Darkborn Part 4

She gathered her skirts to her and stepped sideways through the door, using the spill of sonn only to let her step around the guests on the balcony. She risked a soft sonn-cast over the stairs and gra.s.s below, so that she would not collide with anyone, and then ran down the stairs. A backward cast picked up the couple standing entwined, pressed back in one of the decorative alcoves beneath the stairs. Sensing the sonn, the woman twisted to place her inamorata between herself and the garden. Telmaine had already recognized her second cousin, in ardent embrace with a man not her husband. She sighed. Parthenalope's behavior was scandalous, but her husband's was little better. He drank and she strayed; she strayed and he drank. When she was in their company Telmaine did not need to touch them to feel their mutual revulsion and yoked despair.

She turned away from the adulterous couple, moving quietly across the gra.s.s toward the pond. In late summer, the nights were long enough to lose all the day's warmth, and the air, scented as it was, was chill. Her foot crunched softly on the pebbles as she reached the path around the pond, and she rocked back on her other foot, still placed on the quiet gra.s.s. Then she took her foot off the pebbles and turned, slowly moving parallel to the path, using sonn, scent, the feel of the ground under her shoes, and her familiarity with this garden. Unlike the gardens of some other great houses-her own family's included-the layout of this garden had not changed in a hundred years. Here were the linked ponds, with their languid screen of willows, and here the flower beds, with their extraordinary flowering of night blooms from Imogene's land and even beyond, and here the hedge around the maze, from behind which she suddenly heard her husband's voice.

"How was I supposed to know she would come here?"

She went still, listening with all her disbelieving being as the whisper hung in the air. A moment pa.s.sed, and from behind the hedge the whisperer spoke again.

"How was I supposed to know about the child? She never told me."

Not Bal, couldn't be Bal; she could not imagine scholarly, scrupulous Bal declaring, "How was I supposed to know?" in that defensive whine. And a child-whose child?

"You've been unforgivably careless," a woman's voice murmured. Telmaine s.h.i.+vered, not knowing why.

The man with Bal's voice said, with an urgency bordering on panic, "I'll take care of it. I promise. I'll take care of it. Please."

There was a considering silence, and the husky, almost expressionless voice said, "Ensure that you do. Now, go."

"Are you-"

"I've more to do here. Go."

Telmaine heard a crunch of gravel to her left as the man hurried out of the maze, tripping in his haste. The woman growled softly under her breath, a sound almost animal in its timbre. She did not move, did not sonn after him, waiting, as the crunch, crunch crunch, crunch of feet on gravel faded. Telmaine remained unmoving, pressed against the hedge; she was not even sure she was breathing; she was so dreadfully cold and strangely light-headed. Leaves crumpled under her hands; twigs and leaves jabbed her cheek and ear. She did not know why she did not want to be perceived, only of feet on gravel faded. Telmaine remained unmoving, pressed against the hedge; she was not even sure she was breathing; she was so dreadfully cold and strangely light-headed. Leaves crumpled under her hands; twigs and leaves jabbed her cheek and ear. She did not know why she did not want to be perceived, only that that she did not want to be perceived. She listened, almost with her skin, as the woman emerged and turned toward the great house with barely a sound even on gravel. She thought she felt, or fancied she felt, the hem of the other's skirt breeze past her own, but surely not; surely she would have been sonned. She heard the woman pause just beyond her, and the tiny snap as she freed her skirt from a thorn. she did not want to be perceived. She listened, almost with her skin, as the woman emerged and turned toward the great house with barely a sound even on gravel. She thought she felt, or fancied she felt, the hem of the other's skirt breeze past her own, but surely not; surely she would have been sonned. She heard the woman pause just beyond her, and the tiny snap as she freed her skirt from a thorn.

Laughter chimed from the direction of the house; light running footsteps sounded on the path; fractured sonn washed over her. She readied herself to be discovered, and turned in time to perceive the exchange of sonn as the woman swept her skirts aside to pointedly avoid two hectic young girls, one of whom was Anarys. She thought the woman's hand reached out to tug brusquely at Anarys's slipping veil as sonn faded.

Anarys gave a little cry. Telmaine's sonn leaped out, resolving the girls, standing bewildered in the path. Of the woman, there might have been a vague movement, close to the limit of her perception, but nothing else.

Telmaine hurried forward to meet the girls. "Tellie," cried Anarys guiltily, and fussed her veil over her head. "We just wanted to go out in the garden-we so seldom get to be in the garden at this time."

"Anarys," she said. "The woman who went past you-do you know who she was?"

"What woman?"

"What do you mean, what woman-she pulled at your veil."

"It was the wind that pulled at my veil!" Anarys cried.

"There was a woman on the path just now."

