Darkborn Part 10

"Yes," said Bal. He had worked himself free of the quilts, managing to wrap one rug around himself. Now he slid his legs over the edge of the bed, his face taut with pain.

"No need," said Ish. "But keep your hands off m'scorches." He stooped and collected Bal, lifting him with a grunt and a muttered, "Falling in love with your wife, sir, is bad for a man's health."

"You are not not in love with me," Telmaine said, after a moment of mortified incredulity that he should in love with me," Telmaine said, after a moment of mortified incredulity that he should say say it. "I don't like your sense of humor, it. "I don't like your sense of humor, sir sir."

He gave her a vulpine grin as he carried her husband out the door. She and Amerdale followed close behind, Telmaine hampered by the bags and Amerdale, who clutched her skirts as though she expected Telmaine, too, to disappear. "Where are we going?" she said, but the question went unanswered.

Outside, the rain was still falling heavily, filling the air with fine shifting echoes. The smell of smoke was bitter on tongue and throat. Ishmael cracked a single intense pulse of sonn toward the pavement on either side of them, and went still, listening. Olivede, her back against the door lintel, held one of the revolvers partly sheltered from the rain. Telmaine heard the sound of distant carriages in the rainwashed streets, a slamming door, footsteps fading unchecked in the distance, the song of one of the late birds. Ishmael said, "I think it's clear. Call us a cab." He followed Olivede down the stair, lurching a little, and saying to Bal in a voice that carried some strain, "You'd like my fuel carriage, Hearne, or so your little ones say. Pity she's a rough ride, and conspicuous."

Olivede, who had palmed the whistle, blew it; the cab came quickly, eager for the first fare of the day. With a struggle, Ishmael lifted Balthasar aboard and then bent over, gripping the base of the door, coughing again. Covertly, Olivede extended her hand to soothe him, collecting a nod of grat.i.tude. He hefted up their baggage, wincing as he used his arm, then helped Telmaine and Amerdale inside. Olivede he left to manage herself, as befitted her disguise; she swung aboard with reasonable competence. Ishmael whistled, a distinctive call that sounded almost birdlike, and waved, and a young man appeared from beneath the steps of a house opposite and trotted swiftly over-one of their hidden guardians. Ishmael gave him brief instructions and sent him running off in the direction of the coach stand before clambering into the coach himself. He slammed the door and leaned out the window to pa.s.s up their fare and growl instructions to the coachman to take them to the train station, and then fell into his seat, wincing as the cab started to move and he lurched back against the rear of it.

"Where are we going?" Telmaine said again. "Bal's too weak for a long journey, and we're not leaving the city until Flori is found."

"Station's a decoy. We'll be met," Ishmael said, steadying himself by gripping the window.

They arrived at the train station, and Ishmael at that point pa.s.sed up another fare and gave instructions to another landmark. Two more such legs followed before they were met, on a side street, by two private carriages with a pair of husky coachmen each. She, Bal, and Amerdale were loaded into one, Ishmael and Olivede into another. She fought down the improper desire to beg Ishmael to stay with them. They set off again, she bracing Bal against the rocking, Amerdale leaning against him, clinging to the stuffed bear and sucking her fist. Telmaine didn't have the heart to reproach the child for the reversion to infantile habit.

"How," Bal said, "did you meet Baron Strumh.e.l.ler? Ought I to be affronted?"

She so wished she were an ordinary wife, who need only guess at the pain and grief and worry that he was trying to distract them both from. She stroked his forehead, giving him what of herself she could. "Just a few days ago at the archducal summer house. He offered to escort me here. I'm glad I let him: He saved your life. I hope he hasn't formed an attachment to me; it would be so awkward." Which was a thin, thin expression of her own turmoil.

Bal laughed weakly. "My dearest heart, for a man to form an attachment to you seems to me to be the most natural thing in the world. I'm constantly amazed that you don't have admirers following you around in besotted herds."

"I'm married to you!" she burst out. "Though just at this moment I don't know why! Why Why did you have to take in Tercelle Amberley?" Immediately she felt his hurt and remorse and cried out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should not have said that." did you have to take in Tercelle Amberley?" Immediately she felt his hurt and remorse and cried out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should not have said that."

