Master of restless shado.., p.52
Master of Restless Shadows, page 52
part #1 of Master of Restless Shadows Series
“No. I’m a little agitated. We have so much to do before the coronation and I need to talk with your mother about a great number of matters.”
Sparanzo nodded, but his attention already returned to his cards. Celino and Marisol also lifted up their cards, but the twins continued to watch him attentively as he strode past them to the large oak table where Oasia and a dozen of her lady companions worked in a circle at their lace looms.
Mistress Delfia did not sit at the table but stood near a window, with her back to the rest of them. Fedeles guessed that she had watched her brother as he carried his belongings to the stables and readied his mount for their departure. For an instant he wanted to go to her and offer some comfort—try to assure her that he would do all he could to save Ariz. But how presumptuous would that be? He who had stripped her, her children and her brother of everything now offering up the hollow consolation of words? Worst of all, he knew that such talk wouldn’t represent any real power he currently possessed to free Ariz. He simply wanted to be able to offer assurances to assuage his own guilt.
But it was truth, not comfort, that brought him here, he reminded himself.
He turned his attention back to the table where Oasia sat surrounded by her ladies and great cascades of fine lace. On the loom before Oasia, countless silk threads hung on tiny wooden bobbins and spread out from intricate, half-finished designs of pale ivy and stallions. The threads of Oasia’s loom glinted with faint sparks of blue light. To Fedeles’s eye the spells cast an entirely different pattern over the delicate silk.
More blue sparks lit from her fingers as she twisted three bobbins of silk threads into a fine braid and then wove them into a larger pattern of lace. A multitude of her blessings gleamed across the silk. Eventually the lace would adorn the shirts that Sparanzo, Celino and Marisol would wear for Sevanyo’s coronation.
Oasia glanced up to him and then down to the restless shadow curling around his feet. Fedeles wished to God that he could control the damned thing at least enough to stop its constant thrashing.
“I think that my darling husband would like a word alone with me, my dear friends,” Oasia announced.
In a matter of moments her ladies-in-waiting and her handmaids joined Fedeles’s guards in the hallway. Delfia left last, leading her two children and Sparanzo away with promises of a game of Rabbit’s Run in the ballroom.
“But can’t Uncle Ariz join us?” Marisol asked.
“No, my dear. He must go and look after Sparanzo’s aunt Clara.”
Sparanzo offered some objection, but Fedeles couldn’t make it all out as the heavy door fell closed.
“Come and sit down.” Oasia patted the seat next to her own.
Fedeles almost refused. Frustration and anger smoldered through him, making him want to stand over her and shout. But not only was that impulse petty and bullying, it lay at odds with his greater need to hear the truth. Grudgingly, he sat.
Briefly he studied the large circle of finished lacework that covered the center of the table. Outwardly it resembled a simple map of the city. To Fedeles’s eyes it blazed like an alchemist’s blue fire. At the heart of the silk map rose a shining miniature of the very house they now stood in. Beyond that the rest of the city spread out in a haze of cerulean light. Several sectors—the Haldiim District, the Savior’s Chapel and the Shard of Heaven in particular—were represented by their dark absences, but between the Royal Palace and the Quemanor household, Oasia’s wards formed a resplendent tapestry of protection. For all the hundreds of guards and captains who imagined themselves as Prince Sevanyo’s protectors, none rivaled Oasia in her silent defense of the kingdom. Not even Fedeles knew exactly how many magical attacks she had thwarted, nor how much of her distant expression and serene manner arose from how very much of her soul she stretched out to shelter the city.
Looking at the wards, it was hard to remain angry. But then Fedeles remembered what he came here for.
“Would you care for a little of the tisane Delfia has brewed?” Oasia asked.
Fedeles shook his head.
“A honey biscuit?”
“How long did you know?” Fedeles demanded.
Oasia’s serene expression tightened only fractionally.
“About Ariz?” she asked.
Fedeles nodded, not quite trusting his voice not to betray his hurt.
