The Lascar's Dagger (42 page)

Fritillary said, “There’s no proof Sorrel and Celandine are the same person. We may never know. But let’s press on. What is your witchery?”

“My – my witchery? I don’t have one!”

“Of course you do. I can feel it. Witcheries recognise one another. If you delve inside yourself, you’ll feel mine. You haven’t looked in the mirror lately, have you?”

“They don’t have mirrors in the kind of hostelries I’ve been staying at.” He fingered his cheek, saying, “I suppose you’re referring to the scar having healed so quickly. But I didn’t do that. It was part of what happened to me at the shrine.”

“Ah.” The look she was giving him now had a smidgeon of pity in it, and not a little mockery. “Come with me.” She stood up and he followed her into the next room, which turned out to be her bedchamber. If he’d thought about it, he would have guessed it would be austere, in keeping with her monastic existence. The room was indeed small and plain, but there were touches of femininity, even luxury, that surprised him. Fresh roses on the washstand, paintings of bucolic scenes of country life and nature on the walls, a prettily embroidered bed cover with a lace fringe. There was also a mirror with a carved oakwood frame.

“Take a look at your face,” she said. “You told me you were branded. The Prime took great delight in telling me you were branded. You both said it was done on the cheek. Well, tell me why I can’t see it.”

He stared at his image. The picture reflected back at him was almost free of distortion, unlike the cheap looking-glasses he was accustomed to using. And that made what he was seeing all the more shocking. He expected to see a white or red puckering, something, to show where the brand had burned him. But his cheek had no scar at all. It was as if he had never been scarred, and yet he could
feel
the roughness of it.

He turned to look at the Pontifect, knowing that she must see how shaken he was. “This may be a glamour, a permanent one. But it’s not mine,” he said flatly. “And I don’t have any healing power.”

“So what is your witchery? Ask yourself what changed immediately after your night at the shrine.”

The birds
… He suppressed a shudder. “Birds,” he said finally.

“
Birds?”

“I know what they’re thinking about. Well, they don’t
think
, not really. They just …
feel
things. Which I sense. It’s muckle-headed nonsense! Who wants to know when the local sparrows are hungry?” He was getting good at ignoring them now, though. Even the flocks of town pigeons that followed him around as if they were demented.

She stared at him, but he had nothing further to say. Shrugging, she led the way back into the main room to sit again. He felt exhausted and leant back against the cushions as if all energy had drained from him.

“We who draw on the power of the Oak have only one thing in common,” she replied. “We have all endured something extreme. Extreme grief, or pain, or fear, or horror. And in the course of that experience, we surrendered ourselves. We gave up part of our life, part of our independence, to the service of the Way of the Oak. In return, we were granted the powers of witchery. If you don’t truly understand yours, I suspect it’s because you’re holding something of yourself back. When you truly commit yourself, the full extent of your witchery will be revealed to you. And remember this: it comes with a terrible price.”

“You mean something more then being unfrocked, branded and left for dead?”

“Oh yes, indeed. Part of your life belongs to the Faith now.”

“It always did,” he protested. “I am – was – a cleric, remember?”

“And can be again,” she said. “After all, I’m the Pontifect, and it is ultimately my decision who serves the Faith as a cleric and who doesn’t. Though I have no intention at this point of restoring your position. You can serve the Faith better as my spy.”

His relief was immediate.
No more court life.

Then, unexpectedly, she said, “I’ve always known this moment would come. I’ve been waiting for it.”

He was appalled. “You can’t possibly have known that I was going to be nullified!”

“No, no, of course not. But I did know that one day you would be offered witchery.”

He pondered her words, exasperated because she didn’t seem able to say anything clearly. “Has this something to do with my mother?”

“It has something to do with the blood you’ve inherited. Witcheries run in your family. But it’s more to do with what I’ve sensed inside you. The potential.”

At least he realised now the meaning of that feeling of expectation he’d sensed in the Pontifect from time to time; she’d been waiting for him to tell her that something like this had happened.

“I’m not sure that I want this.”

“You have no choice. You have whatever it is already.”