"It's true enough," he told her in a measured voice. "But I couldn't know then what I know now, and I could not have closed the door against her with the sunrise bell tolling."

"Mama, Papa, don't fight don't fight," Amerdale appealed.

Bal put an arm around his little daughter and rested his cheek against her head.

"I want Flori," she whimpered. "I want to go home."

"So do I," Bal breathed. "So do I. But, my dear, we have brave friends who are doing everything they can to help us find Flori and go home safely."

Telmaine found herself unable to ease a pain that was as great in her as it was in them. She huddled beside them in the coach in shared but solitary misery.

They changed coaches again in a street she did not recognize. Her protests at the effect of the handling on Bal were silenced only by Bal's warning that she shouldn't draw attention. The coach, though lacking an emblem, was luxurious, well sprung, and large enough that Bal could stretch out along the seat. She sat opposite him, Amerdale curled up with her head on her lap, sonned his face tighten with each jar, and wished that she dared lull him to sleep, as she had felt Ishmael and Olivede doing.

Suddenly Bal lifted his head. "I know where we are," he said, startled. She reached for the carriage shutter to let it down and sonn, but Bal's sonn stopped her. "Best not," he said. "We'll be there shortly, and it might be best that no one sonns who is in this carriage."

"Why? Where are we?"

"The archducal city palace. I recognize the feel of the paving."

"Why . . . !" she said, her first reaction one of pure alarm at the thought of arriving here of all places with her social armor in such disarray. "I've nothing suitable to wear," she protested, though that was the least of it. Bal, her dear Bal, laughed. Immediately his breath caught and he clutched his ribs. "My dear heart," he gasped, "you never change."

"No," she said, "it's-"

"I know what it is," he said gently, reaching a hand out to her. "I know what it is."

She clutched his hand briefly before releasing it to try to put her veil and dress in a semblance of order. Bal did not attempt to rea.s.sure her that her efforts would serve. She sensed he understood a little how exposed it made her feel to arrive at the archducal palace as a refugee, trailing an injured husband, a missing daughter, her husband's pract.i.tioner sister, and the notorious Ishmael di Studier. Even if Bal had no idea of the depth of the potential scandal around her. He said, "I'm sure we can keep to our rooms for as long as we need."

The carriage described a familiar final curve, made an unfamiliar turn, and drew to a stop. Bal said thoughtfully, "They've brought us to the side door. Must be trying to make sure we aren't observed." She heard orders given and received. She gathered up the sleeping Amerdale, who whimpered a protest, straightened her spine, and prepared to face the haughty servility of the archduke's house staff and the curiosity of his family and other guests.

Telmaine There was no curiosity. They were shown into a room in a part of the house she had never stayed in before when she had attended events as an eligible ducal cousin. The stairway came off the side entrance but was placed so as not to be immediately evident, and the rooms were secluded to the rear, beside a closed and walled garden. Compared to the rooms kept for n.o.ble guests, they were plainly decorated and furnished, the furniture well kept but softened with age.

Olivede Hearne rose from an armchair to greet them with an expression of such naked relief that Telmaine could not help feeling an impulse of sympathy for her. Intimidating as it was for Telmaine to find herself arriving here unprepared, it must have been much more intimidating for the healer mage, who had shared Bal's modest upbringing and had probably never even been past the servants' entrance in a house so grand.

Regaining her composure, Olivede followed the footmen carrying Bal into the main bedroom, and stepped forward to supervise his settling into bed. The footmen tried to deflect her, insisting that doctors had been summoned, but she ignored them, bending to examine her brother gently. She made no overt magical gestures, but Telmaine recognized the sensation of lightness that she was forced to a.s.sociate with magic being worked nearby. She could not protest, knowing how much it eased Bal. He was resting comfortably amongst an abundance of pillows when the archduke's physicians descended, both impeccably groomed, elegantly dressed, and so elevated in manner that they barely acknowledged the wife and completely ignored the sister. Olivede did not protest her dismissal from the august presences; Telmaine did object, though little good it did her. She found herself banished to the sitting room with her daughter and the door shut firmly against her.

