Lightborn (40 page)

“Mother of All,” Floria breathed.

“I expect they’ll be the best of friends hereafter,” Tempe predicted, her tone adding an unspoken,
Men
.

“Who’s back at the palace?”

“Six, under Rupertis. Orlanjis’s vigilants are out here as well, though Helenja refused to let hers go. The mage seems to have vanished; word’s out he’s answering questions from the high masters.”

“I have to get back there.”

“I’ll take you. I’ll not be needed until later, when they’re ready to sort and fillet their haul here.” While the armed vigilants held their circle, the guards, expert in this work, were systematically shackling those who had not fled. Behind them, several mages vigilant moved amongst the fallen, ensuring their survival to trial. City taxes at work, Floria thought sourly. She felt at her waist. Revolver, gone. At the bottom of the fountain, she hoped, though there’d be no finding it until the fountain was drained. Two corpses floated in the water, beyond saving. The nearest, she vaguely remembered. Following her gaze, Tempe silently handed her her ankle dagger.

“Did I—?” She remembered frantically trying to keep one arm, one knife, free of the hands that thrust her deep, and slashing at the black shapes eclipsing the surface.

“That one, yes.” Tempe handed her her rapier in its soaked sheath. “Given that multiple witnesses truthfully attest he was trying to drown you, I doubt there will be more than a fine to pay. The blood money to the family will come out of city funds. The other seems to have been pushed under in the struggle. We didn’t realize he was down there in time.”

It was one of the youths she had frightened into retreat. Nineteen, at most, face bruised and blood-filled brown eyes turned blindly up to the sky. His last sight the white underside of foaming water and the shadows of people trampling him under? She looked away from the uncomprehending young face. “There was more than one trying to drown me,” she said.

“We’ll get descriptions,” Tempe said. “And we’ll need your testimony, too. You’ve me to thank that you’re not joining the haul in the tank. And if you run again, Floria, it will be a vigilant’s warrant on you, understand?”

She made a sound that she trusted could be interpreted as assent.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me about this box that the rumors keep mentioning.”

“You’ll have to wait until I speak to Fejelis.” She twisted her neck to look at the other woman. “I’d appreciate having you there; maybe he’ll believe I’m speaking the truth.”

She pushed herself all the way to her feet, and this time her legs seemed to resign themselves to their task. Tempe beckoned to three trainee vigilants who had, Floria realized, been standing off close enough if they were needed, not close enough to hear what they shouldn’t. They closed in around her; they, it seemed, would be their escort.

She cleared her throat. “What else has been happening at the palace?”

In the vast vestibule of the palace, Fejelis silently handed the crimson ribbons to Captain Rupertis, who did not protest the menial task, but patiently tied them in place around Fejelis’s dusty red sleeves. They would stand out, clean and shiny as they were, distinct from the mourning garb of earlier grief.

To his hovering secretary, he said, “. . . Has there been any response from the Darkborn?”

“None, my prince.”

He disliked that. He disliked that a great deal. In a city in chaos, a palace courier bound for the archducal palace could easily have fallen to a random attack. Even without the possibility of deliberate interception. He said, “. . . I have to know who is in charge over there, and what they plan to do with those responsible for this slaughter.”

He bit off the end of the word, preventing others from escaping; he, of all people, could not afford intemperance of speech in a city reeling between paralysis and violence. But he had just come from the servants’ quarters beneath the outer wall, adjacent to the tower. Blocks of dazzling carved alabaster fallen from the tower lay amongst shattered brick and adobe of the servants’ homes. A glittering ice field of broken glass covered the roadway in front, and the servants’ gardens. Glass frost rimed flowers and hedges. Servants, palace staff, and mages together searched for the residues of high masters and servants’ children, mingling in death as they never would in life.

Having seen that, how could he not call it by name?

Perrin, recalled to guard him, had stood trembling by his side, tears streaking a face still dusty from their efforts on the far side of the wall, until he had insisted that she go indoors. As she walked away, he heard his sister beginning to sob aloud.

“. . . I need an answer, Captain, even if I have to go over to the palace, and demand it in person.” Which he would, their murderous brightnesses, argumentative vigilants, and riots notwithstanding. To his secretary, “. . . Prepare another copy of the initial message.” To the captain, “. . . Recall four vigilants—or as many as you think needed to get a message over to the archducal palace. I don’t want to send another courier into that chaos. Ask them to wait half an hour for an answer, and if there is no answer, to come back and report to me.”