"I didn't meet any woman," Anarys said, and her sixteen-year-old friend shook her head emphatically.

Telmaine had no way to remove her long gloves un.o.btrusively, to let her intrude upon her sister's thought to detect the lie-or whatever lay behind the denial. Unless Telmaine herself were somehow deluded, dreaming. She took control of herself, aware that the chill had faded; at least she could get the girls in, safe, and maybe later she could ask Anarys again. "You should go in. The sunrise bell will be sounding soon."

"No, it won't," said Anarys, emboldened to impertinence by her friend's presence. "The inside bell goes off half an hour before that; it's just been a few minutes."

"Anarys," Telmaine said, "you're not supposed to be outside in the garden at this hour. Please go inside."

"Why are you outside?" said Anarys, but the bra.s.s had worn off her challenge.

"None of your business," Telmaine said, growing angry with a fear she did not understand. "Please go inside, or I will tell Mama-both your mothers."

The two girls turned as one, Anarys flouncing and Jaquecynth trotting along beside. "She's meeting a lover," Telmaine heard Jaquecynth declare, loud enough to be audible. Telmaine pressed a gloved knuckle to her lip, ready to stifle a sound that might be a giggle or a sob. Was it possible that two clever teenage girls could be made to forget an encounter? Or were they lying, and if so, why should they lie? Telmaine had heard no words exchanged, not even a murmur of promise or threat. Who was the man who had sounded so much like Balthasar, in timbre and p.r.o.nunciation, and so little like him in speech and manner? Why were the woman's soft voice and muted manner so terrifying, both to the man and to her?

Her heart rate had barely begun to slow when she sensed someone behind her. She whirled, loosing a snap of sonn that crisply outlined . . . Ishmael di Studier.

Mortally embarra.s.sed at having committed the very impropriety she'd first accused him of, she made a tiny sound and pressed her gloved fingers to her lips.

"It's all right, my lady," he said, a smile in his voice. "I am sorry I startled you."

She lowered her hand, slowly, and flicked a tiny, timid burst, which showed his square face and skewed smile. "Oh, dear," she said.

His smile broadened. Blood surged to her face, mingled mortification and renewed fury. He had no business embarra.s.sing her like this. "You did did startle me!" startle me!"

"I should be most glad you were not armed, then," he rumbled.

She stood breathing quickly for a moment, cold air catching in her throat. In a smaller voice she said, "I am sorry."

"So we are quits on that particular offense as well."

"Quite . . . quits. Baron, did you sonn a woman on the path a little while ago?"

"A particular woman?"

"Yes. She came from the maze, encountered two young girls, and went on into the house, I think, though I cannot say for sure. I did not sonn her clearly myself, and I would very much like to know who she was."

"I cannot say I did," Ishmael said. "You're troubled about something."

"Is it possible-" Telmaine said, and then stopped, shocked at herself. No woman of society should ask whether something could or could not be done by magic; no woman of society should be in the least interested in magic. She found that she was plucking at the fingertips of her gloves, with no idea whether it would be worse if he told her she was raving, or took her seriously. "Never mind. It's . . . it's nothing. It must be getting close to the sunrise bell." She started to move, realized he was not accompanying her, stopped.

In his soft, slightly abashed rumble he said, "You should go in first; I will come once the bell rings. There are malicious tongues about."

She halted and turned to face him. "Did you hear her?"

"Lady Xephilia? Th'words, no, but I know the tenor of it well enough."

"I was furious at her," Telmaine said.

Sonn licked gently across her face. "Why so?" he said curiously, and as well he might, as she had spoken with more vehemence than she could readily explain. She was not going to tell him Lady Xephilia preferred that he should suffer an unknown but likely horrible death rather than live in society as a mage. She was not going to think what Lady Xephilia would consider a suitable fate for Telmaine.

"No need t'be upset on my account," he said. "I've built a thick skin over the years. Takes more than words to draw my blood these days." With a smile in his voice, he added, "Annoys them no end, that."

"You just go on annoying them, then," she said, as lightly as she could.

"As you command, m'lady. While we have this moment, I understand you and your daughters will be taking the train back to Minhorne. Might you accept me as escort? I'd thus mix pleasure with the duty laid on me t'present myself t'your husband."

Common sense warred with rebellion, caution with impulse. She had always been exquisitely careful around acknowledged mages, hiding her own secret behind social prejudice. She could easily refuse to travel with him, because of his reputation. But she had danced two dances with him, and he would need to meet her husband. And she would not let the Lady Xephilias of the world rule her.

The sunrise bell began to toll, startling her. She blurted out her answer before she could change her mind. "Of course I will. It is an eminently sensible arrangement."

Her sonn caught an ironic slant to his smile. "My pleasure, m'lady. Now, please, you must go in."

