by Melanie Rawn
Cailet wanted badly to inquire just how often Councillor Dombur had been inside Anniyas’s dressing room, but decided it was beneath a Captal’s dignity to take so obvious a shot at him (though she was half-hoping Collan would). She didn’t like Irien Dombur any more than Col did. The Councillor had been secretly for the Rising, like many others, but hadn’t declared himself until it was clear that the Rising would win. According to Sarra, all the Dombur Blood had a streak of arrogance beyond the usual: it came from the two times Domburronshir had challenged the Council’s authority. Once, long ago, the self-styled Grand Duchess Veller Ganfallin had done a frighteningly good job of conquering a large swath of Lenfell; more recently, somebody calling himself her descendant had attempted the same. Anniyas had led the battle against his forces and personally killed him—though Cailet could scarcely imagine the woman’s ever wielding a sword, and to use magic openly would have given her away as Mageborn. The people’s gratitude had been expressed shortly after the putative Grand Duke’s death, by declaring Anniyas First Councillor.
“. . . could be underneath the floor, of course,” Irien Dombur was saying now, “but it’s still damned odd—begging your pardon, Captal, Lady Sarra. The third is on a wall at right angles to a window, which really is the most curious of all, because there’s absolutely no structural way there could be any sort of passage. As I mentioned, a Mage has explored these three areas but was unable to get past the Wards.”
Cailet said nothing. She knew what he wanted, but he’d have to ask—sweetly, politely, even pleadingly if she so desired. She wasn’t going to volunteer. Not this time.
“We were wondering, Captal. . . .”
“Were you?” Col asked blandly. “Wondering what, exactly?”
“As I was saying,” Dombur continued, badly concealing annoyance, “we were wondering if the Captal—”
“Could do what?” Col broke in again. “Stroll on in, open the Wards, and you’d have in your eager little hands all of Anniyas’s secrets?” Dombur opened his mouth to protest; Col didn’t let him. “First off, what makes you think there’s anything to be found? Oh, I know—why Ward something if it’s not important? From what I know of the late unlamented First Councillor, she’d set a Ward just for the fun of knowing that when she was gone, everybody’d race around in circles trying to get rid of it—only to find fuck-all behind it!”
“I believe,” said Dombur coldly, looking down his long nose, “that your acquaintance with Anniyas was not of an extent to warrant any presumption of her motives.”
“Is that so?” Col lounged back in his chair, long legs crossed at the knees, thumbs hooked casually in the pockets of his gray wool longvest. Irien Dombur’s acquaintance with Collan Rosvenir was not of an extent to warn him that this was the Minstrel’s most dangerous pose. “I had the pleasure of her company for a few days a while back. They say torture brings out the truth. In my experience, that means the truth about the person doing the torturing.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with—”
“Killing is one thing,” Col explained as if to a particularly slow-witted child. “People kill for a lot of different reasons. But you have to have a special quirk inside to enjoy causing pain. What she did to me really gave her a thrill. She’d put up Wards for the same reason.”
“Even if this were true—”
“Oh, that was only my first objection. The second is this.” Now he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, blue eyes silvering to wolfishness. “Why should the Captal do this little exploration? Because the Council asks? Or is it an order? If the latter, I thought that was settled back after the elections. And if the former—what’s in it for her, except a headache from working all that magic?”
“I beg your pardon?” Dombur blinked.
“You think magic comes for free?”
Cailet stirred then. Physical weakness after powerful magic was not something she wanted generally known. “He’s right, it doesn’t. But assuming there really is something behind these Wards, I think a headache is a small price to pay. I’ll take a look at Anniyas’s rooms, Councillor. But alone. If the Wards aren’t one of her little amusements—though I think Collan’s right about that—I don’t want anyone around who might be injured.”
Collan snorted. “That’s your cue to express concern for her,” he prompted Dombur.
“I am concerned,” he responded stiffly. “As we all are for the Mage Captal’s safety.”
Sarra reentered the conversation. Col had made his point, and enough was enough. She didn’t want to get a reputation for having an unmanageably uppity husband—even if he was precisely that. “I’m sure Councillor Dombur is expressing the sentiments of all Ryka Court, indeed, all Lenfell. Captal, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep us informed.”
