The Mageborn Traitor--Exiles, Volume 2

by Melanie Rawn

  “It’s my heritage, too.”

  Now he understood—and all at once he looked as if he would weep. “Cailet—oh, Cailet, is that what this is all about? Is it yourself you’re afraid of? What have we done to you, child?”

  “What had to be done, to hear everyone tell it.” She ran both hands back through her hair, shook her head, and didn’t bother wondering why Gorsha was silent within. “Don’t worry so much, Telo. I just need the experience of doing things on my own—not the memories of what other people have done. In a way, I owe Anniyas for adding to my education with those Wards and visions. Everything I learn about magic teaches me something new about myself. It’ll be all right. I just have a lot of learning yet to do.”

  The learning she had not done when she’d been Made the Captal. Knowledge she had aplenty; the act of acquiring knowledge was her goal now. And one of the things she must learn was how to test the Mages she would teach, how to probe for power-greed. What could tempt them. If she found it in the Code, she’d use it. The only thing was, how far would such a technique—Malerrisi as it would be—tempt her?

  Telomir placed a hand on her shoulder. Shock and pity had given way to compassion: the virtue of his father’s Name Saint. “Cailet . . . forgive me. I didn’t understand.”

  “It’ll be all right,” she repeated. “Why don’t you go topside for a while? You could use some fresh air, and I could use a nap.”

  He nodded, pressing her shoulder gently, then left her. She lay down in the narrow bunk, closing her eyes. But it wasn’t long before she turned her head to stare in mingled hunger and revulsion at the leather-bound bulk of the Code of Malerris.

  12

  BIRON Maurgen had come to Renig with four ranch hands to escort his mother’s new horses to the Hundred. When he discovered Cailet on board the Amity, he instantly offered her the pick of whichever Tillinshir gray she wanted on the ride north. While he supervised the unloading of the animals—which took not two hours but four—Cailet tended to various errands in town. First she secured the Code and the rest of the books with Lenna Ostin in the strongbox of her law office, after Warding the volumes in eight layers ranging from the distracting to the gruesome. Then she bought a big rainbow-glazed bowl for Sarra and Collan, a stuffed velvet grizzel-bear for Lusira’s and Elomar’s baby, and sandjade mosaics of St. Alilen and St. Eskanto for the newlyweds at Ostinhold.

  How she paid for all this brought up a sore point. The Rille Name—all two hundred thirty-one of them—proudly acknowledged her as one of their own, as arranged long ago by Gorynel Desse. They’d produced a few Mageborns in the past, so it was remarkable but not incredible that one of them should become Captal. In their excitement at having such a notable in the family, they were all ready to share the income from their minuscule Web. Cailet spent two days composing a delicately worded letter of refusal to the First Daughter. She couldn’t take their money. She wasn’t truly one of them.

  But neither could she agree to Sarra’s plan that she take whatever she needed from the Slegin fortune. It felt like stealing from Riddon and Maugir and Jeymi, not to mention Sarra, Lady Agatine’s designated heir. Had it been possible, she could have accepted what was rightfully hers: the inheritance of Ambrai. But she had no more access to it than Sarra did.

  Elin Alvassy was now sole owner of everything the Ambrais had ever possessed. A goodly portion of it had been snapped up at bargain prices after the obliteration of the Ambrai Name. Recovery of these holdings was impossible; years in the law courts would result only in colossal fees for the Advocates and not a square inch of property or a cutpiece in compensation. Ambrai itself lay in ruins. The outlying farms would begin to produce income with this year’s harvest, but all would go into rebuilding the city. Sarra had wanted to offer Elin free run of the Slegin Web—seized just a year ago by the Council and never dismantled—but that would have meant awkward explanations. Sisterhood in the Rising could not account for such extravagant generosity, and their Blood kinship could never be acknowledged.

  Which was precisely Cailet’s point when Sarra tried to give her access to whatever money she needed. They could never reveal their true Name or relationship. And how would it look if a Councillor was the sole support of the Mage Captal?

