Authors: Carol Berg
Fire!
“J
uli!”
The portico had collapsed, blocking the front doors. Hacking and coughing in the billowing smoke, I tried again to shift the burning timbers. “Please, someone help me. My sister’s in there . . . my steward . . . servants.”
The lower floors were entirely engulfed. The winter-bare trees of the garden smoldered, the vines and trellises already ash. The courtyard walls wept ice melt.
Strong arms grabbed me from behind, dragging me away from the thundering horror.
“Do not touch me!” Snarling, I fought to break the arms restraining my own. “I’ve got to find them!” All but Soflet would be abed so late, and he moved so slowly. . . .
A black-draped arm wrapped about my neck and yanked me close, crushing my back to the man’s chest. “None’s coming out that goes in there. And well you know it.” Bony, maggot-pale fingers ringed in copper gripped my chin like a vise, holding my head immobile as their owner spat the words in my ear. “A masterful job. We heard them screaming.”
Incomprehensible words, terrible words.
I wrestled free, shoved the man aside, and reached for magic . . . water spells . . . quenching spells . . . damping spells . . . anything I could think of. I shaped images of Juli, laughing, singing, driving me to exasperation.
Her scent, her terrible silences, her brilliantly honed spellwork. Surely I could shape a summoning and she would come to the upper windows. She could jump and I could catch her.
My skull drummed. My body shook and spasmed. But I had practiced no such spells and could not conjure a dewdrop.
A burst of fire from the kitchen building drew curses and shouts from the onlookers. None from inside the house. Maybe they’d gotten out before I arrived.
Please, Holy Deunor!
Wild with fear, I turned to the crowd.
Buckets and pots dangled empty from shoulders and elbows. Water casks lay abandoned on the flagstones.
No, no, no!
Fifty or a hundred dirty, sweating faces gleamed like holy icons in the demonic light. Some shook their heads, some gawked, some chatted, pointing for their children as if mortal horror were a solstice-night bonfire. Strangers. All of them strangers. Five years I’d lived here and deliberately stayed apart. What use was our holy discipline in this case?
“Has anyone seen a young girl . . . only fifteen? Please, did she come out? There would have been an old woman with her . . . others. Where did they go?”
They dropped their eyes and shifted backward, uneasy and murmuring, “None’s come out . . . Saw no one . . . Heard them screaming . . .”
“Quench the flames, Godling Remeni! You’re the one who knows how. You brought this judgment down on your own!” The husky voice came from a tall man, cloaked and hooded in somber black wool, an orange scarf tied around his neck. Long pale fingers banded in copper poked from his sleeves—my rescuer.
His words held no more meaning than the rush of the fire wind. I could think of naught but those who had screamed, but did so no longer.
A noisy blast, a blaze of new heat, and a rain of shattering glass wrenched me around again. Gouts of flame spewed skyward through the upper windows. The front wall bulged and sagged, driving the crowd backward through the gates. My eyes watered. My skin blistered. But I could not retreat. To leave without them . . .
“Juli!” Again I reached for magic and found nothing.
“Help me, Patronn. We can’t watch him burn, too.” Hands grasped my arms, no pale fingers, but fine, thick gloves worn by two men in wine-colored cloaks and half masks.
They hauled me back as far as the gate just as the whole structure
quivered and collapsed in roaring thunder. The impact raised a hurricane of rabid fireflies that swirled and bit my flesh. Shattered roof tiles and flaming timbers lay where I’d stood just moments earlier.
Juli . . .
serena
. . . beloved . . .
Despair welled up to blind and strangle, to obliterate reason. My rescuers’ faces blurred. My knees buckled. I clutched my hollow breast and bellowed.
“Go quickly, son,” said a man behind me. “Send Zircus to the Registry. I’d no idea Remeni lived so near us.”
“The madman?”
“Indeed. Now look what he’s done. Several of us saw it all. I’ll hold him.”
The pureblood touched my shoulder, murmuring.
A weight of iron settled over me . . . a shroud of ice . . . of death. I curled forward and wrapped my arms about my head as if I could hide the unbearable. “Please don’t be dead,
serena
. Noble Soflet, dear Maia . . .”
“Should have thought of that before you set the fire.” The pureblood’s annoyance drifted over my back like ash. “At least you were considerate enough to confine the destruction to your own house.”
