Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  “That’s impossible,” Sebastien said, voice rising. “Lightborn can’t sense our type of magic.”

  “You’d better hope they can’t,” Rupertis said, flatly. “Fejelis contracted with a sport mage, name of Tammorn, perpetually on the outs with the Temple, but strong. Fejelis claimed the shells that hit the tower were ensorcelled, and the sports dealt with them.”

  Sebastien’s breathing was quick and shallow. “It didn’t happen that way.”

  There was a grim satisfaction in the set of the man’s lips, hearing, as Balthasar heard, the wavering. “Fejelis put this to the archmage and high masters, in front of their brightnesses. They didn’t like that, I could tell you. Prasav made a play for Fejelis’s deposition, right there and then—had to, I figure, since if Fejelis had made the contract with the mages he was asking for, we’d never have shifted him—and the high masters stood aside when we drew on Fejelis. Cursed shame, I thought, but I had my orders.” From his tone, one would never know that he spoke of the murder of a nineteen-year-old man. “That sport mage of Fejelis’s swatted the quarrels aside and lifted himself, Fejelis, and Orlanjis out of there. If the mages know where he took ’em, they’re not saying.”

  He waited for a reaction, and then said, dangerously, to Balthasar’s ear, “But it doesn’t actually matter to you who is prince, does it?”

  Sebastien, too, heard that undertone. “Of course it matters,” he said quickly. “That was the agreement: we help deal with Isidore and with Fejelis, and leave the way clear for Prasav. We’ll help deal with Perrin and the mages. They’re lying; they’re hurt.”

  “Was it Beaudry’s own plan to quench himself after he put a crossbow bolt through Fejelis?” Rupertis said. “We found his residue bundled up in a black tarpaulin. He didn’t even try to get away.”

  “I don’t . . . ,” Sebastien began, and checked himself. “I didn’t order him to do that.”

  “Floria White Hand is still alive,” Rupertis said. “Fejelis put a warrant out on her himself, sooner than we expected. We sent a team after her, but the woman’s as sharp as her rapier. She cut through the screen into her Darkborn neighbor’s house. Got out that way—” His face swung toward Balthasar. “That’s where I’ve heard the name. So you’re part of this, too.”

  “No,” Balthasar said, fiercely; that much the ensorcellment did not forbid. “Never of my own free will.”

  The captain’s face clenched, as if he heard an accusation. “You’d understand better if your rulers had beggared you with taxes to pay mages to protect them against other mages. My family used to have lands and a name—his did, too.” He gave another jerk of the head toward Johannes. “We were bled white by taxes from our lord and by our own Temple contracts. We turned vigilant, hired swords, but decades of service, decades of practice . . .” He flexed his sword hand. “We’re no more than glorified footmen, hired for a show of wealth, because earthborn are cheap, and when the money finally runs out, we’ll slip another step down toward begging in the streets.”

  From his council service, Balthasar knew the price that the Lightborn had ultimately paid, both for the original compact with the mages and for their own murderous customs. By the compact, mages could not use magic against earthborn in their own interests, but could be contracted to do so by earthborn—and thereby indemnified of the consequences. Over time, as the tradition of deposition of heads of houses established itself, anyone at risk must contract with the temple for their protection, against threats both magical and secular. Now, after hundreds of years, much of the wealth of the princedom resided not in the hands of the prince and their brightnesses, but in the hands of the mages, who had much less interest in employing earthborn. And every year the number of starving in the provinces and vagrants in the city increased.

  “Isidore tried to fix it, but he’s been bled white, too.” A grim smile. “They’re all fussing about the prince’s caul having gone with Fejelis, but the thing’s no more than wire and glass. Some of our lineage turned jewelers, and I have their word on it. Prasav is the only one who’s been able to hold on to his wealth; he seemed the best bet, the best gamble, for those of us who’d rather not be eating the garbage from the streets.”

  “I have served several terms on the Intercalatory Council; we know, as much as anyone can know on the far side of sunset, how it is with you. What”—another question for which he did not want to know the answer—“was the warrant for Floria—Mistress White Hand—for?”

