Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  “With your help,” she said, and he thought he might hear a little caution entering for the first time.

  He barked a laugh. “I’m a burnt-out, first-rank mage.”

  “But I’m not,” she said, softly. The softness chilled him. “I’m not the mage Imogene was, and I’m not the mage my sister was. But with one exception, I may be the strongest living mage.”

  “Th’exception being your enemy, the Mother of Shadowborn.”

  “Mother of Shadowborn . . . no, you cannot blame her for them. But never mind. Emeya was a couple of years older than me. . . . Well, I don’t suppose you would care what else she was. Her mind did not survive the Sundering. We were able, while more of us lived, to contain her. Now there is only me.”

  “And what killed the rest of you?”

  “Time. Despair.” Her narrow shoulders shifted. “If I were not Imogene’s daughter, I would have succumbed centuries ago.”

  “What is it y’want from me?”

  “I have borne nine children and outlived them all. They in turn fathered or bore children, none of whom survived.”

  “Survived Emeya and th’others?”

  “Until Ariadne came to me, I had no other mage even approaching my strength. I could not risk myself, because without me, there would be no one to stop her.”

  “Ariadne . . . came over?”

  “She’s Emeya’s granddaughter. It was Emeya’s great-grandson, Jonquil, you killed—though how you achieved that, I do not know. But it gave me even more hope of you.”

  “T’do what?”

  “With Jonquil and Midora dead, she has only two mages as strong as Ariadne.”

  He waited.

  “I need you as an ally,” she said, simply. “You are a mage, experienced in fighting Emeya’s monsters, and with abundant vitality. There is no one else quite like you.”

  “I’m first rank.”

  “Ariadne and I can augment your strength, Ishmael.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Am I possible?” she said, distinctly amused. “Is the fact that you are able once more to use your magic possible? They told you it was not, didn’t they? I can augment your strength.”

  He found himself standing, driven there by the urge to run from the greatest lure she could possibly cast before him.

  She spoke as though she had not noticed his reaction, as though he were still sitting in the chair. “You’re not much use to me as a first-ranker, that’s very true. But I can augment your strength.” She moved her hand; he sensed the first flicker of magic—Shadowborn magic—he had received from her. Out in the corridor, a bell chimed. “I’ll have Lysander take you to get something to eat while you think about what I’ve said.”

  Floria

  Voices woke Floria, voices from the sitting room outside. She rolled to her feet with revolver drawn and sighted through the open door of the bedroom, even as she recognized them.

  Lapaxo sat at ease on a high-backed chair to one side, wall at his back. Balthasar, on the couch, faced the outer door: that much of her instructions he had heeded. The corner of the low glass table was between him and the captain. Bal twisted to face her, and the shift in his expression made her aware that she was untucked and mussed, with her hair unraveling down her shoulders.

  “Floria,” he said. “It’s all right. The captain had some questions for me.”

  “I told you to wake me if anyone came to the door.” She had left him alone, as he asked, though she resolved she would find a way to tell him she did not despise him for the intensity of his emotion. So when he came back out into the sitting room, pale but in control of himself, she had honored his offer to take watch while she slept.

  But she had told him to wake her.

  “I would have, shortly.”

  “Shortly could have been too late,” she said. The captain seemed entertained, which did nothing to reassure her; Lapaxo was the most serious man she knew. But she put up the revolver. Had Lapaxo meant harm, he would have acted as soon as he heard her stir. She could afford the two or three minutes it would take for her to tidy herself.

  She listened through the door as Balthasar continued to describe how the Shadowborn had killed Rupertis, in detail that was brutally clinical even by a vigilant’s measure. Not something she would have expected of Bal—though she would not have expected him to open the door, either, with her safety depending on it. She had to remember that Balthasar had his own purpose here.

