Episode Ten:
Shadowroot

Joel Derfner

 

From the manuscript of the Almanack of Poisones, by Eamon Malfois

Umbraradix: Alſo yclept ye Shadowroot. He who falleth under the Spell of this Elixir ſeeth not what Others ſee, heareth not what Others hear, butt liueth in a Lande of his owne ſhaping, compaſs’d rounde by wicked Men and terrible Beaſtes, nor can he diſtinguiſh Time longe paſs’d from Time that paſſeth from Time yet to come. I haue witneſs’d a Man in ye Thrall of ye Shadowroot come to belieue his Wyfe & Sons meant to do him a Miſchief, & thereafter did ſhun them as ye Southren Lande ſhunneth ye Northren, leſt they deſtroy him utterlie. Ye ſingle Grace offer’d by Fate and ye Gods is that ye Madneſs endureth onlie when ye Poiſone bee drunk conſtantly, for within a Spanne of ſome Weekes ye Man who ceaſeth to conſume it beginneth a Return unto Health. Ye fouleſt & moſt rare Poiſon, Thanks bee unto ye good Gods, elſe ye Lande w’d ſurely haue periſh’d long before this daye.

 

Tess was never more beautiful than when she slept, nor her sunset-colored hair brighter in its thick braid, running sinuously over her right shoulder before entangling itself in the bedsheet that lay bunched and casual over her and left one beautiful, pale breast exposed to the dawning light.

The morning sun left half of Kaab’s face in shadow as she sat in a chair west of the bed, and she smiled. Not so many hours earlier, after all, she had found reason to concern herself particularly with that breast, along with its twin, and the results of her attention had been quite satisfactory, or even—well, perhaps best to leave it at “quite satisfactory.” If tended, the warmth in her belly would tempt her to wake her lover from her slumber.

Not that that slumber was particularly restful at the moment. Tess twitched on the bed, muttering incomprehensibly. Her sleep had been troubled for some time, her head-spirit wandering farther and farther through realms invisible to the waking, but for the last three days that trouble had been growing worse; she seemed to spend more time shivering and squirming as she lay unconscious than she spent still, as if she could wriggle her way out of the grasp of whatever danger lurked in her dreams.

Tess’s breath came more quickly now, shallower, her muttering louder, with an undertone of frustrated protest. Impatient. She rolled onto her side, one rounded arm dangling from the bed, the other wrapping itself in the bunched bedclothes, her hand clutching and releasing, clutching and releasing, unable to catch hold of its elusive prey.

Kaab moved back in the chair, drew her legs to her chest, put her arms around them, and squeezed to keep herself from intervening. The one time she had been unable to bear it and woken her, Tess had opened her eyes with a gasp, and it had taken many terrifying breaths for her head-spirit to return from the house of dreams. But when Kaab finally asked her what monsters, human or otherwise, had pursued her in that house, Tess remembered nothing—or so she claimed.

Kaab’s lips pressed together, and her head turned of its own volition toward the west, and her homeland, and Tultenco—toward the havoc her inability to control her liver had wreaked there, and the lives lost. Ixchel, she begged, do not let me bring Tess to the same end as Citlali. Allow this story to conclude more happily.

A low moan drew her attention back east. Her lover was thrashing now, dampening the bedclothes with sweat. Kaab’s teeth pressed hard into her lower lip. She was a woman of action, and she could do nothing here but wait until—

Tess screamed and her eyes flew open. “No surprise she had it in her!” she gasped.

Kaab knelt beside the bed as her lover lifted herself onto her elbows, panting, her full breasts rising and falling in sharp spasms with her breath. As the fear slowly drained from her face, her breathing steadied.

“No surprise who had what in her?” Kaab asked, as gently as she could. Tess lifted the corner of her upper lip; her eyes shone with perplexity. “What do the words mean, my maize flower? Of what did you dream?”

Tess pressed her hands together. “Buggered if I know.”

Words too easily spoken, too quickly. Kaab harrumphed. “Buggery is out of the question,” she said, “if you continue to keep from me what is frightening you.”

Tess grunted and turned a look toward the ceiling in a gesture equal parts frustration and pleading. “Nothing. I didn’t see anything.”

“That is not true.”

“Can we just say it’s true and forget about it? It was frightening enough to see without having to talk about it.” She turned her glorious neck until she was staring into Kaab’s eyes. A plea, and an invitation.

Kaab stepped to the bed and sat down, finally able to embrace Tess fiercely, to enfold her lover in the warmth of what protection she could offer, and nosed the crook of Tess’s neck. She spoke in her own tongue.

“Eyes by day, dreams by night.”

Tess raised an eyebrow in challenge.

“Try, my maize flower. You know at least some of the words.”

“Fine,” Tess snapped. She identified, petulantly, the words for “day” and “night.” Her eyes narrowed. “The rest of it is gibberish.”

A sharp retort rose to Kaab’s lips, and she held her breath for a moment to keep from releasing it. Her language was a part of her, and she hated it when Tess deliberately provoked her by refusing even to try to understand. Finally, softly, she said, “It is a saying of my people. Just because the gods do not tell us in words how to live our lives in their honor does not mean that they do not instruct us at all. They gave us eyes with which to guide ourselves during the day, upright and strong. At night, however, when our eyes are of no use to us, the gods do not abandon us. They send us dreams by which we can find the proper path forward. To disregard the messages in dreams is to dishonor the gods and our ancestors.”

Tess hunched her shoulder. “Screw the gods and screw your ancestors! I’m not talking about this.”

This was enough to drive Kaab out of bed. “Say that again, and I will—” But here she broke off, for she found she could not imagine harming the beautiful woman in front of her, the woman in whose ample flesh she had found such comfort in this cold, cold land so far from her home.

“I’m sorry,” said Tess in a small voice. “I didn’t mean that. Your ancestors are in you, and your gods are in them.” The rich lips curved. “But there’s only one of you I’m interested in screwing.” It was enough. Kaab returned to her lover’s side. “It’s just—”

Tess gave a sigh of frustration. “By the Seven Hells, Kaab, if you understood how frightened I am when I see him . . .”

Kaab took Tess’s hands, squeezed tight. “Tell me,” she said, “and I vow by Xamanek’s light that I will allow you to come to no harm.”

A deep breath. “It’s Ben,” Tess said. Kaab squeezed harder, nodded encouragement. “He’s leaning against that wall there, drunk, dangling that damn locket from his hand. He’s wearing the jacket he died in, the green-and-red-striped one, but there’s blood spreading over the front of it, and every second that passes there’s less green and more red. He says, ‘We’re going to be rich, Tessie.’ And I ask him how. And he says, ‘No surprise she had it in her.’ And I ask him what he means, and then he grins, this awful rictus, and by now his jacket is completely soaked in blood, and then I look down and there’s blood beginning to spread on my nightgown, and I start screaming.” Tess finally opened her eyes, brown as a rich field awaiting seed. “And that’s when I wake up.”

Kaab considered this for a moment in silence. “What does it mean?”

“I really don’t know, sweetheart. He said both those things the night before he died. He told me we were going to be rich, and I asked how, and at first he wouldn’t answer, but then, just before he went out, he said it was ‘no surprise she had it in her.’ I didn’t know what he meant then, and I don’t know now.” She turned to Kaab, her eyes bright with fear. “And I don’t want to!”

Kaab held her close. “You have no need to.” Her hand moved slowly over Tess’s hair, crown to neck, crown to neck, soothing, calming, just as Ixmoe had done when Kaab had awoken from nightmares as a child. Her voice gained a grim edge. “But I do. For the sake of my family.” She felt Tess shudder in her arms. “Fear not, my flower. My investigation will not touch you.”

“I can live with that.” Tess nestled close. “As long as other things touch me.”

A pause. “What other things might you be referring to?”