He said nothing. It was all so pointless. What good was it to know that a bird was enjoying a beetle? Was his mission in life to call up worms for them, perhaps?

He scowled. When she raised that querying eyebrow of hers, he said, “Fox wants you dead. And I think he would be happy to see that something fatal happens to you.”

“I know. There have been several attempts on my life since you left. And I know he’s already seeking supporters. And has found them.” He looked up at her in surprise, and she added, “You aren’t my only informant. Those ledgers in his office – what do you think they signify?”

“I’ve written down everything I can remember.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers from his jacket and laid them in front of her on the desk. “You might get more from them than I did. I think he’s raising his own force of armed men, lancers. I think ultimately he plans to use the resources of Ardrone’s forests and lands to fund him after his seizure of power. I think some of the ledgers are his accounting of men and women he’s recruited. He wants your job, and he wants the end of the Way of the Oak. And of the Flow too, I reckon. I believe those men I saw on the Chervil track across the mountains were after me, sent by Fox just to make sure I was dead. And I think it likely he’s some kind of agent of A’Va.”

She was dismissive, saying, “A’Va’s power is always secondary to Va’s.”

What was it the shrine guardian had said?
A’Va is lies and hate and temptation and fear and greed and indulgence. He hunts you down … he’s real, yet a lie with no entity.
He wasn’t sure he understood that. A’Va was the antipodal of Va, of course, one positive, the other in opposition. But without entity? Was that the same as saying without body?

“Oh, one more thing. The Fox family tree I saw? There was something very odd about the dates on it. If they are correct, the whole lot of them seem to live to be well over a century old. Like shrine-keepers.”

She snorted. “Unlikely. The rest is more worrying. I will send more cautionary words to King Edwayn about his Prime. It won’t be the first warnings he’s had. If anything does happen to me, make no assumption about my demise. I won’t let Fox climb on to the Pontifect’s chair without a fight.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” But the words chilled him. They made the danger more than just a possibility he’d considered. It was real, serious and close at hand. He waited for her to say more, to explain details, but she was silent. He forgot sometimes that although they had a special relationship, he was only a tiny part of the empire she headed. A minor cleric in a huge web of influence and connections.

He changed the subject.

“Now tell me about my parents. Tell me why you lied. And why they should have any relevance to Valerian Fox. Are you and I related?”

“No. Fox and I have a long history, from the days when we were rising through the clerical ranks of Ardrone. I met him often enough to know he has an evil, ambitious heart, and I thwarted his career whenever I could.” She shrugged. “Naturally enough, he looked for my weaknesses. So when I rescued you from the kind of life you led with Robin Rampion, I wanted to hide my connection to you in order to keep you safe. I had no doubt then that if ever he found out he would hit at me through you. Hence the promise extracted from Robin Rampion, and the lies I told. I suppose, from what you just said, that he has discovered the connection. It’s as simple as that.”

Oh no, it’s not. That’s not the whole truth. Not by the length of an arrow shot.

“Why does my father – Robin Rampion – think I may not be his son?”

“Your mother was a farmer’s daughter. She was beautiful, and wilful. Her parents arranged for her to marry Robin Rampion. She took one look at him and fled to Oakwood. She found a job working in a tavern frequented by students of the university. The three of us – Fox, myself and the man who was probably your father – we were all there at the time, all of an age more or less, and we all came to know Iris, your mother. She and I were friendly. She was very likeable, always laughing, popular with the students.”

“Are you telling me Fox was part of your group?”

“No, Va forbid! We all disliked him, even then. Fox and the other man, they’d known each other since they were children, but they didn’t like one another. Fox doesn’t come into the story directly. I mention him merely because he might have known more of what happened then than I was aware of at the time.

“Anyway, we – Iris, the man who might have been your father and I – had a falling-out. It was the end of the university term. Iris went home. I believe she might have been pregnant with you, although she never told me that. She married Robin Rampion, so it is likely she saw him as a way out of her predicament. I think he made life unpleasant for her because he doubted your parentage. She ran away, leaving you behind. Shortly afterwards she died, back in Oakwood.”

