“Good monk, you’ve no need to give up your bed,” said Saverian. “I’m a daughter of Evanore and our customs see no wrong in stalwart women sheltering with honorable men.” She was being exceptionally polite. She didn’t correct his use of mistress.
Shaking his head sadly, Picus poured the simmering water over his herbs and handed the mug to Saverian and the bowl to me. “Ah, mistress, hope of heaven and true repentance bids me warn ye that I am no honorable man, but abjectly fallen. Though vowed chaste at fifteen, and gi’en naught to suffer in this life but a surfeit of adventure and the joy to serve the fairest prince the One God ever sent to humankind, I succumbed to the Adversary’s assault and broke my vows and the most solemn responsibilities of a teacher to lie with a woman. None should trust me.”
A long pull on the steaming tea seemed to restore the physician’s ironical humor. She tilted her head and examined the monk, as he opened a flat wood chest he’d dragged from the same dark corner where he’d found the blanket. “So you what…consummated an attraction…kept a female companion…in two-hundred-some years…a healthy man who lives among beings who go about unclothed? I’ve little understanding of Karish ways, despite my association with Brother Valen here, but I hardly see the difficulty. If you are indeed this Picus…a man of such advanced years…I would think the continuation of a young man’s animal urgencies would be more reassuring than problematical—mayhap a sign of your god’s favor.” She sounded little short of laughter, which I feared must surely wound a monk so determined to penance, no matter how foolish we judged his rigor.
“The structure of virtue was the last lesson of my novitiate, Saverian,” I said, “though I scarce got beyond naming the seven great virtues and the twelve great vices. But pride of mortification made sense to me—the vice of those who aggrandize themselves by the extremity of their penance rites or humility. Clearly Brother Picus heeds the first duty of the sinner—to sincerely balance his reparations with his clearest assessment of the severity of his sin. We must honor his judgment, while welcoming his willingness to allow us to intrude upon his solitude.”
Picus looked as though the portal to heaven had opened in front of him. His rounded mouth opened and closed like that of a fish. His hands, one holding a rank-smelling onion and the alter holding a leaf-wrapped bundle that smelled fishy, dropped into his lap. “Novitiate?” he stammered. “Thou art Karish, then, a monk vowed, as well as the Cartamandua’s halfbreed son who has begun to take the Danae passages. How comes that—?” Pain etched his fleshless face. “Ah, great Iero’s heart, I must not even ask. I have renounced the world.”
“I did take novice vows, but my abbot sent me back into the world. The story is very long, Brother Picus, and not half so interesting as your own, which we would relish hearing.”
This man had known King Eodward…and Caedmon himself. He could tell us of the Danae…of Kol and his disaffection from his own kind…of my mother and her plan…perhaps even something of the world’s grief. A guilty fear gnawed at me that the archon would be so angered by my escape, he would refuse to tell Osriel what they knew of the failing world. If I could learn from Picus, perhaps I could make up for it. Once Kol set me free to go back to the human world in safety, I could send what I’d learned to the cabal, thus keeping my vow to Luviar. As for Osriel himself, I felt no pity. Likely they would not cripple him for their own failure to hold on to me.
“Thou must tell me thy names, at the least,” said Picus, as he busied himself with his pot and his bundles, “and some small summary of thy purpose in Aeginea, lest I go mad and forget even my devotions. If the Cartamandua did not send thee to Kol, then how come ye here? Kol’s pride would never allow him to fetch thee. Didst thou not know what breaking awaited a half-breed, boy? I fought to convert the long-lived from all their heathenish ways, especially from such cruel abuse of their own children”—he clutched his hands to his chest for a moment, closing his eyes and looking as if he might choke—“but their terror of Llio’s curse ever drives them. And you, lady, so wise and gentlewomanly…an Evanori warrior? Stalwart, I’ll vow, but not half so ferocious as the warlords I remember, who painted their faces with blood and brought Hansker scalps to lay before King Caedmon. How come ye here with Janus’s son?”
As his stream of words bounded and flowed like an exuberant watercourse, the monk dropped the leaf-wrapped bundle into the blackened clay pot and whipped a knife from the folds of his robe. Though the blade was worn near the slimness of a stiletto, he proceeded to slice the onion into the pot, as well, tossing the moldy outer skin out through the dripping door flap.
“My name is Valen,” I said. “I’ve come here to learn of the world. Tell me, what is this Llio’s cu—?”
Of a sudden, I was not sure I could sit still to hear the secrets of heaven, much less whatever tidbits the monk could reveal. Picus’s pot belched steam, smelling strongly of fish and onion. The smoke filled my lungs, and the rank smell curdled my belly. My skin itched. My foot tapped the dirt floor uncontrollably. So little air.
I waved at the physician to take up the conversation, while I downed the lukewarm tea—mint and elderberry—and appreciated its spreading comfort. An unlikely sweat broke out beneath my wet, scratchy shirt.
“I am Saverian, physician and student of natural philosophy, house mage to Osriel, Duc of Evanore, Prince of Navronne. A daughter of warriors, not one myself.”
Picus’s expression blossomed with wonder. “You serve my king’s son? What a fine man he must be. I had warned Eodward that the One God disapproved using holy marriage for wartime alliance, but the Moriangi grav and his men knew of ships, and when we drove the Aurellians to the sea, ’twas the grav who crushed them. And the grav’s daughter produced such a robust babe. I knew him only as a motherless boy, of course, rough mannered and interested in naught but fighting. I tutored him in combat as I had his father. I tried to introduce book studies as well, but the fighting was heavy in those days, and we were constantly on the move, so we’d no time for it.”
Saverian nodded. “You speak of Bayard, the eldest of Eodward’s three sons. When times were more settled, another son, Perryn, was born to Eodward’s second wife, an Ardran ducessa. My master is the third and youngest, born to his pureblood mistress. You do know of Eodward’s fate, Brother?”
“Do I know he is dead? Aye. Even I, whose eyes remain steadfastly human, saw the sun dim on that day. Kol came to break the news and invite me to share his kiran, but I could not, though I knew it would be such a glory as I had not seen since he danced for Clyste. I sent him away, that a heathen creature would not witness a monk’s blaspheming, for I had always believed merciful Iero must surely bring my lad home before the end. Whate’er his sins, as any king must commit in carrying his office, they could not be so dread as to forbid him one last glimpse of the Canon after so long away. Once thou hast seen it…” The monk dashed a hairy knuckle at his eyes, as he stirred his pot with a wooden spoon. “Three sons left. A mercy in that at the least.”
A mercy only if we did not tell him of the princes and their war. Though Picus’s talk touched on old mysteries, like the Canon, and new ones like this Llio’s curse that caused the Danae to cripple halfbreeds, and kirani that seemed something more than mere dancing, it was an effort to concentrate on the conversation. I hunched deeper into myself, cold and hot together, ravenous, yet unsure if I could choke down this mess he stirred. Something was definitely wrong with me. When had I ever found aught I would not eat? The light had gone completely from my gards, leaving my skin purplish gray and leprous in appearance.