The Universal Mirror (24 page)

“No.”  Her face tightened.  “He’s been imprisoned, that they know, but not for what.  Save that it had something to do with Felix and, well, I’m quite sure they’ve made their assumptions.”

“All that you told me, of being the wife of a traitor… was that a lie?”  He swallowed, not wanting to believe it.

“I am the wife of a traitor,” Catharine spat.  “But have I gone around telling the court that my husband is a Heretic?  No, I have not.  I tried to speak with my father about it and he told me that I’d gone mad.  He suggested that I remain quiet and let them hang him for another offense, for love of our name.”

“You can’t lie to me any longer, Catharine.  This is important.”  Bile rose in his throat as he said the words, knowing them a lie in themselves simply by what he hadn’t told her.  “The Council has said nothing about his Heresy to anyone save you?  They’ve not charged him?”

“No.”  Catharine said. 

“It doesn’t make any sense.”  Asahel tried to work it out by speaking his mind aloud.  “When a man tries to escape the island—that Heresy, they call out immediately.  Or when the services of magic are sold to another—that Heresy, I’ve seen men hang for…”

“No one’s ever performed magic to heal,” she interrupted.  “Ever.  I’ve never heard of it, not even when the Plagues were at their worst.”  Asahel looked into her face, startled.

“That’s it.  That’s why the Council hasn’t told anyone.”

“Because he’s—because the both of you, rather, have been trying to heal people?”  Catharine’s round face knotted up into a frown.  “Yes, that is a difficult one to defend, especially when the Plagues have begun to start again.”  He noticed how tight her body seemed to coil when she said it, as if she expected the illness to strike her once more.

“It’s been a time since they have,” Asahel said, not certain of what comfort that offered.

“It has.  And at least it’s always summer, when the Court begins its travel away from Pallo.”  Her fingers played with the thin silver bands on her hands.  “I’m grateful Quentin never forced us to travel with them, but he never thought there was much of a risk.”

“Does he ever think anything is a risk?”  Asahel restrained a groan but not the smile that accompanied it.

“No, he actually put some thought into it.”  Catharine laughed.  The expression brought so much warmth to her eyes that she seemed a different person altogether.  More real, he thought.  “What he always claimed was that the Plagues hit the poor first and the hardest.”

“He would do.”  Asahel sighed.  “Did he actually give a reason?”

“No, haven’t you noticed it?  We hardly ever have the Plagues in the upper districts.  There are a few in the court who are marked, but most of us caught it from servants who were allowed to travel home or from visiting the markets.”  Catharine smiled ruefully.  “It was my father who took me when I was eight to see the monkey that had been brought from Anjdur for the Geographer then—do you remember?  They took him from a ship and carried him in a golden cage up the palace steps.”

“And first he was on display at the docks,” Asahel remembered.  Then he caught himself.  “Aye, no, I don’t remember what you’ve said about the Plagues.  It wasn’t like that for me at all.” 

She leaned forward, still sitting at his desk.  The sleeves of her dress brushed a stack of papers and he reached out to push them away from her before they could fall.  Catharine didn’t smile at him but kept her gaze intent, encouraging him further simply by being silent.  Asahel sighed once more, leaning into his own chair and letting it rock slightly off its front legs.

“Mother used to fear summer like I’ve seen you jump at a spider.”

“I do not—oh, go on.”

“Every few years, down here, by the sea, you could smell the sickness.  It always seemed to come when the city was the most crowded.  There’d be people everywhere, pushing and shoving, aye, and babies crying and not enough food to eat, then that’s when it would come.”  He thought about it.  “You survived.  It would’ve been a miracle here.  I don’t know how it chose who it took.”

“How it chose?  You make it sound like choice was involved.”  Her laugh was sharp as she stood up.

“You don’t sound any better when you say only the poor got sick,” Asahel retorted, about to try and match her sour face when he realized what it was that he’d said.  It washed over him as he asked, “Honestly… it was rare?”

