by Melanie Rawn
“Ah. Orphaned, then?”
“In the Rising, as near as I can figure it.”
“What do you call yourself, then?”
“Jored. I use the Name Karellos—there are a lot of them in The Waste where I grew up, and I didn’t think they’d mind one more.”
“Why not Ostin?” Aidan asked, arching a brow. “There’s even more of them.”
“Lady Lilen keeps close watch on the Name.”
Cailet nodded. “And if she’d found another Ostin, of her Blood or not—”
Jored’s fine lips tightened. “Everyone knows of her generosity, and I don’t take charity. I’ve worked all my life, with help from nobody. If you accept me at Mage Hall, Captal, I’ll work for my keep and my training.”
“Oh, you’ll work, all right,” she said.
All at once he smiled, with happiness and humor and singular sweetness. “You’ll have me, truly told? I can become a real Mage Guardian, and not have to fight what’s in me anymore because I don’t know how to use it?”
“I will, you can, you won’t, and you’ll learn,” Cailet told him, returning his smile. “Come to Mage Hall tomorrow, Jored. You’ll join our new group of Prentices.”
To her surprise, he gave her a bow as elegant as a Ryka Court Blood’s. “Thank you, Captal. You won’t regret it.” Extending his open palm, the gold eagle coin gleaming in it, he said, “This is all I have. It’s yours, as I am yours.”
“What’s this?” Aidan asked, amused. “Are you offering the Captal your dowry?”
Jored’s long, sculpted jaw went rigid. Cailet shook her head; young men and their pride! “Save it,” she advised him. “Or, better yet, go buy yourself a decent cloak. Until you earn a Guardian’s, you’ll have to keep yourself warm.”
After he had gone, Aidan murmured, “He’ll rival Josselin for the number of girls offering to keep him warm at night.”
“Two young, exquisitely beautiful, orphaned Mageborns!” She gave an overdone sigh. “Which of the Saints blessed me with such riches?”
“You could always make them both wear masked coifs,” Aidan suggested.
“But how would I tell them apart, with only those two sets of gray eyes to go by?”
Much later, back in her own chambers at Mage Hall, she felt a restive stirring from Gorsha. Don’t say it, she warned.
Are you now reading my mind?
I don’t have to. We’re both thinking the same thing. Which of them is it? She shrugged out of her clothes and into the nightdress Marra had laid out for her.
Does it have to be either? My advice would be to rid yourself of both.
There aren’t so many Mageborns in the world that I can afford to lose even one. And neither of them tastes like a Malerrisi in his magic, Gorsha. It may be neither of them.
But you’ll keep them both here, and keep an eye on them, as you told Collan.
She turned over in bed so she could see the lamp in the corner. Aloud, as much to herself as to him, she asked, “Am I a fool to keep them both here?”
Not if you’re doing it for the right reasons. If it is one of them, she’s had him for eighteen years. No one could undo her work.
Anniyas undid your work, with my father.
Gorsha said nothing.
“Well?” she asked aloud. “Didn’t she?”
You know nothing of Auvry as he was then. All you knew was the man he’d become.
The man the Malerrisi made him? No—I knew him as my father—who loved me.
He made no reply, and at length Cailet went to sleep. Over the years she had become adept at it, no matter what her worries—as long as there was a light burning in her room. And because the worry brought by Josselin Mikleine and Jored Karellos would not go away anytime soon, she figured she might as well get used to it.
18
THEY waited, the three of them, six days past the scheduled meeting. They were inconspicuous in Pinderon: two middle-aged women (though Glenin resisted the adjective; at forty-seven, she looked thirty) and a younger man, travelers on business staying at moderately priced lodgings in a pleasant but not fashionable part of town. When they were not at warehouses and factors’ offices arranging accounts and purchasing supplies, they shopped or strolled the beach. They attended morning devotions at Pinderon’s St. Tamas Temple on the feast of St. Pierga, three days after their arrival, and left a modest offering in the collection bowl. They were like any other visitors, drawing no attention to themselves and conducting their affairs with a minimum of fuss.
