“Don’t try to manipulate me, Clarie,” Derekian said. “I don’t play games with the nobility.”
“That is not true, and you know it,” Papa said. “You’ve manipulated and schemed your way to a secure position, disposing of weak or corrupt nobles and putting your own people in power. There’s no reason you can’t designate whoever you want as our heir.”
“Pontus,” the king said, “you come dangerously close to treason.”
“Derekian,” Papa said, “you have never had a stronger supporter than Beneddo, even in the early days when everyone thought you would be just another weak Fiorus monarch. If that counts for anything, let it matter now.”
Sienne heard it all in a daze, words tumbling past in a wind only she could feel. Her vision had tunneled down to nothing, just her parents and the king talking about things her addled brain only barely understood. “I,” she said, her voice barely audible. It nevertheless drew their attention to her, searing her skin. “I don’t understand.”
Derekian sighed. “I sometimes think I might as well not be king, for all the respect my vassals fail to give me.” He turned back to Papa. “And which of the many Verannus offspring do I want to choose as heir?”
“Giles,” Mama and Papa said as one, then looked at each other with amusement. “He’s smart, he’s loyal, and he’s at loose ends for what he wants to do with his life,” Papa went on. “I think the focus of knowing he’ll be duke will be good for him.”
“I certainly hope so, because I’m not intervening in your dynastic squabble a third time.” Derekian. “Sienne, you look as if you need to sit. I’m afraid these chairs are designed more to keep petitioners off-balance than to be comfortable.”
“I’ll be fine,” Sienne murmured. Everything still seemed to be coming from so far away. She felt her father’s hand on her shoulder, bearing her up, and finally the tears came. She threw herself into her parents’ arms, sobbing uncontrollably, all the pain and worry of the past four days coming out in hot tears. “You didn’t have to,” she choked out between sobs. “I promised—”
“We only ever wanted the best for you,” Papa said. “We were just bad at guessing what that was.”
“It’s remarkable what you’ve done with your life,” Mother said.
“But—what you said about sacrificing—”
“The whole point of making that sacrifice is to gain something better,” Mother whispered. “It’s not to give up the something better for something less.”
“We’re still your family, no matter where you go,” Papa said, tweaking her ear and startling a laugh out of her. “Lady Sienne.”
Sienne nodded and, smiling, stepped away from them. “You leave in a few days,” she said. “I’ll stay with you until then.”
Papa and Mother exchanged significant looks. “I think there’s someone who needs you more than we do,” Papa said. “But…bring him for a visit. Bring them all.”
Sienne turned. Alaric looked as if he’d run into the middle of fury without ducking. “I will,” Sienne said, and took three steps and threw herself into his arms.
They lay at last in their own big bed, twined together in a tangle of limbs and breathing heavily from exertion. “I can’t remember how long it’s been,” Sienne gasped. “I was afraid I might have forgotten how.”
“Never,” Alaric said, brushing strands of sweaty hair back from her face. “I dreamed of you every night you were gone. Dreamed you’d been kidnapped, dreamed you’d accepted your inheritance, dreamed you’d simply up and left me. They were the worst nights of my life.”
“I won’t leave you again.” Sienne twisted so she could lie curled up in the curve of his body.
“I never thought I’d be grateful to your parents after that trick they pulled, keeping you locked up. It turns out they really did want the best for you.” He blew lightly across her temple, cooling her skin.
“They really did. I’m glad they figured out what that was.” She felt so relaxed, like resin melting over a hot stove. “And to do them credit, they would have let me marry you if we could have had children.”
“Mmm. Is that something you want? Marriage?”
“I don’t think it would change anything, do you? Since there’s no noble title or estate at stake?”
“Marriage isn’t something Sassaven do. The wizard…” Alaric’s arm tightened over Sienne. “He sometimes forces us to mate with someone who will produce acceptable offspring. We’re not privy to what he thinks is acceptable. But it means we make our alliances in secret, in case he decides to punish us by taking us away from the ones we love. I’d never even heard of marriage before leaving the valley.”
