The Makers of Light

by Lynna Merrill

  Rianor cursed mentally. There probably was Magic in a crossbow. There might even be fire in it, like there must be fire in a Commander's mobile candle. But he could see the weapon clearly now, hidden as he was in his alcove, and like an elevator, the weapon also had a mechanism.

  The man fired. Rianor thought it was stupid of him, for the thief must have already run into a side street or, like Rianor himself, lain quietly in an alcove. A crossbow bolt would never reach him.

  It indeed did not. It reached a metal rod, instead—a piece of debris exactly of the kind that Rianor was seeking in this place. There was a clang, and for a moment, where the bolt had hit the rod, there was a tiny piece of light.

  The Militioner screamed. His colleague screamed as well, and both ran in the opposite direction. There was no sign of the thief. As for the High Lord of Qynnsent, he stared at the scene, himself in a momentary shock. He had found tools and materials, and more.

  Wildfire. It could not be controlled. It was the greatest peril.

  Or so the Bers said. But if Ber fire was dwindling these days—if the Bers could not control their own fire enough to make it exist—was there truly a difference?

  Or was there a new chance? Wildfire, just like Science, was a part of Mierenthia itself.

  Now, days later in Rianor's suite in Qynnsent, Linden glanced at the steel rods leaning on the wall, and then at the drawing on his desk. Rianor did not mind her looking at the rods, but suddenly, for the second time today, he saw the drawing of the crossbow as if he had never seen it before: a drawing of a murderous weapon, come from his own hands. He wanted to snatch it away from her sad, beautiful eyes.

  "So, what is it, my lady? You need not have come all the way here. I would have come to see you myself."

  She had been in fever after the night of the outage, and he had seen her for a few minutes each day, but he had not had more time to give her. There was tension between the two of them, too, and there was no time to resolve that, either; the House had priority before the Fireheart visit had passed.

  She met his eyes. "The cook. I only learned today. And that woman, Johanna. I would ask that you do not send them to the Bers."

  "He attacked you. Hurt you." It took Rianor effort to keep the emotions away from his voice. "He could have killed you if you had let him. No, my lady, I cannot grant your request."

  "He only did it because he was frightened. He did not truly hate me. I do not even think that he wanted to kill me—or that he knew what he wanted at all, except for light and warmth."

  "Hate? What does hate have to do with anything? Or his confused knowing or not knowing of his own mind. He tried to kill you. This is what matters. And he will learn what he doesn't know—or at least others will learn from his example."

  "Why the Bers?" There were tears in her voice now. "Why not Militia for him and Mentors for Johanna? She was babbling nonsense. Have you even asked her if she truly thought me a samodiva? I doubt she saw any samodivi—or anything else—that night. I didn't. Don't be cruel, Rianor."

  "He is not cruel." The voice that replied to her was Desmond's. The First Counselor had entered without Rianor or Linden noticing. "He never was cruel, and he is not enjoying this at all. And what you see or don't see, lady, had better be kept to yourself, even in a High Lord's suite. Even here it is not impossible for someone to hear you, and people are frightened and the days uncertain."

  "I sent them both to Octavian first," Rianor said quietly. "It was Mentors and not Militia for the cook, too, for he had called you a witch in addition to attacking you. But Octavian would not deal with them. Not with transgressions made on a night without fire, he said. I am sorry, Linde. The Bers it is—for anyone who would harm you like they could have."

  Desmond glanced at him. "I am sure you also mean to say 'for anyone who would still be disrupting the House's sense of security and peace, the trust and respect in the House's noble members.' No one attacks a noble lady in her own House. Period. If they have issues with her, they can complain to a higher authority—but we are not talking about that at all, are we.

  "Besides, the Bers have been snooping, asking questions. They need someone to be guilty, so it is best that those who have already talked against a noble lady be cleanly labeled guilty and their words aberration—by us. So that the Bers don't label someone of their own choice. Now, lady Linden, I have a request for you. I saw two servants today making a sign against evil upon hearing your name. This, too, is not to be tolerated, but it happened on a normal day, and Octavian should be able to manage if you help him. You can help the House's peace and security as well."

