Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “No,” she said in Telgardian, still facing Rond. “I will come with you.”

  Again he stared at her in shock, while Rond showed no emotion at all. “You would be welcome, my lady,” the man said at the same time Graegor said, “I don’t think you should.”

  Instantly he sensed her anger. “Natayl excludes me from everything important,” she sent in Mazespaak. “Do you really want to do the same?”

  He had no idea how to answer that. Contare had not heard Tabitha’s exact words, but he did sense Graegor’s helpless frustration. “It’s all right,” he sent. “They seem to want her there, so maybe they feel they’ll gain some advantage. That might make them a little less careful, and they might reveal more than they intend.”

  “I should just let her come, then?”

  “Let her control the discussion, in fact, if she wants to.”

  “What about Natayl? Doesn’t he have to give permission first?”

  “That’s between the two of them.”

  Graegor trusted Contare. He should, and he did. If Contare thought this was all right, Graegor would rely on his judgement. He clenched his jaw and looked at Rond. “Where is the fox-den?”

  “A few blocks from here, my lord. I can lead you.”

  “Lead the carriage.” He wasn’t going to ask Tabitha to walk any distance, and “a few” blocks was more likely to be “many”. As Rond nodded his agreement, Graegor turned to Tabitha and made the same formal gesture toward the carriage as he had before. “My lady?”

  She gave him a regal nod and glided over to the carriage, where Stan helped her in. As Graegor climbed in beside her, she folded her hands primly in her lap instead of looping her arm through his as she usually did. She did not smile in triumph, but her mind was not so closed to his that he missed her satisfaction when she heard him tell Stan to follow Rond.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you spoke Telgardian?” he asked her aloud, to try to make it harder for her to ignore him.

  “You did not ask,” she said.

  He held his breath for a count of five before trusting himself to speak. “You’ve heard me use it before and you’ve never said anything.”

  “Are you upset that you can’t leave me out of certain conversations anymore?”

  “When have I ever left you out?”

  She didn’t answer, and he gave up. Cold silence settled over them as the carriage moved forward at a pace that was probably brisk for Rond but seemed torturously slow for Graegor. He was right, he knew he was right. Tabitha should have told him she spoke Telgardian. Why wouldn’t she just admit that and apologize?

  He stewed about it the entire way to the house with the fox-den, which was considerably more than “a few” blocks from the theater district. They passed at least a dozen intersections before Stan stopped the carriage. “My lord,” Stan sent, “the man we’re following is talking to another man now.”

  That had to be Ahren. “I expected that. Thank you, Stan. We won’t be long.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Graegor tapped his link with Contare as he jumped out of the carriage and held up his hand to Tabitha. “We’re in the Alder Park neighborhood, sir.” This quiet block had tall, winter-bare alder trees, and the stand-alone houses were two- and three-story structures with fenced gardens all the way around them. It wasn’t the city’s richest district, but it wasn’t very far down the list. Contare’s First Minister, Lord Henrey, lived nearby.

  “Is the house painted green?” Contare asked.

  “I can’t tell. We’re between streetlamps. I can see two dormers on the upper floor.”

  “It’s the Crane room, then. It’s been at that location since before my time. Under that location, that is. Every two centuries or so they tear down the old house and build a new one.”

  “‘They’? Isn’t it ‘we’?” The Circle owned all the land and buildings in the city, and no lessee could tear anything down without permission.

  “Yes, of course. I mean the Crane family. They have leased it for generations. We have pretended not to know about the room for just as long. Are there any lamps lit in the house?”

  “The windows all look dark.”

  “Keep our link open unless it’s actually cut off. That room is known for leaks.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Graegor looked at Tabitha, and her face was pinched into that small, tight glare she used on him when she suspected he was speaking telepathically with someone else. But she took his arm, and together they walked to the spot in front of the house where Ahren and Rond were exchanging hurried whispers. Ahren saw them and broke off what he’d been saying, and Rond turned around. His voice quiet in deference to the late hour, he introduced Ahren to Tabitha. Ahren seemed horrified to be meeting her, but he managed to bow, and after Tabitha nodded in reply, Rond gestured toward the gate in the tall wooden fence. “The fox-den is here,” he said as he led them forward, “in the cellar of this house. I’ve been told that the room has just been renovated, so all the seals are new.”