“That’s horrible. It makes me even more eager to free them.” She paused, then decided to go for broke. “But children…that is something you want.”
“No. Not really.”
“Liar. I saw you with the werebear children. And with Liliana and her friends. And even those snotty-nosed urchins at Wit and Swift’s lodging. You want children.”
She rolled over to face him and saw he’d gone very still, his eyes closed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I do.”
A cold fist closed over her heart. “And we can’t have them.” He had his arms around her, so fleeing in tears wasn’t an option. “Do you want…” She cleared her throat, which was suddenly tight and dry. “I understand.”
“Understand what?” His eyes opened, but he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking far beyond the walls of the room at some distant vista.
“That you need to be with your own kind.”
His gaze came swiftly to rest on her. “What are you talking about?”
“To have children. You need a Sassaven woman—”
“I need—Sienne, that’s not what I meant!”
“Alaric, it’s obvious this means so much to you, being a father. I don’t want to stand in the way of that.”
Alaric released her and rolled onto his back. “It’s not as simple as that. I haven’t thought about having children, all these years, because—not just because I was away from the Sassaven, but because someone in my line of work, someone trying to defeat a powerful wizard who could possibly kill him, has no business bringing children into the world. Then you came along, and now…” He blew out his breath in a long stream. “Having you means giving that up. I thought I was at peace with it, but I think I grieved that loss all the way back to Fioretti.”
“It doesn’t have to be a loss.” Breathing around the icy fist in her chest hurt more than she’d imagined possible.
“Of course it does. Lose my future children, or lose you. But it’s not even a choice. I want you, Sienne. I have from the beginning.” He buried his face in the curve where her neck met her shoulder. “I just thought, with such an obvious choice, it wouldn’t hurt so much.”
She put her arms around him and held him in silence for a long, long time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s so unfair. If there was anything I could do—but it’s not something magic can fix.”
“Given that magic caused the problem in the first place, you’d think there would be something,” he murmured. He raised his head and kissed her, the barest brush of his lips against hers. “I don’t resent you. Don’t ever think that.”
“I was worried, a little.”
“Well, don’t. It’s not like you won’t have a horde of nieces and nephews, given the size of your family. And there are other compensations, and you are chief among them.” He kissed the side of her face. “Besides, you’d be a terrible mother.”
“I would not!”
“You’d get caught up in something, and forget we even had a baby. Don’t deny it.”
“I took very good care of my little sisters and never once forgot about them. All right, maybe once. There are eight of us! It’s natural to leave one behind in the garden. For an hour. Stop laughing! I swear, Alaric, I’m going to—”
25
Sienne closed Master Tersus’s back door behind her and leaned aga
inst it, finally giving in to the shakes that had threatened to overwhelm her ever since speaking to Mistress Givvani at the University of Fioretti’s wizardry school. Fifty thousand lari. For a piece of ancient parchment.
She’d pushed herself to the limit of her resources demonstrating the potential of the mystery spell, then sat and listened to the wizards argue over whether it was truly a lost spell, or one they had records of. An hour later, they’d decided none of their records matched it, and allowed her to name it: klica drajanek, summon companion. With her name listed as discoverer. No wonder she was shaky.
Nobody was in the kitchen, so she went down the hall to the sitting room they rented from Master Tersus. Alaric had Sienne’s notebook in hand and was frowning at it, probably studying the translations she’d made of the ritual. Perrin sat in the corner on the floor, cross-legged, meditating with his hands resting loosely on his knees. Dianthe had her feet propped on the low, awkward table and appeared to be asleep. Sienne knew it was a sham, because Dianthe wasn’t snoring. “Where’s Kalanath?”
“Out,” Dianthe said without opening her eyes. “He said he needed to speak to someone, and he’d be back soon.”
“Did they buy the spell?” Alaric asked.
“Yes. Guess how much. Never mind, you won’t guess. Fifty thousand.”