It wore on Glenin’s nerves unbearably. At Ambrai, at Ryka Court, and especially at Malerris Castle, her position was the highest, her presence anywhere an honor, and her person deferred to at every turn. She loathed playing the part of an ordinary woman.
And it was no aid to her temper that her son did not keep the prearranged rendezvous.
On the seventh morning of their wait, a letter came to St. Sollian’s Hostel. Glenin opened it eagerly while Saris Allard handed the messenger a few cutpieces for his trouble. Chava escorted him to the door, his handsome face managing to express both openness and reserve all at once; it was a trick he’d picked up from his mother, who as Threadkeeper could contemplate the most efficient form of slaughter while laughing at the imminent victim’s jokes.
“He’s not coming,” Glenin said, not bothering to hide her disappointment as she scanned the few scribbled lines. “He can’t get away.”
“I feared as much,” Saris murmured.
“I’m surprised he risked a letter,” Chava remarked.
“Oh, he was very clever with it,” Glenin told him. “No salutation, no signature but the initial J, and your name and that of the hostel for an address, Chava. Your real name, not the Tillinshir one.”
“I wish I was still there,” he fretted. “To keep an eye on him, carry messages, be close by if he needs me.”
“He’s not a child anymore.” Saris smiled. “And I can’t think of any circumstance in which his own resourcefulness wouldn’t be enough. Besides, you wouldn’t even recognize him! You left Malerris Castle while he was still a little boy, and returned after he was gone.”
“I’d know him,” Chava stated.
“Truly told?” His mother laughed outright. “Not after Glenin and I taught him to hide every single trace of his Malerrisi magic!”
“I wish I’d been able to,” he sighed. “I’d still be in Heathering.”
“We learned from your mistakes,” she soothed. “Thanks to you, we could Ward him perfectly. Isn’t that right, Glenin?”
“What? Oh, yes.” Glenin paced to the window and looked down at the street. It was good to be back in the world again, even though Pinderon was shockingly crowded and noisy after nineteen placid, quiet years at Malerris Castle. Nineteen years—the length of her son’s life plus the spring and summer spent waiting for him to be born. The boisterous street scene below her faded as she remembered those long weeks of pacing the balcony of the Sanctuary Tower, hating the imprisoning iron in its walls but blessing it, too, for the protection it afforded her from prying magic. Now iron had well and truly become her enemy, the bulk of it in Caitiri’s Hearth preventing her from watching her son’s progress at Mage Hall from Malerris Castle.
She missed him, her beautiful boy now grown to manhood. He’d been under Cailet’s tutelage for many long weeks, but their last contact had been long before that. And now he was all alone out in the world, without even Chava nearby in his guise of blacksmith to turn to if he needed help. Damn that bastion of iron ore in the mountains of Brogdenguard, thwarting Glenin’s vigilance.
Below her, a street vendor banished from her position outside a wineshop began a raucous diatribe, claiming the wine within was colored kyyo piss. The Watch was called for, but while they waited the locals gathered to listen to some really creative maledictions. Glenin shook her head in disgust. So many people, all dithering their way through
their lives without the slightest direction or order—her direction, the Great Loom’s order. Who knew what they were thinking or saying or doing, or to what purpose their thoughts and words and deeds were put? The horrifying chaos flayed her nerves more than the uproar of their voices. She missed the Castle, the comfort of her chambers, the beauty of the waterfall and the flame-colored roses growing wild on the hillsides, the Working of magic when and as she pleased.
What an appalling place the world was! But she calmed herself with the knowledge that all these gibbering people were unimportant. The worst any of them could do was fray the edges of the tapestry; the grand design was made up of more important threads. Hers; her son’s; and, unfortunately, Sarra’s and Cailet’s.
And those twin children, her niece and nephew. They ought to have been with Cailet by now, learning to be good little Mage Guardians. What ailed Sarra, to keep them with her so long? Didn’t she understand that magic had its own demands, and motherhood was the art of acknowledging those requirements for the good of the children—and, ultimately, of Lenfell?
