The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  “Would you prefer ‘prideful’ and ‘clever’?”

  “Much! Let’s have a little more respect for your elder sister, please!” she laughed. “Caisha, you don’t know what it means to have my own little sister—”

  “Don’t I? You’re my sister, my family, not somebody I borrowed.”

  “But you still need what I remember.”

  “Please.”

  Sarra said nothing for a long time. Then, almost defiantly: “I loved him. He was the strongest, handsomest, most wonderful man in the world. Mother adored him. Grandfather was fond of him, I think—he was prepared to like any man who made Mother so happy. The rest of the family were . . . oh, polite, I suppose, and pleasant enough. But Grandmother hated him.”

  Cailet nodded.

  “When I was very little, I was afraid of the dark, and he’d use his magic to bring the stars down from the sky and make them dance around my room. . . .”

  Cailet had feared the dark, too. She tried to imagine having a tall, strong father banish her fear in a dazzle of magical stars.

  Sarra’s tone changed. “The first time I saw him after I was grown up was at the reception after the vote. Elo had said he wouldn’t recognize me, that I was Warded. I was afraid anyhow. But he didn’t even look the same. He wasn’t just older, Cai. He wasn’t my father anymore. Part of me was a little girl, wanting to run to him and have him swing me up in his arms the way he used to. But mostly I wanted to run away.”

  Her grip on Cailet’s hand tightened. “There’d be no place to run if anyone ever found out who we really are, what our true Name is. We can’t tell anyone. You know what they’d say, what they’d suspect. Daughters of a traitor Mage. We’d never be able to convince them otherwise. No one must know.”

  “Sasha. . . .” She swallowed hard, hating what she had to say. “Can you keep it from Collan?”

  “Collan?” Sarra echoed blankly.

  “I know we can’t let on who we really are. Your position and your work are too important, and I’d never be allowed to continue as Captal. But if we keep our Name secret, we’ll have to keep being sisters secret as well.”

  “We could use the Mage parents I invented for myself.”

  Cailet shook her head. “A lie wouldn’t survive much speculation. There aren’t many of the old Mages left, but among them they must’ve known most of the others.” She tried to smile. “Besides, people would expect you to turn into a Mage and me into a Blooded Lady!”

  “The first is impossible. As for the second—” She cast a critical eye over Cailet’s dishevelment. “—I’ll work on it.”

  Her laughter was genuine. “Sarra! That would be the project of a lifetime! You’ve better things to do.”

  “I’ll work on it,” she repeated in dire tones belied by a wink.

  “I’d better add ‘dictatorial’ to the list.”

  “Why pretty it up? I’m bossy and we all know it.” She hesitated, then shook her head. “I’ll admit my faults and failings, Cai, but I won’t admit to Collan who I really am. Every time he looked at me, he’d remember. I can’t do that to him or to myself.”

  “Sarra—”

  “And don’t tell me he deserves to know, either. He doesn’t deserve to have a reminder in front of him every day of his life of what he suffered at Auvry Feiran’s hands! He may have become a Mage again for you, but when he tortured Col he was a Lord of Malerris. Don’t ask me to accept that man as my father. Or Glenin as my sister, either. Not after what they did to him—and to you.”

  “To me?”

  “I don’t need my magic to sense that you’re hiding something. Glenin hurt you, Caisha. I don’t know how, but I’ll never forgive her for it any more than I’ll ever forgive him for what he did to Collan.”

  At length, Cailet nodded slowly. “It’ll be our secret, then.” And Glenin’s. But she didn’t say it.

  “Actually, I already told Col we’re sisters. It kind of slipped out. I’ll use the Mage Guardians story to explain us, he won’t look into it very hard.”

  “Are we Liwellans, then?”

  “No, but I think we’ll leave the Name unsaid. One more lie wouldn’t matter, but one less lie is that much easier to—”

  “—justify?”

  “If you want to see it that way,” she replied levelly, “yes.”

  After a moment Cailet said, “One thing. Promise you’ll send me your children when they come into their magic. Let me teach them.”

