by Melanie Rawn
Everyone laughed—even Sarra, who now understood. But in Cailet’s eyes was something Collan and Tarise and Rillan and Telomir had already seen, and acted on as if given prior instructions. Cailet was desperate to make things seem normal, to pretend they were all here only for a convivial meal. She had something to hide, something she didn’t want to speak of just yet, and so wanted the conversation casual, amusing, as if nothing had happened. Mage Hall, Vellerin Dombur, and Glenin Feiran were not discussed. Not that anyone needed to say much; they all ate as assiduously as if this was their first good meal in a week. For some, it was.
Sarra contributed her share of informal chat while observing her children, getting used to them again. She watched the other two young men as well. Both were well worth study.
Jored and Josselin looked more like twins than the twins did. Both were tall, lean, muscular, and beautiful. From one head thick curling hair tumbled over the brow and down the collar; from the other, hair just as thick though not as curly was long enough to pull back into a plait at the nape. Eyes that in direct sunlight were tinged slightly green, like moonstones beneath wispy silk, were in the other face a sultry pewter gray. Sarra was genuinely awed that Josselin had become even more beautiful. Where most men would be haggard and splintered as an old stick by exhaustion, he seemed like ebonwood after a masterful hand had carved and refined him. Jored showed the effects of the ordeal more, but there was an almost luminous quality to his eyes that came from surviving a nightmare. Sarra couldn’t decide which of them she preferred—and wondered if Taigan had come to prefer Jored as much as Mikel’s letters had hinted. She must talk to Cailet about that.
At length, Tarise pried Taigan loose from the dessert plate. Rillan took charge of Mikel, Josselin, and Jored, and went to find them rooms. That left Sarra, Collan, Cailet, and Telomir—and Wards subtly reinforced by the latter two against eavesdroppers.
It was Telomir who narrated the story of what happened at Mage Hall and afterward, having learned it all from conversations over the last few hours with Cailet, Elomar, and the twins. Cailet sat back in her chair, cradling a mug of hot coffee below her chin, eyes closed as she listened impassively to the tale of fire and death—almost, Sarra thought critically, as if she hadn’t lived it herself.
When Telo had finished, Collan got up to pour him more coffee. “You’ve told us the ‘what.’ I can figure out ‘why’ for myself—and not because I’m even smarter than I look. Now I want to know ‘who.’”
Cailet glanced up at last. “Meaning?”
“The usual Wards were in place—no problem. The sentry was on duty—no problem. Three possibilities: somebody took advantage of everyone’s being in Heathering that night and sneaked in when you all came back. Second, the same somebody had an accomplice inside Mage Hall. Third, there was no outside ‘somebody’ and the traitor lived among you, maybe for years, waiting for this chance.”
Cailet sipped coffee and said nothing.
“A Prentice,” Sarra broke in, remembering what she’d seen that morning at Mage Hall, and her conversation with Cailet about knowing each new Mage Guardian. Collan frowned, and it was on his lips to ask how Sarra knew so definitely. But she shook her head a little, and he arched a brow in Cailet’s direction, and subsided.
Sarra went on, “This person has a greater command of magic than anyone suspects. The setting and timing of so many Battle Globes presupposes formidable skill. The explosions were placed as precisely as if working to a map. We may also assume that this person is too valuable to sacrifice, too powerful to lose, and is therefore still alive.” She heard Telomir draw a sharp breath, but before he could use it to speak Sarra silenced him, too, with a single look.
Cailet sat like a statue.
“But you already know all this,” Sarra said quietly.
“Yes.” Thin shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I just needed to hear somebody else say it, come to the same conclusion—to prove to myself I’m not totally insane.”
“Which one?” Telo asked thickly.
Black eyes met Sarra’s. “If I knew, I’d kill him.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Col said.
Cailet seemed to wilt in her chair. “No,” she echoed softly. “I wouldn’t.”
But Sarra saw something else in her sister’s eyes, and it startled her so much that she couldn’t speak. Telomir proposed, and Collan encouraged, Cailet’s taking a few hours to rest. Sarra watched the three of them leave the salon—Telo to escort his Captal, Col to find his children—and couldn’t even move from her chair.