  “The deposition of Isidore. Fejelis said she’d been ensorcelled to take a talisman to the prince’s rooms, a talisman that would annul the lights around it.”

  “No,” whispered Balthasar. “She served him all her adult life—”

  “Tasted every dish he ate,” the captain confirmed. “Closer than a wife, to Helenja’s ire.”

  For a long moment, ensorcellment or no, Balthasar simply hated the Shadowborn. How many people’s loyalty, how many people’s despair, had they used to craft their way to power? For their design was power, he had no doubt of that. They did not care which Lightborn became prince, because their aim was their own ascendancy. Did Rupertis know what he worked for?

  Johannes spoke for the first time, his voice suffused with anger. “We’ve got the Prince’s Vigilance out on the streets. We’ll have mages’ vigilant investigating, and assets questioning. Tempe Silver Branch is questioning the people arrested in front of the railway station. No one can lie to her.”

  “That’s their problem,” Sebastien said. “If they were stupid enough to get caught. You said you wanted a revolution. What’s that song you sing?” He affected a nasal, though true-pitched tone. “Streets running with blood and fire.”

  “There was a servant with Isidore when the lights went out,” Johannes ground out. “Nobody cares about him—it’s all Isidore, Isidore—but he was my cousin, one of us! You’re no better than the rest, you callous bastard.” His hand went to his knife—and was enveloped in flame as the scabbard and pommel caught fire. Rupertis slashed with his dagger at the ties on the sash, yanked them, let the scabbard fall with a clatter of metal and a scattering of ash. Even in those few seconds, the blaze had almost completely consumed the leather.

  Johannes slowly folded to his knees, holding out his burned hand before him.

  Balthasar started to go to him, but Rupertis spoke, and the tone of his voice made him pause. “Fejelis said something else. He gave a name to the magic and to the people who practiced it: Shadowborn.”

  Sebastien was breathing quickly, suppressed glee and horror in his expression. “Shadowborn are a Darkborn myth.”

  “Moving from dark to light,” Rupertis said, half to himself. “Ensorcelling men, burning—” Balthasar took a step forward. Ever after, he would be uncertain whether it was his professional instinct to defuse conflict or an impulse born of the ensorcellment to draw Rupertis’s attack on himself. He was too late for anything more. Rupertis’s rapier came from its scabbard like a breath driven out by a blow. Sebastien fell backward with a screamed, “Stop!” but Rupertis had already started to uncoil in a lunge, as oblivious to command as a falling boulder. Sebastien shrieked a word or a curse, and the captain’s body exploded into flame of such intensity that Balthasar threw his arms up to shield his face. He heard the man’s last breath roar out in agony. The blazing corpse dropped to the tiles with a meaty crunch that—like the sizzle of meat and fat, like the stench, like the postmortem spasms as muscles cooked—Balthasar knew he would be revisiting in his nightmares. The blade clattered to the tiles and broke.

  Too late, far too late, Sebastien cried, “Stop!” and the flames went out.

  Johannes staggered to his feet, eyes bulging with horror. He backed away, one step, two, three, stumbled backward and through the door, colliding with the lintel without a cry. Sebastien did not appear to notice his leaving. “He made me do it!” he cried.

  Balthasar, repelled though he was by the sentiment, could not entirely disagree. Perhaps death had been Rupertis’s
intent; perhaps it was simply a risk he had accepted in trying to kill the young mage.

  “I’ve never burned a man before,” Sebastien blurted, still facing the body of the man he had killed. “I’m not a monster. I’m not. They said I’d be if I stayed. Just like they said.”

  Balthasar swallowed. “It was a reflex,” he said, and before the boy could seize too hard on that as exoneration, he said, softly but sternly, “But if you are going to use your magic to defend yourself, you must learn different ways to do it.”

  Sebastien turned on him. “How am I supposed to learn?”

  “Neill seemed willing to teach you.”

  “She’d stop him. She doesn’t want me taught.”

  He was tired of pronouns and circumlocutions. “Was your mother the one who warned you about becoming a monster? A powerful mage needs training, or even with the best will, he can do great harm.”

