by Melanie Rawn
“Because she owes me a favor for letting her dress me. And because there’s nothing she’d love more than to show off her work on the prettiest girl on Lenfell.” With a few deft movements he fitted the pieces of the box back together and set it onto the table. “Y’know, if the Malerrisi were really smart, they’d make this like those puzzles the Captal used to send you. So that whichever way it was put together, it’d do something different.”
Taigan was distracted from the entrancing vision of herself in one of those scrumptious gowns like Mother wore. “Oh, that’s all we need—another explosion, or a spell to knock us all blind and deaf. It won’t do anything else, Fa. The magic’s all gone.”
“Is it?” He cocked his head and eyed her strangely.
“Well, yes,” she said, not quite knowing how she knew. Her mother knew things—gut-jumping, she called it—and Taigan had in some measure inherited that gift. It was how she’d known that Lady Mirya Witte was going to divorce her husband and marry her new boy. It bothered her that she’d been so wrong yesterday about the Malerrisi and what he carried; maybe the excitement and danger had clouded her ability. And maybe not. But gut-jumping had nothing to do with being Mageborn.
Or did it?
“Fa,” she said slowly, “Mikel and I are too old now, aren’t we? To become Mage Guardians. If we had magic, it would’ve shown up years ago.”
“Possibly. You mind much?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter much if I do, does it? I can’t do anything about it.”
He gave a quiet sigh. “Have we reached the what-do-I-do-when-I-grow-up stage?”
She didn’t say that thank you very much, she was grown up. “I’ve been thinking about it some, yes.”
“Thought about what? Business? Medicine? Politics, like your mother?”
She couldn’t repress a grin. “Spend my life the way you used to, with a ledger book and a long-winded factor droning in my ears? Not a chance! And not medicine either—I hate the sight of blood.”
“My delicate little flower,” he grinned back.
“As I proved yesterday! Knives for me, Fa, not scalpels!”
“Well, what about politics? Your mother carves people up on a regular basis in Council.”
“Every word Mother says when she’s wearing her Councillor Face bores me to death. And I’m pretty useless at everything else—” She sighed. “Just like every other rich girl my age.”
“That’s not true, Teggie. You just haven’t found what it is you want to be.”
“Well, becoming a Mage isn’t an option.”
“But you wish it was?”
“Sometimes.” She shrugged uncomfortably.
Collan smiled, turning the box around in his hands. “I think you’re kind of like this—locked up tight, waiting for the right thing to trigger what’s inside you. And knowing you, there’s definitely going to be an explosion!”
5
“ARE you certain you wouldn’t recognize him again?”
Mikel chewed a mouthful of salad greens, swallowed, and shook his head. “All I can say for sure is he had light-colored eyes—pale blue, maybe gray. I guess he’s pretty good at Warding, huh?”
His mother shrugged. “It’s all right. An identification would have been useful, but. . . .”
“Are there lots of them wandering around?” He didn’t bother to lower his voice; wherever Lady Sarra Liwellan went, people listened to her conversations. The lunchtime patrons of Velireon’s Kettle, Mikel’s favorite restaurant, were no exception, neglecting their own chatter in an attempt to overhear what was being said at Lady Sarra’s table. At least the waiters, just as eager to catch a word, provided attentive service.
Mikel had spent the morning listening to three Justices blather on about the shocking assault on him and Taigan—who, his mother blithely lied to the officials, had merely been out for a pleasure ride. As a reward for sitting still and keeping his mouth shut, she was treating him to lunch. They sat outside at a table with a little striped canvas roof and a view of everything. Mikel preferred the tables next to the wrought-iron trellises where vines screened diners from curious passersby, but the vines were blooming and his mother refused to spend lunch picking purple flowers out of her meal. They’d gone through the usual appetizers and were waiting for lemon-lamb stew to appear from the kitchen. Mikel sopped up spicy salad dressing with a chunk of bread and waited for his mother to answer his question about the Malerrisi.