Perrin’s eyes flew open. Alaric let out a long, low whistle. Dianthe shot upright and said, “Is that even possible?”
“It’s not the most anyone’s ever paid for a lost spell, but this one—the price is as much for the new wizardry theory as for the spell itself. And they agreed to examine the hazard deck at no charge.”
“Is that safe?” Perrin asked. “If Master Samretto stole it, and it is recognizable as belonging to someone—”
“It’s worth taking the risk. I explained that we found it as legitimate salvage, which is true, and if it was stolen, they won’t think it was us, because who would dare present stolen goods to the University of Fioretti? So at worst, the real owner claims it, and at best, we have an artifact we can actually use for something other than hazard readings. They said to come back in a few days and they’ll have an answer.”
“Good choice,” Alaric said. Sienne took a seat next to him and snuggled under his arm. She still felt tender of him, the long days of enforced separation having left a mark. By the way he occasionally touched her hair, or her shoulder, for no reason at all, she thought he might feel the same way. She reached into her pack and pulled out the banker’s draft, extending it to him. He took it and held it up to the light. “This is a lot of lari.”
“It’s almost too much to know what to do with,” Sienne said.
“Oh, I assure you I can think of ways to spend it,” Dianthe said, holding out her hand to look at it. Alaric passed it across. “Precious, precious lari.”
Kalanath appeared in the doorway. “I hear Dianthe talking about money,” he said. “Do we have some?”
“Fifty thousand,” Dianthe said. Kalanath’s eyes widened.
“I do not know what I can do with my share,” he said.
“Dianthe will give you advice,” Alaric said dryly. Dianthe mock-snarled at him and handed the banker’s draft back. “Though as to that, if Perrin’s ready, what we learn from this blessing may change how we spend that money.”
Sienne stood with him and helped move the sofa back as Dianthe dragged the table out of the way. Kalanath lifted Dianthe’s chair and set it against the wall. “You think it will need money?” he said.
“I think it’s possible we may need to do more research, and that costs,” Alaric said. “Perrin?”
“Everyone sit in a circle,” Perrin instructed. “Sienne, put your notebook in the center, open to the page with the ritual we need, please.” He settled down cross-legged again as Sienne laid out the notebook, cracking the spine so the pages wouldn’t turn. Alaric handed her the writing desk that normally stood on a table under the window. She settled it on her lap, spread sheets of paper on it, and gripped a pencil, ready to write.
“Do not fear, Sienne. This will not hurt you,” Perrin said.
“I hadn’t thought it would until you said something, thanks.” The shakes had returned. She held the pencil more tightly, willing them to vanish. Perrin was right, this wouldn’t hurt her, though if she thought about it too long, she started to imagine the possible repercussions of allowing an avatar to work through her. She’d seen Perrin commune with Averran once, seeing the world as the avatar saw it, and it had nearly killed him. This wasn’t the same, but the memory persisted nevertheless.
Perrin breathed in and out rhythmically, half a dozen times, and Sienne found her own breathing falling in time with his. “O Lord of Crotchets,” he said, “hear my plea. You know the quest we have pursued these many months. We thank you for your guidance and ask your forbearance once more.”
A tingling began at the base of Sienne’s spine. The air thickened, became difficult to breathe. She made herself continue the slow, rhythmic breathing and relaxed her grip on her pencil. At least her palms weren’t sweating. Yet.
“Before us is the ritual we discovered in the ruin,” Perrin went on. “We believe your guidance led us to it, and we give thanks, o most cantankerous Lord. Now we ask that your wisdom extend to cover our ignorance. An evil man has warped this ritual to his own ends. We seek to undo what he has done. To this purpose, we ask you, o Lord, to reveal the ways in which the ritual has been warped. Please work through your servant Sienne, whose discovery this is, to show us wisdom.”
The tingle spread up Sienne’s spine and down her shoulders, through the long bones of her arms and into her fingers. Her right arm twitched. Then, without any direction from her, it rose into the air. She stifled a shriek. It felt as if she’d cast drift on only part of her body, to make it rise weightlessly and hang mid-air like a puppet’s arm dangling from invisible wires.