Cailet had lied. She did know who it was.
A Prentice—and still alive. One of the wounded sent to Cantratown? No. Cailet would keep the person close, to watch what happened next. What had she said about Vellerin Dombur? Wait and see how it played out?
A Prentice, still alive, and here at Ryka Court.
“If I knew, I’d kill him.”
No one had reacted to the pronoun; it was common to use the masculine when speaking in the general negative. “If I knew who the donor was, I’d name a hospital wing for her”—but “If I knew who cheated me, I’d hang him up by his balls.”
“Him.” Jored Karellos. Josselin Mikleine.
Which of them was it? Which of those surpassingly beautiful young men was a traitor and a murderer and a Malerrisi?
And was Taigan in love with him?
5
CAILET broke the promise she’d made Elin, but only because Telomir’s father might have told him where the sanctuaries were. Gorsha had been silent for what felt like a very long time now. She knew why when she made her request to Telomir: Gorsha’s son turned away and stared out the arching windows of his office and said nothing for several minutes. When he faced her again, he looked like a hundred years of sorrow—and only then did she recall that he was family, too: his cousin Gerrin Desse had been Elin’s father.
“I know such places exist, but I don’t know where they are,” he said slowly. “Lilen might. I doubt it. Gorsha took care of such things with one or two other Mages during the Purge, but all of them are dead now.”
That set Cailet aback. “Do you mean that ever since I became Captal, these children—”
“—have been quietly killed, with no one the wiser? I don’t know,” he repeated. “Possibly someone else knew, and dealt with them, and passed along the knowledge. But it’d have to be a Mage. The sanctuaries must be Warded against discovery. There’s been no rumor in any Shir.”
“Find out,” Cailet said. “I don’t care what it takes, Telo—find out, because when Elin finally accepts that Piera can’t live with them—”
“This goes to the foundation of what we are, Cailet,” he said heavily. “We have so much invested in thinking ourselves free of the residual tragedies of The Waste War—”
“So much that an afflicted child is an affront to our arrogance and our delicate sensibilities,” she snapped. “It’s nauseating. Find a sanctuary for Piera. Just find one, Telo.”
“I’ll try. Now, I brought you here to rest, Captal, while rooms are being prepared for you. If you don’t lie down, close your eyes, and sleep of your own choice, I’ll bring in Elomar—and we both know he won’t give you any choice at all.”
“I don’t have time—and I don’t have any choice about not having any time either! There must be a hundred Mages roaming around Ryka Court, which is a stupid place for them to be if Glenin decides to get creative. I want to see all of them before I send them out by Ladder to—”
“—to where?” Telo asked. “We’ve lost Mages in every corner of Lenfell.”
“Except Dindenshir, Kenrokeshir, and The Cloister. By Ladder and by ship and on foot if need be, they’re going to be out of Ryka Court by the time Glenin arrives.”
“If she does get frisky,” he argued, “you’ll need more than a few Mages and some Prentices to stand against her.”
“I don’t think much of this wil
l have to do with magic at all. Think about it, Telo. This is Ryka Court. If Mages suddenly start dropping dead, the Council and Assembly will start to wonder who’ll be next. Besides, Glenin has Vellerin Dombur to do her work for her, in large part. She’ll present herself as the soul of prudence, and she’ll only Work magic to keep the coffee hot. What I’m worried about is she’ll find some nonmagical trap for all the other Mages, something I won’t be able to counter. So I want them gone, Telo. Every last one of them.”
“Except for—?”
“You, the twins, Elo—”
“Lusira won’t like that much.”
“I don’t give a damn what she likes. She and her First and only Daughter are leaving. From your group here, keep Sevy Banian and Rillia Vekke—they’re both young and Rillia can assuage your fears about my needing a Warrior to protect me.”
“Speaking of which, I’d like to bring Sirron Bekke here from Ambrai. Other than the fact that he’s damned good at what he does—which is everything—no Captal in memory has faced the Malerrisi without a Bekke Warrior at her side. And you need some new Warders.”