“Yes, my—” Rupertis broke off and turned as five figures appeared in the outer doorway, thrusting Fejelis into the shelter of his body. Fejelis did not resist; he and Lapaxo had settled that, hours ago. But as the figures stepped out of the light, he recognized three cadet members of the Vigilance, Mistress Tempe, and Floria White Hand. Floria’s red clothing was shredded and saturated, the skin it exposed mottled with purple and painted bruising, her hair hung in a wrung- out coil over her shoulder, and her eyes had the expression of glazed ferocity he had become all too used to seeing around him in the past hours. For all he knew, he would see in his own mirror, had he time to look. “. . . Mistress White Hand. Good—to see you.”

Her smile had a crazed quality. “Prince Fejelis. Good to see you, too.”

Tempe reported, to the prince and the captain equally, “We found her trying to stand off a mob in front of Bolingbroke Station, solo. Got there just as they dragged her off the fountain statuary and set out to drown her in it.”

“The hinges of the station door were starting to give,” Floria rasped, and coughed. “Prince, I’ve been at the archducal residence. Last person I spoke to, before the one who let me out, was Duke Sachevar Mycene. He claimed to be in charge of the regency council for the archducal heir, and that Sejanus Plantageter was dying of a magically induced injury. He said Vladimer Plantageter had had a mental collapse—though I spoke to the man only hours earlier and he was sharp as a stiletto. But Mycene seemed very sure of himself.” Her gaze probed his face, looking for what, he did not know. “I’ve more information, but . . . I’d better give it you in a more private place.”

“. . . If it’s what you put in a letter to Magister Tammorn, I’ve seen that.”

Her shoulders slumped slightly, with what, he could not tell. He had not studied her nearly closely enough, trusting in his father’s assessment of her as an unshakable loyalist. Could he have noticed any inconsistencies in her behavior, signifying her ensorcellment, if he had?
Most useless word in the language, “if
,
”
his father’s phantom voice pointed out. He did need to know whether the ensorcellment persisted. He needed Tam or Perrin—and he was glad the doors stood wide at their backs, flooding the vestibule with sunlight.

“. . . Go and get cleaned up, Mistress Floria.” By the red seam of a fresh-healed wound above her brow, he inferred she had had a mage’s attention already, and the Vigilance prided themselves on their stoicism. “. . . I’ll speak to you presently.”

It took an effort for her to move off with her old, deadly lightness of step, but he doubted that anyone other than he and her fellow vigilants would know it. Rupertis waved off one of the novices and one of the vigilants to escort her: wise, given that rumors of her wrongdoing would have sunk deeper into the cracks in the walls than word of his rescinding the warrant.

Tempe said, “She wouldn’t answer questions on the way back. Without a warrant . . .”

Which frustrated the judiciar, that was plain. Fejelis had the vagrant thought that that asset of veracity must make for a difficult time in love.

When he proved resistant to the hint, she said to her captain, “If I’m not needed here, then I’ll go over to the jail, help them sort out their catch.” Rupertis, though he twitched a little, gave up the two novices to accompany her.

“Might I suggest . . . ?” Rupertis began to him, and then both he and Fejelis swung toward the sound of running footsteps.

“. . . a stiff drink?” Fejelis said under his breath, drawing a startled look and a grim smile from the vigilant.

The runner was Perrin, still dusty and almost as distraught as he’d last seen her. She skidded up to him. “They’re going to burn him out,” she blurted. “They’ve bound him and they’re going to burn him out.”

“Who?” said Fejelis, though he already knew. And she confirmed it, “The high masters. They’re going to burn out Magister Tammorn.”

“Come,” said Fejelis, but three strides on, he caught Perrin’s arm. “. . . I’m going to want backup for this. Find Orlanjis, Mother, Prasav, Ember. Bring them and their retinue, and anyone else of their brightnesses you think might carry weight. Floria White Hand as well.” She gulped. Fejelis said, “. . . I know it’ll cost me, but I owe Tam and I need him.” Her eyes widened a little, but he didn’t have time to settle gossip. He spun her toward the stairs, released her, and ran for his chambers, to exchange his vigilant’s helmet for the caul. Prayed he was not too late.