“She left me behind.”

“Yes,” Fritillary said. “She had no resources to care for a child.”

“And the man who might have fathered me?”

“He’d moved on. Gone to another university.”

“Did he know about me?”

“Perhaps. Iris loved him. I think she would have told him – if she was indeed having his child.”

“Who was he?”

“Don’t go there. It’s not worth it. I don’t know anything for sure, any more than Robin was sure. And you’ll never know either. There was … gossip about your mother among the students. Leave it be.”

His anger roiled, making him feel physically ill.

Worse still, the woman who’d cared, the one he’d “remembered” that night at the shrine? She hadn’t existed. His mother had deliberately left him with a man who doubted the parentage of her child.

He looked at Fritillary. She said, “There are some things better left undisturbed, Saker. This is one of them. What matters is now, and the future. I want to keep you well out of Valerian Fox’s reach. I don’t want him to have another chance to hurt you in order to hurt me.”

“How did he make the connection between us?”

She shrugged yet again. “A number of people have noted my mentorship of you over the years. I paid for your university fees, which would be a matter of record. Perhaps he investigated because I sent you to the court. Your death would grieve me, and he found that out.”

He didn’t answer that.

She said, “I want you to go to Lowmeer to investigate the incidences of the Horned Death.”

His heart sank. “Are you trying to kill me?” he asked sourly. “Some sort of justice for my foolishness?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be safer in Lowmeer. Saker Rampion is useless to me in Ardrone because he’s not lawfully permitted back there. Change your name to a Lowmian one. They like fish. Call yourself Anchovy Stickleback. Or Thick-lip Mullet.”

Damn, she wasn’t going to let him forget his foolishness in a hurry. “Actually, I was thinking more about danger from the pestilence than from the law.”

“Witchery gives you some power to protect yourself from A’Va’s sorcery.”

“Not true. In the Ardronese outbreaks, shrine-keepers died, and who ever heard of a shrine-keeper without at least one witchery?”

That reminder appeared to worry her, and she stirred uneasily. “It
–
it’s a new development, and so far only in Ardrone. You are safer than most people I can send. I want you to investigate the Horned Death, anything you can find out about its connection to devil-kin, anything about the practice of twin murder. Anything relevant, in fact. I’ll give you a letter to an old cleric friend of mine, Prelate Murram Loach, who now heads the Seminary of Advanced Studies on the outskirts of Ustgrind; he’ll help you get started. Of course, you are never to cross the Princess’s path again. You will steer well clear of the Regal’s court.”

“You didn’t have to say that. I might have acted as a brainless fool once, but I do learn from my mistakes.”

“Good.”

“What are you going to do about Fox?”

“The Ardronese Prime is not your concern, Saker.” She heaved a sigh. “He’s been clever enough to win Shenat approval with his care of those suffering from the Horned Death, even as he stabs them in the back. You can have no idea how many epistles I’ve had from northern Ardrone praising him.”

“Part of his plan, I imagine. Charm the people you want to make powerless into believing you are on their side…”

“I shall deal with it. You certainly cannot.”

“There are other alternatives. Reverence, you need to watch for assassins. For poison in your food. For a stray arrow. A falling tile. If I stayed here, I could be responsible for your safety.”

She smiled faintly. “No. You go to Lowmeer. Call it your penance, if you like. You leave as soon as you have replenished your kit, whatever you need. Oh, and I’d advise that you wear gloves. All the time.”

“Did you tell him the truth?”

Fritillary, who had been standing at the window wondering just what Valerian Fox’s next move would be, turned to face Secretary Barden. “Not entirely.”

“Mistake.” The old man leaned on his stick and shook his head sorrowfully at her. “He has a right to know.”

“Yes, he does.”

“But you still aren’t going to tell him?”

“If I tell – no,
when
I tell him, I lose him for ever.”

“Possibly you underestimate the young man.”

“Underestimate his anger at my duplicity? I don’t think so. Barden, I
need
him. I need his unquestioning loyalty. And if it takes a lie – or a prevarication – to get it, then that’s what I’ll do.”