by Melanie Rawn
A chill washed over Cailet, shivering through her so swiftly that it was as if the hot fury had never existed.
Taig rapped out, “Shut up, Geria!”
“We all know she’s a changeling!”
“I said shut up!”
He was tall enough and strong enough—and their childhood battles had been frequent enough—for even a First Daughter to back down.
Cailet stared up at him, shuddering with cold. “Taig? What’s she mean?”
“Nothing, darling. She’s just being herself—obnoxious as usual. Now tell me what happened.”
She calmed a little, warmed by his solid warmth. “I gave her money to buy a book, and she didn’t, and she wouldn’t give my five cutpieces back.”
“She’s lying,” Geria announced with a shrug.
Her brother eyed her. “Knowing you and money, I doubt that.”
“You’d take her word over mine? You forget who I am!”
“I know exactly what you are,” he snarled back. “You selfish cow!”
Geria sucked in a breath. “How dare you speak to me that way!”
“How dare you treat Cailet so! But I don’t know why I’m surprised. You don’t change, do you? Everything at your convenience, Saints forbid you should show any kindness—”
“I don’t have to listen to this.” She rose, preparing to storm out, then remembered she was in her own room. Cailet saw it all in her face. She could read Geria’s every thought and emotion as if they were written in the air.
“You’re damned well going to listen for once in your life! You’re as cold as the money you love! You never even grieved when Father died. Never knew what Mother went through, never even tried to comfort her.”
“I did so cry! I’m a very sensitive person, I—”
“Sensitive?” He let out a harsh laugh. “All you could see was yourself in the same position, barefoot beside a pyre with ashes on your head! If you wept, it was for the pleasure of all the attention you’d get!”
“That’s not true! I loved Father!”
Cailet listened and watched, thinking that Taig was right about Geria: she was made of ice. And yet ice could burn: the sight of her face, the sound of her words and the feelings she flung into the room—Cailet shrank against Taig’s warmth, trying to shelter in him. But suddenly his presence burned her also, with a fierce and angry fire like yet unlike the flames within her before.
“When he died, your first thought was how much of his dower you’d get! And even with the greater share of it yours, you complain that Mother won’t give you more! ‘While I’m young enough to enjoy it,’” he mimicked in Geria’s whine. “‘To travel, and have nice clothes and jewels and carriages and furniture—’”
Goaded, she spat, “Why shouldn’t I have more? It’s mine! I’m First Daughter! I have expenses—a husband and children to provide for, a house—”
“A house Mother gave you! A husband whose dower pays for it—and who thinks you hung the moons, Saints help the poor fool! He’s lucky, like Father—he doesn’t really know you. The pretense must be quite a strain, Geria!”
Cailet inched away from Taig, unable to bear the proximity. He was ready to ignite right here beside her—surely in another moment she would see the flames rise up and engulf him and Geria and everything else in wild rage—
“As for the children—you only bring them to see Mother once a year. It’s too far, the roads are too rough, you won’t risk them—won’t risk missing more than a few nights with your latest lover is more like it!”
“Oh, and you’re a portrait of all the virtues! I don’t see you giving Mother any grandchildren! Alin’s bad enough, but to have two in the family—”
“Leave Alin out of this,” he warned.
“I intend to! He’ll never get a single cutpiece from me!”
“You think he’d take money from you, or even want it?”
Cailet’s eyes filled with tears of pain. Taig was immolating her. She wanted it to stop—but the alternative was Geria’s terrible ice.
“Oh, that’s right. Alin’s sensitive! He and you and Margit—”
Taig went white beneath his sun-browning. “Say her name again and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” She laughed. “I’m First Daughter, Taig. I can’t be displaced or disowned. But you can—and will be if you don’t stay away from the Rising. Yes, I hear things, brother dear. While I work like a slave keeping the Combel Web intact, you consort with traitors and felons, spending Ostin money on schemes against the Council—”
“That’s enough!”
