by Melanie Rawn
Rallying, Mikel said, “Don’t believe all of it.”
“Just most of it,” Taigan added.
The Mage grinned once mote. “So the Captal says.”
Mikel said politely, “I hope she was well when you saw her last.”
“You must’ve learned your manners from Lady Sarra—Saints know Collan Rosvenir hasn’t any. I’d love to stay and chat, but I think this road is becoming a little too populous.” He nodded at the four riders cresting a hill from the coast road.
“Tourists,” Taigan said with a shrug, preparing to mount her horse.
“I don’t think so,” Mikel murmured. “Look.”
The young Mage narrowed his eyes at the approaching riders. “Shit! Get in your saddles and ride like hell!”
“Too late,” Mikel gasped. “Here they come!”
The four big Tillinshir grays had jumped a fence and were racing at a full gallop across a sloping field, trampling the tall green grain. No swords flashed in the sunlight, and the men were wearing no distinctive colors or sigils—but threat thundered toward them and the young Mage drew his sword to stand between the horsemen and the twins.
Taigan moved almost as quickly. Her belt-knives were in her hands, poised to fly straight and true when the riders were within range. In her cool response to danger she was unlike nearly every other female on Lenfell; the attempted kidnapping years ago had taught her that though she was the Blooded First Daughter to a powerful woman of great wealth and high position, her precious person was not sacrosanct. Fa had taught her to use her twin Rosvenir knives. The only flaw—and only Mikel knew it was a flaw—was that ever since Glenin Feiran had tried to steal her and Mikel for the Malerrisi, Taigan had been itching to show just how good she was with those knives in protecting herself and her brother.
“What do you think you’re doing?” exclaimed the Mage.
Taigan didn’t even bother answering. Mikel—weaponless, cursing the fact, and knowing his sister would never relinquish one of her knives to him—sought shelter between the two Maurgen Dapplebacks. All he could think as the grays galloped down on them was that if one single scratch slashed their beautiful hides, Rillan Veliaz was going to kill him.
Four against two. Not terrific odds. But one of the two was a Mage Guardian who called up a Globe the size of a garden shed, all crimson shot with silver and gold. Mikel stared, wishing passionately that he and Taigan had been Mageborn. To command such power, to so confidently Work magic—
The four riders split into pairs, leaping the roadside fence, evading the massive Mage Globe. It followed one set, and when one horse plowed into it a shower of sparks exploded. Both grays reared, screaming, and their riders tumbled into the dirt and lay still.
That left two more. The Mage had barely turned his head, his eyes dazed with the backlash of power, when first one man and then the other jerked in his saddle. A knife sprouted like silvery spring wheat, one in each belly. A second huge Globe appeared, encasing one rider and then collapsing in on itself. The horse bellowed and bucked, and a third man hit the ground. The gray snorted, shook his head so that his slate-colored mane flew like a million separate wings, and galloped down the road back to Roseguard.
The fourth man, after yanking the knife from his right side and flinging it to the ground, spurred his horse around and fled the way he’d come.
Mikel whooped with triumph and ran for Taigan. The Mage seized his arm and spun him around.
“Get out of here! Now! I’ll take care of these three!”
“I need my knives back first,” Taigan said calmly.
“I’ll get them.” Mikel shook himself free. A few moments later he kicked Taigan’s victim over onto his back, extracted the knife, and wiped the blade on the man’s longvest. Fingers suddenly closed around his ankle. Yelping, he kicked again and jumped back. The man subsided with a groan, eyes shut, the wound in his stomach bleeding profusely.
“He’s still alive,” Mikel called back over his shoulder, hoping his voice didn’t shake too much.
“Find the other knife and get out of here,” the Mage ordered. “I told you, I’ll take care of them.”
By which he meant, I’ll kill them. Mikel heard it in his tone, and everything in him rebelled. Mage Guardians didn’t kill people—not unless the Captal was directly threatened. Magic wasn’t a weapon, it was a tool. He scanned the dirt road swiftly for a glint of silver, turmoil thudding in his heart. At last he found Taigan’s second knife, and this one he cleaned on his own shirt.
