Floria, craning her neck, saw him realize that he had spoken too freely, particularly to a woman with an asset of veracity. He said, “Lord Vladimer would have thought about the implications of tension between Darkborn and Lightborn before. He received the council’s reports, and it is his job to assess and deal with threats to his brother’s rule.”
“I’ve read some of your council’s writings. This isn’t without precedent.”
“We—the council—write leaflets when we feel we need to inform, not to agitate,” Balthasar said, adamantly. “Floria, won’t you let me—”
“There’ll be poison mixed in with the blood,” Floria said, straightening up. “No point having you poison yourself now.”
The mage drifted over to them, leaving Lapaxo with two of the vigilants. Tempe glanced toward the door. “If you would see to the survivors, Magistra.”
“I cannot, Mistress Tempe,” she said, stiffly. “They attempted to harm a mage.”
“A mage—,” said Floria, baffled. Tempe said to Balthasar, “Are you?”
“Not by any useful measure,” he said, quick mind visibly working. “I can sense anything on the scale of weather-working, but nothing smaller. I never thought it amounted to anything.”
“It doesn’t, ordinarily. Well, well, well. So now you’re under Temple law.” Tempe looked at the mage, a glitter in her eye. “Magistra, does this man look harmed to you?”
“No,” the mage said, warily. Floria had heard that same tone in a junior vigilant greeting a veteran’s invitation to play a friendly dice game or practice a no-fail fighting move.
“Exactly. The vigilants are the ones who are poisoned and bloody, while he hasn’t a hair out of place.” Not strictly true, but any further bruises and sprains were strictly Floria’s doing. “How do you know their intent was to harm him?”
The mage opened her mouth. Closed her mouth. Said finally, “You want to know,” and turned and picked her way across the tacky floor to the fallen.
“She’ll go far,” Tempe predicted. She glanced toward Lapaxo, who was being lifted to his feet by two of the vigilants. “Good not to lose another captain tonight. Nice work with the tourniquet.”
“Yes,” Floria said, obscurely resentful that she had not been allowed to say it first. “It was.”
Tempe drummed her fingers on her knee. “So, did whoever ordered this do it before or after the Temple had laid claim?”
“I don’t understand,” said Balthasar, perching on the edge of the upturned table, his worried attention more on Floria than Tempe. She was irritated; she had survived much worse, and she needed him not to assume Tempe was an ally.
“Several possibilities. The Temple wants you completely under their control. Ordinarily, they don’t bother themselves with less than first-rank mages, but you are unique.”
Floria had a sudden, uneasy feeling that she did not want to hear the rest, not with a mage likely to lay a healing hand on her in the next few minutes.
“The compact prohibits mages from using magic to either benefit or harm earthborn, except under a negotiated public contract and at the request of an earthborn. You understand?”
“Yes.” By the tight tendons in Balthasar’s neck, he did not like the way this was going, either.
“The compact does not apply to mages, although there is governance on the use of magic by stronger against weaker mages.”
Governance, Floria thought. That depends upon strength. She suddenly discovered an unwelcome sympathy for the princess, a mere second-rank mage in possession of knowledge that her superiors were determined to deny. Little wonder she seemed hardly more than a puppet.
The mage approached somewhat warily. “Two of my colleagues have arrived,” she said, primly. “They’re seeing to the prisoners.”
“Was it Prasav gave them their orders?” Tempe asked the mage. “Or Helenja?”
“Sharel,” said the mage, pointedly. “And they were to kill him, too.”
“Of course,” Tempe said, relaxing slightly. This was retaliation against Floria and Balthasar for that incident in the night, not some wider political scheme. Floria wondered if she could possibly cozen the Mother of All Things into letting her be there when Helenja found out that Sharel had ordered the assassination of a man claimed by the Temple. At the very least, there would be a substantial fine.
“Mistress Floria,” said the young woman.
Floria, resenting the need, gave the mage her best intimidating stare. Tempe scolded, “Don’t bully the girl.”