She put a gloved hand on his arm. "Don't wait too long."

"I've the rising of the sun in my bones, Lady Telmaine. No sunrise bells in the wilds."

Three

Balthasar

O n the other side of the paper wall, Floria did her morning exercises, while Balthasar read the proceedings of the latest Intercalatory Council meeting and tried not to doze off. He was still weary with the aftereffects of Floria's stimulant and two days caring for Tercelle's abandoned twins. Sighted or not, they had the same imperious helplessness of any newborn, and as briefly as they had been in his life, they left a hollow in his heart with their going. Now he listened for the sound of a carriage and the excited chatter of two little girls, knowing that if he did not hear it soon, he would not be hearing it tonight. Telmaine would not bring the children out so near to the sunrise bell. n the other side of the paper wall, Floria did her morning exercises, while Balthasar read the proceedings of the latest Intercalatory Council meeting and tried not to doze off. He was still weary with the aftereffects of Floria's stimulant and two days caring for Tercelle's abandoned twins. Sighted or not, they had the same imperious helplessness of any newborn, and as briefly as they had been in his life, they left a hollow in his heart with their going. Now he listened for the sound of a carriage and the excited chatter of two little girls, knowing that if he did not hear it soon, he would not be hearing it tonight. Telmaine would not bring the children out so near to the sunrise bell.

When the doorbell rang, he was on his feet before he realized it could not be Telmaine; she had her keys. Fleetingly, he was tempted not to answer it, but then carefully laid the papers aside and went downstairs. He had no more than unlatched it when the handle twisted under his hand and the door was hurled open by a man's greater strength, throwing him back against the hall table. An ornament brushed his leg in falling and smashed beside his foot. By then, the two men were in the hall, the larger pinning him against the wall. "Where are the brats?"

He cast sonn, gaining a blurred impression of a stranger with a thick neck, square features, damaged ears, before a fist drove into his lower belly, doubling him over. "None of that," his a.s.sailant ordered.

He hung in the man's hands, retching, shocked into paralysis by the violence that had come without forerunning threat or warning.

The second man spoke, his a.s.sumed Rivermarch accent not quite masking the distinct aristocratic tones that Bal loved to hear from his wife. "Get him inside. We don't want to be sonned from the street."

He tried to draw breath to call for help, but could manage no more than a half cry before the heavy door slammed. He heard broken porcelain crunch under heavy feet.

"Now, Dr. Balthasar Hearne, this can go easy with you, or it can go hard. Where are Tercelle Amberley's infants?"

He straightened up, struggling against fear more than against pain, because he knew that to defy them would be to invite more violence. "I do not know what you mean," he said, his voice shaking.

He heard the creak of a heavy jacket, and his sonn burst out involuntarily to catch the man who held him drawing back his fist and the other reaching out to stay his hand. "Not yet," said the aristocrat. "Not quite yet. We will search the house, and perhaps we will find what we need, or perhaps we will find something that proves to the good doctor that he cannot lie to us. Hood him."

They jammed a hood over his head, m.u.f.fling sonn and disorienting him. They lugged him from hall to receiving room to kitchen, thrusting him face-first against the wall while they investigated cupboards, drawers, and cubbies, anywhere that might conceal a newborn child. They found the crib pushed back into the cupboard beneath the stairs, but Bal had drizzled dust from the unemptied dustpan over and around it, craftily enough to deceive Telmaine, never mind these two. They were rough in their search, but not wanton, and that gave him a modic.u.m of hope that they would treat him no worse than they did his household. Perhaps they might yet be persuaded that he knew nothing, that their information was tenuous.

The search ended, as he hoped it would, in the study. There was no sound from behind the paper wall, but keen-eared Floria would surely have heard the incursion into his home. He heard the aristocrat's footsteps move over to the wall and linger, as though he were examining it, and then return to Bal. "As I said, this can go easy on you, or it can go hard."

"I have no idea who you-" Bal said.

"Very hard," said the aristocrat.

The first man drove a fist into Bal's back, above his kidney, and he thudded to hands and knees. The pain and the need to breathe consumed him for an interminable length of time. He fought not to call out Floria's name, not to plead for her aid. If she could do something from behind that wall that could not be breached, she would.

"Again," said the man above him, he did not know which of them, but in answer a boot plowed into the front of his ribs, and he found himself lying on the floor without a recollection of having fallen, clawing at the boards in his struggle for air.

"Just tell us where Tercelle Amberley's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are," said the man, his true tones more marked in command.

Balthasar curled up, his one feeble strategy to protect himself. He heard heavy feet moving around him. "Not about the head," the man with the cultured voice said. His voice came closer as he crouched. "Tercelle Amberley gave birth to twin boys here. You had the disposing of them. Where did you send them? Did that sister of yours take them?"