  “None of them want to teach me. Save Neill, and she’s got him so ensorcelled—”

  “Sebastien,” Balthasar said, “what do you want? You, not Emeya.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want.”

  “Your mother and father got away from her.”

  “They left me behind.”

  “You chose to stay behind, you said. I doubt, with your strength, they could have taken you against your will. But I don’t think you know what you chose then. You know better now.”

  The boy did not answer, his face sullen. “Smell, Sebastien,” Balthasar said, almost in a whisper. “Is this what you want to be?”

  Sebastien’s throat worked on a suppressed gag. “I hate you.”

  Balthasar flinched, but said steadily, “You ensorcelled me to care, and therefore I must care if you court destruction. From what Captain Rupertis said, someone did counteract the ensorcellment on the shells. You felt that last night.”

  “I know it worked. I felt it.”

  Balthasar was courting destruction himself now. The boy need not call fire to burn him, not with the door open to daylight. “If you make the Temple come for you, they will destroy you. If you go to them now, they may spare you. You have a form of magic new to them, and if you can prove that you were acting under the influence of another, then their laws may protect you.” He could not convince himself that it was a certainty, even under Lightborn law. Yet he was certain that if the boy continued on this course, it would be to his own end. Under Darkborn law, Sebastien would be condemned to death for sorcery. If nothing else, if he had fathered Tercelle’s twins, he was guilty of sorcerous seduction.

  “You don’t believe that,” Sebastien said dully. “You think they’re going to kill me.”

  “You haven’t been taught what you need to know,” Balthasar said, “about magic and about morality. I would make them understand that.”

  Sebastien stood a moment longer, head turning from the charred and reeking corpse to Balthasar and back.

  “You do not have to do this,” Balthasar said.

  Sebastien suddenly straight-armed him, hand to the chest, making him stagger. “Be quiet. Go back to your room. You’re not turning me against her. You can’t.”

  Floria

  Floria raced sunset across the bridge. Conspicuous to hurry, and risky to go straight, but what else to do with the time she had? As it was, she would have to return after dark, under the archduke’s proclamation granting the Lightborn part of the night, and hope to make it back before anyone thought to look for her—whether with benign or malevolent intent.

  Breathlessness forced her to slow from a sprint and then to a jog. Her ribs ached; her throat was raw. She was still feeling the effects of being nearly drowned in the fountain outside Bolingbroke Station. Up on the crowded hill of New Town, sun warmed red walls and white roofs. To her left was Darkborn land, the estate of Duke Kalamay, and the raw, brown wound of the mages’ retribution and the explosion of the guns and stored munitions that had carried away half the hill. Nestled in deep shadow, the house itself still stood untouched, but the sky above it was smudged with smoke from outbuildings near the crest of the hill. The last time she had crossed this bridge, there had been smoke in the air, too, the smoke of the burning Rivermarch.

  She glanced down at the dock below the estate; it was intact. If the occupants of the estate were wise, they would leave later tonight. Fejelis had today put almost every vigilant at his command on the streets to protect Darkborn, but she would be surprised if Perrin extended the order tomorrow, so she doubted Kalamay’s grand house would be standing by tomorrow night. Mycene’s estates were in the country, in Darkborn lands, but pity help the city household that had had him as a guest, if the rioters knew.

  As she reached the far side of the bridge, on the road approaching, she met a party of two dozen guardsmen and -women. They looked like they’d had a long, hard afternoon, and were dusty, weary, cut, bruised, and carrying three of their number on stretchers. “Mistress?” one called, though it was a hail, not a challenge.

  Barely checking stride, she rasped, “Nothing for you, unless one of you’s a midwife.”

  They shifted to let her pass, with weary well-wishes. There was more than one gray or balding head with experienced eyes in it, who might well think to ask a few questions about a fair, running woman with her particular collection of bruises, dressed for court and armed for trouble. It would be too much to hope that her rash stand in front of the railway station would not be one of the stories told in the barracks tonight.

  Worry about that later. Up the hill she ran, feeling every stride in the center of her chest. The bundled lights in her backpack bounced on her shoulders. She had her hand on Tam’s gate when she thought to wonder what kind of talismans and protections he kept around his house. Would they recognize her as a friend in his absence? What if he had thought to ensorcell them against Shadowborn magic, including the ensorcellment that still lingered about her?

