Lightborn. Part 19

Did they know, Telmaine wondered, that the gun emplacements had been demolished by the Lightborn mages? If so, neither the dukes nor Phineas Broome said so.

"Sweet Imogene," said the archduke again. "During the night-how many of our own people died, do you suppose?"

"We imposed a curfew on the city. Those who obeyed it would have been quite safe."

"Which was the reason for your rather odd request last night," said Seja.n.u.s Plantageter, tight-jawed. "Congratulations, my lords, for having lowered us to the level of Odon the Breaker."

"They were mages, Seja.n.u.s. You said yourself-"

"I said what?" said the archduke, with ripening fury. "That I wished them slaughtered? That I counted their lives for nothing? I might not be prepared to let magic ruin us, morally and materially, but that did not mean that I am prepared to declare war unilaterally on its pract.i.tioners and murder them in their beds."

"You will not recognize it would come to that in the end," Mycene said.

"Will not, or cannot," Kalamay said, voice heavy with implication.

The archduke's drawn breath checked. "What do you mean by that?" he said, dangerously quiet.

"Your Grace, magic left you on the verge of death, and yet we find you restored to full health."

A muscle twitched at the corner of the archduke's mouth. "No expressions of pleasure at my recovery, my lords?"

"I cannot express such gladness, Your Grace, not given the agency."

A beat. "You are implying, my lord duke, that my will is not my own, is that it?"

There was a silence-none of them would be so ill-bred, or treasonous, as to say it aloud, but their silence did so. The archduke's expression grew fixed. "Lady Telmaine," said the archduke. "What do you have to say to these accusations?"

"I'm sorry, Your Grace," she said to her lap. "It is my fault you were hurt." She bared her face to his sonn. "I am not a sorceress, but I am a mage. I have not practiced magic until this last week, when I began to do so to keep my husband and children alive. Everything I told you was true, except I left out the part about my own magic. I was doing my best to help protect you-and Lord Vladimer-from the Shadowborn. But there was a Lightborn mage who thought I was Shadowborn, because I was-trying to learn how to use their magic. When he tried to bind my magic, the fires-burst out. He helped me come back here-to put right what he and I did. What that man calls ensorcellment is the binding he put around my magic to-to make it safe. I will swear any oath that you ask of me that I did not ensorcell you. And I did not ensorcell Lord Vladimer."

Before the archduke could respond, Vladimer suddenly pushed himself up on the pillow, casting a ragged sonn across them. "Ja.n.u.s," he croaked. "Sweet Imogene, Ja.n.u.s." The archduke did not turn this time, but said levelly, "Yes, Vladimer. Come round here, if you would."

n.o.body spoke as Rohan helped Vladimer to his feet and the two of them came around the end of the bed, Vladimer leaning on Rohan's shoulder. With his awareness focused entirely on his brother, he did not perceive Telmaine until he brushed her skirts, but when he did, Rohan needed to catch at him to steady him. The violence in his expression as he stood over her made her tremble. "Dimi," the archduke said quietly, rising to rest a light hand on his injured arm, "sit down. Help me unravel this."

Vladimer released Rohan to grip the breast of his brother's dressing gown with his sound hand. "Ja.n.u.s," he whispered, "by all the G.o.ds, I am sorry."

"You, too, Dimi? Perhaps I am dead," the archduke said, with harrowed levity, "to be hearing those words from you of all people."

"I failed you," Vladimer said, hoa.r.s.ely, speaking as though the two of them were alone in the room. "Casamir had suspicions. I confess I did not give full hearing to those suspicions. I believe he was investigating them, when he was caught outside-or trapped outside-and died."

His mendacity was breathtaking: he had known. He had known, because she had told him, and he had done nothing to stop it.

This is for Sylvide, she thought. She said in a whisper, "Lord Vladimer, you did know."

"I failed you, too," Vladimer rasped, "when I trusted this woman. It was her magic that nearly killed you. Had my hand been steadier, she would already be dead."

