Lightborn. Part 13

While Tammorn's checkered career included petty larceny, this seemed an oddly trivial accusation. And why would the mages vigilant be paying attention to the ornaments in the prince's room? ". . . A talisman," Fejelis answered himself, ruminatively. "Did you find one?"

There was a silence of several beats. Fejelis said, ". . . I take that as a no."

n.o.body contradicted him. ". . . Thank you," he said, mildly. "Be a.s.sured I will turn my attention to the renewal of contracts as soon as I can."

They stood with a disconcerting synchrony. "Your sister sends her best wishes," the woman said. He blinked at her, taken aback. She smiled, and the three turned and went out, the mages vigilant following them.

The secretary, experienced in court matters, conducted them out and closed the doors behind them, giving Fejelis a momentary respite. He used it to put his cauled head in his hands, rubbing his forehead to ease the ache.

Perrin-or whatever her name was now-would be twenty. She had been ten when the mages vigilant detected emergent magic in her. The compact dictated that no mage could hold secular rank, much less that of heir. By the time Fejelis had been able to leave his rooms after the poisoning, she was gone, her name barely mentioned. As if she herself had been part of the conspiracy. That was the greatest of cruelties.

For nearly ten years, he had schooled himself to forget he had another sister. And now, in violation of custom if not law, Your sister sends her best wishes.

Mother of All Things Born, what scheme was the Temple engaged in?

Tammorn In his distraction, Tam sensed Lukfer's visitors only almost at Lukfer's door. By then there was no effacing himself. Lukfer said, He opened the door not on painful shadow but on sunlight. The curtains had been flung wide. The door to the seldom-used balcony stood open, and Lukfer was lounging against the bal.u.s.trade, talking to two other mages. His magic eddied and rippled around the room, twitching the curtains and rattling the contents of cabinet drawers. It prodded and nudged Tam toward the balcony, playfully.

"Ah, Tam," Lukfer said, with a wave of a hand that was empty of any gla.s.s. "I believe you know Magister Pardel, and I believe you have met Magistra Viola, in her former life. Pardel, Viola, Magister Tammorn, who I believe needs no introduction."

Magistra Viola returned his stare with gray eyes as pale and unrevealing of her thoughts as mirrors. Her warm sandy hair was close-woven in an ornate southern style. She had the oval face, broad cheekbones, and brow of the young prince consort Helenja, but her nose and mouth were those of her father and the elder of her brothers. She had their height, too. Her ankle- length overjacket, her sleeveless s.h.i.+rt and full skirts, all were made of cloth enspelled to pa.s.s light in one direction only, and all were red as blood. On the notch at the base of her throat rested the twin of the pendant Fejelis wore, except that the stone was colorless, not blue.

"Magister Tam," Fejelis's elder sister murmured.

From his brief visits to the palace before Fejelis's poisoning, he remembered Perrin as a leggy hoyden of a child, the then favorite of Helenja's circle. By the time he returned from banishment, she was long gone into her own exile, as far away from court as the Temple could place her.

What else he knew of her was through Fejelis's very occasional mention.

Magister Pardel he also knew. A broad, black-haired, dark-skinned man, with something of the gait, still, of the young sailor he had been when his magic unexpectedly manifested. Shrewd and adaptable, he was the highest ranked of all sports within the Temple, both magically and materially successful. Almost the last person Tam would expect to find chatting on the balcony with Lukfer.

"So," Pardel said, with a glance at Viola, "a contract with the prince. That'll set them by their ears."

Viola caught and held Tam's eyes, drawing aside the collar of her jacket to show the chains of rank around her neck. "I am ranked and of age," she said, in a sweet, light voice. "I am no longer obliged to pretend that I had no life before the Temple."

Second-rank, only. Gossip had told him her magic had proved weak, cruelly so to have cost her her earthborn rank. He looked at her silver eyes and wondered what she felt about that.

"How is Jay?"