Then he saw what he’d done. And it felt appropriate that there was blood on him. And disturbing, that the shirt was dark brown and the blood didn’t even show.
He gave the blades back to his sister, who quietly sheathed them at her belt. The Mage, eyes blazing with anger, pointed wordlessly to their horses before striding off to check on the other two men.
“Now we can leave,” Taigan said. “And not because he told us to.”
Mikel took his sister’s arm and pulled her toward their mounts. “Come on, Teggie.”
“Maybe we should stay and help.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, those men were trying to kill us! This isn’t an afternoon tea social!”
“Mikel!” she exclaimed. “We’re supposed to be at Treyze Senison’s by Ninth!”
“Of all the ridiculous things to think about at a time like this—” He scrambled into the saddle. “I knew we were going to get into trouble! Come on!”
“Oh, shut up! I’m coming, I’m coming!”
After that, they were riding too fast to squabble. Half-Eighth passed, and they were only halfway back to Roseguard. There would never be time enough to see to the horses, get cleaned up, and get to the Senisons’ party without being scandalously late. Tarise would already be looking for them. Their father would be enlisted in the search soon thereafter. And Saints only knew what their mother would say when she learned they were nowhere to be found. That they were on a mission for Fa’s Minstrelsy would hold about as much water as a sieve. Strange, though, that a Mage Guardian had delivered the package, and not a Minstrel. Mikel said as much when they finally neared the Roseguard gates. Taigan shrugged a reply.
“It’s not as if we know everybody who works for Fa,” she said. “This Mage probably offered to take the package for the Minstrel, save her a trip.”
“Then why—”
“Because,” she said impatiently, “it’s probably more important than usual, and a Mage could keep it safer. Come on, we’re already almost too late!”
“We were too late half an hour ago. But I guess we have to play it out. What d’you think it could be, anyway?”
Taigan thought for a minute. “One of those Globes the Captal uses to keep in touch with her Mages? It’s about the right size to hold a small one. And that new Scholar here—what’s his name, something-or-other Irresh?—he doesn’t have one yet like Trelin and Biren Halvos do. I’ll bet that’s it, Mishka—it’s supposed to be delivered to him, and the Malerrisi found out and tried to take it so they can figure out how they work, and we stopped ’em!”
Mikel turned his head to stare at her. “I know you can usually gut-jump just about as well as Mother, but isn’t that pushing it a little? Malerrisi?”
“Who else?”
After another half mile, he said, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you? It didn’t bother you at all that you had to—”
She looked quickly around, as if fearing to be seen or heard. Then, holding out one hand flat, she said, “Don’t you believe it, little brother. I was scared out of my mind.”
And Mikel was oddly comforted to see how her fingers trembled. It seemed to go with the blood on his shirt somehow. He wasn’t clear on why this should be so—and in the next moment forgot all about it in concern for his sister. “Are you all right?”
“Mostly.”
He decided not to tell her what he suspected the Mage would do to
the three attackers.
They passed through the Roseguard gates. Mikel heeled his mare into a faster walk through the streets. “Where do you want to hide it until we can give it to Fa? Tarise found the hole in your bathroom ceiling weeks ago.”
“Then she won’t be looking there, will she?”
Somehow they avoided Tarise. It was just after Half-Ninth when they emerged from their rooms, hastily washed and dressed in the latest young fashion. A little too young, as far as they were concerned: Taigan hated her loose, low-waisted, high-collared pink dress as much as Mikel loathed his pastel blue longvest.
“We look like ten-year-olds,” he muttered.
“At least you get to wear a coif,” she retorted as they slipped out a back entrance and walked swiftly toward the Senison townhouse.
“What an honor. I get to swelter and sweat just like a grown-up.”
“This Birthingday I’m going to demand new wardrobes,” Taigan vowed, “We can’t go on dressing like children.”
“We won’t get it unless we set fire to all the old stuff.”
“Fa’s a walking fashion broadsheet—he’ll be glad if we show some interest—”
“Fa still thinks you don’t have tits,” Mikel replied. “Not that anybody’d notice, in that dress. Do something about your hair before we get to the front door, will you?”