The mages had eventually taken over the entire south wing of the palace, including the southwest-facing rooms that had once been Perrin’s and he had offered to Orlanjis. He trusted that Orlanjis and the palace staff—whose labors since the coming-of-age ceremonial had been nothing short of heroic—would eventually forgive him. The archmage himself had appropriated Perrin’s former suite.

It might be mannerly and politic for Fejelis to knock, but it was not tactical, since he was sure his entrance would be barred. He twisted the handle, shouldered open the door, and had crossed the threshold into the streaming sunlight from skylight and windows before he met an invisible wall.

Five people turned to look at him from where they stood encircling Tam, who lay facedown on the southern tent mat that served as carpet. Only his outflung hands moved, groping for purchase on the rough weave. His dusty auburn head lay between the bare feet of a small man in a clean white loincloth and a single chain of rank, and nothing else. The man’s head would have come no higher than Fejelis’s shoulder, and by eye, he was somewhat past middle age, his copper skin lacking the luster of youth, and his black hair thinning. They had never met, but he had heard Tam’s descriptions often enough. The prince who had ruled when this little man was born, in a hidden mage’s redoubt deep in the south, was three hundred years dead. It was not merely the pressure of the barrier that made Fejelis’s breath shallow, his voice thin. “. . . Magister Archmage.”

The archmage waved someone forward with a flick of his fingers, his gaze not leaving the intruder. His black eyes had the fierce, dislocated outrage of a newly trapped hawk.

“. . . I am Fejelis, Isidore’s son, and prince of the earthborn. Your host for the duration . . . I . . . . have an interest in this mage.”

Magistra Valetta stepped into his line of sight, breaking his eye contact with the archmage. “Prince Fejelis,” she said, “the contract was not finalized and has now been canceled.”

“. . . Actions taken even under provisional contract are covered by the compact, and are therefore the responsibility of the earthborn primary.” He could feel the inexorable pressure of their magic, forcing him backward. He kept his voice level. “. . . Under whose contract do you use magic against me?”

The pressure stopped so suddenly, he nearly pitched on his knees, and by the thud behind him, someone else was less agile. He did not look behind him, merely found his balance, keeping his posture easy. It was entirely possible his relaxed stance meant no more to the high masters than a cat’s lax sprawl. He did not know how mages so powerful would construe threat. As humans did, or otherwise?

The archmage said something in an archaic dialect. Valetta said, “Prince Fejelis, this mage is not under discipline for anything done under contract; it is a Temple matter entirely.”

“I’m glad it is nothing that I asked Magister Tammorn to do. But I am not certain that this is
not
earthborn business, given how my father died.”

He heard movement behind him, and despite himself, the skin of his back tightened against a blow. Helenja’s voice said, “Fejelis, what is this?”

Orlanjis sidled up beside him on his left, his wide eyes taking in the bound Tam, and the archmage. By his indrawn breath, he recognized the latter immediately. The barest flicker of his attention betrayed his urge to look sideways at Fejelis, and then he stared front, unblinking, as he would a deadly sand viper. Fejelis heard their mother hiss Orlanjis’s name.

“Fejelis,” Prasav said, “show some common sense. You cannot interfere in Temple matters.”

Floria White Hand moved silently up on his other side. She had changed her clothes, but her hair was a toweled tangle and she was sashless and barefoot. And quite deadly, poised on the balls of her bare feet, her bruised face a cool, attentive fighter’s mask. Remembering her ensorcellment, he felt his skin prickle.

Too few allies, and the man he most trusted lying bound on that tent rug. He had no choice but to risk—he did not know what. “. . . I think I must, since I believe it concerns the magic that killed my father, specifically, the magic of Shadowborn.”

“Shadowborn are a myth,” Prasav said, curtly. “You’re just making a fool of yourself.”

A flicker of movement to the right of him, Perrin, in her dusty clothes, reaching a hand toward him. “Jay,” she said, voice urgent and low, “don’t. I—mistook what was happening here. It’s—it’s Temple discipline. Yes, I know it looks bad—but—it’s really not as bad as it looks. Just go now.”