  As she returned, Lapaxo was saying, “We know Johannes. He was cousin to the servant we lost with Isidore, and to two or three others who work in the palace. He drinks their lager and talks revolution to anyone who’ll listen, and Parhelion took him for a blowhard. But if he knew Rupertis, then that’s my first choice for how Prasav knew that Fejelis had ties to the artisans. We’d had Isidore’s orders to keep it close, just to those of us assigned to Fejelis.” He pounded his thigh with a fist, his mouth grim. “If I’d had the least suspicion Rupertis was suborned, I’d never have left him in charge.” He shook his head. “That mage, he’s the one your father found, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Tam had arrived in the city destitute, unaware that what had blighted his fortunes for a dozen years or more was poorly emerged magic. He might have struggled on for a dozen more years—if someone had not cut his throat first . . . had he not crossed paths with Darien White Hand.

  “Darien thought it was hilarious that he’d see what a city full of mages could not. . . . You know where he’d go, that mage, when he took Fejelis? I heard you told Helenja west, over the border and into the mountains.”

  “Last place he’d go.”

  “You haven’t switched sides?” the vigilant captain asked, bluntly.

  He was entitled to the question, though it angered her to have him, too, question her loyalty. “I was Isidore’s vigilant. His last orders to me were to look out for Fejelis.”

  He gazed at her; she returned the gaze levelly. A one-sided smile curled his lip. “I’ll tell you now that my heart nearly stopped when Fejelis insisted on interviewing you alone. I’d have placed even odds you’d have put a knife in his heart.”

  “And five minutes later, I’d have been dead, and Fejelis already healed.” If Fejelis had been responsible for Isidore’s assassination, she would have set out to depose him, yes, but she would not have been stupid about it. “Fejelis did not succeed by unrighteous deposition; therefore he is the rightful and righteous prince, and I will do what I must to see him restored.”

  “And the Darkborn?”

  She glanced at the listening Balthasar. “An old friend.”

  “Vigilants don’t have old friends,” Lapaxo said, citing a well-worn maxim.

  “Vigilants don’t have lovers, either,” she returned, pointedly. Lapaxo had lived with the same woman for more than twenty years.

  He signaled a touch over his heart.

  She wondered why he had come. At forty-five, he was old for an active vigilant, and unlike her, had no long family tradition of service behind him. Twelve years ago, he had been a captain in the city watch, and even now he thought like a watchman, paying far more attention than most vigilants to the city outside the palace walls.

  “Lapaxo, why are you here?”

  Lapaxo turned to look at Balthasar, and Floria’s hand shifted to her revolver as he slipped a hand into his waist pouch and drew out a printed sheet of paper. “Two dozen copies of this came in with the mail bag with the reports from the Darkborn public agents. Every other mail slot accessible to the night has them pushed through it, and I don’t doubt that there have been hundreds more distributed overnight out in the city.”

  The sheet was printed in solid black type on thin white paper, Lightborn make—Darkborn paper tended to take ink poorly—but unmistakably Darkborn in content. Typesetting could be done by touch as easily as by eye. In plain language, it laid the responsibility for the burning of the Rivermarch, the murder of the prince, and the destruction of the tower on the Shadowborn
, who had influenced people on both sides of sunrise to work for them. It accused the Temple of failing in its contracted duty to protect the earthborn, and their brightnesses of exploiting the disaster to demand that the Darkborn cede their rights to the city. It asked for the readers’ support in resisting this injustice.

  She read it aloud for Balthasar, slowly, so that Lapaxo could appreciate how he flushed with anger and then paled as he listened. Bal took it from her hand and ran his fingers over the featureless surface. “So that was what he meant.”

  “Who?” Floria and Lapaxo said together.

  “The archduke spoke of other measures. What he meant, he would not say in front of me. But we know how restive some of your people are against their brightnesses and against the Temple. This aims to redirect their anger away from the Darkborn, toward older grudges—��

  She remembered the mob she had confronted outside Bolingbroke Station and imagined them battering at the gates of the palace itself, howling for the blood of their brightnesses.

  “They’ve forced his back to the wall,” Lapaxo said, appreciatively, though whether his appreciation was directed at the Lightborn strategy or the Darkborn response, she could not tell. “This could be very effective. The spark’s already been set to the tinder—we saw that yesterday. This will throw oil on it. Who will burn? We’ll know after sunrise. Tell me, Hearne—and know that I can have it confirmed—were you sent as an agitator?”

