All these divinations and searches for prisons and prisoners had distracted her from the valley itself, from the beauty of the place. The Fair's Empire had not been part of her travels: she'd once crossed the border of one of their far eastern lands, felt herself unwelcome, and not lingered. But Darest, Telsandar, did not seem to care that she was not Fae.
Wandering from kitchen to the house gardens, and then out into the central grounds, she let herself think purely in terms of plant variety and placement, of the interjection of water and the comment of sculptured stone. There was no-one in sight and the hostile gaze of princes was a matter for later, yesterday, some other time. Just now she walked in magnificence, for the Fair understood gardens.
And then she had to think of the nearest bench, over by a shady clump of trees, because Aloren hadn't been wrong about her stamina.
The previous night began to press in on her. She'd almost died. It had almost won. Then Suldar had saved her, and It had acted like It had won anyway. Hopelessly perplexing. And she was left feeling as abandoned as her room.
"We're not supposed to talk to you."
This from Kassen, trailing up in her sister's wake, all curiosity and glee. But it was Princess Desseron, with an expression quite as stony as her mother's, who had come to see her.
"That is true," she said, chin held high, posture stiff. "We have been told we are not to talk to you, that we are to stay away from you. My heart-mother says that you are more victim than enemy. Even my blood-mother concedes that it is not fair and right. But they tell us it is necessary."
Gentian blinked. She'd made overtures to the Cyan princesses because her parents had instilled a belief that a child who has never planted and grown has missed a great wonder. She had not been strategising, and had not expected such a return. "Don't you agree?" she asked.
"I want to know if you do."
"That I'm not an enemy, that it's not right, or that it's necessary?" Questions she hadn't even asked herself, and she found the last especially hard to say aloud. "I hardly know, Highness. I certainly didn't want us to be brought here, and I don't think any of it's right. As for necessary–" She faltered. "I doubt it'll make any difference whether you avoid me or not, except in how you feel about whatever happens next."
Desseron considered this, then nodded: decisive agreement. "Because it would be easier to kill you if you aren't a person to us," she said, with a bald frankness she'd obviously learned from Lady Dhara. "Like Suldar."
"Suldar?"
"Suldar keeps us away because she doesn't want to start to like us."
So straightforward. "You could very well be right, Highness," Gentian said, as Kassen tugged her sister's sleeve and tipped her head to alert her to the approach of Seylon Heresar. Desseron grimaced faintly, but went on, deliberately raising her voice.
"Even if we knew for certain that this monster was using you, it doesn't do anything useful to suddenly stop talking to you," she said, her eyes flashing defiance as she met the Duke's gaze. "I know it wouldn't make me feel any better."
Seylon's faint, ironic smile made him look painfully like Aristide. He stopped before them, bowed, and said: "I believe you are wanted inside, Highness."
"If you say so, M'Lord," Desseron replied, pressing her lips together. She inclined her head formally to Gentian and left without further protest.
"You're making a habit of interrupting my conversations, Duke Heresar," Gentian said, wondering if she should be afraid of this man, and not feeling the slightest impulse to run away. At least not until she was sure she could stand up without falling down.
"Isn't it about time you started calling me Seylon?" He sat beside her with a sigh, and she saw that there were circles under his eyes. He had, after all, spent half the night keeping her alive, and probably had much less sleep after.
"It feels strange to owe so many people my life." Discomforting.
"I expect we'll all think of ways for you to make it up to us."
The words were not light-hearted, and she bit her lip. "You're not planning to avoid me for your own good?"
"I doubt that would make me feel any better, either," he said, still quite seriously. "You must forgive Dhara and Kestia. They've always had good reason to be protective of their children."
She shrugged. "Frankly, I'm surprised that's the sum of their reaction. This isn't a development I expected to be taken calmly."
"Who is calm? After Suldar so kindly stopped you from expiring, we all went down for the confrontation scene. Everyone was waiting, eager to haul my precious little brother over the coals for neglecting to share the more interesting aspects of your past. Chenar is proving most unexpectedly bloodthirsty – it doesn't match his reputation at all to ask why we should not go immediately to kill you. Do you know what Aristide's response was?"
"Not loud enough to wake me."
A pained smile touched Seylon's mouth, but he brushed any attempt at humour aside. "He said 'And then what?' And we couldn't answer him. Until we do, I think you'll find you're the safest person in this valley."
"Because, even if It is reaching you through me, without me–"
"We might as well put down roots. None of us have made the slightest progress toward getting out and we're all far more interested in escape than stopping this mystery Fae. If nothing else, killing you before finding out exactly what happened this morning would be less than practical."
It was a question, and Gentian saw no gain not answering it. "Nothing like how I usually wake," she said, as matter-of-factly as possible. "Suldar was there. I wasn't awake, just aware of Suldar, being there. I don't think she was there in the way that It usually comes. All I felt was her presence. Then It came. But Suldar was between me and It and It couldn't touch me. Or...did, but Suldar drew off the effects. And It thought this was funny. I'm not sure which of them repaired whatever was draining my strength. Can I ask you something?"