She was good for a third-ranker. She dealt with the trivial wounds and left the poison and the asset to fight it out without interference. Her eyes widened, though, at the strength of the asset. Neither of the mages maintaining it had been in the tower last night, or this skirmish would have had quite a different outcome.
“You can go and report now,” Tempe said, watched the mage leave the room, then turned back to Floria.
“What are the other possible reasons for the Temple . . . adopting me?” Balthasar said.
Tempe smiled thinly. “Control, of you as a source of information and a source of disruption. Possession, of an example of some very interesting magic. I understand magic only as much as the next nonmage.”
Disingenuous of her, in Floria’s opinion, given her asset and her relentlessly inquiring nature.
“But I do know that until now, nobody has known how to keep a Darkborn alive in light, or a Lightborn in darkness. I don’t think your archduke quite grasped the implications of this, for the Temple; if I had been him, I would not have let you come over. It may even have bearing on our understanding the nature of the Curse itself, a puzzle for eight hundred years. . . . Yes, I think they’d want you alive.”
Assuming , Floria thought, that the high masters have not already learned everything they needed from Balthasar.
“That makes it less likely they’d use you as bait,” Tempe added. “Though not inconceivable.”
“Bait for whom?” Balthasar said with strain in his voice. “And for what?”
Tempe gestured suggestively toward the door. “Enemies of the Darkborn. Enemies of the Temple. Enemies of the status quo. This court is riven with factions, but in the main, enemies know each other; we exist in a balance of tensions and oppositions. We do not like them to be disturbed. Now Isidore is dead, Fejelis has vanished, and you have come in from outside, bringing with you rumors of unseen forces of unknown potential—This isn’t a simple place you have come to, Balthasar Hearne.”
“I’ve known Floria for decades,” he said, by way of answer.
“Yes,” she said, with that annoying glint of speculative amusement.
Floria bit her tongue; she did not want to invite Tempe’s curiosity.
“It’s different, being on the same side of the wall.” He turned his face to her, then to Tempe—sonning, Floria realized. “Please advise me.”
“Next time I say, ‘Stay down,’ stay down,” Floria said. “Save me grandstanding.”
He looked abashed. “I . . . understand.”
But wasn’t sorry; she heard that distinction. And she’d be a hypocrite if she pretended she’d respect him more for cowering under the table.
The corner of Tempe’s mouth drew down. “My advice: get out of here. The Temple’s protection goes only so far, particularly now that they’ve torn up the compact. Tell your archduke this is not a good idea, trying to stir up the populace. Their brightnesses won’t forget it.”
“And the Shadowborn?” Nothing in Balthasar’s face betrayed his feelings—so he could do it if he needed to.
“Are magical, yes? Therefore the Temple’s problem. Or their brightnesses, should they choose to contract with the Temple to deal with them.”
“That’s not enough,” Balthasar said.
Tempe sighed. “That man Johannes—his cousin was summoned to his bedside, found him raving about Shadowborn who could turn a man into a flare, burn him to char in seconds. Half the servants had heard that story, o
r versions of it, by the time we knew.”
“Did he mention Balthasar?” Floria said.
“Not in any version I heard—but who’s to know who else from that household will be talking—or the group he’s part of?” She stood up and said, deliberately, “So take your lover home and leave him there, if you want him alive by tomorrow’s sunset.”
“We are not lovers,” Floria said, not looking at Balthasar.
Tempe snorted. “Woman, I’ve an asset of veracity. Whether you’ve lain with him or not, you’ve loved this man as long as I’ve known you. While he was on the far side of sunset, you were safe to be the perfect vigilant. That kind of accommodation has the habit of breaking down, though seldom as spectacularly as this.”
“Thank you for your counsel, Mistress Tempe, and for your intervention tonight,” Balthasar said, steadily, though Tempe’s words had brought a flush to his pale skin. “But until the Shadowborn are dealt with, I shall stay. May I have the letters addressed to me now?”