"Arrogant sons of . . ." Olivede muttered, before Telmaine shushed her.

"My apologies," the other woman said stiffly.

"Oh, I quite agree," Telmaine murmured. "But the children do not need to hear it." She heard, too late, the plural, and clenched inside.

Olivede put a careful hand on her sleeve. Telmaine made an effort not to pull away. "They will find her," the mage said. "You have to believe that."

Telmaine swallowed. "Where is Baron Strumh.e.l.ler?"

"Making a report to Lord Vladimer's lieutenant." She shook her head in wonder. "What an extraordinary man Strumh.e.l.ler is. I'd heard about him-one of the healers I work with trained with him-but I never met him until now."

Telmaine found herself suddenly, inappropriately jealous. "Is he all right?"

"I've done what I can with the lungs and the worst of the burns. The stimulant's going to wear off, and the effects on his mind . . . I don't doubt he's personally experienced worse, though I doubt he's known anything on this scale-I don't think he was in the city during the influenza epidemic, and I don't think it touched the Borders. But you have no idea how terrible the touch-sense makes these kinds of events for a mage." She tilted her head back, loosening her neck. "I have have to get back to the Rivermarch. It was bad enough to feel it from half a city away-I hardly want to think of the effect it had on mages who were there. I'll want Bal's help, as soon as he's well enough; he's very good at helping people who've survived terrible events." to get back to the Rivermarch. It was bad enough to feel it from half a city away-I hardly want to think of the effect it had on mages who were there. I'll want Bal's help, as soon as he's well enough; he's very good at helping people who've survived terrible events."

"I don't think you can go back to the Rivermarch, not while we're in danger," Telmaine said, horrified at the thought of either Bal or Ishmael returning to the Rivermarch. She, too, could still feel it, like an oozing sore in her mind.

Olivede sighed. "We'll be rebuilding for a long, long time, Telmaine, long after whatever was behind this is sorted, and you have gone back to your parties."

"That's not fair," Telmaine said tightly.

Olivede pa.s.sed an unsteady hand down her face. "No, I suppose it's not. Sweet Imogene, I'm so tired. I hope those buffoons take care with my brother. I don't think I have the strength left to undo any harm they do."

"They are the archduke's own physicians," Telmaine reminded her. "I'm going to put Amerdale down to sleep. I suggest you go back to your rooms and rest, with my grat.i.tude."

"Dismissed, am I?" said Olivede, with a smile so very like Bal's that it drew all the acid from the comment.

"You are Bal's sister. One does not dismiss family."

Olivede's smile was ironic. "If Bal needs me, or if you need me, call me. I am in the rooms next door. Baron Strumh.e.l.ler has the rooms beyond those-the ones nearest the stairs. He insisted on that." She made her way out.

Putting Amerdale down to sleep in the cozy and well-appointed nursery off the sitting room proved impossible, though eventually Amerdale agreed to rest on the sitting room couch, as long as Telmaine herself lay beside her. Telmaine did, stroking her daughter's head and back, trying to use touch to soothe her rather than magic. She listened to the murmur of voices coming from the bedroom, including the occasional distinct phrase from Bal. Presently, the physicians emerged, and the elder of the ill.u.s.trious two paused to rea.s.sure her in orotund and mellifluous tones that her husband was very weak, but would recover with care and time. He did not refer to the magical healings Bal had undergone. She thanked him demurely, rea.s.sured him that neither she nor her daughter needed anything besides quiet and rest, and asked him if he would now attend Baron Strumh.e.l.ler. Rather frostily, the archduke's physician indicated that the baron had declined their attentions.

Balthasar's fists released their half clench of his pillows as he sonned Telmaine in the doorway. She could smell the physicians' colognes and the odor of their nostrums in the room, and taste the flavors on Bal's breath as she bent to kiss him. His lips were dry and sticky. She filled a gla.s.s with cold water and helped him drink it.