Warning pricked like a rat’s bite through the thickening shell of paralysis. But it was too late and the darkness was too deep for me to comprehend.
C
old. Enveloping, boundless dark. My
head ached, dull as lead. Time to get up . . . to eat. Knew better than to set out for the necropolis hungry. Perhaps it was too early yet. Giaco would wake me.
Teeth chattering, I curled up and reached for my quilts. Only they weren’t there. And the bed . . .
No bed. Just iron.
I scrambled to my feet, fumbling in the tarry blackness. Iron everywhere. Walls, floor. Great gods, an iron ceiling but an arm’s length above my head. Where in Deunor’s mighty name—?
Truth slammed into my chest like a boulder, crushing me against the iron wall. I slid to the floor, scarce breathing under the weight. Dead. All of them were dead. And I?
A masterful job . . . summon the Registry . . . before you set the fire. Madman.
Naked and shivering, I scrambled into a barren corner and groped for memory, for words—the right words to defend myself. Anger, indignation, or accusations would not convince anyone that I was sane, that I had
not set my own house afire, that I had not killed my own sister and our servants. Great Mother of All . . . Juli!
Reason was impossible. A gaping void in soul and spirit swallowed my every thought and question. Juli had been so slight a body, yet her spirit so much larger than I had ever suspected. I’d hardly known her. The world had never known her. Never would.
Impossible
.
Perhaps this place was just the world transformed. What more proper ending than empty darkness, than silence, than unremitting cold and nakedness, when the whole of my family was dead? When every new artwork; every writing; every bit of beauty, laughter, insight, and understanding their magic might bring to this world was destroyed unborn?
A cry rose in my chest, so huge, so powerful my ribs ached to contain it. But contain it I must, for if I once let it out, this horror would be real. I propped my elbows on my drawn-up knees, folded my hands over my head, and kept silent.
A
very long time passed until
a metallic scrape heralded a change.
“Remeni? Lucian de Remeni? Speak up. Where are you? Do you see him, Virit?”
Words would not come.
“By the Mother, lad, fetch me a light. Why didn’t they summon me right off?
Domé
Pasquinale’s binding has likely worn off and we dare not impose another before the prisoner’s judged. Muzzy heads can’t hear what’s spoke.”
A thread of yellow light wavered for a moment, offering blurred glimpses of two figures in gray tunics. Of dry, aged hands clutching a spool of thin cord. When the full onslaught of a torch’s light poured through the door, I buried my head in my arms once again.
“There in the corner, Master Nelek.”
“Ah, you see, he’s already waked. Have your knife at the ready.”
“Aye, master.”
“Well, now,
Domé
Remeni, we need to get you dressed proper for your judgment. ’Tisn’t respectful to greet curators without a stitch, now is it?”
One elder man, one younger. Their talk peppered the silence like the pecking of birds. Yet the nagging discipline of six-and-twenty years insisted I heed. No matter how devoutly I wished to drown grief and guilt in the dark, I could not allow it to mask a danger that had swelled to
monstrous proportion. For of course, Juli had not been the last of the Remeni-Masson bloodlines and the magic they were meant to bring the world. I was.
“Why am I unclothed?” My voice rasped like grit underfoot. My throat felt clogged with ash. “And why does it require a knife to dress me again?”
“Mere precautions,
domé
,” said the elder, the one called Nelek. “We were told to take precautions, as you were . . . excitable . . . and might misunderstand our duties.”
The danger had a name, of course. “I am not mad.”
“Virit and I are not here to judge. We just see to your dressing.”
Nelek, standing over me now, smelled of garlic and had a habit of sucking his teeth. “We’re going to slip a nice shirt over your head, first off. Need to raise it up.”
He tapped on the back of my head. I obeyed, though my eyelids refused to open. I didn’t want to see the box of iron where they’d stuck me.
A cascade of soft linen fell over my hair and settled on my shoulders.
“Now your hands into the sleeves, if you please. Virit, help with the left and keep hold as I taught you.”
They guided my hands through long sleeves—not tight sleeves, thank the gods, as the backs of my hands were scorched and every touch arrowed straight to my gut. Once through, each man gripped a wrist. The younger man’s hands were cold . . . and trembling.
“I’m too tired to fight you,” I said, tugging gently.
They didn’t let go.