  In the end, it turned out that Gorsha had anticipated the financial problem. When Allynis Ambrai’s will was dug up in the Ryka Court Archives, the complexities of the Ambrai inheritance were detailed in all possible permutations. Even though nothing connected Gorynel Desse to it, his fingers were all over it. The date told the whole story: St. Gelenis’s Day of 951, three days after Maichen Ambrai divorced Auvry Feiran. The will excised Glenin from the Ambrai line; even though by changing her Name to Feiran she relinquished all inheritance rights, still Allynis wanted to make official her expulsion from the family. Failing the survival of Maichen and Sarra, everything went to the Alvassys.

  After the destruction of Ambrai, Elinar Alvassy and her husband Piergan Rille took their orphaned grandchildren to an obscure holding in Domburronshir. There, in 952, Elinar had written her own will, in her own hand, witnessed by four Advocates and three Votaries sympathetic to the Rising. This document assigned to Cailet Rille ownership of an iron foundry in Brogdenguard. Part of Piergan’s dower—he who had lent Cailet his family’s Name—it had become Elinar’s property, and she was free to dispose of it as she wished. That it pleased her to deed it to some obscure relation of her husband’s—a child she had never even seen, who had grown up a fosterling at Ostinhold—was explained in her own words: “It is my desire that this girl, who is practically an orphan, attain upon her majority the financial independence that will allow her to pursue her own path in life, beholden to no one, not even her Name.”

  Not the Name of Ambrai, nor the Name of Rille. Yes, Gorsha’s fine manipulative hand had guided both documents. Cailet hadn’t shared Sarra’s surprise when the foundry’s provenance revealed a Desse connection. Four Generations ago, scandals of unfair trading practices among some of the Webs had resulted in regulations demanding full disclosure of all holdings. (It also resulted in diversification of the Ostin ventures; now, a century later, only Lady Lilen and her chief steward knew exactly what the Web owned under what Names.) The Rennes owned the iron mine that supplied the foundry; because Gorsha’s mother married a Renne, the Desses had to sell the foundry. Desse to Rille to Alvassy—and now finally to Cailet.

  The upshot was that she had a tidy income from the foundry, still stoked by ore from the same Renne mine—which, having been Orlin’s dower when Agatine married him, now belonged to the Slegin Web, and Sarra. In these more liberal economic times, Cailet was free to sell the foundry to Sarra, which she intended to do for funds to build her school. And sell at a fair price, she was determined, not the inflated one her sister would doubtless try to sneak past her. For now, however, she had a healthy balance in the Renig branch of the St. Nialos Mercantile Bank—another Ostin venture, of course.

  “Sure you don’t want to invest in my firm?” Lenna teased as she escorted Cailet from her new law offices near the Council House.

  “You’re just feeling poverty-stricken after buying all this,” Cailet retorted with a grin, waving a hand to indicate the fine oak-paneled foyer.

  “Never more truly told! I had to outbid First Daughter for it.” She paused to tell a clerk to inform her next client that she was on her way. “Geria wanted this place because she knew I wanted it. I can’t even bring myself to hint at how much I had to borrow from Mother to pay for it. But once I’m firmly established as Renig’s leading Advocate—with appropriately outrageous fees for my brilliant services!—I’ll be all right.”

  “That’ll take about six weeks,” Cailet remarked. “I had a look at your secretary’s appointment book—you’ll be lucky to find time to eat dinner.”

  They stopped short of the front door, an extravagance in cedar and stained glass, that was being removed so a dignified oaken replacement could be hung
. Cailet squinted at the bright window with its Council sigil, and gave a start at reading the rhyme along the bottom.

  The Sky, the Stars, the Moons, the Sun—

  Before them all: the Name of Lunne.

  “Modest, don’t you think?” Lenna asked.

  That aspect had gone right past her. For the rest—no, it would be too much to ask. But she had to find out. “Not Inara Lunne? ‘Tried by Seventh, convicted by Eighth, and executed by Ninth’ Justice Lunne?”

  “Former Justice—” Lenna laughed at Cailet’s broad grin, and because she’d heard the tale she added, “—whom last you saw slumped over in blissful if unwilling slumber!”

  At last all was attended to, and Cailet met Biron and Telomir for the ride north. Though the Tillinshir grays were a bit more spirited than any of them were used to, nobody fell off, and Telo even began thinking about purchasing the mare he rode.