He said irritably, "They accept no efficacy in magical healing, but fortunately they were persuaded that I did not need surgery now." He turned his head and sonned the night table, where four bottles of differing sizes stood in a row. "Could you please take that second bottle on the left and pour it down the sink?"

She opened her mouth to object, but she knew that tone: Bal in a rare uncompromising mood. She did as bidden, returning from the bathroom with the rinsed and empty bottle, running her finger over the soaked label, which meant nothing to her.

Bal sonned the gesture and said, "It contained marcas extract. Works well for nervous agitation, but I've treated too many people unable to break the dependency to risk it. Telmaine, I'm going to need to send word to my patients that I'm laid up. The Rivermarch clinic will know through Olivede, but my other patients won't." She murmured agreement, deciding not to renew the argument about his getting a secretary. He held out his hand for her to take, and she did, settling down on the bed beside him. "I am sorry that this has been your homecoming."

"Bal," she said weakly, and managed to smile. "I must say it's been unlike any other."

"And I hope will remain so." He sighed. "Telmaine, have you heard anything about Flori?"

"No," she said. "But I'm going to ask if Baron Strumh.e.l.ler has."

"Good," he breathed. "I don't like the idea of him refusing to have the physicians attend him. I know from personal experience that when that stimulant wears off, he will feel like death. We should keep aware of him."

"Personal experience?" Telmaine said. Bal seldom drank and never indulged in stimulants.

She read his memory of crouching over the twins with letter opener in hand, the keen, edgy violence, the unwelcome insights. He said, "Something I used to keep myself on my feet after Tercelle drugged me. She slipped me something so I'd sleep through her exposing the twins."

"He didn't tell me that that," Telmaine said of Ishmael. She marked one more stroke against Tercelle's account, for all the good it did her or the ill it did the dead woman. Then it occurred to her to wonder where her abstemious husband would come by a stimulant that strong. She did not ask; she knew the answer.

Maybe, after this, she would finally persuade him to let that house-and Floria White Hand-go.

Ishmael Ish's interview with Vladimer's lieutenant, Casamir Blondell, was mercifully brief. Too brief, truthfully, for such a complex and fraught situation, but all either of them could tolerate of each other. Vladimer, unfortunately, was not due back in the city until the next day, and Ish knew he could not delay his report, much as he would have liked to.

Blondell had begun life as a peasant, entered adult life as a factory worker, and come to Vladimer's notice as a successful agitator responsible for a campaign of workers' sabotage against the factories. The young spymaster had even then known exactly how to win, use, and manipulate men with the abilities he needed; he had stoked and slaked Blondell's ambition, diverting it from rebellion into service, and over time came to command Blondell's absolute loyalty. The ex-peasant was several years Ish's senior, bulky with early toil and later affluence, and made even more so by the ornate, quilted jackets he wore as protection against stilettos. He had a horror of a.s.sa.s.sination, though the only scar he bore, after years in Vladimer's service, had been bestowed by a castoff mistress. They were natural antagonists, he and Ish: the peasant and the n.o.bleman, the unmagical and the mage, the desk worker and the field agent.

Ish gave his report in Blondell's study, a close, cluttered, overdecorated museum to the man's ego. Relics of defeated enemies, sculpture distinguished only by its ornateness, hunting trophies, at least one of which, to Ish's acute nose, had not been properly cured. Ish, after years of roaming, traveled light and collected only memories. Blondell did not invite him to sit, and so he did not sit, though by now the false energy of the stimulant was almost extinguished and he had to make an effort not to sway where he stood. He delivered his report starkly, without speculation or embellishment. Blondell asked some cursory questions and then dismissed him, no doubt to seek further information from his own sources. Ish did not have the strength to ask him what he had found out about the fire, either to cozen the information out of him or to deal emotionally with the death toll.

He trudged back to his rooms through corridors that seemed endless. By the end of the walk, he could only take pride in not having measured his length on the carpet, or not having some servant sonn him hanging on to the ornamental panels like a drunk. As he lurched through the door to his rooms, he registered, too late, the two other bodies in the room. Then two pairs of hands caught him by the arms and steadied him.