Letters in Ginatic formed in front of her eyes, became words and then sentences in Ginatic she was only just capable of interpreting. A bubble of air pressed against her lips from inside her mouth, pushing them open. She released the bubble, which popped. The faint sound of the first syllable of the first word dancing before her drifted away. One. “One,” she repeated, but in Fellic rather than Ginatic. “Drink deep of the well of slumber, and awaken the second self.”
She felt her right hand, holding the pencil, write something on the paper. She risked a quick glance down and saw she’d written what she’d just said. The letters moved with her, dizzying her when she raised her head. Her hand had its own agenda, clearly, and another bubble of air was pressing against her mouth, so she decided to ignore her hand and give in to the urging of the letters. “Two,” she said as the faint two puffed from between her lips. “Let the knife of binding draw us together, two hands as one.”
She went on, reading the words that scrolled up before her eyes, barely comprehending what she read. The tingling in her hand grew to a burning ache, but it wrote on with no direction from her. The room’s four walls receded from her until she felt she was in a vast white room, featureless, in which sounds and smells were absorbed into its bright walls. She’d never felt so alone, and yet it didn’t frighten her, because she wasn’t alone, there was a presence that lifted and guided her hand. She thought, Averran, and the room shook, nearly thrusting her out of it. She calmed herself and let the next word press against her lips until she set it free and resumed reading.
It was either hours or seconds before the last of the words slipped out; she knew it had to have taken time, because reading always did, but her body insisted it had been no time at all. She blinked, and realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done so. Whatever force had moved her arm vanished, leaving it too heavy for her to lift. The pencil fell from her nerveless fingers and rolled a short distance away, where Dianthe picked it up. Sienne massaged her limp arm and let out a long breath. “I think Averran guided my hand. Literally.”
“Something certainly did,” Alaric said, ta
king her right hand and raising it to be level with her eyes. She gasped. The skin was pale, almost as pale as Alaric’s, and there were four short, rounded red marks like burns across its back, with a fifth, longer mark running down the base of her thumb. Alaric placed his hand around hers, fitting his fingers to the marks. His hand was too large, but it was clear they were the marks of somebody’s thumb and fingers.
“Astonishing,” Perrin said.
“What did we learn?” Kalanath asked, leaning forward to look at the paper, which to him was upside down.
Sienne shook out her still-numb right hand and picked up the top sheet with her left. “I wrote what I said. Didn’t you understand it?”
“Some words were in a foreign language. Probably Ginatic.” Alaric held out his hand for the paper. “And some of it was very familiar. Was it the ritual?”
“I think so. Not this ritual.” Sienne indicated the notebook, which someone had shut—or had it closed itself? She was ready to believe almost anything now. “The one the wizard uses. The altered ritual.”
“But if Averran could tell us that all along, why hasn’t he?” Dianthe took a turn looking at the paper.
“Presumably because we have never asked before,” Perrin said. “And I think it likely that the altered ritual is meaningless without the original to compare it to. We are, after all, seeking a way to invert the wizard’s ritual while retaining the parts of it that give a Sassaven his full power. We are now in a position to compare the two.”
“What’s this word, Sienne?” Dianthe asked, pointing at the bottom of the page.
Sienne looked, and felt numb again. “It’s prafladuo,” she said. “It means ‘dominate.’ It’s a charm spell, or used to be—I don’t think anyone still knows it. I hope no one still knows it.”
“That carver wizard I killed knew it,” Alaric said, his voice grim with unwanted memory.
“Well, no human still knows it, or at least will admit to knowing it. There are stories…it’s the stuff of legends, or nightmares, casting dominate to make someone your willing slave. If that’s what the wizard uses, it’s no wonder the Sassaven are in thrall to him. But in the stories, there’s always a way to break free of dominate. It doesn’t sound like that’s the case for the Sassaven.”
Shifting Loyalties Page 29