“Of course.”
Collan, after a brief glance at Sarra to indicate that she hadn’t heard the last of this, got to his feet and played perfect husbandly host once more. “Thank you, Councillor, for taking time out of your busy schedule to bring this matter to our attention in private.”
It was dismissal, and Dombur knew it—even when delivered by another man who, moreover, had no official power whatsoever. But no one was ever verifiably impolite to Lady Sarra Liwellan’s husband; she had the irritating habit of treating such lapses in manners as if directed at her. The Councillor rose, bowed importantly to the women, and took his leave.
“Not now, Col, please,” Sarra said when Dombur was gone. She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, as if she were the one who had worked too much magic.
He inspected her narrowly. “I’d say ‘now’ is just the right time for a visit from Elo. Isn’t it a wonderful coincidence that I invited him and Lusira for dinner tonight?”
“I’m fine. Just tired. I don’t need to see—”
“And here, in happy hour, are the Lady and her husband,” he said as the door opened to admit the couple—with Tarise and her husband Rillan Vetiaz right behind them. Judging by the look that passed between Collan and Tarise, they had an understanding about providing excuses to kick unwanted guests out of Sarra’s rooms. Irien Dombur had left on his own, but others undoubtedly did not. Cailet began to think it might be a good thing to have someone like Tarise around.
Collan greeted Lusira with a kiss on the cheek, a liberty she allowed only him. “As lusciously lovely as ever. Elo, your work is right over there—” He pointed at Sarra. “—and tell her if she doesn’t take it easier I’ll take her over my knee.” The world ordered to his satisfaction, he favored them all with a sunny smile. “Brandy, anyone?”
3
CAILET entered Anniyas’s rooms alone. The Ward set at the main door had faded almost to nothingness. Considering that Anniyas’s imposture was of thirty and more years’ duration, Cailet marveled that she had risked Wards at all. There was also an odd feel to the remnants, as if they’d been set in haste and not intended to last. This puzzled Cailet until she realized that on the last night of her life, the First Councillor had gone to the Octagon Court fully expecting to begin the process whereby the Malerrisi would come out into the open, with herself as acknowledged First Lord. She must have taken a few moments to Ward her suite, as she had not dared to do all during her tenure here in case her status as a Mageborn was discovered.
First was a Keep Out. Beneath it muttered a suggestion that Guards Are Coming. Both were so dim by now that Cailet could have simply walked through the door without bothering to unWork them. But unWork them she did, just for the practice.
The reception chamber was appropriately opulent—much gold leaf and ornamental plasterwork and finely carved wood—though most of the artwork had long since been removed. Truly told, everything that wasn’t nailed down had been claimed by someone else. A week or so ago, the antiquated Councillor and Rising partisan Flera Firennos had shown her a little bronze statue of St. Miryenne, patron of Mage Guardians. “There was a charming St. Fler
na I took for myself, but I thought you might like this one, child.” Without a fragment of magic to her Name, Councillor Firennos had not felt what Cailet had on taking the St. Miryenne into her hand: a spiteful little spell that gave a Mageborn a needlelike shock, like a spark from a wool rug on a dry day. Cailet canceled the spell instantly, thanked the old lady for the gift, and packed the lovely little statue in a trunk that would eventually make its way to the new Mage Academy—wherever and whenever that might be.
The implications of the spelled artwork hadn’t occurred to her until later. What had Anniyas been doing with an image, no matter how fine, of the patron Saint of Mage Guardians? Cailet had concluded that it had been a marker: anyone Mageborn who touched it would have reacted, if only with a start of surprise. Now she was positive that, as Collan suggested, Anniyas had been amusing herself.
Cailet paced slowly around the reception room, soft leather shoes making no sound on the dusty marble underfoot. Over there was the corner Ward Irien Dombur had mentioned. It practically laughed at her. Light from the window on the next wall limned a fresco of a handsome young man, several sheep, and a basket of wool. Captal Lusath Adennos had been a renowned Scholar all his life, and from his vast store of arcane knowledge came an image that Cailet matched from her own experience to the immense painting that covered half of Firrense. Shaking her head, she moved on to inspect the other two Wards.
