Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “Let me explain.” It was too much of a demand and not enough of a plea, and Tabitha turned back to the rail and said nothing. The wind seemed to cut straight through her, and it tugged a lock of hair loose from her hood and blew it across her face.

  She had to end it. He had no excuses. He would rather swim with other girls than be faithful to her.

  He was hers! They were bonded! Those girls had no right to split them apart like this!

  “Do you want to know about the rogue maga?” he asked.

  She had forgotten about the rogue maga. She had forgotten that this actually got worse. “Tell me,” she answered flatly.

  “First, she isn’t a rogue anymore. She was once part of a rogue cluster, but that was in Jen Idre.”

  “So what changed her mind?” Tabitha asked. “Let me guess. She met you?”

  “No.” His voice grew softer. “Tabitha, you don’t know what she’s been through.”

  “Does Ferogin?” At his silence, she explained, very calmly. “From what I understand, you believe Ferogin is a threat to her. So does Ferogin know what this rogue maga has ‘been through’?”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t care, which is typical.”

  She did not care either. “Is he right to not trust her?”

  “Do you trust him more than me?”

  “He may not have been swayed by her pretty face.” If she even has a pretty face. Tabitha suddenly wondered if this girl was the maga with whom Ferogin had set the charm. She shoved the thought away, but could not help wrinkling her nose in disgust.

  Graegor started to say something. Tabitha waited, and in a moment, he said, firmly and quietly, “I think of Brigita as a sister. And she is not that kind of girl.”

  Velinda and Attarine had agreed that this maga was “more of a mouse than a cat”. But the next question was obvious. “Why was she swimming with you, then?”

  “She stayed on the bank almost the entire time.”

  “Until she decided it was time to become your ‘friend’?” She gave the word all the sarcasm it deserved. “Did you ever consider that she might be using you? She is a rogue! They tried to kill us! Have you forgotten that? They would like nothing better than to get you to trust them. To trust her.”

  “She isn’t a rogue now,” he said stubbornly. “They gave her a place when she needed one, but now her place is with us.”

  “How do you know?”

  He paused. “She pledged to me,” he said. He said it as if he did not think she knew it already. Like he thought it would impress her. “She swore loyalty to me.”

  “Did she open her mind completely when she did?”

  Another large, long silence enveloped him. Tabitha waited. Surely he realized now what a fool he had been. Surely he remembered now the blades that had fallen on them and the spears that had stabbed them. Surely he remembered her blood.

  “When your magi pledged to you,” he said, “did they open their minds completely?”

  What did that have to do with this? “Yes, they did,” she answered after only the slightest of pauses. “I am sure of it.”

  “Who was it who pledged to you, exactly? Did you know all of them before?”

  Icy needles pricked her neck. She had never told him how many magi women had pledged to her. It had not seemed prudent for another sorcerer to know such details. It had not occurred to her that some of the magi who had been there would tell other magi what had happened, and that word would spread. She had thought that secrecy had been implied. Strongly.

  “It was Isabelle, Clementa, Velinda, and Attarine, my four closest friends,” she told him, as she had told him before. She maintained her tone of patient repetition as she added, “It was the Jasinthe magi women, whom Natayl endangered at the presentation. And it was the magi holy sisters from Maga Elinore’s hospital, who have had enough of Natayl’s disrespect.” And other students, other noblewomen, and other holy sisters. Twenty-three in all. Her magi, not his, and none of his business.

  “You didn’t tell me about them all,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “You said it was just your four friends.”

  “I told you before what I just told you now.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Are you going to delve me to prove it?”

  “Delve you?” he exclaimed, and now he sounded horrified. “No! I wouldn’t ever—how could you even think that?”

  “Well, you seemed to be insisting!” The words came out loud, and Tabitha clamped her mouth shut again. A Betaul sorceress did not screech like that. A Betaul sorceress was always calm and still.

  “I wasn’t,” he said. “I wouldn’t. You know that.”

