Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  A beat; pain crossed his face. “Prince Isidore,” he said, compassionately.

  She did not answer. She would not let him feed on her pain, whatever he was.

  She heard the bells change their rhythm, signaling warning to the Lightborn that their part of the night was at an end. If she let him up, if she risked leaving him alive, dared she bring him to the palace for questioning and punishment?

  Whom did she serve? Isidore, who was dead, but who had commissioned her to watch out for his son, and Fejelis, whose steadiness in the midst of chaos and disaster had won her respect.

  Would it help either of her princes if she took a Shadowborn into the palace?

  It would be proof of her innocence, and of Fejelis’s. And a . . . curse on their enemies.

  Her voice rasped. “Stand up.”

  He did, clumsily, holding his wrist close to his body. She ignored that; injuries could be faked to put an opponent off guard. But his clothing jarred her. Mages could ensorcell clothing to appear opaque, but the cloth usually retained the texture of the sheer cloth most wore.

  And he carried no lights, nor did he ask to pick up the fallen stand.

  “Turn around,” she said, testing him. “Walk. Back to me—look round, and I’ll shoot.”

  He turned without hesitation to face the darkness, and began to walk in the direction of the palace. “Floria,” he said, “I am so very sorry about Isidore, about the tower. If we’d realized faster what it was we faced—”

  “Don’t talk,” she said. For all she knew, he had woven an ensorcellment into the words.

  He continued half a block in silence, then spoke again. “Telmaine . . . is dead. Part of me simply does not care if you do shoot me. Except that I would rather it not be you. And I have undertaken to do what I can to persuade their brightnesses that another force has been working to destroy the peace between us.”

  “Your dukes had more than a little part in it themselves.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Duke Mycene is dead—he faced down a Shadowborn. Duke Kalamay—I think the archduke will deal with him as soon as he can, but his power is compromised. Telmaine—I don’t know how much you heard, how much they told you, but my wife was a mage.”

  “A mage?” Prejudiced, proper, jealous Telmaine . . . She reminded herself, forcibly, that this could not be Balthasar, but why should any impersonator think she would care about Telmaine, with whom she had no more than a speaking acquaintance?

  And who could not be dead, whatever he said, because she had freed Floria from her prison before her lights ran out.

  He was speaking again to the night before him in as bleak a voice as she had ever heard. “She had had no training, and she went up against—fought—a Shadowborn. I don’t know what he did to her, but something went wrong with her magic. I can’t believe she would willingly have harmed the archduke, much less nearly kill him.” He halted without warning, and she nearly jammed the revolver into his back. “Keep moving,” she said.

  “She healed him, but they took her prisoner. Took her prisoner and put her in a room and opened it to the light—they executed my beloved wife for sorcery, and I was not there to protect her,” he finished in a gasp, suffocated by pain.

  She remembered Telmaine—or the voice that sounded like Telmaine—saying, “Tell Balthasar we spoke. It is very important.”

  If this were a Shadowborn, it might think to disarm her with Balthasar’s grief, not knowing that she would know it lied. Or be soliciting information, if Telmaine were, implausibly, a mage. “Keep moving,” she ordered.

  After that, he did not speak again until they reached the walls of the palace and passed through into the gardens. And then she saw him falter before her, heard him faintly breathe, “Sweet Imogene. I never imagined . . .” She did not have time to walk him around to the rear, bring him close to the terrible ruin of the tower, which was just as well—if he were Shadowborn, she would not give him the chance to gloat, and if he were not, if he were, impossibly, Balthasar, then she could not inflict such pain on him.

  When, she wondered, did I begin to doubt?

  Since she was not in attendance on their brightnesses, she had not come to the door of greater privilege, but one of the doors of lesser privilege favored by the vigilance, because it gave them quick access to most of the places vigilants needed to be, including their own internal barracks. At the top of the steps four vigilants stood within a shelter of light, watching them. She recognized Captain Lapaxo, the most senior surviving of the captains. Parhelion had died at his post with Prince Isidore. Beaudry had apparently committed suicide or been murdered after making an attempt on Fejelis’s life. Although, given that Rupertis had apparently transferred his allegiance to Prasav, perhaps he was in charge of the vigilance and Lapaxo exiled to guard duty. The captain’s eyes, tired and suspicious, moved from Balthasar to Floria and back again, seeing exactly the same anomalies she had. “Mistress White Hand,” he said, neutrally.

