strength drawn from my very marrow.
No one followed. Yet as I gripped the broken pillars at the top of the ascent, relieved and gulping air into my starved breast, robust laughter drifted out of the hirudo, and an unmistakable white fire blazed in the depths of the ravine—my own magic shining undimmed
.
How was that possible?
* * *
T he bells pealed eleventh hour by the time I trudged across our inner courtyard, exhausted and wholly confused from the events of day and night, groaning at the thought of retracing my steps not six hours hence. I would have welcomed one of the invisible arrows of my haunted imaginings.
“Luka!” Light streamed around Juli’s stark outline in the open doorway. “Where in Magrog’s own hells have you been? There were fires in the Oil Merchants’ District, but of course, you never deigned to tell me where you were going, and Soflet, the god-cursed wretch, barricaded all the doors when I threatened to go to the Registry to find out. He wouldn’t even let me send a message. ‘
Unseemly
,’ he said, which is the most despicable word in any language. If you don’t dismiss the vile scarecrow at once, I’ll put a knife in his neck while he sleeps. And now Maia’s feast is ruined, and I forgot to decant the wine—”
A pause for breath revealed a sob. But when I reached for her, she recoiled. “Aagh! Get away from me! What is that stink?”
“Just let me in, Juli. Move aside.”
My head weighed like a cannonball. My feet were frozen. And to think what I must smell like.
“I’m truly sorry I’m late . . . and about the stink . . . about everything. Please, I need wine, then food. Doesn’t matter what. And, yes”—in our overheated reception room, everything from my frost-rimed hair to my mud-crusted boots began to drip, and the stench of Necropolis Caton rose from me like the fumes of the netherworld—“a bath first of all. If you could call Giaco and tell Maia. Please . . .”
To keep my eyes open through the wine and the bath was near impossible. At first more nauseated than hungry, and then light-headed with the stout vintage, I could imagine nothing finer than my wide bed and its thick quilts. As ever in cases of magical depletion, I had the shivers.
But I owed Juli an explanation. It had been prideful and selfish of me to leave her in ignorance.
Wrapped in a robe of padded wool and my thickest quilt, I found her in the oriel—once our mother’s favorite room and now Juli’s refuge. It hung out over our gardens, and its myriad window panes were the best glass in the house—astonishingly clear. Not that there had been so much to see in any garden these past few years. Unfortunately it was also the draftiest room in the house, having so many windows, no fire, and naught but air underneath the floor. A spread of overcooked fowl, a congealed pie of minced rabbit, some straggling green things, and bread—already stale—adorned a low table alongside cheese, olives, and pickled fish.
I poured half my cup of wine into the bronze libation bowl in the middle of the table. Juli did the same. We maintained the custom, though neither of us felt friendly enough with the gods to muster proper prayers.
“Thank you for this,” I said, settling on the thick rug beside the table and wrapping the quilt tight enough to suppress my shivers, if not cure them. “It was impossible to eat at my new master’s business. Only one of many things I didn’t know . . .”
As I savaged the cold, leathery feast, I told her everything. Almost everything. Far more than I would have done if I’d not been half sotted with wine. I told her of my dismissal and my shame and Pluvius’s odd visit. I told her of Bastien and Constance, de Seti and the hirudo. Good sense pricked my stupor and prevented me speaking of the strangled child or what act the barber-surgeon actually performed to determine that de Seti had not died of wounding. Everything else escaped me in a septic
No one followed. Yet as I gripped the broken pillars at the top of the ascent, relieved and gulping air into my starved breast, robust laughter drifted out of the hirudo, and an unmistakable white fire blazed in the depths of the ravine—my own magic shining undimmed
.
How was that possible?
* * *
T he bells pealed eleventh hour by the time I trudged across our inner courtyard, exhausted and wholly confused from the events of day and night, groaning at the thought of retracing my steps not six hours hence. I would have welcomed one of the invisible arrows of my haunted imaginings.
“Luka!” Light streamed around Juli’s stark outline in the open doorway. “Where in Magrog’s own hells have you been? There were fires in the Oil Merchants’ District, but of course, you never deigned to tell me where you were going, and Soflet, the god-cursed wretch, barricaded all the doors when I threatened to go to the Registry to find out. He wouldn’t even let me send a message. ‘
Unseemly
,’ he said, which is the most despicable word in any language. If you don’t dismiss the vile scarecrow at once, I’ll put a knife in his neck while he sleeps. And now Maia’s feast is ruined, and I forgot to decant the wine—”
A pause for breath revealed a sob. But when I reached for her, she recoiled. “Aagh! Get away from me! What is that stink?”
“Just let me in, Juli. Move aside.”
My head weighed like a cannonball. My feet were frozen. And to think what I must smell like.
“I’m truly sorry I’m late . . . and about the stink . . . about everything. Please, I need wine, then food. Doesn’t matter what. And, yes”—in our overheated reception room, everything from my frost-rimed hair to my mud-crusted boots began to drip, and the stench of Necropolis Caton rose from me like the fumes of the netherworld—“a bath first of all. If you could call Giaco and tell Maia. Please . . .”
To keep my eyes open through the wine and the bath was near impossible. At first more nauseated than hungry, and then light-headed with the stout vintage, I could imagine nothing finer than my wide bed and its thick quilts. As ever in cases of magical depletion, I had the shivers.
But I owed Juli an explanation. It had been prideful and selfish of me to leave her in ignorance.
Wrapped in a robe of padded wool and my thickest quilt, I found her in the oriel—once our mother’s favorite room and now Juli’s refuge. It hung out over our gardens, and its myriad window panes were the best glass in the house—astonishingly clear. Not that there had been so much to see in any garden these past few years. Unfortunately it was also the draftiest room in the house, having so many windows, no fire, and naught but air underneath the floor. A spread of overcooked fowl, a congealed pie of minced rabbit, some straggling green things, and bread—already stale—adorned a low table alongside cheese, olives, and pickled fish.
I poured half my cup of wine into the bronze libation bowl in the middle of the table. Juli did the same. We maintained the custom, though neither of us felt friendly enough with the gods to muster proper prayers.
“Thank you for this,” I said, settling on the thick rug beside the table and wrapping the quilt tight enough to suppress my shivers, if not cure them. “It was impossible to eat at my new master’s business. Only one of many things I didn’t know . . .”
As I savaged the cold, leathery feast, I told her everything. Almost everything. Far more than I would have done if I’d not been half sotted with wine. I told her of my dismissal and my shame and Pluvius’s odd visit. I told her of Bastien and Constance, de Seti and the hirudo. Good sense pricked my stupor and prevented me speaking of the strangled child or what act the barber-surgeon actually performed to determine that de Seti had not died of wounding. Everything else escaped me in a septic
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