by Melanie Rawn
“You Warded his bedroom?”
“Of course. The Most Noble Lady Ria was alive back then, you remember.” She gave the name sarcastic capitals, and Glenin’s mouth twitched with amusement. No love had ever been lost between Ria Shakard and any other woman at Malerris Castle. “And she didn’t half like it that my son was the son of the Fifth Lord—may Vassa’s Wraith personally trap hers in the Dead White Forest.”
“Considering Ria’s ambitions for her own children, it was wise of you to Ward Chava’s room,” Glenin remarked.
“Wiser still of you to send her and her repellent First Daughter to Dombur Castle.”
“Nothing of wisdom about it.” Glenin made wide, innocent eyes. “How could I have known that a Warrior Mage would discover them, let alone that Ria would botch a spell meant to protect her and her daughter?”
“How, indeed,” Saris replied, lips twitching in a smile. Then, more seriously. “The Warden of the Loom arranges matters so that the Weaver may work without hindrance. That was Anniyas’s mistake—she tried to twist the threads to her own designs and do the work herself.”
“I sometimes understand why she succumbed to temptation,” Glenin admitted—something she would never have told anyone else. “It’s hard, compelled to remain here and ‘arrange’ things, as you put it, without actually having my own hand in it. What happened to Ria only confirmed the prudence of trusting to the Weaver. But what you said about Chava interests me. Surely he didn’t feel the Wards on his room until his magic came to him?”
“You know, I think they do feel it, even when they’re babies.” Saris stretched again and poured more wine for them both. “Yours was ready to cast his first spell before he left your womb! And I understand we nearly had a conflagration this morning.”
Smiling again, proud of her son, Glenin replied, “Better all the trials of teaching a child with strong magic than to birth some lumpen little thing with no magic at all.”
“I quite agree. Speaking of which, the girl in Kenrokeshir has been dealt with.”
“Ah. Excellent, Threadkeeper.”
“Compliment the Fifth Lord, not me. I only pointed out the problem. He solved it.” She sipped wine, then shook her head. “A’verro, Glenin, sometimes it is necessary to pull the thread with one’s own hand.”
Glenin nodded. A Malerrisi youth, sent out two years ago at twenty to establish himself in Rokemarsh, had fathered a child by a woman not Mageborn. Glenin had only learned of the baby’s birth at Thieves Moon—appropriately enough, for the woman had stolen Malerrisi seed. She was now dead. The young man had been brought back to Malerris Castle. Glenin had several alternatives open to her, and must decide by tomorrow what punishment he would receive. As for the child—a physicker, secretly Malerrisi, had concocted a fever for the newborn girl, taken her to his hospice, and in due course reported her death. Now she was with a Malerrisi couple at Roke Castle. They would raise her as their own, and watch as she grew for signs of magic.
As Glenin brooded over this defiance of her authority as Warden of the Loom, she wished for the thousandth time that she could master the Mage Globe trick Cailet used to keep in contact with her Guardians. Based on spells in the Code, it should have been simplicity itself for Glenin to set up the same communication network. But some esoteric Guardian magic had been added, and in the dozen years since Cailet’s little message had come by Elsvet Doyannis’s hand, no one at the Castle had been able to figure it out.
Elsvet’s failure had been Glenin’s first and most painful lesson in keeping her fingers out of Chevasto the Weaver’s way. The Fifth Lord excised errant threads from the tapestry. The Fourth Lord educated young Malerrisi to take their proper places in the great fabric. The Third Lord monitored each strand for strength. The Second Lord kept the Loom itself—the structure of Malerrisi across all Lenfell—intact and growing. Only Glenin could order any of them to make changes, but she was the Warden of the Loom, not the Weaver. The debacle of Elsvet had taught her that she must not contort threads of her own choosing to fit a pattern she wished to create. When opportunity arose, she would take it—as she had done with Elsvet herself. The woman had flatly refused to be taken anywhere by Ladder again, and had left Malerris Castle by ship—which had never reached Ryka. The Weaver had obviously finished with Elsvet, and dealt with her accordingly. Glenin schooled herself thereafter to surrender her will to St. Chevasto’s—but sometimes it was hard. Very hard.