  “No,” Balthasar said, forcefully. “I knew nothing of this, and if I had, I’d have wanted nothing to do with it. And I will so declare before Mistress Tempe, or anyone else you want.”

  She waited, ready to counter Lapaxo’s first threatening move, and aware that he was aware of her readiness. But all Lapaxo did was sigh. “You’d better get him out of here,” he told her. “He’s a dead man otherwise.”

  “I am not going anywhere,” Balthasar said.

  Perceptive as he was, he had missed the meaning of Lapaxo’s sigh. Balthasar himself was spark to the oil, living proof of the existence of Shadowborn. The more widely he spread belief in himself, the more widely he spread belief in the assertions in these papers. That he had persuaded Lapaxo of his innocence had done no more than make Lapaxo regret the inevitability of his death. Their brightnesses would not leave him alive to lend support to this.

  Her eyes shifted to the back of his dark head. One blow would be enough, but, stunned, he would not be able to travel by himself, and she could not carry him out until sunrise. Though Lapaxo might help.

  Then Bal’s head came round, and she thought for an instant that he had somehow deduced her thought, but his attention moved beyond her to the door, his head angled, listening. She heard nothing—but he was Darkborn. She raised her hand to stop him from speaking and signaled to Lapaxo. The captain slid from his chair, moving to the door. She pulled Balthasar up, meaning to get him into the bedroom. Behind a wall, he’d be shielded—

  She heard the lock turn. As the door burst open, she kicked Balthasar’s feet from underneath him and dropped him into the shelter of the table, snagging the collar of his thick jacket to soften his descent. That consideration earned her a knife in the side and the sting of a second across her neck. Two more knives clattered off the table. She jerked the knife out of her side—a small throwing knife, not dangerous outside eye or throat—even as the mandala on the skin of her abdomen started to burn. Lapaxo flowed around the door with a sweetly economical slash that opened the nearest woman’s body from rib to hip. A third pair of knives fell from her hands.

  “Poison!” Floria grunted, half doubled over. If the poison was giving the asset this much trouble, Lapaxo or Bal could die of a scratch. Lapaxo shied from a blade, and two more assassins forced their way through the door. They wore light armor and were armed with rapiers. “Bal, stay down!” she barked, and leaped to straddle the arms of the chair, brazenly exposed—a flamboyant idiocy her father would have whipped her for, but one that kept their attention on her. A knife lodged in the muscle of her shoulder; a second, aiming to split her throat, hissed past her ear. She shot the man who had thrown them above the right eye. With a ceding parry and bind, Lapaxo slipped his blade neatly through the seam of the nearest man’s armor. The downed woman twisted violently with a flash of bluish intestine, and lashed out. Floria’s shout of warning came too late. As Lapaxo sprang clear, Floria shot the last assassin, and jumped down from the chair to land beside the table, revolver swinging from the fallen to the door and back. Her hands were slippery with cold sweat.

  Behind her she heard a scrape and a scuttle, and movement caught the corner of her eye—Balthasar dropping to his knees before Lapaxo, who had backed to brace himself against the wall with one hand, rapier still raised, eyes still on the door. The fabric covering his right shin was bloody. Balthasar slashed a strip from his own jacket—Sweet Imogene, with one of those cursed poisoned knives!—and flipped the strip around the captain’s leg below the knee, cinching it tight. “I need water,” he said over his shoulder, to Floria. “Something to wash the wound. And a clean knife.”

  “Identify them,” rasped Lapaxo.

  There was only one identification she cared about: who was still a threat. Her eyes flicked over the assassins, taking in their attire: that of ordinary palace staff, complete to the red morning jackets, stained a much darker red with blood. Two of the four were dead, or indistinguishable from it. The woman was lying curled up around her spilled intestine. The fourth was sprawled on his back, gargling and trying spasmodically to roll over. The corridor outside was empty for now. She wondered what had become of the guards outside; nothing good, she expected. She flicked away all the knives she could see, and then risked leaning over the assassins to frisk them and strip them of other weapons. There were no apparent firearms, but the rearmost was carrying a rolled-up black tarpaulin. A quiet assassination, then—Balthasar with poison, Floria with poison assisted by steel, and her body, at least, quickly disposed of.

