Flesh and Spirit Read online

  Serena Fortuna’s beneficence lay warm on my back. “Well, as you’re late home already and risking your da’s heavy hand, what if I were to visit this seedsman and fetch hazel and nivat for us both? I’ll meet you here tomorrow eve, and we’ll have a song and share it out. I’ll divide my ginger with you, too. This merry meeting will infuse our bread with luck.” I brushed my fingers around her cheeks and down her neck to other fetching curves, feeling her desire swell to meet my own. It had always made sense to me that magic flowed through a sorcerer’s fingertips. “I’d need your coin, of course, as nivat comes so dear. But better to risk a few lunae with me than your da’s bruises on these pretty cheeks, don’t you think?”

  Her sigh, as I bent over and kissed her on the lips to seal the bargain, came near subverting my wickedness. Willing women with even one attractive feature had the disconcerting habit of making me lose all sense. But the nivat was of first importance. I summoned up chilly thoughts of Gillarine and its confining comforts. As my rousing fever cooled again, I pulled away. Damnable necessity. I might as well be gelded.

  Adrianne bade a mooning, ale-sodden farewell to our merry company, leaving me with a mug of ale, a promise of all the dancing I might desire on the following night, and three silver lunae in my pocket. A smith’s daughter…probably the wealthiest girl in Elanus…a more tempting winter’s companion than tidy Brother Sebastian. All sorts of schemes flourished in the flush of the moment. I wasn’t greedy.

  But from the talk I heard from other customers as I finished my ale, the heavy-fisted smith had only enough work to pay his debts and keep Adrianne from Tigg the Procurer’s hand until the last of the bog iron was worked. An empty-pocketed son-in-law would do naught for his choler. I’d need to sell my book to make the scheme work, and in that case I could surely do better than Adrianne. Not that I was in the market for a wife. My feet were too restless for shackling.

  A rattling from the corner, punctuated by challenges to manhood, prayers to Serena Fortuna, and a caller’s flat tones, tempted me to a dice game. Sadly, I had never been able to summon even a glimmer of my mother’s bent for divination when it came to gambling. Best not risk Adrianne’s offering. Nivat was easily available throughout Navronne, being an essential ingredient for those who observed the elder gods’ feasts at the change of seasons. But the native plants—a kind of pepper once grown in Morian—had failed decades ago, and as the only surviving ones were cultured by sorcery, it was always expensive. Even the mead would have to wait. I drained my mug, bade Holur and his jolly piper a mournful farewell, and stepped back into the night. Leaving a tavern for a street, no matter how busy, always put the damp on my spirits.

  Chapter 10

  “That should do for whatever purpose you have in mind,” said Gorb as he wrapped the nivat seeds in a scrap of cloth and tied the little bundle with a thread. He stretched his tight lips into a smile no wider than the flare of his nose and dragged his dark little eyes up and down my height. “Oh, yes. Saldon Night baking, you said. As night devours the sunlight and spits it out again, you shall be well blessed.”

  A plaintive tale of my need for Danae help with my witch-cursed prick had induced the seedsman to unlock his door. Truly, the story itself hadn’t moved him, but only my invocation of Adrianne as the proposed beneficiary of my reinvigorated better parts.

  A wizened little fellow as dry and sharp-edged as his merchandise, Gorb supplied a quantity of black nivat seeds no bigger than my thumb, enough to bake three Saldon loaves or service my unfortunate craving thrice over. And for that he returned only nine citrae out of the three silver coins worth forty each. Iero bless merry Adrianne and blunt her father’s fist.

  I shook the copper coins in my palm. Spending one of them on hazelnuts might blunt the speculation in Gorb’s hard little face. Though I hated wasting the money, nivat was used only for holy offerings like feast bread or for spellworking, and of all the spells that could be worked with nivat, only the doulon required it. I wished no rumors of tall sorcerers with unsavory habits lingering in a town the monks might visit. Fate might lead me to Elanus again.

  So…a story…and how could I help but think of the cursed Boreas, the very one who had caused the need for this journey?