  Graegor sensed mild surprise from Contare, and he sent, “Is he right, sir?”

  “I’ll have Varrhon check for a renovation permit,” Contare said. “Go on in.”

  Tabitha suddenly tapped their link and sent, “Have you been to this room before?”

  There was nothing along their bond besides ordinary curiosity, as if she hadn’t just been angry at him. He was still angry. It took a moment for him to decide to not let it distract him. “No,” he answered her, trying to match her casual tone. He’d visited several fox-dens during the autumn, and Contare had asked him try to reach out telepathically from them. He’d usually failed. “Have you?”

  “Not this one.” From the sense behind her words, he guessed that Natayl had conducted similar telepathic experiments with her. It was only a guess, because she never wanted to talk about Natayl, and so they never did.

  Together they followed Rond through the gate, and the heretic took a lit lantern from a hook on the fence. He led the way across the small garden to the front of the house, then up a short flight of steps to a wide porch. The front door was painted white, and it was unlocked. No lights burned in the foyer or anywhere else in the house that Graegor could see, and Tabitha’s hand tightened on his arm.

  She still didn’t like the dark. He didn’t blame her, not after all the stories about ghosts that her nanny had told her. Nan had only meant to keep Tabitha from getting out of bed and wandering around Betaul Keep when she was small, but Graegor didn’t like the baseless fears it had created in Tabitha’s mind. Suddenly it seemed petty for him to still be angry at her, and he laid his hand over hers on his arm.

  “Here,” Rond murmured as he stopped near a wall. He bent down, and the light shone over a rectangular wooden hatch with a big iron handle. In the other fox-dens Graegor had visited, there had always been a piece of furniture covering the entrance. Rond gave the lantern to Ahren, grabbed the iron handle, and grunted as he pulled the hatch door over. The lantern shone on stone stairs going down to a faint yellow light.

  As Graegor started down the stairs behind Ahren, with Tabitha just behind him, Contare’s presence in his mind was still strong. But once they were all in the enclosed stairwell, Rond pulled the hatch shut, and as the thump vibrated around them, the link vanished. Graegor heard Tabitha’s hiss of breath as she clutched his shoulder at the noise, and he felt her spike of fear while his own mind still anxiously reached toward Contare.

  I’m too dependent on him. His master and the earth magic were both crutches. He needed to learn to stand without them.

  At the landing at the bottom of the stairs, Ahren turned to his left, and they could finally see into the room. It was nicely finished. In most of the other, smaller fox-dens Graegor had visited, the telepathy-blocking sheets of thaumat’argent metal, or thin slabs of thaumat’argent-rich rock, lined the walls and ceiling with no attempt to disguise them. But he had also been in larger rooms like this one, tastefully decorated to look like a par
lor. About five or six paces on a side, each wall was covered in white wooden wainscoting. The ceiling was a grid of coffered squares, its woodwork and plaster all white, sharp, and precise. Hanging from the center of the ceiling on delicate chains was a round oil lamp, its thaumat’argent finial likely set with a spell that kept the flame smokeless. Nothing about the room looked, felt, or smelled like it was underground; even the lack of windows wasn’t obvious because of the carefully placed landscape paintings and columns of pale green draperies. The floor was smooth walnut boards. Graegor guessed that the seals here were behind the wood paneling of the walls and above the coffered ceiling. They were definitely in place, though, for when he reflexively reached for his link with Contare again, it again led nowhere.

  “I’m sorry, my lord, my lady,” Rond said. “They told me they haven’t put the refinements in this room yet. But they stressed to me that it is sealed.”