Taigan and Mikel. She remembered them well from the scant time she’d had them in her grip six years ago. Pretty children, and too damned cunning. Their escape had been her own fault, for underestimating them. She ought to have known that the offspring of Sarra Ambrai and Collan Rosvenir would be resourceful little brats.
Glenin tasted that word in her thoughts: resourceful. Saris had used it and Glenin had repeated it to describe all three grandchildren of Auvry Feiran. But there was only one true son and grandson of Malerrisi First Lords, and his was the thread that must be protected as it wove itself into the pattern that was Lenfell’s future.
She turned abruptly from the window. “Pack our things, Chava,” she ordered. “We’re going to Roseguard.”
The journey was not as impulsive as Saris and Chava obviously thought it to be. Ever since the abortive attempt to seize the twins, Glenin had been postulating various methods of dealing with them. Their personal Wards were formidable; those set around their home and school were nearly as strong. Cailet’s Workings were fiercely effective. Plans had been postulated to take advantage of any opportunity that arose, and none of them had any chance of success that would justify the risk. The abortive attempt on Cailet’s life and the failed kidnapping proved the wisdom of not twisting the threads awry. Chevasto would provide; Glenin’s task was to keep her eyes open for the Saint’s intimations.
But the one thing Glenin was certain of was that if she could not have Taigan and Mikel, Cailet must not be allowed to have them either.
She had waited, musing and scheming, forced to grudging acknowledgment of one sister’s magical skills and the other’s maternal vigilance. And that father of theirs—the oddest of all in magical terms, lacking any trace of power but protected by vigorous Wards and his own unruly personality. By the Great Loom, she had reason to know that strength of will, having tried to break it nearly twenty years ago.
When the twins reached Mage Hall, they would be more shielded yet. And Glenin’s son was alone, surrounded by the enemy. . . .
Taigan and Mikel must not become Mage Guardians. Negligent of her to leave it this long—but Sarra still showed no signs of giving them up to Cailet. That they were Mageborn was obvious, even Warded from their magic. But they were seventeen this year, and they must go to Cailet soon or the repressed power might wither inside them.
What made it difficult was that Glenin had no intention of killing either of them. Their Magelines were much too valuable. They were Auvry Feiran’s grandchildren.
She used her contact in Pinderon—a woman of wealth and high position—to book passage for Roseguard. Her appearance changed: she cut her hair into the short Ambraian style she hadn’t worn since childhood, and added a number of rings to her fingers as an obvious indication of status. For her disguise changed as well: instead of two women and a younger man on business for their own family, she became an important Web factor traveling with her assistant and her son.
Chava did not much resemble Glenin—they had height and fair hair in common, nothing more—but he did look quite a bit like his late uncle, Golonet Doriaz. And Chava’s eyes were a shade of hazel not too far removed from Glenin’s own gray-green. So, poignantly, Glenin pretended he was her own, the offspring of her first and best-loved tutor in magic. The son she might have borne, and would have, had Golonet lived.
The charade would be easier once Chava stopped stuttering over the word “Mother” each time he had to use it for her and not Saris.
They were an obscene amount of time getting to Roseguard. The shipboard accommodations—clean, relatively spacious—were no recompense for the dozen stops they made between Pinderon and Roseguard. All manner of goods were loaded and unloaded; Glenin would have been amazed at the variety of Lenfell’s material wealth if she hadn’t been so impatient to reach her destination.
Finally, on the last day of Healers Moon, they arrived. Their lodgings in Roseguard were much more agreeable than those in Pinderon—a beautiful old inn on the outskirts of town, with fine antique furnishings and magnificent views of hills to the north and ocean to the west. The innkeeper, a minor scion of the Elgirts, was deferential to start with and positively fawning when she learned who Glenin supposedly worked for. Recommendations about the best restaurants (“Just mention my name”) and most stylish shops (“Quite the equal of Ryka Court, our good Lord Collan Rosvenir has seen to that!”) were capped by an offer to secure tickets to the opening of the new theater.
“Of course, it’s been sold out for weeks and weeks, and everyone who’s anyone is going, but my cousin is Sevy Vasharron’s dresser, and he could probably get you in.”
