“Magistra Broome, I am truly sorry.”
A half shake of the head, perhaps of negation, perhaps simply to clear her mind. “And you,” she said to Telmaine. “Did you also know? Did you also keep silent?”
“I . . . ,” she said, weakly, remembering listening to Mycene and Kalamay toying with Bal’s life and her sister’s happiness. Phoebe would never understand what had made her probe Mycene’s thoughts. In a low voice she said, “I thought Vladimer would—”
“Vladimer,” Phoebe Broome said, flatly, “but not you.”
She shrank under that tone, and for a heartbeat hated her. What did she know of the stifling restrictions of society that punished the least initiative in a woman—she with her father and her brother and her commune? But in the shabby little boardinghouse where her flight had brought her, Telmaine had gathered both responsibility and power into her hands, despite the fact that by doing so, she had lost society, virtue, the self that was. She said, simply, “I did not know how then.”
“Curse you. Curse you both,” Phoebe said, and turned away.
“Wait,” said Vladimer, in raw appeal. Phoebe halted, but did not turn. He spoke not to her, but to her father. “Magister Broome—” He choked to a halt.
Farquhar Broome tilted his head to one side, considering him. “Dear boy,” he said gently, “we have built a tradition and earned trust by only practicing magic upon the willing. You are as far from willing as a man could be. And that is something I need no magic to know. “
“I do not want,” Vladimer said harshly. “Indeed, this is the very last thing I want. But I will that it should be done. If this is what it will take for you to work with me, then do it.”
Phoebe drew breath, her expression a mingling of outrage and protectiveness. But magic flowed, and she did not speak. The elderly mage smiled at Vladimer, the creases in his face falling into well-worn pleats. “I am quite old, dear boy, as I suspect you already know, given the dossier you will have compiled on me. Life was not always as kind to me as it has been in these last years, when it has given me a home, a community, and a son and daughter to cherish me. There is not much in the way of men’s natures and conduct toward one another that I do not know. If you entertain some notion that I will be more forgiving, perhaps you are right. But I will remind you that it is the young ones, the ones like my daughter, you must also convince.”
“You are their master, Magister Broome. If you accept, they will,” Vladimer said, intensely.
“Oh, dear,” Farquhar Broome said. “It is not quite like that, but, yes, I do have some influence. You should ask my daughter, but you find betrayal by a man the less painful to contemplate, for all you pretend such dislike of women.” He clicked his tongue at Vladimer’s recoil. “I have met it all before, as I said. . . . Shall I ask the others to leave?”
“No,” rasped Vladimer. “Let them witness it done.”
“Then sit down. I will be quick.”
Vladimer did, lowering himself painfully onto the hearth again. Telmaine resisted the urge to move away. The mage took Vladimer’s head between his hands, turning his face up with gentle pressure. The magic was no more than a breath, but Telmaine felt the healing in it. Then Farquhar Broome stooped and kissed Vladimer on the forehead. Unexpected as the gesture was, it was not theatrical or absurd. Telmaine’s throat filled: she remembered her own father—not a demonstrative man—kissing her so, when he gave his last gift to her: permission to marry Balthasar.
“Dear boy,” the mage said, “I dare not urge you to be easier on yourself. You are able—and you are willing—to do great evil. But you are equally able—and equally willing—to do immense good. Which you do is a choice you will make every day.” He straightened, released Vladimer, and stepped back.
Vladimer’s cane toppled slowly to the carpet as his hand went to his arm. His face and entire posture relaxed at the sudden release from pain. “What an extraordinary sensation,” he murmured; Telmaine was not sure that he was aware he was speaking aloud. She felt a discreet nudge of magic, and the cane hopped upright again, coming to perch by Vladimer’s knee.
Phoebe was standing with her hand pressed to her lips. With her attention on Vladimer, Telmaine had not sensed any exchange between Phoebe and her father, but obviously it had happened. “Lord Vladimer,” Phoebe said, in quite a different tone, and her father tapped her arm. “We shall just let that settle a while, shall we?”
