by Melanie Rawn
Elin actually smiled. “The Council might be made extremely unhappy if this woman turned out to be someone even more important than my sister.”
Lusira rose and strode down the aisle between spectator seats. “Justice Lunne, the prisoners must be taken to Ryka Court, where the truth of this matter can be ascertained without doubt.”
“Siddown and shuddup.” Irritation was getting the better of her carefully elegant judicial diction. “I don’t give a shit if she’s Grand Duchess Veller Ganfallin reborn.”
“Nothing so dramatic,” Elin said with a sniff. “Only Lady Sarra Liwellan, primary on the bounty sheets and heir to all the Slegin properties in Sheve.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed Taig from the spectator seats.
“Huh? Who?” Collan seconded from the box.
“If you’ll recall,” Elomar fretted loudly, “there were two of them. They looked very alike. You commented on it at the time, Captain.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Lusira snapped over her shoulder. “We killed the Liwellan girl and captured Mai Alvassy.”
“Shut the hell up!” roared the Justice.
Advocate Annison half-rose, sat down, then stood. “Your pardon, but if the accused’s identity cannot be established—”
“I say she’s an Alvassy!”
“And I say she’s not!” proclaimed Elin.
“—then she cannot be tried,” finished the Advocate in a timorous whisper.
What all this might gain, beyond a delaying confusion, Cailet had no idea. Sarra was told to state her Name for the record; she dimpled sweetly and refused to open her mouth. The Justice’s direct order produced the same result.
The “Council Guards” were called one by one to the witness box, starting with Lusira, to describe the capture. Fully cognizant of the circumstances of Mai’s death, Lusira presented a brilliantly revised version that left room for doubt with the very vehemence of her telling. Elomar was next, then Taig, each giving the same basic report and contradicting each other on the details.
The clerk pointed at Cailet. She walked up the aisle and through the little wooden gate in a state of near panic: she couldn’t remember the Name of the Guard whose uniform and identity disk she wore. Stepping into the witness box, she pressed her damp palms against her trousers and tried not to tremble.
“Name and rank,” said the clerk.
Cailet began to cough. The clerk brought her a glass of water. She drank gratefully, coughed a few more times, and wondered if there was a spell available to her now that would send everyone in the courtroom to sleep for half a minute. Then she could pretend when they woke that she’d already given the information and awaited questioning. No, wouldn’t work, there’d be nothing written in the ledger. . . .
Inara Lunne nodded once. And again. And nodded off.
The courtroom waited in breathless silence. Cailet dared a glance at her companions as a faint snore issued from the bench. Elomar’s face was so wooden that she knew at once the Healer Mage was responsible. Of course! The coffee!
Cailet assessed the room swiftly—something she should have done on entering, she told herself in disgust. The Watch had departed but for a single man beside the Justice’s chamber door. The clerk sat with the ledger in his lap, eyes fixed in astonishment on the slumbering Justice. In the condemned box were the twenty Mages and members of the Rising, and the Bard. Standing accused were Elin, Sarra, and Collan. Beyond the short fence were the Council Guards.
We own this place, she thought in amazement. The Justice and the clerk think they’re perfectly safe, with us here. Saints and Wraiths, why didn’t I realize this before?
Because she was still thinking like the seventeen-year-old Waster she was, instead of the Mage Captal she had become.
She cleared her throat softly. The clerk’s gaze shifted to her. She reached for a spell and her magic, murmured a word, and saw his eyes close. The Watch, now—a little more difficult to gain eye contact, but she managed it and sent him to sleep as well.
“Quick,” she said, vaulting the rails of the witness box. “Taig, Keler, do something about their chains if you can—”
A terrified squeak stopped her in mid-stride, halfway to Sarra. The Advocate was huddled in her chair, huge pale eyes as round as her thin pale mouth.
Damn! Forgot she was even there. Cailet prepared to send her to sleep too.
“No, please!”
Cailet went to the table behind which the woman cowered. “Better for you if I do,” she said, not without sympathy. “They’ll wonder, otherwise.”