  Sarra’s brows arched in surprise. “Well, of course—if they’re Mageborns.”

  “They will be.”

  “Col isn’t.”

  “No. But your children by him will be.”

  Black eyes—their mother’s eyes—searched her face. “You’re that certain?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Recovering from this unsuspected revelation of the future, Sarra told her, “You’ll have a fine family zoo in about twenty years, then, what with my children and yours—”

  Cailet met her gaze squarely. “I won’t have any children.”

  Glenin had made sure of it. The ravening hollow had been most deeply filled with horror. She had seen herself do unspeakable things—a death-black spider spinning elaborate magical webs, trapping the victim lover, feasting afterward on his blood. She would never risk it. Never. “She’ll mother no Mageborns—but tell Sarra that my son and I will be waiting for hers!” That Glenin was pregnant with a son was something else she wasn’t going to tell Sarra. Not yet.

  “What do you mean? Of course you’ll have children—”

  “No. Don’t make me talk about it, Sarra. It’s just something I know.”

  “You’re wrong. You’ll find someone, Cai. Someone to love, who’ll love you. You promised Taig.”

  Had she? She didn’t remember. Sarra didn’t understand, she thought it was because of how she’d felt about Taig. If the Saints were merciful, Sarra would never understand.

  Arm-in-arm, the sisters walked through the gardens, Cailet subtly steering them to the riverbank where the pyre still burned within the circle of stones.

  Sarra stumbled back from the flames, the curling smoke. “You brought me here to show me that?”

  “And to give you this.” From her pocket she took one of the silver pins, the Sword, and pressed it into Sarra’s palm. “I’m keeping the other. He had them, all these years—even though he wasn’t a Listed Mage, he—”

  She flung the pin to the ground. “No!”

  “But don’t you see? They prove he wasn’t the monster everyone said he was!”

  “They’re probably souvenirs of some Mage Guardian he murdered!”

  “No. They were his.” Plucking the tiny silver pin from the ground, she held it out to her sister. “You’re his daughter, too. Take it. Think of it as belonging to the father you knew as a child, the Prentice Mage.”

  After what seemed half of eternity, Sarra accepted the pin and tucked it in her pocket. “If it means so much to you. . . .” Then, with a last glance at the pyre: “I’m going back. Are you coming?”

  “In a little while.”

  With a brief nod and an even briefer embrace, Sarra left her alone.

  For a long time Cailet gazed at the flames, clutching the tiny silver Candle in her fist. “I was right, wasn’t I?” she whispered. “Or is it the child in me that thinks there was still something in you of what you once were?”

  A wisp of smoke rose from the pyre. Rather than dissipating on the night breeze, it broadened, grew taller, became more substantial. And drifted slowly toward where Cailet stood rooted to the ground, trembling. The mist resolved into the shape of a man: tall, wide-shouldered, wearing the proud regimentals and the gleaming silver insignia of a Mage Guardian. More: the red and black sash of a Captal’s Warder.

  “Thank you, Daughter,” whispered a deep, warm voice on the wind. The Wraithen face was young and handsome, suffuse
d with vast tenderness and vaster sorrow. “I robbed myself of you before you were even born. Forgive me.”

  “You saved my life.”

  “You are the Captal. My daughter.”

  She filled herself with the love in his gray-green eyes—and the respectful duty, too, owed to a Captal—and the pride.

  “Cailet, help Sarra to her magic. She’ll need everything she is to do the work she’s set herself.”

  “I’ll try. But she’s stubborn.”

  “I remember.” And they shared a smile.

  “She told me you made the stars dance for her.”

  “Then she doesn’t think of me entirely with pain. I’m glad.” His expression changed. “Glenin. . . .”

  Cailet kept herself from flinching. Glenin, the daughter he had loved more than Sarra, loved so much he took her with him to the Malerrisi.

  “Gorsha saw in you a Mage Captal with power to counter Glenin’s. But your heart is more generous, your vision wider. Even after what she did to you, you still wonder how to reach her. How to make her understand.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Father.”

