Corambis (4 page)

“Do their deaths burden you?”
It was not the response I was expecting— was the response of a priest, not a ner vous boy or a Corambin duke’s running dog— and perhaps I did not have it in me to profane confession by lying. “No,” said I, “but it burdens me, somewhat, to think that perhaps it should.”
“Ah,” said Intended Gye. “Is your heart made of gears, Lord Rothmarlin?”
I was surprised that he knew the story of the Automaton of Corybant; I had not thought it favored among the northermen. But he was right to ask, right even to guess that that was how I thought of it, although I tried not to. I tried not to compare myself to the magician of Corybant who made himself a clockwork heart and became a monster. He destroyed the city of Corybant, which once he had loved, for he no longer remembered how to love, nor why. Was but a fable, and yet it haunted me. I knew I had flinched at Intended Gye’s question, knew that if he watched me, he had his answer, regardless of what I might say. But I said it aloud, to punish myself, “I fear that it is.”
“Do you think that penance will assist you to amend yourself?”
“No, I do not. But you know as well as I do that that is far from being the point of this maneuver.”
“I will not commit you to penitence unless I believe it will do good,” said he, and I heard a weak kind of stubbornness in his voice. Would not be sufficient for him to withstand Glimmering and Glimmering’s brother and crow- voiced Intended Marcham, but he could ruin his career before they browbeat him into backing down.
And what cared I if a Corambin pup destroyed himself on a point of doctrine? Was I not a monster with a clockwork heart? But I could not let him sacrifice himself to no purpose, nor destroy himself for such a curst- yellow cat as me. I drew breath and found words that were not false: “I know not. Perhaps good may come of penance, even to me.”
“Very well.” I thought from his voice that he knew I spoke more for his benefit than from my own belief, but he did not argue. A rustling noise— did he stand? when had he knelt?— and then his footsteps, retreating. The door opening, closing. An indistinct murmur of voices, and then the door opened again, and many footsteps approached, more than I could count or track. I was hauled to my feet, losing the sack I had wrapped around myself for warmth, and held while someone’s hands, unpleasantly hot, unpleasantly sweat- slick, unlocked the shackle around my ankle. I was dragged away from the pile of burlap, out the door, and through a space that made no sense, that might have been as wide as the sky or as narrow as the grave for all I could reckon. Could not even tell if I was being dragged in a straight line; without sight, I could not understand what my other senses told me. Then a hard shove, and I fell, ending on my hands and knees in shallow, frigid water. I recognized the smell, coppery and harsh, of the natural spring that welled out of the rock beneath Our Lady of Marigolds, Howrack’s church. This would be the pool, and I shut my eyes uselessly, trying to remember the church’s geography. Had been there only once, in Gerrard’s train. Had noticed little, except Intended Marcham’s sullenness and the breathtaking cold of the water. Already, now, my fingers were starting to go numb.
I knew the ritual of penitence, had witnessed it more than once in Our Lady of Crevasses, the tiny church that served both castle and village of Rothmarlin, and all the farmers and trappers and shy wild men who lived in the valley below and the Perblanches above. Had even seen an involuntary penitence when I was a child, although I’d been too young to understand the nature of Annie Lilleyman’s crime.
I knew what came next, and I prayed to the Lady to grant me the strength to bear it.

I didn’t wake suddenly— no jolt, no gasp, no pounding heart; I had to drag myself out of the dream, like dragging myself out of quicksand, one agonized, clawing hand at a time, and I might not have succeeded before dawn if it hadn’t been for a voice in my ear: “Would you just wake the fuck up already, so I can belt you one and go back to sleep?”

Mildmay. I blinked hard, thrashed a little, and then I was awake, staring at the banked- down embers of our fire and feeling Mildmay’s hair tickling my neck.