  From the house there came an infant’s screech: Tam’s daughter had a voice proportioned to her will. Nothing else but to take the risk. She eased cautiously through the gate. No unseen barrier stopped her, no sudden weakness collapsed her, no roar of thunder met her. She padded across the garden, trying to steady her breathing enough that her voice would sound normal. Beatrice was wary of her at the best of times.

  Her pull on the doorbell elicited a sweet carillon and a clamor of, “Mama, mama, mama, attadoor, attadoor.” There was a thud, as of a small body striking the door, and Floria winced. For some, “head-on” was not merely a metaphor.

  The viewing hatch opened; Beatrice’s pale face floated in its frame. “Floria?”

  “Issadaddy?” the unseen child demanded.

  “Let me in,” she said. “Please.”

  “Tam’s not here.”

  “I know. And I know when and how he left the city. Will you just let me in?”

  Beatrice closed the hatch. Floria drew her stiletto—if the woman would not let her in, then she would force an entry—and pushed it quickly back into its sheath as she heard the bolt slide back. The door opened slowly. Beatrice stooped to keep a hand on her son’s collar, her posture wary. Disappointment filled his upturned face and eyes at the sight of her. “Isnadaddy.”

  A crash behind her made Beatrice whirl, releasing the boy. The red-haired baby, propped up in a chair, had hurled a wooden toy onto the tiles, and was glaring at Floria. She could feel the little boy trying to squirm past her legs.

  “Is there someone who can take the children while we talk?”

  “Have you come to tell me he’s dead?” Beatrice said tensely.

  Tam would surely not have left her uncertain of his survival after the tower was destroyed. “He’s not dead. But he’s in trouble. Do you have anyone you can go to for the night—someone you know who would shelter you?”

  The baby screeched. Beatrice moved to collect her while her son mounted an assault on the door. “Did he send you?”

  “Tam lifted out of here with Fejelis and Orlanjis, saving Fejelis from deposition. Helenj
a has Sharel trying to find where he might have taken them, which means learning more about Tam. It won’t take her long to learn about you.”

  Beatrice’s lips pinched. The southerners’ reputation in New Town was dismal; they were loud, reckless, destructive in their entertainment, and careless in making reparations. They had disrupted more than one market with their rumpus, and while more lay behind the failure of Beatrice’s family business than a single stall full of broken crockery, Beatrice’s thoughts about southerners were far from charitable. “It’s too late to go anywhere now,” she said.

  “There’s to be a meeting between their brightnesses and the Darkborn court, and an hour after sunset the bells are to be rung to allow their brightnesses to travel to the meeting place. The Darkborn will keep to their houses. You can move then.”

  “I never—”

  “It’s not common knowledge. We don’t want any mischief done under its cover. We’ll not meet anyone in New Town.”

  And if we do, she resolved, I will deal with them.

  “I don’t think—No.” Her fine lips set. “If I decide to go, I’ll go first thing tomorrow.”

  “And if the southerners come for you tonight? They’re used to the desert, used to traveling by night.”

  “I’m not taking the children out on your word alone, Mistress Floria,” she said, narrowly. “For one thing, I hardly think it will help us to make our way to safety if my son and daughter scream in terror the whole time. I thank you for your concern, and I will act on it if I choose.”

  This was the woman who had refused Tam for nearly five years, though he was as decent a man and besotted a lover as anyone could ask. And she had a point about the children and the noise they would make. Floria might have been able to concoct a potion, even from household herbs, to sedate the children; if she hadn’t had water on the brain as well as in the ears, she would have brought a potion.

  “All right,” she said. “When you go, don’t take any talismans with you that Tam made. Nothing, not even protection or toys for the children.” Some of Tam’s uses of magic were playful and inventive. “Mages would be able to trace you through them.” She wondered whether to mention that the Temple might be taking a renewed interest in Tam’s lineage, given the strength he had shown. If they were, there was probably very little any earthborn could do, and they, at least, would treat the children well.