She eyed him sideways. “You’re picky all of a sudden.”
Swaggering a little, mainly because he knew it would annoy her, he said, “A man likes his sister to look pretty and do him credit—with tits or without.”
Taigan punched him a good one in the arm.
The social life of youthful Roseguard was beginning to revolve around its two most important members—and Taigan and Mikel knew it. Soon they’d be attending parties and balls and dinners in their honor, and dressing (they devoutly hoped) in the elegant style of their parents. For now, they were condemned to make their appearances in “cute” clothes at “fun” morning musicales and “festive” afternoon tea socials. And appearances they must make, or risk insulting those who invited them. They had yet to give their own first big party, which would occur on their sixteenth Birthingday at Midsummer Moon. But because every mother in Roseguard wished her daughters and sons to attend this grand occasion, invitations had been coming thick and fast all spring. Tarise decided which they would accept, after careful inquiry into who else was on the guest list. Tarise was, in fact, turning out to be something of a snob—not regarding ancestry or wealth, but politics. She saw the twins’ social life as useful for signaling Sarra’s displeasure at the attitudes of certain Roseguard families. For themselves, Taigan and Mikel longed for the day they could wear clothes of their own choosing to parties of their own choosing, and Tarise’s political opinions be damned.
Treyze and Goryn Senison weren’t high on their list, not since the day Taigan had caught Treyze trying to kiss an unwilling Mikel and defended her brother’s honor by giving the girl a black eye. (They’d all been twelve at the time.) But the Senisons at least provided a tasty meal, and after the morning’s long ride and no lunch the twins were hungry enough to be courteous to their hosts. They were discourteously late, but their guilt over it lasted only as long as it took them to realize that it only mattered that they had arrived at last.
The other guests were the usual group who had Tarise’s approval. They bore the Names Rikkard and Irresh, Girre and Raninis, Maklyn and Berekard—and if any had once been Bloods, no one would know it. For, as Collan pointed out in disgust, “They’re all arrogant little shits.”
Taigan and Mikel ate and chatted and effortlessly charmed in the light social way their mother had long since perfected. By Tenth they were actually beginning to have a good time. The food was plentiful and excellent; the three comely Irresh girls were proving susceptible to the grin Mikel had inherited from his father; Taigan won her bet over which of Mili Berekard’s five older brothers would be first to marry; and the gossip was flowing thick and fast.
“Did you hear,” said Mili in a hushed voice, “about Lady Mirya’s new boy?”
“Another one?” Taigan allowed herself to be drawn aside to a secluded window seat. “What’s this one like? Besides young and gorgeous, I mean.”
“‘Young’? He’s not even eighteen! And ‘gorgeous’ isn’t the word, if what Nialla Kylades says is true.” Mili shrugged plump, pretty shoulders nicely displayed by a cool, thin-strapped summer dress—the land Taigan wished her father would let her wear. “Her brother Jaysom works at Wytte’s—”
“Jaysom? Oh—flat forehead, big nose, no shoulders?”
Mili grinned. “That’s why he switched from stacking towels and serving drinks to helping that man-mountain who supervises the exercise room! Anyway, the new boy just arrived at Wytte’s, and Jaysom told Nialla that he’s absolutely unutterably perfect. But this one’s different—she’s not being seen with him, he’s not just her newest toy. She’s paying for him to stay at Wytte’s!”
“To pretty him up and improve his manners before she takes him out in public?”
“Before she takes him into her household, more likely.”
“She’s never done that before. It’s disgusting. She’s even older than my mother!”
“Age has nothing to do with lechery,” Mili said sagely, and dipped into a pocket for a flat tin of lip-paste—another grown-up privilege denied Taigan. As pink was applied with a fingertip, she continued, “There’s almost thirty years between him and Lady Mirya!”
“Well, who’s going to complain? Her husband’s been teaching at St. Caitiri’s on Brogdenguard almost three years, and he’s got the daughters with him, so she’s on her own. She has as much right as any woman to amuse herself. It’s her taste in who she does it with that’s degenerate.”