"Now, what what have you been doing to yourself, young master?" have you been doing to yourself, young master?"

"Lorcas," he breathed, recognizing the voice, the tone of asperity, and the wiry arms as belonging to his elder manservant. The sinewy grip on the left would be his son. The pair, father and son, were supposed to have been waiting in his city residence, where he had told them to expect him one, no, two nights ago, after his meeting with Vladimer. He realized, with remorse, that in the last hectic nights he had not given his household the least thought. "How'd you come-"

"Never you mind about us, for the moment," Lorcas said, as they settled him into a chair. "If you've been up to half the things they say you have, you should be in bed, though I daresay you won't go. They tell me you wouldn't have the archduke's physicians attend you."

"Quacks," he grunted. He started to slump back against the backrest, and then thought better of it. "Now you're here, I'll be fine."

He cast his sonn around the room, noting the presence of four trunks-not the ones with the ornate Strumh.e.l.ler pattern, but the plain trunks he kept for travel in his less public role. "How did you come here?" did you come here?"

"We had a message from one of Lord Vladimer's runners that you would be at the ducal palace. So we packed and came over. That was quite a production-two changes of coach and who knows how many so-called destinations." Lorcas appeared beside him with a cup. "Lemon tea, sir."

Ish propped himself on an elbow, cautious of his burns and his unsteady stomach, and accepted the cup. "Nothing should surprise me anymore about the two of you," he said, deciding that the near-instantaneous provision of a cup of lemon tea was no more to be questioned than any other part of it.

Lorcas had joined the Strumh.e.l.ler household with the staff of Ish's city-born mother, and had been Ish's personal servant since Ish graduated from the nursery at the age of eight until his father had turned him out at the age of sixteen. The first night of his return, he had awakened to find Lorcas standing beside Ish's bed with a cup of lemon tea, as if nine years of estrangement had never been. Years later, when Ish's patrols became too strenuous for the aging Lorcas, one spring evening he had found Eldon waiting beside his horse with saddlebags in hand, stoically enduring the chaffing of the seasoned patrollers. Time after time, the two of them had organized, minded, nursed, and otherwise salvaged him.

Ish drank three cups of tea, each liberally laced with honey and restorative herbs, while his menservants unpacked and installed him in baronial style. With relief, he sonned Lorcas discreetly setting aside a certain small, fabric-wrapped box. For the moment, he said nothing. Father and son each maintained a separate conceit that the other was unaware of Ish's magical practice. Presently, Lorcas would find Eldon an errand to take him away, which would allow Ish to ask for the box, and his store of spicules, each one painstakingly charged with his own vital energy, which he could use to advance his healing. His quick recovery might cause comment, but it could not be deferred.

"What have you heard about the fire?" he said.

"A terrible thing," said the older manservant. "Terrible. The coachman said that nine blocks were burned."

"Were you there, sir?" said Eldon. Ish could no more stop thinking of him as "young Eldon" than Lorcas could stop calling him "young master," though Eldon was married and twice a father. Borders men were not noted for changeability.

"Aye," Ish said. "I was." His stomach roiled at the recollection, the smoke, the layers of fire heat, the sting of sunlight on his skin, the mindless sounds of dying people. But he never stinted telling his people what might, some bitter day, save them in turn. "I'd overstayed in the Rainbow House, after-well, I'll be telling you about that later. Woke with the fire, head already fuddled." It had to have been for him not to have caught up jacket as well as shoes. "I knew th'old houses had first opened underground, which could take us deeper than the bas.e.m.e.nts. So I sought th'old doorway while the others broke down the doors between bas.e.m.e.nts. House started to collapse before I could tell them I'd found it. Couldn't reach them before they got trapped and burned. Bad that," he said briefly, and fell silent.

"I've heard of those streets," said the young man after a moment. "I didn't think anyone could get down there."

"They're foul," Ish admitted. "But that said, if we can't get down this time we're in the city, we'll go down next time."

"Thank you, sir," said Eldon, who had an enthusiasm for city history that Ish liked to encourage, since there was no telling what useful information he'd turn up. His father's aspect was more somber. After all these years, Lorcas would know Ish's habit was to return to confront his horrors.