  I leaned my head across the table and spoke softly so that Gorb’s brisk fingers came to a halt. “I met a man in the wood yestereve, a rough, hairy man near tall as me and twice as broad. He was laid up with the sweats, sick and drooling, pissing himself he hurt so wicked. He showed me plate and jewels he’d stolen from a rich man’s house and said if I would bring him nivat seeds, he’d trade me a jeweled dagger that would keep me and Adrianne for ten years or more.”

  Satisfaction blossomed on Gorb’s countenance, and greed sparked his seedlike eyes.

  “Iero damns those that steal,” I went on as if I hadn’t noticed. “But this would not be stealing to my mind, as the guilt of the theft would rest on the one who first took the dagger from its rightful owner. If I made the bargain honorably and filled my part as I vowed, no fault would come to me. So I said I’d find him nivat and return tonight at midnight to make the trade.”

  Nodding slowly, the seedsman dropped his eyes. He shoved the packet across the table and briskly brushed the table’s detritus from the flowing sleeves of his green robe. “Twist-minds are an affront to the Powers. You say this depraved fellow lies close by Elanus?”

  I straightened up and grinned. “I’m no fool to tell you that, Seedsman Gorb. You’ve a bigger supply of nivat than I can afford. But once I have my dagger, I’ll tell the man where he can buy more, and Serena Fortuna bless you with whatever arrangement you can make with him.”

  He dipped an iron scoop into his barrel of hazelnuts and slid a few of them into my palm atop the coins. “Good fortune shared always comes back,” he said. His sharp chin quivered as if he were on the verge of weeping. Or perhaps laughing.

  I paused in the smoky deeps of Smelt Alley and divided my store of nivat. Half went into the green bag, which I restored beneath the false bottom of my rucksack. I tied Gorb’s cloth packet, containing the remainder of the nivat, to the waist string of my braies, and tucked eight coppers into my boot. I spun the last coin in the air and caught it, already tasting mead and humming a tune to accompany its sweet fire.

  But as I stopped in at the still boisterous Blade, thoughts of perfidious Boreas choked me worse than the smelters’ smoke, souring my mood. That pain-racked, drooling wretch I had described would not be him deprived of nivat, of course, but me.

  Holur’s mead cask was empty. But a tankard of his best ale and a bowl of porridge soothed my ill humor, and I bawled every song and galloped the length and breadth of the Blade with every maid and matron that stepped inside—none of whom were Adrianne, all thanks to Serena Fortuna. When I tossed my fifth citré on the barman’s counter, ready to buy another round of ale, the lamplight caught the polished copper and flared like a red sunburst…which brought to mind solicales…and Karish monks…and the life waiting for me with the coming dawn. Before Holur could clamp his sticky fingers on the coin, I snatched it back, stuffed it in my boot, and with sober regrets bade him and all the company a good night.

  The crier called second hour of the night watch—one hour till midnight—as I headed out for Gillarine. Elanus showed no signs of sleep. No surprise to that. The smelters had to be kept burning through the night. As I strolled past Tigg’s alley on my way to the gate, the catamite raised his head and moved a step away from the wall, beckoning me into the alley. He was alone.

  I shook my head and raised two open palms in a gesture of peace—or poverty, if one interpreted gestures in marketplace dialect. The message was much the same: I couldn’t afford him, but bore him no ill will.

  He nodded and slumped back against the bricks.

  Though my taste ran usually to women, the youth was, indeed, beautiful. A torch burned in a bracket above his head. His mellow rose-brown skin and acorn-colored hair gleamed in the firelight. The deep blue silk of h
is scanty tunic rippled enticingly with his movements, and the silver bracelet on his bare ankle sparkled with a gemstone of matching blue…a sapphire?

  I halted abruptly. That a catamite in the alleys of Elanus would be wearing a sapphire bracelet did not stun me half so much as the fact that I had admired that very bracelet in a noblewoman’s jewel box…just before I stuffed it in my rucksack and got myself an arrow in the thigh. Boreas!

  My blood running hot, I beckoned the youth to the street. Down the alley, Tigg the Procurer was taking a lei-surely piss.

