by Melanie Rawn
Someone else. Who?
Someone to whom Taigan and Mikel had great value. A unique value, not measured in ransom money.
His left knee was throbbing with new pain before he even realized he was running. Past dockside warehouses, past the boardwalk, past wooden gangways that mazed through skiffs and sloops, he ran with the air salted and cold in his lungs. Heading for the main wharf, boots pounding on planks five times his age, he cursed as his knee began to slow him down. No one about, not even the Watch; he’d expected that, now that he knew what he was looking for. He expected anything and everything, except that he wouldn’t find Taigan and Mikel.
Taigan—fine-boned and sunny-haired, mischief and fire in equal measure shining in her green eyes, looking more like Cailet every day (and thereby hung another Ward, to keep people from seeing how much she resembled her mother’s sister). Mikel—impossible, incorrigible, redheaded Mikel, who was Collan’s own image right down to his blue eyes and swift quirking smile. Flesh of his flesh, born of his beloved, sharing his and Sarra’s gifts between them, a rich heritage of brains and passion and swordskill and music and magic.
To whom would they be valuable except other Mageborns?
Col swore foully as he began to limp. Why hadn’t he listened more carefully to Sarra’s tale about leaving Roseguard with Alin and Val? Where on the damned wharf was the stupid misbegotten Ladder?
Here. He swung over the rails and grabbed a rope ladder, letting himself down to the catwalk just below the wharf planks. He’d never been taken through this Ladder, but he knew it was here—
—and that he was already too late. They’d be at the old mill in Kenrokeshir by now. And from there to Malerris Castle—
Why in Miryenne’s Holy Name hadn’t he gone back for one of the Mages to take him through? Why hadn’t he thought that far ahead, planned for it—damnfool moron, hadn’t even snatched up a torch from the rows lining the boardwalk—
But he didn’t need a torch to see the bulky form that lay on the planks. Moonlight glinted from dozens of cheap necklaces. Siral Warris, strangled with a short rope, was well and truly dead at last.
There was no sign of Taigan and Mikel.
It wasn’t possible that they were gone. He wouldn’t allow it to be possible. They were clever and resourceful—they’d find a way to escape—they were perfectly capable of outsmarting even a Malerrisi—
They were only eleven years old.
Collan clung to the rope ladder, balancing precariously on the catwalk above the tide. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed—not to any Saint, but for the intervention of a strange and powerful woman young in years but ancient in Magelore.
“Cai—whatever it is you and Sarra have—lend me some of it now. Help me find them. I won’t let them be dead—I won’t let anyone take them and make them into—damn you, Cailet, answer me! Help me! They’re your Blood, too!”
He heard nothing but the weak whisper of waves again pylons and shore. Felt nothing but the sick ache around his heart, the hot prickle of tears in his eyes.
And a quiet, almost imperceptible quiver deep in his brain.
He willed the small tingling awareness to grow, expand, seek its match in two Mageborn children. All those Wards, all those years of having magic in his head to protect him—surely something of it must linger, something that would lead him to his children. Forcing himself to move slowly, he turned his head and looked out to sea—due south, to Malerris Castle.
No. Not there. Westerly, then, imagining a map with the island of Bleynbradden riding the vastness of Great Viranka between here and Kenrokeshir. The tremor strengthened and his hold on the rope went lax, his knees buckling, his chin sinking to his chest.
Stars exploded in his skull.
His eyes stung as his gaze raked the docks for small boats riding low in the water. Dozens, hundreds—but only one outlined in spectral fire.
He didn’t bother with the rope ladder. He jumped fifteen feet into waist-high water, staggered as his knee gave, caught balance and breath, slogged through feeble surf. Sopped to the shoulders, boots full of seawater, he ran across the dark sand to the planking and pounded through a maze of bobbing hulls and naked masts.
The little sailboat floated only out of habit. Barnacles held together its elderly Domburr oak. The filthy yellow sail was bunched in the stern, the mast was splintered in a hundred places, and the hull hadn’t been painted since Anniyas became First Councillor. To Collan it was more beautiful than the Slegins’ beloved Agate Rose.
