Lightborn. Part 14

"Cloth," he croaked. Someone handed him a cloth, and turning Fejelis faceup, he began to wipe his bloodstained lips and cheek and scrub at the gore in his fair hair. He was hardly aware that the name he whispered was not Fejelis's, but that of his younger brother, now years dead. But this time it was a still-breathing body he cradled, not one still and beginning to stiffen in death.

Tammorn "Here," said Captain Lapaxo. He stepped aside as he spoke, removing himself with alacrity from Tam's path, giving Tam and Fejelis a view of the balcony and the black tarpaulin heaped on it. Partly hidden beneath its folds was a southern-style crossbow, of wood and horn, with a powerful draw. A sideways glance confirmed that from here they could see the corner of Orlanjis's balcony, some seventy yards away. Shadows had claimed that balcony entirely now. Overhead, the clouds were tinged with sunset gold. But that he was feverish with borrowed vitality, he would have shivered.

Fejelis stooped, lifted the edge of the tarpaulin, studied the brown residue left by a man's quenching, and let the tarpaulin down again. The captain of vigilants looked at his pallid face, his blood-soaked, torn shirt, and the tidemarks of dried blood on his cheek, and winced, visibly.

". . . Can you tell anything?" Fejelis said to Tam. "Who was he?"

Vitality was fled, gone the instant the bowman pulled the tarpaulin over himself. Or had it pulled over him, Tam reminded himself; murder was entirely possible. Gone, too, was any trace of ensorcellment. The mages vigilant had sensed nothing. "No," he said. "I presume there's nothing to identify him or her."

"That's a southern bow," the captain said.

Fejelis's head turned, his eyes unreadable as mirrors. ". . . And how many from the north are experts with the weapon," he said, calmly, "including your own peers?"

The captain lowered his head. "Prince," he acknowledged.

". . . Do not let anything close your mind, Captain," the prince advised. "There were two men on that balcony; the bolt may not even have hit the right one."

Do you believe that? hovered unasked in the air. Orlanjis, hysterical, had claimed the bowman was aiming at himself, and that Fejelis had pushed him out of the way and thereby saved Orlanjis's life. "He moved so fast," Orlanjis had protested his perceptions of a brother known for his hesitations and spidery build.

But Orlanjis, by all reports, had drawn his brother into that exposed corner, just before the bowman fired the bolt.

A touch could answer that question, were Fejelis to ask Tam, but Fejelis had not asked.

"We're starting a census of everyone who's still in residence," Lapaxo said. "While it's possible this came from outside, it's more likely it was in the household all along. We'll find out who was in and out of these rooms, and check why the group they were supposed to house wasn't in them."

". . . Very good," Fejelis said. "I'll stop trying to tell you how to do your job now."

The captain accorded that a nerve twitch of a smile. "It's possible he tossed something identifying over the side, when he decided he could not escape, so we will need to search below."

Fejelis, looking down at the tarpaulin, said, ". . . He-or someone-was prepared. I would interpret that as meaning he was not meant to escape. . . . But I will leave you to your inquiries. I need to get cleaned up. I shall be opening the general receiving room in about an hour. Could you please arrange cover accordingly?" He raised a hand, preempting objections. Quite likely none of those watching would notice the tremor of those fingertips for seeing the blood that streaked them. ". . . We have a palace full of their brightnesses, and it is crucial that they see me."

"I do understand, my prince," said Lapaxo stoically.

". . . Actually," Fejelis said, in his rooms some time later, ". . . I believe Orlanjis." Bathed and scrubbed, his hair clean and drying, he sat gathering himself for his next public appearance. ". . . He thinks the bowman was aiming at him, and Orlanjis is very good with a bow-Sharel's teaching. . . . It was his reaction, when he saw the bowman-"

"Whom he claimed he didn't recognize," Tam could not help but say.

Fejelis continued his thought, "-that prompted mine. He was terrified."

Which did not, Tam thought, exempt the possibility that Orlanjis was merely playing out his a.s.signed part. Fejelis was capable of steadily watching murder done in front of him; Orlanjis was not. "You saved his life, nearly at the cost of your own."

". . . I'm sure the mage vigilant would have dealt with any wounds."

Fejelis had not been conscious to hear the mage vigilant demand, "What did you do? I couldn't-" She had drawn back from publicly admitting that she had felt Fejelis dying under her hands. When Helenja had arrived with her entourage, Tam had watched the mage convince herself that she had simply not had time to muster effective healing magic before Tam had preempted her.