“No!” Vladimer said urgently, surging to his feet. His cane spilled again, but when Telmaine tried to pass it to him, he ignored it. Speaking quickly, overriding any question or offered sympathy, he said, “Notwithstanding their apparent magical strength, the thing—one of the things—that perplexed me throughout this is how capricious their actions have appeared, a mixture of the subtle use of ensorcellment and coercion and the gross manifestations of magic. It may be they are capricious by nature, but I have found the assumption of caprice rather than logic to be a dangerous one to make about one’s enemies. We must think this through, and quickly. Was Stranhorne merely the first, geographically, or was there a reason why it should suffer the first mass attack?”
He started at a forcible knock on the door: Noellene di Studier, with Laurel di Gautier at her shoulder. “Lord Vladimer, excuse me. There’s a telegram from Minhorne—”
He almost lunged at her, snatching it from her extended hand without a word of thanks. Telmaine sonned the momentary surprise on Noellene’s face, and the more speculative attention on Laurel’s, as he used both hands to tear it open. He dropped into an armchair, spreading the telegram on his lap to sweep his fingers over the text. They held their collective breath.
He lifted his head. “The Lightborn have delivered an ultimatum to my brother. They wish the city surrendered to them in reparation for the attack on the Mages’ Tower. They rejected all arguments as to the existence of the Shadowborn. They gave this ultimatum at a meeting, and immediately prior to the meeting, the archduke’s party came under attack from a boy of some fifteen or sixteen years, manifesting Shadowborn magic and purporting to be the son of Lysander Hearne—Balthasar Hearne’s brother.” To Telmaine, he said, “I suspect this is the individual you and I encountered at the train station. . . . The Lightborn gave no indication they were aware of the incident. The Shadowborn was accompanied by Dr. Balthasar Hearne.”
Telmaine heard Laurel di Gautier breathe, “Oh,” but was too dizzy with relief to wonder why.
“Dr. Hearne managed to physically subdue the Shadowborn mage”—Vladimer’s brows rose as he read—“using chloroform, but not before the Shadowborn had incapacitated Phineas Broome and killed the Duke of Mycene.”
If the rumor that Sachevar Mycene had fathered Vladimer had any truth to it, no one would know from his manner. “Chloroform,” Vladimer noted with approval, “is less flammable than ether. . . . Hearne claimed to have been ensorcelled by the Shadowborn, but the ensorcellment obviously had its limits. He also claimed the ensorcellment allows him to survive in daylight. He volunteered to offer himself to the Lightborn court in a living demonstration of the existence of Shadowborn magic.”
“No,” Telmaine breathed. “Why?”
“Despite considerable reservations that he is acting according to his own will, my brother decided he had no choice but to take the risk, in hopes that Hearne could provide the evidence needed to convince the Lightborn.” To Farquhar Broome: “Can someone be ensorcelled to move during daylight?”
“Not by us,” Farquhar said. “Nor, to my knowledge, by the Lightborn. How intriguing.”
By his expression, “intriguing” would not have been Vladimer’s word for it. To Telmaine, he said, “Your husband appears to have survived the transition. They were able to exchange words with him through the wall.”
“Are they sure it is him?” Laurel said.
Vladimer nodded approval. “His sister—who is a mage—vouched for him, as did two members of the commune working at the palace who had no known contact with the Shadowborn. Th
ey all confirmed he was Darkborn, ensorcelled, and the man they had known in the past as Dr. Hearne. Which passes for certainty, I suppose, in these times.
“According to Hearne, there are two factions of Shadowborn, led by two very strong, rival mages. One goes by the name of Emeya; the other name Hearne could not learn. Their ambitions appear to be territorial, though Hearne could not say why they chose to act on them now.” He refolded the telegram. “Admirably succinct. I owe Casamir Blondell another debt of thanks; he trained his successor well. What is unfortunately apparent is that we are unlikely to get immediate reinforcement from the north—”
“Did my husband know that I am still alive?” Telmaine interrupted. She would be cursed if she let this question go unasked. “Did anyone tell him?” If only she had made herself known to Olivede at the train station and not shirked that personal awkwardness. If only the—she could say this in the privacy of her own mind—cursed Lightborn were not obstructing the mages from speaking to their fellows in Minhorne. If only Balthasar had never opened his door to the pregnant Tercelle Amberley . . .