  Linden listened to Desmond, while Rianor only nodded in agreement in the end, no matter how much he hated the idea. Desmond was right. The House needed this.

  Linden nodded, too, then suddenly stared at the First Counselor.

  "It is all a game to you, is it not? Like that Stratagem game that you like to play with Brendan. Only, it is real people that are your pawns now. I will do it, but I wish I were like you, Desmond! I wish I could enjoy it!"

  Rianor would have gone after her, perhaps—were he not the High Lord. He could have gone if he did not have the whippings to discuss with Desmond (and with Mentor Octavian later), and if he did not have to think of the stupid holiday wine and then to read more of Desmond's reports, preparing himself for new encounters with the Laurents, the Bers, and the other nobles tomorrow.

  There had been no fire outages reported in other Houses so far—but, of course, Qynnsent had not made theirs public, either. If the Bers were quiet in Qynnsent's case, they might be similarly quiet regarding others as well. Rianor and Desmond had to do their best to learn tomorrow. The Laurents owed them; perhaps they would let them know.

  The Laurents must know something of what was happening in the world, for suddenly the High Lord of Laurent had relinquished the office of High Ruler to his daughter, his only living child and heir. He was tired, he said. He had already been through one tragedy in the past two years, and now he had almost lost his wife. The lady Mabelle would do well with the peace and quiet of Balkaene, he said—but Rianor and Desmond did not believe his reasons even for a moment.

  Desmond did not truly believe in other Houses' outages, either. Qynnsent's had been deliberate, he thought; it had been a warning from the Bers to a troublesome House with a troublesome High Lord. Indeed, Qynnsent's First Counselor did not seem to doubt the Bers and their power as much as he had last quarter at the Qynnsent Council any more.

  It was the right time for such a warning, the First Counselor said. If he himself had been a Ber who would deny fire to Qynnsent for a night, he would have chosen exactly one of the nights before Guilds Day. Guilds Day was the first big holiday after the Day of the Master, and it was the first time every year when nobles officially gathered at the Fireheart, after the Day of the Master and the year's first Council of Sovereigns.

  This year's first official Fire Ceremony would happen tomorrow at noon, and everyone, especially High Rulers, was expected to attend it. Then, in the evening, there would be the Guilds' official presenting of the new apprentices acquired at the Day of the Master.

  Rianor ran a hand through his hair. Members of Qynnsent had to be there tomorrow, pretending, for they were not yet ready to fight the Bers openly.

  Guilds Day, too, started the period of transporting the second batch of last year's grain to the Mills. Qynnsent, Waltraud, Laurent and Iglika would open their granaries in Balkaene, and Maeron and Kadisha would open theirs in Dobria, and what grain had not been sent to the Bers in the autumn would be sent now. Like in autumn, most of the grain would be cleansed and Milled for food, but some would be blessed and sent back to be sown into the soil itself. The crops that would grow from those seeds were called "spring crops," even though spring was still naught but a memory of what had been and what must thus be again. "Spring crops" was a symbolic name. The eating and wine-drinking on Guilds Day and the few days before and after it was symbolic, too. The Bers smiled an
d said that it was the people's own blessing for the crops to come—that it was of course not needed but that it was good and allowed.

  "So that people would not fail to hope, my love," lady Eleora had explained, many years ago, when Rianor had asked her why the Bers approved of so much eating and drinking on that day, whereas most often they discouraged excesses.

  "The world is frosty and gray outside, the days are short and there is too much darkness. And it has been like that for a long time—so long that frost and grayness have started slipping inside people." She had shuddered, then, as if frost and grayness had already slipped inside her. "Spring must come, my boy, for it has come every year before—but people can't help but wonder, will it really come? Will it come this time? At this point in the year, Ber fire and light is no longer enough. We need the Sun. The Bers know it, too, and they know that there is a limit to what berating and whipping can achieve with people. So, the Bers start speaking of spring and have people eat and drink, for eating and drinking and merry-making help people believe and thus endure."