“I’m magically depleted, else I might have saved my sister’s life.” Grief squeezed my lungs like a fist of iron.
“Well and good,” said the elder, “but we must do this anyways. Now, Virit . . . and quick.” With firm grips they twisted my arms and pressed my hands together, back to stinging back. A deft hand interlaced my fingers. Then they folded my hands around my locked fingers until the heels of my palms touched.
Before I could understand the purpose of this beyond tormenting my raw wounds, they began wrapping cord briskly about my bundled hands.
“What the devil are you doing?” I tried to wriggle away from them, but sitting in the corner with the two bodies pressed close, I had no space and no leverage.
“Just precaution,
domé
.” Nelek’s iron digits ensured my fingers were tucked away tight, as the younger, Virit, wrapped the cord. “Can’t have you working magic, now can we?”
Silkbinding. That’s what they did for undisciplined children . . . for
recondeurs
. . . for madmen. The fingers were the conduit of magic.
“Now for your britches. Want no dangling bits to scandalize the curators. Let’s have you up. . . .”
They pulled up baggy slops and shod me with soft velvet slippers. The shirt gaped at the neck and wrists. Shirt, slops, slippers—the garb of a pureblood prisoner. Fine linen and wool as our heritage demanded, but neither button, clasp, chain, nor bit of leather that might carry a spell. Loose fitting; no layers, no pockets. They didn’t want me hiding things. Shapeless and unadorned, unfit for the gods’ chosen to wear outdoors or among ordinaries. They weren’t planning to let me go.
“One more little item, laddie, and then we’ll be done,” said the old man, a gray sinewy fellow. More and more he sounded like an elder addressing a balky infant. “But first, perhaps, as you’ve been well behaved. Fetch him a drink, Virit.”
Virit was a blotch-faced, twitchier replica of his master. Either one could likely break my neck at will.
With my hands bound, young Virit had to pour the water down my throat, dribbling more on my shirt than in my mouth. I did not refuse it, though. I had to be able to speak. Calmly. Rationally. With impeccable manners.
I inclined my back. “Thank you both for your assistance.”
“Let’s have you kneel, lad, as we finish up here.”
I did as he said. Perhaps they were going to comb my hair. Wet from Arrosa’s pool, tangled by wind and sweat and ash—I aborted the thought, lest calm escape me.
The old man stepped behind me and slipped something over my head. Hard leather drooped over my face, blocking one eye. I shook my head to get it off. Tried to push it up with my bound hands. But quick movements settled it lower, covering the left half of my face. A mask. Protrusions of stiff leather cupped my chin, crossed my brow, extended down my nose like a soldier’s helm. “What in the name of—?”
The old man yanked a leather strap through my mouth and around my head, latching it to the back side of the mask. I tried to protest, with no
effect but to set myself gagging. The devilish strap had a stiff flap, shaped to still my tongue.
“Now, now, don’t panic. Just swallow easy.” Young Virit pressed down on my shoulders while the elder stroked my throat. “You’ll get accustomed. Would have been easier had we done all this while you were nogged. Your body would have worked it out on its own, and you’d have been right with it already.”
Bright shards of fear pierced discipline’s dull armor.
Right
with it?
Accustomed
? Surely they weren’t going to keep me in this dreadful device. Surely they would let me speak.
A growl of fury rose from my depths.
The gray man met my one-eyed glare. His watery eyes were brown and yellow, and he tilted his head, smiling sadly. “Can’t hide it no more, can you? Can’t keep up the show of manners.” He bent over me solicitously, dropping his voice. “I’ve been taking care of your kind since I was Virit’s age. I’ve seen every kind of ruse to hide the breakage inside. But eventually the truth comes out.”
My
kind
?
I shook my head. I knew what he was intimating. “Not mad,” I said, but the words came out like the panicked grunt of a beast.
“We’d best go ahead with the rest, Virit. He’s mightily upset with us. Loosening up, you see.”
The rest
was shackles.
Magrog’s hells.
What did they think I was going to do? I could not run. My life was over if I ran.
Virit grabbed the torch. The iron-fingered Nelek grabbed my arm and guided my awkward progress out of the cell and through a series of musty corridors lined with empty rooms. Only when we arrived at the twisted iron stair did it strike my tangled wits that I had traversed these same passages on my visit to Gilles. They’d stowed me in the bowels of the Registry Tower. No one ever came down here.