  “I need a mage to question this man, urgently.”

  Her prisoner said, “A lineage mage won’t be able to—”

  “Would you kindly be quiet,” she said, tense with doubt and the potential for disaster.

  Lapaxo said, “Go through; wait inside.” She heard him ordering one of the other three, the last two to take down the lights and close up, to follow. He joined them, flanking Floria and watching her prisoner. It was easier to think of the prisoner as such now, to believe that whatever he was, it was not what he appeared to be. Out in the night . . .

  Inside was a short, wide vestibule with another vigilant post at the end. To those guarding it, Lapaxo signaled, Bring a mage. A woman disappeared through the door beyond the post.

  “I would quite like to sit down,” her prisoner said diffidently.

  “It won’t be long,” she said.

  It wasn’t. The vigilant returned not only with a mage wearing the badge of the palace judiciary, but with Tempe Silver Branch of the judiciary—not mageborn, but magically endowed to detect lies, as Floria was magically endowed to detect poisons. The mage was less than Floria had hoped for, merely third rank, born of the lineages, and quite likely as young as her oval face. She was dressed entirely in mourning red—tunic, trousers, headband, and gloves. Her wheat-colored hair was meticulously braided into multiple neat loops, attesting to vanity, poise, and an understanding of the need to maintain appearances. Despite that understanding, she had something of the harrowed, heavy-eyed look common to many of the younger mages in the aftermath of the tower’s destruction. Though where most of them looked merely stunned, her eyes smoldered with rage.

  Floria said, “Magistra, could you please tell me what this man is. I warn you, he may be dangerous.”

  “How so?” said Lapaxo, and she realized that her prisoner was not the only one under suspicion.

  “He claims to be Darkborn. Indeed, he claims to be a close friend of mine. That is, as we all well know, impossible.”

  “Even so, you don’t quite believe that,” Tempe said, quietly.

  Floria laughed bitterly. “My notion of what is and is not impossible has been somewhat tried of late.”

  “Where did you go tonight?” Tempe said.

  “To warn someone that the southerners might be about to take an unwelcome interest in them. I would prefer not to say who.” Especially not in the company of a mage. “I will say—listen to me, Tempe—that the party I went to warn constitutes no danger whatsoever to any of their brightnesses, the vigilance, or the Temple.”

  “Truth,” said Tempe, somewhat reluctantly. She turned her attention to Balthasar. “Who are you?”

  Floria had been vainly hoping that she would not start with that question.

  “My name,” said her prisoner, “is Balthasar Hearne.”

  Both Lapaxo and Tempe looked at her; they recognized the name. The mage did not. She had not moved, had not shown any indication of initiative. Absorbed by her own anger, she would do nothing without a direct order.

&nb
sp; “. . . And, yes, I am Darkborn.”

  The mage’s lip curled. “Do you want me to examine . . . him?”

  There was a silence. Tempe said, as uncertain as Floria had ever heard her, “He is speaking the truth—as he believes it. Lapaxo—”

  Lapaxo returned the mage’s glare with his own, one of a captain of vigilants. She was the one who dropped her eyes. “Please, Magistra.”

  She jerked off her red glove and tucked it into her belt. “Fine,” she said. “Hold him.”

  “There’s no need,” their prisoner said.

  “I’ll determine the need,” the mage said, shortly. “Hold him.”

  Floria took one arm, Lapaxo the other. The mage said to Balthasar, “I’m going to touch your face.”

  “I know,” he said. “My sister is a third-rank mage.”

  The touch was almost a slap, though it quickly softened as she took hold of herself, her hand molding to his cheek. Floria watched her face as her magic penetrated his thoughts, watched her expression shift from anger to confusion and then, abruptly, to deep pity. Floria could not see his, though he shivered a little in their grip.

