Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  That had happened just before Tabitha and her father had arrived in Tiaulon for Motthias’s coronation. “But it’s the Pravelles who are letting them in now.”

  “I know you think that, but the map does not support it. Most are crossing the White Sea and passing through Sentier without any serious challenge, and that’s a Jasinthe holding. It’s true that a few are coming through Chartaul, too, but that’s only to be expected.”

  Tabitha was not particularly good with maps. “But if not the Pravelles, who? It’s not the Jasinthes.” All the Jasinthes were isolationists, at heart and in policy, and they made much of the purity of their blood. Tabitha’s presence was the sole reason they had sent Attarine to attend the Academy on Maze Island, among so many foreigners. “In fact, I am certain that the Jasinthes would take more steps to stop the heretics all along the coasts of both seas, if they could. Should we not in that case support the duke’s move to get on the regency?”

  Her father winced a little. “That has its own dangers. War with Adelard, for one.”

  It was hard to understand all of this. “So Lord Morel is better? Even though he and the other regents are just standing around watching heretics overrun Thendalia?” Tabitha had wanted to like Lord Morel, or at least respect him, since he was a magus. She had met him with his cousin in Tiaulon, and had found him quite an ugly man, with crooked features and lank hair. But he had hardly been the worst of Motthias’s cronies.

  “Actually, I think Morel has good intentions. But the other regents have their own separate agendas.”

  Something occurred to her then. “Does that mean that … that maybe no one is letting the heretics in? That since the Pravelles, and each of the regents, and the queen too, are all working against each other, no one can stop what is happening?”

  The ghost of a smile crossed her father’s face. “That is surely a possibility.”

  This made it all the more important for Tabitha to succeed. It was not only Betaul. The fate of all Thendalia might depend on this meeting. She had to stop what was happening, and she could not let anyone stop her, like the Seventh Circle had stopped Sorceress Iseult.

  What would have happened had they not stopped Iseult? What if Iseult had been allowed to finish her work to end the civil war? It had taken generations after Lord Brias had died before the Pravelles had established themselves as Thendalia’s new royal house. Because they had, Natayl had been born a prince.

  All the histories agreed that the Betauls of that time could not have taken back the throne. They had been weak, barely holding onto the region around Betaul itself, and had regained wealth and power only under the Pravelles’ rule and support. But what if the Pravelles had only risen because of the Betauls’ support? What if the Betauls back then had been too careful, too ready to let another family take the ultimate risk, and the ultimate prize?

  “I wish you were king,” Tabitha said, low.

  Her father laughed and drank, but made no other answer.

  “You would be good at it,” she pressed.

  “My own lands and my own people are more than enough worry for me.”

  “All Thendalia could be your lands. All Thendals could be your people.”

  “No, Tabitha.” He said it as if denying her a new necklace.

  She sighed inwardly. Had it been a new necklace, she would have asked again. But as it was, she knew better. He had given his oath to Motthias’s son. “You were ready enough for me to be a queen,” she muttered.

  “And you did not seem the least upset about such a fate.”

  “You were ready enough for one of your grandsons to be a king.”

  “We always want more for our children and our children’s children.”

  The charm will work. The charm will work.

  Her father drank more, then changed the subject. “That holy sister on Maze Island, the one who pledged to you. You said she was writing letters to some priests she knows.”

  “Maga Elinore.” Despite her long years on Maze Island, the ancient maga still knew many priests who had risen far in Thendalia’s Theocracy, and she, like Tabitha, wanted to know what they thought of the heretics. “Some did write back to her, but they were too careful with their words to guess their opinions.”

  Her father shook his head irritably. “Priests.”

  Tabitha nodded. It felt wrong to have such low regard for men of God, but they were not acting like men of God. According to Maga Elinore, the intrigue in the Theocracy was as bad as the intrigue in the court. “It should be very simple,” Tabitha complained. “We are talking about heretics. All the Theocracy should join the Hierarch in denouncing them. Why is there any argument at all?”

  Her father shook his head again, even more irritably. “Our Hierarch’s denunciation was not nearly as strongly worded as Adelard’s Hierarch’s. It left room for argument.”

  Tabitha had not ventured to ask him this before, in letters or in person, but they were on the subject now, and he had already hinted at his opinion. “Do you believe that our Hierarch should be … deposed?” She would not mind that at all. She had spoken twice with the Hierarch during her time at court in Tiaulon. He was old and lecherous and smelled like a sack of onions.

  Her father firmly shook his head. “Not unless he is found guilty of heresy himself. Theocratic law is clear.”

  She approached the question from another angle. “Might it be better for Thendalia to have a stronger Hierarch?”

  Now he gave her a sidelong glance. “A stronger Theocracy, I would say. The shovel-men might not find so many converts here if our Archpriests consistently followed their own laws. And enforced them among ordinary priests. So many of them are corrupt, and what happens to the few who are not? They end up bearing the brunt of the heretics’ violence.”

