Voushanti scrambled to his feet and extended his hand, the gold wristband gleaming brightly in the murk. Brother Victor lay wrapped in the cocoon of my cloak, struggling to breathe. Of all the facts in this failing universe, one stood clear and invariant. The monk would die if I did not get him help soon.
Cloud and smoke had grayed the midday to little more than dusk. Wind flapped my soot-grimed sleeves, drove flying snow down my collar and up my billowing tunic, and stung the burned patches on my hands and legs and face. Without my cloak, I was already shivering. My mind was numb, my reservoir of schemes barren. “You cannot expect me to believe the Bastard Prince will heal him. He must have some use for him.”
Voushanti whipped a knife from his belt. I jumped when he tossed it on the ground in front of me. “I have risked my own survival to preserve this monk’s life, which should demonstrate something to a man with limited choices and half a mind. Have you some other plan to save him? If not, then take my knife and one simple thrust will save him from my master’s depredations. A second thrust will take care of your own problem.” Cold, blunt. He did not care what I chose.
Every tale of Osriel’s depravity swirled in my head, yet he had sent me to rescue good men from a terrible fate. Voushanti himself had shown naught but courage in the fight. I could read nothing from his dreadful visage save icy challenge. Perhaps it was weakness or some other consequence of my shameful state, but I trusted his word.
He nodded as if I’d spoken it aloud. “The storm has come early upon us, Magnus Valentia, and much of Palinur has yet to burn. We’d best be moving before we are consumed.” The Evanori scooped Brother Victor into his powerful arms, handling him as gently as Brother Robierre would have done. “Now, tell me the way out of here.”
Osriel had an interest in Brother Victor’s life, and for now my master’s will would prevail. As for later…we would see. Pressing forehead and palms to the fouled earth, I reached out to find a path through the dying city—through layer upon layer of building and burning, of births and deaths, of commerce and art and piety, of cruelty and war, the footsteps of centuries. A simple route revealed itself. I raised my head and pointed down an alley that would lead us back to the house where the Duc of Evanore waited.
Indeed my course was clear, as nothing had been clear in all my life. The day had scribed two images on my soul, images that demanded I answer for my ill choices: Jullian, quivering in his silent terror, and the wise and passionate abbot of Gillarine splayed and gutted like a beast. Both my fault. Because I could not think. Because I could not act. Because I had clung to mindless pleasure to dull the pain of living. Always I had insisted my perversion harmed no one but myself. Who was there to care if Magnus Valentia de Cartamandua-Celestine, lack-wit recondeur, burnt out his senses or locked his useless mind away in a ruined body?
I clenched my fists and wrapped my arms about my eyes and ears, miming that deadness as if to silence conscience for one last time. But Jullian’s terrified silence and Abbot Luviar’s cry of agony gave my shame a voice I could no longer put aside.
And so, as I stumbled to my feet and followed Voushanti out of the tanners’ yard, I left a litter behind in the filthy snow: a fragment of a mirror, a silver needle, a linen thread, and a few black seeds that rapidly vanished into the muck. I threw the empty green bag into a smoldering house. Never again. Ever.
Chapter 29
“You are not forbidden illumination, Cartamandua.” The lamplight from the passage set Mardane Voushanti’s freshly polished mail gleaming, delineating his bulky shadow in a bronze glow as if he were Deunor Lightbringer himself. The warrior quickly dispelled the illusion by stepping out of the doorway, only to return with one of the passageway lamps, giving me full view of his half-mangled face and worn leather. He displayed no sign of bandages or discomfort from his wounding.
Illumination. Upon our return to Prince Osriel’s dismal dwelling, Voushanti had whisked Brother Victor away, declaring the monk would be cared for, while two of Osriel’s warriors had deposited me into this fusty little chamber. In the hours since, as the gray daylight faded beyond the slot window, I had sat with muddy boots propped on a dusty clerk’s desk, and unshaven chin propped on my curled fingers, seeking illumination. The woolly tangle that had snarled my thoughts and actions throughout the day had at last unraveled, and the mysteries of past and present now surrounded me in stark, immutable stillness like a ring of standing stones: my grandfather, my master, the Danae, Gillarine, the end of the world.
“Unless you’ve brought me dinner or answers, I would prefer you take your lamp and go,” I said, too tired to mask bitterness and self-loathing. I did not expect answers any more than I expected word of Jullian’s fate or Brother Victor’s health. Everyone I’d met since Boreas had deposited my dying carcass outside Gillarine had excelled at keeping me mystified and on edge. Tonight, though I had defined and bounded these myriad puzzles, I could declare none solved.
“You’ve not cleaned yourself. Are these breeks not fine enough to cover your pureblood arse?” Voushanti prodded the stack of neatly folded fabrics he’d brought along with a water basin and towel soon after our arrival. A mardane, a landed baron and warrior of more than average skill, both military and magical, serving me like a housemaid—one of the lesser standing stones, but a curiosity, nonetheless. Why was I so sure that deeper investigation would reveal this man had no home, no family, no history or ambition that linked him to anyone but Osriel?
“Tell me, Lord Voushanti, was the spell you worked at Riie Doloure of your own making, or was it Prince Osriel’s work?” I believed I had deciphered the answer to this particular puzzle. Quickened spells could be attached to objects and keyed with a triggering word, allowing those with no magical talents to use them at will—but only once or twice without a new infusion of magic. Voushanti’s limited usage of the spell in Riie Doloure made me doubt he was the originator. And his gold wristband would be a perfect spell carrier.
“Our master will answer questions or not, as he pleases. Just now, he requires your attendance in the proper garb of a royal advisor. So dress yourself or I’ll do it for you, and I am no genteel manservant.”
Though for once in my life I desired no company but my own, I had to answer this summons. The last doulon interval had been but eighteen days. I bore no illusions about what was to come. Even if I survived the ravages of the doulon hunger long enough to shake free of it, sooner or later the disease that gnarled my gut and flayed my senses, prompting me to seek its comforts, would leave me a drooling lunatic. But in the past hour I had vowed to Luviar’s shade that for as long as I had wits, I would give what aid I could to those who fought for his cause. For now, my hope of illumination lay with Osriel the Bastard.
Voushanti remained stolidly beside the door as I stripped off my scorched and bloody garb and used my shirt to scrub the soot from face and arms. The water in the cracked basin was long cold. The tiny coal fire in the rusty brazier could not have kept a rabbit warm.