20

SARINE

Sacre-Lin Chapel

Maw District, New Sarresant

Three days had passed since Reyne d’Agarre’s fête. She hadn’t gone.

The thought of attending a salon, one of the private gatherings of the city’s intellectuals and the elite, had an undeniable allure. But even aside his gold coin and the crates of pork and bread d’Agarre had given out to the citizens of the Maw, there was still the matter of how he came by the means for his charity. He was a thief, to say nothing of whatever else he could do with Zi’s promptings of Yellow and Green.

Besides, her wardrobe was entirely unsuitable for the occasion. Imagining herself in coat and breeches beside the ladies in their fashions and finery had tipped the scales in favor of remaining at the Sacre-Lin. And so she hadn’t gone, and that was that. It was unlikely a third invitation would be sent when the first two passed unremarked, and besides, she’d already exposed her gifts to the magistrates after the episode on the palace green. Whatever d’Agarre might have threatened her with had lost its teeth. She hadn’t expected to see him again.

Which made it all the more surprising when he’d shown up to attend her uncle’s sermon that morning.

He shone like a beacon in the fourth pew of the church, the buttons on his red coat reflecting the sun streaming through the chapel’s stained-glass relief. She could scarce imagine a man less suited to his present company, sitting amid the wretches and wayward souls gathered to hear her uncle preach.

When d’Agarre arrived her uncle had spared only a glance before continuing on with the day’s lesson. The congregation always enjoyed hearing this section of the holy books: the Grand Betrayal of the Nameless, who had once been the companion of the other Trithetic Gods before he betrayed their trust and became instead their immortal enemy. Today the focus was on the Exarch, foremost of the Gods, and his decision to allow the followers of the Nameless to rejoin his fold after their onetime master’s treachery was revealed. It was a sweet story, amid the battles and the carnage of the Grand Betrayal; the violence drew in the crowd, but her uncle weaved in the true lesson—on the virtue of mercy—with a master’s touch.

She watched from her loft, a knot growing in her stomach as d’Agarre took in the sermon, seemingly oblivious to her presence. Every word her uncle spoke brought them nearer to the moment when that façade would shatter. And finally, with a sweeping gesture and an admonishment to remember the virtues of which he had spoken, her uncle’s service was done. The crowd seemed to pay d’Agarre no mind, shuffling out in their usual way, finding it within themselves to place the odd coin into the collection box as they passed through the chapel doors on their way to the street.

He is skilled, Zi thought to her.

She wrinkled her brow and gave Zi a look.

“You preach the Betrayal well, Father,” Reyne d’Agarre said, still seated as the last member of the congregation left the chapel.

Her uncle bowed his head at the compliment. “To what does the Sacre-Lin owe the pleasure of your attendance, my lord?”

“I’m no lord, Father. Only a councilman.” He stood to offer a bow. “The name is Reyne d’Agarre. I had a pair of letters delivered here and thought to inquire after their receipt.”

“Passing odd, for you to come in person, Master d’Agarre. This district has no love for wealth.”

D’Agarre laughed. “Nor I, Father, I assure you, though I know well the good that can come of prudence and effort well spent.” Pausing, d’Agarre glanced up toward her loft, and their eyes met as she peered over the divide. “Sarine. Is there aught I can say to convince you to join me for the afternoon?”

“Sarine is needed—” her uncle began.

“Why?” she cut in, rising to her feet and looking down into the nave below. “Why me, Master d’Agarre? You’ve sent three invitations now, if I’m to assume you intend to deliver another today.”

He nodded, withdrawing another folded letter from his coat and dangling it over the side of a pew.

“You saw what I did, in the Harbor, and the Maw,” d’Agarre said. “And you must have heard news of my activities since.”

“You’re a thief,” she said.

“I support a cause great enough to excuse petty thievery,” he snapped back, his voice suddenly hot. “Come, walk with me, and you may understand the reason why.”

“She’ll have no part in it,” her uncle interjected. “Best if you leave at once.”

“No, uncle,” she said. “I’ll hear him out.”

“Sarine—” her uncle said, looking up at her with a worried expression.

She understood his concern; Father Thibeaux had kept her safe from half a hundred perils that she knew, and surely another hundred she’d never seen: hunger, cold, priests, and press-gangs. It was poor repayment to court the attentions of a man who made a habit of confronting the city watch. But more than curiosity had burned in her since the Harbor. She’d sketched the beauty of the nobles’ world scores of times, been drawn in by the possibilities of her meeting with Lord Revellion. In spite of their allure, she knew in her gut the injustice of it, of their lives of plenty when so many had so little. And until the Harbor, she’d never seen a man or woman dare to stand so boldly against what she knew was wrong.

“It’s fine, uncle,” she said, taking the ladder down from her loft. “If he meant ill, he wouldn’t have come here alone.”

