Lightborn. Part 2

She swallowed. "I will-think about that," she said, lying. The last thing she wanted to think about was the Darkborn mages. When they had healed Ishmael, how much had they learned about the reason for his overreach? Had Ishmael himself already inadvertently betrayed her?

The apothecary did not, it seemed, wish to challenge her further. She said, "I want you-I want you to get close to Lord Vladimer. I know you aren't a mage-you can't sense the Shadowborn-but you do know and believe in what we're fighting."

"Thought you'd say that," the apothecary said, and pushed himself to his feet. "He'll have doctors, y'know."

"You seem to me an inventive young man," she said, not rising.

"I'm a right hungry one," he amended. "Soon as I can get fed, I'm yours."

Two.

Floria Floria White Hand leaned against the curved gla.s.s of the high balcony, gazing over the palace ballroom below. In stately, rippling rounds the dancers paced out their steps, the Lightborn court uniting to carouse at the coming of age of their prince's heir. The bold colors of the north intermingled with the muted earth hues of the south, and gems sparkled in the lights mounted at every joint of the coffered ceiling, every bracket in the walls and around the balcony columns. No shadows were allowed in this hall.

Though how they could dance after that hours- long feast, Floria could not imagine. All she herself wanted was a quiet place to negotiate with her outraged stomach.

Beside her, Prince Isidore's voice said softly, "He's come on well, hasn't he?"

The ruler of the Lightborn leaned against the balcony at her side as casually as if he were merely one of the Prince's Vigilance and not their earthly master, robed and cauled in the royal blue and star sapphires that only the prince and his lineage were allowed to wear. The captain of the Vigilance guarded his back, and two senior lieutenants his right and left, protecting his person and, for the moment, his peace.

She followed Isidore's gaze to the center of the dance, to find the tall, gangly figure of Fejelis, his heir. Fejelis danced as he did almost everything else, with attention, precision, and a perceptible hesitation before committing himself. He was invariably a half beat behind the music. She found it illuminating to observe the effect on his partners.

"I like to see this one from above," the prince remarked. "For the effect of the waves. I've been told it goes back centuries, before the Sundering, and was an invocation of the sea."

She made a sound more dutiful than interested.

"You look a little wan, Mistress Floria."

"Indigestion, my prince," Floria said.

"Ah," he said, with a trace of chagrin. The heir's mixed heritage had been celebrated in food as well as decoration, music, and dance. As a palace vigilant, daughter of generations of vigilants and a.s.sa.s.sins, Floria's duty was to guard the life of her prince and those he designated. Several generations ago, an ambitious head of the White Hand lineage had contracted with the Mages' Temple to supply and maintain an a.s.set of immunity to poisons for a member of the White Hand lineage. The cost had beggared and the controversy divided the lineage, but the a.s.set had descended first to Floria's father, and then to herself. With it had come the duty of being the prince's food taster, and as such, she had to follow where his tastes led.

Unfortunately, where the prince had been able to develop first a tolerance and then a fondness for the highly spiced fare of the south, Floria had been unable to do likewise. The a.s.set that protected her, and by extension the prince, seemed unable to distinguish between certain spices and poison.

"Oh, I'll live," she said, rubbing her stomach.

"White fish in milk tomorrow," the prince promised. She made a face, as he no doubt expected.

The heir was dancing with one of his southern cousins, a voluptuous young woman whose lush brown hair had been woven into a stiff cornice with beads and gems. The girl was a.s.serting the rhythm, her bare stiff back expressing her resentment at being shown up by her partner. His eyes were fixed politely on her face. Beside Floria, the prince chuckled. "I shouldn't be surprised if he were figuring out which bit of that hair to tug on to bring the whole lot tumbling down. I could tell him, I suppose, but I think I'll leave him to find out for himself."

She glanced sideways at him, knowing that there was nothing idle in the remark. His eyes had strayed to where his consort was sitting amongst her entourage, on the dais at the far end of the hall. Helenja's hairstyle was even more ornate than her young cousin's, its faded roan length woven into an ornate sculpture evocative of a sh.e.l.l.