  “No more do I.” Broad shoulders cloaked in Mage Guardian black lifted and fell as he sighed. “We choose our paths as we are led to them. She never saw another path. That was my doing. But if you could show her, Cailet—help her—and mend the fabric I tore apart—”

  She stiffened instinctively. “Those are Malerrisi words.”

  “So they are. But the pattern of life is a true image, Caisha. I thought I saw better order and greater safety in the rigid weaving of the Great Loom. Glenin still sees it. She doesn’t understand why it’s wrong to put the threads in the hands of the privileged, self-appointed few.” He began to fade with the smoke of his pyre into the night.

  “No, don’t go, not yet! What am I supposed to do? Gorynel Desse made me Captal and now—”

  “You were Captal from the moment of your birth. That is why I couldn’t know that you existed. Peace, Cailet. Be patient. Soon enough you’ll know your true work.” He hesitated, almost invisible. “I do love you, Daughter.”

  “Father—”

  But he was gone.

  She was crying, and wondered why. For herself, certainly; for Sarra, who had not seen this proof; for Glenin—perhaps. But not for Auvry Feiran. How could she weep for a man whose Wraith, despite all the horrors and betrayals and deaths and lies, had somehow against all logic not been condemned to endless, aimless wandering in the Dead White Forest?

  7

  Still angry with her sister, Sarra arrived back at the courtyard bonfire in time to see a difference of opinion between Keler Neffe and Sevat Semalson escalate into a shouting match. Telomir Renne was pleading with them; Granon Isidir stood by with folded arms and an expression that proclaimed annoyance at not getting a word in edgewise. Threading her way through the crowd, Sarra heard enough bits and snatches of commentary to piece together the problem: identity disks. Keler was against them. Semalson, an assistant at Census, was for them. As Sarra emerged from the surrounding circle of onlookers, the two young men were yelling at point-blank range.

  “Enough!”

  To their mothers’ credit, both shut up when a woman ordered them to. The assembly hushed too, anticipating a good show. Sarra gritted her teeth and cursed herself for interfering. Now she’d have to prove her ability to lead—right now, or not at all.

  “Couldn’t you have waited a few days?” she demanded.

  “Lady Sarra, tonight makes an ending and a beginning,” Keler said. “The disks are offensive and useless, and—”

  “They weren’t Anniyas’s idea!” exclaimed Semalson. “The disks originated thirty-three Generations ago—”

  “And finished serving their purpose long since!”

  “I said enough!” Sarra eyed the pair of them. “As you seem bent on having this out here and now, you may present your thoughts on the matter. Calmly, rationally, and without screaming. Domni Semalson, you first.”

  “The viewpoint at Census is simply stated, Lady Sarra. The government must accurately identify citizens. How else are contracts to be held legal? Births, marriages, divorces, trade agreements, wills, Dower Funds—all these depend on absolute certainty that every woman, man, and child is—”

  “You forgot taxes!” someone yelled from near the bonfire.

  “Yes, all right, and taxes!” Semalson’s thin dark face flushed with more than wine. “But don’t you forget that possession of a disk is the right and privilege of freeborns! Without one, you’re classified as a slave!”

  “An interesting point,” Sarra said. “But valid only if slavery continued to exist. Which it won’t.”

  Pandemonium.

  She judged that the uproar was mostly in favor. But plenty of Webs dependent on slave labor would howl themselves hoarse over abolition. Let them, she thought impatiently. There was enough in the Council treasury for fair compensation. Emphasis on fair. She’d have to find someone who knew the trade and could say when estimations of market value were attempts at extortion.

  The argument over slavery would be only the first conflict in the changing of governmental policy. She already knew that everyone in the Rising had distinct ideas about what the Rising was meant to accomplish. So, she mused as the tumult died down, Tarise was right about me years ago. I’m a Warrior after all. I’ll have to fight for every single thing I believe to be right. But I’ll have to learn how to be Healer, too. And how I’m going to stitch all these wants and needs into a working government is anybody’s guess. Even Cailet and her Mages will have demands. Gorsha, if you were here, I’d wrap your beard around your throat and strangle you with it.