From his pocket, he slipped a cipher. Tempe’s irritated glance at Floria rebuked their collective negligence in not finding it and questioning him for the key. He worked the cipher one-handed with some dexterity, reading the messages with the fingers of his left hand, lips moving slightly as he committed the translation to memory, and apparently quite oblivious to the activity around him as Tempe’s people gathered up the dead and wounded.
He lacked most of the basic instincts of survival in the Lightborn court, she had to admit. She had to assume that was nurture, not nature: with the exception of his brother Lysander, his lineage was sound, producing generations of civic-minded, intelligent men. Quiet men, with the kind of courage that was proven only on testing, as Balthasar had proven his. The women were less distinguished, but she suspected the diminishing effects of Darkborn expectations of their sex; Balthasar’s small daughters were promising enough.
A daughter of hers would be spared that impediment. Her lineage offered the health and athleticism and survivorship of ten generations of vigilants, plus her asset. The Mother of All determined how those offerings would be endowed—except the last—but at least they would be on offer. Even if a child inherited Balthasar’s blindness, the example of Ishmael di Studier and the Stranhornes had proven that was no handicap.... Though if a child required an ensorcellment to live under light . . .
And there was Telmaine, and Darkborn expectation of sexual fidelity in marriage, which Balthasar, unlike many of his peers, practiced. She did not need Tempe to explain to her that in a court of alliances that formed and dissolved overnight, governed by contracts that could be torn up even before the signatures had dried, that she had learned to prize, even idealize, such loyalty. If she asked him, would it lessen her in his eyes . . . thoughts . . . or herself in his? Think highly of yourself, don’t you, woman? Assuming he’ll be yours for the asking . . .
His movement drew her eye as he returned the cipher back to his pocket, and folded up the letters. With a shake of the head in response to Tempe’s extended hand, he pocketed the letters as well. As he drew breath, she converted the silent request into a staying gesture, and motioned forward the secretary who had just arrived. “I think it best we enter this into the record under a judiciary seal.”
Balthasar began to explain how Lord Vladimer had taken the Darkborn mages—and Telmaine—south to the Borders to contend with the Shadowborn, and were requesting Lightborn assistance. Floria, listening, thought, And first we all three have to survive.
Fejelis
“Tam’s gone where?” Fejelis demanded.
Jovance was a step behind him as he threw open the door to the small bedroom, on the empty bed and empty room. He turned to face her, and she put a strong hand on the center of his chest and firmly pushed him backward over the threshold. “Give us a moment,” she said, over her shoulder. “Get everything together, and tell us as soon as you hear the train.”
As she kicked the door closed, he seized her shoulders, answering her disrespectful handling of her person with his own. “Where has he gone?”
“He has been sent”—she laid stress on the word—“to negotiate with the Shadowborn.”
He should not have such difficulty understanding simple words. He looked around at the bed, its covers trailing off the edge, the sheets still creased with Tam’s restless movements. If he touched it, might it still be warm? “. . . I didn’t even know he’d gone.”
“You’re not a mage, Prince Fejelis.”
The title—reminding him who and what he was, and why this might be a disaster much larger than betrayal by a friend. “. . . Gone to the Shadowborn?”
“Sent,” she reminded him, forcefully. “It wasn’t voluntary, that I can tell you.”
“But Tam’s—”
“Very strong. My grandfather said seventh-rank potential, sixth-rank fulfilled, fifth”—a sour expression—“acknowledged. But against the high masters, he had no chance.”
“. . . He got us away.” He felt dazed and blundering, and knew it showed.
“Only with the archmage’s help, he told me. They anticipated needing him to do this—and the archmage had taken a liking to you. You remind him of someone from his past.”
“. . . And the Shadowborn?” Fejelis said, disregarding anything else for the moment. “Has he a chance there?”
Her eyes asked him not to make her answer that question. “Not . . . if they’re hostile. Tam . . . said to tell you good-bye, to give you his love, to give you his regrets. He made me promise I’d look after you. Said you’d look after me, Beatrice and his children, the artisans. . . .”
Fejelis felt his shoulders bow under the weight of all Tam’s love and lost hopes.
