself,
plebeiu.
I don't like you twisting words and dealing lightly with the gods to get your way.” He remained stiffly by the door, his lips set in a prim line, waiting.

Of course. Manners. I stood up, touched my still-tingling fingers to my forehead, and bowed. Every pureblood was my superior. “Good night,
Domé
Silos.”

As soon as he was out the door, I hurried to the bedchamber window. The cold night air took my breath as I yanked the balky casement inward and peered into the night. A quivering energy about the window indicated more magical alarms to warn of my escape. My poor skills gave me no hope of shaping an unraveling spell. Thus, for the moment, I let my eyes adjust to the dark sloping lawn and the thin line of beech trees and low wall that separated this wing of the house from the lane and the Aingerou's Font.

No movement was visible through the leafless branches. No dark blur against the night or the embankment. No blue dragons scribed in light on muscular limbs.

I gripped the casement and stared into the empty night until I was so cold I could scarcely move.
Dealing lightly with the gods…
perhaps I had been. A catch in my throat threatened to unleash emotions I had no use for. Somewhere the lonely cat was still wailing.

When Lukas returned to undress me for bath and bed, he snorted and slammed shut the casement. Thank all gods he was not pureblood. They would hang me before I bowed to him.

“I cannot sit in that room all day and pick at my scabs,” I said as I strode down the cobbled paths of the knot garden. “My father said I was not to roam unaccompanied, so accompany me or explain it to him, whichever you choose. He very much outranks you,
domé
, and is not happily thwarted.”

Caphur, the Registry overseer with the hairy chin and short legs, dodged snow-laden branches and tripped over broken paving, struggling to keep up as I sweated out the frustration of a long night of little sleep and an entire morning of doing nothing. I felt ready to tear down the garden walls with my teeth.

The squalling I had thought was a cat had broken into cackling and screams early that morning. Only one explanation had come to mind: They housed mad cartographers as well as
recondeur
s in the east wing. My grandfather was confined not a hundred quercae from my apartment. By midday, I was half crazed with the racket…and the thought of its source. When Lukas arrived with my dinner, I bolted through the door into the open air. Though only one alarm had triggered, not two, prickly Caphur had spotted me instantly and latched on to me like a wasp.

The din from the corner apartment quickly drove me out of the overgrown courtyard, through the brick arch, and around the washhouse. I remembered this garden as the sunniest of the little patches of nature sprinkled about my family's rambling house. Not that there was much sun in evidence this day. Moisture-filled clouds bulged and sagged onto the roof tiles.

The meticulous plantings of the knot garden appeared flat and soggy under the patchy snow, blackened leaves and dead stems instead of colorful swaths that shifted hue and pattern through the year as the various plants bloomed and faded. Silos and the second temple guard posted themselves at the outer wall, lest I take the wild notion to fling myself at the piled stones and skitter over them like the lizards that lived there in true summer. Tempting to try it anyway. Caphur alone, I might challenge. The bristle-faced Registry man was strong, but not particularly quick. Burning the Harrower youth had shown him unimaginative and brutish. But Silos…My body well remembered his precise and paralyzing sorcery as I ran from Gillarine.

No, escape would be impossible as long as my guards were so edgy. I had to wait. I had to behave myself, to lull them into belief in my compliance. Stupid to have walked out like this.

When I tired of circling the same half quellé of path and the same gnarled blockage of grievances, I returned to my chambers, bearing some faint hope that Lukas had not disposed of my meal in his haste to report my ill behavior. To my dismay and astonishment, I found my father seated beside my brazier.

“Patronn,” I said, genuflecting.

He flicked his hand in a gesture that I interpreted as “continue with what you should be doing, if you can possibly complete it before I get too impatient.” So I sat on one of the stools while Lukas, wearing no expression but smug superiority, deftly removed my muddy boots, replaced them with gray slippers, and blotted the damp from my shoulders, back, and head with a soft towel. Unable to stomach the yellow cape, I had worn no outer garment, despite the chill.

Protocol forced my valet to withdraw to the bedchamber and close the door once his sartorial duties were completed. Poor nasty, spying Lukas. I rose and awaited the reprimand to come.