The marriage between north and south had been a political and economic necessity. It had been intensely unpopular with the northerners, and the consort's relatives had intrigued against Isidore from the start, appalling the court. There was a code and style to deposition of leaders. Two of Helenja's brothers and several of their supporters had died at the hands of the Prince's Vigilance before the southerners had learned. Yet by the glint in his eye, the prince was thinking of the mischief he might make with that sculpted hair. South and north might conspire against each other, but the man and woman themselves had found an accommodation, even mutual affection.

Floria wished him well, tonight of all nights. Helenja's mood was bound to be difficult. Of their children, Fejelis was far from Helenja's favorite-that was his brother, Orlanjis, prancing through the elements of the dance at the far end of the room from brother and mother. He was a handsome boy, much more so than his brother, growing evenly from a compact, appealing child into a well-shaped, winning youth. His auburn hair was intricately braided and wound close to his head, like a princely caul. Not by chance, Floria was sure. Fejelis's sandy hair was no more than shoulder- length, blunt cut in the northern style-as short, as his mother complained, as a servant's-and swung free as he spun lightly on his feet. A single star sapphire bounced on its chain at his throat.

"Do you remember when Fejelis cut his hair?" the prince said. There were times she had to wonder whether he didn't have a trace of magic himself, but Isidore was nothing if not observant. "Looked like a new-hatched chick, he did, all the yellow down standing up in tufts. That was the day I was sure he was going to be his own man. . . . You will watch out for him, Floria, won't you?"

He would be thinking, as she was, of the consequences of that haircut. Three days later, Fejelis was poisoned by members of his mother's retinue. He would not have lived but for luck, and a mage's willingness to flout the law. The outrage around the poisoning of a child had one good consequence-it divided the southerners and resulted in exile or execution for the worst of them. Helenja might countenance the a.s.sa.s.sination of her consort, but she would not countenance the murder of her son.

Floria studied the broad sullen face of the woman on the dais, and wondered if she still would not. She feared otherwise. Fejelis had survived with his health and spirit intact, but with a new wariness. As far as she knew, he was close to no faction at court, neither south nor north, which might protect him from becoming ensnared in the enmities of his allies, but gave him no allies against his own enemies. But until Orlanjis came of age, Fejelis should be safe-or at least as safe as his father-or at least from that quarter.

She shifted her eyes back to watch Fejelis weave through a line of other dancers, the swift turns and partner exchanges evoking the disorder of foam spilling onto the sh.o.r.e. Yes, he would be his own man, and not a puppet of the southern factions. But was he his father's as much as Isidore seemed to think? The Prince's Vigilance monitored his activities, of course, but he could be disconcertingly adept at dodging their observation, when he so chose.

Again the prince's unsettling perceptiveness. "I'm well aware that he has affiliations he prefers I not know about and far more radical ideas than I. But I've never believed that policy should outlive the prince. The world changes, year by year, for all we deny it. If nothing else, our friends on the other side of sunset would see to that."

The intrepid, inventive Darkborn, who filled the night with the sounds of their industry and, with their light-sealed factories and day trains, were encroaching upon the day. Their inventions crept across sunset, no longer merely affecting the lower cla.s.ses. Several of the costumes down on the dance floor were dyed with by-products of Darkborn chemistry. The Vigilance carried guns made according to Darkborn designs; alas, so did their enemies. Even the precariously static world of the Lightborn would not remain unchanged, with them near.

"Did your Darkborn friend recover his daughter?" Isidore said, unexpectedly.

She glanced at him; she had forgotten that she had told him about Balthasar's troubles. "I haven't been home since shortly after Ishmael di Studier took him and his family to the palace, thinking they'd be safe there." She would have been more worried about Balthasar had not the influx of visitors-southerners-for the ceremony kept her preoccupied with the well-being of the prince. Except for intervals of s.n.a.t.c.hed sleep, she had been standing guard and tasting food for days.

Tomorrow she should be able to stand down, if only for a few hours. Then she could return home, send a message by day courier to the archducal palace. Find out what had happened to Bal, to Florilinde, even to Balthasar's p.r.i.c.kly wife.

Isidore said, "Fejelis thinks the Darkborn are most important for our future."

She swung her head to look at him. He half turned toward her, his patrician face in three-quarter profile. The molding of the caul picked up the lines of his cheekbones and followed his brows. They exchanged glances, hers dubious, his calm, a gray so light as to be silver, like mirrors. About some things, even a prince could not speak openly.

