Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  She had her hand on the door when she heard the sunset bell begin to ring. The first hour of the night was for the Darkborn. She turned back, ignoring the resentful expression chased off Beatrice’s face. “Make yourself at home, Mistress White Hand. I must go and put the children to bed.”

  That was a ritual that would occupy her for the better part of the next hour, Floria suspected. She made her way through into the social room and sat down on one of the long couches. Her first glance had already measured the room and eliminated all threat in it; now she studied the brightly painted tiles mounted on the walls and in brackets in alcoves, Beatrice’s former livelihood. In the corner was a clay sculpture, a tree with coiled and twisted roots and huge, enameled copper leaves. The tree drew her eye and made her uneasy. It suggested turmoil, unhappiness. Though when she had said as much to Tam, he had laughed and said she did not understand artists. Being a mage, he could not avoid knowing what his lover felt, that she liked him well enough, but she did not love him—though he could be consoled that she loved no one else better.

  She was hardly one to judge the bargains others made, she who frequented the vigilants’ house of companions, when she felt the need. Perhaps it was time to engage a matchmaker, as more than one of her relatives had suggested, and cease to be so choosy. Or accept that the priceless magical asset against poisons she had inherited from her father would pass to one of her cousins or their children.

  Old thoughts; useless thoughts. Better to spend her time thinking what else to tell Beatrice that would make the woman move the moment the sun came up.

  Balthasar

  Sitting in the room, resting as best he could, Balthasar listened to the sunset bell and then to the voices in the vestibule beneath. This time, Sebastien’s informants were Darkborn; he was sure of it, though he could not hear the words. The ensorcellment would not permit him to leave the room. Presently, he heard the door beneath close, and feet come quickly up the stairs. The door gusted open, slamming back against the wardrobe behind it. “You!” The carpet around him burst into flame. Balthasar scrambled into a crouch on the cushion of the chair.

  “You didn’t tell me about your wife!” Sebastien shouted, in Lysander’s voice.

  Balthasar started to stand, and then realized that standing would place him above the full heat of the blaze. “No,” he said, more faintly than he would have liked. “I didn’t.”

  “You ought to have. She was a danger to me! She helped murder Jonquil.” That last seemed to turn his anger more calculating. “Well, it doesn’t matter.” It wasn’t just the shimmy of the flames that distorted his face, Balthasar realized. His voice completed its shift toward the boy’s. “Your wife’s dead.”

  The edge of the cushion was catching. “Put out the flames, please,” he said, arm shielding his face.

  Sebastien quenched the flames with a sweep of the hand, his expression ugly. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I did,” said Balthasar. He took a precious moment to compose himself, and stepped down and over the scorched carpet. “I have no reason to believe you.”

  Sebastien’s hands closed into fists. “She tried to use our magic and lost control. She nearly killed the archduke, and then she came back to heal him, and they captured her and he had her executed. They put her in a room with a skylight and opened the skylight.”

  That made two of three implausible statements. The only one believable was that if Sejanus Plantageter were hurt, Telmaine would try to help. “As I said, I have no reason to—” And he remembered what Ishmael had sensed from Telmaine while they were in Stranhorne, and what Stranhorne’s son had telegraphed to his father. And that the archduke, judicious ruler though he might be, had a profound distrust of magic. That was enough for the ensorcellment. An abyss of belief and despair gaped beneath him.

  The boy’s hands loosened their clench, and his lips eased into a smirk. That was worse; that was Lysander’s smile of considered cruelty. “You ought to have told me,” he said. “I’d have been able to save her.”

  “She would never give in to you. And I refuse . . . to believe she is dead.”

  “Believe it,” the boy said.

  At the words, the ensorcellment twisted inside him, trying to tear out his hope, tear out his heart, tear out his love. It wrung a sound from him that was midway between a gasp and a groan, the sound of a man who had taken a mortal injury. There was no argument reason could make against the imposed conviction that Telmaine was dead. “I will not,” he said, strangled. “I will not.”

  “Tidy yourself up,” he heard the boy say, dismissively. “We’ve a visit to make.”