“You didn't run.” Less anger than I expected. Suspicious, though, and a bit off-balance. Almost tentative. I had never seen my father this way.

“You did not forbid me to breathe, Patronn. Only to intrude on your sight. I've never seen you in the knot garden.” I
would
keep my temper. Or, at the least, I would force him to lose his first. “Did you
wish
me to run? Silos's firebolts are impressive and quite debilitating.”

“I've had an inquiry about a contract.”

Bravado drained into the region of my great toe. Max had been right; anyone interested in the contract of a
recondeur
was more likely brute than saint. No point in asking the identity of the inquirer. My father would tell me or not at his pleasure. Why had he come here—to watch me tremble? Did he imagine that terror at a perilous future would make me beg him for a lifetime's forgiveness?

“That must be gratifying,” I said at last, clasping my hands at my back. At the least, I would give him no leverage.

He leaned forward, his dark eyes blazing of a sudden. “If you had ever shown just one minim of appreciation…of…of…loyalty…”

“Appreciation? Loyalty? For what?” I gaped at him. What skewed perception had him using such words with me in such aggrieved fashion? “Lord of Sea and Sky, I was your
child
! I never asked to be some weapon of war between you and the cursed gatzé who fathered you.”

I would not accept assignment of blame for our difficult past. After twelve years of drowning all serious thoughts in mead and dancing and the requirements of survival, I'd had far too much time to think these past weeks.

“I know not why I am as I am, or why you have loathed me since my earliest memory, but you tried to beat it out of me because you hated
him
. You
made
me, Patronn. You birthed me with your cock, and you formed me with your strap and your hatred. Now, unfortunately for both of us, you must deal with me. So do as you have ever done…as you damnably well please.”

So much for keeping my temper.

Livid and shaking, he shot from the chair, pointing one finger as if to loose lightning at me. “How dare you speak to me in such fashion? You are no child of mine.”

His declaration—the foulest, the most dreadful condemnation that could be spoken from a pureblood father to his offspring—fell between us with the impact of an iron gauntlet thudding to the floor. Something—those irretrievable words or the sight of his trembling hand—infused me with inordinate calm. I pulled up to my full height and enjoyed looking down at him. “Then let me go.”

“Oh, no,” he said, moving to the door, his rage held dangerously tight. “I have responsibilities to this family—something your unnatural soul will never understand. This contract will remove your face from my sight, your foul speech from my hearing, and the burden of your existence from my shoulders. Every pureblood will see the sweetness of this resolution and marvel at the ways of fate. Command your valet to dress you appropriately, Valen. Tonight our family will celebrate a sealing feast, and by tomorrow the unseemly past will at last be put to rest.”

He slammed the door before I could answer. I lifted the chair where he'd sat and threw it at the door. Dust and cushions and splinters of wood and stone rained down on the woven rug, but the chair came to rest on its side. Intact.

I bellowed and laughed at the same time, as this rebellion came to the same pitiful ending as every other. Was my life to be the very archetype of futility? Nothing changed. Nothing settled. Nothing accomplished. Every day I'd lived under his roof I had prayed to hear that I was not Claudio de Cartamandua's child. Now, even if I could believe it true, I knew it made no real difference.

I clamped my hands at the back of my neck and squeezed my head between my forearms, trying to crush the useless rage and nonsensical terror that had set me on this course of madness so many years ago. For it was not just the enmity between me and my father and my grandfather—the anger, spite, and bitterness that had forever plagued this house—that had me ready to slam my head into the stone. The flaw was in me. Somewhere I was broken, not just in my ability to decipher words on paper, but in my ability to live in this world.

One of my childhood tutors, the first and last who had ever bothered to listen to my rants, had argued that the duties and restrictions of pureblood life were no more demanding than those of any privileged family. One had to pay for the position one inhabited in this world, he'd told me, and I should be grateful for what I was given. In a frenzy I had shoved him into a brick wall and ransacked his study, pawning two of his precious books for the money to get myself royally drunk. I was eleven. In the years since, logic nagged that his arguments had merit. But my body and spirit yet refused to accept them.