There was a short, suspended pause. ". . . But thank you," Fejelis said. "Again."

"I wish," Tam started, and stopped. The wish he was about to express was that either he or Lukfer had sensed the talisman before the bolt had been fired. It had certainly been potent enough to touch.

If Lukfer had not annulled the ensorcellment on the box, he might have been able to get a sense of distance. But if Lukfer had not annulled the ensorcellment on the box, he could not have annulled the ensorcellment on the bolt so deftly, and Fejelis might have died. "Are you warm enough yet?" he filled in the unfinished question.

He himself felt the room near stifling, but Fejelis had complained of cold even after a hot shower. He had hidden the worst of his reaction behind a locked bathroom door, and the accounts of his composure would be flying through the halls even now. Tam had seen his accomplishment in Lapaxo's response to him.

". . . It is a pity," Fejelis said, "we did not take the bowman alive, or find anything other than the bow. . . . If it was retaliation from the northern faction for my father's death . . ."

"Jay," Tam said, a little raggedly, "the Vigilance will take care of it. They have rather a lot to live down now."

Fejelis considered him, his expression oddly thoughtful and compa.s.sionate for so young a man. ". . . You called me by the name Artarian, back . . . then. Your son's name."

Mother of All, he had been distraught, to let that name slip. "Artarian was . . . my younger brother. He died at eighteen, defending me, after one of my messes. Stabbed . . . in the back. I reached him just in time to feel the life go out of him. I didn't know how to help him."

"Ah," Fejelis said, quietly. "Thank you. I'm honored that you would think of me in that way. I'm glad, too . . . that there is someone in the palace who will understand why I simply reacted."

Not exactly, thought Tam, for he was far less sure of Orlanjis than Fejelis seemed. He wanted to remonstrate, to warn Fejelis that even magic might not always be able to rescue him, and to tell him how nearly it had not, this time.

The prince got to his feet, testing his legs. ". . . I must show myself. I will keep the room open for an hour." With wintry amus.e.m.e.nt, "Anyone who does not appear by then is so far removed from either information or influence to be irrelevant, and can wait until morning."

Tam stood behind Fejelis's chair, listening as the prince exchanged brief words and a.s.surances with the seemingly endless procession of people filing past him. Word seemed to have reached all the palace's guests, and they had all turned out to inspect their prince. "For cracks," as Fejelis had put it, with that dry detachment that was sustaining him. Vigilants flanked Fejelis, vigilants guarded all the entrances, and vigilants had been stationed on all the balconies. The full contingent of the mages vigilant contracted to the palace had been turned out as well. With the exception of one Captain Beaudry, who was missing, and Floria White Hand.

The corner of Fejelis's mouth had quirked at the sight of his ma.s.sed guardians, but one look at Lapaxo's face and he had yielded without a word. On his left, within their own stockades of vigilants, sat the dowager consort with a shocky-looking Orlanjis, and other members of the southern faction. The dowager consort did not disguise her speculative attention on her elder son. On his right were Prasav and his cousins of the northern faction. Tam could not tell, from the surface, what they felt beyond their carefully expressed outrage.

All the time the pageant continued, Tam watched the steady blue-cauled head in front of him, and felt his rage grow. This extraordinary young man, this bright hope of the forgotten and dispossessed, had nearly died on the first day of his reign. Tam, for all his power, had failed to antic.i.p.ate it and nearly failed to prevent it. Lukfer's wariness of their Temple superiors, justified as it may be, deprived them of potential allies and of lat.i.tude of action. But behind Tam's anger were fear and an appalling sense of powerlessness. He had not even sensed that bolt, except through Fejelis's agony as it struck.

The taking of a life, as he well knew, required no magic whatsoever. Even a first- rank mage could heal-or cause sickness-and execute elementary talismanic magic. A third-rank mage could have created that bolt-perhaps the apprentice who had had a part in creating the box.

Unlike most mages, Tam had no natural bent for healing, though with considerable effort he had grown skilled. He was a master of matter, not vitality. Had he not sensed the bolt, might he not sense other magic as inimical to life, because he lacked the sensitivity?

He thought of the mage he had sensed in the archduke's palace. The vitality was Darkborn, but the magic was Shadowborn. Could the archduke of the Darkborn know what he harbored? Seja.n.u.s Plantageter distrusted magic, but he was scrupulous in ensuring the law was observed even as it applied to mages and Lightborn. Or were the Shadowborn attacking the Darkborn, too? It was the Darkborn who had suffered most from the Shadowborn-set fires.