The name startled him into a twitch. A logical nickname amongst children, he told himself sternly. "He's holding up well," he said.

"Do you think he'd like to see me?" she said.

"I think he might," he said, though cautiously.

"Would you be prepared to arrange it?"

He made a sound intended to be neither agreement nor rejection. She did not press further, but engaged him in conversation around the doings and politics within the Temple that deftly trod away from matters of legitimacy and history. He would have enjoyed it but for wondering what Lukfer, and she, and Pardel, were all about.

"An interesting young woman," Lukfer noted after the two were well gone, "who has not forgotten that, but for a chance gift of fate, she might have been princess herself."

Tam gave him a sharp look-Lukfer's fluctuating magic could be intrusive in more than physical ways, though Pardel would have s.h.i.+elded the weaker mage. Lukfer merely raised a brow, inviting him to voice his thoughts.

"Why were they here? Did you invite them?"

"I did. I'm afraid, my young thief, that your reversion to your former habits did not go entirely unnoticed."

"The box-" And then he realized that he had no more sense of that noxious talisman.

Lukfer followed the turn of his head. "I decided," the older mage said, "partly for my edification, and partly as a precaution, to annul the ensorcellment."

"Dear Mother of All," Tam breathed at the thought of the intimacy that that implied. Little wonder Lukfer was out in the suns.h.i.+ne, and looked, now he paid more attention, a little sickly.

"It was not," Lukfer said, "a pleasant experience, but very educational. Now my guests have gone, I would quite like a gla.s.s of that fine Isles wine-the decanter is standing out. Pour a gla.s.s for yourself, if you would."

Given his precarious control, Lukfer rarely indulged. Nor did Tam: beer and spirits had played too large a part in the disasters of his youth. He poured-by hand, not magic-and carried the gla.s.ses back onto the balcony.

"So somebody noticed I had taken the box," he said. "How much difficulty is that likely to cause? Was that why you-?" He gestured toward the interior and the quenched box.

Lukfer held the winegla.s.s lightly, contemplating the golden depths. "Aside from its general unpleasantness, I decided I would rather not have my lights go out at some unpredictable moment." His eyes lifted. "You think I did it to remove evidence?"

"I hope," Tam said slowly, "that wasn't the reason."

"I cannot say it was not," the other mage said.

Tam tamped down his temper. Getting himself tossed off the balcony by Lukfer's stirred-up magic would attract attention. "I had breakfast with Fejelis and his relatives-both sides. There was poison in one of the sauces-the heavily spiced ones that only the southerners would eat-and what was probably a staged episode on the part of Orlanjis. The attempt wasn't likely to have killed anyone, given the concentration of magic at the table, but I annulled it. I tried tasting it to see if I could learn more, but Fejelis stopped me out of a care for my palate."

Lukfer grunted. "Confused the one responsible no end, no doubt."

Tam rubbed his forehead, squinting in the late-afternoon sunlight. "Fejelis believes the solution is in identifying his father's a.s.sa.s.sin. I don't think he recognizes how much of the stability he was used to was because his father had ruled so well for so long. He won't get it back just by implicating the responsible faction. He is so young, Lukfer. Idealistic and fatalistic. Convinced he's invulnerable and equally convinced he will die young. And either way, bent on taking the most appalling risks."

He began to pace. "Last night I sensed more Shadowborn magic. I placed it in the archduke's palace on the Darkborn side. The worker was strong, but not particularly skillful. I wanted to examine the box again, to see if I could tell if it was the same mage."

"Ah," Lukfer said. "The talisman was enspelled by two mages, one powerful and skilled, and one powerful and less skilled. A master and student, perhaps; perhaps you sensed the student." Very soberly, "They understand our form of magic very well indeed, Tam. I could not have designed a more efficient annulment myself." Lukfer, after decades struggling to control his strength, had as much theoretical insight into magic as anyone in the tower.