  They were eight days getting to Maurgen Hundred, through the most hospitable terrain The Waste had to offer. Cailet and Telo alone could have done it in two by Folding the road, and as they traveled through mile after mile of prickly scrub jooper trees, she wished they had. The scenery wasn’t exactly inspiring, and the horses shied at every spindly windblown skeleton of sage. Stupid name for a plant—she could see no wisdom in making one’s home where the sun shriveled new leaves as soon as they unfolded and the wind shoveled up roots.

  The sagebrush didn’t have much choice. The people did. So why did they live here? She knew her homeshir’s history: devastated by a war between rival Mageborns, once The Waste was confirmed habitable again thousands left kinder climes to establish farms and ranches here. Some came for the challenge of it—and challenge there had been aplenty. Some came because their families had flourished here before The Waste War—though first sight of the ancestral lands must have been a shock. Some came because there was money to be made from the rebuilding. But Cailet couldn’t imagine anyone coming for love of the land.

  Still, the Ostins and Maurgens and Obreics and Senisons and all their breed did love the place. Even those who left for one reason or another, professing to loathe it here—she was thinking of Alin and Val now, and Taig—never called anywhere else home. There was pride in being a Waster, in not only surviving but thriving in a harsh and ugly land.

  Look at Biron over there—inhaling the dry, dusty air as if it were the sweetest of perfumes, commenting enthusiastically on a hilltop vista or the formation of sandstone pillars carved by wind and acid storms. Cailet had been born here, too, but whereas she had a Waster’s disdain for those who had it easy elsewhere, she found nothing to love about this ravaged Shir but the people who lived in it.

  She felt this even more strongly when they reached Maurgen Hundred. The hospitality she received had nothing to do with being Mage Captal. She was welcomed for herself by friends who had known her forever. She spent a relaxing evening catching up on all the latest gossip and slept more soundly than she ever did at Ryka Court. Moreover, she slept without Wards—but, as always, with a lamp burning at her bedside, to guard her from the depths of the dark.

  She rose early. Refreshed by a morning bath—the Maurgen water-filtration system was the best available, rendering even acid-storm rain fit for washing and drinking—she wandered down to the kitchen. The cook exclaimed with pleasure on seeing her and insisted on serving her a huge breakfast. She gossiped with him over the meal, learning the latest about everyone in the district—the really scandalous things Lady Sefana pretended not to know.

  Replete with scrambled eggs and fresh muffins and coffee, Cailet ambled across the yard to the stables long before Telomir was even reported to be awake. She saddled up a mare familiar to her from childhood—a year ago?—then chose a gelding for Telo. The ranch hands soon forgot her new position and they entered into a spirited discussion of just which Dapplebacks should be bred to the new Tillinshir grays, with what possible results. This led to a tour of the new foals and her promise to come back to the Hundred when she had time to choose one for herself; Lady Sefana still owed her the promised Birthingday gift. She returned to the main stable in time to see Jennis Maurgen crossing the yard with Telomir.

  “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard! What is wrong with men?”

  “Women,” Telo shot back.

  “Imili, Feleris, and Alliz!” Jennis exclaimed, black eyes flashing. Cailet was distracted from wondering who the last-named Saint was when she continued, “My mother was on horseback two days before she delivered Riena and me—and she practically went into labor in the saddle with Biron and Val!”

  Ah, of course: Alliz the Watchful, patron of mothers of twins. Cailet grinned to herself and prepared to enjoy the rest of the argument. Jennis was certainly having a good time; Val’s departure from Maurgen Hundred years ago had emptied the place of the only man who’d ever contended with her or Riena. Biron wasn’t exactly afraid of his sisters, but after watching them beat up on Val, he had long ago decided that placid avoidance was the wiser course.

  “Having you go into premature labor in the saddle is all we lack!” Telomir broke off at sighting Cailet. “You’re a woman, talk some sense into her! She wants to ride with us all the way over to Ostinhold!”

  Because they were not, in fact, going to Ostinhold, Cailet suddenly understood his unmannerly tones: lacking any other good excuse, he’d used Jennis’s pregnancy as reason to discourage her from joining them, hoping to annoy her enough to prevent awkward questions.