  Keler Neffe was grinning ear to ear as he shouted, “There you have it! No more reason for identity disks!”

  “I don’t agree,” said Telomir Renne, frowning worriedly. “Forgive me, Sarra, but while I do agree that slavery should be outlawed, I still think the disks are important. They provide identification in legal matters, of course, but they also prevent anyone’s pretending to be someone she isn’t. Imposture is not a weapon I’d care to put in the hands of the Lords of Malerris.”

  “Besides,” a woman called out derisively, “the Renne Blood owns the right to mint the damned things. Isn’t that right, Minister?”

  Keler cut into the burst of laughter before Telomir could do more than turn rigid with outrage. “Bloods, Firsts, Seconds—what better reason to do away with the disks? The whole system became meaningless twenty Generations ago!”

  “Do you mean to say,” Semalson snarled, “that you Second Tier Neffes are no different from—”

  “—the Semalson Bloods? Damned right, that’s what I’m saying!”

  “No difference?” Jenet Adennos, a cousin of Elomar’s and the late Captal’s, stepped forward. She was just forty, but the weeks spent in a jail in Kenroke had aged her at least ten years. “What about the fact that you’re a Mage Guardian, Keler? Do you still say you’re the same as Domni Semalson?”

  Sarra answered for him. “Yes. He does.” And she gave Keler a look that said if he didn’t, he’d better rearrange his thinking immediately. She turned the same expression on every Mage Guardian she could find in the crowd.

  Suddenly a familiar drawling voice remarked, “Keler may have the advantage in magic, but I know for a fact he can’t add two and two. He’d make a hell of a Census taker.”

  This ridiculous observation didn’t strike Sarra as funny at all. But everyone laughed—or almost everyone—as Collan edged out of the tangle and stood with the bonfire behind him. He’d gotten rid of the longvest, and in the plain red and white of trousers and shirt looked nearly presentable.

  “You’re all missing the point,” he went on. “The only people who care about Bloods and Tiers are people who want to keep the system even though they don’t have the guts to call it what it is. As for impostors—hell, I’m not wearing a
disk, I could be anybody. And look at Lady Sarra. The one she’s wearing belonged to Mai Alvassy!”

  And then he slid a thumb beneath the chain at Sarra’s neck and pulled it off over her head and threw it into the bonfire.

  Into the deathly silence he said calmly, “Who she is is who she says she is. And the same goes for me, and every single person on Lenfell.”

  Dizzy with pride, Sarra couldn’t take her eyes off him. Vaguely she was aware of a few, a dozen, then almost everyone present tossing their disks into the blaze to melt into meaningless bits of silver. In the race to tear off and dispose of the disks, Sevat Semalson was jostled back. He gave Sarra a dire glance as he bumped into her.

  “We’ll still know. Birth records, marriages, divorces—” His mouth curled unpleasantly. “—and tax rolls.”

  “Fine,” she replied, nodding. “A government has a perfect right to know who its citizens are. But not to label them for its own convenience. Not to categorize them. We are who we say we are, not what anyone tells us to be.”

  She felt a hand tug at her elbow, and turned. Collan. She wanted to throw her arms around him—until she got a good look at his face. He drew her over to the wine carts and rounded on her furiously.

  “What the hell was that look for?”

  “What look?”

  “Little Lady Innocence!” He shook her by the arm; she jerked herself free. “It was as plain as if you’d branded me the way Scraller did!”

  “Branded—?”

  “Your property!” he hissed. “And if you think I’ll husband you, First Daughter, think again! I don’t belong to anybody, least of all you!”

  Her temper exploded in his face. “Who says I want you? Obviously you’re not the kind of man to be a husband! I wouldn’t have you as mine if you got down on your knees and begged!”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Then, with the illogic that was the birthright of even the most rational men and the despair of countless Generations of women, he did an incomprehensible about-face and accused, “You need a husband, Lady—and it’s going to be me!”