by Sharon Green
“Concern,” I echoed, almost beyond speech and starting to feel chilled. “You two don’t know the meaning of the word. Which is why I’ve already arranged to put in my own claim to this house. If Father tries to do the same he’ll have to plead his case in court, where I’ll get to have my say. The law is clear there too, so tell him to save his bribes. The judges won’t be able to find against me no matter how much he pays them.”
“What an innocent you are,” she said with the vilest amusement I’d ever seen, then she rose to her feet. “The law first supports the good friends of the court, one of whom is your father. This house will be taken away from you, and then you will be destitute. When your father offers to take you back into his care, the law will insist that you go. There are enough paupers on the indigent rolls that keeping someone off them is considered a public service. My advice to you is to withdraw your claim to this house as quickly as possible, and then apologize to your father and me. If you refuse, don’t complain about what happens.”
And with that she sailed out of the room, heading for the front door. In two years’ time this was only her second visit, the first being when she and Father came as guests to my first anniversary party. Gimmis had still been fairly active then, so they hadn’t enjoyed the party or stayed very long. Now that my husband was dead, their mood had improved considerably…
“She’s gone,” Warla hurried in to say, obviously having waited until the door closed behind our guest. “What are you going to do, Dama?”
I walked over to the chair my mother had been in, smoothed my skirt, and then sat. The chair had belonged to Gimmis and was the only really comfortable one in the whole sitting room. What a surprise that Mother had made straight for it as soon as she entered the room.
“I refuse to simply roll over and play dead,” I muttered, rubbing at my arms to chase away the cold trying to cover me. “I’d rather be dead than give in to them, so what have I got to lose? I’m going ahead with the plans just as I told her I would.”
“But how can you?” Warla protested, wide-eyed and all but wringing her hands. “You heard what the Dama your mother said, you won’t win. Why make things worse by fighting if you know you can’t win?”
“But I don’t know that,” I countered, forcibly pulling myself together. “What my mother said and what the truth is don’t necessarily have to be the same thing. A successful merchant always acts as if he’s telling the truth, and most customers will take his word for it without finding out for sure. That’s what my father says, and my mother has been hearing it for much longer than I have.”
Hearing it and following it, I added to myself. Father had always chuckled and called Mother his best student, but I’d never really understood the comment until a few minutes ago…
“What if she is telling the truth?” Warla ventured, still looking frightened and unsure. “You could end up being sent back to them, and then you’d have to obey.”
“Now, that’s something that isn’t true at all,” I said, reaching for the cup of tea my mother hadn’t even glanced at when Warla served it to her. “Two years ago they talked me into believing I had no choice, but I could have refused to obey. It would have meant a lot of trouble and pain, but I got those anyway. I saved myself nothing by obeying, so I won’t make the mistake a second time. Even if it comes to that.”
“You’re still hoping you’ll pass the tests for High practitioner,” Warla said after a moment, a fairly safe guess on her part. “The Dama your mother never said anything about that, even when you asked her.”
“That’s because she knows how these things work,” I answered sourly after sipping at the tea. “Now that someone has noticed that I qualify for Middle strength, I have to test for High. But they send people here from all over the Empire to do the same thing, and there are only so many positions as High awarded. You have to be absolutely tops, and even then you might have to wait until a position is vacated. But if you are waiting, there are certain protections you enjoy until you move into the position—as long as no one comes along to knock you out of line.”
“It all sounds so … conditional and uncertain,” Warla fretted as she came over to freshen the tea in my cup. “If so few positions as High are available, why do they keep sending people here from all over? Wouldn’t it be better to just leave them where they are?”
“And risk leaving some supposed Middle out there who’s actually stronger than their seated Highs?” I shook my head with a very unamused smile. “They’re not that stupid, not when there are people around who don’t like the way this Empire is run. One of those unhappy people could conceivably put together a Blending that would cause serious trouble before it was stopped, so why take the chance?”
“That means they’re doing it for themselves rather than for the people involved,” Warla observed with a frown. “That doesn’t sound very nice, but—What happens to the people who don’t qualify for High? There must be an awful lot of them.”
“That’s something I don’t know,” I admitted, having already worried at the question myself. “I tried to find out, but people talk around the details or simply refuse to answer. The worst of the applicants are allowed to go home, I think, but the rest? There’s a good chance I may find out firsthand.”
“And you still intend to try?” Warla exclaimed, back to being really upset. “I don’t understand you, Dama. Wouldn’t it be so much easier just to apologize to your parents and do as they tell you? Maybe this time your father will find you a husband you really like.”
“Of course he will,” I agreed dryly. “Unless there’s another old sadist who wants me as much as my father wants the man’s business interests. A lot of them won’t even care that I’m no longer a virgin, just as long as they can do anything they please to me. Warla, go and find out if dinner will be served on time tonight.”
Warla parted her lips, probably to remind me that dinner was always served on time, then she got it. I wanted no more conversation from her, and hadn’t simply ordered her to leave because I don’t believe in treating innocent people like that. She smiled tremulously, curtsied her agreement, then left without another word.