Seven hundred years ago, the last remnant of Lightborn mages had thrown themselves on the mercy of the strongest chieftain of the sundered lands. From their bargain had arisen the compact that governed the use of magic in the affairs of those without magic, the earthborn, to this day. It prohibited mages from using their magic in their own interest where earthborn were involved. It prohibited mages from using their magic either for or against earthborn, except at the behest of another earthborn. It established a complex and rigid set of laws as to when and how an earthborn might righteously contract the services of a mage. Any acts under contract were then the responsibility of the earthborn; the mage was made immune by law.

Thus the mages had survived, and the chieftain had ended his days as master of the daylight lands. Would he have made the compact, Floria wondered, if he had envisioned that the few dozen desperate pet.i.tioners would become thousands, with some amongst them with the power to become essentially immortal, or conjure up a storm, or-it was rumored-reverse time itself ? If that chieftain had envisioned that one day the earthborn palace, large as it was, would be . . . shadowed . . . by a Temple tower four times its height? Or that the transfer of wealth from hundreds of years of contracts would leave his state a hollow sh.e.l.l?

Had he known that, he should have had his pet.i.tioners' hearts pierced then and there, or been deserving of righteous deposition.

The Darkborn had resisted making such a bargain, had thrust magic to the periphery of society, and had nonetheless prospered. Idealistic and radical factions within Lightborn society wished to follow their example, and escape their dependence on magic, a dependence that extended-she glanced upward-to the very lights they lived by, through the night.

The dance ended. Fejelis had no sooner bowed to his partner than another southern cousin pushed through the throng to claim him. She was as fair as the first had been dark, but no less shapely and supple. Floria sensed a campaign, Helenja's, or someone else's. From his not-so-casual remark about his son, Isidore seemed at ease with the idea that Fejelis might ally with a southerner.

Floria was not, but then she was the one who, for eighteen years, had tasted every dish the prince ate and cup he drank. Fejelis would be safer if the southern faction thought he could yet be brought to heel-unless the northerners turned against him, determined that there would be no more southern alliances.

Even the Prince's Vigilance could fail in its task.

"I do worry about him," Isidore said. "His strongest alliances are not within court, but outside-though there are some that are potentially formidable-" She glanced aside at him, and caught the suggestive glint of a silver gray eye. None of the prince's a.s.sociations known to the Vigilance could be described that way. Disruptive, yes, formidable, no. Isidore continued. "It is time he built stronger support of his own within court; he will need it when this job falls to him."

Useless to protest that statement; it was the reality and they were realists. There would come a time when age or c.u.mulated mistakes made Isidore's deposition more acceptable than not. There would come a time when even the Prince's Vigilance would stand aside, for the good of the state.

But it should be years yet. Years.

"He's in danger of being too careful," Isidore stressed. "Of not taking the risk of letting people close. Of not trusting people he should."

This was, she thought, a disturbing conversation to be having on the evening of the heir's coming of age. Fejelis was now considered able to rule without a regent. There were those who would risk an unrighteous deposition to have a prince on a string.

Did anyone have Fejelis on a string? What was the formidable a.s.sociation Isidore had alluded to? Isidore himself did not seem perturbed by it-but why alert her?

"He has reason, of course. So I've been having a quiet word with a few people I trust," the prince said.

He said little after that, and presently left, his guards following. Floria knew she had received-along with those other few-a commission, though a commission to do what, she was not sure. She let the prince go down the stairs, and then padded along the corridor to a locked cabinet where the Prince's Vigilance kept some of its provisions. Find water and a gla.s.s, mix in one of her own preparations to settle her stomach. In a while, she would be summoned to taste the food and drink the prince was taking into his chambers with him, and then, perhaps, if her indigestion, or this last conversation, allowed, she might sleep.

Telmaine Had she been but a little quicker, she would have escaped.

It was not to be. As she closed her door, on her way to visit her daughters, she heard footsteps on the stairs at the end of the hall. Superintendent Malachi Plantageter, with Ishmael's lawyer trotting at his heel.

An impulse to dive into the bedroom, squirm childlike under the bed, and pretend not to be here died stillborn. "Lady Telmaine Hearne?" said the superintendent, though he well knew who she was. They had exchanged words when he arrested Ishmael. "Is this an inconvenient time?"

