Master of restless shado.., p.7
Master of Restless Shadows, page 7
part #1 of Master of Restless Shadows Series
He allowed Narsi and his sister to quickly strip him. As they worked Narsi was happily surprised to see Lord Vediya had begun to unpack the surgical needles and silk from his satchel and then use the cleansing dish to soak both in coinflower distillate.
Narsi would have thanked him but he was distracted when he at last lifted away Master Ariz’s doublet and almost dropped it due to its immense weight. Chain links of some kind lined the entirety of the ugly brown garment. Narsi could feel them through the cloth.
“Please let me take that for you, Master Physician.” Mistress Delfia reached out and snatched it out of his arms. The fact that she gave no sign of the immense weight told Narsi that she expected it and made him think that she was at pains to hide it. Perhaps her brother wore the heavy doublet as a penance for some wrong that she didn’t want Narsi speculating upon. Narsi made no comment and hoped that his silence would put her at ease. He wanted to treat her brother, not collect gossip.
Master Ariz’s shirt he deemed too torn and bloody to waste time salvaging and simply cut it away. The body revealed beneath was shocking in its perfect muscular definition. Narsi didn’t think he’d ever seen such a powerful back, toned chest or corded arms, except perhaps carved from marble in a chapel. But unlike the flawless statues of the Holy Savior, Master Ariz’s fine skin was crisscrossed with hundreds of long, thin scars.
Did Master Ariz number among the zealot penitents who scourged themselves during the week of Our Savior’s Misery? Had he been flailed, or somehow dragged across a field of razors? Certainly the pain and extent of injury these scars testified to would make the gashes in his forearm seem a lesser trouble. The thick circular burn scar on his chest alone bespoke torturous agony.
Narsi did his best not to stare. Instead, he focused his attention on applying duera drops to the wounds to slow the bleeding and ease Master Ariz’s pain—even if he gave no sign of feeling any. Narsi rinsed his hands and then took the prepared needle and silk from Lord Vediya and carefully stitched the wounds closed. When he had tied the last knot and cut the silk, Lord Vediya passed him a washcloth to wipe the blood from his hands. Then he handed over a roll of bandages.
“Thank you,” Narsi said, and he meant it. Lord Vediya’s assistance made the entire procedure fast and simple. A few moments later Narsi finished wrapping Master Ariz’s brawny forearm and tied the bandage off with a suture knot.
Master Ariz’s expression remained one of bland disinterest, but his sister thanked Narsi graciously and listened attentively as he prepared a weak tincture of duera and explained what signs to watch for when the bandages were changed.
It was only after the two of them departed and Narsi collapsed down into his seat by the fire that he realized he’d neglected to secure any sort of payment.
Lord Vediya stood frowning at Narsi’s door.
“Master Ariz and his sister have served in the duke’s household nearly five years, but before now I would never have suspected him of being anything but drab beneath his clothes. Certainly not . . .”
“Such a beautiful ruin?” Narsi said as the image of all those scars filled his mind again. What sort of person inflicted such wounds upon such a perfect body? He couldn’t imagine, or perhaps he didn’t want to. Instead he stared at the gold seams of the embers burning low in the fireplace and his tired mind drifted. His eyes fell closed. He heard the rustle of clothes near him and the creak of a floorboard.
Narsi cracked his eyes open to see Lord Vediya leaning over his chair. For the first time Narsi noticed the lock of gray in his hair.
“Shall I help you to bed?” Lord Vediya asked.
“Mine or yours?” Narsi chuckled. His eyes fell closed, but then he shook his head. No, that was too dangerous and too foolish to even joke about. He forced himself up to his feet. “No, that doesn’t deserve an answer. I shall take myself.”
Lord Vediya nodded indulgently and then took his leave.
In the bedroom, Narsi found a freshly killed rat on the floor and the lanky black cat already asleep on his blankets.
Chapter Seven
“You have a feeling about Timoteo’s new physician?” Fedeles cast Atreau a skeptical glance. Then, realizing that the glow of all the surrounding blessings did not illuminate the gloom for his friend, he added, “It isn’t simply the flush of too much wine?”