  The mage dropped her hand and stepped back. “He needs a healer, not me,” she said, staring at their prisoner in undisguised pity and dismay. “He’s—he’s quite mad. He is convinced he is Darkborn. He believes he was held prisoner by these Shadowborn, ensorcelled by them, made able to walk in daylight. He believes he is on a mission to prove that the Shadowborn exist and are responsible for everything that has happened. He believes he is blind, believes it so strongly that I cannot see through his eyes, yet he behaves as though he is able to see. Something terrible must have happened to him. . . . If you were to make inquiries among the people who lived around the tower, you might well find someone who knows him.”

  Their prisoner made a sound that might have been the ghost of a laugh or the ghost of a sob.

  Tempe said, “Does he intend anyone harm?”

  “No,” she said, with certainty. “He wants to save us—Darkborn and Lightborn both. Even the Shadowborn. He cares. He cares passionately. And he grieves.” To their prisoner, she said, awkwardly, “I’m so sorry.”

  Floria said, “Do you sense any ensorcellment about him?”

  “No!” The mage bristled at that question, taking it as accusation.

  As a pure-lineage mage, she would not.

  “Thank you, Magistra,” Lapaxo said. “That answers some of my questions.”

  She dipped her head, turned away, and left at a walk just shy of a run, fleeing the presence of a man driven mad by tragedy.

  Their prisoner sounded shaken. “She’s wrong. I’m not mad.”

  Lapaxo said, tiredly, “We’ll hold him here, under guard. Find his family in the morning.” If they had survived. And even if they had survived, what was the likelihood of their being able to pay for a healer to restore a mind so broken?

  Yet that voice. That manner. Every word he had spoken, every action he had taken, was Balthasar. Perhaps she was as mad as the mage said he was. She said, choosing her words carefully, “May I look after him? I brought him here.”

  “And why was that?” Tempe said, promptly.

  “I couldn’t leave him out there,” she said, truthfully. “We were due to hand over the night, and he’d already run into some of Sharel’s retinue, who’d been amusing themselves by battering in Darkborn doors.”

  “They came through half an hour ago,” Lapaxo said. “Spitting fire and swearing vengeance against you.”

  Their prisoner said to Tempe, “Then I wish to lay charges against these four individuals, by the compact of eight sixty-four, dealing with matters of legal transgressions across sunset. The charges will certainly involve property damage and assault.” He held up his wrist, the swelling and new bruising prominent on the pale skin. “I was in imminent danger when Mistress Floria stepped in: by their words and behavior, they did not intend me to survive as a witness. There may be further charges, depending on what else they did.”

  For once, Tempe seemed at a loss, caught between the insistence of her asset that he believed every word he said, and her own certainty that he was severely delusional. She said, weakly, “I’ll . . . send a clerk to take a statement.”

  “Thank you,” said their prisoner.

  “Permission granted,” Lapaxo said. “I’ll want a guard on you both.”

  That was precisely what Floria did not want, but she took what she could get—them past the guard post and into a small holding suite. It was starkly lit and equally starkly furnished, with a modest living and eating area, three beds in separate rooms, and toilet facilities. The prisoner investigated the stretched mesh of the seating with interest before sitting down and leaning back. “Floria,” he said, in a strange, wondering tone. Then, purposefully, “Do you think I could get ice and a strapping for this wrist? I don’t think it’s broken—there’s no tenderness at the expected spots—but it’s swelling. And then I have to speak to a mage who can actually detect this ensorcellment.”

  She was not going to tell him that the only sport mage in the palace, as far as she knew, was the princess herself. She decided to deal with the practicalities, and spoke to their guard, requesting bandages, ice, food, and drink, and a dose of painkiller from the vigilant’s store.

  The vigilant returned with the medical supplies and the food and drink. She mixed a dose of the painkiller into juice, sweetened it with honey, and tasted it. She had half expected recent events to have undone her efforts in educating court in the futility of poisoning her. But it was unadulterated.

