The Shadow of Theron, page 29
“He is your friend,” Eugenie said at last. “The only one in the world.”
Sancio’s mouth gaped open, then closed again wordlessly.
“It’s alright,” Eugenie prodded. “His secret and yours are safe here.”
“Don Lysandro de Castel,” he said in a small voice. He blinked, not believing his own ears.
Eugenie drank in the name. “Yes. That’s right. De Castel. And the story you have to tell me…he is at the center of it, yes?”
Sancio was visibly shaken. “Yes, Madam Examiner.”
“Anything you refuse to tell me, the slightest, thing, could be of vital import. Do you understand?”
Sancio nodded.
“Good. Now tell me all.”
He did. When he was finished, Asha was the first to speak.
“Fetch him, boy. This instant.”
Sancio leapt from his chair, but crashed back down to it again at a wave of Eugenie’s hand.
“No, Sister. That is not the way of things.”
Asha’s eyes darted from Eugenie to Sancio and then back again. For all the restraint she mustered in Sancio’s presence, Eugenie heard her roar like a lioness.
“We’ve wasted enough time tracking our quarry. Now he’s here, and we’re here, and if de Castel is what you say and he has the sacred relic, then we can finish this.”
Sancio dared to interrupt. “Our temple’s relic is not in his possession. Not exactly.”
“So give it to him! If you told true, then Marek is no longer willing to hide what he is. Your friend must challenge him.”
Eugenie interceded. “Did someone say to Theron, ‘you are called to be the Goddess’s champion, and you must answer’? He will come to it of his own accord or not at all.”
Asha raged like a bull. But when she did not charge, Eugenie knew that she had won over her mind, if not her heart.
“We cannot force the hand of fate. The wheel that brings de Castel closer to his destiny is already turning. But it may yet go awry.”
Eugenie imagined she could hear the grinding of teeth.
“We must stand idle then?” Asha asked.
“No. There is much to be done that he cannot do.”
“Like what?”
“We will be there when de Castel raises the call. For now, we prepare his army.”
“His army?”
Eugenie nodded. “Darkness is returning. And it returns first to Lighura.”
Sancio stared at her. “Do you mean to say, Argoss is returning?”
Eugenie wished she knew. But the signs were not clear.
“And you think Lysandro is…”
She watched the pieces fit together in his mind. He ran a bloodied hand through his hair as shock rippled through him.
“We must prepare ourselves to aid the Child of Theron, but we must also restore the villagers’ faith. We can start with the window.”
“The window?” Asha asked.
“I beg your pardon, Honored Sister, but the blacksmith has called upon every craftsman and artisan there is. No one remembers how to forge a sacred window.”
“Of course they don’t. The knowledge was never theirs in the first place.”
Eugenie got to her feet and dusted off her robes. “Stoke the brazier. Asha, gather what warriors you can, the strongest among them. The night is no longer young.”
Asha was stripped down to the worn bands of fabric beneath her robes. Sweat poured from her back in shining rivulets as she and the Aruni melted a handful of the shattered grains of colored glass and refashioned them into their former shape. She’d been doubtful when Eugenie first suggested she craft the window from memory, but as Eugenie sat cross-legged on the floor of the temple chanting, Asha found that she knew it well enough. Every angle, every curve, every shade of green and gold came to her as if from a dream. Thrumming between her ears was Eugenie’s incantation. It transformed into an incessant tone that seemed to come from within her own mind.
The heat stung Asha’s eyes. It could not have been hotter if she’d been standing inside Morgasse’s forge itself. But on she worked, the night banished by the blinding white fire of the brazier with its mouth open wide. The Aruni working the makeshift bellows were no less tested by the strain, but their minds stayed clear of all but Eugenie’s chant. Asha’s body answered screaming to the task, feeling it was she who was being forged, molded by the leaping tongues of flame into a sacred windowmaker of old. When the dawn came, a shaft of light sought out its lost perch and found it again. It pierced through the diamond tip of the golden arrow that heralded the triumph of Theron.
“Lysandro.”
Sancio cleared his throat as his friend came to the door.
He is my friend, he insisted to himself. Whatever else the Examiner believes him to be.
“Sancio. Won’t you come in?’
The formality in Lysandro’s voice cut right to the core of him. But he supposed he deserved it.
“Some breakfast?” Lysandro asked.
“No, thank you.”
“You’re sure?”
“I ate already, thank you.”
That was a lie. Sancio couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything. His head was full enough. The mere thought of food made his stomach roil.
He sat in the chair Lysandro indicated and rubbed his knees as he tried to find the right words.
“The Aruni have decided not to make the high priestess’s death public.”
“What?”
“Not yet at least. I thought you should know, before you said anything.”
Lysandro nodded. “Anything else I should know?”
Sancio shook his head stiffly. It was all he could do to keep from saying all he was forbidden to say.
“Will they do as you said? Try to seek out the Examiners?”
That shook him. Hadn’t the Morgassen said she had met him? Perhaps she hadn’t revealed herself. If that was the case, it was hardly within his purview to do so now. He’d delivered the one message he was permitted. Stretching their conversation beyond that put him on dangerous ground.