Her duty was not to create, but to take advantage of opportunities. The trick to being Warden of the Loom was to recognize signs that the Weaver was preparing something to Malerrisi benefit. Thus the young man and his unauthorized offspring had been retrieved; it remained to be seen whether either one would contribute to the tapestry.
The sordid little tale prompted another thought. “Saris, does Chava want to come home because he feels he’s in danger? With some girl not Mageborn, I mean. He’s long past the age when a man begins to think of marriage and children.”
Saris blinked several times. “Chava? Married? A father? I never knew anyone who wanted such things less! No, I think he’s just homesick and wants to conjure a few spells without having to worry about getting caught.”
“I know how difficult it is,” Glenin mused. “Being the only Mageborn, unable to use magic, unable to talk about it with someone who understands. . . .”
“Not one of them out in the world can even be suspected of possessing magic—can you imagine what would happen if the Captal found out? She’d try to make them into Mage Guardians!”
Glenin forgot what she’d been about to say as a wholly new idea occurred to her. “How much chance would she have? Oh, not with Chava, I know he’s loyal. But with others?”
Saris looked thoughtful. “I could begin some inquiries. Nothing obvious, just a visit here and there to ascertain loyalty.”
“Do that. No matter how well-trained and dedicated they are, they must interact with all sorts of corrupting influences and make thousands of choices without disciplined supervision.”
After a few moments, Saris said, “It’s a terrible responsibility, Glenin. We must teach them how to choose, but those choices must always fit into the greater pattern of the Loom. We can instruct and demonstrate and give examples—and I’m not talking just about our students, but about our sons—while in the end we can only trust that we’ve done our jobs well, and beg St. Chevasto to guide them when we cannot.”
“I wonder sometimes how anyone can raise a child with the idea of letting her become what she wants to be. How can a child make such decisions?”
“It should always be left to a mother. We’re older, wiser, we know the world—”
“Some of us are wiser,” Glenin said, thinking of Sarra and her twins.
“Some,” Saris agreed. “The day can’t come too soon when the unwise ones are kept from making all the wrong choices for their children—or letting the children themselves choose.”
“Chava decided on blacksmithing himself, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did!” Once more Saris’s sparkling laugh rang out. “What Mage could sense his magic if he’s surrounded by all that iron?”
“You taught him well, Saris. I hope I do as well with my son—” She chuckled. “—if he doesn’t burn down the castle first!”
3
A dull week of work and Web later, guests arrived at Roseguard unannounced. Collan was rounding a corner on his way to the kitchens for a snack when he nearly collided with a tall, sturdy, swarthy youth who’d beaten him to it. The young man sidestepped nimbly, balancing a large tray on the flat of one hand like an expert waiter. The fingers of his other hand were woven around the necks of three unopened wine bottles.
Collan surveyed the laden tray: bread, two half-rounds of cheese, sliced roast, two kinds of grapes, and a pyramid of chocolates. “I gather,” he said dryly, “that having eaten your grandmother out of shelf and sideboard, you’re here to do the sam
e to us.”
Aidan Maurgen grinned. “I’m a growing boy.”
“And couldn’t wait for the servants to bring you some lunch. At least you’ve grown up—this is more civilized than what Taigan and Mikel are eating this week.” Collan snagged an apple from the tray and bit into it as they walked to the guest quarters.
“I thought they got over the pumpkin mush with cheese sauce stage years ago.”
Col snorted. “If only. I’m just glad I don’t have to feed ’em personally anymore. Their first year cost me a fortune in shirts.”
“The way I heard it, you set a new fashion—no man dared to be seen without pulped carrots decorating his clothes.”
“Spinach,” Collan corrected. “Orange isn’t a color redheads wear well. Don’t think you’re not welcome, but why are you here?”
“Just tagging along while Aunt Lindren finds a house for Miram and Riddon.”
“Please tell me she didn’t bring the twins. One set around here is all I can manage.”
