Lightborn

by Alison Sinclair

  “No matter,” Mycene said. “Sejanus will accept what is already done. The Lightborn will protest, of course—”

  “They destroyed your guns,” Telmaine said. “The mages destroyed your guns.”

  “In an impulse of anger that I understand,” he said, with no apparent thought of the men who had died manning them. “Still, it is a pity. I doubt a lady can appreciate what an achievement of precision engineering those were. Though I suspect Ishmael di Studier might.”

  Telmaine choked back her anger at merely hearing him speak the name, never mind in such context.

  “Was he your lover?” Mycene said, idly.

  He would twist even her rightful denial upon itself. She turned her head away, signaling her refusal to entertain the conversation further. Presently, the footman arrived to advise Mycene that the archduke would speak to him now. Kalamay promptly demanded to wait elsewhere than in the company of two mages. He left, bound for the palace chapel, leaving Telmaine with Mycene’s men, and Phineas Broome.

  She had thought to ignore Broome, but in the absence of Mycene’s baiting, her fear for herself returned, and it was as much to distract herself as to challenge him that she said, “Does your sister know you are here?”

  “What’s between me and my sister is none of your business.”

  “How long have you been working for Duke Mycene? Did you help him plan this attack? The Lightborn will know about you, Phineas Broome. And unlike the dukes, you are not immune from mages’ justice.”

  “If she says another word, shoot her,” Phineas Broome said, savagely.

  She gripped the armrests, her heart racing, as she heard men’s stances shift, holsters snapping open.

  “I didn’t help him plan this attack. I didn’t even know about it. I went to him to tell him about you.”

  His tone, near panic, sounded genuine. If he had gone to betray her to Mycene—either sensing the Shadowborn magic about her or to compromise Vladimer—and then found himself allied with men who had slaughtered Lightborn mages—little wonder he sounded so panicked.

  As before when frightened, he turned to righteous anger. “You think your birth entitles you to—” A footman interrupted what promised to be a familiar peroration against aristocratic privilege. The archduke, he said, was offering Lady Telmaine a more comfortable suite. With several of the palace guards at his back, he overrode Phineas’s invocation of Duke Mycene’s orders to escort her off to a small suite used, by the smell of dried flowers, by one or more of the dowagers of the connection. She declined food, drink, and the services of a maid, but she did ask for one of her own dresses, and gloves. Whatever fate awaited her, she would meet it as a lady, not a criminal. The bone heaviness had returned, the exhaustion of emotion and magic expended. She could hear the warning bells still ringing, marking the danger and chaos outside.

  Fejelis

  Fejelis stared down at the draft contract on the desk before him, marked by his dusty fingers.

  He was aware of the mages watching him: three mages, high masters all, his lost and found sister, three members of the mages vigilant contracted to the palace. And of the earthborn: his mother, dowager consort and leader of the southern faction; his cousin Prasav, leader of the northern faction; several senior advisers of the palace judiciary, expert in reviewing contracts; Captain Lapaxo of the Palace Vigilance and his vigilants; and the prince’s secretary. He was aware of the pressure of all their eyes on his lowered, cauled head.

  “. . . I cannot sign this,” the prince said, quietly.

  Having spoken, he looked up at the three high masters. The spokeswoman was the drab woman who had raised the Temple’s concerns over the contract with Tam, now introduced as Magistra Valetta, mage judiciar and eighth-rank. In Isidore’s ordered days, Fejelis doubted a single high master had set foot in the palace, much less three of them at once.

  For people with such control over matter and vitality, they looked . . . much like the survivors of an explosion in an artisans’ foundry he had once witnessed. Dazed and disorientated and very vulnerable.

  “. . . I think I understand your—need,” he said, choosing the word with some care. Because he was not sure that he could understand. An ordinary earthborn would have trouble enough, but he, son of a prince, and of the north-south alliance, had been profoundly aware of his own mortality since the age of nine. The high masters in their tower had not been aware of theirs until now.

