Labyrinths heart, p.14
Labyrinth's Heart, page 14
Was Letilia’s departure the first drop in the flood of their decline?
She couldn’t recall. Had Crelitto’s brother Umattone died before or after Letilia left? They’d happened in quick succession, she knew, but this many years on, the precise timing escaped her.
The register would say.
The garden door creaked, Meatball nosing his way in. He thumped his head against Donaia’s leg, but she didn’t indulge his demand for petting. Nudging him out of the way, Donaia went to the new lockbox and removed its contents with care.
House Traementis’s register was old and heavy. The oldest segments dated back to the time of Kaius Rex, though the imbued parchment still looked as new as the day of its making. Donaia spread it open on her desk, meaning to trace upward to the black Ninat over Umattone’s name—and stopped again.
She knew what her register had looked like when the new members were added in Canilun, and it wasn’t this. Every current name had a second Uniat scribed around it, the space between broken with tiny, complicated figures whose meaning she couldn’t begin to parse.
Meatball whined a query as she rose to her feet. “Stay,” Donaia said, and with the scroll in her arms, she went back out into the house.
When Donaia left for lunch, Tanaquis had been at the manor, in the room she used when she didn’t want to go all the way back to Whitesail. She was still there now, and Renata with her, but Donaia ignored her niece as she dropped the scroll atop Tanaquis’s papers and stabbed one finger at the mess of the current generation.
Tanaquis looked stricken—but not surprised. Donaia fought to keep her voice steady as she said, “You did this. Why?”
For some reason Tanaquis looked at Renata. Donaia did the same, searching Renata’s hazel eyes. “Is this something to do with your mother?”
Renata pressed her lips together, then stood and took Donaia’s stiff hands in her own. “No, not Letilia. It’s… I’m sorry.” Regret shadowed her gaze. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you this, and I’ve let my uncertainty drag on too long. It has to do with the curse on House Traementis.”
The old fear dug in, its claws never quite leaving Donaia’s heart. “Are—are we cursed again?”
“No,” Renata said firmly. “But Tanaquis and I have been investigating where the curse came from. We still don’t know who’s responsible… but we think we’ve found what was used to enact it. A numinatrian artifact, a profoundly malevolent one. Unfortunately, we can’t simply leave it lying around; it’s far too dangerous. I have it, but I was concerned that it might have an ill effect on the family. So I asked Tanaquis to make some alterations to the register to protect the rest of you.”
Her gaze dropped to take in the scroll. “I’ll admit, I didn’t expect something quite so… extensive.”
A malevolent artifact. Donaia had known Renata was still chasing the source of their curse, but she hadn’t asked for details. Her own mourning had been a cocoon, shielding her from the guilt of letting others take on that burden. I need to start paying more attention.
Tanaquis was watching them silently. When Donaia looked at her, she said, “I have Iridet’s permission to work on this matter. And the safety of House Traementis is one of my primary concerns. I promise, this has my full attention.”
So quietly it was almost inaudible, Renata said, “The more I consider it, the more I wonder if it would be wiser to remove me from the register.”
She tried to withdraw her hands, but Donaia tightened her grip. “Don’t talk nonsense. I have my fill of that these days from that woman.”
A mere touch wasn’t comfort enough. She pulled Renata into a hug, murmuring into her niece’s hair, “Even if you won’t let me send your mother away, I can at least make sure you don’t bear every burden on your own. If this artifact is so dangerous, then I’ll take that danger on myself. I will not lose you.”
Too, her heart whispered. From the way Renata flinched, she heard the unspoken echo.
When the girl pulled back, her eyes were limned with unshed tears. “No, this burden must remain mine. You’re the head of this house; risking you means risking everyone. But…” She bit her lip. “You’re certain?”
“That you’re family? Yes,” Donaia said. “We’re Traementis. We don’t give up on each other.”
Kingfisher, Lower Bank: Apilun 10
“And I thought kneading dough was hard. My baking ancestors are burning for shame,” Pavlin grumbled as Grey tied their borrowed splinter-boat up at a water stair. He stretched his shoulder, easing the strain of an afternoon of rowing and poling up and down the Lower Bank.