“‘Wandering around’? Nothing so random. I’d guess there are probably about as many young ones as the Captal has sent out from Mage Hall. As for the older ones . . . well, nobody really knows how many survived the so-called destruction of Malerris Castle in 960.”
“Twenty-seven years is enough time to train up half an army. Is that why the Captal tries so hard to find Mageborns before the Malerrisi can get to them?”
Sarra nodded. A waiter arrived, burdened with a tray bearing two bowls of stew, another basket of bread, a fresh pitcher of iced mint tea, and a glass of white wine. “I didn’t order this,” Sarra said as the wine was placed before her.
“With the respectful compliments of Domni Witte.” The waiter nodded to an outdoor table fifteen feet away.
Mikel and his mother turned to look—he with intense curiosity about any man who would dare such a liberty, she with a carefully neutral expression on her face. The table was occupied by a middle-aged man Mikel had never seen before. But the woman who entered just then was familiar to him—and of great interest, as he recalled Taigan’s gossip. Lady Mirya Witte appeared not to notice anyone in the whole restaurant as she sailed by, trailing flags of green silk from tiny sleeves and half-bared shoulders. Domni Witte rose and bowed, half-turning to include Mikel’s mother in the salute.
Mikel, knowing that his reaction would be common chat by the end of the hour, said, “What a beautiful dress—if it was on somebody Teggie’s age.”
The waiter was present, so Sarra was compelled to frown at the impertinence, but her black eyes were dancing. To the waiter, she said, “Please thank Domni Witte for the kindness, but this is not a vintage I prefer.”
Mikel applied himself to his stew. Then, when he and his mother were as alone as they would get in a public place, he said, “If she were a man, she’d look like an overage bower lad.”
“And what would you know about such persons?”
“Not much. I guess Teggie’s right, and she’s trying to look twenty years younger for her next husband.”
“What?”
Mikel related what Taigan had told him last night. Sarra’s frown was genuine this time.
“Divorced and remarried? We’ll see about that!”
“Who’s Domni Witte?” He poured more tea for her, then himself.
“Mirya’s brother. A miserable excuse for a Blood,” she sniffed, “who once was deluded enough to think he might have a chance to marry me.”
“Long before Fa was around,” Mikel said confidently, and grinned. “He would’ve taken him apart and put him together again backward!”
“Mmm—your father’s a little more creative than that,” Sarra chuckled. “Let’s just say that once he got finished, Domni Dalion’s face would’ve wanted to sit down.”
He joined in her laughter, but the next moment turned serious. “Mother, did you and Fa know right away? I mean, all the songs and stories talk about love at first sight and all that, but the ones about you always say—”
“—that we spent most of our time shouting at each other?” She gave him a merry wink that made her look nowhere near the forty-one years they’d celebrated at her last Birthingday. “Truly told, that was how we knew!”
Confused, Mikel asked, “Because you were always mad at him?”
“Because everything he said and did annoyed me so thoroughly that it was either fall in love with him or kill him.” She paused. “Something slow and lingering, involving a
roomful of lutes played off-key. . . .” Suddenly she eyed him. “Why do you ask? Is there a young lady of your acquaintance that you’d like to murder?”
“No,” he said, without even the hint of a blush. “I was just wondering how to recognize her when I find her.”
“You’ll know,” she assured him—and not with the amused condescension of most adults either. She said it because she believed it from personal experience, and she expected him to believe it, too. She smiled at him again, his favorite smile that warmed and teased and loved him not just because he was her son, but because he was Mikel. It was fashionable among his friends to denigrate one’s parents, to consider them fusty and foolish; Mikel would rather have died than admit it to his peers, but he had never looked on his powerful, beautiful mother and handsome, talented father with anything less than pride, admiration, and gratitude that he was their son. He was about to say something unfashionable to that effect when a commotion at the entrance caught his eye.