He heard something that sounded very far away, something that could have been the night wind—or a quiet sigh. Cailet? No—he knew without knowing how he knew that it was not a woman but a man, infinitely relieved and infinitely weary.
He forgot all about it as the fiery outlines of the sailboat faded. Pulling in a shaky breath, Col crouched down and pulled aside a corner of the patched and stinking tarp.
Taigan and Mikel huddled on the deck: dirty, barefoot, and alive. He watched the moonlight on their sleeping faces for a moment, then scrubbed the moisture from his eyes and cleared his throat.
Taigan frowned in her sleep, then stirred and opened her eyes. “Fa?”
“Yes,” Collan said, or tried to. His second attempt at speech was more successful. “I’m here. Looks like you two had an adventure, huh?”
She nodded solemnly. Nudging Mikel, always slower to waken, she said, “Fa’s here.”
Mikel shifted, jerked awake, and blinked wide blue eyes. Collan held out his arms and the pair flung themselves against his chest, nearly toppling him.
“Fa, it was awful—this lady came in—we tried to fight, but she did something to us and it made everything so slow—”
“—and we couldn’t yell, we tried, but she pushed us out the window and we fell, but it didn’t hurt—”
“—and then she took us outside the walls and—”
“Shut up and let me tell it, Mikel! She got mad and did something else and everything disappeared until—”
“—we got away! I kicked her and used all those tricks you taught me—”
“—we ran and ran—Mikel was really smart, Fa, he shoved barrels in the water so they’d think we fell in—”
“—but Teggie was the one who found the boat, and we hid—”
“—and they gave up and went away, didn’t they, Fa?”
“Yes,” Collan said. “They gave up and went away.”
After a moment they pulled back from him. He brushed dirt from Mikel’s cheek and picked dried seaweed from Taigan’s hair. He’d been worried that this would frighten them half to death; he’d been wrong. They weren’t scared. They were mad. He smiled, thinking how furious Sarra had been when he’d abducted her: the outrage of one who has never even dreamed that anybody could think of laying rough hands on her precious carcass. Yes, these two were her children, all right.
“Who were those people, Fa?” Taigan asked.
“Why did they do it?” said Mikel.
Typical questions. Taigan identified and categorized; Mikel’s favorite word had been why since the day he’d learned it.
“They were our enemies, your mother’s and mine.”
“But why?” the boy insisted.
“Because they wanted money and we’re very rich,” he said, opting for the truth—just not all of it.
“We are?” Taigan blinked.
“Of course we are,” Mikel scoffed. “Why else do Mama and Fa have to talk to so many boring people?”
Collan bit back a smile. Taigan would be the matrimonial prize of her Generation, yet she had no idea she was rich. He and Sarra must be doing something right.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you back home and into a hot bath.”
“But Tarise already made us take a bath today,” Mikel wailed.
“Fine,” Col said. “If you want to wake up reeking of fish, go right ahead.”
<
br /> Mikel subsided, seeing—or rather smelling—the point.
“How did you find us?” Taigan asked as she was set on her feet. “We were ever so quiet, and we didn’t move for hours.”
Col took his time about answering. The pair really were a mess: nightshirts ripped and filthy, faces smudged, hair tangled with anything from pillow feathers to desiccated fish fins. As Taigan took a few steps favoring her right foot, Col realized their wild run had put splinters into bare feet. Sighing, he hoisted a child onto each hip.
“Oof. This was a lot easier when you were little.”
“How did you know where to look for us, Fa?” Taigan asked again.
“We can walk,” Mikel protested, wriggling.
“Shut up, Mishka. How’d I find you?” He hesitated, then grinned. “Well, it’s my experience that every adventure ends with something special. So how about this: a Mage Guardian lent me some magic, and I sent it out to find you, and this stinky old scow lit up like a hundred Mage Globes.”