Grey did the same, though without the dramatic expression of suffering. “Vigil work will be easy by comparison. I’m grateful you took the time to help, though.”
Pavlin would never have given his shoulder that comradely nudge when Grey was his superior. “Of course I’d help. And not just because Tess has me wrapped around her thimbled finger.” The winter sun was as bright as his grin. “You might not be pinning the hexagram back on, but you’ll always be my captain.”
A musty smell rose from the coats they’d shucked into the bottom of the boat. All their clothes smelled, spattered with splashes of algae-green canal water. Today had been good practice, even if Grey couldn’t hope to be partnered with anyone so accommodating in the second trial.
“If you come back with me,” Grey said, “Alinka can give you salve to ease the soreness.” He would need some himself. Fit as he was, rowing was very different from dueling, and an activity he hadn’t indulged in this much in years.
“Maybe something for blisters, too,” Pavlin said, inspecting his palms.
Grey wasn’t surprised to find a guest waiting at Alinka’s house. The members of the Stadnem Anduske still had to be careful where they went, but Cercel’s first action as Caerulet had been to disband the Ordo Apis, the special force Ghiscolo had created to hunt them down. Idusza perked up like a cat at the scent of fish when Grey came in; then her shoulders slumped. “The Faces have not smiled on you, I see.”
“No luck,” Grey admitted as Yvie ran shrieking across the room to hug his leg. He and Pavlin had used their rowing practice to sniff around the Lower Bank, hoping to glean hints of where Branek and his captives were holed up.
“Perhaps if we sought their blessing,” Idusza said. “Offerings I have made, but we lack a szorsa’s guidance. Not since Suilun have I seen Arenza.”
Grey pried Yvie off his leg and tried to calculate how much was safe to say around his niece. She’d kept one major secret for them already, when Koszar was recuperating upstairs. But it wasn’t fair to ask a child to carry adult burdens. “I spoke with Arenza myself, and she laid a three-card line. Our path is The Face of Stars: We must simply hope for a stroke of fortune.” He’d spent the day giving fortune as many opportunities to strike him as possible, but the sky remained clear, and Grey’s fortunes remained as luckless as they’d always been.
Grinding up a piece of brick tea, Alinka muttered, “Perhaps we would see her more if she were not given reason to stay away.”
Idusza scowled; Pavlin shifted awkwardly toward the door. But Yvie wasn’t old enough to know that some words were meant to be heard, not answered. “What reason?” she asked, far too loudly.
Alinka twitched guiltily. “Who can say? Come, alča. Go add more decorations to the front step; perhaps those will lure her to us.” Catching up a bucket of colored chalk remnants Tanaquis had kindly—if unthinkingly—bestowed on the child, Alinka ushered her out onto the stoop.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Once the door was closed behind Yvie, Alinka gave Grey a meaningful stare. “The first trial… That, I understood. As a duelist you must establish yourself, so the world sees you as more than Mistress Ryvček’s apprentice or the grateful recipient of Era Traementis’s charity. But now you borrow a boat and practice as if you mean to win the second trial, too. What hope you to gain from Alta Renata, when already you are the house duelist? Why have we seen nothing of Arenza?”
“Perhaps I should…” Pavlin took another step toward the door. “Ča Polojny, can I escort you to… somewhere?”
Snorting at the ill-concealed invitation to flee someone else’s domestic squabble, Idusza rose and exchanged her house slippers for half boots. A shawl of faded rust with only the bleached remains of embroidery came up to cover her head. “Yes, to my friends I should take this lack of news. Alinka. Ča Serrado.” Her polite farewell was its own condemnation. Arenza was a friend of hers, and she clearly didn’t approve of any man toying with her heart.
Their departure left Grey alone with Alinka, and no more observers to hide behind. But what could he say? She was right to glare at him; from the outside, his behavior looked inexplicable. Alinka had been so glad when he found a sweetheart, but now here he was, chasing after an alta for reasons he refused to explain. Meanwhile he was betrothed, and she didn’t even know it.