“Yes.  Honestly.”  Catharine searched his face.  “What are you thinking of?”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”  But it did.  He rubbed his eyes.  “It’s dead late.  Too little sleep, I’ve had, with you about.” 

That wasn’t true—in fact, his mind was racing with a new question.  Why do the Plagues only come to the poor?  And how’s it that it only happens when we’ve too many mouths to feed?  And for that matter, why haven’t they announced Quentin’s crime?  Or drawn attention to myself?  The answers were starting to piece themselves together in his mind, too rapidly for him to risk sharing them with the woman in front of him.  Catharine would act if she knew—he sensed that.  It was too soon to take that chance.

There was one way that he could get confirmation and as he thought of the man that he needed to speak with, another piece of the puzzle slid into place.

“Asahel, say something.”  Catharine’s hand fell on his shoulder.  Not a small woman herself, her touch was firm enough to shake him out of his own thoughts.  “I know that I’m not a magician, but he is my husband.  He sent me here.  You can trust me.”

But you don’t know that you can’t trust me.  That he shouldn’t have. 

“I need to talk to Felix.  I think Felix will know why we’ve not been taken by the Council.”  The room grew colder despite the heat of the words.  Her skirts shifted as she stepped back, a slight breeze drifting into the space between them.

“He was there when Quentin was taken.”

“Aye, I know.”

“I told you what that meant.”  Catharine was not a shrill woman—rather, her anger ran deep and he could see what it meant to live with it day in and day out in the way that the air seemed to still.  “He hated Quentin in university.  I used to think it was funny.”  She blinked and he noticed that her lashes seemed damp.  “He was always kind to me, even when he shouldn’t have been, perhaps because neither of us fit… expectations.”

“Would he send you to prison for delivering a message?”  It was a simple question, but it took her a moment before she shook her head in response. 

Asahel went to the chest in the corner and opened it, taking out a scabbard.  His fingers brushed the hilt, feeling the slight tinge of Felix’s magic still lingering in the steel, and he knew.  The scabbard rested on his palms as he carried it to her, presenting her with the sword as if it was  a gift.

In a way, he thought, it was.

“That’s his sword.  Everyone knows it—almost none of the magicians carry weapons,” Catharine said, staring at the leather against his skin.  “And the Carnicus crest.  There.”  She gestured at the faint sigil worked into the scabbard, a sign that he hadn’t known himself.

Asahel nodded.  “It’s his.”

“Why do you have it?”  Her hand reached out, taking the sword from him and holding it firmly.  The woman stood with it as if it belonged to her, protectively wrapping her hand around the grip even as she continued staring at Asahel.

“He asked me to carry it once.”  To say more than that would be to tell her that he had betrayed her husband.  Asahel knew that he had passed the point at which she could have been told—now, he needed her more as his ally.  “And then… everything else happened.”  He averted his eyes, knowing that he had never been able to lie.

“This isn’t—I can’t believe he hasn’t come for it.”

“Aye.  I want you to bring it to him.”  He didn’t know if Felix would understand what he meant when the sword returned to its owner.  It had been given as a guarantee of protection.  Asahel knew he was playing a dangerous game to guess that sending it back to the other man would result in a meeting on ground that didn’t belong to the swordsman. 

“What kind of message do I take with it?”  She looked uncharacteristically bewildered.

“That is the message.”  Asahel said.

The shipyards felt more like boneyards as the summer weeks began to pass.  The men who remained at work were gaunt, their faces welted by pox and shadow.  It was not uncommon to stumble on a shipwright polishing wood with his tears.  It was an unlucky practice, but these were unlucky times and Asahel let it go.

He moved freely among the men, not constrained by fear of illness.  Like them, Asahel had been bred to the sea and now that he was called, he took pleasure in leaving the desk behind.  Magic could not touch a body, but it could move a barrel or carve a tree—these things, at least, were not prohibited.  Every time he called energy out of the earth, he waited for the Geographer’s eye to settle upon him.  If it did, however, he never knew.

The simplest things gave him the most satisfaction, however, for those were the things he was never asked to do.