Aidan laughed, his father’s wink twinkling in his eyes even as his father’s gold earring shone at his left earlobe. Collan had sent it to Maurgen Hundred earlier this year to be one of the eighteen presents traditional on the eighteenth Birthingday. Now a man grown, Aidan was more than ever Val’s handsome image; all he seemed to have taken from his mother’s family were longer legs and lighter brown eyes than the Maurgens. “My adorable little cousins yelled and screamed for an hour when they heard we were going to visit Roseguard, but Lindren told ’em if they didn’t shut up they’d be staying at their Aunt Geria’s for the duration, instead of with Granna Seffie at the Hundred.”
“Vicious enough,” Collan allowed, “but an empty threat. None of the other Ostins has spoken to First Daughter in years. How is Lady Sefana?”
“Ready to knock Biron upside the head for dumping Val and Margit on her. Can’t blame her—they bring the total pairs of twins living with her up to four.”
“Four?”
“Riena’s Sefana and Jeymian, Jennis’s Solla and Valiri and Aliz and Lilen,” Aidan chortled. “And Jen talks about having more! Granna Seffie swears by St. Alliz that after two sets of twins, if she’d gotten pregnant again she would’ve slit her own throat.”
“Wise woman.” Crossing the central hall to the reception room doors, he added. “Of course, your tagging along here has nothing to do with the fact that Marra Gorrst is enrolled in my class at the conservatory until Candleweek.”
“Nothing at all,” Aidan said blithely, not changing color and not fooling Collan a bit.
Not just Lindren Ostin and her husband Biron Maurgen, but his sister Riena and her husband Jeymi Slegin were waiting in the salon. Almost a full table tonight for dinner, Collan reminded himself to remind the cook. Taigan and Mikel would be thrilled at their inclusion in the grown-up ritual. Candles, gleaming crystal, a special arrangement of flowers, and the Roseguard dinner service of beautiful white Rine porcelain painted with the Slegin Rose Crown—all he lacked was Sarra to preside over the table. But thought of the dishes also reminded Collan to tell Mikel that if one of those plates was so much as chipped, his loving father would chip out one of his teeth to mend it with.
Lindren was the youngest of the six Ostin daughters, and Collan had always found her to be the most like her mother. Lady Lilen had once confided that each inherited something completely different from the Ostin agglomeration of traits. Margit, dead these twenty years, had received the magic; Lenna, the ingenuity; Tevis, the stubbornness; Miram, the looks; Lindren, the energy. First Daughter Geria had been gifted with nothing more agreeable than an ability to make money—which, with their mother’s blessing, Lindren and Lenna had spent the last dozen years thwarting at every turn. Collan, loathing First Daughter almost as much as the other Ostins did, helped now and again. Thus, after greeting his guests, he asked Lindren how much of Lilen’s money she wanted to spend this time.
“A lot!” she replied, grinning. “The less that’s left, the less Geria will inherit.”
“Lilen will spend everything she can without endangering the Web,” said Riena Maurgen. “And then leave what she bought during her lifetime to the other children. I always knew I should’ve married an Ostin!”
“So should I,” retorted her husband, a Slegin whose dower included swaths of Sheve and a mountain of gold coins in the Roseguard branch of the St. Tirreiz Bank. To Collan, Jeymi added, “I’m working on getting her to divorce me while Lenna and Tevis are still unmarried.”
“They’ve both got far too much sense to follow Miram’s example—or mine,” Riena said serenely. “Slegin men are dangerous. It’s the Renne Blood in them, you know.”
If the Ostin daughters divvied up the family traits, the two sets of Maurgen twins split everything down the middle. Riena and Jennis and Biron and Valirion all looked pretty much alike, but the elder of each pair were twinned in unruffled temperament while the younger were more volatile. Jennis and Val had received all the fiery sparks, leaving Riena and Biron with the steady warmth of the hearth. Collan, applying the principle to his own children, told himself that the best of him and the best of Sarra were to be found in both Taigan and Mikel. He marveled again at the vagaries of heredity—which he had never in his life applied to himself.