Longer. “I think you already know the answer to that.” A hand on Kaab’s back. Kaab’s own hands, moving across an expanse of smoothest skin. She bent her lips to Tess’s neck and received for her trouble a low hum.

Kaab sat up, offering herself. A reach, a sigh, fingers on arms, on bellies, on breasts. Earlobes nipped, tendons taut, eyes fluttering, and now they’re lying down, their legs entangled, arms searching, toes pointing, a tongue, the taste of salt, of saliva, of salt again, of paint, ink. Fingernails digging into a wide back, soft groans, the smell of sweat and yesterday’s perfume, oh gods, the air is sweet, pale skin the color of the finest, most delicious festival ant eggs, her own brown flesh, inhale, a gasp, a breath held.

“I believe,” said Kaab breathlessly, “that you are correct.”

And then she found a use for her tongue far more interesting than speech.

 

Silk.

The chocolate trickling down her throat, the blue porcelain cup that had contained it until moments before, the counterpane: all smooth as silk. Diane replaced the cup on her breakfast tray precisely. She had come to prefer the blend of spices with which the Traders turned the drink to fire, but it would not do to lose entirely her taste for the gentler flavor consumed by those on the Hill.

A knock came on her bedchamber door.

“Darling?”

It was William’s voice. She sighed. Now that the arrangement with the Traders had been finalized, she had looked forward to a day or two free of care before she decided how best to deal with her husband and his toad of a lover. Rafe—she found it distasteful even to think the name—was a crawling kind of pestilence, cunning and oblivious at once, with a temper like fatwood and the political sense of a small green salad, and yet, without her understanding how, he had managed to foil her every effort to rid herself of him. She had insulted him, she had belittled him, she had transformed his work for her husband into drudgery so far beneath him it could do nothing but drive him away, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect; not only had he yet to abandon the duke, but he appeared more and more often, wandering about the house at all hours, a dreary, moping lump in his ridiculous long hair and his filthy robe and his whiny moods.

William spoke again. “Might I trouble you for a few moments of your time?”

It was far too early for civilized conversation—the clock hadn’t even struck noon—but his voice was suffused with urgency, and, given his erratic behavior of late, it would probably be unwise not to receive him. The gods only knew what he might do if left to plot his own course. “Of course,” she called to her husband. “Take as many moments as you like. They are all yours, after all.”

She sat up, snatched The Tyrant’s Dialogue from her bed stand—it was often convenient, she had found, to present the appearance of having been interrupted at something fascinating, so she kept books in various places around the house in which to seem engrossed—opened its thick pages, and looked up with a distracted smile as the oaken door, heavy with dignity, swung open.

“Diane, I’m sorry to disturb you at such an ungodly hour, but—”

“Not at all.” She gestured serenely with the book. “The choice between The Tyrant’s Dialogue and an actual dialogue with my husband is no choice whatsoever.”

“Then listen,” he said, suddenly gleeful. It was obvious he had to restrain himself from running to the bed, and she was filled with a sudden fear that he would jump onto the mattress and bounce up and down. But Rafe’s poisonous effect on him, thank the gods, had not been quite so deleterious to his dignity—not yet, at any rate. He simply sat very close to her, took the book gently from her, and folded her hands in his. “I have extraordinary news. For you, for me, for Tremontaine, for the City, for the Land!”

Diane sat up, hiding her unease behind a smile alight with excitement. “What is it?” Why, he was positively grinning. He had to be aware how silly he must look; it was appalling that he couldn’t have the decency to make at least a show of embarrassment.

She let it go. If she had been the kind of woman who allowed herself to be distracted by everything that appalled her, she would never have accomplished anything in the world.

William kissed her and sat back. She let amused forbearance play on her lips. “My noble husband, I trust that at some point you will move from telling me that you have something to tell me to actually telling me.”

He ducked his head. “All right, then. It concerns trade.” Her face showed mild interest. “And chocolate.”

As dismay filled the pit of her stomach like lead, she clapped her hands with just the right degree of girlish joy. “Do tell me, William, tell me at once!” Better to get it over with so she could consider what machinations would be necessary to countervail the damage her husband’s enthusiasm might do. After all she’d gone through to set up her arrangement with the Traders, was he going to knock it down—and Tremontaine with it—by upsetting the balance of the City’s chocolate trade?

No. He could not be permitted to destroy the house she had gone to such lengths to shore up. Her house, now, as much as his.

He took her hands again and looked into her eyes with a joy that was almost nauseating. “To begin with, this will be nothing you don’t already know and find tedious, but I suspect that in truth I am not nearly as clever as you about this sort of thing, and I must keep it straight as I go.”

She pressed his fingers gently. “You are forgiven everything.”

“You are too kind.” To her surprise, he bent his head to kiss her fingers, an old, loving gesture of the kind that used to mark their days. As if he thought nothing had changed between them. Perhaps he did. “So. Trade in the Land has for the most part consisted of importing goods from other places and either using it or selling it on.”

Oh by the Seven Hells. “Yes.”

“This opens us up to vulnerabilities of all kinds, the most recent example of which is that disastrous chocolate shortage.”

Diane disengaged her hands and settled back among her lacy pillows. “If you please, don’t remind me. The sooner that unfortunate episode can be allowed to fade into the blessed mists of time, the better.”

“But to forget it, darling, is to leave ourselves open to its repetition.” The concern in his voice made her want to strangle him. “I, for one, am of the opinion that there was no small element of extortion involved. Did you not notice that as soon as Davenant persuaded the Council to reduce the tariff, a new ship landed?”

The lead in Diane’s stomach began to warm, to spread like thick liquid through the rest of her body. Her husband might understand nothing beyond the edges of the truth, but that only made him all the more dangerous. “I did,” she said cautiously, “but I do believe it is possible to read too much into a coincidence.”

He shrugged. “Either way, wouldn’t it be better to eliminate our dependence on the Traders entirely?”

Diane’s heart stopped beating. She willed it to start again. “How on earth—” She felt faint. “How might we do that?”

“I’ll tell you, but you must promise to listen to the end.”

She raised an expressive eyebrow. “Is there something you fear I’ll find objectionable?”

“Hardly. I just— Well. I’ve spoken to you before about Rafe and his ideas about the earth orbiting the sun.”

She kept any hint of resentment out of her voice. “It all sounded most interesting, if incomprehensible. But that’s the University for you.”

“Rafe has a friend, a young genius by all accounts, who’s taken those ideas and applied them in a completely new way to the art of navigation.”

She saw at once what he intended, and the mass of lead solidified again in her stomach, cold. “You intrigue me.” Her voice was steady. “Pray, go on.”

“If the merchants of our city learned to navigate to far shores—to make their way even to the land of the Traders—then could they not harvest raw chocolate for themselves? And bring it back here to sell?”

And to ruin us, she thought. “Oh my,” she said faintly. “What a thought!”

“Just think, Diane. It could transform commerce in the City, in the Land, in a way no one ever dreamed possible! Imagine if we opened up our borders not just to goods from other nations but to knowledge, to other ways of looking at the world, to—”

Diane emitted a peal of laughter she was barely able to keep free of hysteria. “William, you’re magnificent, but”—you? We? What would make him more pliable? Admonish him or be on his side? Quick, quick, decide—“we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves!”

“You don’t think it’s exciting,” he said.

The look on his face was so crestfallen it filled her with a desire to slap him. For the Land’s sake, he was a duke. Dukes did not pout.

“It’s not that, not that at all.” She gripped his hands on the silk counterpane. “Why, exciting doesn’t even begin to describe the possibilities! But possibilities, darling, have two edges.”

He looked away from her toward the window. “Exactly the reaction Rafe thought you’d have.”

Diane turned to stone.

Finally: “Your secretary presumed to counsel Tremontaine on his relations with his wife?” She heard her voice rise on the last word. Careful, careful. She must not lose control.