“Were my warmth inspired by wine, I’d tell you that his naked body is a wanton dream and his eyes are wonders of copper and emeralds. No. He’s striking, but it’s more his character that I found fascinating.”
“His character? Next you’ll be telling me you’ve fallen in love with a girl’s skill at needlework,” Fedeles replied, and he was only half teasing. He reached out to press his palm to Atreau’s brow. “Are you fevered perhaps?”
“You’ll understand when you meet him.” Atreau shrugged off his hand. “He’s exceptionally genial. Though that doesn’t quite describe the quality . . .”
“When words fail you,” Fedeles said, “then I know I’ve had you working too long on my account. You need to rest, I think.”
“Yes. I do. But not as much as I need a physician for . . . her.” Atreau said softly.
Fedeles couldn’t stop the sound of disgust that escaped him.
Just the sight of a physician’s silver signet made Fedeles shudder in horror. When he’d been a student a physician had taken possession of him. For three years the man locked Fedeles’s mind in a prison of gibbering madness while secreting a murderous shadow curse in the very blood and bones of his body. Even after the possession was broken, a vicious remnant of the curse lingered in Fedeles. Every year it seemed to grow and Fedeles’s loathing of physicians grew with it.
Everything about them revolted and terrified him. A whiff of coinflower, the clink of medical instruments, or a glimpse of an exam table could set his body shaking and his heart hammering with panic. And always, his terror roused the shadow within him—ready to lash like a murderous demon. Indiscriminate and fatal.
“He’s friendly with the Grunito family and of Haldiim descent, so I very much doubt that Bishop Nugalo claims his allegiance,” Atreau added. “And if he is one of theirs, he’s gone out of his way to make himself familiar with the most obscene of my works.”
“How? Can he read ashes?” Fedeles asked. Even as a duke he’d been hard-pressed—and heavily fined—to protect his private collection of Atreau’s written works. He couldn’t imagine how a mere physician could have done the same.
“Apparently the royal bishop thinks so little of the Haldiim people in Anacleto that he failed to consider that they have their own publishers. One of which has printed a rather lovely volume of my latest book.”
The happiness in Atreau’s voice surprised Fedeles. That warm, musical tone had grown so rare of late; he’d nearly forgotten Atreau could sound joyful. Fedeles knew much of that was his doing, but it could not be helped. He’d come to rely upon Atreau more than he would ever have imagined back in their school days.
“I shall write Nestor and request that he procure a copy of the book for my collection.” It didn’t matter to Fedeles that he wouldn’t be able to read the Haldiim script. Atreau’s work—and the history it recorded—needed to be preserved. Fedeles owed Atreau that much at the very least. A letter to Nestor could also serve as a foil to pass along a message to Alizadeh in Anacleto.
Not for the first time, Fedeles wondered what it was that Alizadeh could have done that had caused the Bahiim in the capital to bar him from entering the city. Perhaps the man was as contemptuous of Haldiim holy law as his student, Javier, had been of the Cadeleonian church.
Beside him, Atreau lifted his face to contemplate the stars overhead.
Fedeles could hardly see them or the dark heavens. Too much light radiated from blessings and charms decorating the wide promenade that surrounded the palace grounds. Prismatic color flared. Magic of different kinds shone—flecks of wild, raw power glinted like veins of gold through the granite flagstones at his feet, while blue, red, green and violet hues cloaked the multitude of statues in spells.
He narrowed eyes against the brilliance flashing at him from a lion statue, which had been seized generations before from the kingdom of Usane. Then, as they passed a burbling fountain, Fedeles gazed at the exotic collection of wan blessings glowing from so many foreign coins scattered beneath the waters. Fedeles couldn’t read any of the illuminated symbols, but he felt their intentions. His shadow curled toward them with lazy interest but didn’t rouse to any threat.
The most recent wards lining the promenade were no mystery to Fedeles. Over the past five years his wife, Oasia, had strung hundreds of delicate cerulean protections across the grounds of the royal palace. They gleamed like fine cobwebs shining with dew. No doubt Oasia could have created much more powerful spells, but she, like Fedeles, had to tread very carefully when it came to magic.