Once she was gone I took a deep breath, needing it to free myself from the tendrils of helplessness Warla always spun all around herself—and around those near her. If I hadn’t known better I would have thought it was a talent, but none of the aspects covered such complete readiness to surrender to anything at any and all times. Warla’s born aspect was Water, which helped to make her a good companion and lady’s maid. The baths she drew were always the perfect temperature, a pot of tea never grew too cold to drink, and ice was always available when it was wanted.
But there were servants with other aspects able to do the same things, and Warla had been engaged originally by my husband rather than by me. He must have wanted her to teach me the right attitudes, and her plainness had kept him out of her bed and saved her from what I’d gone through. After my husband died everyone in the house had expected me to send her away, but that was the last thing I’d do. I needed her horrible example constantly in front of my eyes, to show me what I could become if I ever let them have their way again.
Them. I’d learned from acquaintances that most people don’t think about their parents like that, lumped together without personality and always on the opposite and enemy side of the line. No one quite understood why I had trouble controlling my temper whenever it became necessary to discuss them, but I found it equally impossible to understand other viewpoints. Your mother came to tend your house and children when you were sick in bed? Why? What did she expect to get out of something like that? She didn’t expect to get anything? She did it because she loves you? Sure, right, tell me another one…
I got out of the chair and began to pace, more disturbed than I’d admitted to Warla. I don’t need a mirror to tell me what desirable merchandise I am, with reddish-blond hair and violet eyes, an incredibly beautiful face and a lush figure. Every man I meet seems to want
me from the first glance, especially the old, rich ones with no conscience or sense of right and wrong. At almost twenty I was getting on in years, but even aging didn’t seem able to kill the attraction. My parents had no intentions of letting me out of their clutches until I became really useless to them, so it was either give in at once and completely, or get ready for the dirtiest fight of my life.
So I had to think about the fight, since giving in was completely out of the question. I did have a couple of weapons I’d never had the nerve to use, but two years in the hands of a brute either kills your nerve completely or toughens it to the point of iron. If Gimmis hadn’t become incapacitated when he did, I wouldn’t have just stood there letting him die in his own good time. I’d been no more than a step away from doing it myself and at once when he fell to that final illness, and the memory of my state of mind still haunted my dreams. If anyone ever pressed me that hard again…
The house abruptly became stifling, and I just had to get out for some air. The street would be almost empty at that time of the afternoon, but the possibility of meeting even one person I knew was more of a chance than I cared to take. I couldn’t have handled polite conversation if my life had depended on it, so I left the sitting room and hurried all the way to the back of the house and out to the gardens. Our gardens weren’t as large as some, but they had a ten foot stone wall surrounding them.
It was possible to make myself slow down once I’d gone a short distance along the flagstoned path, but not because I’d managed to calm myself. On the inside my emotions still raged around, which meant it was a good thing Gimmis was dead. The agitation kept me from paying attention to the thorns on the bushes, and the catches and pulls they caused in my skirts would have had my husband reaching for his belt. A girl too fuzzy-headed to care properly for her clothing needed to be taught better, he’d always said.
And that brought on all the other memories, mostly of the times I’d run into the garden to hide. That had been right at the beginning, when I’d still thought it would be possible to avoid whatever my husband wanted to do to me. Once I learned the futility of that hope I stopped running, and simply crept out to be alone once he was through doing whatever he’d decided to. The time came when I also got past the creeping stage, and then I used the garden to brood in. It was also where I first decided to kill Gimmis…
When my breath started to come in harder and harder gasps, I finally admitted it had been a mistake to come out here. Even having to engage in polite conversation with a neighbor wouldn’t have been as bad as that, so I turned around to go back. I couldn’t have taken more than two steps when I felt the sudden stirring of magic … my kind of magic … and then a really large fireball appeared. It hovered between me and the house, and then it stopped hovering and began to move toward me.
“What sort of stupidity is this?” I demanded out loud, certain that whoever had created the fireball could hear me. I also stopped it before it could reach me, of course, but the mental command I gave for it to disappear wasn’t obeyed. Someone with a good deal of strength had created the thing and set it practically in my lap, and banishing it wasn’t going to be possible.
And that managed to focus every bit of anger and fear and hatred and uncertainty inside me onto the latest intruder into my life. This whole thing could very well be something done at my parents’ urging, to show me how futile my hopes were in regard to passing the tests for High. You’ll never escape us, the crackling flames seemed to say, not until we’ve burned every bit of use and humanity out of you. Even your talent won’t free you, not ever, never, never…
“I’ll show you,” I whispered, so lost to insanity that I actually spoke to the flames. “I will get free, I will, I will!”
And then I reached to the fireball with my own talent, causing a second fireball to come into being around the first. Fight fire with fire the old adage advised, and that was exactly what I would do. But not in any ordinary sense, oh no, nothing ordinary for this girl. Brute force combined with exquisite finesse, yes, that’s what would do it.