“I suspected the very first time I laid eyes on the boy trailing my brother around the grounds of our family house. I tried to warn him and his sister not to be taken in by Hierro’s allure, but they were just children and I was not so safe myself that I could do much more than that.” Oasia lifted one of the wooden bobbins, but her expression was distant and she set it back down. “I knew Hierro had enthralled Ariz for a certainty after I took Delfia and her children in. She told me what had happened to her brother and begged me to help him.”
“And did you try to free him?”
“Of course I did,” Oasia replied. “But the spell Hierro used to bind Ariz is both powerful and deep-rooted. I couldn’t pull the brand from his flesh without ripping him apart. And though it might have been a mercy, I didn’t wish to kill Ariz. I am a little fond of him, you know.”
Fedeles guessed that she must be, otherwise he doubted that she would have allowed him anywhere near Sparanzo.
“But you didn’t tell me. Why?” Fedeles demanded.
“Do you think that Atreau tells you everything he knows?” Oasia replied. “Do you think that Ciceron did?”
“No, but neither of them are my wife,” Fedeles snapped.
A faint, fond smile curved Oasia’s lips.
“Indeed they are not. I’m the only one who has entwined my entire future and fortune with yours, for better or for worse,” Oasia agreed. “Atreau is free to run off and hide in whatever bed pleases him. Don’t think he won’t abandon us to save his own skin, just as he left Miro to die in that squalid little room of his. But I’ve made my place here with you. My fate and Sparanzo’s are tied to yours.”
“And yet you kept this from me.” Fedeles met her gaze. “How could you?”
“Setting aside the fact that it was not my secret to divulge to you?” Oasia drew in a deep breath, as if preparing to scold him, but then her expression softened. “At first I kept it a secret because it is my nature to keep secrets. And I knew that once you were aware of the truth, you would not be able to keep your knowledge from Ariz. You would be overwhelmed with the need to console him. You would assure him that you would do everything to free him—”
“What is so wrong with that?”
“Only that Ariz would not be able to keep himself from revealing all your promises to Hierro. And the instant my brother realized that you knew about Ariz’s condition—that you felt guilty for his suffering—then he would turn Ariz against you.”
Fedeles scowled.
“If you had told me all of it, I wouldn’t have approached Ariz.”
A short laugh escaped Oasia.
“You are many wonderful things, Fedeles, but you are neither a talented liar nor a skilled actor. As soon as you knew, it would have shown.” Oasia sighed. “And in the years since Ariz joined our household, it’s begun to matter to me a great deal that the truth could hurt you . . . and him. Look what it’s done to you both today.”
Fedeles couldn’t argue with that. “Still, there’s the principle of the matter. You should have been honest with me.”
“I was not dishonest,” Oasia countered.
“You kept the truth from me.”
“Yes. But what good has revealing the truth accomplished? Has it brought you happiness? Or saved Ariz, or relieved Delfia? It’s only endangered us all.” Oasia shook her head. “Sometimes knowledge may do as much harm as ignorance. Life isn’t so simple that any of us can always make the correct decisions. I did what I felt was best for us all.”
Fedeles frowned at the vast tapestry of fine silken threads. The pattern of lace appeared so pretty and perfect that it seemed almost unimaginable that it arose from such a chaos of tangled, scattered lines.
“At least now I understand what he’s going through.”
“Are you happier for that?” Oasia asked. “Do you imagine that Ariz is? Or that he would have wanted you to think of him as a tortured puppet? He may seem unassuming and humble, but he is still a man. He possesses enough pride to want you to see him as more than Hierro’s pawn.”
“I know that he’s more than a pawn.” Fedeles felt his anger ebbing, his shadow settled into a sullen pool. “I kissed him.”
“And?”
“He liked it. He likes me, I think.” Fedeles sat quietly for a few moments while Oasia brushed at a corner of her lacework. A spark seemed to snap at her but she crushed it out with the tip of her finger. Then she turned her attention back to Fedeles.
“Is something else troubling you?” Oasia asked.