“Teggie, don’t tell me you actually believed all that squirm about her husband’s taking the job so he could oversee their education? She just wanted them all out of the way so she could do as she pleased without her mother getting angry that she was setting a bad example for her daughters. Which she’s been doing with a new boy practically every season.”
“But you say this one’s special. . . .” Taigan frowned, then caught her breath. “Mili, she’s going to divorce her husband and marry this new boy!”
The little tin of pink gloss snapped shut. Shrewd blue eyes narrowed. “New boy here, husband and children finally away—it makes sense. But she can’t marry him until he’s eighteen and can legally sign a contract.”
“And it’ll cost her,” Taigan remarked. “She’s the reason my mother got the divorce laws changed, you know. But don’t tell anybody—I’m not supposed to know that.”
“The things you must hear!” Mili said admiringly.
Taigan smiled like a cat. The things they’d done were even better. But she said nothing about the morning.
“I’ve told you my best of the week,” her friend continued. “Now it’s your turn. You never tell me any good political gossip, but what’s being planned for your Birthingday? Is it going to be as spectacular as your father’s other parties?”
“Better—or so he says,” Taigan laughed. “But he won’t tell us anything!”
“Typical male. Well, then, what about that luscious new tenor? They say he’ll rival Sevy Vasharron one of these years.”
If she knew anything about the tenor, Taigan didn’t get the chance to share it. In the arched doorway of the salon appeared the tall figure and grimly scowling face of Rillan Veliaz. Two minutes later the twins had perforce made their excuses and were being hustled down the front steps of the Senison townhouse.
“Not a word,” snapped Rillan.
“But—”
“You heard me, Taigan!”
Ten minutes later they were hearing their father, and it did not make pleasant listening.
“Of all the stupid, crazy, damnfool stunts you ever pulled, this one’s the limit! You’re
lucky I don’t knock your heads together just to hear ’em crack! Who the hell d’you two think you are?”
Taigan looked her raging parent straight in the eye and replied, “First Daughter and only son of the two smartest leaders of the Rising.”
That actually stopped him in mid-tirade, and he shot her a suspicious glance. “Smartest?”
“You lived through it.”
He snorted. “Nice try. We weren’t smart enough to stay childless! And don’t you try to sweet-talk me, girl,” he warned, pointing a long, lean finger at her. “So you wanted some excitement, did you? All the usual crap you pull isn’t enough for you anymore, is that it? You had to steal the horses—”
“We didn’t steal them, Fa,” Mikel put in. “We just arranged to meet the courier and—”
“Shut up! Did you ever think he might’ve been followed? Or that he wasn’t who he said he was? Did you think of that? Do you ever think at all?” Collan stalked over to a chair and flung himself into it. Hooking one knee over the chair arm, he swung the leg back and forth for some minutes, glowering. The twins looked at each other from the corners of their eyes. He was really mad this time.
And he had reasons he didn’t even know about yet. But neither Taigan nor Mikel was about to tell him.
“Well,” came a new voice, cool and biting, which made the pair flinch as all their father’s shouting could not. Lady Sarra Liwellan strode through the sitting room, rustling crisply in an ivory silk trouser suit, the lacy tunic picked out in black thread—the kind of clothes Taigan dreamed of wearing. Turquoises glowed from her ears and from the clasp holding her golden hair at the nape. She was elegant and straight-backed and beautiful, and as always the twins were filled with pride that this remarkable woman was their mother.
The sting of her voice was anything but beautiful, however. “Congratulations. I hear you’ve surpassed yourselves. I didn’t think it was possible for any exploit of yours to surprise me, but it seems I was wrong. My compliments.”
This was worse than the time they’d restrung Fa’s second-best lute backwards just before unexpected guests arrived. Or the time they’d replaced sweet green peppers with hot green peppers in the condiments dish at the St. Velireon’s Day feast. Or the time they’d sneaked into Wytte’s and switched all the clothes around in the changing room. Or the time—well, this was worse than anything.