  As with him, their enemies had cruelly taught it them.

  If he had been able to be present at the trials and punishments of his poisoners, would he have wished to be?

  If anyone had told him that these trials and punishments would not take place, that the guilty would be spared, what would he have thought?

  “You will not deny us justice,” the second of the high masters rasped.

  “Shh!” said Magistra Valetta. “Let us find out what he is willing to do.”

  Fejelis looked down at the document before him. It was a contract, between himself and the Temple judiciary, enabling its retaliation, in his name, against the Darkborn responsible for the Temple’s destruction. It was properly constituted according to the compact, save that it also sought to license, retroactively, the magical destruction of the artillery batteries.

  That, he could almost give his name to. No earthly power could have ended that lethal barrage so swiftly. Never mind that retroactive permission violated the proper- notification statutes and that neither earthborn nor mageborn judiciary normally accepted insufficient time as an argument. This time, neither would dare object. Never mind that if he did give his name to the deed, it would make him responsible in law and before the Darkborn state. It would damage the Darkborn’s trust, and damage—he did not know by how much—the artisans’ projects, which relied upon Darkborn goodwill. But even so, he could still bring himself to give his name to it, if it stood alone.

  But the rest of it . . .

  Mother of All, he wished he had Tam here. He needed the mage’s seasoning and advice, his insight into mortality and loss from the first twenty-five years of his life, his understanding of magic and the Temple from the second. In scattered moments, he worried about the man he had last seen sitting blank-eyed and bloodied on a slab of broken marble. Don’t break, he had demanded, but it was not a demand that might be met. A wide heart could be as great a weakness as a pinched one.

  He looked up at Tam’s substitute, the sister he had lost as a child, so startlingly returned in the midst of ruin as a willowy young woman in a nightdress. In that chiaroscuro nightmare, her hissed, “Fejelis, I’m your sister. I’ll thank you to look at my face,” had lent a comic grace note.

  But she, too, had almost died. The older mage who had been her lover had died.

  He said, to her, “I . . . can’t. It violates the compact. I am not sure I could even do it, had it been—” He realized then, that Tam would be furious at him, for seeding the notion that such a danger could come from the Lightborn side. “. . . Had it been Lightborn. Because the perpetrators were earthborn. And the means, nonmagical.” He saw Perrin draw in her breath, sharply. Her eyes flicked to the high masters, questioning. Fejelis followed her gaze, saw a quizzical expression cross Valetta’s face, swiftly masked when she realized his attention. She frowned at Perrin.

  “. . . Was there,” he said, “a magical component?”

  Valetta’s hesitation was longer than his. “No,” she said.

  Perrin’s face showed nothing now. He had not yet learned to read her.

  “Then it is a matter for earthborn. If anything, this contract should be written so that we might act as your agents.”

  The angry mage snatched a sharp breath of profound offense at the suggestion. Fejelis kept eyes level, his expression steady, thinking neutrality challenge enough. Change-and-about was perhaps a needed lesson here, but not one to be emphasized.

  He was aware, though, from the sound of his mother’s breathing, that the mage was not the only one offended. A sideways g
lance found Prasav’s eye on him, calculating.

  “But I do not think any such contract will be needed. Numerous Darkborn also died, caught outside in the city when the tower was breached. There is no obstacle to their answering to Darkborn law for those crimes. One death is all anyone can give.”

  Though where vengeful mages were involved, he was far from certain of that. He trusted that the Temple would not like to draw attention to that.

  He said more softly, “I will see it done, Magistra Valetta. There is a principle of justice beyond contract or compact that made what my ancestor Odon did unacceptable, and that has made this unacceptable.” He slipped his fingers beneath the stiff paper of the offered contract and held it out to her. “Please convey my respects, and my regrets, to your archmage and high masters.”

  “You had better,” Prasav said as the door closed behind the mages, “be prepared for when they come back.”

  Fejelis turned to look at him, past Perrin. “. . . Why so?”

