by Melanie Rawn
“That’s why I invited him to Mage Hall the next year,” Cailet said. “Lady Sefana and I discussed it at length. She felt, and I agreed with her, that he ought to see how Mages live and work and are educated—and that he could be just as useful in a community of them even if he wasn’t Mageborn.”
“It appears,” said Tarise, “that you accomplished it. We talked when he got back from Sleginhold, and he seems to think he’ll be of greater use to you because he’s not Mageborn.”
“How come?” Taigan piped up. “I mean, I’d feel pretty stupid being in music class if I didn’t know anything about playing a lute.”
Cailet sipped brandy and smiled at her. “But there’s more to music than playing an instrument. Even if you’re like I am, with no talent whatsoever, you can still listen. Perhaps in such a class you’d be the one to tell them how they sound.”
Taigan had a habit—picked up Saints knew where—of shifting her lower jaw to the right and tapping the misaligned teeth together when she was thinking very hard about something. Sarra was almost pathetically grateful that she recognized her daughter’s facial quirk.
“You mean Aidan will keep them honest?” Taigan said at last.
“In a way,” Cailet smiled.
“As long as he’s not looked on as a token,” Riena said. “I know you’d never intend that, Cai, but I’d imagine some of your students are fairly arrogant when they arrive.”
“It takes a while to cure some of them of it,” the Captal admitted. “And yes, Aidan will be good for them in that respect. But I’m thinking mainly of myself, you know.”
“You need somebody around you who’s not Mageborn,” Sarra said.
Her sister eyed her thoughtfully. “You must annoy your fellow Councillors no end when you do that.”
“Do what?” asked Taigan.
“Know what you’re thinking practically before you think it. Surely you’ve been subjected to that little trick of your mother’s.”
Taigan shrugged, and Sarra hid a flinch. To Cailet, she went on, “He can’t be for show—just to demonstrate to everyone outside of Mage Hall that you don’t discriminate against those who aren’t Mageborn.”
“But that will be one result,” Lindren said. “A good one, just as his presence will be good for your magic-proud students.”
“Yes,” said Cailet. “But he wants to do this, Lindren, and I need someone I can trust without even thinking about it. Oh, I have no qualms about the others, don’t mistake me. But when most of them look at me, they see the Mage Captal. They give their loyalty to her.”
Sarra frowned as the black eyes in the thin, angular face focused on the brandy bottles. Suddenly she remembered how, that first year Cailet had been Captal, she’d numbed her fears and griefs with liquor. Far too much liquor.
“The Captal must survive,” Sarra heard herself say.
The Captal nodded, saying softly, “Can you imagine what it’s like to have a hundred people around you who have freely sworn that your life is more important than theirs—than anyone else’s in the world?”
“But it is,” said Taigan. “You’re the Captal. Do you need Aidan because he thinks that way even though he’s not a Mage Guardian?”
“I need him because just about the first thing he ever said to me was that his father died to keep me safe.” She shook her head and looked at Riena. “In serving me, Aidan’s doing what his father did. Of his own will, of his own needs. And of my needs, I’m going to keep him safe. For his father.”
Tarise cleared her throat. “Well, for all these noble sentiments and motivations, Marra Gorrst may have something to do with it, too.”
Cailet’s head turned so fast Sarra could almost hear her neck crack. “Marra Gorrst?”
The tension Was broken by Riena’s delighted laughter. “Now, here’s history! We know something the Mage Captal doesn’t!”
A little while later they joined the men in the music room, where Collan was playing idle runs on Falundir’s lute while its true owner sat nearby with eyes closed and a dreaming smile on his lips. Rillan Veliaz, as fascinated by Cailet’s tangle puzzle as the twins, was on the floor with the pieces spread out all around while Mikel searched for the one that would bring up the view of Mage Hall. Taigan, weary of serious discussion, joined them eagerly. Tarise consulted with a servant about coffee and card tables. Riena and Lindren sat with their husbands; Cailet drew Aidan aside by the empty hearth, a puzzled look on her face that changed to amusement when he blushed at something she said. Sarra remained in the doorway for a few moments, telling herself she’d been a fool to let so many years go by with so few of these evenings in them.
Collan smiled when he saw her. He always did, whenever she came into a room—as if every sight of her was exactly like the moment when his memory had come back that night at the Octagon Court. She was hardly that girl anymore, nor he that young man. They were both older; he was a little grayer; she was a little plumper. Yet whenever he looked at her like this, and smiled, she was twenty-three again.
Ridiculous. And how much more a fool she’d been to stay away from him and that look and that smile for so long. She went to his side, drawn by that awareness of him that had been in her from the very first—yes, even when he’d thrown her over his shoulder like a sack of beans and carted her off as a hostage. She dimpled on recalling it, and he grinned back at her.
“I’m about to give you something else to laugh about,” he told her, resting the lute on its stand beside his chair. Rising, he rapped his knuckles on the wooden table to gain everyone’s attention. Falundir opened his eyes with a start; Collan shrugged a rueful apology and then bowed to Riena and Lindren.