Any number of Labaran witches and Haldiim Bahiim spoke freely of how spells and places of power shone like constellations for them. Fedeles’s exiled cousin, Javier Tornesal, had once demonstrated his sensitivity to magic by reading a text using only the magical light thrown off by a small talisman of a piglet. But in Cadeleon, admitting to seeing such things, much less manipulating them, was to confess to practicing witchcraft and committing heresy.
Lady Hylanya Radulf had learned that the very worst way.
She’d arrived in the capital as a potential bride for Prince Jacinto Sagrada, though privately she’d confessed to Fedeles that the true purpose of her tour of the city had been to investigate the aging wards that had once banished demons from the world—spells forged during the Battle of Heaven’s Shard and maintained by the Hallowed Kings to this day. Fedeles had put Atreau at her service, tasking him with watching over her.
But Hylanya had discovered far worse than aging wards. Many of the protective spells had been torn asunder, and where the light of those spells failed, she’d been able to peer deep into the Shard of Heaven and perceived the ancient, deadly magic at its heart.
She’d not recognized it or known how to combat it. But she’d felt its power and malevolence like a desolate wind that had left her shuddering. Since then more wards had dimmed, and now Fedeles, too, caught glimpses of the roiling mass stirring within Heaven’s Shard. His shadow prickled whenever he went near the place.
Did a furious Old God like the grimma smolder within the Shard of Heaven? Or could another demon lord like Zi’sai slumber inside? Or did the Hallowed Kings protect them all from something even more relentless and killing—a vast, unrestrained shadow curse, like the one that lived within Fedeles? Was that why his shadow had grown so much more restless of late? Did it sense a malevolent power like itself?
That possibility ate at Fedeles, filling his dreams with burning skies, crumbling houses and the crushing knowledge that he had caused countless deaths. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d been used to terrorize and murder his friends. Then, he’d tried to end his own life, but the shadow within him wouldn’t allow him to escape.
Now, Fedeles could barely bring himself to think of the matter for too long. Instead he tried to entrust it to other people—better people—than himself.
He’d sent messages to Javier and Alizadeh, but neither could offer him much reassurance. The Battle of Heaven’s Shard had left few survivors and almost no reliable records. Even most relics remaining from those days had been lost or hidden away by the secretive clergy of the Holy Cadeleonian Church.
All that was certain was that if the wards maintained by the Hallowed Kings failed, then whatever magic lurked within the Shard of Heaven would break free. Learning its true nature could cost them the entire kingdom.
Hylanya’s attempts to repair the ancient wards should have pleased the royal bishop. At the very least her undertaking would have ensured his survival along with that of thousands of other Cadeleonians. It would have served him to ignore her. Instead he’d condemned Hylanya, ordered his priests to exorcise all of the protective wards she’d built around the Hallowed Kings and dispatched an assassin to poison her.
While the royal bishop’s guardsman had hunted Hylanya, seemingly blank pages of tattered paper began to arrive for Fedeles. Letters written in shining white light that few people other than Fedeles could see.
When Hylanya had been poisoned, both Javier and his Bahiim master Alizadeh entreated—then ordered—Fedeles to claim the ruins of Crown Hill. There, beyond the royal bishop’s grasp, lay the derelict remains of primitive wards—broken and scattered like a shattered shield. Moldering and long abandoned, they had been raised before Cadeleon stood as a unified nation. They had fallen to neglect when Cieloalta was only a muddy harbor town. But if the Hallowed Kings failed, they might offer the only protection to be found for all the people of the city. So Fedeles had ridden up into the ruins.
Yet the way the shadow curse within Fedeles roused as he walked over the heights of Crown Hill alarmed him. And the way the old wards responded to his shadow made him fear his own corrupting influence. For a time he’d held out hope that Hylanya might recover and take on the work in his place. But now he recognized that he could wait no longer. Hylanya needed to escape to Labara and he had to find the self-control to rebuild the shield of Crown Hill without setting his own curse loose.
A party of royal guards dressed in dun-yellow uniforms marched past them, drawing Fedeles back to his present surroundings.