“If anyone did know to tell him,” Vladimer said, “then my ruse with Blondell’s ash and your jewelry was not nearly as convincing as I intended it to be.”
Farquhar Broome was shaking his head at her with the expression of a benign tutor. His magic drizzled around her, dampening her fires.
“I will inform my brother of your survival when I telegraph in return.” A wintry smile. “We did arrange that he lay the blame for your escape on me.” To Noellene di Studier he said, “I need to speak with your brother and his advisers. This makes it exigent that we use every asset and advantage we have to keep up the pressure on the Shadowborn. . . .”
Telmaine hardly heard. Balthasar, gone into the light and ensorcelled by the Shadowborn. Ishmael, lost around Stranhorne. With tight fists and a tight throat she said, barely audibly, “Magister Broome . . . I retract all suggestion of impropriety around the request you made of me on the train. You had every right to ask, and I . . . have an obligation to answer.”
He gave her a broad smile. “My dear girl.”
Balthasar
The summons to the archmage’s presence came a half an hour later. By then, Floria had badgered him not only into self-possession, but into putting his appearance in order. She sent for a pair of eyeshades, two oval pieces of smoked glass held in a fine frame of wire, to cover his sightless eyes. His eyes disturbed Floria; it was plain. Lightborn were averse to physical infirmity, but he had never thought of himself that way.
He was glad she was at his side, though he had not expected to find her so disconcerting. In the sentimental manner of boy and youth, he had presumed she was beautiful, but it was a shock to find that she truly was, even with her hair scraped and netted back and that wary, hard expression. Hers was an elegant, bone-cast beauty that would last into old age. He knew women who had labored all their lives as domestics and at the factories, but he had never met one whose strength had been groomed like a fine racehorse. She asserted herself in space like a man—indeed, like a nobleman—expecting others to yield to her. Only her voice, familiar to him since early childhood, was the same.
Six vigilants, including Captain Lapaxo, escorted them. From Floria’s descriptions of the palace, he knew that the walls had been painted by some of the finest artists in the land. He could even have said what the panels depicted, had he known exactly where he was, from her descriptions. But to sonn alone, they were featureless.
“Who?” Floria murmured to Lapaxo.
He replied, “Helenja.”
The dowager consort, mother of the princess, and descendant of Odon the Breaker, a southern lord reviled in Darkborn history.
“Why?”
“Y’think she’d tell me?” Lapaxo said. And even lower, though not low enough to escape Balthasar’s hearing, “You believe him, about Rupertis?”
So the captain of vigilants knows about the report, Balthasar thought. Good. The more who knew, the better.
“He hasn’t been seen since, has he?”
They finished the walk in silence, passed by a wide double door, and were shown through—threaded through—a narrower side door into a suite of rooms even hotter than outside.
Helenja, dowager consort, was a heavyset woman with a broad, handsome face oddly enhanced by a once-broken nose. Perhaps among the southern clans, such an injury did not merit a healing. Perhaps it was even a mark of beauty or vigor. At her side was a lean man with a fine, crafty face and a caul marking him as one of the highest in the land. His clothing, though of Lightborn style, had panels of lace that Balthasar recognized as Darkborn work and that Telmaine would have priced to the penny. Balthasar suspected he could put a name to him: Prasav, Isidore’s cousin and nearest rival. The young woman with him, whose resemblance suggested she might be kin, wore an expression of covert fascination, her face not quite turned toward him.
He swept sonn over the others, making himself pay attention to their positions, groupings, and alignments to try to distinguish advisers, attendants, and hangers-on. A few he recognized: Mistress Silver Branch, with her clerk, who was trying to make himself as small as possible. Balthasar hoped he had not endangered the man by making him record his testimony. The young mage who had tested him at the door, and—he realized this with a pang of visceral alarm—two of the group whom he had challenged on the streets.