  His body moved, somehow. He wondered that a man could endure so much pain and still live. He could barely draw breath for it; he found himself leaning, dizzied, against the side of the wardrobe.

  Promise me, Telmaine had said, as they began to reckon the danger they were in, that if anything does happen to me . . . promise me you will still live for, love, and care for the children.

  Their daughters, who were sheltering with Telmaine’s formidable elder sister. Florilinde, who had a fascination with all things mechanical, and little, strong-willed Amerdale, whose sixth birthday was a mere two weeks away, and whose one immovable desire was for a kitten of her own.

  Amerdale will not have her birthday in a city ruled by Shadowborn. Whatever had happened to Telmaine; whatever happened to him. Balthasar pushed himself away from the wardrobe. His hands sought the pouch of bottles he had taken from the medicine chest and obstetrical kit the night before. He remembered the pleading Don’t leave me from the night before and set the thought, Chloroform, for painless surgery first and foremost in his thoughts as he wrapped the small bottle of chloroform and pushed it into his pocket. Morphine, for the relief of pain, and a syringe, in the other pocket. He did not count himself as religious—it had always seemed to him that religion was a product of psychological frailty as well as a triumph of imagination—but now that he stood face-to-face with his own psychological frailty, he whispered a prayer as he rose: that he be given the moment he needed, the opportunity he needed, for he surely could not choose.

  He followed the boy, once more in his Lysander form, down the steps, to the tolling of a warning bell. Sebastien had said the night had been ceded to the Lightborn to allow their brightnesses to travel to negotiations. The air that brushed his skin felt like night air, just after sunset, though with Sebastien’s ensorcellment on him, he did not suppose it mattered whether it was night or day. Nothing much mattered. Not the tolling bell, not the eerie, huddled quiet of the city beneath it. He heard no voices from the streets, no carriage wheels, no horses, not even any machinery. Only the wind stirred. Sebastien said, disgruntled, “There aren’t any coaches. I don’t want to waste myself lifting.”

  He is afraid, Balthasar thought, insight penetrating his dullness. He roused himself. “Where . . . are we going?”

  “Your council chambers. The Lightborn princess—whoever she is—and her nobility. They’re all going there to meet the archduke and his council.”

  Balthasar forced himself to pay attention to the undertones of that gloating. He said, quietly, “You do not have to do this.”

  The boy in his brother’s shape halted and swung on him. “Do what?”

  “Whatever you are planning to do—” No, that was weak. “Kill the archduke, kill the princess—is that it?”

  “You don’t think I can do it? I’m a strong mage.”

  “Yes,” Balthasar said. “I think you are entirely capable of it.”

  “Good.”

  “I also think you do not understand what you are doing. But for me to make you understand—for me to even start to make you understand—between here and the council chambers is quite beyond my capacity.”

  The admission stirred a vague impulse of alarm. He needed to care—he needed something to use against the ensorcellment. “Tercelle’s children—they are yours, aren’t they? Truthfully?”

  “You don’t thi
nk I’m old enough?” Sebastien challenged.

  No, thought Balthasar; he had been nearly ten years Sebastien’s elder, and still not old enough, when the midwife set Florilinde in his hands. She had thoroughly disapproved of him, he recalled. Telmaine had told him later that she had been outraged to have a husband underfoot who fancied he knew something about childbirth. He stopped with a gasp, remembering her laughter. It felt as though he had just scraped a scalpel across the raw wound of her loss. “Did you feel anything—anything at all—for Tercelle Amberley?”

  Sebastien caught him by the arm and swung him around, wrenching aching muscles. “I loved her, stupid! She was so beautiful. The way she spoke, the way she held her head, her grace—she wasn’t like the women where . . . where I come from. It was just once, for me and her, the first time I ever . . . I didn’t expect . . . I didn’t think about . . . I didn’t even know she was pregnant. I couldn’t even look for her because Jonquil would have known. And it was all for nothing. Jonquil had her killed. When I felt him die, I danced. And if anything’s happened to my sons because of you, you’ll die—horribly.” He spun and started running, slowing to a walk halfway down the block. He might have been sobbing. But if he had been, he was composed again when Balthasar caught up with him.