"I was just going to my sister's to visit my children," Telmaine said, coolly. "But I suppose this will not take particularly long." She stepped back and let the two men in, the long-boned man with the distinctive Plantageter nose-which he came by quite legitimately, if through the distaff line-and the small rotund lawyer.

"I understand your husband is out of the city," the superintendent said. "Would you prefer that one of your brothers or your brother-in-l aw were present?"

She couldn't imagine which would be worse, to have her rigid eldest brother, Duke Stott, either of her two smart and mocking younger brothers, or her sister's husband, Lord Judiciar Erskane. Merivan's husband would be her best ally against the law, but if anyone found the missed st.i.tches in her lace of lies, it would be he. She shook her head.

"The archduke said he thought you would prefer to have your own legal representation," Malachi Plantageter continued. She sonned the lawyer, noting his shrewd face with mixed relief and apprehension. Di Brennan was not her family's usual lawyer, but he represented the same firm, and he and Balthasar had spoken about Ishmael's arrest; he knew at least part of the story-one of the stories.

"Thank you," she said meekly. "What would you like to speak to me about?"

Without a word, without a theatrical flourish, the superintendent held out both hands. In one was a lady's reticule; from the other dangled a silver love knot.

She knew her hands would tremble, but she had no choice but to accept both. She laid her hands down atop the reticule, the love knot held in her closed fist.

"Is there anything you would like to tell me, Lady Telmaine?" he said quietly.

"I thought I had lost them," she said.

"How much money was in the reticule?"

"Sixty, sixty-five." She ventured a small shrug of the shoulder, the insouciance of a lady to whom money comes easily.

"Perhaps," di Brennan said to the superintendent, "you might explain."

Plantageter leaned back with a sigh that she felt in her own weary bones. "Yesterday evening young Guillaume di Maurier was found seriously wounded-he had been shot in the abdomen." The lawyer's brow drew briefly in sympathy. "I sent one of my agents to take a statement. Di Maurier said he had been searching for a lost child-you may know he acts in an irregular capacity for Lord Vladimer-and had traced her to a warehouse in the Lower Docks. It was while he was there he was shot. He had given this information to the child's mother with the expectation that she and"-a slight emphasis on the contested t.i.tle-"Baron Strumh.e.l.ler would act to free the child. As the young man seemed in extremis, the agent did not tell him of Strumh.e.l.ler's arrest. A kindness, you understand, if he were to die." Telmaine made a small sound in her throat; Plantageter paused, awaiting her question, but both sonned di Brennan's warning headshake. Breathing shallowly, gripping Bal's love knot, she held her peace.

"That was around one fifteen of the clock. A little after half past, a coachman delivered a lady matching Lady Telmaine's description to the Upper Docks. Further reports had the lady walking in the direction of the Lower Docks. At around two of the clock, fire broke out in a warehouse in the Lower Docks. An extremely fierce, hot fire. One or two witnesses claim they sonned a woman carrying something from the direction of the fire, but in such conditions such testimony could be challenged. Somewhat later, the lady returned to the waiting coach, smelling strongly of smoke and with a sick child in her arms. She asked to be driven to the archducal palace, claiming to have lost her money but to be acting in Casamir Blondell's interest. Out of sympathy for the child, the coachman agreed. He was paid on arrival, and the cloak he had lent to keep the child warm returned. I received the information from Casamir Blondell that the child Florilinde Hearne had been restored to her parents. He knew of no female agent a.s.signed to work the docks."

Telmaine controlled her breathing and her expression with an effort. He waited; she had a sudden impression of a cat waiting by a mousehole, and felt a flare of unwise temper at the idea he should toy with her.

"I also received a message from the prison that Baron Strumh.e.l.ler had collapsed and expired at about the same time the warehouse burned. However, I now know that is not so."

"In what way?" said di Brennan, frowning.

"He is not dead."

"The order of succession has been dispatched, and we are making the arrangements required to execute the late Baron Strumh.e.l.ler's will."

It was, Telmaine thought, a cat-to-cat contest now, and she was very glad to crouch quietly in her mousehole.

"I would hold on that will," Plantageter said, with a trace of humor. "Lord Vladimer Plantageter arrived by the train from the coast just after sunset tonight. By his account Lady Telmaine, her husband, and Baron Strumh.e.l.ler interrupted an attempt on his life and killed the sorcerer responsible. Strumh.e.l.ler had escaped prison with the collusion of the prison apothecary, whom I believe he had known in the past."