All he remembered of his mother was her armband of blue onyx set in silver, and her beautiful voice as she sang by the fire. Of her looks, character, and other talents, he knew nothing. Of his father, he knew less than nothing. Gorynel Desse had given him the Name “Rosvenir,” but Collan could have been anything from a Mikleine to a Garvedian. Hell, he could be an Ostin for all anyone knew—and considering their numbers, it was more than likely.
None of it interested him, truly told. He was what he was, what he had made of himself. And together he and Sarra had created two more lives. There was a satisfying freedom in that, in not being fastened to the past.
Talk turned back to the cheerful spending of vast sums of Lady Lilen’s money, and Collan made suggestions about various properties in the hills around Roseguard. Biron made a list, with directions, and gave it to his sister.
“We’ll go out looking after lunch,” said Lindren. “Just Riena and me. I know what men are like when they walk through a house.”
Jeymi rolled his eyes. “And I know what women are like. A single minute spent in the kitchen to make sure it has an oven, and even less time to count the bathrooms, without a thought to them other than whether the plumbing works.”
“Snug roof, solid foundation, and dry cellar, that’s all women ask about,” Biron nodded. “Not a word about whether the garden’s large enough to feed the household, or where to put a horde of visiting relatives, or how much it costs to heat the place in winter—”
“That,” Riena serenely informed her brother, “is why we have husbands.”
After luncheon, Collan offered a carriage to the women for their drive around to various properties. Jeymi went to visit old friends in the city, and Aidan expressed—of all things—a desire to go swimming.
“Could we?” Biron asked wistfully.
“You Wasters!” Collan grinned. “All right, then, come on. I know a great bower.”
“Let’s go!” Aidan leaped to his feet.
“A what?” Biron cast an alarmed glance at his nephew.
“Relax,” Col advised. “Nobody’s going to outrage your modesty or infuriate your women by bidding on you.”
Someone in the Wytte Web had had the bright idea of buying up one of the nicer bowers and converting it into an exclusively masculine retreat. Most of the men in Roseguard had memberships. Sarra had given Collan one for his Birthingday last year, mostly because she thought he’d enjoy it and partly because she saw a chance to annoy the Wittes—not a one of whom she could tolerate for more than five minutes. The Wyttes were a (formerly) Fourth-Tier offshoot of the (formerly) Blooded Wittes, who never admitted that the only difference between the
families was a vowel.
The Maiden’s Prayer, choicest bower in Sheve, had provided only the finest young men in the most elegant settings, with prices to match. Now the young men were gone and the settings were book rooms instead of bedrooms, but the price of an afternoon at Wytte’s was still extravagant. The Members’ Entrance was through a sedate front door into a reception area that would not have been out of place in the most conservative household in the Shir. Within, all was very proper, dignified, and comfortable. There were three libraries for quiet afternoons with a good book; a card room for friendly games (no wagers allowed); a restaurant; a rooftop arboretum with fine views of the city and sea; a training room supervised by a massively muscular Wytte who’d spent fifteen years as a drill instructor for the Ryka Legion; and a bar.
“Fruit juice and coffee, no liquor—though I’m working on getting the city ordinance changed,” Collan said as they rounded a corner and approached the building. “It’s just a place to escape the women and children for a couple of hours. You’ll find out what a relief that can be, Aidan, once Marra Gorrst opens her eyes and—”
“Marra Gorrst?” Biron asked, bewildered
Aidan wrapped his arms around his head and moaned.
“Have I said something amiss?” Col inquired innocently.
“Marra Gorrst?” Biron said again, more pointedly, then shook his head. “I told Mother that sending you to Mage Hall for six weeks was a mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Aidan said stoutly, emerging from his protective shell. “I had a great time and the Captal said that if I want to come back and work for her, I’m more than welcome. And now that I’ve turned eighteen, I can do as I please, with Granna’s permission, of course, and—”
Biron sighed. “And you came along on this trip to get you more than halfway there before you broke the news. You say Lady Sefana agreed to this?”
“Of course she did! I’m not like Terrill Ostin, running off to join the Dinn Opera without even leaving a letter!”