  Balthasar considered and rejected several questions, among them whether the men who had nearly beaten him to death had been sent by Jonquil or Sebastien himself. “What . . . would you like to do after this is over?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, once you have done what has been laid upon you to do,” Balthasar said, choosing his words carefully. “What will you do then, if you had a choice?”

  “Get away,” Sebastien said, head down. “Take my sons and . . . live far away from people. I’d set magical talismans all around, so that no one would approach, and if anyone dared, I’d raise storms and lightning. I’d build a house for them, out of stone and earth. We’d eat fruit and berries, and we’d raise oats and barley and potatoes, but not lettuce—I hate lettuce. And meat. We’d collect stones—beautiful stones—and make mosaics. You’re laughing at me.”

  “No,” Balthasar said. “No, I’m not.”

  Perhaps he did not entirely keep the sadness from his voice, for Sebastien halted. “You didn’t believe all that, did you? That’s where I’m really going to live.”

  Balthasar oriented himself to Sebastien’s grand gesture and the direction, and realized he must be pointing at the Lightborn palace. “I’ve heard it’s very beautiful inside,” he said, “though much of the beauty is in the colors, and would be wasted on such as myself.”

  Sebastien stared at him. “Would you like to see?” he said, unexpectedly. Balthasar tried to conceal his sudden dread that the boy was about to turn his magic on him. “Doesn’t the dark . . .” His voice suddenly trailed off, but Balthasar heard, quite clearly, frighten you?

  “I was born in darkness,” Balthasar said, mildly.

  “You nearly wet yourself when I opened the door.”

  “So would you have,” Balthasar said, “if you’d known your whole life that sunlight would burn you to ash. . . . I wish I understood magic better, to know how you were keeping me from burning. It’s an . . . exceptional thing. Your people must understand the Curse very well.”

  “Yeah,” Sebastien said, “we do.”

  The Intercalatory Council Chambers were just within the boundaries of one of the newer Darkborn districts, small row houses occupied by the homes and offices of minor civil servants and not-yet-established professionals. Had he married according to his station, he might well have had his first home here. A couple of streets away was the start of an equally modest Lightborn district that for two or three hundred years had been home to Lightborn artisans, artists, and craftsmen. He liked to believe both districts had prospered in unexpected ways from their proximity. The outer walls of the council chamber had been plastered smooth, so that the Lightborn could paste posters, which offered the people’s commentary on politics and society. He could rely on Floria to describe those that his colleagues on the council were too politic to translate.

  He set a hand on the wall as they approached the steps, and felt damp, lumpy paper. The lumps compressed as he pushed at them: fresh paste, hastily applied. And then his hand brushed something tacky, and he caught the smell of blood. He halted, midstride, the memory of those hours in surgery coming back to him. Sebastien, on the stairs, turned. “What is—ugh! Leave it! Leave it. Nasty thing.”

  “What—”

  “Leave it! It’s vile!”

  Balthasar pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands, keeping his mind closed to the stickiness. Sebastien rattled the handle. “They’re locked!” He threw his weight against the doors, unavailing. “I’ll have to burn through!”

  “No!” cried Balthasar, remembering the stench of smoke rolling out from the gaping wall of Stranhorne. “I know where there’s a key.”

  Distrustfully, Sebastien watched as Balthasar hoisted himself up to the lowest rank of gargoyle. Floria had been appalled when she learned about it—why, she demanded, didn’t they just leave the door unlocked? His groping hand found the key, spilling it onto the paving stones with a clatter.

  Sebastien simply stared at it, while Balthasar slithered down, collecting moss on his borrowed formals. “Tradition,” he explained, as he bent stiffly to collect the key.

  Sebastien stood at his shoulder as Balthasar plied the key and pushed the door open. Deep in the building, a bell rang, and Sebastien started. “What’s that? ”

  “The council works day and night—it’s best someone’s warned when the door is opened.”

