The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  Costly trinkets were appropriate for a Wise Blood celebration, a marriage, or the birth of a First Daughter. This was nothing more important than Garon’s thirty-first Birthingday.

  But, truly told, Glenin wasn’t even giving this dinner for him. During it she would announce a forthcoming and far more momentous Birthingday. She smiled and sighed and considered her hopes for her son. On reflection, the Scissors were the obvious choice.

  “But not in gold and jewels,” she said aloud, taking a fresh sheet of paper from a drawer. She wrote an order for three hundred pairs of steel scissors—in green velvet pouches with gray drawstrings, to remind everyone of the Name of the woman who gave them. The crafters would be working around the clock to fill the order, but that was their problem. As a concession to the week, and rather neatly giving tribute to another Saint she didn’t believe in, she added that the handles be engraved with flowers—Miramili’s Bells.

  The Summoner, she thought suddenly.

  If she concentrated, she could still feel the spell’s direction, though with more effort than yesterday; the magic must finally be fading. Yet who would have such power to begin with, to send a Summons from The Waste that Glenin had sensed on Ryka, and moreover could still sense six days after its casting?

  Gorynel Desse was dead. So was the old Captal. Who, damn it?

  In the next room, the frantic voice of Glenin’s personal maid lifted in protest. The arched door that mimicked the domed ceiling flew inward before Glenin could send a magical thread outward to discover the intruder’s identity.

  Anniyas. In full and furious cry.

  “Get up and come with me,” she snarled.

  The maid, quivering with equal parts fear of Anniyas and outrage at the intrusion, babbled at the same time, “My Lady, I’m most terribly sorry but the F-First Councillor insisted—”

  “It’s all right,” Glenin said, with a feather stroke spell of Calm. She deplored domestic disturbances, especially in front of Anniyas. “You may go.”

  The girl nodded, cast a doubtful glance at the unwelcome guest, and made her opinion known by not quite slamming the door behind her. Anniyas paid no heed. She paced the chamber round and round, an agitated whirl of heavy charcoal-gray silk with too much gold lace ruffling the hem. The expression on her face made Glenin worry for the jade chess set and crystal camellia bowl among other breakable treasures. But Anniyas looked readier to smash heads than trinkets. Glenin put down her pen and turned sideways in her chair.

  “I hate not using magic!” Anniyas spat. “Not even a simple spell on a stupid girl to get me in here—and how dare you forbid me your rooms at any time, let alone the middle of the damned day?”

  “Is there something I can do for you?” Glenin inquired with a placidity she knew would further annoy her husband’s mother.

  “I already told you—come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Are you questioning a direct order, Malerrisi?”

  This, Glenin was well aware, was calculated to infuriate her. Had she indulged, nothing in this world would have parted her from her chair. Damping her urge to snarl back, she stood up and silently faced Anniyas.

  “Excellent choice. Wear a cloak.” The old woman—suddenly not looking very old at all, Glenin thought with a frown—left at once by the garden door.

  Snatching a length of green wool from her bedroom closet, Glenin hurried after her. The private garden enjoyed by the Council and certain elite was a week from full spring display, but enough trees and flowers bloomed to make her nose itch. On three sides of the formal plantings were elegant residences; beyond a rose-covered wall, manicured lawns sloped down to the lake.

  She caught up with Anniyas at the summerhouse that was the garden’s centerpiece: a round, domed tracery of slatwork painted white and gold, roofed in green, with an arching open doorway at each cardinal point of the compass. Anniyas went around to the eastern entry rather than the nearer south door.

  Once Glenin was inside, Anniyas said curtly, “Ward us.” And because silent obedience appeared to be the day’s theme, Glenin did so at once, nodding when she was through.

  “Sight?” Anniyas demanded. “Sound?”

  Again she nodded, resisting the urge to suggest—oh so sweetly—that the exalted Lady of Malerris test the Wards herself. This, of course, she could not do; no one must know that she, who intended to rid Lenfell of magic, was herself Mageborn.