  She gave a single, precise shake of her head. “Right now, I don’t know what you would or would not do.”

  “Please, Tabitha,” he begged her. “Please listen. I’m sorry. I will open my mind to you. Completely. You’ll see that Brigita does not feel that way about me, and I don’t about her. You’ll see why I have to protect her.”

  Tabitha shook her head again. She could not see into his mind without allowing him to see into hers, and that was not going to happen. “What, exactly, is so special about her?”

  “We saved her life.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “All of us who were there.”

  Swimming. “Tell me all about it, then. Leave nothing out.”

  “All right.” He paused, maybe planning his words. “All right,” he said again when he seemed ready. “Brigita was sitting on the bank most of the time we were there, but suddenly she got up and went to the rope-swing. She got up there, to the branch where the rope was, but then she fell straight down and hit her head on the rocks.”

  Tabitha knew that she was supposed to feel sympathy. But the girl should not have even been there. She never should have gone anyplace where boys were swimming, and she certainly never should have tried to join their antics. “But you healed her?”

  “Jeff and Rose were the only ones there who could actually use healing magic on her. She’s Adelard, but they’re both bound to the Circle.”

  She knew all that already. “I assume you helped, somehow?”

  “I did. But right then, when it first happened, we called to Contare and Josselin. Contare stayed in our link while Josselin shapechanged so she could fly to where we were.”

  Tabitha nodded impatiently. For a head wound, calling to Contare and Josselin for help was only prudent. These details were really not important.

  “Brigita actually died,” Graegor went on. When Tabitha did not react to this, since she did not believe it, he continued. “Contare told us to put a preservation spell on her until Josselin could get there. Patrick started casting it.” Another pause. “Brigita’s magic was … released, I guess. It came toward me, since I have Adelard magic. Contare told me to hold it, but not take it. It was so strange.”

  Tabitha did not understand. Was he talking about this girl’s magic or her spirit? Was there a difference? If she had actually died, how had he held onto it?

  “Patrick couldn’t get his spell to work,” Graegor went on. “I summoned earth magic, and there was a way he could use that. But Contare said it would take too long for Josselin to get there. Jeff and Rose couldn’t use their healing senses, so they had to try mechanical surgery. They needed to be able to see. So I—I summoned light, but inside her skin. Under it, in her body, so they could see the blood vessels and the bones, and it worked.”

  Tabitha really did not understand what he was talking about now. How could anyone see any light inside someone’s body? But she was not going to ask anything, especially since he sounded like he expected her to be impressed. “So you all healed her.” That seemed to be the sum of it. “And when the rogue maga woke up again, she pledged to you.”

  He hesitated, perhaps upset that she had not admired his accomplishment appropriately. Eventually he said, “Yes. There was more to it. When she—”

  “Why did she feel the need to pledge to you?”


  “So she wouldn’t be forced to pledge to Ferogin or Pascin.”

  “Why would either of them force her?”

  “To ensure her loyalty.”

  Tabitha was suddenly tired of the rogue maga. It was done. Velinda and Attarine did not think she was a slut. She did not seem to be powerful or knowledgeable enough to be a threat. Anything Graegor did to thwart Ferogin was probably to the good. The pledge was not magically binding. She was not worth Tabitha’s time.

  “Tabitha.” Graegor wanted her to understand. He clearly, obviously, desperately wanted her to understand. “Brigita would have died if I hadn’t been there.”

  Perhaps she should have.

  “When we healed her, it made us all feel like a family.”

  “A family,” she repeated, just so he could hear how ludicrous it sounded. Ludicrous and insulting. Family was so much more than one incident, one shared adversity. If he had grown up bearing the Torchanes name, he would realize that.

  “Yes,” he said earnestly. “I know this is hard for you. I know you don’t like Jeffrei, or Koren either. I just hope you can try to understand what they mean to me.”

  Koren.

  The name seemed to echo in the depths of the sea.