“Ladies,” he said, “I confidently and happily report that the estate of Shore Hill is yours whenever you want to write out the payment voucher.”
“What?” Lindren gasped.
“When did this happen?” Riena demanded.
“I thought the owners wouldn’t sell?” said Jeymi.
“Did I,” Collan asked severely, “or did I not tell you to trust me?”
Cailet gave a sardonic snort of laughter. Col glared at her, then grinned again.
“Shore Hill?” Sarra asked. “The Wittes will never sell it. Mirya still has grandiose notions about setting herself up in style—”
“Now she’ll be able to,” Collan said, “just not as a landed lady at Shore Hill.”
“How’d you manage it?” Lindren asked.
“She changed her mind about wanting to live in the country,” he replied blandly.
“How much is it going to cost my mother?”
“Several thousand less than you offered. I drive a hard bargain.”
Sarra eyed him suspiciously. But it wasn’t until they were alone in their bedchamber that she got the truth out of him.
“I blackmailed the miserable bitch,” he said bluntly.
“You what?” Naked, she picked up her nightdress from the bed.
“When she broke her husband’s jaw, I finally had medical evidence against her.”
Sarra sat down hard on the bed, her nightdress sliding to the Cloister carpet in a puddle of white silk and lace. “Collan,” she breathed, “what have you done?”
“It’s what she won’t be doing anymore that’s important.” He shrugged out of longvest and shirt, and sat to take off his boots.
“Medical evidence?”
“The healers weren’t eager to swear out statements, but I finally convinced ’em. With those in hand, plus the offer for the estate, plus the fact that Mirya needs money—” He glanced over at her. “Plus a threat to bring her up on charges and make her a test case in the Council regarding the laws—”
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“I went about it wrong at first,” he continued, oblivious to her shock. “And it cost Ellus Penteon. But with the healers saying there was no way his injuries could have come from anyth
ing but a beating—” He shrugged. “I also told her that if she divorces him for any reason but his own consent, or if I ever hear of the slightest mark on him again, the deal is off and I’ll have her up on charges.”
“Before the Council.”
“Damned right, before the Council. Her Web’s too tight with most of the members of the High Court, they’d never even hear the case. But you can take it to the top, and she knows it.”
Sarra got to her feet and put on her nightdress and went into the bathroom to wash her face. When she returned, she was reasonably certain that her temper was under control.
She was wrong.
“You used the power of my office to threaten a citizen of Lenfell?”
He nodded. “You bet I did, First Daughter.” He slid a silver-and-onyx earring from one lobe and went to work on the silver-and-moonstone in the other. “You’ve done it plenty of times. You used your power to get Aidan away from his mother and change his Name from Firennos to Maurgen. You rewrote the laws to give fathers more rights to see their children, even if they’re divorced or unacknowledged. What’s so different about this?”
“My office, Collan—not yours!”
He slapped both earrings onto his dressing table and whirled around, more enraged than she’d ever seen him. And even though she was just as angry, it smote her that she had no idea why he was so furious.
“Your office!” he snarled. “Your power! You, who never see anything until I shove it under your nose! Well, this time you weren’t here to see it even if I had performed my usual humble function! What’d you expect me to do—wait until she killed the poor idiot?”
“That’s not the point!”
“It’s exactly the point! I find out something, I come to you with it, you get it changed. Well, this time I did the changing myself—and you’re lucky I did it the way I did! What I really wanted was to give Mirya Witte a taste of what broken ribs feel like!”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“No man would, is that it? Saints forbid that he should even defend himself if the woman who owns him wants to break his jaw! Look at it, First Daughter! I’m showing it to you now, this nasty little secret society lets them keep—what goes on in a woman’s home is her business, and what happens between her and her husband is no concern of the law!”
Sarra glared at him. “You used who and what I am to blackmail Mirya Witte into selling her property—don’t you see how wrong you were?”
“No,” he snapped. “I used your power because I don’t have any of my own. That’s what life is like for men. I happen to be a man married to a woman with a lot of power. So I used it. So what? Lindren got Shore Hill, Mirya Witte got the money she needs, Ellus Penteon gets to live without fear of getting beaten to a pulp—”
“And what did you get?”
“The satisfaction of doing something!”
Sarra consciously unclenched her fists. “I think,” she said slowly, “that you had better find someplace else to sleep tonight.”
“This is my bed just as much as it is yours. You go find another one.”
Thirty-nine Generations of Ambraian ice stiffened her spine. Knowing from her experience in Council that if she said another word, she’d say something too lethal to forgive, she stalked past him out the door.
15
“CAPTAL?”
Cailet looked up from the desk, where she was writing a letter to Lady Sefana about Aidan. “Mikel. Come in. But why so formal? I’ve always been ‘Aunt Caisha’ before.”
The boy closed the door behind him and smiled shyly. “I guess I need to ask you something as the Captal.”
Setting down her pen, she turned in her chair and regarded him thoughtfully. “Something to do with magic.”
Mikel nodded. “Is it possible—I mean, does it happen to other people—” He sighed and started over. “When you touch something, can you feel things?”