“I…expect so,” he said.
Lysandro’s eyes slid from him in contemplation.
“So, are you engaged yet?”
Lysandro hesitated before answering. “I’ll know tonight.”
“I’m sure you will be.”
Lysandro remained taciturn.
Sancio wanted to apologize. He’d been in such a foul mood when Lysandro had chosen the girl over standing guard against Marek. Chosen her over what Sancio, his lifelong friend, had asked of him. Would it have gone another way if he’d come earlier? Or would there have been two heaps of ash on the altar instead of one?
The Examiner had said Lysandro’s time had not yet come. Perhaps that was true. But it didn’t make Beatríz any less dead, or do anything to heal the rift that Sancio felt widening between them.
He was not alone in this, Sancio saw. Lysandro’s mouth worked as if to say something. But whatever he was thinking, it was not given the shape of words.
“Alright,” Sancio said at last, and rose from his seat. “That’s all I had to say.”
“I am sorry,” Lysandro said to his back as he reached for the door. “For the high priestess.”
It’s not your fault. He thought it, but Sancio couldn’t bring himself to say it. He would never know what might have been.
“I know.” Sancio turned back one more time and allowed himself a quick smile. “And um, you might want to stop by the temple.”
Lysandro raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“You’ll see.”
Lysandro couldn’t believe his eyes. The window was exactly as he remembered it. It was as if, just this once, time had reversed itself.
Others seemed to feel it too, from the snippets of conversation he overheard in the street opposite the restored window. An Aruni in full battle regalia spoke with a cluster of people, spear in hand.
“If the long hand of Argoss has seen fit to undo time, then this is Arun’s answer.”
Those who surrounded her nodded in agreement. She was all pride; nothing in her tone or expression gave away her grief. It was the same for all the Aruni. No one would think they felt anything but triumphant on this day. Lysandro wished he could feel the same.
Marek was nowhere to be found. Lysandro moved through the crowd toward the blacksmith, who stood near a larger group of onlookers. He rubbed his jaw.
“It looks just as it was. You’ve kept your word, and more,” Lysandro said, admiring the window.
“That’s just it,” the blacksmith replied. “I didn’t do it.”
Lysandro turned to face him. “What?”
“I did what you said, Signor. I called artisans from everywhere there is.” He gestured with his hands to the dumbstruck crowd gathered around him. “But none of us could make hide nor hair of it.”
Lysandro blinked. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I have no idea how that window got there.”
They both turned to contemplate the window. But it was beyond comprehension, and it made Lysandro uneasy.
“I know you said you’d pay for this, but…it doesn’t feel right, Signor, not when it’s not my doing.”
“I’ll pay you for your trouble, at least, and that of the artists you’ve gathered.”
The blacksmith bowed. “That’s more’n fair.”
Lysandro left the man to ponder the sacred image, tearing his own gaze away to head for the playhouse.
There was no doubt, when he arrived, that the raising of the curtain was only a few hours away. Musicians tuned their instruments. Sets glistened, their painted locales still wet. High-backed chairs filled the house, and the middle-aged woman Lysandro remembered from the market was in a corner, surrounded by brightly colored dresses, convincing military attire, and finely woven Maghrevan robes of ivory and gold. It seemed none were finished to her satisfaction. She grumbled a curse, threw a costume in the face of one of her assistants, then went back to grumbling again, seeing to them herself.
Fabien was on stage, whirling the slip of a girl playing his lover in his arms, while the real one sat beside Seraphine in the middle row. She wore a soft, simple dress of pale lavender that looked sweet against her peaches and cream skin.
“Stop, stop, stop!” she cried to the feigning lovers. “The high notes are not right. You must find the balance between otherworldly and…shrill.”
“I am not shrill!”
Behind the girl, the doge cleaned out his ear with his pinky finger.
Sera ignored the girl’s protests and directed her gaze at Fabien. “You have to turn her out, so we can see her face.”
Lysandro took the other seat beside Sera and was greeted with a smile from Pirró across the way.
“How am I to fall in love if I can only see her neck?” Fabien shouted back.
“You must fall in love, yes. So must the audience. You expect them to love her neck?”
The girl, whose name Lysandro didn’t know, clamped a pale hand down on her quickly reddening throat. Her eyes went wide as saucers.
“What’s wrong with my neck?”
“Oh, for the love of—”
“Nothing dear, your neck is perfect,” Pirró cut in. Lower, so only Lysandro and Sera could hear, he added: “It’s a hangman’s dream.”
Laughing was about the last thing Lysandro felt like doing. But he couldn’t help it.
The girl was fit to be tied now, and covered her sobs with her hands. Fabien just shifted on his feet and stared at the rafters.
“You’re horrible,” Sera said to Pirró.
“You started it. And now we’ll get nothing done today.”
“Good morning, Sera.”
She turned such a bright smile to Lysandro that it made his heart race, but it was quickly replaced by the furrowing of her brow. Lysandro squirmed in his skin as she studied his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Her ability to detect the somber shift in his mood was uncanny. Her exquisite features, turned to worry at his expense, made him want to purge the previous night from his mind all the more. He shook his head in response; she was his safe haven, a balm on his soul. It was a burden he would bear alone.