“You—you’re a Mage, aren’t you?” Agva Annison whispered.
Cailet nodded.
“Are you going to k-kill us?”
Lusira answered for her. “Were that her intent, you would already be dead.” She went past, readying her sword to pry open the chains binding Sarra and Collan and Elin.
“I’ll have to make you sleep now,” Cailet said. “I’ll remember that you tried to help us.”
“Please don’t spell me!” Tears trickled down sharp cheekbones. “I’ll pretend you did, I won’t tell anyone—”
“Well. . . .” Cailet knew it was smarter to treat her as she had the others. But the woman’s terror of magic made her hesitate. Was this what she could look forward to, this shrinking away from her as if she had sprouted the horns and fangs and claws of a Wraithenbeast?
“I swear!” The Advocate was almost sobbing.
Cailet nodded. She just couldn’t use magic, however benevolent, on the woman. If she was ever to be regarded without fear, then she’d have to prove herself—and other Mages—harmless. No time like the present.
“Oh, thank you, thank you! I won’t breathe a word of this, I’ll say that you had to overpower me—”
Cailet winced. “Just make it convincing—for your own sake, not mine.”
The Advocate immediately sprawled her arms across the table and slumped over with her cheek on the scarred wood.
“She looks a bit too comfortable,” Collan said critically, rubbing his wrists as he approached.
“Leave her be. Let’s get out of here.”
“Past time for it, if I may say so.”
“You may not say so,” Sarra told him. “Cailet, we’ll need horses. Not even you can Fold the road for so many.”
“We’re only going as far as the docks.” She touched her sister’s hand lightly, to reassure herself.
“Not me or mine,” said a woman behind her, and she turned. The Warrior Mage she had alerted yesterday stood there, hollow-eyed and angry. “I don’t know who you are, and while I thank you for rescuing us, we’ll take care of ourselves from now on.”
A voice mused in Cailet’s mind: Mages are a singularly independent lot. The only command they’ll obey is the Captal’s.
“Done a terrific job of it so far,” Collan observed.
“We were betrayed,” the woman snapped. “And now we’ll be going.”
“Where to?” he asked with exaggerated politeness.
“Anywhere!”
“I think not,” Sarra said blandly. “Not without the Captal’s permission.” And she nodded, almost bowing her head, at Cailet.
The Warrior stared. “What?”
“Introductions later,” Taig interrupted. “Everybody’s cut loose from their chains, Cailet, and we ruined six swords doing it. Let’s go. However you spelled the others, Elomar says the Justice won’t sleep all day.”
“Right,” Sarra said briskly. “Five groups, I think. No sense in looking like a parade. We’ll meet at the docks.”
“And get the hell out of here,” Col said. “And I still say it’s past time for it.”
Cailet agreed. There was just one problem. None of the doors would open.
The one to the Justice’s chambers was stuck tight. The one through which the prisoners had entered seemed cemented shut. The double doors lea
ding to the outer hallway wouldn’t budge. Taig and Keler assaulted the brass handles with their sword hilts. Col went to work on the hinges.
“Don’t bother.” Cailet folded her arms and sat on the fence railing. “They’ve been Warded.”
“What?” Taig spun around. “That’s not possible, Cailet there aren’t any Mages here but our own people, and why would they—”
“Not a Mage. A Mageborn.”
Sarra blinked. Cailet glanced at her and nodded. Of the others, Tiron Mossen was the first to figure it out. Summoning him with a glance, she also collected Elomar, Keler, and Elin. Together they returned down the aisle.
“Ward the others,” Cailet murmured. “I’ll be safe enough.”
At the sound of her voice, Agva Annison straightened and turned in her chair: no more the skinny, skittish galazhi but a lean and cunning predator. She smiled at Cailet through the sudden faint shimmer of a protective Mage Globe that ensphered her entire body.
“I’ll have to make an offering to Gorynel the Compassionate,” she said, “for touching your tender heart regarding my poor, pitiable self.”
