I sputtered in disgust. “I needed money. I needed nivat. I needed a roof and walls to protect me from this rabble you’ve joined. That Max betrayed me to Bayard Slugwit was no surprise. And only a doulon-crazed fool would believe he’d help me out of this madhouse. He likely paid your whey-faced lout to taunt me with the knife, not give it.” And more clearly than ever, Jakome was Gildas’s whey-faced lout, not Sila Diaglou’s. Jakome had taken my blood for the doulon.
“So, tell me, Brother Gildas, if the mad priestess plans to create a new world from mingling my blood with that of her mad followers, what is to be your place in it? Chief Corrupter? The Baron of Books?” And here I took the dangerous leap. “Or are your aims, perhaps, different than the lady’s?”
He strolled across the room and halted just behind me. I gripped the iron window grate, straining every sense to decide if cold steel was aimed at my back. But instead, he spoke softly over my shoulder. “You know I cannot trust you, dear fellow. You have made clear that you have no use for practical, unsentimental men. Know, too, that I have given the priestess everything she has demanded of me. She is fiercely loyal and will believe no slander—especially from a renowned liar. And she relishes bleeding doulon slaves to poison Danae sianous. But I will also tell you this, my friend: Heed my direction, and one day soon, before these cretins wreak heaven’s wrath on the winter solstice, you and I will exchange favors. You would like to keep your mind and be free of this madhouse and a future impregnating Harrower broodmares. I would like to spend the next few hundred years in Aeginea. I believe I’ve knowledge enough that I can buy the archon’s good will, but alas, your book of maps does not suffice to get me beyond their borders.”
Inside, I smiled with grim satisfaction and chose to take one more risky step. “Give me Jullian along with the nivat, and all my skills will be at your service, Brother Treacher. The boy stays with me until we go, and I breathe no word of your plan to him, to Sila, or to anyone. Sentiment and pragmatism will walk hand in hand.”
His breath moved on my back, fast and hot. My own breath held still as my mind raced over everything I’d told him—where I might have yielded too easily or pushed too hard.
“Done,” he said at last, clapping a hand on my bare shoulder, his forced joviality reopening one of Malena’s lacerations. He snatched up the bloody rag from the floor and blotted the wound.
I did not allow him to see my fierce hope. If I could truly persuade the blackguard to give me Jullian, I would tear down these walls with my toes if need be to get us out.
“The diviners have foreseen the fall of humankind, Valen. It is up to each of us to find our way through it. Follow my lead, and you will survive as you have all these years.” He dropped something onto the table and tapped on the door. The door guard let him out and set the lock.
His parting gift comprised a small canvas bag holding a silver needle, a linen thread, a finger-length rectangle of mirror glass, and three nivat seeds—far too few for one doulon spell, but sufficient to rouse my hunger. I clutched the bag to my chest and told myself that I dared not risk my pretense of cooperation by tossing the seeds from the window.
If I were actually planning to deliver Gildas to Max, I could save my brother the work of interrogation and tell him Gildas’s secrets, writ as plain as my own on this night. Instead of serving as the lighthouse Scholar, vowed to teach the world what might be forgotten in the Great Harrowing, Gildas planned to keep his treasury of knowledge all to himself. Instead of watching magic that he himself could never possess become every man’s birthright, he could astonish the ignorant by fashioning a spindle, by predicting the sunrise or the change of seasons, by working the magic of fire by striking flint to steel or the magic of life by suturing a wound. Gildas fancied himself a prophet, an alchemist, a sorcerer. The weary survivors of the world’s chaos would name him a god.
Chapter 23
Lust and nivat plagued my dreams. I was out of bed and pacing my tower cage well before what passed for sunrise. I donned my shirt and chausses, unable to bear the thought of my captors gawking at the mystery of my gards, and hoping that clothing might quench the dual fires that plagued me with fits of the shakes.
Trying to recapture some use of my senses, I examined the inner side of the door locks, peering through the seams of the door, tapping, shaking, rattling. The exercise revealed little. I needed to be out of here.
When Malena brought ale and bread, I could not eat. I could not speak. I could not look at her without wanting to tear away her gown—stitched of common russet, buttoned tight across her breasts to reveal everything of softness and curves. I hated myself for it. I hated those who tempted me to it. I didn’t understand it. In the past, the doulon had quenched all fleshly desires, not driven them. I donned my pourpoint, thinking to put another layer between my skin and temptation.
The girl played the good wife, commenting upon the weather and the food and did I wish for a heavier cloak to wear over my garments. She folded the clothes still scattered on the floor and laid them in the clothes chest. She even began some apology for serving me wine laced with “vigger’s salt,” which was the common name for saffron that alley witches swore could inflame a man’s flagging prick.
I choked on a miserable laugh, closed off my hearing, and clung to the window bars. Saffron was more expensive than nivat.
Though I did not suffer from the cold, the morning was bitter. Ice crystals whipped through the barred windows, swirling on the floor and settling like dust in the cracks and crevices on either side of the door. In the mottled gray of storm and smoke, Palinur spread below my tower like a battlefield, its streets and houses like fallen soldiers—some of them charred ruins, half buried in mud and blackened snow, a few still displaying life and movement. Somewhere out there, Voushanti and Saverian awaited my call.
Considering the two of them gave me extraordinary comfort. That a dead man with a mote of hell in his eye and a physician with a desert for a heart seemed like the world’s finest companions told me what a nest of lunatics I’d come to. And I was as bad as any of them. The moment I had Jullian at my side, we would find a way through this damnable door, down to the prison level, and out of this cursed place.
“Dear Magnus, the day is so very cold.” A weight pressed softly against my back and Malena reached her arms about my waist. She was shivering, and my arms ached to enfold her. “Could we not begin again? If we learned more of each other, we could be friends.” Her fingernails were chewed and broken, ridged with black dirt and a rusty residue that could so easily be old blood. Saints and angels!
I grasped one of her hands as it snaked toward my groin and twisted her arm as I turned, using it to force her back toward the door. “Let us learn more of each other, Malena. Shall I tell you stories of my friend Gerard, of how he loved to watch the wall of light move across the refectory or how he named all the abbey’s goats after holy saints or how this boy, who blanched at butchering a chicken, sat bravely on a wounded soldier, singing of hearth and home, as our infirmarian sawed off the man’s leg? Tell me, Malena, did you cut Gerard at the Well? Did you drive the spikes that held his hands to the rock or taste his blood? You will need more than vigger’s salt to make me lie with you of my own will.”
Even as I spoke these things, my body craved her. Revolted, I shoved her against the wall and returned to my window. I would bind my hands to the bars before touching her again.
“You speak bravely in the light, Magnus,” she said, all sweetness foregone. “But when I come in the night, you shall bend as the earth must bend before the power of the Gehoum. They care naught for one boy, naught for you, naught for me, but only that the land and people be subdued and humble and made clean. Your body speaks their will. Look at your hands.” Indeed my shaking dwarfed her shivers.