“He thinks that I might be able to challenge Hierro if I can master this thing.” Fedeles kicked the toe of his boot into his shadow.
“It is not a thing,” Oasia said, as she had so many times before. “It is part of your spirit. Just as this”—she opened her hands and a sphere of luminous blue mist briefly rose over her palms—“this is part of mine.”
“Your witchflame, Lady Hylanya called it,” Fedeles said. The young woman had caused an uproar at court with her candor, but Fedeles had found her company informative and refreshing.
“It is the light of a strong soul, that was what my mother said.” Oasia ran her hand over a silk thread. “Hers was vibrant as a star.”
“My grandmother used to get embarrassed and hush me whenever I mentioned the green lights that danced around her. But it was beautiful and radiant when she prayed in chapel.” Fedeles supposed that she would have been mortified if she’d lived to see him playing at magic up on Crown Hill. She’d strongly disapproved of the way Javier had flouted the church and made a show of his Hell-branded soul.
Oasia nodded from her halo of clear blue light. Again she crushed out a few wayward indigo sparks. They seemed concentrated on the south side of the city, not far from the Theater District. Oasia made a motion as if waving aside smoke, then leaned back in her chair.
“Master Ariz could be correct. You may well possess the power to free him. Or at least the potential to challenge Hierro.”
Fedeles contemplated his shadow. Could he unleash it against Hierro? If he did, could he ever reclaim control of it?
“If this thing is my soul, then what does that say about me?” Fedeles murmured. “It’s such a corrupted thing—”
“Your spirit is marked by the hardship you’ve endured. You carry a deep scar from that time, no question, but that doesn’t mean you are corrupted.” Oasia placed her hand on his. Her skin felt soft and warm against his cold fingers. “Hierro’s soul shines the brightest blue I have ever seen, but I promise you that is no indication of his purity. He may seem beautiful, but inside he’s a monstrosity. The world is not so simple that good hearts always beat beneath handsome flesh.”
Fedeles knew she was right, but it wasn’t just the appearance of his shadow that seemed malevolent. It all too easily lashed out in violence.
“In a just world our beauty would be judged by our actions, not our faces.” Oasia studied her lace map of the city, but then shrugged.
“Atreau wrote much the same thing in a poem of his, you know,” Fedeles commented. He felt relieved to be able to turn the subject from himself.
Oasia scowled at the mention of Atreau.
“About me, no doubt,” Oasia said.
“He didn’t mention you by name,” Fedeles assured her.
“The man does know how to leave out just the right detail. I noticed his memoirs omit the months he spent fucking my husband as well as the night he left him to die,” Oasia responded. “He so loves to cast himself as the hapless lad at the mercy of a cruel world, doesn’t he?”
Fedeles considered the thought. “A long time ago I think that might have been the case, but he’s changed. He’s grown.” Fedeles wished that Oasia and Atreau could overcome some of their animosity. Both of them possessed good hearts and quick minds—even if their personal histories had led them to do harm; they were both becoming different people. Better people.
“I’m pretty certain that he’s not outgrown his penchant for fucking married men and seducing lonely wives,” Oasia responded, but she sounded more distracted than angry. She ran a hand over her lacework, smoothing it out. Then she returned her attention to Fedeles. “If you aren’t careful, my dear, you know he’s bound to come sniffing around your bedroom door sooner or later.”
Fedeles laughed at the idea of that. “If Atreau makes an appearance in my bedroom you can be assured it would be to steal my bedding for the comfort of some needy waif who’s won his sympathy. Or perhaps a pair of barmaids.”
“A strapping soldier, more likely,” Oasia replied flatly.
“You don’t truly believe that, do you?” Fedeles had always imagined Atreau’s affair with Oasia’s first husband as an anomaly—a single curious coupling in a vast catalogue of female partners. Atreau had certainly never made an advance toward any of the men in Fedeles’s household.
“Have you read the passages from his first memoir describing Elezar Grunito?” Oasia raised her brows.