Ish set aside his tea; it was not sitting well. "How much contact have you with the ducal staff, or are you a.s.signed quarters here?"

"Here, at the end of the hall. We were told we should keep t'ourselves."

Sensible, that, though it would restrict their ability to gather information. "Let's bide quietly for a day or so, then."

"May we let the rest of the staff know?" His daughter, Eldon's sister, and her husband were housekeeper and groom to the staff who would have come north to meet him, and two of their children were pages.

"Aye, do that," Ish said, trying once more to lean back without pressing on the burns. "Circ.u.mspectly, though." He moved his tea aside so that he could prop himself upon the armrest. "I can't a.s.sure you that there's no danger, or warn you what t'do against it. It'd be best if there's least suspicion th'staff knows anything about what I've been up to." If it were just his own person he had to consider, he would have told his staff not to hold back the information that he was at the ducal palace, and send the trouble his way, but he had Lady Telmaine, her husband, sister-in-law, and daughter-both daughters-to consider.

Lorcas removed the cup and saucer threatened by his restless shifting. "No need to concern yourself, sir; we'll get it done."

"There's a lady next door, Magistra Olivede Hearne, who's also been caught up in this thing. She's not accustomed t'this style of living, I judge. When you get a chance, find out if she's in need of anything we can provide."

"Yes, my lord."

When Lorcas started "my lord"-ing him, it was a chastening sign. Ish rested his forehead on his folded arms and listened to father and son exchanging quiet words around the message to go to the household. They broke off at a tentative knock on the door. He heard Lorcas open the door, and Telmaine Hearne's soft, disconcerted voice. The exchange was brief, lasting only long enough for him to struggle out of a doze he was not aware of having fallen into. By the time he lifted his head, Lorcas was closing the door.

"What-"

"The lady was inquiring after you," Lorcas said. "I said you were resting; she said not to disturb you. That was Magistra Olivede?"

"No, that was Lady Telmaine Stott, Mrs. Balthasar Hearne, now."

"Ah," said Lorcas. "My mistake."

Ish gathered his thoughts. "I need t'tell you a little more." He gave them a brief sketch of events from his perspective, omitting the nature of Tercelle Amberley's indiscretion. It was enough for them to know that she was a lady with high a.s.sociations who had compromised herself. He told them of Vladimer's request-both expressions turned grim at that-and his own return to the city with Lady Telmaine to consult her physician husband; of that homecoming; of-omitting specifics-his rendering a.s.sistance to the gravely injured physician and setting out in pursuit of Hearne's kidnapped daughter, and how his inquiries led him to the fetid underbelly of the furnace.

There was silence after he finished. "Sir, Father," Eldon said judiciously, "I think I will get that message sent, if you do not need me."

"Aye, you do that," Ish said, recognizing the young man's circ.u.mspection.

Eldon went out, closing the door behind him. Ish pushed himself upright in his chair as Lorcas carried the velvet-wrapped box to him. "I'll go into th'bedroom for this," he said. Lorcas helped him rise on jellied legs, supported him into the bedroom, and left him sitting at the dressing table with the box in front of him. Ish opened the box one-handed, supporting himself with the other, sonned carefully, and lifted out a spicule, folding it in his hand and feeling its stored energy drain into him, easing his burns. He used another, and then a third, since they were only as strong as he himself was, tucked the spent spicules into a side pocket for reuse, and closed the box. He knew he should turn some into a small case and carry them with him, as he did while he was patrolling the Borders, but he hesitated to do so while moving amongst his aristocratic peers. It was not a rational caution, but an irrational inhibition. He could readily have found an explanation acceptable to most, and to those who were constantly watching him for stigmata of magehood, the innocent gems on his cuff links and tiepin must all but vibrate with magical iniquity. But there it was. He slid the box into the upper drawer, rose to his feet with some of his old collectedness, went over to the bed, and stretched out on it, p.r.o.ne, knowing that Lorcas would expect it, and would wake him if there was need.