  She whirled as Balthasar lunged for the table. Oblivious to her reaction, he caught up the carafe and a glass and smashed the glass and used the broken stem to open the poisoned cut, raising new blood. Lapaxo’s face was gray and he was breathing heavily, but he was still standing, back flat against the wall. Balthasar, his fingers on the pulse at his groin, said, urgently, “Floria, I need some digitalis, some stimulant—”

  “I’ve nothing with me.” She would have, she should have, if she hadn’t been knocked from crisis to crisis.

  “Then get me some,” Balthasar said, lurching out of his crouch to catch the captain as he began to slide down the wall. The rapier fell with a clatter. “That or a mage.”

  Arguing the matter was pointless if Bal couldn’t see that moving them from a defensible position could kill all three of them more surely than lack of help would kill Lapaxo.

  The sound of running footsteps from outside sent her back behind the table. She’d have grabbed Balthasar if she’d thought he would come, but—“Quiet!” she barked at him, and in a burst of adrenaline-fired strength, heaved the glass table on its side. It made an inadequate shield, but its crash was enough to command the attention of the new arrivals.

  Who were half a dozen vigilants wearing judiciary badges, with Tempe Silver Branch at their back. The lieutenant in charge swiftly assessed her and the casualties, and then directed two of his men to clear the way for Tempe and the young mage who had questioned Balthasar. Tempe walked, seemingly unaware, across the tacky floor, while the mage followed her with mincing step, her face working in horror and revulsion. Adamantly, Floria pointed to Lapaxo. Tempe said to the mage, “Him first,” and the mage went. Balthasar ceded his place with profound relief, whispering urgently to her.

  A ferocious cramp bent Floria over. Hands braced on knees, she grunted out an assurance that she’d be fine. Tempe scowled; she hated it when appearances contradicted the truth told her. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Scratches,” Floria rasped. Tempe took her arm, examining the wound,
and unstuck the side of her tunic to check the other, carefully avoiding the blood. “Bitch of a poison.” If it had come to her against the assassins, she’d have been fatally off form, even if no poison could kill her outright. She freed a hand to knead her abdomen, willing everyone to go away and leave her to her misery. Maybe she could deflect their attention. “You’d better get the mage on to them soon if you want answers.”

  “Helenja or Prasav? Take your pick. The two who were posted to guard you are dead.” She put a hand on Floria’s shoulder, knee behind her knee, and pushed her down onto the mesh couch. “We’ve been having an interesting night, while you two were snug in here.” Her suggestive tone earned her a sour look, which she met with a quizzical expression. “Been two letters for him, heavily ciphered—and, yes, I know they’ve not been delivered. We want to know what’s in them. Also leaflets”—she nudged the paper on the ground with a toe—“pushed through every available mail slot and newspaper drop in the civil-service sector and servants’ quarters. Variety of texts, all the same theme—the Shadowborn are your enemy, we’re not, their brightnesses and the Temple are obstructing our alliance. You can say this for the Darkborn: they’re thorough. I’d venture to say this wasn’t all thought up in a night; someone had it planned ahead of time.”

  “Lord Vladimer,” Balthasar said, from beside Lapaxo. Lapaxo’s eyes were closed, but his skin had already warmed several tones from death gray. Then Balthasar noticed Floria’s hunched posture and came quickly to his feet. “Floria!”

  “I’m all right!” she said, sharply. “The asset protects me.” If he couldn’t read her eyes, she willed him to read her expression: Watch what you say. Both for her sake and his.

  He started around to the rear of the couch, but was intercepted by Tempe’s outstretched arm. “You don’t want to get behind a vigilant just coming off a fight.” She looked him up and down. “Vladimer? Word came to us that he had lost it mentally.”