“I’m the only one in this family with any sense! Lenna and Tevis won’t even consider the husbands I’ve found for them—good husbands, willing to pay plenty for the Ostin Blood. And Mother’s worst of all! Coddling that impossible Alin, giving shelter to renegade Mages, taking in stray cousins as if they’re her own children, and an orphaned brat who’ll be the ruin of—”
Taig slapped her, bringing a cry to her lips and blood gushing from her nose. Fire quenched and ice shattered with the crack of Taig’s hand. Cailet’s whole body spasmed in reaction, in relief. For an endless instant time seemed suspended, and Taig and Geria were only people again, not raging opposing elemental forces.
Taig’s voice was curiously mild. “I said that’s enough. Give Cailet her money. Now.”
The First Daughter pinched her swelling nose and obeyed. Her eyes were sulky with hatred and the promise of vengeance. Cailet darted a hand out for the cutpieces and fled.
Taig caught up with her in the hall connecting the west and south sprawls of Ostinhold. “Slow down, Cai! It’s all right, she won’t eat you, I promise.”
It was calm here, the air cool and quiet. No fire. No ice. She caught her breath and turned to face him, looking way up into his silvery eyes.
“I’m not frightened—not for me,” she amended, having only now realized what she’d witnessed. She had never seen a grown man hit a grown woman in her life—had never even heard of such a thing. “Taig, you hit her!”
“Not the first time,” he replied with a shrug. Then, smiling: “Saints, Cai, don’t look so grim! She won’t haul me up before the Watch at Longriding.”
“But she’ll take the Ostin Name away from you first chance she gets.”
“Oh, I’ve expected that for years. And you’re nothing to do with her reasons for it.” Bending, he grasped her shoulders gently. “Don’t be scared for me, lovey. If she complains to Mother, she’ll have to explain how it started. She may have convinced Father she was the sweetest girl ever born, and Mircian may believe it as well—but Geria has never fooled Mother.”
Then why does Lady Lilen give her everything she wants? But Cailet didn’t say that. “If she takes your Name away, you can use mine,” she offered. “You’d be my brother.”
“Haven’t I always been?” Taking her hand, he strolled with her along the hall. Hazy late sun—real warmth, soft and easy—seeped through windows pitted by a hundred years of acid storms. “Now, what’s this famous book you’re so eager to read?”
It seemed so silly now. “Just a story. Taig, why’d she say that about Alin? And the Mages? What’d she mean about me?”
“You’re too little to hold so many questions. No wonder they overflow. What I want to know is, why am I always in the way of the flood?” He shook his head, still smiling. “If you were Alin, and only fourteen, would you like it if someone tried to marry you off? Lenna and Tevis are old enough to defend themselves, but Geria’s trying to bully poor Alin into signing a contract now.”
“That’s dumb. He’s not even interested in girls. He spends all his time with Valirion Maurgen.”
“Just so. At fourteen, I didn’t much like girls, either. Nasty, chattery things,” he added, pulling a face to make her smile.
Still, she was not so easily distracted. “What about the Mages?”
“I can�
�t answer that, Cai. And you know it’s something you shouldn’t ask.”
Cailet sighed. Nobody talked about Mageborns except in whispers. “I know, I know. When I’m older. When is ‘older,’ anyway?”
“Well, I’m twenty-two, and they still don’t tell me everything.”
“But you know about the Rising, and what Geria meant about me. It’s why you slapped her. To keep her from saying more.”
Taig had a habit of gnawing his cheek when he was thinking fast; it screwed his mouth around. Cailet mimicked the expression. He noticed, smiled, and ruffled her short pale hair.
“Cai, she’s wrong. You’re no danger to any of us who love you.”
She believed him, because she always believed everything Taig told her. But she couldn’t forget the feel of the fire and the ice—and something else that had happened before them.
“Taig . . . I did do what Geria said. I just—I was tired of listening to her lie to me. So I told her to be quiet. And she was.”
“A speechless Geria Ostin—I’m sorry I missed it!”
“I was glad I shut her up. She really makes me mad sometimes. But, Taig, it was scary. That I could do that.”
“Did you? Or was she so astounded that you actually talked back to the high-and-mighty First Daughter that she just couldn’t find anything to say?”