“He did. And he was right.”

Leave this subject at once. Tread safer ground. “My love, I cannot help thinking the way I think.” She pitched her voice to apology. “Yes, the knowledge we gained might lead to phenomenal advances of all sorts, but what if not all of these advances were conducive to the good of Tremontaine?”

He shook off her hands. “The good of Tremontaine, the good of Tremontaine—damn the good of Tremontaine; I’m sick of considering the good of Tremontaine!”

A shock of red heat dimmed her vision, filled her voice with shocked incredulity. “You’re sick of considering the good of Tremontaine?”

An awful silence.

Her vision cleared, and she saw his eyes wide, his mouth open.

At once she wiped the fury off her face, replaced it with loving concern, reached for his cheek.

He swatted her hand aside. “Fine, then,” he said, and his smile was ice. “Damn the good of Tremontaine and damn you, too, Diane. Damn your politicking and your maneuvering and your cold, cold heart. For seventeen years I’ve acted the dutiful pawn in your game of Shesh, because you play it so much better than any of us, and it’s always been to my advantage, but I swear to you, in this moment I don’t give a minnow for my advantage, because there is passion in my life again, there is fire, and you will not quench it, no matter how much frost you heap on it!”

Disaster. She breathed faster so her cheeks would redden. One hand strayed to her bosom; the other grasped his shoulder. “Husband, you are not the only one in whom passion stirs at this moment.” She thickened her tones. “Seeing you in such a state rouses in me—”

“Oh, yes, Diane, yes, yes, how perfect!” The bitterness in his laugh! “Cold reason cannot bend me to your will, so you feign hot fervor instead, while inside ticks the same grinding metal clockwork, lubricated with acid, that has served you for a heart since the day you were born!”

She reached a beseeching hand up to him, only to see him raise his own hand to her, poised to strike; stare at her with horror, his sides heaving; and fling himself from the bed to lope, cursing, from the room.

A great cry began deep within Diane, and all her strength was not enough to contain it. For seventeen years, she had not wept a single tear that had not been in pursuit of her goal—not since a certain dreadful day—because if she had learned one thing very, very early in her life, it was that tears availed nothing, nothing at all, and every moment spent releasing them was a moment spent running toward destruction, and that was not her path, it was not, it was not, and she bit into her lower lip so hard it grew paler than her cheeks, and then she bit harder and shut her eyes tight and made her hands into fists and dug her nails into her palms and drew blood and bore down with everything she had and everything she was and pressed, and pressed, and pressed. Finally, the almost unbearable tension surrendered just enough for her to know she had conquered once more the forces that sought to draw her down into the deep, and they were not invincible, she had triumphed, and she released her fingernails from her palms and her teeth from her lip and felt the blood rushing back where it belonged, under her control, and she opened her eyes and began to breathe again.

She sat quite still until for five minutes together she had been utterly, utterly calm. Then she rose, wiped the blood from her palms with a handkerchief, and rinsed them in the basin until the water ran clear.

What a fool she had been, to think safety so cheaply bought.

 

A hired sword of Tremontaine knew where he belonged.

Leave it to Samuel, the first swordsman, to fight the showy exhibition bouts and lead the men to swoon and the women to call for their smelling salts; he found fame and adulation gratifying. As far as Reynald was concerned, the more attention you called to yourself, the more your freedom was restricted. Unobserved, as the second swordsman, he could accomplish all sorts of things Samuel would turn up his nose at—no, scratch that—all sorts of things Samuel had probably never heard of.

Let the first swordsman strut about like a popinjay. Reynald preferred the shadows.

So it was to the shadows that he kept as he made his way across the old bridge under a quilt of clouds spreading slowly and silently over the scatter of stars in the twilit sky, to the place where shadows cloaked all those who sought their protection:

Riverside.

She must not discover the identity of Ben’s killer, the Duchess had said of the Balam Trader girl. Her insinuation that he achieve this by means other than the sword, he could safely ignore. Political maneuvering was for the Hill. Reynald did not have the patience for it.

He kept his eyes open—his hand resting lightly on the hilt of the sword hanging from his left hip—for the dark woman dressed as a boy and carrying a sword. Ridiculous.

He strode past mewling lovers, past sauntering pickpockets, past whores fanning themselves while they flirted with the linkboys, to the house of the redheaded wench where Ixkaab Balam seemed to be found most frequently these days. But he could see from the dark, unshuttered windows that no one was there. Nor was she at the Maiden’s Fancy. Nor at the Three Dogs.

Bah. The evening was lengthening. Perhaps she was in the Balam compound, where he could not go. He would return tomorrow. Reynald hastened to the establishment where his other errand took him. It was too dark by now to see the sign over the door, but the figures painted on it, he knew, had long faded past the point of recognition anyway.

The proprietor, a jolly, middle-aged man with one leg that stopped at the knee, supporting himself on a crutch, looked up to attend to the new arrival. “Greetings! And how are you this fine evening?”

Reynald held out a piece of foolscap on which was scratched a single word. The shopkeeper, after understanding that his visitor did not intend to do him the courtesy of stepping any closer, clumped merrily over to him—a customer was a customer, after all, rude or otherwise—his free hand outstretched for the paper. When he read it, however, his brow wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

At last Reynald smiled. “I think you do.”

“Sir,” said the proprietor, his eyes wide, “I assure you, I don’t. I don’t know what this means. Perhaps you misunderstand the nature of my shop.” A big smile. “But you have a pleasant evening, all the same.”

He turned to swing back to his counter, but before he reached his destination, the point of Reynald’s blade pressed into his back, a tiny spot of blood blooming around it.

“Why don’t you try that again?” The proprietor shuddered, but those who knew the second swordsman of Tremontaine well would have called his tone affable.

A long silence. Then, unwillingly, the man spat, not looking around, “Fine. But I don’t want to see you in here ever again.”

“What you want,” said Reynald, “is none of my concern.”

A little while later, he left the shop whistling, his eyes light and his step jaunty. Drawing blood always put him in a better mood.

 

Rafe was being driven mad by his own hair.

He kept binding it up so it would stay out of his face as he worked, the flame of the single candle on his desk dancing dim light onto the foolscap. But before you could say “sword,” the ribbon would be in his left hand again, his thumb and fingers working it feverishly as his goal drew nearer and nearer, and the light on the paper, foiled by the fall of dark hair, would grow even dimmer. “Yes,” he muttered to himself as the sound of his pen scratching did what little it could to fill the silence of the room, “yes, take the inverse of the opposite angle as the . . . and then multiply it by the result from the previous . . .”

For he had taken measurements of the heavenly bodies again, and he could taste success like the finest chocolate on his tongue. “No, no, not that one.” He laid the ribbon down, shuffled through the pile of paper in front of him, scanning each page quickly, until he found the number he had been searching for. “And then fill in this equation with . . . yes . . . yes . . .”

His eyes grew wide as the pen scratched faster and faster, and he stopped breathing for a moment, and at last his hand was still.

“Yes!”

He had done it.

On the ink-smeared pages before him lay proof that Rastin was wrong, that de Bertel was wrong, that the basis for all astronomy for the last two hundred years was wrong.

The earth orbited the sun.

The sun, not this planet he and his friends trod, was the center of the world.

He leaped up, knocking his chair over. “Praise be to the gods and the demons and the Horned King!” He raised his arms high above his head, grinning, his hands fists, and danced around the room like a boy of ten who’d just won a kickball tournament. “Take that, Rastin!” He drew an invisible sword and, leaping forward, stabbed the air in front of him. “Take that, de Bertel!” The air suffered another wound. “Take that, Chauncey! Martin! Featherstone!” His laughter in the empty room was full and rich.