  Prasav’s attention shifted to Perrin, instead. “You’re not contracted to him.”

  She bristled a little. “I was seconded when the mage who is contracted was otherwise occupied.”

  “Otherwise occupied?” said Helenja.

  He knew better than to admit Tam might be incapacitated. “With casualties. Contracts do allow reassignment of certain duties.”

  If it were written into the contract, which Fejelis knew it was not; no one could substitute for Tam in his trust. He resisted the urge to rub his temples, where the caul seemed to press. “Perrin,” he said, “could you please leave us for a moment. I need to talk to Prasav and Helenja—” Though he’d separate them, too, on the least provocation. He had no patience whatsoever with courtly warfare tonight.

  “Magister Tam asked me to watch you.”

  “. . . Outside. Now I have the mages vigilant.” He made his glance a warning one. “I’ll come back to you in a moment, if you would wait.”

  Straight-backed, she stalked from the room. She never had liked being excluded, from anything. He would have to talk to her alone, too, probe for what lay under Magistra Valetta’s long hesitation in answer to his question.

  But if the attack was other than purely material, why should the Temple deny it?

  He glanced at the mages vigilant, but he had to trust in their discretion under contract, even in such circumstances, because he would be an utter fool to uncover himself further. “. . . Why should I expect them to come back?”

  “Because word is that Sejanus Plantageter’s not in charge anymore, and if the high masters don’t know that already, they shortly will.” Prasav inspected Fejelis for confirmation as to whether this was new to him. “My informants tell me that he was injured by an apparent magical attack—a crude one, with fire—last night, and is probably dying.”

  “Did you know this?” Helenja said, from behind him.

  A poisoned question, for he had no doubt Helenja’s and Isidore’s informants had informed on each other for years, and she probably knew everything he did—through those channels. He suddenly felt the need to stand up, rather than have them picking over him like an unsatisfactory child. “. . . Yes.” Those seconds he could spare from worrying about Tam, he spent hoping that Tam succeeded in finding a way to help Plantageter in a way that did not violate the compact.

  Helenja’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And when the mages do come back, your answer will be the same.”

  “. . . I am glad you are so sure of it . . . since all I know is that the circumstances are likely to be different. . . .”

  “They are Darkborn,” said the granddaughter of Odon.

  “If the Darkborn will not bring them to justice,” Prasav said, “we must.”

  “Did you mean to insult the high masters with that notion of them contracting us?” Helenja said.

  “I thought it a potentially fruitful idea,” Prasav said.

  “. . . If we retaliate, either by contracting magic or without magic, it could put us at war with the Darkborn.”

  Fejelis remembered then his conversation with Tam, and the moment at which the pattern seemed to fall into place, of attacks intended to decapitate both leaderships and inflame their followers.

  He gestured in the direction of the tower. “It’s not . . . a war we would necessarily win.”

  That made them think: good. “. . . I have sent a message to Sejanus Plantageter, asking for a meeting. If I must meet with a regency council, then I will meet with them. But in matters criminal, there is also Vladimer Plantageter, the brother.”

  Who by all accounts could match Fejelis’s own relations for cunning, and who might, from the other side of sunset, have discerned the Temple’s weakness. “. . . He has brought down more than one of their own aristocracy for less significant crimes than this.”

  Before either his mother or his cousin could resume, he said, “. . . I need a moment to speak to Per—Magistra Viola now.”

  Prasav and Helenja retreated, with their vigilants, and Perrin returned through the door of lesser privilege, her face heated. Her glance back at the door of greater privilege told him what had gone on out of his sight: the vigilants, or Helenja and Prasav, had blocked her entry through the door that had, once, been her right.

  Now, he thought, what could he risk saying to her, a member of the Temple, with mages vigilant present? If he only had Tam’s letter to hand to her—which was possibly back in his bedchambers, or equally possibly with Tam, and if so—did mages burn ruined clothing?

  “. . . Do you know,” he asked, “how is Magister Tam?”