If that was the Shadowborn apprentice, or if that was a Darkborn mage allied with the Shadowborn, then there was only one way to be certain that he did no more harm. Tam's conscience would not allow killing on mere suspicion, but after twenty years around Lukfer, he knew how to bind another mage's magic. And perhaps, in so doing, he might learn enough of the other's purposes to know what additional action he must take.

He would not tell Lukfer; it would distress the older mage, and alarm him with the possibility Tam might rouse the interest of the Temple Vigilance. But he doubted that those worthies would much concern themselves with an a.s.sault on an unknown, low-ranked Darkborn mage. And it was worth the risk, to protect Fejelis. Let Tam get through this interminable hour, and let him get Fejelis back to his rooms and resting safely, and then he would deal with this mage, and his magic.

Telmaine After a sleep broken by strange dreams and anxieties, Telmaine's evening toilette was interrupted by the arrival of her mother and, shortly thereafter, Merivan. Telmaine's brother the duke had received an invitation to breakfast at the archducal palace, and his d.u.c.h.ess was still at their country estates for the summer, so he had appealed to his mother for support. The dowager d.u.c.h.ess had brought two of the best early-evening dresses of Telmaine's wardrobe, and supervised Telmaine's maid with an anxious expression meant to rea.s.sure, though she said only, "We will discuss it later, dear," when Telmaine asked.

Telmaine had expected that they would be escorted to one of the more intimate receiving rooms on the upper floor, but they made their way to the main and public part of the palace and down to the level of the grand ballroom. A steady flow of people-couples and families with their retinues-were crossing the wide foyer from the doors and entering the ballroom. Telmaine swept out before her with her mage sense, and her next step stumbled over the density of vitality it met. The entire ballroom had been opened out and was filling up with people.

Behind her, Merivan said, sharply, "What is it?"

She regained her balance and her nerve, having confirmed that amongst the ma.s.s she sensed no taint of Shadowborn. "I was a little-startled, that was all," she said. "When you said breakfast-I expected-something-small."

"Lady Telmaine." A footman stepped up to her side. "Lord Vladimer requests a moment of your time." Even as he did so, another footman was leading her mother, brother, and sister into the ballroom, letting her detach herself. She trailed the footman between the rows of seated guests and the rows of poised servants, trying at once to hurry and to be un.o.btrusive. Surely Vladimer must have had word of Bal.

An exquisitely dressed young woman suddenly twisted in her chair with a rasp of lace. "Telmaine!"

"Sylvide!"

Her dearest friend, Sylvide di Reuther, caught her skirts; she had to stop. "What happened to you?" Sylvide cried. "Where did you go?"

Yes, the last Sylvide had known, she had set Telmaine down at Bolingbroke Circle, ostensibly to hire a carriage to take her back to the archducal palace and safety. Instead, Telmaine had taken a carriage to the docks and a walk through the fire. So the question absolutely could not be answered with the truth. Telmaine stooped low, easing Sylvide's grip, and bringing her mouth close to Sylvide's veiled ear. "I'll have to tell you later. Lord Vladimer wants to talk to me."

"Lord Vladimer? Why ever-"

Telmaine became aware of the silence around them, Sylvide's neighbors-her husband, her mother-in-law, her sister-in-law-all listening intently. She patted Sylvide's hand, whispered, "Tell you later"- though what, exactly, she had no idea-and bade them all good evening in the dulcet tones of a blameless woman. Sylvide's husband was the only one who replied. Oh, dear.

Vladimer was waiting for her in a small side room, standing propped on his cane. A cup and saucer sat within reach on a high table, but there was otherwise no sign of breakfast. Vladimer was finely groomed and as elegantly dressed as she had ever known him be. The lines of current fashion should have suited him, with his height and the angular lines of his face, but the skin seemed tight-drawn on the bones, and his vitality quivered in her awareness with pain and the hectic energy of fever and stimulants.

"Before you ask, there's been no further word from the Borders, bad or good," he began without a greeting. "There's been a report from the Stranhorne train station of abnormal weather, a very heavy snow, immediately around Stranhorne."

"Snow in summer?" Her voice rose. "Surely that's not natural."