  The youth summoned a smile from some secret place and lowered his dark lashes in a way that promised to share its source. Well past its days of breaking, his voice wrapped my body like silk. “What’s your pleasure, sir? Tigg has a room—”

  “Shhh.” I laid my arm around the youth’s tight shoulders. Though he smelled exotically of cardamom and clove, his accent was directly from the riverlands of Morian, not mystical Estigure. Careful to keep him within sight of his master and myself obscured by the brick corner, I bent my head to his. “No custom from me this night, sorry to say, but I would offer you a citré for a question answered.”

  He raised his heavy lids and buried his secrets again. “One citré buys only a small answer.”

  “The bracelet on your ankle. I would know where to find the person who sold it to your master. My wife—a harridan the likes of which would drive Sky Lord Kemen himself to the netherworld—would forgive me the worst of my failings if I could but take her such a trinket. And though your beauty is most worthy of much beauty in its turn, I’m thinking this little treasure was not ruinous to buy. Your master seems a…thrifty man.”

  “Your coin?” He stuck out his hand, all languorous invitation vanished.

  I dug the copper from my boot and held it above his hand. “And your answer?”

  A careless toss of his head threw his silken hair from his face. “Don’t think to get this bauble. Master covets it. He said I could wear it for the street, but not when I go with aught. Big hairy fellow gave it for a night with me most of a month ago. Said he needed the blessing of lying with Karus’s kin, as he was hunting a place to bed for the winter.”

  “That’s all?”

  The youth’s long lashes fell toward his smooth, empty palm. “We didn’t talk so much. He’d been a while without a decent lay.”

  Disappointed, I brushed my hand across his, releasing the coin. It vanished under the hem of his tunic, and he stepped back so that my arm dropped loose and empty. Even a touch would cost me more. I didn’t begrudge him the necessities of his trade.

  I eyed his slender form, neither hair nor blemish to be seen anywhere below his scalp. He brought to mind Stearc’s squire Corin of the bronze braid and elegant cheekbones…fairer yet than this one. I felt a shifting in my braies, which circumstance startled me a bit. I was truly a pitiable case. “Fare you well this winter season, lad, with worthy companions and a light hand from those who profit from you. Indeed, you are almost enough to sway a man who finds his pleasures elsewise.”

  His eyes took light from the torch as he shrugged and settled back against the wall, raising one knee to prop his foot on the bricks. “One Mistress Kellna lives out by Graver’s Meadow and sells berries and rootstock here in the market. Some say she also buys and sells goods that are…outside the common trade. I don’t care much for women, but you might find her informative. She come by new stock this month past and made profit enough selling it on to Edane Groult down near Caedmon’s Bridge that she bought me two nights running for a new friend come to stay with her.”

  I grinned. “By Graver’s Meadow, you say?”

  “Aye. West on the first track outside the gates. Right fork at the old mill.”

  “Thank you for that,” I said.

  “Mayhap next time, you’ll let me sway your pleasure. You’re a leg up on most as come by here.” The boy’s gaze flicked down the alley, and his face paled. “You won’t say who told you?”

  “On my soul, not a word.” I backed away quickly. When Tigg the Procurer stepped out of the alley and peered up and down the lane, I was well hidden behind a broken chimney.

  I pulled the monk’s gown from my rucksack and drew it over my head, covering rucksack and all. Then I slipped out of the ruin, clasped my hands to my chin, bowed my head and shoulders as if in prayer, and hurried toward the town gate close behind the ragged donkey boy driving his empty charcoal wagon.

  The woman in the pillory spat and yelled as I passed. “Karish perversion mocks the Gehoum. The earth will bleed to cleanse itself. You’ll pay, Karish! You’ll pay!”

  No one paid her any mind, or me, either. Not the gate guards I’d talked to earlier. Not even the short sallow newcomer riding through the gates, wearing a gray silk mask that covered half his face, a claret-colored cloak, and the black-and-yellow badge of an itinerant inspector from the Pureblood Registry. I grinned behind my folded hands, strolled across the stinking ditch, and turned westward onto the track for Graver’s Meadow. Though the moon was well past full, its cold light kept me to the path.