Seylon was looking less than happy. His pursuit of her had been smoothly light-hearted, and he'd never made a pretence of being struck with any passion. But it seemed he was at least ready to feel sorry for her. "Anyone can ask," he said, after a long pause.
"What were you meeting about on that barge?"
The frown gave way to a wry grimace. "You choose your moments, Gentian. Right now, I'm almost tempted to forget our borders. Lost property, shall we say, and leave it at that? It's not my secret to tell."
"Whose is it?" she asked, but waved the question away. "It's funny – borders are very real to me, but I've never before been involved in the politics of them. We could be anywhere in all the world, but you would be in Cya, and I Darest." She wondered briefly where Captain Djol was, and what he felt about the land that had punished his loyalty.
"The politics of borders?" Seylon shook his head, and stared for a long while into the distance. Making up his mind about something. "There has always been a border between my brother and myself," he continued unexpectedly. "Among other things. We have met very rarely, but we've had plenty of reason to study each other. I have never seen him less pleased with himself than he is today."
"Pleased?"
He sighed, not looking pleased with himself either. "Positively subdued. You see, our elusive Dawn, whether she's trying to get in or out of this place, appears to be constrained by Darest's borders. Which means she, and you, mainly constitute a threat to Darest. And my brother is well-known for eliminating any threat to Darest."
Seylon rose, bowed to her, and turned away. Gentian wondered if he had genuinely thought to warn her, or was simply making mischief. She had of course already realised that if Selvar did free herself, Darest would bear the brunt of that escape, a fact which gave Aristide, above them all, a reason to kill her. With a hastier man, less devoted to certainty, she would probably be dead already.
"It is not wise to expose yourself so, Magister."
Gentian started, twisting to discover Aristide standing directly behind her. She stared at his hand, at the saecstra which should have w
arned her of his arrival, and he followed her gaze, opening his fingers to better view the knotted lines.
"I do not always need to shout my presence, no," he said and released a spell that must have been muffling the enchantment's distinctive whisper.
That was only the start of it. She had looked about often enough to have seen anyone approaching. He'd been completely guised, hidden from view and then shielded so that even she couldn't detect the power of his castings.
"Do you really think it makes any difference where I sit?" she asked, wondering if he was trying to deliberately unnerve her.
"Perhaps not. I believe Princess Aloren prescribed rest and frequent meals?"
When she didn't respond he held out his saecstra-marked hand, and after a fraction's pause Gentian clasped it, and felt his oath whisper through her bones.
He pulled her to her feet, and they walked back to her room. At the door she looked directly into those eyes: brilliant and distant, all reaction blocked away. Subdued, Seylon had said.
"You still wish to try the contagion experiment?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll see you tomorrow."
ooOoo
Some time after midnight and Gentian, not feeling at all inclined to sleep, wandered into the hall to look at Aristide's door, standing ajar as promised. She could feel the murmur of several divinations set to await her arrival, and wondered what he would do if he woke alone.
Drifting downstairs, she found something to supplement Aspen's cake, then left her candle and walked out into the grand inner garden of Telsandar to look up at the bright, false moon.
Harp music drew her from the illusion of sky, and she sought the pale light filtering through the opaque side-windows of Suldar's building. Stopping beside the statue, Gentian stared at the blackness where an entry should be, and let the harp's notes wind through her.
Suldar is our sun and moon, Seylon had said, and Gentian saw no reason not to take his words at face value. She had a prayer. Climbing until she reached the blank marble that was not a door, she leaned her forehead against it.
The music stopped.
"I screamed every day for four years," Gentian whispered. "And wept for six more. My parents learned not to touch me. All those broken mornings with no understanding, and not able to do the least thing about them. I haven't shed a tear since I was ten. I used them all up." She turned her head so that the chill stone pressed against one temple. "I long ago abandoned the idea of life being just, and learned to deal with what is. I know I probably won't see how this ends.
"The only thing I was ever able to do was leave, and I forfeited that escape by coming back. Breaking oath. That's all that matters, isn't it? Even knowing who, or why, it's not going to make any difference to me. And you – in this you're just like me. Caught with no choice at all, and no way out. As much senserel as I."
Gentian gave up talking and listened to the silence, and when the first notes of the harp sounded, she merely turned and wobbled back to her room. She was far too tired for the tantrum the situation deserved. Crying that it wasn't fair would be no more use than it had been when she was four, twelve, sixteen. Crying had never made any difference at all. Nothing had.
But she would go through the motions. Time for another token experiment.
For all her reluctance, and her doubts that it would work, Gentian agreed with the approach. Magic bound by word and thought was necessarily limited. Contagious and sympathetic magic might be popularly associated with the charms and curses of hedge-mages – tenuous and unreliable – but they were also the forces that moved the oceans, and returned souls to the Moon. They were vast powers that followed different rules.
Pushing Aristide's door further open, she found a corner room where moonlight streamed through gauzy curtains. Outside its reach the shadows were inky, and she could make out little except the faint sheen of pale hair in a dark, vast bed.