"I am well aware of that," Vladimer said. "Console yourself, if you will, that it will hamper Ferdenzil Mycene's movements and communications as much as your husband's, Strumh.e.l.ler's, and mine." He hooked the cane on the edge of the table, lifted the cup, and drank thirstily. Teacup landed on saucer with the chime of fine china and the trill of an unsteady hand. "Now, as to this evening, this is a command performance. Rumor is rife. The evening broadsheets are full of speculations of such lush inventiveness that even I do not know whether to be impressed or appalled. Ishmael di Studier's name figures largely in them, as does your husband's. Even Strumh.e.l.ler's escape from the prison is being attributed to him in some quarters; he is quite the mastermind."

He was not so ill that his malicious humor was in abeyance. She supposed she should be grateful for the warning. "What am I supposed to say when people ask me where my husband is?" she demanded, but challenge quickly succ.u.mbed to panic. "I never expected this. Why has the archduke invited-"

"To quell rumor and alarm at the ducal orders. We are to conduct ourselves with apparent confidence that everything is on its way to resolution. Depending upon your audience, you may choose to pretend you have no knowledge of your husband's mission, though I doubt anyone who knows you well will credit that. Anyone too persistent, you may simply refer them to me."

"Lord Vladimer," she said plaintively, "can't I simply have the vapors and lie down?"

A brief taut smile, startled out of him. "If I may not, you certainly may not."

"And what are you going to say?" she challenged. "Or will my husband have a profession and reputation to return to?"

"I am not," he said flatly, "in the habit of discussing my activities, or my agents' activities, with the gossips of society. Be a.s.sured that the men who matter will know the services your husband has rendered."

And will they be grateful? Telmaine thought-but managed to stop herself from saying. Oh, Bal, what a reward for your loyalty: social ruin.

"Lord Vladimer," she murmured, and, hiding alarm and resentment behind a practiced, social smile, let herself be escorted from the room. She would not let Bal be sacrificed, not even for Seja.n.u.s Plantageter. She would not.

Sylvide di Reuther, at once the first and the very last person she wished to talk to, had inveigled the footmen to bring an extra chair and set an additional place next to her. The one consolation was that they were adjacent to the archducal table, close enough to sonn without her being obtrusive. She did not need magic to sense the thunderous atmosphere around her; Lady di Reuther was in fine high dudgeon, and Sylvide's breathing was quick and shallow and her heart- shaped face set. Telmaine ducked her head and nodded a.s.sent to the hovering footmen. Even if she could not eat, she could be spared having to speak while she picked at her plate. She lifted her fork in a trembling hand.

She had not thought she could eat-had expected even to be sickened by the smell of it-but when the first slice of breakfast pie was laid on her plate, she found herself having to restrain herself from an unladylike greed. The aroma of island spices poignantly evoked the memory of the imprisoned Ishmael confiding a wish or whimsy to retire to the Islands and grow spices.

"Telmaine," Sylvide said, from beside her, "how is little Florilinde?"

As safe, and unsafe, a question as any. "Back with us now," she said, laying down her fork. "And unharmed."

Sylvide breathed out. "That is so good. I hear Master di Maurier is still holding his own, and I'm sure that knowing she is safe will do him good."

"You are not communicating with that reprobate, Sylvide," decreed Lady di Reuther. "I was appalled to hear that you had visited him-and you, Telmaine. I thought better of you."

"Master di Maurier is a hero," Sylvide said, her voice pinched.

"Master di Maurier is a disgrace," Lady di Reuther declared.

Sylvide confined her argument to a tight little shake of the head. Softhearted Sylvide remembered Gil di Maurier from the nursery, her little boy cousin. To Telmaine's mind he was both hero and disgrace, but the experience of the underworld that he had gained pursuing his dissipations had let him find Florilinde. Her covert attempt to heal him had been no more than she owed him.

"Are you aware of the reason for your daughter's travail?" Lady di Reuther demanded.

"Yes," Telmaine said. "Confidential information that my husband refused to divulge."

"You do realize, Telmaine, even if your husband does not, that it is not appropriate for men and women of our cla.s.s to become the subject of such reporting as has surrounded this affair."

"And little Amerdale," Sylvide said, desperately. "How is she?"

Telmaine took firm control of herself, knowing that she was merely a goad or two from some unwise outburst. "Counting the days to her sixth birthday," she said, brittle and airy. "We have promised her a kitten. She is quite infatuated with them."