She tipped her forehead forward, bouncing it lightly on his chest. With him pinning her arms, she could move neither forward nor back. “He didn’t have a choice, Fejelis. If nothing else, you must understand that.”
“. . . Could we go after him?”
She lifted her head, honey-colored eyes narrowing. “No, Fejelis. He . . . gave me an impression of what he sensed just before he lifted. It’s ugly and it’s very, very strong.”
“Where?”
“West of us. I’d say close to the Darkborn barony of Stranhorne. Directing or driving the force that overran Stranhorne. No, Fejelis.”
Can I believe her? he thought, with a sudden and too-welcome suspicion. Suppose it was the Temple who had found Tam, seized him, and took him unwillingly—Fejelis believed that, at least—back to Minhorne? He’d rather have her a willing traitor and a liar than Tam a traitor, a tool of the high masters, and a prisoner of the very monstrousness that had produced the things they had fought.
She was still in his hands, and he realized that through his grip on her shoulders, through the coarse weave of her sleeves, she could know everything he was thinking. He let her go, like a coal that had fallen into his hand, and at the flicker of pained emotion in her eyes, promptly regretted that. “. . . I’m sorry.”
“I know.” She hesitated. “I should have cloaked my touch-sense, but . . . I had to peek.”
His lips formed something that was not a smile. “Now you know.”
She sighed. “I too wish it had been that way, Fejelis.”
“. . . Is there nothing—nothing we can do for him?”
“No. If the Shadowborn kill him, then we can try to avenge him. It didn’t occur to him to veto that.”
Her smile was wondrously cold, but in her eyes was the knowledge that death was not the worst that might await Tam. The silence was punctuated by a chime. “We need to go,” she said quietly. “The train’s coming.”
He opened the door just as Jade was raising his fist to knock.
“We wait until they stop and blow the whistle twice,” Midha said, as they gathered around the door. “That’s the usual routine if we have to come down to a train in the night. Either the caboose will have been cleared for you, or someone in it will shout instructions.”
They had Jov
ance’s assurance that there was nothing living nearby except for those on the train and themselves, but Orlanjis was still shivering slightly at the thought of going into the night. Fejelis put a hand on his shoulder, drawing his gaze, full of unspoken questions and uncertainty. Fejelis managed, from somewhere, to summon a grin. “Have you ever actually ridden a Darkborn train?” His brother had shown a surprising—perhaps lifesaving—knowledge of the Darkborn railways, and admitted to a desire to escape court to the railways. “This’ll be a first.”
Orlanjis managed, from somewhere, to summon a pout. “Don’t tease.”
Then the whistle sounded, and Midha opened the door. They dropped a rope with lights down either side of the ladder and climbed down one at a time, with only Jade staying on guard above. Orlanjis suddenly blurted, “I have to get something.”
Midha, frowning, nodded to Sorrel. “Make it quick.”
Lights in hand, she flanked him on his dash underneath the platform to a tarpaulin that, from its profile, covered a stack of drums. He reached underneath and withdrew a bundle of red: Fejelis’s ceremonial caul and jacket, which Orlanjis had hidden in a futile attempt to disguise their identities. He was sweating when he returned, his arm blanched with exposure to shadow.
Fejelis accepted the bundle and tucked it under his arm with a quiet “Thanks.” He could feel the hard wire of the caul against his ribs.
The door to the caboose opened with a crack that made them all jump, and a great fan of light spilled across the gravel and scrub alongside the tracks. A man’s huge silhouette waved at them and a voice barked from inside. “All aboard that’s coming aboard. This train’s got a schedule to keep.” By its pitch it could be man or woman, aged but still strong.
“Les?” said Sorrel. “Les!” Their boarding was briefly obstructed as Midha and Sorrel crowded into the doorway to confirm and shout greetings; then the train whistle blew warning and Midha boosted Jovance aboard. Fejelis and Orlanjis scrambled after. Midha closed the door and bolted it behind them.
Shadowborn Page 29