But he would never be able to pa.s.s it on, neither the strength nor the insight. The masters of lineage had been unable to capture his strength for the lines; of his several children, born to carefully selected mothers, none were more than fourth- rank. His one strong granddaughter had vanished years ago. Tam was his only student in the last four decades, the only one who had the patience to receive understanding piecemeal, since even normal magespeech could be hazardous.

"Why did you have Pardel and the-Magistra Viola here?"

"You asked me-challenged me, even-to find a way to destroy this magic."

"You told them?" That came out offended, but he could not forget how he had had to drag an admission out of Lukfer. He shook his head, by way of apology Lukfer's faint smile conveyed warmth and forgiveness. "Not yet. I have to be very sure that we can trust them, before we draw them into working outside the compact."

Outside the . . . "That's not possible."

"Is it not?" There was a surge of chill and foulness, and Lukfer's wine flared into a transparent blue flame. Tam gagged at the unexpected proximity of it. Lukfer raised the gla.s.s and, gently, quenched the flame with another pulse of the vile magic. "It is undetectable, at least by the lineage mages. And it is not nearly as unpleasant to use as to be around."

"Mother of All Things," Tam whispered. "You mean you're able to-"

He never finished the sentence, or the thought. His persistent sense of Fejelis's vitality suddenly flared bright with a sense of danger, and brighter still with agony. He choked out, "Jay-" Lukfer's broad, white hands caught and steadied him and chaotic power suddenly surged around him. Tam caught it as it crested, heedless of the danger, wrapped it in his will, and lifted.

Fejelis Fejelis found his younger brother on his balcony, standing in the one corner that was still not in shadow at this hour, and looking out over the late-afternoon city. Orlanjis had, by all reports, kept to his rooms all day. He was not dressed for a public appearance. His auburn hair was worked into a simple braid, held with a red ribbon.

He started as Fejelis's name was announced, his shoulders stiffening.

". . . I'm glad to see you didn't suffer too many ill effects from breakfast," Fejelis said, to his back.

Orlanjis turned, posture and expression braced, lower lip protruding slightly. "I spoiled it, didn't I?"

". . . If that was your intention, yes."

"I didn't want to, but Sharel . . . and I wasn't feeling well anyway. . . ."

Sharel was their mother's sister, younger by twelve years, who had joined Helenja's entourage after the purge that had followed Fejelis's poisoning. Fejelis was not surprised that Sharel had suggested the masquerade, or that Orlanjis had taken the suggestion; when he was younger, he had adored her, and even now, plainly he was under her influence.

"I'm ashamed of myself," said Orlanjis, eyes downcast behind thick ginger lashes.

Which he might well be, as well as realizing that the potential consequences of offending Prince Fejelis were quite a bit more severe than the consequences of offending a mere elder brother. Fejelis rubbed thoughtfully at the callus on his right index finger, where his fencing glove had worn thin and the pommel rubbed, and looked around him. Of all the prince's children, Orlanjis had spent the longest in their mother's lands, in the desert, and was acutely homesick in the north. Along this narrow balcony, he had created a miniature desert, the sands sheltered and contained by gla.s.s.

Orlanjis said, dolefully, "I suppose if I want to go south for the winter, it's you I should ask."

Along the side of the building, blocking one of the windows, a portion of a canyon wall had been sculpted from porous clay and planted with cacti and epiphytes. Rather than answer his brother's implied request, Fejelis crouched to study the feathery sprigs of the plants that lived on moisture from the air. After a silence, Orlanjis said, "It shouldn't be that yellow on the tips. It needs more sun."

Hand on the gla.s.s to balance himself, Fejelis stood, trying not to make it apparent he did so to avoid having his brother at his back. Orlanjis seemed not to notice. His eyes, dark like their mother's, avoided Fejelis's. "Jay," he said more clearly, "I'd like to go south as soon as you'll let me. I don't want to be here while-"

While things worked themselves out around their father's deposition, Fejelis understood. ". . . I'd miss you."