Granon, she thought suddenly, painfully, and nodded. “Send Rillia away, then, and bring Sirron’s cousin Ollia here from Neele. She’s young for it, but quick and clever.”
“And strong,” he added with a faint smile. “I heard about your morning with her.”
Cailet eyed him sidelong. “Will there ever be a similar morning for you, Prentice Renne?”
“Not a chance,” he responded cheerfully. “I’m much too old. I’d curl up whimpering on the floor in two minutes flat. Now, who else stays?”
“Jored Karellos. Josselin Mikleine.”
He cocked a graying brow. “The first for Taigan’s sake, I suppose. But Josselin? Why keep him here?”
Cailet smiled thinly. “Surely you’ve noticed the distraction he provides. No woman can think about anything or anyone else for five minutes after he enters a room.”
“Ten minutes, Captal! And you forgot to mention the men, who want to bed him or kill him! Well, Sevy Banian will be glad he’s staying, anyway. He’ll have a friend to talk to.” When she looked blank, he explained, “He’s a good lad, but a farmer to his toes. He’s much more comfortable rusticating in Ryka’s hill villages than wearing velvet regimentals around here.”
“But wasn’t he raised in Havenport? That’s not exactly a barnyard.”
“Near Havenport for his first thirteen years, then a year with an aunt who tried to hammer some culture and sophistication into him—without much success, though she did manage to get rid of his rural accent. Then Fiella Mikleine found him and took him to Mage Hall.” He leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips meditatively. “Sevy’s one of those Mages who’re perfectly happy in a little farmhouse within reach of a dozen or so villages, not a Scholar or a Healer or a Warrior but knowing enough about each to teach school, help the local physicker, and defend whoever needs defending. They set Wards for the sheep in the high country, and set off Mage Globe fireworks on Saints’ Days, and except for the times when people need magic they more or less forget that the woman or man living nearby is a Mage.”
“The backbone of what we used to be,” Cailet murmured. “Will we ever be that again? Will there ever be enough of us again to make magic a normal part of life?”
Telo shrugged. “It’s a goal, Cailet. There rarely were enough of us to go around. That’s why so many were itinerant. Mage, Healer, and Warrior, traveling great swaths of Lenfell to do what they could and hope nothing really awful happened when they were too far away to do anything at all.”
“That’s why there were Ladders. And Folding spells. And—” She stopped as a glow suddenly emanated from one of the crystal spheres cradled on Telomir’s office couch. Avin Sonne had found a satchel to carry the Globes in and cloth to cushion them; Dessa had taken charge of the satchel and on arrival here emptied it onto the brocade couch. The six were lined up, each on its own pillow, like sleeping cats. But now one of them had awakened.
Not the one Cailet had hoped—the one she hadn’t yet identified. She was afraid she would never know whose it was, which of her fifty-seven Mages who’d had one might now be dead. She hoped its owner was alive—but surely the Globe would have shone with a message by now, frantic and asking for help as the others had done. She’d visualized the shelves the way she’d told Mikel to do, trying to identify each and every glass orb, trying to match the names of the dead with the Globes that were now lost, trying to figure out from its size when it had been made and thus to whom it belonged. If she thought about it hard enough, she knew she’d be able to put a name to it, and send a message, and find out if that person still lived.
Cailet! Stop this obsessing and find out what Pier has to say!
Gorsha? she asked, confused for a moment.
No, the Wraith of Veller Ganfallin! Collect yourself and read the damned message!
Rising, she went to the couch and picked up the Globe.
Bringing Lenna Ostin Renig-Longriding-Ambrai-Ryka by St. Deiket’s according to request. Any further information on legal developments, any/all documents, hearing date, please send soonest.
“Telo, who asked Lenna Ostin to come to Ryka?”
“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “I completely forgot about that. Sarra and Collan have been named in a lawsuit before the High Judiciary.”
“Glenin?”
“No. Mirya Witte divorced her husband, in a manner of speaking. She murdered him.”