Likewise in the dressing room was a stained-glass window—and on the closet door, a painted carving—of an obscure but identifiable Saint. Cailet stared in honest amazement. Anniyas could not have signaled her loyalties more clearly if she’d posted placards. How it must have amused her. Col was right, and these Wards were nothing more than her parting joke at an unwary Mage Guardian’s expense. A good thing it had been Viko Garvedian who’d explored this place; his mother Tiomarin had taught him thoroughly and well how to protect himself and others.
Cailet decided to deal with the Ward near the wall fresco first. As she expanded her concentration, she recognized the sensations Dombur had described. Pathetic, really, compared to some of the Wards Gorsha remembered. She was about to begin the sequence of spells that would cancel the Ward when she heard voices in the antechamber.
“What do you think,” Collan snarled, “she’ll find lost millions from the Treasury and tuck them away in her pocket?”
“It’s the opinion of the Council that there ought to be witnesses.” Irien Dombur. Of course. “Lady Sarra and I will perform that function. There’s no need for you to—”
“Where I go, he goes,” Sarra interrupted. “Now, is there anyone else you’d like to invite to this, Dombur, or are three witnesses enough?”
Cailet went out to meet them. “Invite all Ryka Court if you like. There’s not much to be seen—except for someone with eyes to see it. Come on, I’ll show you.” She led them through, pointing out the Saints depicted in paint, stained glass, and carved wood. “I realize that not one person in a thousand has ever heard of them, but how obvious did she have to be?”
“I don’t understand,” said Sarra. “Who are they?”
“The young man is Bleisios the Curly, patron of wool-combers. He’s as unknown as they come, except in upland sheep country. The lady in stained glass is Avingery Lacemaker—see her spools and pins, and the lace she’s just made, lying across her lap? And the carving is Dantian Circle-Spinner, seated at her seven-ringed spinning wheel. What they have in common, besides being in Anniyas’s chambers, is that their patronages—wool-combers, lacemakers, and spinners—were assumed by another Saint when the Calendar was revised.”
“Chevasto the Weaver,” Sarra said, and Cailet nodded.
Dombur had the grace to look abashed. “Patron Saint of the Malerrisi. Captal, there must have been a Ward that kept everyone from seeing these things. Something that blinded us to the reality of this.” He was practically pleading for this to be so, unwilling to acknowledge that the signs and sigils of Anniyas’s reality had been right there all along.
“People see what they’re comfortable seeing,” Cailet misquoted Collan, whose mouth twitched at one corner. Then, to ease Dombur’s obvious distress, “There might very well have been something to prevent true sight. If there was, it’s gone now.”
Sarra was gazing at her with admiration and perplexity. “Though I’m no Scholar, I have a fairly good education—and I’ve never heard of these Saints.”
“You may have, without knowing it,” Collan mused. “Every so often a variation will show up as a given name. Usually people think it’s just a strange version of some other Saint.”
Cailet nodded agreement. “Such names run in families for Generations, used again and again without anyone knowing where they really come from.”
“Fascinating, I’m sure,” Dombur said, suddenly nervous, “but should we be here, Captal?”
“There’s no danger, if that’s what you mean. The Wards appear to be straightforward—to keep people from prying—but they’re rather weak by now. They weren’t all that threatening to begin with, presumably in case a Mage Guardian showed up here and sensed them.”
“And the spaces they Ward?”
“I was just about to have a look.”
Cailet returned to the wall fresco, her three witnesses trailing her. She looked up at the innocuous portrait of the curly-headed youth with his sheep and his wool basket, admiring it impersonally for a moment before calling on her magic. Thinking herself prepared—for another and stronger Ward, for a triggered spell, or for simple nothingness if the Malerrisi magic had faded—she was shocked nearly senseless by the vision that blossomed from an exploding invisible Globe.
A handful of silvery sand sifted from work-roughened fingers. A similar handful of rich dark loam, another of reddish-brown clay, yet another of gritty ash sparkling with bits of obsidian. Fifteen handfuls from all the Shirs of Lenfell trickled down from stained, submissive hands into a tight-woven basket, bringing the flesh of a whole world to its ruler: Anniyas.