“I . . . I’ve not read the entire thing in detail, no,” Fedeles confessed. In truth he’d hardly skimmed the books, though he often mentioned them, just to gauge other people’s reactions. “Those days embarrass me. I wasn’t myself . . .” Fedeles trailed off. He didn’t need to tell Oasia what a mess he’d been. But then he realized something and grinned. “But you really have read it?”
“I have. Mistress Delfia—or perhaps it was Ariz—one of them owned a copy.” Oasia frowned as Fedeles continued to grin at her. “Anyway, Delfia and several of my handmaids took turns reading passages aloud while we worked at the looms.”
“And did you enjoy it?” Fedeles asked.
“I found it . . . informative.” Oasia again placed her hand on her lace loom. She regarded Fedeles with a thoughtful expression.
“Do tell,” Fedeles prompted.
“There was one passage that has been nagging at me for months. I think I just realized why it bothered me.” Oasia drummed her fingers over her loom.
“Let me guess. It involved his adventures in a brothel?” Fedeles rarely got the opportunity to tease Oasia even a little.
“Of course it did. You’d think from Atreau’s telling that the Sagrada Academy held classes inside the Golden Rod and taught you boys nothing but chatting up tarts.” She gave a short laugh, but then her frown again returned. “But this section of his memoir bothered me for a different reason. It’s early in the book. Two of the girls employed at the brothel share gossip about the Yillar students with Atreau and they mention Hierro by name. A few passages after that they talk about how dark his . . . private areas looked when compared to Genimo Plunado’s.”
Fedeles could see why Oasia’s expression had turned queasy at the mention of her brother’s genitals, but he didn’t see how this information could be useful.
“That implies that Genimo and Hierro were enjoying the girls’ services together,” Oasia went on. “And that led me to suspect that not only did Genimo remain in contact with Hierro after they went away to school, but that they could have colluded throughout the time that you were under Genimo’s control.”
Fedeles felt a sick drop in his stomach, but he nodded.
“Master Ariz did say that Genimo and Hierro exchanged letters about . . . my condition.” Fedeles hated to think of all the intimate details Genimo had likely betrayed. “But if Hierro attempts to use the letters to expose anything of my private affairs, not only can I claim that I was not under my own control at that time, but I might be able to charge him with conspiracy. I don’t think he’d dare to make the letters public.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Oasia agreed. “But what has begun to worry me is that Hierro could be in possession of some or all the plans for the mechanical cures that were used to suppress your soul and house the shadow curse within your body. If he could unleash another shadow curse, he could wipe out the entire Sagrada bloodline just as the Tornesals were destroyed.”
The horror of that thought rooted Fedeles in place for a moment.
Scholar Donamillo had successfully murdered dozens of men and women without anyone ever suspecting him of any wrongdoing. He hadn’t needed assassins or agents willing to tip poison into wineglasses. He’d simply employed ancient magic and modern mechanisms. One by one members of the Tornesal family went mad and died in agony. Fedeles’s mother had numbered among those killed.
Fedeles had destroyed every remnant of those vile mechanisms, and until just now, he’d felt secure in the knowledge that they were gone forever. He’d not considered that Genimo might have shared his designs with his childhood companion, Hierro Fueres. Fedeles’s pulse quickened with anxiety. His shadow rippled.
But no mechanical plan alone, no matter how detailed, could recreate the devices that had entrapped him, Fedeles reminded himself. Merely constructing a machine hadn’t been enough to create a shadow curse. That had required Master Donamillo’s secret knowledge of Haldiim curses and Bahiim magic.
“Hierro would need to find a recent curse, like the Old Rage, and wake it,” Fedeles said as much to himself as Oasia. “He would have to carve away the wards used to pacify it . . .”
The only place such curses rested were sacred groves where Bahiim trapped them and slowly dissipated their malevolence. He thought suddenly of Javier’s missive, urging him to protect the Circle of Wisteria. The full ramification of his failure last night spread through him like a clammy nausea.