Wanting to get this over with, she walked into the room and felt every one of his divinations react to her presence. Aristide woke up. Facing away from her, he was little more than a shadow to her unenhanced eyes, but Gentian was quite sure he was no longer asleep. He didn't move, lay there waiting.
She climbed slowly into the bed, sliding beneath cool sheets to brush against him, every nerve tingling. Trying not to be too awkward, she settled along his back, laying an arm lightly across his ribs.
A faint sandalwood scent tantalised her, and the warmth of his body leached through the thin cotton robe he wore. Her arm moved with the steady pace of his breathing and his feet were bare against hers. No doubt Aspen would advise her to glory in the privilege, the moment, but not even Aspen's optimism could overcome thoughts of death.
Was that why he had withdrawn so far? To treat someone you contemplated killing as a colleague or friend – let alone a romantic prospect – would not be to Gentian's taste, and she doubted Aristide still found this experiment funny. She certainly did not.
Aspen had been wrong: languishing up close only hurt more.
Fingers brushed the back of her hand. A feather-light gesture, not repeated, but beyond what she had expected. Gentian accepted it, wrapped it up in a tiny glowing starburst in her mind, and let it take her back to sleep.
Chapter Seventeen
Aspen jerked upright. Someone had shouted. Straining to identify the source, he nearly levitated off the bed when a burst of power bloomed nearby. Wood splintered, was followed by shattering glass. In the Diamond's room.
Aspen threw himself from the sheets, snatched up a robe, then stumbled to a stop. It had all gone quiet. No casting, no sounds of a fight. Just the same divinations that had been there earlier in the night, and the familiar hum of the saecstra. What in the hells had happened?
Clutching at the robe, Aspen took a deep breath, then another, forcing a semblance of calm before drawing power. One of the most basic of the true-magic castings, a simple sharpening of senses. He listened.
Someone was...weeping? No. Gasping, breathing in great juddering gulps. Two someones, both in the Diamond's room. The morning experiment. Aspen hadn't been invited to watch, had had to content himself with imagining Gentian snuggled up to the Diamond. Hoping that this would somehow fix things, that the world would turn right way up, the sky become real. The Diamond Couerveur be himself again.
Alert to every sound, Aspen padded cautiously into the corridor to stare at a closed door. They weren't talking. What had been that spell? Even if the experiment had worked, if the Diamond had succeeded in sensing Gentian's morning visitor, there shouldn't have been any breaking of things involved. Could Dawn have attacked them physically? Actually manifested? Should he be running to the rescue?
But no. No more casting, no screaming or crashing, just breathing. One had slowed down. Appalling to realise that this must be Gentian, lying there as she had after each awakening, eyes squeezed shut. Which made the one still gasping, the one with breath sobbing in his throat–
The door opened. Aspen had been too caught up in disbelief to notice the movement from the bed. Gentian staggered through, clutching the wall as if she needed it to stand up. She flinched from him, threw up a hand as if she thought he'd hit her.
"What–"
"Quiet." The command was ragged but absolute, and she pulled the door shut before doing anything else, then leaned against the wall, panting. "Go away."
"Gentian–"
"Please, Aspen." Her face was turned into the wall. "Go downstairs. I'll explain later."
He'd seen that strained endurance before – the part of the morning attack that made her barely able to look at him. But she didn't seem frightened, or hurt, and Aspen most especially did not want to look past her into the room where his idol, his lifelong ambition, shuddered in the gloom.
Allowing his hearing to sink back to a normal range, he was glad there was something he could run to. Pots and pans were so much easier: they did what you wanted, and didn't go changing into things you never expected.
Discovering
his robe still clutched in his hand, Aspen put it on and went to make breakfast. Peppering Leton with questions during yesterday's explorations had given him plenty of ideas at least, and he was regarding the results with partial satisfaction when she finally showed up.
"Sorry. I–"
"Don't try to explain yet." Aspen handed her a steaming plate. "Sit. Eat."
He frowned at her while she obeyed. This was his first good chance to look at Gentian since she'd stopped dying, and he was mainly inspired to pour more food down her throat. Frail. A strong wind would send her flying.
"Thank you for the cake," she offered, after picking without interest at her plate.
"No problem." Aspen made his voice close to normal as he added: "What went wrong?"
A blink. "Nothing. As experiments go, I guess that would count as our first real success. He felt It. He must have felt It every bit as strongly as I do, which I wasn't expecting. I'm sure my father only caught some echo."
She paused, considering this, and Aspen frowned at her. Like the Diamond, she seemed quelled, missing some vital spark. In her case it was probably just exhaustion, but Aspen wished she'd give him one of those sideways looks, or at least act concerned or worried, show anything but this...squashed lack of emotion.
"I needed you to go away, had to leave myself, because he'd made it worse by moving. And then by casting. Unless you stay as still as possible, the world feels more and more wrong and it's like your bones don't come with you and all people are monsters... With us there the need to get away would have been overwhelming, and I can't guess how casting must have complicated things. Once we left the pressure to escape us lifted. He's gone now, out into the valley. Walking it off."
She must have caught his expression because her own flickered. "You thought he'd handle it better than me?"
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