by Melanie Rawn
She winced slightly to think of the gibbering panic this had caused in her twenty years ago. Had she faced death so often since that she could shrug off this new threat? Certainly not. Perhaps it was the feeling of inevitability that accompanied the attempt on her life. In a way, it was a relief that it had finally happened.
Which did not relieve others of responsibility for its not happening again, with the desired results this time.
Her right shoulder was still numb, but her head was rapidly clearing and she felt, on the whole, not all that bad. Truly told, she was so free of pain that she suspected Elo of doing something to dull the bramble-scratches as well as the cut from the poisoned horn.
“So. You’re back.”
Another inevitability: Elomar, stern and glowering, coming over to stand over her bed. She smiled up at him. “Didn’t go very far,” she answered.
“You might have. I heard what happened. You haven’t—nor what came after.”
“After what? Oh, you mean after Granon Isidir killed the stag.”
“Reluctantly. Refused the trophy horns.”
“He didn’t look happy,” she admitted. “So what happened after?”
“A stampede. Everyone’s safe but Jored—a horn caught his thigh. He’ll live. It was no accident, any more than that,” Elo said, gesturing to her shoulder.
“No. But I’m still here.” She tried to push herself up in bed, failed, and looked up at him in surprise.
“Stay put,” he growled. “You weren’t mortally poisoned—thanks to Isidir—but it’s bed for another two days, Captal.”
“Impossible.”
He merely folded his arms, silently daring her to try.
Subsiding, she glared at him. “Where’s Sarra?”
“Cursing her husband, vanished on Minstrelsy business.”
“He’s lucky he found an escape from this mess—and if I know Col, he’ll take as long about it as he possibly can.” She reached for a glass of water with her good arm. “Who’s Warding me?”
“Pier Alvassy.”
“Get Sirron or Ollia Bekke.”
A brow arched.
“Pier is family,” she said deliberately, and a flicker of startlement passed over Elo’s long face. She almost smiled; he was one of the very few who knew who she and Sarra truly were, and most of the time he forgot. But because Pier was a close cousin to the Ambrais, Glenin and her son could almost certainly pass through any Working he set. “Besides, it’s the Bekke Name’s privilege, Warding the Captal.”
Cailet sipped again at the water, and settled back into the pillows. All at once she realized Elo was waiting for something—and from her lips there issued a string of feeble curses when she figured out what it was.
He was unimpressed. “In bed you stay, Captal.” Taking the glass from her limp fingers, he drew the blanket to her shoulders. “And Bekkes to Ward you it will be. Sleep well.”
And for the second time that day she slipped into the darkness.
14
TAIGAN, deprived of her father’s common sense, sought out her mother’s cool practicality instead. Once assured that both the Captal and Jored would live and be none the worse, mother and First Daughter silently sought the privacy of the Council Gardens that night.
There had once been a wooden summerhouse here; Anniyas’s favorite haunt, and because of this torn down and replaced by a gift from the Isidirs of Rinesteenshir. An airy circular fantasy of wrought iron painted white, the little trellised room was twenty feet high and twenty feet across, with a stained-glass roof whose full beauty vanished with the sun. But on nights such as this, with the Ladymoon one day away from full, silvery light was enough to bring pallid life to the colors and shapes overhead. Taigan sat in one of the three velvet chairs and stared upward, picking out the sequence of the story: Falinsen Crystal-hand, Maurget Quickfingers, and Caitiri the Fiery-eyed inventing the art of glass.
“Ward us, please—for silence only, unless you don’t wish to be seen,” said Sarra, and Taigan did—inexpertly she knew, but it was harder because of the iron. She had to huddle the Ward close around herself and her mother, and felt the sting of the metal the whole time.
Sarra sat down, putting a cushion behind her back—unnecessarily. Her posture was so rigid that her spine never came within six inches of the pillow. For a long while nothing was said. At last Taigan could bear it no more.
“Why did you ask for Silence, if neither of us is going to talk?”
Her mother roused herself and met Taigan’s gaze. “You’re in love with him.”
She nodded helplessly. “Mikel doesn’t understand.”
“You’ve been close all your lives. But you’re grown now, with different paths to follow.”
“It’s not just that.”
The beautiful black eyes were opaque, lustreless, set in a pallid face framed by moonlight-whitened hair. “Then what is it, Teggie?”
“He doesn’t trust Jored. I saw it in his face today, after the stampede.” She’d told the story once; now she told it again, with the personal things this time. The feelings. “When the stag charged, Joss ran from cover. Jored held him back. They got all tangled and then the herd panicked and ran straight for them. I’ve never been so scared in my life—I thought we were all going to die. I think I tried to Ward the Captal, I’m not sure. It all happened so fast. Mikel grabbed me and practically wrapped me around a tree—I saw Granon Isidir start shooting, and Mikel try to get to the Captal, and Jored hold him back, too—Mother, he saved both their lives! They would’ve had to go right through the herd and all those poisoned horns to get to her, it was insane even to try—oath or no oath! And Isidir was firing arrows quicker than I could see—but still Mikel and Joss both tried to get to her. Jored did right to stop them. They would’ve been killed.”