He’d grown fond of the sight of those uniforms. One of the guards paused and exchanged a few comments with Atreau; the guard had been moved by one of his poems and wanted to tell him as much.
While they spoke, and Atreau gleaned belowstairs gossip, Fedeles glanced to his favorite sculpture on the promenade. Something about the naked, crouched figure reminded him of Captain Ciceron. Probably the bulging muscles of the bowed back. Or maybe it was the sly glance over his shoulder.
Weeks, even months often passed between the captain’s visits, but the nights Ciceron did spend with Fedeles were delightful. He possessed a beautiful body and could be surprisingly affectionate, especially when drunk. Many soldiers grew violent after too much wine, but Ciceron turned cheerfully lusty, bidding Fedeles to enjoy him as neither his wife nor mistress could.
Ciceron never failed to distract him from his worries, even if only for a few hours. Though recently Fedeles had begun to want someone who would remain at his side in the morning—a lover he could hold in his arms even when they were both sober. Even as the thought occurred to him Fedeles shook his head. How spoiled had he grown that he, who deserved no one’s affection, should long for more from a man who already indulged him?
Beside Fedeles, Atreau bid the guard a good night.
“Honestly, I can’t exactly describe what it is about him,” Atreau murmured. “He’s familiar, but I don’t know how . . .”
For an instant Fedeles thought it was Ciceron whom Atreau meant, but then their conversation returned to him. Timoteo’s physician, and the need to move Hylanya before the royal bishop discovered her.
“Is there a ship ready?” Fedeles asked as they continued their walk.
“Our friends on the Red Witch are willing, but they can’t delay much longer. The harbor master is already growing suspicious.”
“You will need more funds, I imagine.” Fedeles always tried to offer so that Atreau wouldn’t be forced to ask.
Atreau nodded, then added, “And a physician. This one is already on hand in your household.”
Just thinking of a physician in his home churned Fedeles’s stomach. He’d planned on personally dismissing the man when he returned home tonight. Regardless of the late hour.
But it had been so long since Atreau had shown interest in or appeared to take pleasure from time spent with anyone that it seemed a shame to send him away. And they couldn’t maintain Hylanya in her current condition much longer. If she died, there was no question of the hell that her brother would bring down upon them.
“All right, put this Narsi to work for us.” Fedeles sighed.
The physician wasn’t his servant to dismiss anyway, he supposed. And so long as he could keep the man and the horrifying implements of his trade away from himself, everyone would be safe.
“You will need to find a way to draw him off without attracting undue attention,” Fedeles decided. “If he’s as young and . . . genial as you say, then we should take a little care to protect his reputation. I care not so long as he comes nowhere near me.”
“Of course. I’ll do my utmost to keep him away,” Atreau agreed. Then he added, “Thank you.”
Already the voices of courtiers carried to them.
The rest of the city’s populace might have snuffed their candles, put out their lamps and gone to their beds, but denizens of the Sagrada Palace rarely slept before midnight.
Two guards, both looking sallow beneath the yellow garden lamps, watched them approach and allowed them past without a word. Fedeles wondered if they’d recognized him or if they’d simply grown too tired of challenging every actress and poet that Jacinto Sagrada invited to his private rooms to bother stopping anyone.
At last they reached the marble steps that led up into the Royal Star Garden. A maze of perfumed hedges and blossom-strewn bowers divided the huge circular garden into quarters. Only the wide, pebbled walk before them presented a direct path and unobstructed view straight to the heart of the garden. There, Prince Sevanyo—silver-haired and hollowed by decades of rivalry with his brother—reclined upon silk pillows. Dozens of courtiers, advisers and consorts lingered around him, like little worlds in the pull of the sun.
Notable by their absence were all four Labaran ambassadors. Fedeles recognized only one of the kingdom of Usane’s dignitaries, and she appeared to be saying her goodbyes to a circle of older courtiers. Of the twenty flamboyant Yuanese emissaries who normally attended Cadeleonian court and brightened the gatherings with their brilliant feathered robes and wigs, only two had not returned to their homeland. The younger of the two appeared ill at ease, while the elder studied the sky above them with a languid indifference that only vast quantities of black poppy smoke could inspire.