If Hierro seized the grove, he would have exactly what he needed to wipe out the entire Sagrada family—and anyone else who opposed him—at his leisure.
Sparanzo nodded, but his attention already returned to his cards. Celino and Marisol also lifted up their cards, but the twins continued to watch him attentively as he strode past them to the large oak table where Oasia and a dozen of her lady companions worked in a circle at their lace looms.
Mistress Delfia did not sit at the table but stood near a window, with her back to the rest of them. Fedeles guessed that she had watched her brother as he carried his belongings to the stables and readied his mount for their departure. For an instant he wanted to go to her and offer some comfort—try to assure her that he would do all he could to save Ariz. But how presumptuous would that be? He who had stripped her, her children and her brother of everything now offering up the hollow consolation of words? Worst of all, he knew that such talk wouldn’t represent any real power he currently possessed to free Ariz. He simply wanted to be able to offer assurances to assuage his own guilt.
But it was truth, not comfort, that brought him here, he reminded himself.
He turned his attention back to the table where Oasia sat surrounded by her ladies and great cascades of fine lace. On the loom before Oasia, countless silk threads hung on tiny wooden bobbins and spread out from intricate, half-finished designs of pale ivy and stallions. The threads of Oasia’s loom glinted with faint sparks of blue light. To Fedeles’s eye the spells cast an entirely different pattern over the delicate silk.
More blue sparks lit from her fingers as she twisted three bobbins of silk threads into a fine braid and then wove them into a larger pattern of lace. A multitude of her blessings gleamed across the silk. Eventually the lace would adorn the shirts that Sparanzo, Celino and Marisol would wear for Sevanyo’s coronation.
Oasia glanced up to him and then down to the restless shadow curling around his feet. Fedeles wished to God that he could control the damned thing at least enough to stop its constant thrashing.
“I think that my darling husband would like a word alone with me, my dear friends,” Oasia announced.
In a matter of moments her ladies-in-waiting and her handmaids joined Fedeles’s guards in the hallway. Delfia left last, leading her two children and Sparanzo away with promises of a game of Rabbit’s Run in the ballroom.
“But can’t Uncle Ariz join us?” Marisol asked.
“No, my dear. He must go and look after Sparanzo’s aunt Clara.”
Sparanzo offered some objection, but Fedeles couldn’t make it all out as the heavy door fell closed.
“Come and sit down.” Oasia patted the seat next to her own.
Fedeles almost refused. Frustration and anger smoldered through him, making him want to stand over her and shout. But not only was that impulse petty and bullying, it lay at odds with his greater need to hear the truth. Grudgingly, he sat.
Briefly he studied the large circle of finished lacework that covered the center of the table. Outwardly it resembled a simple map of the city. To Fedeles’s eyes it blazed like an alchemist’s blue fire. At the heart of the silk map rose a shining miniature of the very house they now stood in. Beyond that the rest of the city spread out in a haze of cerulean light. Several sectors—the Haldiim District, the Savior’s Chapel and the Shard of Heaven in particular—were represented by their dark absences, but between the Royal Palace and the Quemanor household, Oasia’s wards formed a resplendent tapestry of protection. For all the hundreds of guards and captains who imagined themselves as Prince Sevanyo’s protectors, none rivaled Oasia in her silent defense of the kingdom. Not even Fedeles knew exactly how many magical attacks she had thwarted, nor how much of her distant expression and serene manner arose from how very much of her soul she stretched out to shelter the city.
Looking at the wards, it was hard to remain angry. But then Fedeles remembered what he came here for.
“Would you care for a little of the tisane Delfia has brewed?” Oasia asked.
Fedeles shook his head.
“A honey biscuit?”
“How long did you know?” Fedeles demanded.
Oasia’s serene expression tightened only fractionally.
“About Ariz?” she asked.
Fedeles nodded, not quite trusting his voice not to betray his hurt.