Five white cloaks swirled in the breeze through the open window as the four lesser Malerrisi Lords watched and the First Lord nodded and smiled. Fifteen people, carefully bespelled, bowed their heads low in homage. And in silence, without a struggle, fifteen throats were slit to moisten the soil with the blood of a whole world, while five white cloaks spread like scavengers’ wings in the breeze and Anniyas dug her beringed fingers into the blood and dirt and laughed.
Cailet stumbled back, sickened. But the vision did not release her mind. The soaked earth seemed to separate for her, showing the stony dead sand of The Waste, the rich soil of Ambrai, the alluvial silt of the Kenroke marshes, the volcanic ash of Brogdenguard, all the different rocks and gravels and dust of which Lenfell was made. She could feel the victims’ terror muted by magic, hear their liquid dying—and see Anniyas and her fellow Lords, smiling.
Strong hands gripped her shoulders. She recognized them, the support and comfort they gave, and bent her head so she wouldn’t have to meet Collan’s eyes.
“Cai? You all right? What happened?” His palm under her chin brought her head up. “What did you see?”
“Anniyas,” she managed. And then, because he was worried and she had to tell someone, she found words enough. “They brought the land to her—here, in the room beyond this wall—she had their throats slit to blood it—fifteen people, one from each Shir, bringing all Lenfell to her—and they watched, the Malerrisi, they watched and smiled and—” Her gaze was drawn to the placid pastoral scene of the youth and the sheep and the basket of wool, and sudden involuntary magic shattered the plaster fresco.
“Captal!” exclaimed Irien Dombur.
“She slaughtered people here and nobody ever knew it!” Cailet pulled away from Collan and spun on her heel. “Nobody ever felt any of it! I don’t know how to deal with that kind of magic!”
“You must.” The Councillor for Domburronshir came forward, all elegant clothes and stu
died mannerisms and Blood arrogance. “We need to know what Anniyas left behind. Who’s to say there aren’t other visions waiting for the unwary? At any time anyone in this room could be assaulted by magic—persons not as strong as you, who would be permanently damaged.”
“Instead of only temporarily damaged, like her?” Sarra asked bitingly. “Captal, I’m a Councillor, too, and I hereby cancel the request to—”
“As senior Councillor here,” Dombur interrupted, “I must insist that she continue.”
He was right, damn him. Cailet turned again, concentrating on the place where St. Bleisios had been, and cast a spell that came to her without having to think about it. She’d given up trying to figure out who provided what she needed; all she knew was that unless a Ladder was involved, the spell didn’t come from Alin Ostin.
The wall abruptly separated horizontally just below the ruined fresco. She heard the grind and crack of the mechanism that she broke asunder with magic—no matter, it would have taken hours to locate the trigger and use the device. Now no one could use it again. Just as well. A passage was revealed, glowing white as if the stone was lit from within. Another spell, of course, harmless but effectively eerie.
“There’s your first architectural anomaly,” she said over her shoulder to Dombur. “Have it investigated by whomever you like. I’ve unWorked the Wards so it’s safe to enter, but I have no personal interest in anything Anniyas may have left behind.”
The Councillor drew breath to object. One glance from Collan made him reconsider.
Cailet strode to the closet in the bedchamber, wondering what horrors were concealed by guileless Dantian Circle-Spinner. Sarra’s worried call of her name behind her made her flinch, but she confronted the carving before they could follow her into the room.
Swords sang, wielded by two superbly skilled warriors. One was tall and broad-shouldered, with gray-green eyes that blazed in the ruined moonlit beauty of the Octagon Court. The other was slight, blonde, and possessed of a prowess not truly hers as she attacked with a sword not truly her own. The powerful man and the swift young girl battled under the laughing gaze of the First Lord of Malerris, and when the girl had won and her enemy lay prostrate before her, she plunged her sword into her father’s throat. Tossing lank fair hair from her eyes, she approached the old woman standing where Generations of Ambrais had stood. “He was of no further use to me,” Anniyas said. “It’s time you took his place.”