by Melanie Rawn
And there was the crux of it. The Bequest. She couldn’t give it to anybody else because she didn’t really have it.
The Ladder knowledge of Alin Ostin, the Mage Globes of Tamos Wolvar—and bits of their personalities as well, because everyone learned in ways unique to their characters—these she possessed. She could still see the gleaming spheres of light and learning that contained their gifts to her. But the entirety of the Bequest, that quintessence of Magelore every Captal before her had possessed—this she lacked. And through her own fault, because she’d tried to steal an unborn Mageborn’s magic.
She could not pass on the Bequest she didn’t have. And even if she could, on whom could she shove this awesome responsibility? Who would be willing to shoulder it for her? Whom could she trust to do it?
Through the welter of feeling and speculation she tried to discover if she was tempted. With genuine surprise she found she was not. It wasn’t only that the Bequest could not be passed on complete. Or that if she tried, they’d discover that she was unfinished, lacking the true depth and breadth of knowledge a Captal must have. It wasn’t even that she couldn’t think of anyone she could trust more than she trusted herself to carry out the obligation.
She felt no obligation. Truly. She was the Mage Captal. As Sarra had said, the only one they had. Gorynel Desse had Warded her at birth and twice more during her childhood to keep her safe, to prevent magic from tearing her apart before he could guide her into its uses. He’d done his best for her—they all had, done their best and given their best. It was her fault the Bequest wasn’t complete.
It occurred to her that she would have to do something about that.
The thought tucked itself in a corner of her mind as something else came clear: she couldn’t imagine not being Captal. Less than a year since the Making, and she couldn’t imagine herself as anything else. She was eighteen years old, and her enemies were her enemies because of what she was, not who she was. What she was had been thrust upon her without her knowledge or her permission. And people wanted to kill her for it.
Even though she wasn’t really what they thought she was. But even if, as Captal, she wasn’t whole—well, the Cailet Rille who had grown up in The Waste had not been a whole person, either. How could she be, lacking her magic? It was part of her, so strongly that it had struggled to break free of the Wards, so powerful that Gorynel Desse had reWorked her Wards twice. Collan had only had his memories blocked; an essential component of Cailet’s very life had been denied her. And when it had been returned, its power was such that in conjunction with the gifts of four other Mageborns, she had become Captal.
That was what she was. Who she was had yet to be fully discovered. But without the magic, without being Captal, she would never find out.
The magic and the position were hers. Both belonged to her now, and she could not give up either. For she could allow no one else in the world to face Glenin and her son when the time came. That was her obligation—not only to the Mage Guardians and Lenfell, but to herself. And to the father who had died saving her, and the mother who had died birthing her.
Try to kill her, would they?
She turned her fingers in Lusira’s palm, pressing lightly, then let go. Smiling, she said, “You’re all stuck with me, Saints help you. And no matter how well this technique worked to make me stop whining, the next time you have something to say, just say it, all right?”
Lusira laughed softly and shrugged. “As you wish, Captal. But it did work. Just as Sarra said it would.” Laughing again at Cailet’s outraged stare, she added, “With help from Collan, and my husband’s small contributions. We know you, my dear. And whereas you have good reason to be afraid, you’re not the type either to live in fear or give in to it.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But eventually somebody will try to give the government a dead martyr in place of a live Mage Captal.”
“They’ll have to get past all of us to do it.”
Cailet shook her head. “I can’t put any of you at risk. I have to leave—not because I’m scared for me, but because someone might try to get to me through any of you.” The way Anniyas’s vicious magic might have reached her through Sarra’s First Daughter. “I have to find a place for myself, Lusira. For a new Academy, where I can teach in safety, out of their reach. I have to leave because I can’t protect all of you.”
Wrong. And now that you’re no longer so frightened and can think rationally, after you finish your dinner, Caisha, I’ll explain why.
7
THE Wraithenday dawned bright with sunshine and chill with the wind off the lake. Cailet stayed late abed, watching rainbows cast by the faceted windows drift across the walls. Finally she got up, ate an apple from the bowl in her sitting room, and began to pack.
She bungled it, of course, awkward hands wrinkling everything. She was about to give up and summon Tarise to do it for her when Collan strode into the bedchamber. He paid as little attention as Sarra did to the permanent Wards, and in the long night of discussion and eventual reluctant acquiescence to Gorsha’s plans, she’d forgotten to recast the new ones.
Collan spared a glance for the tangle of clothes on her bed, sprawled into a chair, and said, “You haven’t been to see Sarra.”
“No.” She tried once again to fold a shirt, and failed miserably.
“Look at me.”
“I can’t.”
“Coward.” He said it the way he would have said, It’s raining.
“She doesn’t want to see me,” Cailet muttered. “Neither do you. Why are you here?”
“Y’know, Cai, you have the most amazing capacity for getting everything unequivocally wrong. The truth is that you don’t want to see us. Now, you want to tell me what’s rolling around that brain of yours that I’m the only one here with sense enough to set straight?”
Cailet folded a shirt, unfolded it, crumpled it in her bandaged hands.