Glenin presumed the name should impress her, and obligingly looked impressed. “‘Everyone who’s anyone’?” she echoed, wide-eyed, then glanced at Saris, who wore her blandest smile—belying the predatory gleam in her eyes. “It sounds exciting. I would be extremely grateful if your cousin could get tickets for us.”
Domna Elgirt beamed with pleasure. “Tomorrow night, then—St. Mittru’s Day. I know you’ll enjoy it.”
Chava tugged at his coif-ties in a show of masculine dismay. “But I don’t have anything to wear!”
As it happened, all three of them required appropriate clothes. They had not expected to attend this kind of glittering social event. The afternoon was spent in the pleasurable pursuit of gowns for Glenin and Saris, and a new formal longvest for Chava.
That evening, exhausted and bemused, Glenin confessed to Saris that she hadn’t realized how much she missed shopping. “I had my own dressmaker at Ryka Court, naturally, but I still scoured the stores for shoes and gloves and suchlike. I’d forgotten how much fun it could be.”
“I’ll be on my third bucket of hot water before my feet forget,” Saris observed wryly, wriggling her toes in a steaming basin. “They didn’t think it was fun at all!”
“But the rest of it was delightful. And revealing,” she added thoughtfully, sipping a glass of wine. “Although if I had to listen to that shopboy rattle on one more instant about how Taigan Liwellan searched all over town before finding the perfect color of stockings in his inventory, or that Mikel Liwellan will be wearing boots identical to those in his window—”
“Quite the little darlings of fashion, aren’t they?” Saris drawled. “Please tell me I can make the girl spill something sticky down her dress, Glenin, please?”
“I had something much more entertaining in mind.”
“Tell!”
Glenin laughed. “Patience, Threadkeeper. I promise you’ll enjoy yourself thoroughly.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Lady Warden!” Then she grew serious. “I don’t care what happens to the boy, but would it be possible for Chava to have the girl?”
Glenin took another swallow of wine before she replied coldly, “As his reward for being discovered in Heathering?”
“No,” Saris rep
lied forthrightly. “Because he is the last Malerrisi of the Allard line—and the Doriaz, come to it. Besides, it’s time I had a granddaughter.”
Glenin considered—Would the child look like my Doriaz?—then shrugged. “Perhaps—after I have a granddaughter.”
19
THE intended mother of that granddaughter entered the theater on the arm of an adoring young puppy in a green-and-turquoise coif. It was the latest innovation to wear one’s Name colors and sigil as prominently as possible. Even former Thirds and Fourths had the right to an emblem—a sundering of tradition enacted by the Assembly only last year. At least the young Halvos escorting Taigan Liwellan had an ancestral Blood claim to the two feathers featured in the embroidery of his longvest—unlike the army of Jaronians in yellow and blue, sporting matching pectoral necklaces of grinning sunburst faces. There were a dozen Agrenirs in various versions of purple and red, their newly minted sigil of crossed scythes a deliberate insult to their cousins, the Grenirians. So was the Wyttes’ arrowhead, strongly reminiscent of the Wittes’ chevron. The Vasharrons were in red and blue, men and women alike wearing huge gold earrings in the shape of stylized nightingales—a tribute to their most famous son, who was to dedicate the theater this very night with a recital.
Glenin, Saris, and Chava arrived unfashionably early, the better to reach their seats, which were not in any of the boxes but back under the first balcony. The theater was decorated in elegant ash-rose. Four gigantic silver chandeliers dripped crystal, as did sconces along the walls. Over a thousand seats upholstered in cream-colored velvet were arranged in five sections: seriously cheap (second balcony), cheap (first balcony), affordable (where Glenin sat), expensive (first twenty rows), and seriously expensive (the boxes). A velvet curtain like a waterfall of thick cream wove patterns of roses around silver sigils of various artistic Saints. Alilen the Seeker’s feather, for singers; Delilah the Dancer’s crossed swords; the trumpet flower of Capriel Leatherlungs, whose patronage was wind instruments; Colynna Silverstring’s coiled strings; the five bees belonging to Sesilla Honeythroat, patron of choral singers; and Velenne the Bard’s lute for actors, poets, and musicians in general.