“Oh, sure,” said Mikel.
“Come on, Fa,” chided Taigan.
Hitching the pair more securely into his arms as he walked, he shook his head sadly. “This is the respect I get? I give you a perfectly plausible explanation and all you do is make fun of me.”
“What’s plausible mean?”
Taigan said, “Something that sounds true but usually isn’t. Like what Fa just said.” She considered for a moment. “Like most of what he says.”
“This younger Generation, I don’t know,” Collan mourned, thinking with an inner grin that Cailet was going to have the time of her life teaching magic to these two skeptics. “You tell them what they want to know, and they don’t believe you.”
The conversation continued in this vein all the way back home, with the twins scorning his every explanation. Rightly so; each was as absurd as the first. Except that the first, the most absurd of all, was the truth as far as Collan understood it.
“Well, two birds appeared right over the boat, one dark and one pale, to show me where you were.”
“Try another one, Fa!”
“I followed a trail of cookie crumbs from Mikel’s shirt pocket.”
“Tarise didn’t let me have any cookies tonight!”
“Well, how about this one—as a Minstrel, my hearing is far beyond the ordinary, and I followed the echoes of your footsteps on the planks.”
“Next you’ll say you have a nose like a Senison hound, and eyes like an eagle, and—”
“—and two children who seem to have forgotten their duty to believe their esteemed father in all things!”
Mikel peered at Taigan around Col’s chin. “Is he being plausible again?”
“No. Just silly.”
By that time they were home, and Tarise took charge of them. She scolded and hugged and exclaimed over their injured feet. Collan laughed and waved good night as she swept them off, chagrined, for another bath.
Only then did he collapse into a chair and squeeze his eyes shut and begin to shake.
Some while later, he heard Tarise come in and pour two large drinks. “You know who it was, don’t you?” Her voice was thick with loathing.
“Glenin Feiran.” He accepted a glass and drank deeply before meeting her hazel eyes. She was angry and frightened, and liquor had put a flush into her pale cheeks. “Are you all right?”
“I saw her.” She sank into another chair, hands wrapped around the glass. “I’d just returned from the lecture—I should never have gone, it’s stupid to leave them unguarded for an instant, even with the Wards—”
“Don’t blame yourself. The Wards are the best Cailet ever cast. We all trust them. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.”
She shrugged. “We’ll share responsibility—along with every other person in the Roseguard Residence, and don’t think I won’t have something to say to every single one of them tomorrow morning!”
“Tell me about Glenin.”
Tarise shuddered and gulped more brandy. “She was there, in my room. Rillan’s been gone for two days at the ranch tending a colicky mare—she probably arranged that. I wouldn’t put anything past her. She looked at me and suddenly I was down on the floor and couldn’t move! Why didn’t you come looking for me when you saw the twins were gone?”
“I didn’t think,” he said honestly. “I’m sorry. All I knew was they were missing—I guess I wasn’t playing with all strings strung.”
“You can’t imagine what it was like for me, lying there fully conscious and unable to move a finger.” She downed her brandy in three large gulps. “The Captal will have to strengthen the Wards.”
“Until she can, does that husband of yours have any friends as big or bigger than he is?”
“Several.”
“Good. I’ll want to meet them tomorrow. Why don’t you go get some sleep?”
“Why don’t you?” she countered.
He smiled to concede the point.
Tarise finished her drink in a gulp and set down the glass. “Why did Glenin want them?”
That was an easy one. “To kill them, or turn them into Malerrisi. The former, she could’ve done right there in their bedchamber. But she didn’t, so it has to be the latter.”
“There’s a third reason. She could have wanted to find out if they’re Mageborn.”
Collan shook his head. “That won’t show up for another couple of years. But that brings up something I hadn’t thought about. Why take them now, when they’re still magically blind? It would’ve made more sense to wait, or to have taken them when they were babies and she could raise them to hate us from the first.”
Tarise knotted a ribbon around the end of her braid and stood up. “Something else, Collan. She worked a spell so I couldn’t move, but not one to hide her identity.”