“The baby,” Collan said. “You feel guilty. Elomar says Sarra would’ve miscarried anyway. It’s why she was sick long past the usual time for pregnant women.”
So he hadn’t told them about the other. About the Wild Magic.
“He also says,” Col went on slowly, “next time she’ll have twins. A girl and a boy.”
Cailet bit her lip and nodded. “Yes.”
“You told him that.”
“Yes. But he shouldn’t have said anything to you and Sarra.”
“She doesn’t know.” He paused, then remarked pleasantly, “But I bet you even know their names.”
“No, I—”
“Don’t lie to me.” All the easy drawl had left his voice now.
“I’m not, I—”
“Shut up.” His eyes were like the sigil of his Name: cold and cruel as steel knives. “I don’t care what you know or don’t know. I don’t care if you go hide someplace where you never see Sarra again. But as of right now, this minute, you’re going to go see her, and you’re going to let her yell at you if she feels like it, or pretend she’s fine if she feels like it, or cry over the baby if she feels like doing that, or any other damned thing she wants.”
“I can’t—”
“It’s either that, Captal, or I’m going to wipe up the floor with you. She’s hurting because of you, and you’re not allowed to do that to her.”
“I never meant—Collan, you don’t understand what happened. I can’t explain it fully, but things aren’t the way you think they are.”
He silenced her with a look. “You think whatever you want. I don’t care about that, either. Not when Sarra’s blaming herself.” He brooded for a moment. “You know what she said? She wanted to know why it didn’t hurt more. More! She said losing the baby should’ve hurt her more, because it was her fault.”
“Oh, Collan, no,” Cailet breathed.
“Falundir came in yesterday to sit with her. You know what she said to him? He told me after, using his List. S
he said the baby should’ve been safe inside her. Instead, she felt her daughter die, fighting to get out of the one place she should’ve been safe.”
Cailet’s throat closed over a moan.
“She wants to see you. And you’re going to go in there and—”
“Your daughter died because I walked up to those Wards playing Mage Captal as if I knew what I was doing—”
“You are Mage Captal,” he said flatly. “And don’t give me any shit about being incomplete either. You are Mage Captal. You have to be, or everything that’s happened is for nothing.” Rising from the chair, he finished, “Now, are you coming with me to see Sarra, or do I break your arm?”
Cailet gave up. “I don’t know what to say to her, Col.”
“You’ll think of something. Minstrels and Mages always do.”
He escorted her down the corridors—not by physical force, but she sensed his hand ready to grab and quick march her if she showed any signs of flight. There were none. She had to go see Sarra.
Collan, as excellent a wall as he could be, was sometimes an even better window.
8
SARRA, confined to bed and not liking it one bit, did not yell, or cry, or evidence any emotion other than annoyance. “Elomar Adennos is a tyrant,” she stated.
“You noticed,” Cailet replied. Seating herself at the foot of the bed, she went on, “I thought I’d bring you some flowers, but I’m told you heard what happened the last time. So I brought you this instead.”
She handed Sarra something wrapped in a scrap of silk scarf, something that had been in her pocket since sunup. She’d Worked it the night before at Gorsha’s direction and with Tamos Wolvar’s expert guidance.
“A Mage Globe?” Sarra almost touched it where it nestled in a scrap of silk, then drew back. “It looks like glass.” Plucking up the long, thin gold chain, she let the inch-round crystal sphere swing back and forth. “What does it do?”
“Nothing—unless someone around you has nasty intentions. Then it gets nasty. It’s a Ward that’ll warn you if there’s danger from magic nearby. Nobody else will feel it but you. Promise me you’ll wear it.”
Sarra gathered her unbound hair to one side, slipped the chain over her neck, and blinked when the little orb, milk-white flecked with gold, touched the skin between her breasts. It rested right near the birthmark over her heart. “It’s warm! Is that the magic inside?”
Cailet nodded, and took back the box.
“I hope you’ve made one of these for yourself,” Sarra said.
“I won’t need one.”
Frowning: “I don’t agree. Elomar told me—”
“Elomar talks too much.” Cailet smiled as her sister arched a brow. “Well, sometimes, anyway. I don’t want you to worry about me, Sarra. I’ll be very well protected, I promise.”
“But you won’t tell me how, will you?”
“If I understood it, I would. But I don’t, so, truly told, I can’t. But you know I have to leave here.”
To her surprise there was no argument. “Where will you go?”
“The Waste. You can see people coming from a long way off.”
Frowning, Sarra pushed herself higher against the pillows. “You can’t be thinking of building your school there.”
“No. I just want to spend some time thinking. The way I would’ve done at Falundir’s cottage. I need that, Sarra. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
And you aren’t the least bit ashamed of yourself for lying to her, are you?
If it keeps her safe, no. Not the least little bit.
“Caisha. . . .” Sarra hesitated. “About the baby . . .”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said quickly. “It was mine, for letting you be where the Wards could hurt you. I’m sorry, Sarra. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop that this instant,” Sarra retorted. “Elomar gave me an oration—for him—on the subject. What I wanted to talk to you about was how it could have happened in the first place. It concerns you, too, and your future children.”