"My Dorian is the same, only with him it is birds. There was an aviary in the Islands court; he would have stayed there night and day if he could. Once," she said to the table, "he persuaded me to take him to an all-day opening. The visiting area was covered with a canvas, set up so that the birds can go outside by a series of tunnels that don't pa.s.s light. It was quite terrifying, and at the same time utterly diverting, because the birds are so much busier and sing so much more by day. The staff made up beds for us, but neither of us slept at all."

"Dani," said Lady Calliope, "did you know about this?"

"Of course, Mother. If I had not had work, I would have gone as well."

"Reckless," Lady Calliope deemed it. "Dorian is your heir."

"It was quite safe," Sylvide said, breathing quickly. "Dorian is my son."

"No, Dani, it was reckless. I trust there will be no repet.i.tion."

Sylvide jabbed at a piece of bacon and sent it skittering across the plate and onto Telmaine's napkin. Telmaine s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and quickly laid it aside on the plate, trying equally to avoid a stain and further comment from Lady Calliope.

Sylvide said, "Your hand, Telmaine. It's all right."

"Quite all right," Telmaine said, remembering too late she had planned to favor that hand when next she met Sylvide. "Oh, it stings still, but it must not have been as bad a burn as we feared. It was fright as much as anything that made me faint."

"I am so glad," Sylvide said. She caught Telmaine's wrist, pulling her close to whisper, "Telmaine, whatever they say, I don't believe any of it."

"About what?" Telmaine whispered back, wondering if there was more than Vladimer had hinted at, but Sylvide said nothing more. Telmaine cast a wary sonn around her dining companions. Across the table, Lady Calliope's aspect was haughty and disapproving, but she was ever thus. Beside his mother, Daniver di Reuther sat in sullen obedience. Telmaine thought guiltily of her lapsed resolve to speak to her brother the duke on Dani's behalf. Dani had been ousted from his post in the Scallon Islands by Mycene's intrigues, and the sooner he found another, the sooner he and poor Sylvide would escape his mother's reach. At Dani's side, his unmarried sister was teasing the food on an almost full plate, thin wrists protruding from her fashionably puffed sleeves. She was twenty-seven and still unwed, having outlived two fiances and been jilted by the last. On Lady Calliope's right sat her older son, on whose account she had no right whatsoever to sneer at Gil di Maurier. By his drooping posture and sagging face Xavier di Reuther had planned to be abed by now, sleeping off a day's excess, rather than socializing to ducal order. At least the table should be spared his thumping wit, though not his heavy cologne. Merivan had stationed herself on his far side as sentinel to her erratic sister and was manifestly unhappy; her pregnancy made her extremely sensitive to odors.

Lady di Reuther was opining, disapprovingly, upon the behavior of her southern neighbors, and in particular the wayward daughters of the barony. Knowing that Ishmael was fugitive in Stranhorne lands made Telmaine listen, though she did find herself rather shocked; surely it was not true that the Baronettes Stranhorne had dressed in boys' garb to ride out to hunt Shadowborn.

Sylvide said, unexpectedly, "I thought it was very brave of them."

Xavier roused himself to a chortled "Like to sonn you in breeches, sister dear."

Dani started to stand, his expression ominous. His mother put a manacling hand on his arm.

"I don't think you would, sir," Telmaine said. With her early-maturing figure, her sweet nature, and a family who showed scant concern for the security and happiness of a girl, Sylvide had suffered far more presumption and trespa.s.s than she deserved. Xavier was more bl.u.s.ter than malice, but he still would not say such things to a woman he respected-Telmaine, for instance. She smiled sweetly into his bleary face and reached across the table with her magic. "I understand your sister-in-law is quite a fair shot." A delicate, internal nudge-it didn't take much-and he was pushing back from the table, stumbling away with a hand clapped over his mouth. She felt an indecent thrill as two footmen swiftly converged to steer him into a side room.

Her blood chilled. The voice had the crystal edges of a Lightborn, and the touch, brief as it was, exuded power.

"Telmaine?" said Sylvide.

She gripped the table, to hold herself in place. There was no answer. For a moment she struggled with the urge to flee-but where could she possibly flee to, if the Lightborn Temple Vigilance had discovered her? A whimper tried to escape; she swallowed it down.

"Telmaine!" Merivan hissed across the table. "Control yourself!"

"Daniver," Lady Calliope said, far more audibly. "Sit down. One of you making an exhibition of himself is quite enough."