“I suspected the very first time I laid eyes on the boy trailing my brother around the grounds of our family house. I tried to warn him and his sister not to be taken in by Hierro’s allure, but they were just children and I was not so safe myself that I could do much more than that.” Oasia lifted one of the wooden bobbins, but her expression was distant and she set it back down. “I knew Hierro had enthralled Ariz for a certainty after I took Delfia and her children in. She told me what had happened to her brother and begged me to help him.”
“And did you try to free him?”
“Of course I did,” Oasia replied. “But the spell Hierro used to bind Ariz is both powerful and deep-rooted. I couldn’t pull the brand from his flesh without ripping him apart. And though it might have been a mercy, I didn’t wish to kill Ariz. I am a little fond of him, you know.”
Fedeles guessed that she must be, otherwise he doubted that she would have allowed him anywhere near Sparanzo.
“But you didn’t tell me. Why?” Fedeles demanded.
“Do you think that Atreau tells you everything he knows?” Oasia replied. “Do you think that Ciceron did?”
“No, but neither of them are my wife,” Fedeles snapped.
A faint, fond smile curved Oasia’s lips.
“Indeed they are not. I’m the only one who has entwined my entire future and fortune with yours, for better or for worse,” Oasia agreed. “Atreau is free to run off and hide in whatever bed pleases him. Don’t think he won’t abandon us to save his own skin, just as he left Miro to die in that squalid little room of his. But I’ve made my place here with you. My fate and Sparanzo’s are tied to yours.”
“And yet you kept this from me.” Fedeles met her gaze. “How could you?”
“Setting aside the fact that it was not my secret to divulge to you?” Oasia drew in a deep breath, as if preparing to scold him, but then her expression softened. “At first I kept it a secret because it is my nature to keep secrets. And I knew that once you were aware of the truth, you would not be able to keep your knowledge from Ariz. You would be overwhelmed with the need to console him. You would assure him that you would do everything to free him—”
“What is so wrong with that?”
“Only that Ariz would not be able to keep himself from revealing all your promises to Hierro. And the instant my brother realized that you knew about Ariz’s condition—that you felt guilty for his suffering—then he would turn Ariz against you.”
Fedeles scowled.
“If you had told me all of it, I wouldn’t have approached Ariz.”
A short laugh escaped Oasia.
“You are many wonderful things, Fedeles, but you are neither a talented liar nor a skilled actor. As soon as you knew, it would have shown.” Oasia sighed. “And in the years since Ariz joined our household, it’s begun to matter to me a great deal that the truth could hurt you . . . and him. Look what it’s done to you both today.”
Fedeles couldn’t argue with that. “Still, there’s the principle of the matter. You should have been honest with me.”
“I was not dishonest,” Oasia countered.
“You kept the truth from me.”
“Yes. But what good has revealing the truth accomplished? Has it brought you happiness? Or saved Ariz, or relieved Delfia? It’s only endangered us all.” Oasia shook her head. “Sometimes knowledge may do as much harm as ignorance. Life isn’t so simple that any of us can always make the correct decisions. I did what I felt was best for us all.”
Fedeles frowned at the vast tapestry of fine silken threads. The pattern of lace appeared so pretty and perfect that it seemed almost unimaginable that it arose from such a chaos of tangled, scattered lines.
“At least now I understand what he’s going through.”
“Are you happier for that?” Oasia asked. “Do you imagine that Ariz is? Or that he would have wanted you to think of him as a tortured puppet? He may seem unassuming and humble, but he is still a man. He possesses enough pride to want you to see him as more than Hierro’s pawn.”
“I know that he’s more than a pawn.” Fedeles felt his anger ebbing, his shadow settled into a sullen pool. “I kissed him.”
“And?”
“He liked it. He likes me, I think.” Fedeles sat quietly for a few moments while Oasia brushed at a corner of her lacework. A spark seemed to snap at her but she crushed it out with the tip of her finger. Then she turned her attention back to Fedeles.
“Is something else troubling you?” Oasia asked.
“He thinks that I might be able to challenge Hierro if I can master this thing.” Fedeles kicked the toe of his boot into his shadow.