  It had been rare for her to talk for so long, and High Lord Alastair had chided her for uttering such aberration before her young son, but Rianor had been grateful to her. What she had said made sense, unlike many of the things his father told him about the world. She had been the one to encourage his Science, while his father brushed his questions away and said that all Rianor needed to know about the world he would learn from the Aetarx. He had not; he had learned what he knew from Science.

  Eleora had been the one to know and understand Rianor better, but she had also been the one to love him less—if she had loved him at all. It was Alastair who had jumped before that carriage and swept his son from the horses' way; Alastair who had then tried to live despite the damage he had taken, his son's name on his lips by the very end.

  At least, that was what the Commanders said. She, on the other hand, had left him; had simply let go of life upon Alastair's death and faded away. She had not even told Rianor whether she blamed him—and so he blamed the Commanders and Bers for not saving either of them.

  Why had he placed such a blame, the grown Rianor wondered? And why was he thinking of that now?

  Because he finally knew the answer, and it was applicable now. More than ten years ago, in his childish naiveté, he had thought his parents eternal and the Commanders of Life and Death all-powerful. He had been proved wrong in just one day.

  Now, naive yet again, the High Lord Rianor had believed that, despite his experiments and tinkering with everything, his House was invincible—that he was. Why? He had already been showed once in his life that his whole world could fall apart. Why had he, yet again, lived as if it never could?

  Rianor closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his temples. He was so tired. How much had he slept these days at all?

  Fire taken away at the time of the year when people needed light and heat the most. A warning for dissenting troublemakers. Yes, the Bers might do that. That woman, Adept Brighid, certainly would do it.

  Rianor knew that—but he also knew that these days the Bers were weakened.

  "Why would they do it in the days before Guilds Day? Why not right on Guilds Day itself?" Rianor asked of his First Counselor.

  "So that we would have time to somewhat recover before we face them," Desmond replied. "Time enough to think of what it all means and then behave properly. They do not aim to cripple us, Rianor, but to show us that they can."

  If they could. If what had happened was not really a failure of fire.

  "Still, it doesn't hurt to be careful tonight," Desmond said.

  "Of course. This time we are prepared."

  They had buckets of fire everywhere now, by every possible outlet. It would have been funny, were it not disturbing and sad, that they'd had to bring them all from slum firewells. The Great House of Qynnsent might have fire (when there wasn't an outage)—but it was fire contained away from them all. No matter if the fire in the Qynnsent pipes and stoves came from the wells on the House's property or from somewhere else, the Qynnsent wells themselves were closed, the fire unreachable. Same with the pipes and stoves.

  Qynnsent's servants had been forced to wait at long lines in slums, bringing back only one bucket per person, for that was the quota that the commoners had imposed at the wells, so that there would possibly be enough fire for everyone. Rianor felt bad for taking from their fire at all. But it was his duty to care first and foremost for the House (and for the Aetarx, but that was a whole different story). He was not up to caring for commoners' Mierber, too, right now. He would take what he must from them.

  He was also preparing himself in other ways. He had the steel rods and the drawing of the crossbow, and he had some idea of what he should do to test wildfire as safely as possible—if wildfire at all could be safe. From knowledge gathered from the most forbidden fairytales and from current rumors about the Edge, he knew that wildfire should be enclosed inside stone, for it would not eat the stone itself. It would, of course, eat mostly anything else it touched.

  The Bers said that wildfire could only destroy, that it could not give life, and writings in various Houses, in addition to the official Ber-prepared history, gave testimony that the Great Fire had truly happened, that it had killed millions of people in Mierber. Yet, the Bers themselves had shown Rianor, with that candle of theirs that night in the Head Temple, that whatever else, wildfire gave light.