  “And against prying magic?”

  She cocked a brow. “Only iron can do that.”

  “Then use the fucking nails!”

  After a moment’s startlement—Anniyas never allowed her rural upbringing to show in her language—Glenin obeyed.

  “All right, then.” Anniyas sat on the wooden bench that curved along the south wall. Afternoon sunlight angled in, dappling her gray shoulders and graying head with gold. “Sit down. Rest your back. It’s a habit you’ll want to get into, believe me. All the weight you’re gaining with this baby, you’ll hardly be able to walk by your tenth week.”

  Shrugging off the insult, she went to the bench opposite Anniyas and sat. And said nothing.

  “Why wasn’t I informed about the Summons?”

  “I only learned what it was yesterday.”

  “And when were you going to tell me? Today? Next week? Some morning when you had nothing else to do?”

  “I didn’t know it was that important.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Glenin, I’ve known you since you were eight years old and you’ve never been able to fool me. Not important? A Summons to all Mage Guardians to attend on the Captal as fast as they can possibly get there?”

  “I’m not a Mage Guardian. And I had no idea that’s what it was.”

  “Well, now you know,” Anniyas growled.

  “How did you?”

  “Your father let it slip an hour ago. He of all people should have known at once, and come to me—”

  “He didn’t feel it. I did. And quite frankly I don’t understand why. He’s the one they trained.”

  “But yours was the magic open to it at the moment it was sent. We used to keep someone alert like that at Malerris Castle at all times. The present Fifth Lord being an idiot, however—”

  “Do you mean I’m the only one of us who felt it?” she asked, astonished.

  “And a lucky thing you did! My luck. Because I’m the one who knows what to do about a Summons. You don’t even know why it was sent, do you? There’s a new Captal, made at Ambrai—thanks to the incompetence of you and your father!—and she or he is gathering all surviving Mage Guardians for an attack.”

  Glenin smiled. “There aren’t enough left to attack a half-built barn. What’s the body count now? Nine hundred? Nine-fifty? You’ve nearly got your thousand, First Councillor.”

  “Nine hundred twenty-three. With a living Captal, ten would be enough—if they did it from Ambrai.”

  “Why? Their Ladders are all dead—nearly all, anyway. There’s no power to be had from them, the way the surviving Ladders at Malerris Castle store magic we can use. And Gorynel Desse is just as dead. Whoever this new Captal is, without Desse to—”

  Anniyas heaved herself to her feet and began to pace again. “Desse made the new Captal! Just as he made Leninor Garvedian!”

  “Not to mention Lusath Adennos,” Glenin added cuttingly, “the joke of Mageborns all over Lenfell.”

  The First Councillor snorted. “Don’t be a fool. Adennos was a box to hide the Bequest in. Oh, don’t look so cow-eyed! The Captal’s Bequest! Surely you learned about it somewhere!”

  Glenin’s brain was reeling now. “But it’s just a list of spells and Wards and things—”

  “—transferred from Captal to Captal for Weaver only knows how many Generations, probably back to their Founding! ‘Just a list’? Don’t make me laugh!” Anniyas picked at a silver paint chip on a wooden strut. “Desse tricked me with Adennos,
I’ll give him that. He made it look as if he had nothing better to work with, and we Malerrisi believed him. By the Great Loom, we made it easier for the old son of a Fifth by killing every Mage at the Academy!”

  “But now there’s a new Captal,” Glenin said, bringing her back to the subject. “Who has Summoned all surviving Mage Guardians. What are we going to do about it?”

  Anniyas developed a coldly calculating smile. “I am going to do precisely nothing. You are going to use that clever little velvet Ladder of yours to take your estimable father to a place I have in mind, where—”

  “Ambrai?”

  “Don’t interrupt! If it was Ambrai, I’d go myself by the Octagon Court Ladder! Which, eventually, I will do,” she appended with a deeper smile in her blue eyes.