“It is not a thing,” Oasia said, as she had so many times before. “It is part of your spirit. Just as this”—she opened her hands and a sphere of luminous blue mist briefly rose over her palms—“this is part of mine.”
“Your witchflame, Lady Hylanya called it,” Fedeles said. The young woman had caused an uproar at court with her candor, but Fedeles had found her company informative and refreshing.
“It is the light of a strong soul, that was what my mother said.” Oasia ran her hand over a silk thread. “Hers was vibrant as a star.”
“My grandmother used to get embarrassed and hush me whenever I mentioned the green lights that danced around her. But it was beautiful and radiant when she prayed in chapel.” Fedeles supposed that she would have been mortified if she’d lived to see him playing at magic up on Crown Hill. She’d strongly disapproved of the way Javier had flouted the church and made a show of his Hell-branded soul.
Oasia nodded from her halo of clear blue light. Again she crushed out a few wayward indigo sparks. They seemed concentrated on the south side of the city, not far from the Theater District. Oasia made a motion as if waving aside smoke, then leaned back in her chair.
“Master Ariz could be correct. You may well possess the power to free him. Or at least the potential to challenge Hierro.”
Fedeles contemplated his shadow. Could he unleash it against Hierro? If he did, could he ever reclaim control of it?
“If this thing is my soul, then what does that say about me?” Fedeles murmured. “It’s such a corrupted thing—”
“Your spirit is marked by the hardship you’ve endured. You carry a deep scar from that time, no question, but that doesn’t mean you are corrupted.” Oasia placed her hand on his. Her skin felt soft and warm against his cold fingers. “Hierro’s soul shines the brightest blue I have ever seen, but I promise you that is no indication of his purity. He may seem beautiful, but inside he’s a monstrosity. The world is not so simple that good hearts always beat beneath handsome flesh.”
Fedeles knew she was right, but it wasn’t just the appearance of his shadow that seemed malevolent. It all too easily lashed out in violence.
“In a just world our beauty would be judged by our actions, not our faces.” Oasia studied her lace map of the city, but then shrugged.
“Atreau wrote much the same thing in a poem of his, you know,” Fedeles commented. He felt relieved to be able to turn the subject from himself.
Oasia scowled at the mention of Atreau.
“About me, no doubt,” Oasia said.
“He didn’t mention you by name,” Fedeles assured her.
“The man does know how to leave out just the right detail. I noticed his memoirs omit the months he spent fucking my husband as well as the night he left him to die,” Oasia responded. “He so loves to cast himself as the hapless lad at the mercy of a cruel world, doesn’t he?”
Fedeles considered the thought. “A long time ago I think that might have been the case, but he’s changed. He’s grown.” Fedeles wished that Oasia and Atreau could overcome some of their animosity. Both of them possessed good hearts and quick minds—even if their personal histories had led them to do harm; they were both becoming different people. Better people.
“I’m pretty certain that he’s not outgrown his penchant for fucking married men and seducing lonely wives,” Oasia responded, but she sounded more distracted than angry. She ran a hand over her lacework, smoothing it out. Then she returned her attention to Fedeles. “If you aren’t careful, my dear, you know he’s bound to come sniffing around your bedroom door sooner or later.”
Fedeles laughed at the idea of that. “If Atreau makes an appearance in my bedroom you can be assured it would be to steal my bedding for the comfort of some needy waif who’s won his sympathy. Or perhaps a pair of barmaids.”
“A strapping soldier, more likely,” Oasia replied flatly.
“You don’t truly believe that, do you?” Fedeles had always imagined Atreau’s affair with Oasia’s first husband as an anomaly—a single curious coupling in a vast catalogue of female partners. Atreau had certainly never made an advance toward any of the men in Fedeles’s household.
“Have you read the passages from his first memoir describing Elezar Grunito?” Oasia raised her brows.