  Cailet could have changed Jennis’s mind. But one didn’t do that to friends. Truly told, a Mage Guardian didn’t do it at all; it was something from the Code that a few very powerful Malerrisi were capable of using on those not Mageborn. During those long hours of study on board ship, she’d concluded that whereas magic itself was inherently neither good nor evil, there were applications of it that—for lack of a better word—stank. She’d take what she found beneficial and adapt certain other things to the Mage Guardian ethic, but some Workings she would never touch.

  She walked over to her childhood friend, put a light hand on her arm, and used the best argument she knew—which, though grossly unfair, at least had the advantage of being true.

  “Jen, I just watched one friend lose a baby. Don’t make me go through it again.”

  “Nonsense,” Jennis replied briskly. “No Maurgen has miscarried since Fielto was a filly.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But I can’t help feeling that way. Please, Jen.”

  Telomir put in smoothly, “It isn’t as if either of us needs directions to find Ostinhold.”

  Jennis rounded on him. “If you were a Senison hound, you couldn’t find the end of a leash!”

  Cailet, seeing that Telo had overdone it, intervened. “Indulge me, Jen. Just this once.”

  With an annoyed shrug, Jennis capitulated—but not without a last scathing glance for Telomir. “This is why I won’t take a husband!”

  Scowling right back at her, he retorted, “And why I never became one!”

  Cailet thought this over as they rode out of the yard. Telo would have been a fine catch; no one knew he was Gorsha’s son, but everyone knew he was Jeymian Renne’s. Born a Blood with connections to many important families, rich, clever, good-looking, personable, and with an excellent career in government, thirty years ago half the women of Lenfell should have been after him. Perhaps they had been. Cailet didn’t know. But he had never married.

  Jennis’s reasons for not taking a husband were obvious to anyone who knew her: she enjoyed men, but preferred women. She didn’t need any man’s dower; all she needed was an hour or so of his time on a day she was fertile. Tamaso Obreic, a comely green-eyed fourth son of a third daughter, had obliged; Jennis would be a mother by late spring. Lady Sefana had told Cailet the whole story last night, wryly amused at her daughter’s cheerful plan to have children by any man who struck her fancy as a desirable sire.

  Telomir presumably hadn’t wa
nted to marry; Jennis didn’t need to. So why did anyone get married at all? One could have babies without taking or becoming a husband; as long as the children were loved and provided for, what was the difference? She heard someone inside her head tag the word provided, and nodded to herself. But how depressing to think that money was the only real reason to marry, even though it seemed to be true. Well-dowered men were sought by women who needed money, and rich women by men whose families could not provide for them.

  Ah, but then there was the case of Sarra and Collan. Sometimes it seemed to Cailet that they’d married for the sole purpose of having each other around to snipe at. Well, and to make love with. A voice clearly identifiable as Gorsha’s laughed.

  Dearest, they married for love. So did your parents. So do millions of other couples. It’s not all about money, you know. You’ll find out, one of these years—see if you don’t.

  That was just it, though. She wouldn’t find out. There lurked in her things as fearsome as the Wraithenbeasts she was riding to investigate, things that would destroy the mind and heart of any man she bedded.

  For the first time in a long time she deliberately thought of Taig Ostin. Almost a year since he’d died. The last thing he’d said to her was about loving another man. “Find him, Caisha. Love him even more than you loved me.” She’d known with Taig’s death that no one could ever replace—let alone surpass—him in her heart, that she could never want any man the way she’d wanted him. A few days later, Glenin had made certain of it.

  There would be no children for her. Sarra’s twins would have to suffice. One day they would come to her to be educated in their gifts. Her life until then must be spent preparing to teach them. And that meant a new Academy.

  And just where she was going to establish it was a total mystery. Part of her purpose in her travels last year had been to scout possible locations. She’d thought she’d found a nice piece of land near Wolfprint Springs in Cantrashir—until the locals expressed their reluctance to have Mages living next door. It had been the same in five other places, though not everyone had been so honest in their rejection. That farmland near Maslach Gorge in Tillinshir, for instance, its only structure a burned-out farmhouse—the area residents had told her with absolute solemnity that the place was prone to bizarre winds and reliably reported to be haunted* In other places, property she would have bought and built on was either not for sale or the owners could not be traced; merchants she talked to regarding possible supply contracts were unable to furnish her needs. No one wanted a resurgent Mage Academy anywhere near them.