“Do you want to get some fresh air?” she asked.
“Thank you, but I’m fi—”
She was out of her seat before he could refuse. Her hands were warm in his, and soft as silk as she pulled him to his feet and toward the door.
Fabien stepped forward on the stage. “We’ve only just begun here!”
Sera’s sharp retort echoed through the theater. It was in Mirênese, so Lysandro couldn’t understand it, but from the shocked look on Fabien’s face, and the way even Pirró gaped, it wasn’t anything good.
Fabien threw up his hands as Sera led Lysandro out the front doors to sit on the steep outer steps.
She clasped his arm with her hands and folded their fingers together on his lap. A deep sigh escaped him when she laid her head on his shoulder. It was the first time he had sat still in hours. But the world was still spinning, and he was cast adrift in the torrent of recent events. The frenzied beating of his heart slowed, finding a calm in the storm as he laid his cheek upon her rose-scented hair.
Though they were alone, she whispered to him, soft and gentle as a morning breeze.
“What’s the matter?”
“Just…stay with me, for a moment?”
She squeezed him tighter, and he felt the weight of his guilt settle on him in the silence. He’d killed two men. And his impulsive anger would only provoke Marek further.
But Seraphine was safe, and by his side. He allowed himself to breathe.
They remained that way for longer than Lysandro dared. Soon he felt compelled to speak.
“I finished the novel you lent me last night.”
“That’s what you ran off to do?” she asked.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
She wanted to ask why. He could see the question forming on her mouth as he peered down at her. But she bit her lip instead.
“How did you like it?”
What to say? As the book had drawn to a close, he’d found he’d been walking in the steps of a murderer. And he had stepped into the same shadow that very night.
If had affected him like no other book before. Its dark mood had reflected his own, and he had seen more of himself there than he liked. Perhaps that had been the point, the author’s subtle reminder that darkness dwelt where you least expected to find it.
“It was deeply moving,” he managed to say. “Truly.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
Lysandro wouldn’t have put it quite like that.
It was then that he noticed the flower he’d left for her in the night tucked into her hair. It had opened in the sunshine, and brought out the fiery strands in her tresses of spun gold.
“That looks lovely on you.”
“Thank you.”
“I can’t stay. I just wanted to see you.”
“You will come tonight, won’t you?”
“Of course. I need to see how it all fits together. How it ends. You’ve been quite secretive about that.”
Sera smiled in admission. “There are scenes we only do when you’re not around…but with good reason. Can’t take all the magic out of it.”
“Will I see magic on stage?”
“Only time will tell. If Celine can stop shrieking.”
“You’ll be singing. That’s magic enough for me.”
He relished the rosy blush on her cheeks, then turned to go.
“You’re sure you’re alright?” she asked.
“I’m better now. Thank you. I’ll see you tonight, Sera. Good luck.” He pressed a kiss to her hand and departed.
Lysandro wanted her so badly, he couldn’t stand it any longer. She was his shining light, his anchor in a world gone mad. He couldn’t envision a future where she rejected him—if she were going to, she would have already done so. Still, he had not truly expressed his feelings. He needed to fix that.
This Faelsday was deeply personal. Faelia had blessed Theron with life so he could fight another day. Mere days before, Lysandro had survived the Blood Sword’s blow, just as Theron had in ages past. He hoped that, like Theron, the Goddess smiled upon him, and wished him success in ridding Lighura of its great evil.
But the day was also a triumph of love. He would honor Faelia and give thanks by celebrating Her holiday to the fullest.
The shopkeeper rushed to greet Lysandro before his foot even crossed the threshold.
“Welcome, Don de Castel! I feel as if I’ve waited a lifetime for you to pay me a visit.”
The jeweler’s smile was framed by a sharp face and a neatly groomed mustache and beard showing the first signs of silver.
“I’ve had no reason to come before,” Lysandro replied mildly.
“Is there something in particular you’re looking for?”
“Particular? No,” Lysandro answered. “Might I look around first?”
“Of course, Signor, at your leisure.”
The little shop was well-stocked with rings, bracelets, brooches, every manner of adornment, all glittering in the sunlight that poured through the open windows. Lysandro passed a thoughtful eye over them all, but nothing sang to him. After some minutes, the shopkeeper inched up behind him, but he was careful not to intrude. He was rather like a fox stalking a rabbit in its den.
“Anything catch your fancy?” he asked, his tone so casual Lysandro could almost believe that his reply didn’t matter to him in the slightest, that he’d only asked as a harmless amusement to while away the time.
“Do you have anything—” Lysandro paused, unsure of what he meant. The jewelry was all very fine, but in their cases, they felt as if anyone might claim them. He intended a gift meant for Sera alone, something that reflected the sense of wonder and enchantment she sparked in him.
“Do you have anything special?” Lysandro asked. “Something unique, or…”
“I believe I know exactly what you mean, Signor. Allow me.” The man disappeared into the back and returned in a moment with three boxes covered in soft black fabric. He laid each one on the counter facing Lysandro.