Orlanjis took a step back. Fejelis shrugged, inviting him to believe it or not. ". . . I was thinking to ask if you would like the vacant rooms on the top floor. A far bigger balcony than this, and much more sun."

Orlanjis blinked. "Those were Perrin's rooms."

Your sister sends her regards.

". . . . Even if she were ever to come back to the palace, it would be as a mage." And it was not likely, he knew, from Tam. The Temple disapproved of emotional ties with earthborn. Few mages were like Tam, prepared to flout that disapproval to love and befriend earthborn. "I don't think she would mind."

"It's on the same floor as Fath-you," Orlanjis said, suspiciously. "Do you want me there?"

". . . Yes," said Fejelis. ". . . I do. And yes. It's a bribe. I would far rather have you working with me than against me."

Orlanjis's lips parted.

"Father always said you had more imagination than the rest of us put together. . . . The lack spares my nerves, in these circ.u.mstances, but it does not help me solve the problems I face-the rift between north and south, the impoverishment of the earthborn lineages, the artisans' discontent, the effect on us of the Darkborn's progress. . . . To find solutions, I need people who can envision something new." He gestured to the model cliff. ". . . What I can do is make sure is they and their ideas have opportunity to thrive."

"You sound-like Father," Orlanjis said, his brows drawing together.

"Thank you," Fejelis said.

"Mother won't like it if I move," Orlanjis said, toeing a twig on the balcony.

". . . I have to try and reach an accommodation with her, too," Fejelis said. An imp of mischief prompted him to say, ". . . Would you be willing to have breakfast with me tomorrow? Exonerate me of the suspicion of having tried to poison you this morning?"

Orlanjis's dark eyes widened at the blunt phrasing. ". . . Bring whomever you wish," Fejelis said, lightly.

"Jay, that mage-Tammorn-has a.s.sociations with the radical artisans' movement."

". . . I'm aware of that," Fejelis said, wondering how Orlanjis had come by that information. "But thank you. Magister Tammorn came from the western provinces, so he has considerable sympathy with the artisans, though not, I think, with the radical factions." He knew not, in fact. The radicals recruited from the dispossessed incomers to the cities, of whom, decades ago, Tam had been one. Their advocacy of revolt put at risk the innovators Tam nurtured like tender plants. "I need that sympathy. Their brightnesses of both the court and the Temple are too far removed from the hards.h.i.+ps of ordinary people. If we can address those, the radicals will lose their support."

Orlanjis's cynical expression was unpleasant on so roundly appealing a face.

". . . You think I'm being naive," Fejelis said. ". . . So be it. Let the argument be simple compa.s.sion."

"How do you know so much?" Orlanjis said, a little sulkily. Perhaps measuring his potential as prince against Fejelis, and not liking the contrast.

Fejelis shrugged. ". . . I went out and about when I was younger-un.o.bserved, I thought, though Father eventually disavowed me of that notion." Except where Tam was involved; the mage subtly used his magic to protect his meetings with Fejelis and the others from observation. "Father talked to me about what I learned, much as he talked to you about the southerners."

"You were close to him," Orlanjis said. "Closer than either he or you let us think."

Fejelis let silence be his answer. He felt an involuntary tightening in his throat at the reminder that that closeness was lost to him. Orlanjis's fingers worried at his sleeve. "I feel such a coward, Jay, not wearing red for him."

The corner of Fejelis's mouth quirked. ". . . *Be your own man' is advice given cheaply by people who have no idea what it is to be the sons of a northern-southern marriage. But you're not a child anymore, 'Jis; you're a man, a prince's son, and could well be my successor. Like it or not, you have to make those decisions for yourself, and accept the risk. . . . And here endeth the lesson," he added, wryly, seeing the resentful flash in his brother's dark eyes.

There was a long silence. Orlanjis, he saw, was struggling with himself over a question. He feared he knew what it was.

"Jay, who do you think killed him?"