Ren’s masquerade had always been a delicate balance. Letting others in on it might have improved her life, but it had made the dance significantly more difficult to maintain. And it meant that more people had to lie on her behalf.
Telling Alinka the truth would only widen that circle. Yet Grey couldn’t imagine keeping it from her much longer.
The silence had stretched painfully long. “I promise, Arenza understands what I’m doing.”
“Very nice for her. But I understand nothing.”
“I know. Alinka, I—” Grey folded her into a hug. “She’ll come visit. And she’ll explain.” Either with the truth, or with a deft lie. If anyone could come up with such a thing, it would be Ren.
But more and more, he didn’t want her to.
Nor did he want to do it himself. “Sit down,” Grey said. “I’ll make tea… for you should know something about my own life.” And about the Rook.
Hidden temple, Old Island: Apilun 11
Vargo was the only one in the underground temple when Renata strode in and announced, “I had to tell Donaia about Tricat. Not everything, of course—not its origin, nor about the other medallions, nor that it was losing this one that cursed the Traementis. I don’t want her killing Letilia. But…”
He wasn’t used to seeing her visibly uncertain. At last she said, “I haven’t felt right, hiding the danger from her.”
Vargo sat back on his heels, keeping his chalk-dusted hands clear of his dark trousers. She still maintained her Seterin accent when she wore Renata’s mask, but more and more often, he found himself slipping into Lower Bank rhythms when they were alone together. “No secrets or debts between you, your enemies are my enemies. En’t saying a family’s the same as a knot, but similar principles, yeah? ’Cept nobody says it out loud when you join a family.”
“Fortunate for me that they don’t.” Her wry laugh fell like golden leaves over a sinkhole of guilt.
They might have dispensed with secrets between themselves, but they still held many back from the world. Well, Ren did. Most of Vargo’s major secrets had died with Ghiscolo, Diomen, and the Praeteri. Only Alsius remained, and practically everybody important knew about that now. As for his life, he’d never been anything to the world but belligerently himself. Ren, on the other hand, still had plenty to hide.
Tanaquis arrived soon enough after that Vargo knew she must have come with Renata and somehow gotten distracted halfway down the tunnel. Probably by the ward that kept intruders out—she still wanted to understand how that worked, and why triple clover knots let people pass through. “Oh, you’ve started,” she said, hurrying over to examine the numinat Vargo had begun inscribing. “Let me see.”
Today’s work was their latest attempt to find the spirit of that nameless szorsa Ren had met in the dream. She’d tried taking aža here in the temple, but none of the glimpses it showed her were the one she wanted. Tanaquis had suggested the Tricat medallion might help, as it had before, only to recoil at the vehement refusal of the others.
Instead she’d taken a new tack. Her inspiration for today’s numinat sprang from her mentor’s obsession with music. “It’s not the same as Tricat, which is embedded in time. The harmonic spheres transcend time,” she’d explained, hoping to convince them to rig the cavern with wires that would turn the entire temple into a giant lyre. Eventually, she gave in to Vargo and Alsius’s more reasonable suggestion of chalking out the figure for the harmonic spheres, an ever-widening path of seven overlapping circles. Combined with the figure Tanaquis had once used to send Vargo’s spirit into the realm of mind, they hoped it would direct Ren to the szorsa.
::Do pay attention so you can give a thorough account when you return,:: Alsius implored Ren as Serrado arrived, a near echo of the instructions Tanaquis was giving her. ::Some people don’t appreciate how wondrous an event it is, traveling through the realm of mind!::
Abandoning her to her fate, Vargo approached Serrado. Ren’s excuse for inviting him had been that he was Vraszenian, and therefore knew more about Ažerais’s Dream than any of them—the same reason Serrado had given back when they were trying to save Ren from sleeplessness. It made a good cover; if it weren’t for his suspicions, Vargo would have bought it.
“I still don’t understand why she needs to go in alone,” Serrado muttered, as though the argument hadn’t been settled several times over.
Really, they weren’t being at all subtle—not if you knew where to look. Vargo would warn them, but watching their dance was one of the few amusements he had these days.