Helenja waved them forward. “This is the one?” she said to them.
An unnerved silence. Then they tried to answer together. “Yes, Mistress Helenja.” “But we—”
“‘Yes’ is sufficient.” To Floria: “Why did you not bring him directly to me?”
“I was stopped at the door.”
“Mmph,” said the dowager, swinging across to stand in front of Balthasar, studying him up and down. “I admit, I expected something a little more impressive.” Her head turned toward the door, then back to him, and she pointed to one side. “Over there.”
He did as indicated. At a hand signal from Lapaxo, two of the vigilants joined him. Helenja did not object to them, but she stopped Floria as she made to accompany him. “I want you there.”
On the opposite side of the room. Floria went, a threat in her expression.
Helenja returned to her place midway between them and waited. There were few chairs, which was in keeping with the Lightborn’s aversion to showing infirmity. He should maybe have accepted Floria’s offer of a stimulant, except he remembered too well the effect of her stimulants on the unaccustomed constitution. He hardened himself to endure.
Some minutes later, the double doors abruptly folded back. “The princess, Mistress Helenja, Master Prasav.” Vigilants and mages filed in, followed by a tall young woman with an elaborately woven cap of hair who stopped three strides in and spun to face him with expression of appalled revulsion.
“So,” Helenja said, with a long sigh of satisfaction.
The newcomer controlled her face, though her throat worked involuntarily with nausea, and turned to face Helenja. “Your message said you needed to speak to me urgently.”
“Princess,” Helenja said, “I presume you have not yet had a copy of that extraordinary report prepared by Mistress Tempe’s clerk. Meet Dr. Balthasar Hearne, Darkborn.”
So this was the usurper princess. Floria had cast aspersions on her courage and honor, but Floria was a woman of slow-shifting loyalties, and one who preferred her world ordered, and all those in it predictable. The mage princess offended both loyalty and order, and no one could have predicted her ascent. To his sonn, the princess seemed far too young for her role, tired, nervous, and overburdened—another person rolled over and harried by events and others’ wishes. He felt a great empathy for her.
She tried to recover her balance. “That’s . . . not amusing, Helenja.”
“No, it’s not amusing at all that the Temple has lied to us.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said on an exhale.
“Of course
you do.” Helenja’s waving hand scattered hard echoes of metal and gems. “Fejelis claimed that lineage mages could not sense Shadowborn magic, but that sports could. For that, the Temple allowed his unrighteous deposition, because they could not afford to have us believe that they were unable to defend themselves or us against Shadowborn magic. You, however, are not a lineage mage. What do you sense about that man?”
“He cannot be Darkborn,” the princess said, a little desperately.
“I have witnesses who found him walking the streets without lights,” Helenja said. “Shall we try that?” she said to Balthasar. “Put him in a darkened room.”
“If that is what you have to do,” Balthasar said, “do it.”
Helenja rewarded him with a smile. Floria’s stance gave the impression of a cat about to pounce. “She”—Helenja gestured toward the young judiciary mage—“tested him at the door. She thought his mind had been broken by the horror of the tower’s destruction. But you have another explanation, don’t you?”
“Mistress Helenja, Mother, I can’t—”
“You can’t what?” The dowager’s voice was a growl. “Two-thirds of the contracts held within this palace are contracts to protect us against hostile magic. If the Temple cannot protect us—as the attack on its own tower showed—then those contracts are invalid.”
Balthasar drew a breath. “Princess,” he said, “Mistress Helenja. Forgive me, but the integrity of your contracts is an internal matter between the Temple and you. I am here to prove the existence of the Shadowborn, and to assert Darkborn innocence in crimes you have held them responsible for.”
Helenja’s expression was one she would have turned on a potted plant that had rustled its leaves and spoken aloud.
“Princess,” Balthasar pressed. “You may be the only person in this palace able to sense this ensorcellment, but you can sense it. Your reaction showed it.”
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