  “I don’t,” she said, obviously startled that that was his first question.

  They looked at each other across the desk, nearly eye to eye. Her face was both familiar and strange; he wondered if she found his likewise. He wished he had the opportunity to learn more about her, for simple—kinship—as well as the need to decide whether to trust her.

  He sat down instead, by far the easier decision. “. . . Magistra Valetta seemed to hesitate when I asked her if there was magic behind the attack on the tower.”

  Her expression became wary, and stayed so. “She said there was none.”

  “Was that your sense as well?”

  “. . . I sensed . . . something. But I am not very strong.”

  Fejelis laid his hands fingertip to fingertip in front of him. “. . . How many of you died, Perrin?”

  She flinched. “Do the numbers matter?”

  To the mages, it seemed so.

  “. . . Tam—Magister Tammorn—brought down the body of Magister Lukfer. I am finding it a little . . . difficult to understand how Darkborn shells could kill a mage so highly ranked, and although no one will tell me numbers, I am certain he is not the only one.”

  “Magister Lukfer wasn’t highly ranked, but he was—very strong.” She blinked rapidly, her inflamed eyes bright with tears. “Fejelis, I’m not contracted to you. I did this because Magister Tammorn asked me to, because he—had something else to do. I didn’t expect to still be doing it now. It’s allowed, but it’s limited.”

  Her flickering glances toward the mages vigilant made him dearly wish for a private place, a corridor, a balcony . . . though look how that last had turned out.

  “. . . And I’m very grateful to you,” he said. “Would you like to stand down, then? I won’t need you, I don’t think, unless I need to go back outside.”

  Her wordless gratitude confirmed her dread of incurring the Temple’s displeasure. He felt a moment’s regret—the sister he remembered would not have yielded to anyone’s displeasure. Very conscious of being heir, she was, even arrogant. How bitter it have must been to her to lose such a place for second-rank magic.

  He could not, he realized, thank her for her service in the conventional terms, which would seem to her as condescending. “When everything is close to normal again”—assuming that they both survived—“will you join me for a beer?”

  “A beer?” she said, widening her ey
es. “My princely little brother likes beer.”

  “Or wine, if you prefer.” Consorting with the artisans had given him low tastes, indeed, but he much preferred artisans’ bitter to anything sweet or fruity. He might explain that to her, over that beer.

  At the door, there seemed to be a quiet stirring, his secretary gesturing to one of the Vigilance, the vigilant gesturing to Lapaxo. What new crisis was upon him?

  “Fejelis,” she said, suddenly leaning forward, “ask Tammorn your questions.”

  Then she was gone, and Lapaxo was coming forward to tell him that protests had begun in Darkborn areas of the city, and that mobs were gathering outside the archducal palace and Bolingbroke Station.

  Telmaine

  Sejanus Plantageter arrived alone, in midmorning. He was dressed as elaborately as she had ever seen him, with all the elegance and artistry of his class and talents. There were no marks about him of his injuries, but his face was weary and strained.

  “Lady Telmaine,” the archduke said. And then, quietly, “I am so sorry.”

  Her sonn caught him as he drew back a chair and sat down. There was a guardedness about his movements, a constraint that set distance between them and that attested to his fear of her. But there was also a somber resolution.

  “I have spoken to Vladimer and my dukes. Now I would like to hear what you have to say.”

  I am so sorry, he had said, as if a physician announcing a death, or a father a punishment. “Will it make any difference?” she whispered.

  She held back her sonn; she did not want to know the expression on his face.

  “No,” he said, at last. “If I did not believe you at some level blameless, I would not have entered this room.” Her lips parted, but to what purpose? “By your confession, you did not intend to injure me or the others; nor, I believe, did your Lightborn companion. Is he with you now?”

  “No,” she said. “I think—I think something has happened to him. Maybe in the attack on the tower . . .”

  There was a silence.

  “Will I be tried for sorcery?” she asked quietly.