“More people going means more chance of someone getting lost.” He felt bad the moment he said it, and the sour look Serrado gave him was like a thumb pressed to a bruise. “Besides, it’s better for you to stand ready to retrieve her. Tanaquis and I will need to handle the numinatria.”
Then Vargo raised his voice for everyone to hear. “By the way, am I the only one assuming that Faella used her medallion to put Cercel in the Caerulet seat?”
The chorus of “No” that answered him echoed melodiously from the temple’s high ceiling.
“She’s a good choice, though,” Serrado said as the last of it faded. “Better than any other I can think of.”
Renata nodded. “I doubt Faella used the medallion to control anyone’s desires—I don’t think she knows how. But she might very well have looked for someone who could get the support, not only of the Cinquerat, but of the city.”
Social unity fell under Illi-ten’s purview. Vargo growled low in his throat. “You know, if the medallions only helped people to act like selfish assholes, it would be easier to resist them. The problem is, they really can help, sometimes.”
“Of course. There’s nothing inherently wrong with desire, or any of the emotions that emanate from the Primordials.” Tanaquis’s declaration lacked her usual blithe confidence. The loss of Iridet’s respect and support had shaken her more than the fall of the Praeteri. “That’s all Primordials are, really. Those concepts in their purest form.”
::Lumen save us all, I am not wading through another apologist debate,:: Alsius grumped. His admiration of Tanaquis’s “innovative mind” and “precise chalking” had soured in the face of her flirtation with heresy.
“Perhaps you might have a word with Faella,” Vargo said to Renata, both of them fighting a smile at Alsius’s pique. “After you return safely, of course.”
“That’s hardly an incentive to come back.”
He gave her an impudent wink as Tanaquis said, “While you’re at it, perhaps you could persuade Faella to talk to me about what she saw during the ritual. I still only have reports from some of the medallion holders; I’m lacking Sessat, Noctat, Ninat, and Illi-ten. It isn’t nearly enough.”
“Not likely to get Noctat,” Vargo muttered.
“I know!” Tanaquis huffed at Sureggio’s rudeness, dying without leaving a proper report. Vargo hadn’t told her what he and Varuni had discovered when they went to Extaquium Manor, intending to remove that human stain from Nadežra, only to find themselves too late. Whatever the man had seen in his temple vision inspired him to end his life in an eleven-sided numinat. His note had said, I surrender my soul to the purity of desire.
Renata cleared her throat. “I’ve been meaning to ask… Vargo, have you been having any peculiar dreams since you took a medallion? Sessat-related dreams?”
“Apart from the occasional nightmare of plague, I don’t often remember my dreams.” And those he did were banal worries of being trapped in a library full of blank books—probably bleed-over from Alsius. “I take it you’ve been having Tricat nightmares, Renata?”
She twisted her gloved hands in an uncharacteristic display of nerves. “Not nightmares, exactly. Dreams of the past. And dreams of the Vraszenian past, at that—some of them here in Nadežra, but others elsewhere in Vraszan. At least, I assume it’s Vraszan; I’ve never been farther inland than Floodwatch.”
“Tricat dreams?” The brightness perking Tanaquis’s tone was warning in itself. “How fascinating. Could you—”
“—give your report after we’re finished here,” Vargo said, placing chalk in Tanaquis’s hand and turning her toward the numinat. “Perhaps your dreams can take you to wherever this nameless szorsa of yours waits.”
Ažerais’s Dream
The numinat that carried Ren’s spirit into the dream felt a great deal like falling asleep. One moment she was sitting in the figure, listening to Tanaquis hum the seven-note melody she was supposed to use to return; then, without quite noticing the transition, she was somewhere else. A different version of the temple, with murals carved into the walls that flickered and changed in the corners of her eyes.
It wasn’t quite right, though. While the place around her was recognizable as Ažerais’s Dream, it was… too precise, Ren thought. Crystalline and hard.
The realm of mind, inscriptors called it. She’d always assumed it was the same thing as the dream—and it was. But the method she’d used to come here had left a sense of distance between her and the dream, like a pane of glass separated them. Nothing was quite immediate enough, quite messy enough. Like a dream described rather than experienced.