The silence lasted several heartbeats. "Sit down, if you would, Vladimer," the archduke said. "My lords, it seems this is becoming more tangled, not less. Leave us, please. I need to speak first to my brother, who is obviously not well enough for a prolonged interview. Then I will speak with yourselves. Rohan, would you remain, please, since you have been privy to this strange affair from the beginning."

"And the sorceress?" said Kalamay.

To Telmaine's wavering sonn, his expression was unreadable. "Lady Telmaine," he said, with deliberate courtesy. "I must also ask you to wait as well."

By a sickening irony, of which the archduke was surely unaware, they were escorted into the same waiting room as the one that Mycene and Kalamay had been waiting in when Vladimer set her to discover their plot. As she preceded them into the room, Mycene said from behind her, "The penalty for sorcery is death. Rank is no protection, as Strumh.e.l.ler has cause to know."

"And the penalty for treason, Your Grace?" she managed, though her voice was little more than a whisper.

"Is irrelevant," Mycene said, gesturing her to an armchair with a mockery of courtesy. "The Lightborn are not our masters. Indeed, they are not even our peers. Plantageter will acknowledge that-if his will and wits are still his own."

"Mycene," said Kalamay from the door. "Are you prepared to wait in here, with this sorceress?"

The Duke of Mycene did not answer him directly but waved his men to flank the facing armchair, and Phineas Broome to their side, disregarding the mage's hesitation. "He reluctantly admits you are his superior in magic, but claims you could not overwhelm him before he could give warning. At my word or his, my men have orders to shoot, and not to stop shooting until I personally order them to do so." He sat down, even as she still stood, a studied insult. "Do sit down, Lady Telmaine."

"Mycene, have a care," said Kalamay.

"All my life," the Duke of Mycene said, carelessly, "timid people have urged me to have a care, and all my life, I have disregarded them, to my gain."

"This is for your good standing with the Sole G.o.d and His Church," Kalamay said. "The woman's power has too much fascination for you."

"All power has a fascination for me," Mycene allowed. "I admit it does fascinate me to know that a young woman has managed for decades to conceal her true nature."

She needed only her ears, not her magic, to hear the appet.i.te in the words.

"And it is power, Lady Telmaine," he said, unknowingly echoing Ishmael. But, sweet Imogene, the difference between Ishmael and this man . . .

"A venal, corrupting power," Kalamay said.

"Oh, do stop cawing, Kalamay," Mycene advised, without turning his head.

"There are penalties for a.s.sociating with mages."

"Vladimer Plantageter is much more guilty of that than I, and Seja.n.u.s cannot impugn me without impugning Vladimer, which he will not do. I sometimes wonder if there is not something unhealthy between those two. Their mother's behavior certainly was never constrained by decency."

"You have a foul mind," Kalamay said. He had sat down on a chair close to the door.

Telmaine, her head low, said, "He simply measures love as he knows it, Duke Kalamay."

She was rewarded by a sucked-in breath. "Don't speak to me, sorceress."

"I am no sorceress."

"In law," Mycene purred, unprovoked, "you are."

Broome shifted uneasily, his expression that of a deeply unhappy man.

she said, but had the sense that she had spoken in a heavily curtained room that swallowed up all sound, all echoes.

"I wonder if there are others like you," Mycene mused.

"If there are, we must find them," Kalamay said.

"I have no doubt the church has its ways," Mycene said, silkily. To Telmaine, "You told Seja.n.u.s that Vladimer knew of our plans. Was it you who told Vladimer?"

She set her lips and refused to answer.

"No matter," Mycene said. "Seja.n.u.s 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 ent.i.tles 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 doc.u.ment 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 const.i.tuted 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 subst.i.tute, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 glance 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 rea.s.signment of certain duties."

If it were written into the contract, which Fejelis knew it was not; no one could subst.i.tute 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."