  And you did not need Bers to make wildfire. Rianor knew that. You did not even need a crossbow. Lights like those Rianor had witnessed in the Warehouse District—they were called "sparks"—could sometimes happen when a sword clashed into another one. It was very rare, and there was an unwritten law that the fighters should then stop fighting, whatever their reasons for a fight, that the Master himself had deemed it that they be in peace with each other.

  What Rianor did not know about wildfire was how to make it act like Ber fire—how to make it stay alive for longer than a moment without it destroying anything.

  He would learn—but he would not be rash this time. He would prepare an experimental environment as best as he could with the knowledge he had, but he would not make experiments yet. Wretches supposedly used wildfire on the Edge, so he had already sent a person there to check the how and why. Brendan, eager as always, had come to Rianor on the day after the outage to offer to do anything to help his lord. Rianor trusted Brendan's devotion, which Brendan had once again proved by being by Linden's side that night. Brendan was also open-minded enough to have helped with the elevator earlier, and on the outage night he had proved that he could think and act amidst chaos. He had also stolen the House's keys, which could be reason enough for his lord to give him to the Mentors and Militia and send him to prison.

  At least, this was what Brendan could say on the Edge. And even though chaos was the least Brendan could meet in that place, the young man had thought it all an adventure. Rianor understood. If he were not the High Lord and burdened with responsibilities, he would have liked to go himself. However, Brendan was expendable, and Rianor was not.

  Rianor turned to Desmond again, with a High Ruler's question.

  "How are Yanna and Paul, First Counselor?"

  Desmond sighed. "She has stopped babbling—and good for her, for days have passed now, and she can already be whipped and even given to the Bers. They are both quiet now, but Nan and I are watching for signs of trouble."

  Yanna, the servant whom Nan had been attending that night, had been blaming Nan and Linden and Rianor for her baby's death. Nan, because she had not saved it, Linden because Linden had brought light to other servants but not to them, and Rianor because he was the High Lord and thus the person to blame for everything. They had let Yanna talk for a few days—to Nan, Octavian, her husband, Desmond, and to Rianor himself, the only people allowed to see her in her cottage.

  A woman giving birth was the only type of adult in Mierenthia who was allowed aberrant thoughts, the Bers and Mentors said, and for the few day
s around the birth only. That was because she was twice on the Edge between life and the Eternal Place then; twice on the Edge between life and death. She was there once because of herself, for every woman could die while giving new life—besides, she was there because of the new quintessence that the Master and the Powers That Be had prepared in the Eternal Place and sent to Mierenthia through her.

  And how much of that was true? The fact that a mother or a baby could die, certainly. Rianor did not know about the rest.

  Desmond sighed again. "Such a pity that the baby would have chosen this exact night to come to the world. I do not blame Nan. She could not have dealt with such a difficult birth in darkness. Linden, too, has done more than I would have expected, more than she should have, perhaps ..."

  Rianor was prepared to snap at Desmond if he would once again start wondering if Linden forcing that "elevator thing" on servants might not have scared them more than the fire outage would have by itself. They had discussed it; Desmond had agreed that Linden had done the right thing, whatever Desmond's and the servants' opinion of devices "on the edge of aberration" might be.

  Rianor had made sure to thank her for it, and had made Desmond do the same.

  Desmond, however, did not continue in this direction.

  "Such a pity," he said again, and suddenly Rianor realized that Desmond was sorry not only because of the trouble the baby's death had brought. The death itself had made him sad.

  Such an emotion coming from the First Counselor indeed made sense. Play with humans Desmond might, but in the end it was humans that interested him, humans that he valued. A new baby dead before it could have lived was a waste—and, besides, Desmond so much wanted a baby himself.

  "Desmond, go get some rest before the ceremony. You can hardly keep your eyes open."

  Desmond's eyes had become clouded, and not with sleep. Looking at them suddenly made Rianor feel heartless.

  Desmond sighed yet again but talked of the morrow for at least half an hour more before he would go.