  Tabitha reached the bottom of the stairs behind Graegor. The lamplight glittered on the silver-colored wrap over her shoulders. He offered his arm, she accepted it, and they took a few strolling steps into the room. Her expression was unimpressed. “How do you know that it is sealed?” she coolly asked Rond. Hearing her speak Telgardian made Graegor angry again, but he forced himself past it.

  “You would know, my lady,” Rond replied, inclining his head.

  “Do you trust us about that?” She smiled condescendingly. “We are in a fox-den because you don’t trust us. How do you know that it is sealed?”

  “I don’t,” Rond admitted. “I’m not a magus, my lady. I asked about houses with fox-dens, and I found out about this one.”

  “Who told you about it?”

  “I’m sure they didn’t use their real names, my lady. But I trust that the owner of the house would make sure—”

  “‘Owner’?” Tabitha arched her eyebrows. “No. Lessee.” She saw Rond’s expression twist irritably at her correction, and both her accent and her words grew sharp. “Don’t forget to whom you speak. Everyone lives on this island, everyone visits it, because we allow it.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Rond said, very carefully, inclining his head again and folding his hands together. “I’m very sorry. I meant no offense.”

  “I forgive you.” But she didn’t smile, and she then looked directly at Ahren as if Rond had ceased to exist. Ahren’s eyes widened, and he shifted from one foot to the other, as if he wished he could sit down. “You,” Tabitha said once she had made him uncomfortable for long enough. “Tell me your name again.”

  “Ahren, my lady.”

  “Ahren, tell me about the ‘shovel-men’.”

  “The shovel-men?” Ahren sounded confused. “We aren’t shovel-men, my lady.”

  “You have nothing to do with them?” she pressed.

  Ahren glanced at Graegor before saying, “My lady, Lord Graegor was there in Farre when I helped to fight against the shovel-men. He’ll tell you that we don’t have anything in common with them.”

  “Except you are both against L’Abbanism,” Tabitha said.

  Ahren’s expression darkened. “No, my lady. We aren’t heretics. We are the white heralds, because we herald the coming of the One. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “The shovel-men say this too,” Tabitha pointed out.

  “Lord Brandeis’s visions are real.”

  “You mean dreams?”

  “The visions come to him in dreams.”

  “These dreams show people’s faces, yes?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “And he says that these people are important to the One?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “And he says that Lord Graegor could be the One?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “But there is no picture of me.” She raised one perfect eyebrow. “I am important to Lord Graegor. Can you explain?”

  Ahren stared at her helplessly. Rond addressed Graegor: “My lord, are there other people who are important to you who aren’t in the drawings?”

  “Yes,” Graegor admitted, though he could feel Tabitha’s annoyance.

  “It’s the drawings we need to talk about,” Ahren blurted. “We need them back.” A moment later he remembered to add, “My lord.”

  “That’s why we asked you to come here, my lord,” Rond said, obviously determined to take back control of the conversation from Tabitha. “Lord Brandeis told us to find the people in the pictures and learn how they’re important to the One. That’s our mission.”

  Graegor waited a beat for Tabitha to say something if she wanted to, then shook his head. “I’m sorry. We’re keeping the drawings.”

  “My lord, we have information that might be useful to you. Would you be willing to trade for the drawings?”

  Graegor strongly suspected that this was a bluff. “It would depend on whether or not the information is useful,” he said, “and I can’t judge that until you tell me what it is.”

  Rond kept his tone even. “My lord, if you promise to return the drawings, I’ll tell you what we know.”

  “I can’t make such a promise. Lord Brandeis can draw new pictures if he needs to.”

  “My lord, respectfully, there is no reason for you to keep them.”

  “I’ve already told you the reasons.”

  “My lord,” Rond said, “you could have them copied, and return the originals to us to give back to Brandeis. They are his.”

  “We are having them copied. The king needs to see them, and so does the sorcerer of Toland. And others.”

  “But the originals—”

  “Will remain in our possession.”

  “My lord.” It was clearly an effort for Rond to keep his tone even. “Why are you determined to thwart us? We mean those people no harm. Why won’t you at least tell us who they all are?”