  “You didn’t tell me.” He caught Balthasar’s arm. “Do they keep explosives here, too?”

  “I don’t know any reason for them to.”

  “You’ll die, too,” the boy threatened.

  “I might count that a mercy,” Balthasar said, and cursed himself for the indulgence. He said, more quietly, “We don’t have to go in.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  He opened the inner door, and found himself caught by the sonn of half a dozen armed men of the archduke’s guard. Instead of the pistols that formed part of their usual, ceremonial regalia, they held revolvers as modern and, he had no doubt, deadly, as Ishmael’s.

  Sebastien jarred up against him, catching his arm. “What is it? It’s dark.” Belatedly, he used sonn, and caught his breath.

  Balthasar croaked, “Wait!” What inspiration might have come to him, he would never know. A door flew open at the end of the hall, and a compact, handsome man built like an athlete threw himself out to confront them, followed a step behind by his own sister.

  “Lysander!” Olivede cried out.

  “No!” the man said. “Shadowborn.”

  Bal recognized Phineas Broome, the fourth-rank mage who was one of the co-leaders of the commune that Olivede belonged to. “Kill them!” shouted Phineas.

  And Balthasar heard the thunder of revolver fire from behind him as Sebastien lifted both of them the length of the hall. Shouts, an explosion. His wild backward cast of sonn caught the guards as they spilled aside, thrown or throwing themselves away from a figure who was simply falling amidst a feathery echo that Balthasar knew as spurting blood. He started back down the hall in trained response, and behind him he heard Phineas Broome groan deep in his throat. The mage stood with arms outspread as though to bar the door, face contorted with extreme effort, the muscles in his neck like ropes. The smell of smoke thickened the air, though Balthasar did not know where from. He gasped, “No, Sebastien. Remember how it smelled!”

  A backlash of heat seared his face as Sebastien fleetingly wavered and the weaker mage prevailed. And then Phineas cried out and fire flashed up his clothing, from trouser cuff to collar. The door to the main chamber slammed open and a revolver boomed. Sebastien lurched; the flame unwrapped from Phineas like a cloak, and then Balthasar heard a man’s mortal scream, felt the heat, and heard an
d smelled, for the second time, a man being incinerated alive by Shadowborn fires.

  In the move he had rehearsed in his mind a dozen times, he pulled cloth and bottle from his pocket; twisted out the plug; dropped it, freeing his hands to sluice the chloroform onto the cloth; and discarded the bottle in turn. He caught Sebastien around the chest, clamped the rag across his mouth and nose, and held him with all his strength in a travesty of an embrace. He could feel, against his wrist, the warmth of the boy’s blood. In Sebastien’s ear he rasped his half-deranged babble of justification: “I can’t let you do this. I can’t let you destroy yourself. You would destroy yourself. It is because I care for you that I am doing this, because you demanded I care. . . .”

  The boy wailed something unintelligible, muffled by the rag. Bone and muscle rippled and swelled beneath his arm; claws dug into his wrist. Heat mounted around him; he could smell the acrid stench of singed wool and hair, and pressed his face to Sebastien’s neck, praying that the mage could not turn the fires on them both. With one last uncoordinated rake at his hand, Sebastien slumped against him. Balthasar half collapsed, half guided him down to the floor, and then squirmed urgently out of his smoldering jacket. In unconsciousness, Sebastien had shed his borrowed form, and Balthasar, panicked by the memory of the Shadowborn who had transformed as he died, tore open his collar until he had exposed the bleeding wound at the join of neck and shoulder, and sonned the pulse in his throat. “Olivede,” he said, “help me.”

  “Busy,” she gasped, from inside the council chamber. “Sweet Imogene—”

  He heard, then, a pistol hammer being drawn back. He dropped forward onto his hands, shielding the unconscious body. Two men dragged him to his feet, their expressions murderous. Both wore the livery of the Duke of Mycene. “No,” he shouted, trying to struggle free, as a third man went down on one knee and laid his revolver behind Sebastien’s ear.