I rolled onto my back and called witchlight— just one, just enough to limn the exasperation on his face.
“D’you ever get a good night’s sleep?” he said.
“Sometimes. Not to night, though.”
He was still frowning at me, but the nuances shifted. “What is it? I mean, aside from a bad dream.”
“That wasn’t— exactly—a dream.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Then what was it?”
“I don’t know if there’s a word. Memory, maybe. Or haunting.”
“You dreamed about ghosts?”
I told him my dream. I told him how I’d dreamed of the house burning, of armored men standing around it, watching, making sure no one escaped. The house burned, horribly beautiful, a great howling rose of a conflagration, and in its center, dark shapes writhed and died.
“People,” Mildmay said, his voice barely a whisper.
“Yes.”
“But—” He hesitated, eyeing me uncertainly.
“What?”
“Well, I mean, I don’t know nothing about this stuff, but how d’you know it wasn’t just a dream? You know, a nightmare or something?”
It was a fair question; I said so, and felt him relax slightly. “But I don’t have a good answer for that one, either. I can tell the difference, but I don’t think I can explain it so that it’ll make sense to you.”
“That’s okay,” he said, hastily enough that I knew he was afraid I’d try. “So long as
you
’re sure.”
“Yes, I’m sure. I wish I weren’t.”
“It’s a bad way to die,” he said, agreeing.
“And they . . . No one buried them or said prayers for their souls. The soldiers watched until they were sure everyone was dead, and they left a man to be sure the fire didn’t spread— nice of them, wasn’t it?— but they didn’t even drag the bodies out. They didn’t do
anything
.”
A pause, and suddenly he was pushing himself up. “Oh for fuck’s sake, is this like your crying people again?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know what I mean,” he said, almost savagely. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. You got a thing about dead people, and there ain’t no fucking arguing with it.”
For one searing apoplectic moment, I thought he was accusing me of necrophilia, but mercifully, before I could find my tongue, he went on, “So out with it already. What do we got to do to let these poor people rest?” And I realized he was talking about the dead of Nera, and the dead of the Mirador, and most recently Prince Magnus. I could even admit he had a point— but what else could I do when faced with the dead’s silent, helpless suffering?
“Well, I don’t know,” I said crossly. “Oddly enough, I’m not familiar with Corambin funerary rites.”
“Saints and powers,” Mildmay said. “So, what? We ask the first person we come across? That’ll be fun.”
I reminded myself that it was the middle of the night and that it was my fault he was awake. “I thought the best thing to do would be to ask the ghosts.”
“Ask the . . . Are you just saying that to yank my chain, or do you mean it?”
“Oh, I’m quite serious. After all, I went to a good deal of trouble to learn how to talk to the dead. I might as well get some use out of it.” I sat up and called more witchlights.
“What—
now?
” His voice actually rose, and I felt a reprehensible pleasure in having rattled him.
“I’m certainly not going to get back to sleep.”
“But shouldn’t you—”
“You have some advice to offer? From your vast knowledge of necromancy and thaumaturgical theory?”
He moved back; I wasn’t sure whether it was to give me room or to get farther away from me. “Do what you want,” he said. “You will anyway.”
“Selfish and wayward as always,” I agreed furiously, and shifted my sight as I had learned from Vincent Demabrien and from
The Influence of the Moon
, so that I could see the noirant energy around us.
Darker than night, it gathered and eddied and slowly became the shapes of those who had died here. Three of them were indistinct, barely even memories of having once been human, but in the center of the ruin, burning even in death as fiercely as a phoenix, there was a woman. A wizard. One hand was raised either in defiance or salute; the other clutched something against her, a swaddled bundle. Her eyes met mine through the flames, and she spoke a word I could not hear. And the object in her arm twisted, struggled against her grip, and I realized it was a child.
I jerked back, bumping against Mildmay, and broke my concentration.
“Whoa,” he said. “Hey— you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, although he could surely feel the shudders going through me and thus knew I was lying.
“It must’ve worked.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “It worked very well.” I told him what I’d seen. “Powers,” he said. “But you— I mean, nobody threatened you or nothing?”
“They’re just ghosts. Patterns. It’s not that.”
He waited.
I said, “You know Malkar brought me to the Mirador.”
“Yeah,” Mildmay said cautiously.
“And he didn’t . . . he didn’t tell the truth. About me.”
“Well, he wouldn’t.”
“No,” I said and even managed to laugh, although it wasn’t very convincing. “He told everyone I was from Caloxa.”
“Caloxa. But ain’t that— I mean, some of the maps said—”
“Yes. They were conquered by Corambis about forty years ago. Just the right time for Malkar’s story— that I was the child of a noblewoman who had fled persecution when I was an infant— to sound plausible.”
“And . . .” He waved at the ruins of the house, visible only as a greater jumbled darkness against the night.
“Yes. His story was almost true.”
“Except they caught her.”
“Yes.”
“And she died in a fire.”
“Just like Methony,” I said, and I felt the shiver that went through him in the hand he laid, very gently, on my arm.
“So, did you figure out what to do?”
“Oh. Um. No. That is, I don’t think the little ghosts need anything more than just being dispersed. They’re almost gone already. But the wizard . . . I don’t know. I’ll have to try again.”
“Or we could get off this mountain, find a village, tell a priest. Felix, this ain’t your job.” His grip on my forearm tightened, as if he was thinking about shaking me.
“Isn’t,” I said and pulled away.
“Fuck,”
he said, under his breath but viciously. “Look. I am
not
the fucking bad guy here, okay? So cut it the fuck out.”
“I have to help them,” I said, and I hated the note of pleading in my voice.
“I ain’t saying you shouldn’t. Just . . . hocus ghosts are bad news. Even I know that much.”
I thought of Loël Fairweather and what had happened to those who had disturbed his rest. And then thought of a half dozen other stories, all equally nasty, if not quite as rife with carnage. And I realized Mildmay was right; he wasn’t my enemy. My enemy was something I couldn’t even name, much less fight.
Mildmay must have sensed my capitulation; he said, “Just wait ’til morning. It’s gotta be better to deal with this shit in daylight. And, I mean, they waited this long, right?”
“Right,” I said. “We should get some rest.”
He accepted my tacit truce without making me articulate it, and we lay down again. I thought of the nests Joline and I had made with scavenged blankets and stolen pillows, how we’d drawn circles of protection around them— like wizards did in stories— and how we’d pretended that it would be enough to ward off Keeper. And how it never was.
I could draw real circles of protection now. I wondered if they would be enough.
I wondered what I thought I could ward against that I wouldn’t bring into the circle with me.
I did not sleep in what remained of the night.