And now to tell Will. Will, who would be just as deliciously thrilled as he was, would vibrate just as much with joy, would—

An insistent knocking at the door. Rafe gave the air the coup de grâce owed a worthy opponent and tripped, bubbling, to the door.

Where Will stood in the doorway.

Without even giving Rafe time to greet him, he strode into the room, swallowed Rafe in his embrace, and kissed him, hot, fierce, as if his lips would devour the younger man’s. He put his hand behind Rafe’s head, his fingers clutching the scholar’s hair in a fist, and held it immobile.

Finally he broke the embrace.

“I feel,” said Rafe breathlessly, “that I ought to make a wry comment.” Instead he returned Tremontaine’s kiss, his own lips just as hungry, and walked him toward the bed, tripping against the heavy frame and falling onto the mattress, his lover heavy on top of him. Will reared, his hands on Rafe’s shoulders; Rafe tried weakly to pull himself up, but neither the duke’s need nor his own would permit it. A voracious coupling, this, teeth and fingernails and lips and tongues and hair and bodies yielding to each other as they moved, the guttering candle finally dying and leaving them to surrender to the dark and to each other. Eventually, after a cry from one and a cry from the other, all was quiet and all was still.

Clouds swallowed the light of the heavens, but Rafe hardly needed light to know the shape of the cheek against which he rested his fingers.

“I await your wry comment,” said the duke, his voice barely a whisper.

Rafe answered him just as softly. “Alas, my lord. I have, for perhaps the first time in my adult life, none to offer.”

 

From The Book of Kings, by Alastair Vespas

But his hopes were not to be met. For in the following year it came to pass that King Edgar, though he had thitherto been the wisest and most reasonable of men, did fall prey to the terrible malady that was to plague him and the Land for so many long years. His dreadful illness did not have quite so dramatic an effect as the madness of his grandson, King Hilary the Stag; yet still only through the offices of Good Queen Margery did the Land survive and prosper.

The cause of Edgar’s illness has long been a subject of discord among medical men. Some have said it was caused by an imperfection in his blood, while others have blamed it on an imbalance in his vital humors. The folktales of a poison called shadowroot are, of course, to be classed with rumors of a Northern wizard’s curse and other like nonsense. But all are in agreement on the severity of his symptoms and the suddenness of their onset. The king began, it seems, to converse with the air, as if in front of him stood a person or, at times, an animal—most often, it seems, a stag or a bear or a crow, but in no wise only these. When those around him protested, he fell into rages from which nothing but confinement and sleep released him. He grew exceedingly suspicious of all who cherished him, whom he had formerly held dear, even his lady wife.

 

And now is come the time to speak of the tenderness, the bravery, the loving-kindness of Good Queen Margery. When her lord husband began to rave, she took up the reins of leadership. She ruled, capable as a king, in his stead, conducting the business of the Land, negotiating treaties, and waging war when necessary. At first the people liked not to be governed by a woman, but she turned their hearts with the continued devotion she showed Edgar even after his descent into madness was complete. She mixed his medicine every evening and administered it with her own hand, ensuring that he consumed it all, lest a lackey forget for carelessness, and it was only due to the draught’s salutary effects that his illness did not strike him even more cruelly than it did. The day she died, the people went into mourning for a month.

Doubly tragic, then, was the king’s recovery within a few weeks of Margery’s death. With what transports of joy would his lady wife have greeted her lord’s recovery, a recovery that without her ministrations would undoubtedly never have been achieved!

 

Kaab hated wasting her time.

The carriage rattled on down the road toward the City. The other travelers had had their fill of looking at her and were looking out the window instead. Not that there was anything to see. The countryside was barren, and the clouds overhead made it more barren still. A clap of thunder startled and irritated her in equal measure. An entire morning in the middle of nowhere, spent talking to people who stared at her, and for what? Scraps of information she already had. Rupert Hawke, Gentleman Robber, steals your money but spares your daughter! Yes, she already knew that. She and everybody else in Riverside. Wicked Thomas. The Farnsleigh fortune and the armored carriage. The ambassador from Arkenvelt. Nothing she hadn’t heard in the Three Dogs at Ben Hawke’s wake. The one woman the highwayman had ever loved, the child whose birth had killed her, the boy who had become Tess’s protector. His fraught relationship with that child, cold and hot, close and far. Nothing Tess hadn’t already told her.

But Xamanek’s light, today she had been talking to his neighbors, the people he had lived among for decades! Tess had never met Ben’s father, and the men and women in the Three Dogs hadn’t seen him for twenty years; they had nothing to offer but shreds of memory. But today, the women who had lived in the rooms across the hall, his landlady, the tavern keepers—they had given her nothing better. “He kept to himself,” they said, and “He wasn’t one for talking.”

It would be blasphemous to think Ahkin of the Waves annoyed in sympathy with her, but she felt comforted nonetheless by the lowering skies.

One barmaid had said she could tell Kaab about the Gentleman Robber, but it turned out that the only words she had were in praise of Kaab’s body (“delectable” was one of them), and, while Kaab was not unappreciative of the compliment, and the girl’s skin was as pale as a sweet white-corn tortilla, Tess awaited her in Riverside.

Now this was a cheerier thought. She smiled the rest of the way to the City.

The smile didn’t survive the wind that hit her as she alighted from the coach. She pulled her coat around her and thrust her hands in the pockets. Tess would warm them, but in the meantime, she had a long, cold walk ahead of her.

She was halfway to Riverside before something made her stop, straighten her posture, look northwest, look southeast. Yes, there was no question about it.

She was being followed.

 

“No, Will.”

Rafe was walking down the broad avenue in the Middle City through streets gluey with mud and air heavy with the promise of rain, Will on his left, Joshua and Micah on his right. The clouds of the previous night sliced dark jags into the noon sky, reflected in the darkness on Will’s face. It was not, perhaps, the best day to go seeking a home for the school that was at last within his grasp, but Will had insisted. So why was the duke so distracted?

“My students,” Rafe went on, “will follow where their curiosity leads them. But first they’ll be exposed to everything. Natural Science, of course, but also the humane sciences. I want them to decide for themselves what they want to study—once they’ve tasted it all.”

“And who, pigeon,” said Joshua, “is going to teach them these humane sciences? Certainly not you.”

Rafe looked at his friend. “How ghastly. No, Pilson is going to join me as soon as he dons his Master’s robe.”

“You mean he’s forgiven you for that memorable evening?”

“Oh, he was quite drunk at the time,” said Rafe airily. “He can hardly remember I was even there. I convinced him it was Mitford.”

“How on earth did you manage that, pigeon?”

“It involved a goat,” said Rafe. “The rest, I leave to your fertile imagination. But now the two of them are inseparable, which makes me doubly lucky: I have escaped both Pilson’s ire and his affections.”

That, at least, ought to have elicited a laugh from Will, as it did from Joshua. But the older man was still just frowning morosely into space, as he’d been since they set out on this little expedition. Whatever on earth was the matter with him?

“Why do you call him ‘pigeon’?” Micah asked.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older, love.” Joshua patted the boy’s arm and turned back to Rafe. “But surely, you’re not going to teach them all of Natural Science.”

Rafe bristled. “Just what, my dear boy, are you implying?” He knew exactly what Joshua was implying.

“Well,” said Joshua delicately, “of course you could. But there might be certain subjects with which others display more . . . facility than you.”

“He means math,” Micah put in. “You’re not very good at math, so it would be a bad idea for you to teach it.”

Rafe looked to the dark heavens and quoted: “‘Lo, I am compass’d round by traitor friends!’”

“No, pigeon, seriously.”

“I can’t simply not teach them math. It’s the foundation on which all of Natural Science—Natural Science the way it should be studied—is built! What do you propose I teach them instead, how to tat lace?”

Joshua assumed an expression of exaggerated patience. “No, love. You should get somebody else to teach it.”

