beard shadowed his cheeks and chin. She found comfort in the warmth of his soft smile. She remembered his tears on the night of Willym’s murder, shed without collection, a treasure spent in memory of the god’s former servant.
“Every man bleeds,” Chrism said. “A god is no different. I can’t count the times this past winter alone that I’ve pricked a finger while working out in the Eldergarden.”
Dart found such a concept impossible to imagine, but she recalled her first encounter with Chrism among the gardens, mistaking him for some common groundskeep. Looking at him now, she could not fathom how she made such a mistake.
“While my blood may have value in trade and stock, it flows from me like any other man’s. Be not afraid. Master Willym and I were beyond ceremony.”
Chrism rolled back the sleeve and exposed his arm. His skin was tanned the color of red loam, while soft hairs, bleached blond by the same sun that tanned his skin, curled up the length of his forearm. He turned his arm to expose his wrist. Here the skin shone paler, appearing tender, as smooth as a woman’s cheek.
“You must simply stab deep and quick. My beating heart will do the rest of the work.”
Dart nodded. She took up the length of braided silk. Pupp lifted his head, tail wagging more vigorously. She waved him down with her free hand. She did not want him interfering-especially not when blood was involved.
Pupp lowered his head but maintained his vigil.
Dart knelt by Chrism’s chair and tied the ribbon above the god’s elbow. She worked rapidly, having practiced all night. She snugged it, careful not to touch his flesh.
“Tighter,” Chrism said. “You can cinch it more firmly.”
Dart swallowed hard and did as he instructed. The silk pressed deeply into his flesh. For some reason, she had thought a god’s flesh would be more unyielding, more like stone.
“Very good.”
Dart sat back and gently lifted the silver lancet from the scarf. Now came the hard part. To stab the god she served.
“Can you see the vein at the edge of my wrist?” Chrism asked. “Willym preferred that one for a deep bleeding.”
Dart reached up and cradled Chrism’s wrist. His skin was warm, almost hot to the touch.
“A quick jab is all it takes.”
She hesitated.
“Be not afraid.” His voice purred with patience and concern.
Dart bit her lip and drove the point into his flesh and out again. A ruby drop of blood immediately welled upon his pale flesh, a jewel more precious than any mined from the heart of Myrillia. Here was a treasure mined from the heart of a god.
“The glass…” Chrism said with a smile.
Dart stumbled back, realizing she had frozen in place, mesmerized. She reached blindly for the repostilary, knocked it over with her fingertips; its crystal stopper rolled free of the scarf, tinkling on the stones. She grabbed the tiny decanter.
“Calm yourself. There is no hurry.”
Blood welled on the god’s wrist into a pool. Dart held forth the repostilary, needing both hands to hold it steady. Still the crystal receptacle tremored with each beat of her own heart.
Chrism leaned forward and tilted his wrist with a skill honed over millennia. The pool of blood became a channel, rushing from his flesh into a thick stream. The repostilary caught the flow as it poured forth.
Dart kept her gaze focused on keeping the wide mouth of the receptacle positioned to accept the god’s gift. Her trembling continued to bobble the jar a bit, but not a drop was spilled. The repostilary filled.
Chrism studied the flow. “That should do nicely, Dart.” She flicked a gaze in his direction. His lids lowered slightly. A glow bloomed softly on his wrist, moonlight through a break in clouds. Chrism had cast a blessing upon himself. The blood stopped flowing, dripping away, healed.
“The bit of linen, please,” Chrism said.
Dart let go of the repostilary with one hand and reached for a folded slip of green Kashmiri linen. She snatched it up and held it out.
Chrism turned his wrist toward her. She dabbed the blood from his skin. No sign of her stabbing wound remained.
Clutching the repostilary, Dart finished her ministrations, wiping the last drops away. The bit of linen would be burned upon the brazier outside the chamber, a fire continually stoked for this very purpose. The residual Grace in the scrap of cloth was too capricious, dangerous, unpredictable, apt to be used in dark rites by black alchemists. Such items had to be purged regularly, including Chrism’s daily garments after the slightest soiling by sweat or bile, the same with his bedsheets. Even forks and spoons were cleansed in fire to burn off any residual saliva.
Her focus on Dark Graces brought her back to the afternoon in the gardens, to the murder of the woman named Jacinta, turned to ash. She pictured the cursed black blade-and the man who had wielded it, a lord she knew by name now after inquiring discreetly.
Yaellin de Mar. Another of Chrism’s Hands.
Dart knew nothing else about the man, avoiding him at every turn. The man oversaw the aspect of black bile, the solids passed by Chrism into a crystal chamber pot, twinned with another pot that collected the god’s yellow bile each morning and night.
Dart had gone over the murder in the gardens… and Jacinta’s final words. Myrillia will be free! What did that mean?
It was the woman who had brought the cursed dagger onto the grounds. Once exposed, she had seemed to throw herself on the dagger to keep from being captured. Why? And what role did Yaellin have in all this? If innocent, why hadn’t word of the encounter in the garden spread, especially here in the High Wing?
Dart had her own secrets, too many already. She wanted no others. So she had spoken to no one about it, not even Laurelle. What could she say? How could Dart accuse or slander a Hand who had been in service to Chrism for going on his second decade?
Distracted by these black thoughts, Dart missed the roll of a drop of blood from Chrism’s wrist. It fell toward the stones. Wincing, she watched the ruby jewel splatter-not against the floor, but upon a bronze nose. Pupp had darted forward, catching the drop in midair.
Rather than passing through her ghostly companion, the droplet found substance. With the touch of blood, Pupp grew momentarily solid. His bronze nails clicked on the stone floor. His molten form settled into ruddy plates and a mane of razored spikes. Dart felt the heat of his presence like a stoked fire.
She froze.
Chrism’s eyes had returned to the view out the window as Dart had finished her ministrations, but now he stirred in his seat. Pupp stared up at the seated god. His eyes flared brighter. His tongue, a lick of flame, lolled out.
As Chrism leaned forward, the droplet of blood sizzled on Pupp’s nose and burned away. A tiny dance of smoke marked its passage. And Pupp’s form turned just as smoky.
“What’s that scent?” Chrism asked. He withdrew his arm, placed his palm on the armrest, and shifted upward, staring around the room.
Dart waved a hand through the puff of blood smoke, clearing her throat. Pupp shook his head like a wet dog and trotted back across the room.
Chrism failed to note his passage, but his nose remained crinkled.
Dart quickly bowed her head. “One of the other Hands must be cleansing the utensils from your last meal, my Lord. In the grand brazier outside your doors.”
With a worried crinkle of brow, Chrism settled back to his seat, but not before glancing one more time around the room.
Keeping her head down, Dart carefully plugged the repostilary with its crystal stopper and returned it to the wyrmwood box. She then folded the scarf over the box, and though her knees threatened to betray her, she stood smoothly.
“You did very well, Dart.” Chrism returned to his watch on the flowing river below his window.
“Thank you, my Lord.”