6
IT required vast amounts of patience to deal with Vellerin Dombur. During twenty years at Malerris Castle, Glenin had learned to tolerate the passage of time with a certain degree of calm, but she had never found it necessary to practice restraint with underlings—and everyone at Malerris Castle was her underling. Vellerin Dombur was not. Truly told, she fancied herself superior to every woman now living, and the only name that could spark any respect in her sapphire eyes was that of her ancestor, Veller Ganfallin. For her, Glenin and the Malerrisi were hammer and nails to be gripped firmly in her own expert hand; she would never admit to needing them, lest the hammer begin to think itself capable of driving home the nails under its own impetus. Without the Blood claims of the Domburs, Glenin was powerless.
Or so Glenin allowed the woman to believe. And it was hard, grindingly hard, to smile at her and Warm the day-old coffee sent up from the tavern and murmur the necessary things about how wonderful the world would be when all South Lenfell belonged once more to the Domburs, as it should.
“And then we’ll see what we can do about Ambrai, my dear.” A smirk dimpled her smug fat face. Fifty-two, she dressed as if she were still a skinny slip of an eighteen-year-old girl. Lace frills and silk ruffles meant to disguise the narrow shoulders of her youth now added bulk to already generous outlines; low-cut, tight bodices designed to make the most of very little now seemed in perpetual peril of bursting at the seams. Her extravagantly arched brows were dyed, as was her high-piled hair—augmented by bobbing false curls—and she wore precisely the wrong shade of plum-tinted powder on her eyelids. She looked like the vulgar mistress of a cheap whorehouse who took each of the boys to her bed thinking it was an honor for them.
But despite the fact that Glenin had youthful beauty, taste, and elegance—everything Vellerin lacked—and ten times the brains into the bargain, this woman possessed an invaluable asset: the sheer, crushing presence that came of ambition even more ruthless than Glenin’s.
Returning Vellerin’s smile, Glenin dared for just an instant to loathe the Weaver’s schemes that had given her this woman to wind so many threads around, and brought up the subject of Mirya Witte. Never one to suffer morons at all, let alone cheerfully, nevertheless Glenin suppressed her exasperation at having to explain everything three times before Vellerin began to see the point.
Invocation of Blood rights and dignity was not as potent as she’d thought it would be. Ve
llerin cared for no lineage but her own, which she traced in Bloods unsullied by Tiers (so she claimed) back to the First Census. Well, so could Glenin, but only on the Ambrai side. The Feirans were problematical; her father hadn’t known the name of his own father, and the Feiran women hardly ever married and even less often named the men who sired their children. In any case, except for Glenin and her son, the Name was extinct, systematically targeted by a covetous Web throughout the last century. Glenin’s grandmother had been the last female of the line until Glenin had taken the Name for herself. She didn’t mention to Vellerin that she intended her own granddaughters to be called Feiran as well, no matter who their mothers might end up being. It was not something one discussed with a woman as determined to bring back every law and custom of the old days as thoroughly as Vellerin Dombur did—for her own glory and aggrandizement, of course.
Strangely, what gained her cooperation in Mirya Witte’s cause was something Glenin hadn’t expected: Sarra’s misuse of her position to profit her Ostin friends. Glenin bit her tongue against the malicious observation that Vellerin had done much the same thing regarding her various land-grab schemes in Domburronshir. At first Glenin assumed the woman thought her intrigues secret, but after some thought decided that it went to basics of character. Just as the coward touted her own courage, the ignorant lout her powers of intellect, and the liar her veracity in all things, Vellerin Dombur would profess herself the soul of integrity and roundly condemn Sarra Liwellan for being a cheat and a thief while she herself cheated and thieved every chance she got.
The important thing was her agreement to support the lawsuit. Chava had written down the detailed particulars during a morning interview with Mirya. Glenin and Vellerin plotted strategy using this new gambit. It was galling to pretend that almost every idea originated with the would-be Grand Duchess, but she had the arrogance of the supremely self-centered that would admit to no brilliance she herself did not propose.