As dusk began to fall, he was repairing one of the nets that had been torn on the winter voyage.  It was a heavy mass of rope, frayed in places where it had caught on the rocks.  His hands sought out the gaps so that he could wind them together and strengthen the bond with magic.

A low whistle stopped him.  It was no song sung on a ship, at least none that he knew.  Asahel lifted his head to see a solitary figure walking towards him, a sword banging against the other man’s hip.

Don’t stand, he told himself.  Let him think you don’t notice him.

It was too late.  Felix stopped where he stood close enough to be identified but not close enough for Asahel to read his expression.

“A man isn’t old until his regrets take the place of his dreams,” Felix looked as if he was quoting an old book, his mouth puckering at the corners.  “I feel incredibly old today, Soames.  And yourself?”

“You know how I feel, aye?”  It was all the younger man trusted himself to say.

“I never did.”  He came closer, edging up to the corner of the net.  His foot nudged it, the rope so heavy that it barely moved.  “Were you planning to catch me with that?”

“I’ve work to do.  You’ve no idea, I’m sure, but we’ve lost a fair number of men to the sickness and the poxes.”  Felix looked chastened then, settling himself on a piece of driftwood and gingerly lifting the edge of the net.

“I…”  He wasn’t looking Asahel in the eyes.  “Can I help with this?”

“I didn’t call you to help.”

“I could mend things, you know.  I’m not just—”  Felix stopped.  Unlike the others Asahel knew, Felix didn’t plead or ask for sympathy.  He never had.  “Catharine doesn’t know all of the story, and neither do you.”  His knuckles gripped his sword pommel but Asahel took up the net-weaving again.  There was nothing threatening in the gesture—if anything, Asahel thought, it meant that Felix was afraid.

“I don’t.  But I know that I’ve like to have killed a man at your suggestion.”  The rope snarled and tangled around his fingers, knotting up his left hand.  “My best friend.”

“You call him your best friend but you’re clinging to someone you knew at university.”  Exasperation cracked the air between them.  “He never did anything to earn it afterwards, you realize.”

“Aye, and you and I were such good friends before I’d stumbled on your door?”  Asahel struggled with the knotting, his face red as he blurted out the question.

“I turned him over.  Is that what you need me to tell you?  And I convinced you that telling the Geographer was a good idea.”  He stared at Asahel’s hands for a moment, then let out an irritated snort.  “Stay still.”

Kneeling next to Asahel, Felix’s fingers picked out the netting so he continued talking.  “The two of you would have been caught.  It wasn’t difficult to notice all of the grave robbing, for one.  The magical energy so far away from the universities—those things stick out on a map.”  Sure, steady hands loosened the web enough for Asahel to pull his own hand free.  “I saved one of you—that’s something.”

“You didn’t save the right one,” Asahel murmured. 

Felix caught his chin, holding it hard so that he couldn’t turn away. 

“Yes.  I did.”  He paused, then said, “You’ve got ability, Asahel, but it’s tempered with morality.  The sort that none of us ever learned, in all our petty little lives.”

“I don’t.”  Asahel twisted his chin out of Felix’s palm, pushing the other man gently back with his hand.  “You think—I thought—that I made the right choice, turning Quentin in, but I didn’t.”

“How do you mean?”

“There’s a proverb on the docks that goes,” the younger man hesitated.  “’Death’s the universal mirror.’  Have you heard it?”

“Something about, oh, how every man sees the reflection of his own life just when he’s facing death?”  Asahel nodded in response and Felix replied, “I understand, then—go on.”

“Aye, well,” the younger man continued.  “As we—Quent and I—as we’d begun to understand what we were about and the consequences… he looked in the mirror and he thought that healing others was worth dying for.  I looked and… I was afraid for my own life.  I still am.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Felix said after a moment of thought.

“It is,” Asahel pressed.  “And I’m not the only one.”  He looked at Felix, his gaze lingering on the other man’s eyes, so gray with confusion that they reminded him of a morning’s fog.  Then Asahel let himself look down at the sword before turning back and fixing his eyes on the rapidly descending sun.