  Typical of Boreas to hole up for the winter in the first place he came to, a town small enough everyone would learn of him, and then to choose the bed of one who dealt in stolen goods. He’d never been one to think things through. And it was just like the devil to convince his woman to buy him a boy. I’d never understood what made women fawn on Boreas so—a big, hairy, unwashed brute with a gruff, foolish way about him, who definitely preferred partners with parts between their legs no female could provide. Not that he hated women. Women were his porridge, nourishing and sufficient for every day. Lads were his meat and spice.

  As I walked I amused myself planning the encounter. Would it be more pleasurable to slice off the villain’s balls with one of our stolen daggers or to tie him up naked in the cold and let him watch me walk away with our booty? Once I’d settled somewhere—Pontia, perhaps, a town large enough to sell one of the daggers and still keep my head down—I’d send an offering to Gillarine to thank them for their hospitality.

  The track kicked up sharply. The stream, narrower here, burbled and gurgled, cutting deep into the rocky slope, creating moss-lined nooks and grottos, each with its own watery music. As a child I had imagined such a cool, mysterious nook must be a Danae sianou—the holy place where a Dané gave up its body for a season and became one with the land. Sometimes I would leave feast bread there and pray to be stolen from my family. More often I would yell, stomp the ground, and throw rocks in the water, hoping to wake the sleeping guardian. Neither activity bore fruit.

  A cold gust flapped my gown around my ankles as I stepped around fresh horse droppings. And then more. I bent down and passed my hand over a mound. Still warm. Several people had ridden up this path not long before. I swore under my breath, but I’d come too far to turn back. Likely more than Mistress Kellna lived up this way.

  After consideration, I removed my monk’s gown and stuffed it into my rucksack. A lost monk might walk clear easier than my own self if I encountered ordinary folk, but the talk of Harrowers had unnerved me. And the captive woman had reminded me how they hated Karish.

  My thigh was grateful when the path broke over the lip of the rise. The stream lay like a silver necklace across a rocky goat pasture, leading the eye toward a scant woodland and a cottage. A sweet, cozy little hideaway, cupped in the embrace of shallow chalk cliffs, easily defensible.

  Unfortunately, the cottage was ablaze. A robust woman sprawled among the grazing goats with an arrow in her back, and somewhere Boreas was bellowing out agonized curses that threatened to crumble the earth beneath my feet. I would recognize his rumbling epithets anywhere.

  I ran. Not back toward Elanus, which even a moron’s poor sense would demand, but toward the conflagration and the screaming. Boreas had saved my life at the battle of Arin Fay, taking a deep slash on his arm while striking down the halberdier ready to remove my head. We had exchanged the favor a number of times in the long months fo
llowing, so one could say I owed him nothing—less than nothing since he had abandoned me half dead. But that first time, having seen the Ferryman’s hand as clearly as I would until the day I took ship with that grim spirit, I had given Boreas my oath to protect his back. I prided myself that I had never broken my sworn faith.

  All too aware that the treacherous moonlight would expose any approach on the meadow track, I circled wide toward the cliffs to come up behind the house, racing as soft-footed as I could manage over the rocky ground. When I plunged gratefully into the clumped beech and oak grown up in the lee of the cliffs, the rush of the nearby flames was already waning. I crept cautiously through the snagging undergrowth of blackthorn and hazel.

  The screams—hoarse now, choking grunts, wordless animal cries—did not emanate from the burning house, but from an expanse between the house and the chalk cliffs. Breaking free of the bracken, I sped through a stretch of scattered, pale-trunked beeches and caught myself just before hurtling into the open.

  Beyond the bordering trees lay a rolling meadow, dotted with stands of rowan and birch. Nestled in a willow brake, a small, bean-shaped pond shimmered in the cold moonlight, its waters ruffled by the knife-edged breeze. From the pond spilled the stream that gouged the hillside. My soul swelled at the beauty of the place; my skin flushed and quivered as if the angel choirs themselves had come to sing in Gillarine Abbey church.

  But my eyes were quickly drawn to a knoll at the heart of the meadow. At the apex of the knoll, five people gathered about a splayed figure, still as death. The angled moonlight stretched their long shadows across the slope.

  A howl rose in my throat. Had I a weapon…a bow…a club…a blade longer than my finger, I would have set upon them, never mind the odds. But as in every juncture of my life, I was inadequate. Too late. Unprepared.