  Koren.

  “Koren was there?” Tabitha managed to whisper.

  “She … yes. I … you didn’t know?”

  He thought she had known. Known that he had not just been swimming with magi girls, but with another sorceress.

  That thought filled her mind, filled the air around her until she could not breathe. Needles in her skin, needles under her skin, icy hot sharp pain choking her.

  She could not breathe. She could not see. The enormity of his betrayal blanketed everything.

  How had Velinda missed this? How had this not made it into the rumors, that Koren herself had been there?

  Or had it, and Velinda had not been brave enough to tell her, knowing how she would react?

  Graegor must have known how Tabitha would react.

  He had stayed. Swimming. The little bitch. She had not left. He had not left.

  Was she the one who had tried to kiss him?

  Urgency pierced her blind black rage. Isabelle, Clementa, and Maga Rollana were all trying to send to her, their minds full of fear. Isabelle’s magic was burning with it, and Tabitha seized it, stretched its coin-thin edge into a line of pure power. Then Clementa reached toward her, and Tabitha grabbed hold of her mind and magic too, a rock-hard seed warping into a thorny vine, warm with energy. Maga Rollana’s mind pulled back, resisting, but Tabitha squeezed and the older maga’s magic raced toward her like water downhill.

  More. There was more here, in the sailors, the Thendal sailors. She could feel them. Like Marjorie’s mind, like the sharp tip of a feather, or sticky strands of spider silk, barely there, barely everywhere, but strong, unbreakable. She clawed them toward her and wrapped them in her rage, hooking their barbs into the lightning-hot spikes digging into her skin.

  Something cracked.

  Suddenly she could hear screams. There was wood under her hands. She could feel splinters in her palms and fingers. The ship was shuddering.

  Her father’s ship. This was her father’s ship.

  Her eyes popped open. It was bright. She was standing before the mizzenmast, gripping it hard, her fingers sunk halfway into the jagged wood. A crack ran up the mast from her hands, and far above her, half the yardarm was dangling, held up only by a frayed rope and the remaining strength of the splintered wood. The sail was still fastened to it, but the wind did not know what to do with it, and the canvas was folding in on itself. A sailor hung from the straining rigging, but he could not get a good grip, and he started to fall.

  Her horrified shock snapped the bristling lines of magic that boosted her own. Isabelle, Clementa, Maga Rollana, and all the sailors fell away from her as she stared at the broken yardarm. The prickling itch covering her skin turned icy cold.

  The ship swayed, and her fingers dug even deeper into the mizzenmast. Then, behind her, soft warmth billowed out, like a blanket spread across the summer grass. She jerked her head around to look over her left shoulder, down to the quarterdeck, to see the falling sailor land on his feet with barely any impact, and then stumble to his knees.

  She lifted her hands away from the mast, pulling them out of the wood. The pain felt distant. Slivers and splinters left beads of blood on her fingers and palms. She turned to look at Graegor.

  He was standing against the rail of the sterncastle, turning to look at her, his blue eyes huge, his breath held. His magic was folding and contracting into him as he drew it back from the sailor who had fallen. It was strange magic, stranger than she had ever realized, even in the fox-den when their powers had risen together to protect them both. Against the itching, burning power of her own people that she had just been holding, Graegor’s power now felt like a dozen different fabrics, from prickling wool to sheer silk, and the scent, the scent was different too, familiar and comforting but also exotic and mysterious.

  She reached for it, and it stretched toward her.

  His turbulent emotions came with it, his wordless, anxious dread. But no resistance. He let her pull. The more she pulled, the more it itched and scraped, but she kept pulling because it was so vast. Hundreds of magi could not give her this much. She could face Natayl if she had this much. She pulled, and could no longer feel him behind it. The sense of him was smothered under its weight. She pulled.