Cailet blinked. “Feel what, exactly?”
He came closer, gaze fixed on the gleaming hardwood floor. “There was this glove.”
“Whose glove?”
“I don’t know. It’s in Mother’s room—you won’t tell her we looked, will you?”
Confused, she said, “Looked where?”
“She had a box—it’s got dried flowers and some other stuff in it, some gold earrings, and the glove. Please don’t tell her we saw it.”
Sarra had a treasure chest? If Mikel hadn’t been so worried, Cailet would have smiled. “I won’t tell. What was so special about the glove?”
He told her.
Cailet sighed softly, all impulse to amusement gone. Gorsha, what is this? I’ve never heard of a Mageborn who can feel and see other people that way.
I told you they were powerful. It’s rare, but not completely unknown.
The glove . . . it belonged to my mother, didn’t it?
Yes, dearest. Though I’m a trifle put-out at Mikel’s description of me as “an old man.” I wasn’t even sixty!
She did smile then, at his vanity, and her smile was a good thing—Mikel was starting to get even more nervous. “You know what I think?” she asked her nephew. “I think someone spelled the glove with some pretty powerful magic.”
“Then it wasn’t us? Teggie and I aren’t Mageborn?”
“I don’t know,” she lied. “I won’t know for another few years.”
He bit his lip and scrubbed his fingers through his curls. “I had to ask.”
“I understand.” And I also understand that I’ll have to block that memory when I reWork their Wards tomorrow.
A wise precaution. Let them be normal children as long as they can, without even a suspicion of what they truly are.
“Normal?” You’re beginning to sound like Collan with that insulting “human” remark.
There’s more truth in what he said than you’re willing to admit.
What she wasn’t willing to do at the moment was argue it with him—not when Mikel was standing there waiting for her to say something. “Very strong magic is sometimes used to identify an item—magic so powerful that even those not Mageborn sense it.”
“Like Wards to keep people out.”
“Exactly.”
This is a new theory. I’m intrigued, Captal.
I had to think up something to tell him!
“So Taigan and I might be Mageborn, and we might not.” He made a wry face, shrugged and finished, “I guess we have to wait for that, just like for everything else.”
“Such as?” She smiled.
“Just—you know, to grow up, that stuff.”
“You’ve probably heard this a million times, but believe me, it’s true. ‘That stuff’ will happen soon enough, and last for the rest of your life.”
“Three million,” he grinned. “One each from Mother and Fa and Tarise. And she’ll be coming after me in a minute to put me to bed as if I was still four years old. I better go.”
“If you want to stay and talk a while, you’re welcome,” she offered.
He shook his head. “Teggie and I have early riding practice tomorrow.”
Cailet decided to open the doorway a bit more. “I’d like to hear what happened that night.”
The freckles suddenly looked darker against the pallor of his skin. He didn’t want to talk about it. He kept his expression calm, though, which impressed Cailet. This one was deep.
“But I should probably hear it from both you and Taigan,” she went on smoothly.
Mikel nodded, showing no sign of his relief. “I better get to bed. Good night, Captal.” After a slight pause, he amended that to, “Aunt Caisha.”
“Sleep well.” She watched him leave, then got ready for bed—already planning the configuration of Wards that would make remembrance of the glove and its accompanying sensations impossible. A pity she couldn’t unWork all the protections yet, and explore this odd talent the twins se
emed to share.
One day you’ll have to unWork every Ward you ever placed on them, Gorsha reminded her. And Saints help you when you do.
16
“IS Collan right?” Sarra had gone to Cailet’s room. In her own house, her own home, she had nowhere else to go.
Cailet, sitting up in bed, hugged her knees to her chest and rocked slowly back and forth. “Yes. But there are worse things than being right, Sasha. If he doesn’t find something to do with himself, he’s going to be miserable.”
“Even more than he is now? But what can I do?”
“Change the laws he hates so much, for a start. It’s the purpose he serves in your public life, you know. He’s absolutely right about that.”
“I know, I’ve always known.” Sarra thought back to a conversation in a lightless cell in Renig Jail. Collan had always been able to make political theory personal, give principle a face and a name and a set of tragic circumstances. “He keeps me real by showing me reality.”
“But you’re the one with the power to do something about it. Consider what kind of man he is, Sarra. Truly told, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened long before now.”
“What hasn’t happened?” she cried forlornly.
“You know that, too.”
Sarra got up from the bed to pace. She did know, and it frightened her. “I can’t lose him. I can’t. I’ve spent so much time away from him and the children—just now, tonight, I decided that I have to put them first, and stop working so hard—”
“About time,” Cailet observed.
“I’ll resign from the Council.”
“Now, let’s not go too far! I’ll grant you a river of regret, but don’t drown in it. How happy would you be if all you did from now on was wander around Roseguard, harassing the gardeners? I know you, Sasha. You and Col are just alike. You both need to do something.”
She spun on her bare heel to face her sister—who was maddeningly calm and almost smiling. “Anything I suggest to him, he shrugs it away!”