"I am truly gratified," di Brennan said after a pause. Telmaine heard genuine emotion in his voice, and her heart warmed to him. "I have known Ishmael di Studier, boy, man, and baron, since I was a student, and despite all his irregularities, I have never felt that by serving my client I was not serving justice." Then the unguarded moment pa.s.sed; the lawyer returned, keen-edged. "Then the charges are dropped?"

"We must discuss that at a later time, Master di Brennan," Plantageter said.

Smoothly, the lawyer accepted that with a murmured "Of course."

"The charges must be dropped!" Telmaine said, unable to restrain herself. "We know who tried to kill Vladimer and we know who killed-who must have killed-Tercelle Amberley."

"Unfortunately, my lady, knowing and proving before law are two different matters," Plantageter said, with some emphasis. "The remains of four men were found in the ruins of the warehouse." A flush of heat washed over Telmaine as she remembered brushing by the foot of one of the corpses. That realization, that distraction, would have been the death of her and Florilinde, but for Ishmael's sacrifice.

"Lady Telmaine, did you arrange for that fire to be set, to enable you-or someone else"-as di Brennan shifted in his chair-"to free your daughter?"

"Of course not!" Telmaine said, in what she hoped was the tone of someone hearing that outrageous accusation for the first time.

"Did you bribe anyone to set the fire, with the money in that reticule and your jewelry?"

"My husband gave me this when we were courting," she said in a thin voice. "It would be the last thing I would ever-"

"Did Baron Strumh.e.l.ler start the fire?"

Now she was genuinely appalled. "No! Baron Strumh.e.l.ler-" She caught herself; di Brennan's hand signal was redundant warning. "Baron Strumh.e.l.ler was in prison, half the city away." And, brazenly, "I know he has the reputation of being a mage, but I-I simply don't believe it."

"Baron Strumh.e.l.ler's supposedly fatal collapse occurred at the time the fire began," he noted, but without any real conviction. "Lady Telmaine, what did you plan to do when you confronted those men in the warehouse?"

She would not think of Ishmael's agonized scream in her mind as he had reached across the distance between them to hold back the flames-an impossible effort for a first-rank mage. "I planned to bribe them to free my daughter," she said, as steadily as she could. "I would have promised them no one would know. They could not know that Master di Maurier had been able to give testimony. Is he-" Her voice wavered. "Is he still alive?"

"I believe so, but if he does live, it will be a miracle. It does make me ask what you thought you were doing, going to the same place."

She bit her lip. "In truth, Superintendent, I fear I was a little mad. My husband had been beaten, my daughter stolen away from me, and the man who had been helping me find her accused of the vilest crimes."

"You should have come to us, Lady Telmaine."

She clutched her gloved hands together. "It was-I was afraid of the publicity, Master Plantageter. Afraid that it would hurt my daughter. Baron Strumh.e.l.ler promised us he could use Lord Vladimer's networks. And Master di Maurier found her. I do hope he lives. When he told me-Florilinde was all I thought about."

He leaned back in his chair and his sonn washed deliberately over her. "I cannot decide whether you are a blessed innocent who has used up a lifetime's luck in a night, or a woman so cunning she has been able to conceal all the traces of her crimes." He paused, and sonned her again, catching her with her mouth a little open as she sought-truly sought-to find an answer for him. "When did the fire in the warehouse start?"

"As I set foot inside the building."

"The description was that it was explosive."

"It may have seemed so from outside," Telmaine said, steadily, her heart beating hard. She must hold her nerve, hold it with all her strength. If she did not waver, they must take her testimony for what it was, or think the unthinkable. "The downstairs was pa.s.sable."

"But the guards did not escape," he said. "And if there was time for you to reach and free your daughter, there was time for them to flee. Did you have them drugged, Lady Telmaine? Was that what your bribe money was for?"

"No," she said, cleared the croak out of her voice and said again, clearly, "I did not drug them. I do not know why they did not escape. I paid them no heed. All I could hear"-a shallow gasp, quite unfeigned-"were my child's cries."

There was a silence. Plantageter said, in a confiding voice, "I suspect, Lady Telmaine, that not a court in the land would convict you."