“Who could possibly be—” Rafe stopped in his tracks. By the Seven Hells, of course! How could he not have seen it, when it had been staring him in the face the whole time? He grabbed Joshua’s head with both hands and kissed him. “You are a genius!”

Joshua lifted his brows. “Thank you?”

But Rafe was already looking at Micah, his eyes bright. “You must come teach at my school.”

“What do you mean?” asked the boy.

“Look, you’ve been talking ever since you got here about how you have to go back to the farm and help Reuben and Amos and Seth and Judith and Elfine the goat and Ada the cow and Flora the turnip and the gods only know how you’ve managed to keep them all straight, but in the end you never go back. And why is that? Because you want to stay here. And what I’m offering you is a way to stay here forever. Not just until you take your exams. And to study whatever you want to study, and correct whomever you want to correct, and no one will shout at you anymore. You have a duty to scholarship! What do you think?”

He looked over at Will, who radiated gloom. “Tell him he must do as I say,” he said. But Will made no response.

Thunder rolled above their heads. Micah jumped. “I—I—”

“This one!” cried Joshua suddenly. “Pigeon, this one!”

Rafe looked around to see his friend pointing at a house so garishly tricked out it would have shamed Lord Ruthven’s lady. The eaves were painted a bright red, the door more intricately carved than a woman’s lace collar, the windows bedecked with a cheap and dingy pink gauze.

“Joshua,” said Rafe, “it looks like a brothel.”

“Exactly!” Joshua was smug. “Your students can learn a useful trade along with their Natural Science and tatting.”

“What’s a brothel?” asked Micah.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older, love.”

Rafe regarded Joshua. “You know, I was mistaken about you.”

“How so?”

“I used to believe fervently that you had the second-worst taste of any man I knew. I see now that denying you the victor’s laurel was the height of injustice.” He looked over at the duke and tried again. “My lord? What do you think?”

Will spared the gaudy abomination a brief glance. “Not grand enough.” His tone was short.

“Not grand enough?” Rafe’s hands clenched. “Not grand enough? I do not want a grand house for my school. I do not want a grand house for my school today any more than I did when you showed up at my rooms last night so unexpectedly, if delightfully. I do not want a house at all, frankly; I’d much prefer to rent a shop of some kind, the more ramshackle, the better. One has appearances to keep up. The only reason I agreed to this expedition at all was that if I didn’t I was afraid you’d simply do to me again what you did this morning, but there are no feathers left in my pillow, and I hesitate to think what you’d use instead.”

Will ignored Joshua’s laugh and stared at Rafe, his eyes wide.

Rafe snorted. “Oh, please! It cannot have escaped your notice that Joshua and Micah here have male body parts. They’re both quite aware of the sorts of things one does with them.”

Will stopped and seized both Rafe’s arms. “Can’t you see that your school deserves more than that? More than that dilapidated shack?”

“Will, if you call that a dilapidated shack, why don’t you just have me open the school in Tremontaine House? I’m sure the duchess would love having young minds opening all around her, flirting with the lackeys, and getting their grubby lower-class fingers in the jam.”

Will’s hands clutched Rafe’s arms to the edge of pain. “And would that be so bad? To fill Tremontaine House with people seeking knowledge, with people passionate about something? Who allowed themselves to be guided by their hearts?”

“And their minds,” said Micah. “I hope.”

Will barreled on. “To bring joy into the house? What would be so very, very wrong with that?”

A brief silence. “Will,” said Rafe, quietly, “what is the matter?”

Will released his lover’s arms. “Nothing.” He turned to start walking again. “We’d better get inside somewhere. It’s going to rain soon.”

This time it was Rafe who took hold of Will’s arms. “That’s not good enough. Try again.”

“I said, nothing!”

“And I said, that’s not good enough. If you won’t let my wretched temper and unbridled arrogance keep you from forcing me to reveal myself to you, then I’m certainly not going to let a mood keep me from forcing you to do the same. What is wrong?”

Will turned his head away, his features contorted in anguish. Joshua took Micah’s hand and dragged him off in the direction of the University.

Out of the corner of his eye, Rafe saw a passing water carrier give him and Will a curious look. Clearly, the open street was no place to talk. Rafe drew Will into the alley running alongside the garish house, muddy but empty. “Tell me,” he said.

Will sighed. “It’s Diane.”

Rafe took a deep breath, exhaled. “Go on.”

“I’ve hurt her terribly,” he said quietly. “We had words yesterday, and mine were . . . harsh.”

“From you, I suspect that means you said you liked her hair better the other way.”

That won, finally, a rueful smile. “I told her she had clockwork lubricated with acid for a heart.”

The sound of arguing voices floated to them from the street. Rafe whistled.

“Precisely.” The relief of unburdening himself, perhaps, loosed Will’s tongue. “We’ve never quarreled like that before, and I’ve certainly never stormed out and spent the night elsewhere.”

“No wonder you were so enthusiastic last night. And so glum today.”

Warm blue eyes rose to his. “I’m sorry, Rafe. I should have told you.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rafe said thickly. “You just did.”

Will took his hand and kissed his fingertips. “Can you forgive me?”

“I could, were there anything to forgive.” Rafe leaned forward and brushed Will’s lips with his own, a feather on still water. There was one thing left to do—a difficult thing, but necessary. “You must go home,” he went on gently. “The Duchess Tremontaine is not a woman to be trifled with.”

Will frowned. “But we’re seeking a home for your school—”

“Yes, at your insistence. Go.” Rafe couldn’t believe these words were issuing from his mouth. “A wife is a very complicated thing, especially when she’s a duchess. Make amends. I’m easy.”

Will smiled and cocked his head. “So I’ve been told.”

“Ah, but your information is, alas, out of date. Haven’t you heard?” Rafe turned, impish, and sauntered away. He looked back over his shoulder to see Will smiling at him. “I’m in love.”

A razor of silver lightning slashed the sky.

 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you today, Micah, but I’m certainly not going to check a gift stag’s horns.”

Micah sat back in shock as Larry swept the entire pot of bets over the scarred table, humming merrily. She hadn’t made an error like this since . . . well, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d made an error like this. She eyed the cards remaining in her hand. She’d known Thaddeus didn’t have the Twelve of Beasts or he’d have played it off Larry’s Seven of Birds. So why in the god’s names had she led the Moon, when it had been perfectly obvious that if Larry played the Comet or a Crown above eight, the hand was his?

She sighed, the sound inaudible in the din of conversation that filled the Inkpot. She couldn’t help it. Cousin Reuben was going to be so upset.

But the thought of a future devoted only to math filled her with such overwhelming happiness that for a moment she was almost calm. She saw a sky full of shapes, two-dimensional, three-dimensional, floating, rotating, spinning so that every moment they connected with one another and with her in new and more glorious ways, with no sharp voices to frighten her, no one and nothing standing between her and the magnificent vision.

But first she would have to inform her family, and she would have to do it in person. Telling important news in a letter would just be rude; Rafe had said so. They depended on her, and she was going to abandon them. She owed them an apology and an explanation. And that was the problem. Aunt Judith and Uncle Amos were nice. Seth was nice, even when he was upset. But Reuben was the one who came to town, and though he was usually the nicest of all of them, he definitely wasn’t happy when you said something he didn’t want to hear.

“Micah? Hello?”

She looked up at Patrick. “What?”

“Your play.”

She examined the cards in her hand. She tried to call up the image of her likelies tables to figure out what she should play. But now she couldn’t concentrate on anything but the sound of Reuben’s voice as he yelled at her. How could you? he would say. You know how much we need you! We can’t do the turnips without you! I won’t allow it! I’m taking you back home right now. It made her elbows itch.

She shook her head to clear it and dropped her cards on the table. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushed back her chair, and ducked her way out between the Inkpot’s noisy, noisy customers. Thaddeus, Larry, and Patrick called out to her, but she ignored them.