Much later, they left me— shivering, bleeding from the seven ritual cuts across each forearm, dressed in nothing but the thin linen of a penitent’s shift, my hair still dripping the bitter coppery water of Our Lady of Marigolds. I was not in the room where I had woken; they had dragged me out into the church’s rear yard and there chained me to the catafalque on which lay Gerrard Hume’s body, already embalmed. Either I had lost a good deal more time than I had thought, or Glimmering had moved very swiftly indeed. Neither possibility offered any consolation.

For this was my penance, pronounced by Intended Gye, Intended Marcham, and Intended Albern: Gerrard’s body was to be displayed throughout Caloxa, and I was to be displayed with it, chained to him in death as— Intended Gye had said somberly— I had chained myself to him in life.
Whither thou goest, I will go
was the burden of the old song, and it was to be my burden, too. I had always been caricatured in the newspapers as Gerrard’s tame cougar— drawn as a stunted, ill- favored creature, blood dripping from its muzzle— and I was sure it amused and pleased Glimmering (in the proxy of his equally thin- voiced brother) to treat me as such.

Was one comfort to be had. As I was outside, I knew that it was night. No heat of the sun, no sounds of men or animals. And they had not left anyone to guard me; I knew this for I had heard the argument over whether a guard was needed. I was alone, and they had left no lights, for I neither heard nor smelled anything burning. If someone was watching, there was little for them to see but shadows. Even so, even with the best assurance of privacy I could give myself, was painful to force myself to examine the catafalque with my hands. It felt like another surrender.

They had put a metal collar around my neck; it would doubtless begin to rub welts before dawn. A chain ran from a loop on the collar to another loop bolted to the frame of the cart on which the catafalque had been erected. On the collar end, everything was soldered together, and staying still for that had been yet another test of my nerve. I had small stinging burns at the nape of my neck and down my spine. At the cart end, I found, unsurprisingly, a Corambin padlock, compact and heavy in my palm. I could not free myself, though indeed I knew not what I would do an I could. Was not as if I would be able to find my way out of this yard unaided.

Was not as if I had anywhere to go.
The chain was a long one, long enough that I did not fear strangling at the end of it, long enough that I could make my slow, groping way along one side of the cart, feeling the coarse cloth that bedecked it, could then stand to my full height and move my hands slowly, cautiously, in from the side of the cart, following the drape of the cloth, until my fingers found the soft dullness of dead flesh.
Was his shoulder. Another quarter inch and I found the material of the sleeveless burial robe traditional for Caloxan kings and margraves. I remembered the feel of the velvet from my father’s funeral rites, and I wondered who had dared to do Gerrard this last honor. I felt down his arm, then followed the bend of his elbow inward to find his hands folded together over his breast. His sword should have lain beneath them, but of course it did not. Glimmering would recognize that mark of respect.
I moved my hands up his chest and neck, trying not to feel the line of coarse stitches where the practitioners had sewn his body back together. Trying not to think about the other repairs they must have had to make.
Be grateful, I told myself. Be grateful they didn’t leave him where he fell or dump him in the nearest midden like so much offal. I wondered what they had done with Benallery and the others. Hoped at least they had buried them decently, but there was no one I could ask, and nothing I could do about the matter even an I knew.
I touched Gerrard’s face. Memory told me what I was feeling: the strong line of his jaw, the high bridge of his nose, his broad forehead and his short dense hair, the color of honey. His eyes were only a shade or two darker, and when he was happy, they lightened until they were exactly the same color. I traced the arch of his eyebrow with one finger. I had never told him I loved him; I hoped he had never guessed. Eadian to his bones, he would have been horrified, guilty. He had had enough burdens to bear without that.
The heat of tears on my face told me that I was crying. I rubbed them away out of an old, old reflex. My father had called me a violet- boy, told me tears were only for those not strong enough to fight.
My sister, Isobel, his favorite child, never cried.
“Thou wert right about me, Father,” I said aloud, rubbing my face with both hands, hearing my voice waver and hitch as it were a stranger’s. Was not strong enough to fight. Was in truth a violet- boy, for if Gerrard had asked it of me, I would have . . .
Mindful of the chain, I pulled myself up onto the catafalque. I could feel and hear myself sobbing, but as if from a great distance. It mattered not. I touched Gerrard’s face, forehead, nose, the cool molding of his lips. “Am sorry,” I whispered. “Am so sorry.” I kissed him once, chastely, like the oathbinding kiss I would have given him when he was crowned king, and then I lay with my head on his shoulder and cried myself to sleep like the girl- child I had never been.