Cailet kept walking toward her, and made no answer.
“You can’t get out until I release the Wards,” said the Advocate. “And you’ll never get inside this Globe.”
Elomar held the gate open. Cailet stepped through, gesturing to him and the other three Mages to remain where they were. A combination of Wards sprang up to protect those behind: Tiron casting his onto the wood itself, the more accomplished Keler building on it into the air, and Elin easily reinforcing all with a floor-to-ceiling Ward just behind theirs. Elomar smoothed out the whole structure with a mastery Cailet envied. She had never yet cast a Ward. She did not do so now.
Agva Annison laughed, the indulgent chuckle of a teacher whose pupil has made a silly mistake. “A Mage Captal who couldn’t smell the magic around the doors? This will be easier than the First Lord ever dared dream!”
Tiron growled with all the outraged pride of his fifteen years. Cailet felt strangely aloof, much older than he; the insult didn’t even touch her. She said almost humbly, “Truly told, I have much to learn. For example, I don’t know how long it will be before the real Council Guard arrives.”
The woman shrugged. “They make their rounds every hour when court is in session. I should think you have about five minutes.”
“Thank you.” Cailet nodded. “That’s just time enough.” She drew Gorynel Desse’s sword.
Agva Annison lost her smile.
“You recognize it?” Cailet asked, genuinely surprised.
“It—it’s one of the Fifty,” she stammered. “How did you get it?”
“A gift from its last owner,” Cailet replied somberly. “If you know what it is, then you know how much it will hurt. Drop the Wards.”
The Malerrisi rose to her feet, proudly defiant. “No.”
“As you say, I do have much to learn. I don’t know how well I can control this sword. Actually, I’ve never used it before.”
“No.”
“Please reconsider. I don’t want to kill you, and for all I know this sword might do just that.”
“No.”
Cailet half-turned away, as if she’d changed her mind. She had a glimpse of Sarra down by the double doors: her hair like a wild golden flame amid darker heads and black Mage cloaks; her face as strong and beautiful as white fire. “You’re my sister, and I love you,” Cailet heard again in memory. I am also Captal, Sarra. Love this part of me, if you can.
Later, when they discussed it, Col would tell her that when he fought, time sped up. For Cailet, it slowed. Each command of brain to nerve to muscle seemed a separate stream of light and energy. Each movement lasted hours. She swung Desse’s sword, magic flaring along its length unsummoned by her. She saw the contemptuous sneer on Agva Annison’s face change to incredulity and then terror as the woman realized Cailet had not changed her mind and the sword was coming at her with lethal force.
The blade connected with the Globe. Languid lightning crawled up the steel, reversing before it reached her hands, directed back at the glistening sphere—which shattered in a million silent shards and vanished.
The Malerrisi’s scream went on forever.
So did time, as Cailet strove to check the sword’s arc, fighting its hunger. The battle was as unexpected as it was fierce; she’d been unsure of how powerful the sword’s magic might prove, but she’d had no inkling it would be like this. Gorsha, why didn’t you tell me this thing feeds on my magic and Malerrisi blood? I can’t hold it, it’s too strong. I don’t want to kill her!
After an almost audible snap inside Cailet’s head, minutes were minutes again. Agva Annison lay crumpled across the back of her chair. Cailet stared at her, expecting blood. But there was none.
Not because you are stronger than the sword, Cailet. Because you truly did not wish her death. If you had. . . .
She lifted the blade, assessing its clean, straight, arrogant rise toward the ceiling. You mean I can’t lie to this sword.
Truly told, Captal. I know; I tried.
“Cailet!”
She blinked and lowered the sword. “What? Sarra?”
Her sister’s hand cupped her cheek, blessedly cool against burning skin. “It’s over, Caisha. The Wards are gone.”
“Oh,” she said inadequately. “That’s good.”
Collan was there as well, regarding the senseless Advocate. “Just goes to show,” he drawled, “never can trust a lawyer.”