  Glenin’s mind worked with frantic speed. Anniyas was the First Lord’s most valued thread—but Anniyas was weaving her own way through the Great Loom. Glenin had never trusted her, never, and even less so now that the required son nestled in her belly, the child who would grow up more powerful than Anniyas ever dreamed of being, the child Anniyas feared—

  All her half-realized insights braided together and knotted around her heart: her son was the child Anniyas wanted.

  But she was old, nearly seventy. She’d be close to ninety before the boy was fully trained. Ah, but she didn’t have to live that long, for at twelve or thirteen his magic would begin and surely the old woman could survive that long. Long enough to raise him, teach him, mold him, so that when magic was his he would be hers—

  All of which meant that the life-thread that was Glenin would be Scissored from the massive Tapestry as soon as she had borne him.

  “I’m pregnant,” she heard her own voice say very calmly. “Ladders are dangerous.”

  A dismissive shrug. “You’ve got weeks and weeks yet before you have to worry about it.”

  “He’s Mageborn,” she said, listening to the quiet voice and marveling at its composure. “I can feel it even now, when he’s barely formed. He’ll be one of those children who’s aware even in the womb.”

  “Nonsense. A fantasy in books.”

  “Would you care to touch him with your magic?”

  Anniyas glared at her. “You’ll go where I tell you and do as I say!”

  Glenin rose slowly to her feet and looked down on the First Councillor and said, very clearly, “No.”

  “Don’t defy me, girl. Not now, not ever.”

  “Take it up with the First Lord,” Glenin suggested coolly.

  Anniyas gave a harsh, braying laugh. “You shit-witted idiot! Haven’t you figured it out yet? I am the First Lord!”

  19

  That morning, behind the alcove screen, a small but adequate hip-bath had appeared. Sarra blinked at this evidence of strengthening magic. Collan only shrugged and dug into breakfast. She bathed in silence, glad enough of getting really clean at last, but fretful with maddening speculations.

  Not about what had produced the tub and the hot water, scented with her favorite violet perfume. It was obvious enough that the cottage had heard a Truth that paid for its magic. What bothered her was what Truth of Collan’s had bought this—and how much it might have cost him.

  He didn’t seem any the poorer in resources of wit or humor, responding to her offer of first bath with a quip about violet being neither his color nor his cologne. (She privately considered that color perfect for those coppery curls and very blue eyes.) He looked neither restless nor bored, neither troubled nor out of sorts. In fact, he was more relaxed than she had ever seen him—as if he’d finally gotten a decent night’s sleep.

  She felt the same. And she knew it ought to bother her. The soreness was gone from her ankle much sooner than it should have been. Two whole nights of ease-spelled slumber had restored her completely. Any other time she would have been eager to set out again, get moving, do something. She had energy for more than lazing in a tub and then beside the fire with the grimoire in her lap. And, Saints witness, she certainly had places to go and things to do. But all morning passed and she did nothing.

  There was one small anomaly. Collan served her breakfast as politely and elegantly as any woman could wish, keeping an unobtrusive eye on her plate and winecup lest either go empty before her hunger and thirst were assuaged. It was unsettling, this uncharacteristic gentility.

  She felt herself growing drowsy in mid-afternoon, and fought off sleep with conversation. Col was eager to talk. They discussed books they’d read, places they’d been, plays and operas they’d attended. Occasionally his tastes even coincided with hers. At length, hiding a tenth yawn behind his hand, Col smiled and told her it wasn’t the company, and he certainly found his own stories fascinating, but they really ought to give in to the magic so it could clear the breakfast dishes and set up dinner.

  “Do we have a choice?” she asked, barely able to keep her eyes open now.

  “Not that I can tell. Take a nap, First Daughter.”

  She was asleep before she could remind him to stop calling her that.

  She woke to a rowdy drinking song and splashing sounds coming from the alcove. Dinner waited on the low table before her: spicy stew, green salad, and six of the palm-sized honey-walnut tarts she adored. She made a face. The house knew her very well. Ambrai colors in her bedrobe, violet scent in the bathwater, her favorite dessert . . . if it already knew so much, why did she have to tell it a Truth?