“I guess that was it. It’d have to be, wouldn’t it?” She sought reassurance for her doubts in his eyes. If she mentioned the fire and the ice, he would have an explanation for them, too. Soothed, trusting his answer even though she had never even asked the question, she decided it had been what Lady Lilen called “overactive imagination” in Alin, and pushed it all aside. Taig was just Taig again, after all: tall and warm and solid and caring.
“I’m sure that was it,” he said, then grinned. “And it’s a pity that’s all it was. Shutting her up is one of my life’s ambitions! Come on, Cai, it’s almost dinnertime and I’m starved. Besides, I want to hear how Geria explains her bloody nose!”
2
Just after Cailet’s Birthingday (Taig gave her the book), a guest arrived at Ostinhold. Geria had long since gone back to Combel, so there were no protests when Lady Lilen welcomed another Mage Guardian to her home.
Few Mages admitted to their calling nowdays. Everyone knew that. There were very few Mages left. Since last year’s horror at Malerris Castle, where the Lords were exterminated by Guardian treachery—or so it was said—suspicion of undisciplined magic ran rampant across Lenfell.
This Mage was a Scholar, clad in black and gray robes, even adhering defiantly to a hint of his regimentals: the severe cut of his longvest, a gray sash, the stitching at collar-points reminiscent of rank insignia pins. He swept into Ostinhold with his graying hair uncovered by a coif and within the hour was alone in a private chamber with Lady Lilen and her second son, Alin.
The former emerged looking shaken. The latter remained with the Scholar Mage until well after dark. Over the next few days, Alin rode out with the Mage in all directions, returned at all hours, and ignored the rest of the family. Cailet’s single encounter with the Mage taught her that he had no time or attention for anyone else; her glimpses of Alin’s pallid face told her the boy was constantly exhausted.
“But what’s he teaching Alin?” she asked Taig one day. Taig only shook his head. Mage things again, that she wasn’t supposed to ask about. But Taig looked as worried as Lady Lilen.
So Cailet told neither of them that she didn’t feel very well, either. She slept badly, dreaming strange dreams she didn’t remember in the morning. As the days wore on, the prickly feeling behind her eyes gradually went away and the dreams stopped. Just as well she hadn’t bothered Lady Lilen with what was obviously unimportant.
On the first day of Applefall week, all Lenfell observed the Feast of St. Agvir. Trestle tables the world over groaned under the weight of food to be devoured after the traditional competition among children to climb the tallest tree in the district. Ostinhold, however, had a problem: there were no real trees within a hundred miles. The Agvir Wood—twenty-five feet of solid oak imported at great expense by Lady Lilen’s great-great-great-grandmother—was raised instead. Long silver ribbons were distributed to every child between the ages of ten and thirteen, the courtyard humming with anticipation. Alin, who had won three years in a row, was no longer eligible. For the first time, Cailet was—and determined to have the fastest time.
The ten-year-olds went first. “St. Agvir’s Windfall Apple” was sung by the assembled crowd as one child after another scurried up the Wood like squirrels, knotted a silver ribbon around the apple finial, and shinnied back down to race for the finish line. One verse and the chorus was good time; one verse and part of the chorus excellent; last year Alin did it in four words past one verse. Waiting her turn, Cailet counted under her breath, fingers clenched around the stiff ribbon. This many beats to the midpoint, that many more to the top—where time was usually lost tying the ribbon to the base of the apple. Some tried to make it up on the way down by dropping the last few feet onto soft mats spread for safety’s sake, but that was against the rules. You had to keep hold of the Wood until your feet touched ground.
“Cailet Rille!”
Her turn. Heart pounding, she stepped up to the line, rocking slightly back and forth in time to the tune. Lady Lilen always hired musicians from Longriding to keep the rhythm even throughout; people had a tendency to sing faster as the song wore on. Cailet heard the drumbeat that signaled the start of the verse, poised herself, and at Lady Lilen’s signal ran for the Wood.