  She offered it to him, not certain whether he would take it. He put their shared thought into words. “I’m trusting you haven’t put something in here that will knock me out until morning.” He did not mention a simple, lethal dose, though if he did not think about the possibility, he was insane.

  “I’ll call in Tempe, if you want. Let you ask me in front of her. She wouldn’t let me poison you.”

  He considered her thoughtfully for a few heartbeats longer and then drained the glass. “I must get you to teach me how to make medicines palatable,” he remarked. “Most of the ones I was taught to prepare taste thoroughly vile.”

  Despite his seeming calm, she saw his relief as moments passed and he felt no ill effects. “My wrist?” he prompted.

  Wary of touching him or letting him touch her, she pulled up a stool. It was her turn to feel relief when she took his arm and nothing happened. His skin was pale and cool, with a slight rash or chapping across the back of his hand, and no calluses of manual work or sword training. She examined the wrist, feeling the tendons and probing the fine bones, ignoring his flinches—provoking them, even. He let her hurt him, enduring. “I don’t think it’s broken, either,” she said at last.

  He relaxed as she wound the coarse mesh of the bandage deftly across his palm and around his thumb. “Do you remember,” he said, “mixing up a hangover cure for me, after my friends and I celebrated passing our final exams?”

  She did; she had been worried about him—about Balthasar—as he had been so miserably ill. She finished strapping the wrist. “Let’s have something to eat.”

  Somewhat to her surprise, Tempe did respond to their request, sending a clerk to record both the prisoner’s statement and hers in his impeccable shorthand. The prisoner’s account was precise and well observed, including details of appearance and posture. The mage must be right; he could see.

  Or he was Darkborn, and Balthasar Hearne.

  She needed to know for her own sanity.

  The clerk gathered together his materials and started to rise. The prisoner said, “Wait.” And when the clerk looked at him—and away from those disturbing eyes—he said, “I have a request that you take down another statement, under the seal of the judiciary.”

  “Under the seal of the judiciary” meant that the statement would enter permanent record. The judiciars considered the integrity of their records as sacrosanct as the Temple did their
contracts.

  The clerk looked at her for confirmation; she nodded slowly. Whoever and whatever their prisoner was—mad or sane—he understood Lightborn law, and under that, he was fully entitled to make such a statement.

  “It may take a little time. Would you like something to eat or drink?”

  The man shook his head vehemently, and Floria felt the corner of her mouth twitch. Of course not; not in the presence of a notorious vigilant assassin whose asset made her immune to poisons.

  In a measured voice, the prisoner began, “My name is Balthasar Hearne, and I am a physician, born Darkborn in the city of Minhorne. I am an adult of sound mind and a citizen in good standing, and I make this statement of my own free will to place on record my knowledge of the troubles that beset Minhorne, specifically the burning of the Rivermarch, the assassination of Prince Isidore, and the destruction of the tower of the Mages’ Temple.”

  She knew part of the story, but not all, and certainly not what had happened in Stranhorne and after. His account of Captain Rupertis’s treason and death brought her to her feet, fists clenched. She rang for a guard and demanded that Rupertis come down and see her. The guard told her that Rupertis had not reported in, having left on an errand during the day. After that, she could not sit down again, but paced while, in a still place in the center of the room, the man told his story. The clerk’s moving hand faltered several times during the narrative, as did their prisoner’s voice, but he told it to the end, listened as it was read back to him, and signed in an uncertain but recognizable script when the last sheet was offered to him. “Put that before your Mistress Tempe, if you would.”

  He managed to hold his composure until the clerk left, and then he laid his face in his hands.

  Her last disbelief had crumbled, listening to a voice she had known for close to thirty years speaking without a mischosen word or misplaced inflection. She sat down beside him, resting an arm along his spine and gently kneading his neck as though he were another vigilant. “You need to pull yourself together,” she said, quietly. “As soon as Tempe reads that, she’ll be along, wanting to hear you confirm it to her asset. You’re liable to find yourself up before the Temple or the princess very shortly after that.” She closed her hand on the tendons of his neck, pulling gently back. “Balthasar, sit up and listen to me.”