“Even so, Jored was injured.”
“They were struggling against him—Joss literally threw him halfway across the clearing, and one of the does grazed him with her horn as she passed.”
“I see.”
Taigan sat up straight. “You think like Mikel, don’t you? That it was wrong of Jored to keep them safe.”
“I wasn’t there. I have no idea what happened. But I’m more interested in why you think Mikel hates Jored.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Come now, Taigan! It was in your voice and your eyes, if not the specific words. I’m your mother. I know you.”
Putting so stern a name to the look in Mikel’s eyes made her reevaluate the look itself. “Not hatred,” she said slowly. “He was angry—first because Jored kept Josselin from the Captal, and then because he did the same thing to Mikel. A Nameless nobody from nowhere, daring to interfere with a Liwellan of Roseguard—”
“You’re not being fair. Your brother’s not that kind of person.”
Taigan shrugged. “He looked like that kind of person.”
“Is that your love for Jored talking? I certainly don’t recognize my daughter’s voice.”
“I can’t help that I love him!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “Mikel liked him at the beginning! I don’t know what happened!”
“Ask him.”
“I can’t. I’m scared to. If he answers the wrong way, it’ll ruin everything.”
“Between you and your brother, or you and Jored?”
“Both. You’re so lucky, you and Fa—you don’t have any siblings or even any other relatives to worry about whether they like the person you married—”
“Taigan.” Sarra’s voice was very soft. “Do you wish to marry Jored Karellos?”
Marry him. Live with him, lie in his arms at night, have him father her children. . . .
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not even eighteen.”
“A year ago, you would’ve said you were eighteen, so few days before the fact. Does that tell you something?”
“That I’m not ready to
be married—yes, I can see that, thanks,” she snapped.
Sarra said nothing for a few moments. Then, rising to her feet: “It’s getting late. I have a great deal to do tomorrow. And no one will be helped by lack of sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
“I didn’t think so. But don’t stay out here too long.”
Sarra came over to Taigan and bent to kiss her brow. “You think I don’t understand, but I do. I love you so much, my darling. I only want you to be happy. Good night.”
Several astonished minutes later, Taigan found her voice and whispered, “I love you too, Mama.” But by then Sarra had vanished into the darkness of the Gardens.
A short while after that, Taigan left the lacy circle of iron. She paced aimlessly along gravel paths into the more public areas, but no one was out—everyone was too busy gossiping about the morning’s near-tragedy. Only this morning? So short a time since she’d sat with Alinar Liwellan while that venerable Lady frankly looked her over for worthiness to be First Daughter of the Name?
All at once she wondered what Alinar would make of Jored as a husband. And how Jored would respond if she ever told him to sit down and shut up.
She managed a smile at that, her mood finally beginning to ease. She was surprised to find she’d walked all the way down to the lakeshore—again, deserted, and so quiet that she nearly leaped out of her skin when someone spoke from the shadows behind her.
“Cailet?”
Taigan turned around, moonlight shining full in her face, squinting. For just an instant he looked like Jored. But of course it wasn’t. It was Josselin.
“Taigan,” he said. “How stupid of me. Of course she wouldn’t be here—she’s still resting. Has there been any change? Have you heard anything?”
She’d never heard him babble. Why so nervous? “She’ll be all right. Elomar’s the best.”
He came a few steps closer. “Can’t you sleep either?” When she shrugged, he went on, “He’ll be all right, you know.” No need to identify he. “You care a great deal for him. Forgive me if it’s rude to say so. I—I believe he cares for you as well. As much as he dares.”
“Because of who I am? How ridiculous!”
“That’s probably part of it. It’s more like—caring isn’t something either Jored or I ever learned how to do. Or maybe we did know, once, and taught ourselves not to. We’re orphans, Taigan. His life has been as unsettled as mine. We’ve talked about it—we’re a lot alike in that way, almost the twins in experience that people sometimes call us in looks. He’d ask what my childhood was like, and almost everything I said was something matched in his life.”
“You both had it rough when you were growing up. I know that.”
“You try not to care about any person or place, even something so simple as a cat or dog, because you never know when it’ll be taken away, or you’ll be sent away—” He stopped, shoulders hunching in a shrug, and a smile flashed whitely in his dark face. “I’m sorry. That sounds disgustingly self-pitying, doesn’t it? Please tell me to shut up now!”
Now, there was something Lady Alinar hadn’t figured on: a man who asked to be told to shut up! Taigan smiled, thinking she’d have to share this new alternative in masculine character with the old woman tomorrow.
“Joss, neither you nor Jored ever had a family—and that’s a rarity in our world, where everything turns on family one way or another. But if you’re looking for people to belong to, you’ve already found them. Your fellow Mageborns.”
He nodded gratefully. “But it’s tough to get past childhood training. If Jored sometimes seems to back away from you—” He broke off again. “I’ve bothered you enough for one night, Taigan. If you’ll excuse me?”
She watched him walk away along the pebbled beach, then shook her head and started back for the lights of Ryka Court. But she was barely to the first stand of trees when she saw a figure she could never mistake for any other striding down to catch up with Joss.