I seem to remember muttering darkly to myself while I spread my own flames completely around the intruder flames. Encasing someone else’s creation wasn’t supposed to be possible for two people using the same aspect, but I was in no condition to remember that. Half the time it was my husband whom I surrounded with flames, and the rest of the time it was my parents. I was intent on showing them all, proving that they would no longer be allowed to do as they pleased with me.
And once the intruder flames were completely surrounded, I caused my own flames to burn hotter and hotter and hotter. Only a crazy woman would try to burn flames but there was something else I did as well. With my flames using up all the air around the intruder, there was nothing left for it to burn in. The hotter my flames grew, the fainter its became, until there was nothing but a shrunken shadow left inside my inferno. I waited until even the shadow had disappeared, extinguished my flame and the small fires my efforts had started in the surrounding garden, then stumbled to a nearby stone bench. Once I’d collapsed onto it I began to shake, buried under the memory of what I’d done. The madness had disappeared with the intruder, and all that was left was unadorned terror.
“And that’s what you can look forward to if they manage to get possession of you again,” I whispered from out of the terror, knowing it to be the truth. “You’ll go mad and use your talent to kill them, and then you’ll be sentenced to the Demon Caverns for the rest of your life. Everyone left alive in the Caverns is mad, and no one ever escapes. You have to stay out of their hands, so you have to pass those tests.”
A lot of have-to’s for a woman already half crazy, but what choice did I have? None that I could live with, none that anyone else involved would live through. I had to stay free no matter what, had to … had to…
That was harder than I’d thought it would be, and I’m glad it’s behind me now. I’m not usually that intense, not out where others can see it, at least, but I’m supposed to tell the truth in this narrative. The others insist I was as biting as my flames when we first met, but I’m sure they’re just exaggerating. Or mistaken, which is perfectly possible. You see, it all began with a plan and a misunderstanding, when—
Oh, yes, I have forgotten somebody, haven’t I? The last of our five, the arrogant Vallant Ro. Well, if you insist…
CHAPTER FIVE
Vallant Ro—Water Magic
There weren’t many people in Port Entril—or any other Southern port—who didn’t know the Ro family and their fleet of transports, and most of the ones who didn’t were either drunk or children. Neither description fit the group on the dock, so Vallant wasn’t surprised when they made a beeline for his ship as soon as the Sea Queen was docked. Then they got close enough for individuals to be recognized, and Vallant cursed under his breath. The man in the lead was his oldest brother Torrin, which had to mean trouble.
Torrin was first up the gangway, but the group behind him wasn’t far behind. The deck was, as usual, a madhouse, with seamen trying to batten down for port and getting the cargo offloaded, and passengers clutching their belongings while trying to debark. Torrin and his escort made an effort to ignore it all, but they were swimming upriver against a stronger current than they knew. Vallant leaned a shoulder against the deckhouse, folded his arms, and watched their approach with open amusement.
“I’m glad you’re havin’ such a good time, little brother,” Torrin growled when he finally fought his way close enough to Vallant. “Too bad the fun has to end—and so abruptly—but you can’t say you didn’t ask for it. Get your things together and start movin’. Captain Vish will take over from here.”
“The hell he will,” Vallant answered, no longer amused as he straightened. “The Queen is my vessel, and another man captains her over my dead body.”
“Right now I wouldn’t much mind arrangin’ that,” Torrin countered, his expression showing he wasn’t joking. “And Daddy would probably name me sole heir if I did. He
’s been chewin’ walls for the past week, which hasn’t done his health any good. He wanted to come down here to meet you, but none of us would let him. Havin’ the head of your family arrested for murder can be embarrassin’.”
“What in hell are you talkin’ about?” Vallant demanded, so out of patience that he forgot to watch his tone. The Master-of-the-vessel snap that made him a captain no one talked back to caused Torrin and the others to flinch, even that fool Vish—Vish the Fish, most seamen called him… “Why in every blazing blue hell would Daddy be angry at me? I think you’re tryin’ to cod me, Torrin, and if you are—”
“Damn it, watch your mouth, Val!” Torrin hissed with a glance at the gaggle behind him, and Vallant finally noticed that there was a woman in their midst. She wasn’t bad looking, especially with that faint blush now in her cheeks, but this wasn’t the time for women.
“Answer my questions, big brother,” Vallant ordered, this time using the tone of command deliberately. “Tell me what’s goin’ on, and why you’re trailin’ a pack of lubbers.”
Vish bristled up at that and jutted out his bearded chin, but everyone managed to ignore him.
“Vallant, you’re supposed to be on your way to Gan Garee!” Torrin answered with exasperation, but without any more bush-beating or hesitation. “It’s the law, little brother, and you know how Daddy feels about the law. No child of his will ever break it and stay a child of his, not while there’s an ounce of breath left in his body.”
“You can’t be serious,” Vallant said with a frown, finally understanding. “I have no interest in testin’ for High, and I told those fools that. I’m a seaman and captain of my own vessel, and that’s all I want to be. Now take this pack and get off my deck.”