Cailet managed a wan smile. Was she exhausted from using power or not using it? Was it the shattering of the Globe or the fight with the sword that had drained her so? The blade chattered into the scabbard with the shaking of her hands. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the others had left through the double doors. With one last glance at the somnolent courtroom, she said, “This was badly done. I apologize.”
Sarra alone nodded. “Agreed. Next time, a better plan.”
“The difficulty of our position as Mage Guardians,” said Elomar, “is that we cannot act until threatened.”
“Compunctions and ethics are inconvenient.” Col’s crooked grin appeared. “I’ve never had much use for them, personally.”
“Fancy that,” Sarra murmured.
He favored her with an arched sardonic brow, but addressed Cailet. “Now can we please get out of here?”
Halfway to the door, her steps dragging with weariness, Cailet heard a creak of wood behind her. At the same time there popped into her head a crazy image: a brick wall in a rugged stony canyon. Then she staggered as Col shoved her into Elomar and reached for his sword. Sarra was quicker. She spun, one hand already at her belt. Cailet’s mind and magic fumbled for the meaning of the knife’s silvery flight into Agva Annison’s chest.
She felt Elomar wrap her in his arms for a moment tightly, as if grasping something infinitely precious. Then he set her on her feet and bowed to Sarra.
“You shouldn’t have let her live,” Sarra said matter-of-factly, and went to retrieve the knife.
Cailet watched, numb with shock. For me, she thought, as her sister bent and jerked out the knife and wiped it on the dead Malerrisi’s tunic. Sarra killed for me. She did what I should have done. She just said so. And she’s right. . . .
“Captal!”
Thickened wits responded slowly to Lusira’s shout. But the ringing of steel on steel triggered some new and alien reaction: energy, magic, power, whatever she cared to term it, its strength surged into her body and she was running for the outer hall with Gorynel Desse’s sword gripped once more in her hand.
7
The twenty-five members of the real Council Guard squadron got the shock of their lives in the courtroom hallway that morning. Their usual boring rounds—Council House, jail, docks, residential districts, markets—turned into a brawl not a hundred yards from their own barracks.
; It was to their captain’s credit that she instantly recognized the incongruity: so many people, some wearing ragged Mage regimentals, all wearing the pallor of long days in prison, and none wearing chains, should not be freely exiting any courtroom, especially Inara Lunne’s.
Taig anticipated the captain and drew his sword almost before her suspicions formed. The twenty former prisoners had since the previous evening gone from hope to despair to stunned joy; now, liberty threatened, they blindly attacked. The Mages held to their ethic, aware that their new Captal was present. No magic assailed the Council Guards. But if steel no longer circled their wrists and hung from their ankles, neither was any steel in their hands. Against well-armed and well-trained soldiery, it was hopeless.
Then the Captal arrived.
Not quite five minutes later, no Council Guard was left standing.
Sarra watched most of it from the double doors. Still shaky from her first Malerrisi kill, with an absurd reminder nattering in her head that she must cut a new notch on the knife, she saw her sister carve into living bodies like a sculptor shaping cold marble. Cailet was no clumsy butcher, cleaving meat with hacking strokes; her movements were efficient, precise, graceful. Almost gentle, some of them. So must St. Delilah have looked, Sarra thought absently; the warrior who dances with no partner but her sword.
She felt no curiosity or amazement that this should be so. Her instincts, badly bruised by the backlash of what Gorynel Desse had done to Cailet, reaffirmed their recovery by giving her the obvious answer: it was Desse’s sword in Cailet’s hands, and he who moved in Cailet’s body with the lithe elegance of the born swordmaster.
She wondered if Cailet knew it.
When all the Council Guards sprawled bleeding on paving tiles—red, and so highly polished that the blood scarcely showed—Sarra saw Taig sheathe his own sword and approach Cailet with hands outstretched. The Captal eyed him warily.
“Cai,” he said softly. “You can stop now.”
She glanced around. Drawing a deep breath, she tilted her head back to meet Taig’s gray eyes. “They’re not dead,” she told him.