The market was crowded—people probably wanted to get their shopping done before it started to rain—and the dark sky made it feel more so. Maybe Reuben wouldn’t be here, she thought hopefully as she forced herself past the red-faced fishmongers, particularly loud today, past the butcher with his knife bigger than her hand, toward her cousin’s stall. No, because then he would sell fewer turnips and her family would lose money, and she didn’t want that. Two dirty children were chasing each other through the crowd, snaking in and out and shouting. Maybe she could just write Aunt Judith and Uncle Amos a letter after all. Maybe—

She stopped in her tracks, her mouth and eyes wide. “Bessie!” she called, and ran toward the spotted cow staked nearby, her arms out.

She realized before she was halfway there that the cow wasn’t Bessie. She looked enough like Bessie, still, that the sight of her filled Micah with joy or relief, or both. “What’s her name?” she said to the farmer when she arrived at his stand.

“Esmeralda.”

“Esmeralda’s spots are the same color as Bessie’s, and so are her eyes. Bessie’s spots are in different places, though. Bessie has one on her nose and three on her left side and five on her right side, and your cow has one less spot in each place: none on her nose, two on her left side, and four on her right side.” She talked until the farmer gave her a funny look and walked away from her to the lettuces on his table, which she knew meant he didn’t want to listen anymore. If she hadn’t been so worried about Reuben, she would have arranged the lettuces more neatly for him.

She sat down on a stool and began stroking the side of the cow who wasn’t Bessie. Thunder pealed over her, but with her hands on Esmeralda’s side she was not frightened. She sat, silent, breathing deeply, as the feel of the soft flanks against her hands began to muffle the sharpness of her anxiety with images of the farm and Aunt Judith and the turnip fields. Things that made her smile.

Esmeralda tilted her head back and stuck out her tongue, which was exactly what Bessie did when she was happy.

What Micah needed to do, she realized, was to figure out exactly what to say. It was important. She thought for a moment and breathed deeply.

“Reuben,” she told Esmeralda, “I’m not coming back to the farm.” No. Aunt Judith always said that when you were telling people something they wouldn’t be happy to hear you should warn them first that you had bad news. “Reuben, I have bad news.” Yes, that was better. You should also apologize. “I’m sorry. But I’m not coming back to the farm.” Or was this not a time she should apologize? “Reuben, I have bad news. I’m not coming back to the farm.” No, the apology was better. Maybe.

Esmeralda tore a mouthful of hay from the pile at her feet. Stroke, stroke, stroke.

“Rafe is giving me a job teaching at his school, and you know how much I love math.” Yes, that would be good. “And I’ll get to spend all my time doing math.” She sped up as she spoke, all in one breath. “So I know you depend on me to help with the turnips and the planting and all the other things but I think you can do them without me and if you want, I can keep coming to visit you here and remind you of things like when it’s time to plow and harvest and what to do in the rain and things and I promise you’ll be okay, but Rafe says I have a duty to scholarship so I’ll be happy too and it will be so wonderful!”

Was that right?

Esmeralda turned her head to look at Micah, bits of hay hanging from her lower lip, and let out a soft moo.

Micah clapped her hands and then put her arms as far around Esmeralda’s middle as she could and pressed hard. So solid, so dependable.

As she made her way toward her cousin’s stall, though, she began to feel anxious again. It had been so clear just a little bit earlier! Reuben, I have bad news . . . spend all my time doing math . . . keep coming to visit you here . . . But she remembered the time on the farm that the sheep had wandered off and how loud and frightening Reuben had been when he yelled about it. The words she’d just thought of, sitting with Esmeralda, got harder and harder to remember. Reuben was going to be so angry. Wait, was she going to include an apology or not?

She caught sight of Reuben’s back and started feeling sick to her stomach. She wanted to run back to Rafe’s rooms, but Joshua and somebody she didn’t recognize had been there in bed making noise like the pigs did when they mated so she didn’t think that would be good and anyway she had to tell Reuben, she had to.

“Reuben!” she said, and he scowled to see her. Oh gods. He was in a bad mood.

“Wonderful,” he said. “The one person who stops is somebody I know doesn’t want any cabbage.” He bit his fingernail. “In the rain the roads back will be bad enough as it is, without my having to drive them with a cart full of unsold greens.”

Micah wanted to throw up. What was she supposed to say? She had been so careful, come up with something so good. But the words stayed out of her head. Finally she couldn’t bear it anymore.

“I love math more than the farm so I’m not coming back and I know you might not like it but I have a duty to scholarship,” she blurted.

Was that right? Probably not. Probably he would yell at her much worse than she had expected. Her whole body was rigid. She wanted to disappear.

And then a grin split his face, and he started laughing louder than she’d ever heard him laugh before.

Reuben wasn’t mad! Her body melted and she threw her arms around him and squeezed him even harder than she’d squeezed Esmeralda.

“Micah,” he said when she finally let go, “I don’t understand a damn thing when you talk about numbers, but you’re a great kid, and if that’s what you want to do, then that’s what you should do.” He reached out and chucked her under her chin.

“You don’t need me for the turnips?”

“You’ve taught us enough about growing crops to last us a lifetime. Do me a favor, though?”

The wondrous shapes entered her vision again, rotating, relating, growing, changing. Right. “Anything, Reuben!”

“Keep coming to visit me here? And write Aunt Judith and Uncle Amos a letter every week? It’ll help us miss you less.”

“Every day! I’ll come every day!” And she clapped again and jumped up and down.

As she ran off, thunder slapped the sky again.

It began, finally, to rain.

 

Kaab was fuming. The gods showered the earth with water in Binkiinha, too, but the City seemed to see more rain in a month than her homeland did in a year, if not two. And the rain here, unlike that in her homeland, was cold.

She looked up and muttered a curse as a raindrop landed in her eye.

She had walked around Riverside twice by now on a meandering, circuitous route, avoiding the mud and the largest puddles, taking in the whores she passed, the pimps, the pickpockets, the ne’er-do-wells, the urchins. But she had managed neither to evade nor to identify whoever was trailing her.

As she passed a secondhand clothier’s, she glanced at the reflection in the window and finally saw him, across the street now, the man who had surely broken into Tess’s apartment, the man Vincent said he had seen dressed in house livery at the Swan Ball.

Tremontaine’s creature.

She grunted in frustration. She was tired, and she was wet, and she had lost her morning. The gods had not created her with the patience for this.

She stopped in her tracks, turned around, and stared directly at her pursuer. His hair was plastered against his forehead, water dripping from his ears, a dangerous half smile on his face. She said nothing as she crossed the street to him, simply eyed him, imperious.

“You are following me,” she said when she reached him. “Furthermore, you have been plaguing a woman whose happiness is a matter of some import to me. I am displeased.”

He laughed, without amusement. “Then we have something in common. You, girl, have been plaguing a woman whose happiness is a matter of some import to me.” His hand moved to the hilt of his sword.

“I do not see how I can have troubled the peace of the Duchess Tremontaine by going about my family’s business.” Was that a flicker of surprise on his face? “Whom do you take me for, that I should not know your mistress? Some girl on her first mission, fresh as unpicked maize, with her eyes closed to what is around her? Or is it your own pox-ridden eyes that cannot see clearly what lies before them?”

The man’s half smile blossomed into something mocking, derisive. “This,” he said, “will be amusing.”

He drew his sword.

Kaab didn’t move a muscle, but her throat closed and her liver grew heavy with fear. The air smelled suddenly sour.

She hurled a prayer up to the gods.

Protect me, Ixchel, from the spear by day and the jaguar by night.

What had she been thinking, confronting this man? Had she expected him to slink away, chastised, and leave her and Tess in peace?