"I haven't . . . met T-Tercelle for . . . years," Bal said, his voice a thread.

"Again," said the interrogator. The kick jarred his whole body; ribs cracked and breath went out of him in a strangled scream. "He," the speaker said, "could break your spine with one move. You'd end your days a cripple."

"I . . . don't . . . know," Bal gasped.

"Then we'll wait for your pretty wife and daughters."

His body answered for him. He started to drag himself up, rising from hands and knees, before his torturer planted another kick in his abdomen, leaving him once more in a retching huddle.

"There," the aristocrat commanded, directing the toe driven again into his rib cage, the heel brought down on his hands and wrists and ankles, each blow well s.p.a.ced to allow for the question, "Where are they?" until his, "No, no, no," was sobbed through his teeth, more plea for cessation than refusal. They did not stop to discern the difference; they battered him until, beyond speech, he writhed like a crushed worm against the base of the paper wall.

"Stop," said the aristocrat. He felt the hood jerk from his head, and sonn lash his face. "He said this one was soft."

"He's faking."

"He's not-Who's that?" There came a small sound, neither thump nor slash, overhead.

Floria's voice said distinctly, "The White Hand." It was her mortal challenge, her last declaration to the men and women she killed. The aristocrat stooping over him shrieked. One of them kicked him again, but it was a glancing blow, and there came a second cry, higher and hoa.r.s.er. ". . . shoot and we'll burn . . ." "We're burning anyway-" "Stop! Stop, Lightborn! You're killing us." He heard them scrambling away from him, and felt the fever of sunrise on his skin. He felt her spring over him to harry them out the door in pitiless, miraculous pursuit. He struggled to raise his head, to make the last thing he sonned be her, but he was too weak to do more than roll it, and his sonn was a whisper. He heard her say from beside him as he lay against the paper wall, "Bal, Bal, please talk to me!" Burning, he thought, was not so terrible after all.

Telmaine At the train station at Bolingbroke Circle, Telmaine had second thoughts that had nothing to do with the propriety of allowing Ishmael di Studier to escort her through the city so he could meet her husband and lay his case before Bal.

"Is that thing . . . magical?" she said doubtfully, pulsing sonn over the conveyance in which he proposed they travel.

"Not in the least," Ishmael di Studier said cheerfully. "I admit the design is based on the Lightborn horseless carriages, which are, but the engine burns a mixture of alcohols and petroleum. We are experimenting to find the best possible mix."

She had not expected him to share the fas.h.i.+onable mania for machinery, given his disdainful response to the display automaton. Yet here he was, showing off a polished and decorated machine machine that was clearly his pride and joy. The thing was like a low open coach, except that there was no horse and it had grafted onto the rear a casing that he claimed housed the propulsion mechanism. Above the axle and between the wheels ran a bundle of piping. She sonned it dubiously, trying to convince herself that it was no more than a single small, trackless train engine, while Amerdale clutched her skirts and Florilinde sidled closer to the thing, fascinated. The baron had spent much of the train journey exerting his charm on them, to good effect. " that was clearly his pride and joy. The thing was like a low open coach, except that there was no horse and it had grafted onto the rear a casing that he claimed housed the propulsion mechanism. Above the axle and between the wheels ran a bundle of piping. She sonned it dubiously, trying to convince herself that it was no more than a single small, trackless train engine, while Amerdale clutched her skirts and Florilinde sidled closer to the thing, fascinated. The baron had spent much of the train journey exerting his charm on them, to good effect. "Papa would like this," Flori said slyly. would like this," Flori said slyly.

Telmaine surrendered. Balthasar would indeed like it. Sunrise was approaching, and she could not risk having to take shelter with Ishmael, of all people. She said briskly to her daughters, "Then do get in."

"Need t'prime the engine," the baron said, which he did with a vigorous pumping motion on a lever in the front of the car.

The racket was astonis.h.i.+ng. "Heaven's heart, Baron! Can you even hear to sonn . . . ?" Amerdale had her hands clamped over her ears, and even Florilinde's expression was dubious.

"Pardon?" the baron bellowed back.

"Can you even hear-" she tried again, although she felt her point amply ill.u.s.trated.

"Not th'same frequency!"

That might be, Telmaine thought, maneuvering her skirts, but the whole neighborhood was still going to know they had arrived.

They started with a lurch. Telmaine, watching the baron over her shoulder, thought that, compared to driving a carriage, steering seemed a remarkably onerous procedure involving levers and pistons and a large wheel. The baron plied them like an organist playing a fugue with more enthusiasm than skill. At least so close to sunrise the streets were largely empty, though Ishmael seemed oblivious to the occasional shying horse and cursing coachman. She hoped the children were similarly oblivious. Their vocabulary was quite diverse enough.