  Tabitha nodded slowly. High noblemen like her father had knights and guardsmen, and could defend their lands from bands of heretics even without help from king, queen, court, or regency. Her father was prepared to do that very thing if she was not successful, and she knew that Duke Aviere was trying to do so already. But individual priests? They had no money and no weapons. They could do little if the heretics decided to burn their chapels, and nothing to keep those heretics from slithering away into the night afterward. Their only power came from the Theocracy, and the Theocracy was divided.

  It is up to me.

  If she succeeded, the Betaul Marches would become a haven for those fleeing the depredations of the heretics. Her father’s lands had not yet been touched by the longer, colder winters that were causing crop failure further north, and with her magic, she could ensure rich, fertile soil that should feed thousands of people for hundreds of years to come. Her father’s people would revere him, and her. This crisis could be what propelled her family to recover its ancient crown.

  A crown, and a dynasty.

  The charm would work.

  The servingman appeared to refill Tabitha’s goblet again, and then her father’s mug. Tabitha drank and relaxed into the chair, letting its curved, padded back cradle her neck. The music for the dancers had a complex but compelling underbeat of subtle drums, and she started tapping her hand on the armrest.

  She felt Isabelle calling to her. “Pamela is asking about you. She thinks someone must have offended you.”

  “No, I am just talking to my father.”

  “Where—oh, I see you both now. I’ll tell her.”

  Dear, dear Pamela. Tabitha smiled and shook her head, and her father noticed. “Nothing,” she told him. “Just Isabelle.”

  He grunted. Although he had never said it, he was not comfortable with telepathy. She suspected that, like most non-magi, what made him most uncomfortable was the idea that magi could be talking about him right in front of him without him knowing.

  Then he cleared his throat, and when she looked at him, he said, “We spoke once about placing one of your magi at Betaul Keep.”

  “Yes.” She was happy that he had brought up the subject himself, but she spoke c
arefully. “What do you think?”

  “I think it has many benefits,” he said, just as carefully. “But it would need to be someone that you trusted completely.”

  “Of course, Father.” The problem was that all of the magi she trusted completely were still students. “I have been thinking about which one to send.”

  He nodded. His eyes were on the people dancing across the ballroom floor, and Tabitha saw Beatris and Sebastene among them. After a moment, her father said, “Send two. One to Betaul, one here.”

  “I will,” she promised immediately, but she would talk to Clementa about it. Clementa knew all the Thendals at the Academy, including the boys. Surely there were magi boys she could come to trust, at least with her father’s messages.

  She wondered what it would be like to have a boy pledge to her. Would they feel any different from the girls, in her mind? She was not sure she should tell Graegor about it.

  “How far is the range?” her father asked.

  “The telepathic range? Most magi can only send up to ten or twelve miles, but for some it can be up to a hundred.”

  That made him frown. “It’s two hundred fifty from here to Betaul. But …” He paused. “But only about a hundred from Chiad Isle to Alamere.”

  “Yes, so the magi would arrange to connect from those two points on a regular schedule.”

  “Is that what’s normally done?”

  A smile would be condescending, so Tabitha suppressed it. “Indeed.”

  “See to it, then.” After a pause, he added, “And you might as well make sure they are both healers, so I could get the most benefit from them.”

  That sounded cold, but she knew he did not truly mean it such. “Yes, Father.”

  They watched the dancers for a while in silence. Eventually Isabelle twirled by with her latest partner, and her father said, “Your cousin seems to be doing well. Maze Island suits her?”

  “Very much. She is excelling at the Academy. She and the other girls tell me what they are learning, and it sometimes fills gaps in my tutoring.” Tabitha made sure to tell Maga Rollana and Magus Uchsin every time that happened. Her own education should include everything the magi were learning.

  “And you two get along well?”

  “We do,” Tabitha nodded in satisfaction. “She is loyal to me, and good company besides.”

  “Then I am glad I brought her to you.” He made a gesture of uncertainty. “At first ...”

  She waited, then prompted, “At first?”

  “Her family was not very accommodating when I delivered your letter.”

  Tabitha smirked a little. “But they did not dare deny the request.”

  “They tried to, remember? For months. And the girl herself seemed skittish. But once we were all on our way to see you, Beatris and Pamela were very kind to her and made her feel welcome.”

  There was something that Tabitha had wanted to ask her father for a while. “I know it’s rather gauche, but … why did you never tell me about Isabelle? That she was … conceived out of wedlock?”

  He glanced over at her. “Ah. She told you?”

  “It was one of the first things she told me.” Tabitha’s father had been barely out of earshot at the time. “She wanted to make sure it would not matter to me. I told her it did not, since she was magi. But I was shocked.”

  “I suppose you would be.” He drank more ale, then studied the bottom of the mug for a while. “I was angry,” he said finally. “I did not want a bastard to have your mother’s name.”

  My dead mother’s name. To lose his wife in childbirth, and then have her sister name an illegitimate child after her six months later? Yes, he would have been angry at that. Tabitha waited for him to continue, and when he did not, she said, “It was not Isabelle’s fault.”

  “Of course not. I know that. It did not change how I felt.” He shook his head. “I did not like her mother—your mother’s sister. Or the minstrel. The father. That’s why I never brought the girl to Betaul for fostering. I should have.”