Swallowing her fear, she drew her own sword. “There are customs to be observed, are there not,” she said, “when two swordsmen duel?”

This time his laugh was almost genuine. “Two swordsmen?”

Kaab said nothing, feeling the balance of the sword in her hand.

“Very well, then.” His voice rang out above the sound of the rain pattering on the ground. “I call challenge.”

From the corner of her eye Kaab saw a passerby stop, then another. They had an audience. Never mind them. Immaterial.

She assumed her stance, different from the one she had learned in her youth across the Road of the Sun, but one into which, after months of work with Applethorpe, she fell naturally. Torso turned to the side, legs bent, arm lifted, elbow crooked just so, the sword loose in her hand, her other arm relaxed behind her. They began to circle each other.

Kaab stepped forward.

* * *

She lunges. He parries, makes a riposte. She parries, the clash of metal on metal.

These are easy moves, testing moves. The first part of a duel isn’t part of the duel. Vincent’s words. It’s strictly for information. How strong is your opponent? What are his weaknesses? Does he favor one side? Does he give anything away?

“Not bad,” says the man opposite her, and she can hear an echo of something that sounds like admiration in his voice.

She, for her part, will not waste her breath in idle talk. Not until she knows it will do her good.

She was furious when Vincent made her spend their first few lessons on walking. Ekchuah guide her, he didn’t even allow her to draw her sword! But thanks to him the circular fighting pattern the Xanamwiinik swordsmen use is second nature now. Face him to the west, one foot, the other, again, face the south. Gods, how sweet it would feel to run directly at him, as she would at home! There is something foolish in this style of fighting. Effete.

But that does not make the blade she faces any less deadly.

He thrusts. She sweeps the tip of his sword away, dances back.

This man is taller than she is, though not by much. A few inches. But where she is lean and wiry, he is muscled. Large. It will slow him down. Light, unfortunately, on his feet. His rapier is longer than hers by, what, a handspan? Two? Which means she has to stay farther away from him to keep out of his range. But it also means that she needn’t get as close to him before his weapon becomes useless. A sword whose point extends past her ear can do her no harm.

His head nods up and down, judging her balance, her strength, her guard. And wasting movement. A sneer. He’s underestimating her. Good. She’ll use that.

As for her, everything she needs to know she sees in his face.

Watch my eyes, damn it, not my sword, Applethorpe kept saying. This man’s eyes are narrow. Veiled. He thinks himself opaque. But Ixkaab Balam is a first daughter of a first daughter of the Kinwiinik. He can conceal nothing from her.

“You will never get what you want,” she says, her voice steady.

Attack, riposte. Feint from him, the whip of a blade slashing the air, feint, thrust high inside. “Oh?” he says. “And what might that be?”

She says nothing. She will tell him when it suits her.

He thrusts again, too fast, too close. She leaps to the side, barely misses being scratched. The duel has begun in earnest. She smiles, crouches lower, hears Vincent’s voice in her head: Too low. She rises two fingers’ breadth. Circle, circle.

She has this man’s measure now. He still underestimates her, but he isn’t letting it make him careless. His guard is high, his parry consistent. No tells, nothing that will allow her to predict any of his next attacks. She will have to wear him down. Which means the longer the fight takes, the better. “You fight well,” he says, “for a barbarian.”

Her left eyebrow rises very slightly. “So do you,” she says. “For a barbarian.”

He smiles, slows his circling steps. She follows suit. Parry, feint, feint, feint, feint, thrust center outside, yes, parry, no, no, no! Xamanek’s light! His riposte low inside, strike, and the sleeve stuck to her arm flowers blood.

She has been bloodied many times before in combat—single, group. But never when she has known that every wound she took brought her closer to joining her mother in the houses beneath the earth. Tears come unbidden, unwelcome, to her eyes.

Courage begins to seep from her body along with blood. She is facing a City swordsman. He is intimately acquainted with a weapon she met for the first time not half a year ago—he is toying with her; he knows what he is about, and she does not. He has spilled the blood of countless men, wasted it without the sanction of the gods.

And now his slashes and thrusts seem to come faster, faster, sharper, and sweat mixes in her eyes along with the rain, and pain, and more of her blood. She slips in mud, goes down on one knee. She can barely breathe. Up again. He batters her, drives her back toward the wall. She is blind with terror; she is doomed; she knows even as she begins to whisper a prayer to the gods that they cannot be importuned, that Chaacmul will accept this sacrifice from their priest, that—

No.

A single word, echoing, stills the roiling she feels within.

The voice, it surprises her to note, is not Applethorpe’s.

It is her own.

Despair is unworthy of you, says the voice. Have you not stood before Ekchuah’s temple to celebrate the return of the morning star? Have you not danced the Water Dance in the Batab’s palace with his most distinguished warriors under the first new moon of the year?

Are you not your mother’s daughter?

She knows what to do.

She reaches for the feeling of obsidian, the cool, silent force with which she has so recently become acquainted. Impassive. Respectful. Controlled.

Strength begins to spread through her, and warmth. Her smile becomes an openmouthed grin, falling rain running over her tongue. She leaps up and back like a jaguar, facing away from the crowd of spectators that has gathered to watch someone die. Step, step, yes, there! No, not far enough, there, back, back, damn it, back, but he’s moved too quickly, too quickly, too close, and he seizes her sword arm, pulls her to him, hard, what on earth is he doing, his elbow coming at her, pain pierces her face, red, blooming, vicious, she staggers back toward the side of the street.

She bends over, panting, her hand on her thigh, wipes under her nose, sees bloodied rain streaming off the back of her hand. How dare he? Vincent almost ended her lessons when she pulled something like this move.

A swordsman never grabs his opponent’s arm, Applethorpe had barked, furious. Do that and you lose the duel, and probably any hope of future contracts. She has spent months learning the rules of combat in this godsforsaken Land, has paid the Xanamwiinik the respect of acting according to their custom. Who does her opponent think she is, a dog to be spit upon, a fool to be made mock of in the sight of the gods?

Her liver begins to move within her, to heat her limbs to tingling, to urge her to strike, now. Now. Leap at him, do it, do it for Citlali, for her kin executed in Tultenco, for every woman killed by a man who has claimed the right.

Yes, whispers her liver as she stokes it, and it is crimson with rage, abandon yourself, deliver yourself to me, I will make of you an eagle, striking without thought, killing by instinct, attacking, destroying, yes, yes—

No. Her own voice again, steady, still, rooted deep in stone. Giving herself over to her liver-spirit was exactly what led to the disaster in Tultenco, to Citlali’s death and the death of her kin, to her banishment here. She has no need to call on her liver-spirit.

It is part of her.

Her opponent has shown that the ordinary rules do not apply in this fight.

This is not, then, a duel.

It is a murder.

The only question is whose.

She reaches now for actual obsidian, pulls out her dagger. A handspan of chipped stone, the hilt wrapped with rough, strong henequen rope, the blade harder than steel. More deadly.

A flash of fear in his eyes. He sees that something has changed. Does not yet know what.

She drops to a crouch. Ah yes. Her work with Vincent has rendered the Xanamwiinik fighting stance comfortable for her—but this, to this position she was born.

Now is the time to speak. “It does not occur to her, you know,” she says, her voice low and clear through the rain. He cannot keep uncertainty from his eyes. Apprehension. “I speak of your duchess. You dream of her; you lust after her in the dark; you bed your lovers and thrust into them and whisper her name.”

His lips press together, tight. She has struck true.

“But.” Make him wait. “When you are not before her, it does not occur to her that you are alive. You are less to her than her leavings in the commode.”

He has begun to tremble. Now strike home.

“If she knew how you thought of her, she would laugh harder than you have ever laughed at anything since the cursed day your mother gave you to the light.”

He roars, inarticulate, wild. And she sees it, as clearly as if his skin had grown transparent as the skies; she sees him fill with rage; she sees his innards clench with the truth she has hurled. It is time.