  “We have no reason to trust your intentions.”

  Rond’s mouth grew tight with the words he was obviously holding back. Ahren took a step closer to him and whispered something. Rond gave a bitter laugh and muttered, “Shit.”

  “Careful,” Tabitha said softly. Graegor was stunned; she even knew Telgardian curse words. Where and when had she learned any of his language? And why had she never told him?

  Rond was bowing his head. “I’m very sorry, my lady. I meant no offense.”

  There was a small thump. Before he even knew the danger, Graegor reacted, diving flat to the floor with Tabitha as something, some things, a dozen or a hundred things shot straight through the space where they’d been standing. His power whirled into high-pitched noise and solid violet light just inches above his head, crowding and overwhelming the sheen of Tabitha’s magic rising alongside it. Then both energies warped beneath an enormous weight that rang like two struck bells, while the wooden floor shook and jumped with thudding impacts.

  Tabitha was terrified. Her fear choked their bond and he could not block her out. He held her tight and opened his eyes, and when he looked past her shoulder he saw his own face, mirrored in a long, flat stretch of shining steel sunk fast into the floor.

  Blades. Blades were falling from the ceiling, and two of them hung inches above him and Tabitha, blocked only by the spinning strength of his gen shield and Tabitha’s silver power.

  By some instinct, he jerked his left leg back, but then that leg burst into blinding pain like a firework. First red hot, then white cold, then nothing—it went numb from the knee down. Tabitha suddenly jerked her arm to one side, and he felt her gen shift against his, and the blades above them dropped another finger’s width. Pain in her arm burned across their bond, and her body convulsed with her scream. A splatter of her blood hit his face.

  His medallion burned against his chest, and then the earth magic was there, rushing up to him and through him, ramming power up into the shield covering him and Tabitha. His leg was dead, but every other nerve in his body sparked with lightning as raw energy surged up the long, lacing strings that connected him to the far depths of the earth. His shield turned fog-whit
e, and it heaved—and suddenly the weights pressing above him and Tabitha were gone.

  He heard a muffled clang. A second later the two huge blades fell back onto his strengthened shield, and the metal shattered.

  He heard a yell of pain, but it wasn’t Tabitha. He knew it wasn’t her, even though her pain and fear and fury still overwhelmed their bond. Was it Rond or Ahren or—someone else was still here, someone was in the room with them. He couldn’t help Tabitha until he knew what was happening. With the shield of earth magic a milky white dome over and around them, he braced his elbow to the floor and pushed himself up.

  He immediately flinched back as something else fell toward him, another blade, a curved blade—a scimitar. Sparks flew as the sword deflected along the domed curve of his shield and buried its edge into the wooden floor. Tabitha’s arm hurt like nothing she’d ever felt in her life. Graegor heard another muffled yell, an angry curse, and something else hit the shield behind his back. Everything outside the shield looked and sounded as if it was behind mist and under water. The scimitar was wrenched out of the floor and brought down hard against his shield again.

  He had to stop them. He pulled more power from the earth and flung it outward. But the shield absorbed the telekinetic force, and it expanded into an even larger dome.

  He couldn’t attack. Whoever was out there, he couldn’t attack them. He braced his elbow to the floor again and pushed himself to his knees. Though he couldn’t feel his left leg below his thigh, he stood up, gritting his teeth with the strain, pressing his hands to the solid energy of his shield, feeling it spin against his fingers.

  Blurred human forms moved away from him. One disappeared completely—the stairwell, that far wall hid the stairwell. They were retreating. He counted four men. One held the shape of the scimitar, and another held the equally unmistakable shape of a bearded axe. He could feel Tabitha’s pain as if his own arm had been stabbed, but he didn’t move yet. He looked left, right, and behind, trying to see if there was anyone else.

  But there weren’t, except for two forms lying near—under—more blades, blades that spanned the length of the room and stuck into the floor. Two forms … Ahren and Rond.