Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

The prince, shapeless in his enveloping robes, leaned back in his chair. Voushanti climbed slowly to his feet. Stepping back a few paces, the mardane motioned me to approach.

Wishing myself five thousand quellae from this place, I took a deep breath and crossed the expanse of floor through the swirling dust and snow. Heat radiated from Voushanti’s body as if he had swallowed the sun. As he bowed and withdrew, blood trickled from the unscarred corner of his mouth. Mighty gods…

Remembering Osriel’s instruction from our last meeting, I whisked off my mask and looped it over my belt. My knees felt like porridge, my skin like cold fish.

“My lord prince,” I said, touching my fingers to my forehead and bending one knee—the proper pureblood obeisance to his contracted master.

The flames in the two braziers shot into the air in spouts of blue and white flame, pushing back the rippling shadows. Not enough to reveal the prince’s face. Only his hands were exposed. Long, slender, pale fingers, one adorned with a heavy gold ring. Their smooth firmness reminded me that Osriel was no older than I. He twitched the ringed finger, and I rose to my feet.

“Magnus Valentia.” The harsh whisper came from behind and beside and before me, raising the hair on my arms. “The reports of your behavior puzzle me.”

In our previous interview, the prince had expressed a preference for honesty over feigned deference, for boldness over cowering. Swallowing hard, I shoved fear aside, clasped my hands at my back, and hoped he’d meant it.

“How puzzled, my lord? Since leaving your side in Palinur, I have followed Mardane Voushanti’s direction, and I’ve not strayed from his sight save when his sight was clouded with sleep. We traveled companionably. Indeed, we worked together to preserve the lives of your Evanori subjects on our journey from Palinur. Never once, even when Mardane Voushanti and his men were…debilitated…by the severities of that journey and we were separated by necessity, did I break my submission to you. Nor did I have any intention of doing so this morning when I aided the good prior to retrieve one of his abbey’s lost children. Mardane Voushanti had no basis to assume I would run away.” The weight of Osriel’s attention slowed my words.

“Yet this morning’s excursion occurred over his objections, and only after a monkish potion laid him low—he has reaped his proper harvest for that slip of attention. I instructed you to obey him as if his word were my own. So tell me, shall I punish you for disobedience, or shall I punish this Karish prior for poisoning my servants and abducting my pureblood for his own purposes?”

The questions and accusations nipped at my skin like the claws of demon gatzi. I kneaded my hands at my back, expecting to feel bloody pricks and scratches. Hold on to your mind, Valen, I thought. No supernatural power exists in this room. You have felt the stirrings of true mystery in the Gillarine cloisters, and you have witnessed a living Dané dance his grief. Whatever Osriel of Evanore might be—and I had no doubts he possessed power unknown to any of my acquaintance—he was neither god nor demon.

“Prior Nemesio believes that my novice vows, made but a few weeks ago, give him a claim on my loyalty. Though my oath to you is more recent, I saw no compromise of your interests in helping him retrieve a dead child.”

I stepped closer to the chair and did not squirm. “As for potions and poisons, the unfortunate effect of the abbey’s blessed water on Mardane Voushanti and his men is perhaps a reproof from their gods at some failure in their devotions. For surely, my cup was filled from the same pitcher, yet I did not fall asleep. Then, too, Mardane Voushanti arrived at the sad scene of this boy’s death not half an hour after I did, thus he could not have been much affected. Were the prior’s water poisoned, would not the mardane have suffered its effects longer? Or is there some reason his constitution does not succumb to the effects of potions or poisons?” I braced, expecting red lightning to strike.

But instead, the prince leaned his elbow on the arm of the chair and propped his chin on his hand. “Ah, Magnus, your tongue is as soft and quick as a spring zephyr in the Month of Storms…and just as deceitful. Unfortunately I’ve not the time to test your stamina at this game tonight. But I believe I shall reap great pleasure from our sparring in the deeps of this coming winter. Snug in my house, I shall strip you of your pureblood finery and raise the stakes for untruth.”

I bowed, hiding my satisfaction, as well as my face, which his throaty humor had surely left void of color.

“And now we must discuss a few things before my guests arrive.”

“Of course, my lord.” I straightened my back and forced myself to breathe.

The prince angled his head upward, then waggled his hand toward the floor. “Sit,” he said impatiently. “I’ve no wish to break my neck gaping upward. Is your father or brother so tall as you? Your grandfather, perhaps? Purebloods are of wholly modest stature.”

“I am an aberration of pureblood lineage in countless ways, my lord. My own father would gleefully deny my birth had he not scribed it in the Register himself and seen the entry countersigned by two unimpeachable witnesses.”

Off balance from his abrupt shift from chilling threat to peckish complaint, I settled on the wood floor and wrapped my arms about my knees. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. The shadows that reeled and twirled on the refectory walls had no correspondence to the flames in the braziers. Nor did their shapes—heads, limbs, writhing torsos—correspond to those of the prince or my own body.

“An aberration? Yes, I suppose you could be,” the prince mumbled.

I did not flinch or turn my head when his next comment seemed to come from behind my left ear. “So tell me who would be considered unimpeachable witnesses to a child’s birth? Truth and lies are of infinite interest to me. I might like to interview such a person.”

At least this answer was easy, though I could not fathom the intent of the question. “For good or ill, lord, the witnesses to my birth are beyond your inquiries. Indeed, they are more a part of your own history than mine. Two of my grandfather’s oldest friends happened to be visiting our house on the day I was born—Sinduré Tobrecan of Evanore and Angnecy, the seventh Hierarch of Ardra, the very two clergymen who brought your father to Navronne from the realm of…angels.”

“A most interesting coincidence.”

Though forced to parrot the facts and validation of my lineage since I could speak, I’d never considered them at all interesting.

The prince settled back in his chair and did not move. Thinking, surely. Watching, too. The velvet hood might mask his own face, but I did not believe it obscured anything he wished to look on. Rather than squirm under his scrutiny, I stared back at him. From this angle I could glimpse his jaw—fine boned, square, clean shaven—and mouth—generously wide, lips pale but even. Unsettling. Well, of course, I thought, after a moment, he is Eodward’s son. Though I had met the king only once, every coin in the realm bore the imprint of those fine bones. What was so dreadful about Osriel’s face that he kept it hidden, when his man Voushanti walked freely with his own ruined flesh bared for all to see?

“Tell me, Magnus, what magics can you work? You’ve said that you paid no mind to your tutors and that your inability to read prevented your study of pureblood arcana, but Voushanti’s report indicates you are not incapable of spellworking. What have I received for my hundredweight of gold?”

No wisdom lay in underreporting my paltry skills in some hope that Osriel would set me free of my contract. He might decide my best use was that he made of corpses. Overreporting might yield me a better position in his house. My grandfather constantly babbled that I had talent beyond the usual for purebloods. Of course, even before he went mad, my grandfather had an overblown opinion of our family’s talents, and I’d never seen evidence of anything extraordinary in myself.