Two more people had come into Velireon’s Kettle: a plump, badly dressed woman of about sixty, and a young man who, even judging by Taigan’s fourth-hand description, could only be the new boy.
In a word, gorgeous.
He was tall—he had at least two inches on Mikel’s father, possibly more—and not even the modesty of a loosely fitted longvest could disguise the lithe power of his body. His chest was deeply muscled, with correspondingly developed shoulders, arms, and thighs, but the overall effect was one of physical perfection, not massive or aggressive physical strength. Mikel—not quite sixteen and not quite full-grown, despite the size of his feet—felt scrawny just looking at him.
And then there was his face.
Large, deep-set gray eyes. Thick black brows saved from severity by a whimsical arch. Wide, full-lipped mouth. Straight nose, square jaw, angular chin—strong-boned without heaviness, finely made without delicacy. An errant black curl escaped his plain dark coif to grace a high, broad forehead. Two things spared the young man’s face from monumental and overpowering perfection. The first was a fractionally off-center cleft in his chin. The second was a fractionally crooked front tooth revealed by the uneasy smile he gave Mirya Witte.
Looking at this quintessence of feminine dreams, Mikel—who already had eligible girls swarming around him (one anonymous young lady even sent him bad poetry every Saint’s Day)—felt about as attractive as a kyyo with mange.
Mikel sneaked a glance at his mother and struggled against a grin. Her jaw hung just a little unhinged, and her eyes were just a little wider than usual, and her cheeks were just a little flushed. For her, this was the equivalent of flopping to the floor in a faint.
He leaned across the table, whispering, “You look like you want a divorce so you can marry him!”
Startled from her stunned stare—in which she was joined by every other woman in the restaurant—Sarra cleared her throat. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Don’t worry,” he soothed. “I won’t tell Fa.”
“Nothing to tell,” she said firmly.
“Uh-huh. First a former prospective husband sends you a drink, and now you have to pick your eyes up from the table when some handsome young stud walks by—”
“Mikel,” she cautioned, and when he grinned again, she told him, “I may have your father take you apart and put you back together again, and with some manners this time!”
The young man was now seated opposite Mirya Witte. Mikel would’ve thought she’d have him right next to her, the better to get her hands on him, but he supposed this positioning allowed her to look her fill. “Wonder who the other woman is.”
“What? Oh—well, if Taigan’s right about Mirya’s wedding plans, Dalion is there to represent the Wittes in the negotiations. So the other lady must be representing the boy—as well as making sure Mirya doesn’t paw the clothes off him in public. Disgusting, at her age!”
“He must be incredibly poor. I mean, with his looks, he could get anybody!”
“It’s one of the worst aspects of society that a dowerless man must trade on his looks—”
“—and a rich one can be as ugly as a grizzel,” Mikel said.
“I’ve done what I can, but almost forty Generations of custom are difficult to overcome.” She caught and held his gaze with her own. “Thank Imili and Maidil and every other Saint in the Calendar that you won’t have to go through any of it. Marry the girl you love, Mikel.”
He shrugged. “I’ve got lots of money and a face that doesn’t scare horses. But it’s finding the girl that’s the real trick, isn’t it?”
“You will. And when you do, you’ll know.”
6
“AND of course,” Sarra said at dawn the next morning, voice rich with amusement, “it never even occurred to him that even when he finds the girl, she might not like him!”
“For shame!” Col grinned. “Thinking such a thing about your own son!”
“In this, my immodest Minstrel, he is distinctly your son!” She finished buckling her sandals and stood up from the bed—dragging all the sheets off him in the process. When he blurted a protest, she smacked him on a naked thigh. “Time you were out of bed, lazy. You’re off to Wytte’s today, remember, to look into the boy’s situation.”
“Exactly. I’m resting up.”
“For what?” she scoffed. “Lying around the pool?”