D’Agarre bowed, extending a hand for hers when he arose. “My assurances, Father. I know well the dangers of this city. We will be safe.”

Her uncle nodded warily, and d’Agarre gestured for her to lead the way through the chapel doors. She did. On their way out, d’Agarre paused a moment to take a pouch from inside his coat, setting it atop the collection box. Then they emerged together into the New Sarresant sun.

“Sarine.” D’Agarre repeated her name with the same intensity he’d used before. “I hoped you might accept my invitations. I was disappointed by your absence.”

She eyed him as they walked. He stepped lightly through the streets of the Maw, seeming unburdened, without concern at displaying wealth so openly in a district full of thieves. Evidently his charity had earned him a degree of familiarity among the city’s worst sort. A dubious honor, though not without merit, given her uncle’s efforts to do the same.

“I never mentioned the Sacre-Lin when we spoke in the market. Did you have me followed?”

He paused mid-stride, turning to give her a surprised look. “Gods no. What sort of man do you believe me to be?”

“The dangerous sort,” she replied without thinking.

He feigned a wounded look before breaking into a grin. “The truth is you had half again as many drawings of the Sacre-Lin chapel as anything else on display in the market. A few inquiries among the priests as to the source of those stained-glass reliefs and I gambled it was likely the best place to find you.”

“I see.” Damn but that was obvious. She’d been a fool to display it so plainly. What if the city watch had made the same connection after prying into her drawings of the nobles?

“As to danger,” d’Agarre continued, “from what I hear you are no small threat to public safety yourself.”

Heat crept into her cheeks. He laughed.

“Nothing to be ashamed of. I had the truth of it from men who were there at Rasailles. They say you were something to behold.”

She said nothing. It was still too close to a raw nerve. By instinct she hid her hands in the pockets of her coat, concealing the scarred flesh that marked her for what she was.

“No.” D’Agarre stopped to lay a hand on her arm. “Don’t hide it.”

She looked away.

“Sarine, you have a gift far beyond their understanding. I had wondered if it was possible. In all the long years, in all the records we’ve kept, there has never been a single incidence of binding among our number. Binding is a rare talent, of course, but for us to have gone so long without one, it began to seem as if one gift precluded the other.”

She frowned. What was he talking about? Binding was rare, yes, but even among the commonfolk there were enough freebinders, marked and unmarked, to hire if one had need of their services, and d’Agarre had proven he had no shortage of coin.

D’Agarre faced her before she could put words to the thought. “You are not alone in your gift.”

“I know. My uncle taught me about bindings when I was—”

“No, Sarine. Your other gift.”

On the grass beside the road a four-legged crystalline serpent appeared, scales flushed a deep green. It cocked its head at her, then bowed, folding itself in half at the neck as she had seen Zi do, countless times before.

She gasped.

“Mine is called Saruk. Have you learned the name of yours?”

“Zi,” she whispered, trembling. “He never told me he could appear to others.”

It was never needful.

D’Agarre nodded. “The kaas can be difficult, at times.”

“The kaas?”

“Yes. Have you not read the book?”

She gave him a confused look.

“The Codex? Those of us with the gift can read its pages, and before long the kaas appear to forge their bond.”

“I’ve never heard of a ‘codex.’ And who is ‘we’? How many are there?”

D’Agarre frowned. “A handful here in New Sarresant. More elsewhere. Are you certain you’ve never read the book? It is the essence of the link between us and the kaas. Might you have lost it, as a child perhaps?”

“I was an orphan, on the streets of the Maw.”

“That may explain it then. I shall have to have another copy made.”

“How did you know? About Zi?”

“In the Maw, when we were attacked by the watch. You used Red.”

So that’s what Zi had meant with his cryptic colors. He’d never explained what he could do; it wasn’t like her bindings, or the strange lure of the cat spirit. Zi just did what was needed, when it was needful.

She shivered, and her breath came quickly. D’Agarre noticed.

“It is all a bit overwhelming, I know.”

She nodded, staring off into the distance, toward the district boundaries and the Riverways. Whatever she’d expected from a sojourn with Reyne d’Agarre, it had not been this.

“And you are a binder as well,” he went on. “You are gifted beyond the dreams of the fools that call themselves noble. They play at power, but you have the truth of it. Real power, the chance to reshape the world according to your desires.”

“Is that what you were doing in the Harbor, Master d’Agarre?”

She’d meant it as a flippant challenge, a distraction from the fever-dream come to life swimming inside her head. But he seemed to take it deadly serious.

“Yes, Sarine. That is precisely what I was doing in the Harbor.”

She felt a chill.

“Come to my next salon. You will see. This city is rotten to its core.”

“I—” she began.

“I know,” he said. “I know you will have doubts. Let me persuade you. Let me—”

“I have nothing to wear,” she said in a rush.

He blinked, then let out a laugh.

“An easily solvable problem,” he said with a grin, tapping another coin purse on his belt.