She lets her sword fall to the ground and runs directly at him, stays low as she runs, reaches down with her empty right hand, makes it a shovel collecting mud, garbage, muck, dung, flips his sword aside with a contemptuous twist of her dagger as he is still roaring, inside his guard now, hand up, fling, and now his eyes and his face are dripping with gods know what. His sword cannot touch her, and he cannot see. He strikes out with his off fist, she leaps easily out of its way.

And now she is the one who laughs, because this is so easy. He was so arrogant, so sure of himself. Now he is blind with filth. The rain running down his face does nothing to restore his sight to him. Her impulse is to toy with him, to humiliate him. She shifts her balance to step to the south, just out of his range, where she can taunt him further.

No. A third and final time. Her own voice ringing in the obsidian chambers of her mind. Do not tempt the gods.

This is not a voice she can disobey.

So she nods. Advances, lunges with the dagger, pierces, pushes. His roaring voice breaks off, he drops his sword, falls. Blood, a great deal of it, running into the mud as Chaacmul’s sky pours water on them both.

She walks over, stands just north of him, his feet stretched away from her to the south. She kneels. She has never killed before. She has come close. She has wanted to kill, certainly, longed to water the thirsty earth with her enemies’ blood. But she has never released into the world the three spirits of any child of the gods.

She puts her dagger to his throat. Holds it steady. Draws it to the west. More blood. A sigh. Stillness.

She should say something, but no words come.

She stands, nods brusquely to the spectators, and walks in the rain toward her lover’s house.

 

From the private correspondence of Dominick Redstone, Chair of the College of Physic, to E— L—, Master of Physic, lecturer in Thelney Hall

No, Edward, my decision is final, and the fact that I even have to remind you of that—again—should be an indication of how pertinacious I find your repeated requests that Sparrow be allowed to return to the University. However urgently you miss thinking about his lips as you lecture—oh, yes, I know all about that; the two of you were so obvious about it that, frankly, I’m shocked Anthony stood for it at all—he has simply gone too far. There are accepted avenues of research. He knew very well what they were. And yet he chose to study poison. Poison, Ed. And not just any poison—no, he wanted to study a poison that doesn’t even exist. What a ridiculous name, “shadowroot.” If he wanted to spend time poking about in dusty archives, he should have done it on his own time and not subjected the rest of us to what he found, or thought he found, or—as I suspect is truly the case—pretended to find. No, Sparrow is not coming back.

This has been an annoying note to write; please don’t make me do it again. I have enough annoying notes to write as it is. Next is to Tremontaine about the examination committee matter. Gods, don’t you miss the days when the University was permitted to govern its own affairs?

* * *

Thank the good god, his wife was home at last, and he could make amends!

William took Diane’s hands as soon as she walked through the door. She was glowing with the very last of the storm. He kissed her, his lips hard against hers, kissed her again, more enthusiastically than was strictly sensible in front of the servants, and led her silently to the grand staircase of Tremontaine House. With a tilt of her head she granted him permission to accompany her, and as soon as he had shut the door to her sitting room behind him, he took her hands again and looked into her eyes, as blue as the sky after a summer storm.

“I dare not ask your forgiveness,” he said, trembling.

She flew into his arms. “Nor should you, William!” she cried. “It is I who must ask yours!” A rueful smile touched her lips. “What a miserable creature I was yesterday. In your position I don’t know that I would have come back at all, much less so soon.” She clutched the front of his coat, gave it a little shake. “Please, run to the Council at once, this instant, and tell them of what Rafe’s friend has discovered. It will revolutionize trade for the Land. Just think of it, Will! How spectacular it will be! My love, my love!” And she nestled her head against his broad chest and began to weep.

He held her tightly to him. Oh, oh, she was such a wonder! So gentle, after the cruelty with which he’d treated her—to think she could take the blame for their quarrel! He did not deserve such a wife, would never deserve such a wife, no matter how much good he did the City, the Land, or the world.

He touched the alabaster skin of her neck. “No, Diane. Simply—no. I was an impetuous fribble. Yes, we can release this information, if we decide after due consideration that it’s for the good of Tremontaine—”

She pulled away from him for a moment, shook her head fiercely. “Damn the good of Tremontaine!” Her smile was sun through showers. “Or so I heard a man much wiser than I say not long ago.”

He held her closer still for a time. Then he relaxed his embrace as with a tender hand he began to stroke her hair.

“Let’s leave it alone for today,” he murmured. “And perhaps for tomorrow, and the day after that. When I’ve calmed down enough to look at things reasonably, we’ll think carefully—very carefully—about all the implications.” He chuckled. “We’ll think. How silly I am. You’ll lead me through the implications, and I will follow a step behind you. You only want what is good for me, and for our land and our people, and I am a fool and an ingrate to question your judgment.”

She laughed, relief bright in her voice, reached up, and took his face in her delicate hands. He leaned down and kissed her again, long, full, and moved his hand down from her head to her back. He inhaled deeply. She smelled of peaches and rain, and kindness.

“I thought—” she said, hesitant, “after yesterday, that you might not—that you would—”

“Shhh,” he said, put his finger to her lips, and drew her toward her bedchamber.

When they were finished, sprawled under the coverlet in each other’s arms, she rang for her maid.

Lucinda, entering almost immediately, gave a deferential curtsy and kept her eyes down. “Yes, mistress?”

“Chocolate. From the new supply.” William gazed at his wife as she spoke; he was unable to stop smiling.

“Of course.”

They said nothing while they waited for the chocolate, did nothing at all, in fact, other than to bask in happiness. “No, Lucinda,” said Diane when her maid returned and made as if to prepare the drink. “This evening I will prepare my husband’s chocolate myself.”

Another curtsy. “Of course, mistress.”

When Lucinda was gone, Diane stepped out of bed, put on a white linen gown, drooping lace at the collar and sleeves, and bent over the chocolate tray. God, William thought, even her back was beautiful! How on earth had he gotten so very, very lucky? She had sustained him for nigh on seventeen years, him and his house. No, he did not love her in the way that he loved Rafe. But the gratitude he felt for her was real, and, as the last of the sun pouring through the window set the dust motes to dancing in the air, that gratitude grew for a moment so powerful he almost wept.

“What,” he said, “is in that little pot?” He gestured with his chin toward an unfamiliar addition to the tray.

“I know you’ll think me silly, William,” she said, almost embarrassed, “but I’ve begun to take my chocolate with some of the spices the Traders add when they drink it. A foolish affectation, but it pleases me.”

“Then I hope,” he said, “that you will allow it to please me as well.” He felt a slight alarm flash across his face. “Not too much, mind you. I understand their version of chocolate to be rather full of fire.”

“It is an unusual flavor, and not quite what one expects. Since you request it, however, I will add the smallest pinch of spice.”

Uncapping a small box, she took a pinch of what it contained, flourished it at him, laughing, and added it to the fragrant brew. She bent over it for a few moments, whisking, then turned, shaming the carven table with her own elegance, and walked lightly over to the bed to present him with the steaming cup.

“This,” she said, “is chocolate so fine the Kinwiinik ordinarily keep it for themselves. But after our ball, they were gracious enough to send us a small supply. My lord husband, your chocolate.”

He took the cup from her warm hands, held it momentarily, brought it to his lips. It smelled rich and bitter. He blew on it to cool it. Swallowed. His wife had used exactly the right amount of spice: enough to lend the flavor an extraordinary depth but not so much as to do violence to his mouth.

And if out of his vision, while her back was turned, Diane had added another ingredient to his drink, the clear contents of a small vial she had not obtained from the Kinwiinik—well, the chocolate flowed no less smoothly over his tongue for it, nor did her eyes, as he drank, shine upon him any less brightly.