  “I …” Tabitha trailed off. I thought you just did not like magi. “I would have liked that, Father. But I do understand how hard it must have been for you.” Something occurred to her. “She looks like him, right? Like her father. Her mother and my mother were both beautiful, but she …” She trailed off again. She needed to guard her tongue more closely.

  “She is not,” her father finished the sentence for her, and Tabitha could only nod. “She does look like her father,” he went on. “Have you heard her sing?”

  “No.” Isabelle never sang, not even when they visited the dormitory. She seemed defensive about it. “Have you?”

  “I overheard her singing with Beatris and Pamela when we were on the ship. She does not have the purity of tone that you do, but that’s probably due to lack of training. She could be a minstrel like her father if she wanted to be.”

  “She has never sung with me.” But why? Did she think Tabitha would be upset if someone else had that talent? It was ridiculous.

  “Will you let her sing with you?”

  “Of course, Father.” He knew perfectly well why she had not let the holy sisters sing at the wedding ceremony with her. She did not need to sing solo all the time.

  “But what if she is better than you are?”

  Tabitha shrugged, refusing to be baited. “Then she is better.” The truth was that Isabelle would never be able to match Tabitha in beauty or in magic, so Tabitha could easily concede any superiority her cousin might have in the musical arts. “Beatris and Clementa are smarter than I am. Pamela and Marjorie have sweeter dispositions. Should I continue?”

  Her father shook his head, picked up his mug and drank. She waited, but when he said nothing, she asked, “Father?”

  “About Lady Marjorie. It’s hard, knowing that I was wrong about something so important.”

  Tabitha bit her lip. She had had to lie to him, firmly and directly, about how she knew that Marjorie was innocent. Needing to be sure, he had asked question after question about how she had probed Marjorie’s mind and what she had seen there. She did not want to revisit that.

  Her father shook his head again. “I only hope she forgives me for not believing her at the time.”

  “She does, Father. She knows that you were only doing what you thought was right.”

  “But I was not right.” He frowned into his ale. “Someone got away with murder in my house. I have to live with that.”

  Tabitha said nothing, because there was nothing she could say that would make him feel better, lie or truth. At his request, she had already questioned all the servants that he had brought here with him who had been in Betaul a year ago. But she had not tried to touch any of their minds, because it had been unnerving enough to touch Marjorie’s.

  When he spoke, she knew what he would ask. “Is there any chance at all that you could return to Betaul? Just for a day?”

  He had asked her this before. He thought that the real murderer may not have left Betaul, and that Tabitha could question everyone there now who had been there then. She shook her head, her heartbeat quickening. “Forgive me, Father. I can’t.” She had already told him that Natayl had been adamant about how long she could stay.

  “Please, Tabitha,” he said quietly. “I need to know.”

  No. That is the last thing you need. “There are limits to what I can do,” she told him again. “Marjorie and I were as close as sisters. That’s why I could see into her thoughts.”

  “So what about Jenevive?”

  Startled, she looked at him. He was serious. “She did confess,” he reminded her, “although no one believed her at the time.”

  “You did not believe her.”

  “But do you remember why?” At her hesitation, he went on, “She said the guard dog was asleep, but they never sleep on duty. She was proved a virgin, but up in the attic, there was proof of the opposite—that the girl who was there was not a virgin. Or at least did not leave as one.”

  Calm
and still. Calm and still. “So obviously, she was not there.”

  “Or she was, and what I thought was proof was not.”

  Tabitha said nothing. What would happen to Jenevive if, somehow, Tabitha could convince her father that her friend was guilty? Could it possibly be better for her? She had wanted to join a cloister rather than get married.

  But Jenevive was already married. And her husband would never let Tabitha’s father imprison her. He would punish her himself. Tabitha could not take that risk.

  “I am willing to question her,” she answered slowly, “but no one has heard from her. She will not answer letters from anyone, not even me. Do we even know where she is living?” She did not think it could be anywhere near Betaul, or here. Not close enough for Tabitha to visit.

  “I know that her husband’s trade circuit is north of Teneoust, along the coast. Also …” He seemed reluctant to say it. “I heard that she may be pregnant.”

  “Pregnant!” This was so startling it made Tabitha sit bolt upright in her chair, and her father raised his eyebrows. Tabitha lowered her voice, hoping the ambient noise and music in the ballroom had kept everyone from hearing her outburst. “She should have told me.”

  “I can’t think that she would be happy about it.”

  “But she was frightened of it, of possibly dying in childbirth.” Her father’s expression tightened, and Tabitha berated herself for reminding him of her mother. “She said that one of the five of us would, but I can make sure that no one does. My magic can make sure.” If Maga Rollana ever gets around to talking about childbirth. Maybe Josselin could teach me instead. “Father, can you send someone to find out for sure if she is pregnant? Find where they are living, and ask the servants there?”

  Her father nodded. “I will learn all I can for you.”

  Tabitha sighed. “Thank you.” It was her fault. Jenevive would not have had to return to her family if not for Alain’s death. She would have been allowed to stay in Betaul, and when Tabitha had become the sorceress, she would have made sure that Jenevive had everything she needed to travel the world and sketch it all, just like she had always wanted. But she had been married off so quickly, and now she might be pregnant.