“I . . . I’ve not read the entire thing in detail, no,” Fedeles confessed. In truth he’d hardly skimmed the books, though he often mentioned them, just to gauge other people’s reactions. “Those days embarrass me. I wasn’t myself . . .” Fedeles trailed off. He didn’t need to tell Oasia what a mess he’d been. But then he realized something and grinned. “But you really have read it?”
“I have. Mistress Delfia—or perhaps it was Ariz—one of them owned a copy.” Oasia frowned as Fedeles continued to grin at her. “Anyway, Delfia and several of my handmaids took turns reading passages aloud while we worked at the looms.”
“And did you enjoy it?” Fedeles asked.
“I found it . . . informative.” Oasia again placed her hand on her lace loom. She regarded Fedeles with a thoughtful expression.
“Do tell,” Fedeles prompted.
“There was one passage that has been nagging at me for months. I think I just realized why it bothered me.” Oasia drummed her fingers over her loom.
“Let me guess. It involved his adventures in a brothel?” Fedeles rarely got the opportunity to tease Oasia even a little.
“Of course it did. You’d think from Atreau’s telling that the Sagrada Academy held classes inside the Golden Rod and taught you boys nothing but chatting up tarts.” She gave a short laugh, but then her frown again returned. “But this section of his memoir bothered me for a different reason. It’s early in the book. Two of the girls employed at the brothel share gossip about the Yillar students with Atreau and they mention Hierro by name. A few passages after that they talk about how dark his . . . private areas looked when compared to Genimo Plunado’s.”
Fedeles could see why Oasia’s expression had turned queasy at the mention of her brother’s genitals, but he didn’t see how this information could be useful.
“That implies that Genimo and Hierro were enjoying the girls’ services together,” Oasia went on. “And that led me to suspect that not only did Genimo remain in contact with Hierro after they went away to school, but that they could have colluded throughout the time that you were under Genimo’s control.”
Fedeles felt a sick drop in his stomach, but he nodded.
“Master Ariz did say that Genimo and Hierro exchanged letters about . . . my condition.” Fedeles hated to think of all the intimate details Genimo had likely betrayed. “But if Hierro attempts to use the letters to expose anything of my private affairs, not only can I claim that I was not under my own control at that time, but I might be able to charge him with conspiracy. I don’t think he’d dare to make the letters public.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Oasia agreed. “But what has begun to worry me is that Hierro could be in possession of some or all the plans for the mechanical cures that were used to suppress your soul and house the shadow curse within your body. If he could unleash another shadow curse, he could wipe out the entire Sagrada bloodline just as the Tornesals were destroyed.”
The horror of that thought rooted Fedeles in place for a moment.
Scholar Donamillo had successfully murdered dozens of men and women without anyone ever suspecting him of any wrongdoing. He hadn’t needed assassins or agents willing to tip poison into wineglasses. He’d simply employed ancient magic and modern mechanisms. One by one members of the Tornesal family went mad and died in agony. Fedeles’s mother had numbered among those killed.
Fedeles had destroyed every remnant of those vile mechanisms, and until just now, he’d felt secure in the knowledge that they were gone forever. He’d not considered that Genimo might have shared his designs with his childhood companion, Hierro Fueres. Fedeles’s pulse quickened with anxiety. His shadow rippled.
But no mechanical plan alone, no matter how detailed, could recreate the devices that had entrapped him, Fedeles reminded himself. Merely constructing a machine hadn’t been enough to create a shadow curse. That had required Master Donamillo’s secret knowledge of Haldiim curses and Bahiim magic.
“Hierro would need to find a recent curse, like the Old Rage, and wake it,” Fedeles said as much to himself as Oasia. “He would have to carve away the wards used to pacify it . . .”
The only place such curses rested were sacred groves where Bahiim trapped them and slowly dissipated their malevolence. He thought suddenly of Javier’s missive, urging him to protect the Circle of Wisteria. The full ramification of his failure last night spread through him like a clammy nausea.
If Hierro seized the grove, he would have exactly what he needed to wipe out the entire Sagrada family—and anyone else who opposed him—at his leisure.