  Right in front of her, the drooping sail slapped hard against the mast, and the yardarm groaned. It would snap and break off and fall to the deck at any second. She had to get the sail down. She had to get it all down. No. Not down. Contained. Folded into itself, like an umbrella. Tabitha held hard to Graegor’s magic, and then, as easily as a thread around a twig, she looped it around each end of the yardarm. Then, as easily as that twig between her fingers, she folded the broken ends together and held them both against the shivering mast.

  A rope snapped somewhere. She felt just the edges of Graegor’s mind, the lightest touch of telepathy. His power, her power, together, spikes of power enmeshed. In the fox-den, their magic had risen together, but alongside each other. Now it was all merged. Now she moved his when she moved hers. Everything magnified, everything closer, an endless rush of energy within the two of them, a light, a boiling silvery light that she saw with his eyes.

  The wind pushed and rolled at them, trying to fill the folded sail. But they beat it down against the mast with the two halves of the yardarm. Coils of rope leaped up to lash everything in place, wrapping around and around and around and around, tying themselves into knots.

  The magic was so hot inside her. Its sharp tingling was almost unbearable. The edge between pain and pleasure was so fine she knew it would cut her, but she could not let go. It filled her.

  I can’t give this up. I can’t give him up.

  She needed this. She needed this power. With this, she felt like a sorceress. No one else could have this. No one else could have him. He was bonded to her. He was bonded to her. He filled her.

  Savoring the magic, bathing in its lightning, she lost track of herself. She did not know how long it was before she felt Graegor trying to call to her. He wanted to stop. He wanted her to stop pulling.

  And it was a relief when she did. Nothing so intense should be held for so long. The itch faded and her mind quieted. She let out her breath, and she let her hands open from clenched fists.

  The ship’s deck tilted under her feet, but she took half a step to easily keep her balance. That was how she felt. Balanced. Balanced, calm, and still. She opened her eyes, and after she had blinked at the bright day around her, she looked up at the cracked mast.

  Rope bound the mast, layers and layers of rope, so much she could barely see the dun canvas. She could not see the two halves of the yardarm at all, as they were completely encased in the crumpled sail.

  Her hands hurt. She looked at them and frowned at the splinter
s and the spots of dark blood. The mast. She had been holding onto the mast. With a tiny effort, a tiny line of prickling cold up her spine, she gently squeezed the slivers out of her skin and healed the wounds. They were barely more than needle jabs.

  “Tabitha.”

  She shut her eyes, and she shut her mind, immediately, protectively. She remembered why she was there, why he was there, why the mast was broken.

  Koren. He had been swimming in a pond with Koren.

  But Tabitha was going to keep him anyway. He was hers. She would not let Koren, or anyone, have him or his incredible magic. Every part of him belonged to her.

  But she was going to make him sweat, and she was going to make him pay.

  Opening her mind only enough to allow tiny tendrils of thought, she sent, “Koren was swimming with you.”

  “No,” he sent immediately. It took a moment for him to add, “But she was there.”

  Tabitha let the silence grow between them, because she knew she could stand it for longer than he could. He could not stand it for long at all. “Tabitha, I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you.”

  That did not deserve acknowledgement. Men all felt the same way about her. She was something to possess, to have. A prize.

  “You’re amazing. I never … I just … you’re the only one.”

  That did not deserve acknowledgement either. She had better be the only one.

  “The only one,” he repeated. “I love you.”

  Still she did not answer. But this time she could not answer. His words were simple, so why did they stir so many complicated feelings? The idea of him loving her seemed immature, somehow, or even a little crass. It was something she had once felt for Nicolas but had been so wrong about. She even felt a little impatient, like she knew better, now, and wished he knew better too.

  But her father had loved her mother. He still loved her mother, still missed her. She was certain of that, even though he had never actually said it.

  Graegor’s anxiety was growing in their bond. Then, abruptly, it was gone. He had blocked it, hidden it from her, thinking he knew her answer by her silence.

  “In my family,” she sent, “we don’t say it, we show it.”