". . . I don't know," Fejelis said, leaning his elbow on the bal.u.s.trade. "There is no doubt that magic was involved. The palace judiciary is reviewing all contracts, to try and identify any worded so as to permit an attack on the prince, that they missed. . . . The Temple is investigating magic outside contract." He hesitated, and then decided on a deeper candor than he had dared up until now, leaning close to say softly, ". . . Tammorn represents our best hope for learning anything the Temple does not want us to know."

"Oh," said Orlanjis, staring at his brother. "But we can't . . ."

That "we" echoed, made his heart lift, but Orlanjis did not finish the sentence. No matter, they had time. "I'm cold," Orlanjis muttered, and retreated back into the sunlit corner. Fejelis went with him. He should, he knew, get back to his receiving room and continue with his endless work, but this new rapport he was nurturing was precious. He did not know when he would have another opportunity to speak to Orlanjis like this, without interference.

He propped himself against the balcony, enjoying the warmth on his back. Mage light might sustain life, but it did not nourish it, not as the sun did. ". . . You were going to say . . ."

Orlanjis glanced toward him. Fejelis glimpsed the flash of white around his pupils as his eyes widened. He did not consciously register the sudden horror; he was not aware of recognizing the implications, nor did he formulate intent. He simply threw himself on Orlanjis, twisting to heave him bodily behind the s.h.i.+eld of the gla.s.sed garden. He heard a coa.r.s.e hiss behind him, and something thumped his back with a sound like a stone striking a hung carca.s.s, and enough force to drive the breath from him. He crashed forward across his brother's legs, the impact jarring loose searing pain and a gush of salty warmth in his throat. He felt Orlanjis's thras.h.i.+ng efforts to free himself, but already his senses were being stripped from him, his hearing reduced to the fading rus.h.i.+ng of his pulse, his sight entirely red shadows darkening to black. His last sensation was of peach fuzz against his palms.

Seven.

Tammorn Tam dropped to his knees, gasping, as Lukfer's chaotic magic unraveled from his. Miraculously, he was alive and intact and not bisected by a plane of gra.s.s or planted knee-deep with the sands of this toy garden, or, worst of all, conjoined with one of the vigilants or servants cl.u.s.tered in the sunlight corner. His magic, wielded without thought, thrust them all aside, and he caught his first glimpse of Fejelis lying facedown and unmoving, impaled through the back by a wooden bolt. Just beyond his head, Orlanjis lay curled up against the bal.u.s.trade, face twisted away in panicked, revolted denial. Even before he saw Fejelis, Tam had sensed the foul aura of the bolt itself, something crafted not for the annulment of light but for the annulment of life itself.

The mage vigilant who had been down on her knees beside Fejelis struggled against the pressure of Tam's greater strength, shouting something at him that he ignored, as he ignored the useless fluttering of her magic. They told him later he had lifted the length of the balcony. He knew only that he found himself crouching over Fejelis, tearing away the bloodied fabric around the bolt as simultaneously his magic tore at the killing ensorcellment. Then he felt his own heart suddenly falter within him, his hands go numb, the bolt darken in his sight, as his nemesis, shockingly, seized upon his vitality.

Until Lukfer reached across the distance between them to hook the core out of the ensorcellment with a single practiced twist.

The bolt had driven all the way through Fejelis's lung, lodging in a rib. Its tip was bone, exempt, like the wood, from the talisman against metal bullets. It was barbed, designed to tear flesh when it was withdrawn. Tam growled, and felt the bolt vibrate with the sound, warping and withering like a stick in a flame, the barbs shriveling away. He drew it out, casting it aside; he did not know where, or toward whom. Fejelis choked, strangling on blood, an excruciatingly familiar sound. He reached out for the other mage, despite the danger, and felt a great surge of vitality flood him. Feverish with the excess of it, he bullied together blood vessels, spun together tissues, purged the blood from Fejelis's lungs and windpipe, and swept closed the skin around the wound so brusquely it s.h.i.+vered like the film on heated milk. Then he gathered Fejelis into his lap.