  She glanced up as Collan rounded the screen, toweling his limp, dripping curls. Cheeks and chin shaved silk-smooth of stubble, hair in a mad wet tangle, he looked no older than she was and perhaps a bit younger as he gave her a crooked little grin.

  “Don’t tell me you squeezed all six feet of you into that hip-tub,” she said, smiling back.

  “Six feet two inches, and the tub’s my size now.” He tossed the towel over the screen and approached the fire. “Looks good. And I’m not even wondering where the lettuce came from this early in the season.”

  “Yes, you are, or you wouldn’t have said it.” As he sat down, she smelled not a hint of violets. Instead—winter iris and woodsmoke, and something else very masculine that she couldn’t identify. “Did the house provide a bigger tub because you’re bigger than I am, or because the magic is getting stronger?”

  “You’re the Mageborn. You tell me.” When she started to speak, he shook his damp head and dipped a ladle into the stew. “Later.”

  Later arrived after one helping of stew (he had three) and a virtuous two walnut pastries (he ate the other four). Sarra put down her napkin, picked up her winecup, and said, “Whatever was said last night did things to the house.”

  “Probably.”

  “Did you try the stairs again?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Halfway down.”

  “So it’s my turn to tell the Truth.”

  Raking uncombed curls from his brow, he frowned and said, “Look, Sarra, you don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”

  “I thought you were the one who was so anxious to get out of here.”

  “Maybe I changed my mind. We’ve got beds, food, clothes, even baths. The beds are soft, the food’s great, the bathwater was clean as well as hot, and we don’t even have to stoke the fire.”

  “And the clothes?” She lifted one turquoise-clad arm.

  “Well, a little much—but what the hell. Point is that no inn I know has all that at once. And it’s even free.”

  “Not quite.” Eyeing him closely, she asked, “Is this how you’d like to live your life?”

  He sprawled back, hooking one leg over the chair arm. “All I lack is my lute, Lady.”

  “Liar,” she accused gently.

  “You look right at home,” he observed. “Just the way I’d picture you if I ever stopped to think about it. Taking your ease, reading old books, and sipping good wine all day long—”

  �
�—with sweet dreams guaranteed every night. I’d be bored brainless. And so would you, Minstrel. We both have places to go, work to do—”

  “—songs to sing and women to sing to,” he appended, winking at her.

  She bit her lip. “Collan . . . did I ever thank you for singing to Cailet?”

  “Even if you did, I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

  “Once is enough. And don’t get any ideas about her,” she warned.

  He laughed heartily. “Me and the kitten? Don’t tell me you’re jealous!”

  “Don’t be absurd.” She hid behind her winecup. A long swallow, then another, and she set the gold goblet down with a determined thunk. “Just don’t chase after her the way you do every other woman you see.”

  The very blue eyes widened in outrage. “They chase me!”

  “I haven’t,” she retorted smugly.

  “There hasn’t been much time,” he drawled.

  An unexpected giggle escaped her. “Don’t you ever stop?”

  “Not until I get what I want. Kind of like this house.”

  Mirth fled, and she stared down at her folded hands. “It’s my turn.”

  “You don’t have to,” he mumbled. “I lied about the stairs.”

  “What?”

  Draining the wine down his throat, he put the cup on the table. The forks rattled. “Last night I went all the way down them and opened the front door.”

  If she’d been capable of speech, she would have cursed him up one side and down the other, and probably should have. All today he’d said nothing when, in fact, they were free to go?

  He’d stayed, knowing he could leave?

  Sarra grabbed up handfuls of the turquoise robe and ran for the iron staircase. One step, two, three, four—

  —and she wasn’t even halfway down.

  Collan walked soft-footed past her, all the way to the bottom. There, he turned and looked up at her. Light spilled from the bedchamber out to the balcony and down onto his face, solemnly gilding his very blue eyes.

  The only coin this house will treasure,

  The only key to these locked doors