“Lady dear, if this infant is indeed being primped and primed for the voracious Mirya Witte, then the very last thing he’ll be doing is lying around the pool.”
This proved to be the case, to Collan’s everlasting regret.
There was another recent arrival at Wytte’s besides Mirya’s new boy. In the foyer was a statue. Not a particularly good statue—the pose was awkward, and several fingers had broken off and been inexpertly welded back on—but Col assumed its technical quality was secondary to its visceral impact. The bronze was seven feet tall, impossibly muscular, and hung like a Tillinshir gray. That was the only part of him that wasn’t green with rust.
Collan took one astonished look and burst out laughing.
“I must say,” remarked Domni Pierigo Wytte, “that’s the first time he’s gotten that reaction.”
“Well, just look at him. You could give the rest of him a polish, you know.”
Pierigo grinned and flicked a finger against the statue’s outsized member, shining gold against the tarnished rest of him. “We bought him from a bower in Neele. The customers used to rub it for luck.”
“This was on display in a bower? Bad for business. Nothing in anyone’s stable could measure up.”
“You’d be surprised. Here for a swim?”
“Actually, I thought I’d visit the torture chamber. Strained a shoulder the other day, maybe I can work the kinks out.”
“Hauling Lady Sarra away from the little Malerrisi gift? Yes, we all heard about that. Shocking. But she doesn’t weigh enough to wrench a muscle. You’re out of condition, lad.”
“And you’re a natural blond,” Collan replied sweetly.
Domni Pierigo laughed heartily and escorted him down the hallway. As they turned in the opposite direction from the pool room, he began to hear the grunts and groans of men in serious pain. Collan held open the double oak doors so the other man could precede him—but mainly because he didn’t want Pierigo to see him wince.
The room was approximately the size of the Malachite Hall at Ryka Court, but the activities conducted within were considerably less stately. Reeking with sweat, echoing with the bellows of the Master Torturer and the whines and whimpers of the torturees, the place was packed with men straining at weights or pounding around the bordering track oval or contorting themselves into various impossible positions. All were naked but for cod-pockets, and most of them looked utterly miserable.
They were also, every single one of them, in perfect shape. Not a paunch, not a bulge, not an untoned muscle, not a hint of excess flesh. Co
llan found them absolutely nauseating.
Pierigo Wytte cast an amused glance at him. “Change in policy since you were here last. They’re all bower lads. We now reserve Seventh through Eighth exclusively for them, to keep them separate from the other patrons. They found it too depressing.”
“I can’t imagine why,” he muttered.
“This is why,” he grinned, slapping Col’s belly. And then he realized whose depression Pierigo was talking about. “We’ll start you off easy,” he went on as they hurried across the track between runners. “It’s not wise to rush it with men your age.”
His age. Wonderful. Not yet fifty, and he was classed with the great-grandfathers.
“Where do I start?” he began to say, but the words never left his mouth. Coming around the outer curve of the track, running as smoothly as if those long legs could run forever without breaking a sweat, was unquestionably the most dazzling young man Collan had ever seen. Sarra’s description—suspiciously lyrical as it had been—hadn’t done him justice.
Pierigo watched him go by, frowning. “He needs a little more work,” he said critically.
“Where?” Collan asked in a strangled voice.
Pierigo patted his arm consolingly as they continued toward the scales in the center of the hall. “We were given specifics by our cousin Mirya,” he said, grinning as he claimed kinship with the formerly Blooded Wittes—a connection they venomously refused to own. “Why do you think Ellus Penteon spent so much time here, and wore that chain around his waist? She had it welded on him the day she married him.” Pierigo shrugged. “She’s just as fanatical about her own figure, of course, so it’s not as if she’s one of those women who puffs up like a ripe melon and then screams if her husband gains half a pound.”
Collan shook his head. “Women,” he intoned, “are horrifying creatures.”
“Hah! You’re complaining? You husband the best one in Sheve!”
“In all fifteen Shirs,” Col grinned.