What was Mikel doing here at this hour?
Well, for that matter, what was she?
Sleeplessness, she decided, was endemic tonight. For a moment she debated talking to her brother as their mother had recommended. But her nerves were wound almost as tight as Josselin’s, and she’d likely say something she shouldn’t. So she trudged back to her room, and sat up for most of the night with a book she would never remember having read.
15
“BUT why’d he do it?” Mikel asked again, and again Josselin shrugged.
“To protect us. You especially. It wouldn’t endear him to Lady Sarra, to be presented as her First Daughter’s future husband—the man who let her son be gored by triplehorns.”
Mikel kicked at a rock. “You really think Teggie will marry him? What do you think of him? As a person, would you want him for a brother?”
“You’re worried about your sister.”
“No, just him. Why don’t I trust him?”
“Because he doesn’t trust anybody else. I tried to tell Taigan the same thing a little while ago. Jored’s like me. He doesn’t care easily. He doesn’t trust.”
“He probably saved my life today. Yours, too. So why don’t I trust him?”
Joss sighed, hunkering down on the stones, long fingers scooping up flat stones to skim across the lake. “Mikel, feelings are just there sometimes. They happen, and there’s nothing you can do about them.”
“You mean I can’t help not trusting Jored, and Teggie can’t help loving him.”
“Maybe when you get to know him better—”
Mikel shook his head, surprising himself with his answer. “I don’t want to.”
Another rock sailed out across the water before Joss looked up, gray eyes frosted by moonlight. “The Captal accepted him at Mage Hall. Can you trust her judgment, at least?”
“I have to, don’t I?” Mikel muttered.
Joss flung his handful of stones into the lake, and rose with a rueful laugh. “Don’t we all? Which of us could possibly out-think the Captal? She scares people to death. But she’s just a woman, Mikel. Not all-powerful, not omnipotent, not a candidate for future Sainthood.”
He sounded somehow as if trying to convince himself. Mikel found that very strange. Wryly, he remarked, “Couldn’t prove it by me. She was different when she was our Auntie Caisha than she is these days as Mage Captal.”
“‘Auntie Caisha’? Joselet’s Silver Shovel!” He laughed low in his throat. “Auntie Caisha! I can’t imagine ever calling her that!”
“If you tell anyone I told you that, I’ll deny it in a court of law to my last breath!”
Josselin grimaced as they started back up the slope. “And here I’d almost managed to forget about the Grand Justices.”
“They’re taking their sweet time about a decision.”
“The longer they think it over, the more uneasy I get. They won’t dare acquit, but they’ll have to throw a sop to the conservative faction. And that means I’ll have to find some way of paying back the money Mirya spent on me.”
“I’ll lend it to you—Saints, I’ll give it to you!—in exchange for one thing.”
“What?” he asked warily.
Mikel grinned. “Tell me what it was like at Wytte’s. Spare no details. I want all the facts and all the gossip.”
Joss shook his head emphatically. “Your father would skin my hide for a fingerpick pouch, hang my hollow bones for wind chimes, and use my guts for lute strings if I soiled your innocent young ears with such things. And that’s if there was anything left of me after your mother got finished!”
“Then it is a—”
Joss interrupted silkily, eyeing him sidelong. “Don’t say it, Mikel. The last man to do so ended with a black eye. I swore then that the next would have his balls presented to him on a fork. Fried. With plum-brandy sauce.”
Abruptly Mikel felt the two years’ difference in their ages—and
not just the difference between the last of adolescence and the first of manhood. For all the humor of the threat, threat it definitely was. Joss might not know what Name to call his own, but the one he did have he would defend. And it had taken quite a beating at the appeals court.
“Sorry.”
“Forgotten. And don’t worry too much about Taigan and Jored. I have a feeling that it’s a marriage that will never happen.”
“She’s eighteen in three days, just like me. She can do as she pleases then—just like you.”
“Yes—and look at the trouble it got me into.”
16
THE Malachite Hall was arrayed for a Hunt Banquet—usually held the night of the chase, when all the riders bathed, applied liniment and liquor as their weariness dictated, and dressed for the occasion in an hour and a half. This time the feast had been postponed. To hold one grand affair the day before Midsummer Moon celebrations would be both exhausting and redundant. The delay was fortuitous in that it was certain by evening that the Mage Captal and her Prentice would recover fully from their shocking accident—though neither was yet well enough to attend the festivities. Holding a showy entertainment with their fate undetermined would have cast a pall over the whole evening.
Accordingly, at sunset on the night of Midsummer Moon four hundred sumptuously clothed and bejeweled diners gathered in the Malachite Hall. The same genius responsible for Cailet’s bird-themed breakfast chose to work with the gorgeous striations of the stonework; the company was inundated in green. Full-grown willows stood in massive copper tubs rusted green with age. Ivy-twined trellises framed every door and window. The centerpieces were potted ferns. Candles of every conceivable shade from lime to pine squatted beside each celadon porcelain plate atop grassy table linens, and the chairs cushioned backs and bottoms in moss-colored velvet.