Cailet had no idea what she was talking about, and said so. Sarra shifted in bed, curling her legs to one side beneath the covers, and fixed her with an intensely troubled gaze.
“It’s safe to talk here, isn’t it?” When Cailet nodded, she went on succinctly, as if two words explained it all: “We’re Bloods.”
Cailet waited, but that was the extent of it. “So?” she asked blankly.
“This isn’t supposed to happen to people like us,” Sarra insisted. “Losing a baby because it’s not growing right. That’s what Elo said happened. But it shouldn’t have. Not to a Blood.”
Cailet thought about it for a while. “Well, we Ambrais don’t produce a lot of children, you know. If I remember it right, Great-grandmother had two, Grandmother had one, and Mother—” —died giving birth to me. She said, “Mother had three, maybe because she was half Ostin. Of course, compared to the Ostins, the Ambrais are pretty pathetic.”
“But no miscarriages—none I know about, anyway. Why did it happen to me?”
Cailet’s turn to frown. “Sarra, are you implying that there’s something wrong with us?”
“Maybe. It could be why we don’t have many children. I was sick all the time with this baby. Elo says it wasn’t formed right, it couldn’t have been born. So I have to think that there’s something inside me that’s not right, either. And it may be the same with you.” She fidgeted with the fringed blanket across her knees. “It isn’t supposed to happen to Bloods.”
“Don’t hear this wrong, but it might not be you. It might be Collan.”
“I thought of that, too. It’s a possibility, of course.” She spoke coolly, as if analyzing a piece of legislation. Cailet understood; Sarra had done her weeping. Now she was investigating likely reasons and potential solutions. “We know nothing about his family. We have no idea what Tier he really comes from. What if it’s something to do with him, and—”
It’s not. You may trust me on this, Cailet. It’s nothing to do with Collan.
And you’re not going to tell me how you know. Damn you, Gorsha—
You’ll know what you need to know when you need to know it. For now, I ask you to believe there is no fault in Collan—nor in Sarra or you. This child was never meant to be born.
Aware that Sarra was looking at her strangely, Cailet said, “Sometimes these things just happen. Even to Bloods. I don’t think we can ever be sure.”
“Perhaps. There’s another factor here, though. Magic.”
Cailet forced a shrug, swearing to dose Elomar with his foulest purging syrup if he’d let anything slip about what he and Lusira had sensed about the child. “I’ve never heard of a woman having a miscarriage because of—”
“What about Wild Magic? Is that what kind of child I would’ve had?”
Cursing Sarra’s intuitive leaps, Cailet replied, “No. Mageborn, of course. But not—”
“How do you know?” Sarra cried. “Did it happen because of physical reasons? Is there something wrong with the Ambrai women? Is it something about me, or me making a baby with Collan? Is it the kind of magic I inherited? Or is it that I was Warded for so long against my magic—and still am?”
Helplessly, Cailet said, “I don’t know. Sarra, your daughter is gone. There’s nothing anybody can do about it, and no explanation except the one Elomar gave you. Let her go. Please. There’ll be more children, I promise—”
“She was my First Daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” she said stupidly, not knowing what else to say.
After a time, Sarra spoke again. “I just want to know why. That’s all. If there’s something tainted about me, or us—our Blood—”
“Then the whole structure of Bloods and Tiers was a lie from the start.” Cailet stared down at the white gauze binding her hands. “Maybe it was. Maybe the Bloods are overbred, or inbred, or maybe it does have something to do with our
heritage of magic. Maybe Glenin is right, and we should breed for it.”
“She miscarried, too,” Sarra said suddenly. “I’d forgotten that. I think I heard that it was a little girl.”
And now Glenin had a son. All at once Cailet’s insides twisted with sick knowing. Glenin’s son, Sarra’s daughter. . . .
Deep within her mind she sensed Gorsha’s horrified realization that she must be right.
Gorsha, it’s too horrible! Not even Glenin—
And what would she not dare, in the service of the Weaver?
“Caisha? What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing,” she managed. Glenin’s son and Sarra’s daughter. . . .
Only now that daughter would never be born.
To Sarra she said, “I’ll ask Elo about—about maybe something being wrong with us physically. I can’t tell about the magic. One thing I do know, Sarra, as surely as I know how much I love you: you will have healthy children. I swear it on the Captal’s Bequest.” Sworn on her hope of its eventual completion. On her determination to know it whole within her.
Sarra relaxed and smiled. “I believe you, Caisha. You’d never tell me such a thing if it weren’t true.”
From outside the closed door—and the Warding—came a familiar voice. “There’s a rumor that not just one but two surpassingly beautiful ladies are to be found within this room, and I decided I simply had to come and see for myself!”
Cailet hastily canceled the magic that protected them before Telomir Renne could slam smack into it. A moment later Gorynel Desse’s son, the oldest living Prentice Mage, strode through the door, bearing an enormous bouquet of silvery-blue roses that he proffered to Sarra with a bow and a flourish.
“For you, from Lady Lilen’s own greenhouse—you remember, the one with the cactus—with the loving good wishes of however many Ostins there are in residence this week. And I must say that if there get to be many more of them, they’ll own this whole planet.”