Leather gloves, trousers, and shortvests protected the children from splinters—as if after so many years the Agvir Wood hadn’t been polished smooth as satin. Cailet had chosen to go barefoot so her feet could get a better grip. Teeth clamped around the ribbon, she leaped as far as she could and climbed for all she was worth.
Halfway up, they hadn’t even finished the first line. Grinning, she climbed faster. Other ribbons were held out of the way down below by the children who had tied them; as she neared the top they formed a silvery trellis overhead. Only a little way—Saints, the Wood was slippery!—gilt apple within reach—
A long, thin wail cut like an arrow into her heart. Alin! She knew it, as surely as she knew she was about to fall. Twenty-five feet straight down—onto pads not springy enough to prevent a broken bone if she landed wrong.
Twenty silver ribbons—including, somehow, her own—were tight around the finial. She let go of the Wood and grabbed at them with both hands. Strips of silk woven with metal threads hissed through her gloves. She felt heat through leather and then cuts on her palms. She was flying, falling, frightened and exhilarated all at once. She heard screams, none of them Alin’s. And then she lost her grip and slammed into the mats, breath knocked out of her, stars exploding into sudden darkness.
Cailet had been afraid of the dark ever since she could remember. Miram had told her once that even when she was a tiny baby, she cried frantically if no light was left burning in her room. Now there was darkness all around her, the stars were gone, and she had no breath in her lungs to cry out her terror.
Worse, she sensed someone else in the darkness with her—someone even more frightened than she, and in profound pain echoed by the stinging ache behind Cailet’s own eyes. Alin—scared of the Scholar Mage, of darkness, of chaotic swirling images he couldn’t even see. Cailet tried to find him, needing not to be alone, needing someone to help her against the Wraithenbeasts she was sure lurked in the dark. But Alin was beyond her reach.
Beyond anyone’s?
The thought came unbidden, terrible in its implications. Gentle, comical, fiercely independent Alin—scared and alone and hurting—
I’m here, Alin! It’s all right!
She couldn’t find him. Her eyes opened to daylight and panicky faces: Lilen, Taig, Miram, Healer Irien. She tried to speak, to tell them Alin needed help more than she. Gasping ai
r, she struggled to sit up and make sense of the world. Her head spun and her right arm buckled, refusing to support her, and her breath caught with the pain.
“Hold still,” Irien commanded, fingers probing gently. “Somebody get some ice. St. Feleris, look at her hands! Let’s get the gloves off, Cailet. That’s it, you lie down with your head in Miram’s lap. Don’t try to move.”
“Are you all right, Cai?” Taig asked, voice shaking.
“Yes,” Irien answered. “Sliced hands and a broken arm—a clean fracture, thankfully. The cuts are nothing a few stitches won’t cure. You’re lucky you didn’t break your leg or your head.”
“That thick skull?” Miram teased gently, stroking Cailet’s hair. “Don’t be silly. Don’t you worry, sweeting. Lenna’s gone for Irien’s kit. You’ll be just fine in no time. You scared us all, truly told! What made you slip?”
Cailet stared in mute bewilderment. Hadn’t they heard? Didn’t they know that Alin—?
“Stupid custom,” Irien was muttering. “A real tree has branches to hold, rough spots to dig into. I’ve expected this for years.” He reached without looking into the medical kit that had appeared at his side, and extracted a bottle. “This will sting a little. Will you heed me now, Lilen, and put footholds on that damned Wood?”
The salve smeared onto her hands stung more than a little. Cailet ground her teeth, fighting the threat of renewed darkness. “Alin—” she managed.
Lilen smiled down at Cailet, an obvious effort to mask worry. “Yes, you beat his time,” she scolded fondly. “We didn’t even get to the chorus!”
“Cheated, though,” Taig put in, winking. “Cai, you know you have to keep hold of the Wood!”
“Swallow this,” Irien said, and poured something sweet onto her tongue. She choked, coughed, swallowed. Almost at once the pain in her head went away. A minute later, just as she got her voice back, darkness swirled in again.
“It’ll hurt, setting her arm,” Irien’s voice said from miles away. “This will knock her out while I do it. Let’s get her to bed, shall we? Taig?”