He nodded, understanding what she was getting at. “She wanted us to know. Whatever she did with them later, right now she wanted to use the twins to hurt Sarra. Personally. Just knowing her children were in the hands of that woman—”
“Yes, but politically, too,” she interrupted. “After ten years of negotiations, the Mage Charter is due for a vote next week.” When he looked blank, she made an impatient face and explained, “The Captal has been operating more or less illegally all this time. Nobody ever rescinded Anniyas’s Purge. When Sarra tried after the new Council was elected, people started wrangling over just what the Guardians ought to be allowed to do. Their duties and responsibilities to Lenfell, when they should be called on, the whole scope of their activities. They’ve been debating it on and off ever since, and nothing’s been done.”
He remembered some sort of discussion years ago between Sarra and Cailet about the advantages and disadvantages of a legal Charter, but the twins had been teething at the time and he’d had no time to pay attention. Still, he knew who would be on which side. Sarra, with her passion for law, would want an established Charter; Cailet, adamantly opposed to governmental interference in Guardian affairs, would want no such thing.
“You really ought to pay more attention to what goes on,” Tarise was saying.
“Probably. So now the Charter’s up for a vote? What’s that to do with the twins?”
“It’s something Sarra fought to put into the document. Mage Guardians are the only legal practitioners of magic. Anyone Working magic without official Guardian status as determined by the Captal will be considered Malerrisi, and an enemy of the people of Lenfell.”
He stared at her. “You’re joking.”
“Not at all. I think it’s a very wise provision—”
“It’s insane!”
“It’s exactly like the Charters for all the guilds and professions,” she replied heatedly. “What if a person who knew a little about herbs advertised herself as a healer—and somebody died because she had no idea how to treat a concussion? Or what about some fool with an ax setting himself u
p as a forester without knowing the first thing about land management? Every craft has standards of education and knowledge, Collan, for everyone’s protection.”
“And what happens when somebody really talented but lacking the official sigil of approval comes along?”
“She gets herself trained in her profession and—”
“What you mean is the guilds control who’s allowed to work and who isn’t—and what they’re supposed to know. Doesn’t that feel a little like the Great Loom to you?”
“All it does is provide certain standards of knowledge and competence—”
“With no room for innovation.”
Tarise flung the long braid over her shoulder. “Now I know why Sarra’s got gray hairs at the age of thirty-six! You’re impossible. And I’m going to bed.”
11
GLENIN held tight to her son as the ship lurched and wallowed. She had hated traveling by sea ever since that dreadful voyage when Anniyas had ordered her to rid herself of her unborn First Daughter. Now she clutched Anniyas’s grandson in her arms, bracing her back and legs against the wooden supports of her bunk, beseeching St. Chevasto to weave calm upon the waters before this scow went down, taking her and the hope of the Malerrisi with it.
Had things gone as planned, she would now be safe and warm and dry in her own bedchamber, her son sleeping peacefully nearby, her niece and nephew lying senseless and bespelled in a locked and Warded room. Instead, there was a nightmare of lashing wind and crashing water, cramped quarters, and food so foul her poor darling boy hadn’t been able to keep down more than a few crusts of bread.
Damn Collan Rosvenir. Damn her sister’s twin whelps. Thrice damn that whining fool Warris for daring to challenge her will. And, truly told, damn Glenin herself ten times over for taking her precious son with her to Roseguard.
Ah, but how was she to know that Warris was so accomplished a votary of St. Pierga Cleverhand? She hadn’t known the velvet Ladder was gone from its leather satchel until she had the twins outside the garden walls, ready to meet her son and leave for Malerris Castle. During her frantic search for the Ladder, Sarra’s children began to stir. She’d been rough in reWorking the spell. Cailet’s Wardings were tricky—it took much more effort than Glenin had anticipated to seize the children, which boded ill for the future. When her son arrived, they were so glazed with magic they didn’t even see him.