Darkborn Part 5

It wasn't a relaxing trip, with the noise, the starts, the stops, the sudden swerves and jolts that threatened to pitch her and Amerdale on the floor and tumble the incautious Florilinde into the street. Still, it was swift; she could say that for it. She was surprised to sonn a carriage standing at their front door. The baron deftly pulled in behind it, and the sober horse did not bolt, though it stamped restlessly.

When the baron turned off the engine, she thought she had gone deaf.

"Papa!" cried Florilinde, and scrambled down from the car. "Papa, sonn what we came here in!"

The baron came suddenly to life. "Hold her!" And she sonned on his face the expression that he must wear as a Shadowborn charged out of the brush, as the door opened and two men came reeling out. Both men had narrow, oozing brands across faces and chests. They blasted her with a shock of rude sonn, making her blanch. "Who . . ." she began.

Ishmael di Studier vaulted from the carriage, s.n.a.t.c.hing at Florilinde. His hand closed on the child's collar and then the other man swung at him with something like a black sock. With a crack of weight on bone, the baron went to his knees. But he was no sooner down than he was dodging sideways, and Telmaine heard the swish of the sap as it missed its second blow.

"Mama!" screamed Florilinde as the first man s.n.a.t.c.hed her up.

Another blast of sonn, directed at her, which must have stripped her practically naked. He said, "We get Tercelle Amberley's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, Hearne gets his daughter back. Tell him that."

And they ran for the coach. Florilinde thrashed futilely in her kidnapper's arms. "Mama!" Telmaine slithered from the carriage and scrambled after the coach as it began to move. She came close enough to clutch at a wheel that tore itself from her hands as the coach inexorably gathered speed.

She turned wildly to find Ishmael leaning against the carriage. "What are you standing there for? We have to go after them."

The baron was sweating with pain, supporting his left arm against his body. "Can't drive," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Need both hands. And we must tend t'your husband."

She dithered in a torment of indecision, and then pulled the daughter left to her from the carriage, holding her smotheringly tight as she ran up to the door. Her feet crunched on broken ornaments, her skirts snagged on an overturned table. Amerdale sobbed, clinging to her. Into the receiving room, into the kitchen, into the pantry, out into the garden, her panic mounting. Dimly, over Amerdale's sobs, she could hear another voice, like an echo.

"Lady Telmaine!" She whirled. Ishmael di Studier stood bracing himself in the doorway. "He's upstairs," he said, more quietly. "Can't you hear?" So prompted, she could hear the voice of Floria White Hand, crying her husband's name.

Balthasar was in the study, lying curled up against the paper wall. At the sound of their arrival, Floria's voice demanded, half a hiss, "Who's that?"

The baron answered for them both. "Ishmael di Studier, mistress. Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, and Lady Telmaine Hearne."

"Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, thank the Mother. It's Floria White Hand," the Lightborn a.s.sa.s.sin said. "What's happened to Balthasar?"

The baron went down on one knee. He grimaced and set his teeth on the fingertips of the glove, pulling at it, finding it too new to yield. "M'lady," he said, "help me get my glove off."

Telmaine ignored him. She fell to her knees, spilled Amerdale from her arms, and stripped off her own traveling gloves, reaching for Bal, feeling chilled and clammy skin, and pain-pain-pain pain-pain-pain. She screamed and s.n.a.t.c.hed her hands back, clenching them against her stomach and doubling over with the reverberations of his agony. Di Studier muttered, "That answers that," and reached out to grip her wrist in his. "Where is he hurt?"

She could not answer. She had no sense that there had been any one place. Just pain-pain-pain pain-pain-pain that seemed to soak the very air. that seemed to soak the very air.

"Need my glove off," the baron gritted. "Now!"

Amerdale grasped his glove with her little hands, pulling with all her strength; belatedly, Telmaine helped, unaware of his thoughts, hardly aware of a sense of presence, like a bank of glowing embers. The baron laid his bare hand on Bal's throat. "Pulse is there, but he's in a bad way." He slid his hand around to press gently on Bal's stomach. Bal moaned. "He's got a belly full of blood. They've burst something-spleen, curse it."

His tone told her the worst of it. Telmaine struggled to her feet. "He needs a doctor!"

"One of your leeches would kill him," Ishmael said. "Mistress White Hand, as you value this man's life, I need a spicule, strongest charge you've got. I'm a first-rank mage, not much, but this man's dying on us."

She heard Floria's feet running from the room.

"Lady Telmaine, sit down on the floor," Ishmael said brusquely to her, "before you faint. I'll do what I can."

She huddled down beside him and wept for her losses and her own uselessness. Amerdale crept to her, clinging and whispering, "Don't cry, Mama."

Floria returned and slammed something into the pa.s.se-muraille pa.s.se-muraille. "Di Studier! Here's your spicule. Can you handle it?"

Amerdale scuttled away from Telmaine's embrace with a tearing of hem and pulled open the door, returning with something in a small velvet bag. Telmaine roused herself to reach for it at the very moment the baron said, "Not you!" She felt a sudden jolt, a lightening of the pull of the earth on her bones. The baron's sonn jarred her, his expression unfathomably appalled. "That's done it," he said in a strange voice.

"Di Studier, what is it?"

He didn't answer Floria, but took the bag from Telmaine's hand and upended it, using his teeth, to spill a little shard of stone no longer than Amerdale's finger into the palm of his hand. His fingers closed on it a moment; then he shook his head. "Curse it," he said to her, and without apology.

"Di Studier, what is it!?"

His sonn swept over her again. "How do you feel, m'lady?"

"It doesn't matter," she said-thinking, I shall I shall not not faint now faint now. "My husband needs help."

"That he does." He drew a deep breath, then said distantly, "I don't believe we closed the door."

"The door door? What has the door to do with it?"

He did not answer. She heard his footsteps leave the room and go unsteadily down the stairs. It made no sense. She brushed trembling fingers against Bal's forehead, feeling a wavering presence, and pain that came and went, came and went with each shallow breath. Outside, the sunrise bell began to toll, the beginning of their day's confinement. All hope of outside help would go at its silence. Still, as she touched him, she felt herself begin to settle, just a little, to earth. And it seemed that his presence wavered less, and his pain eased a little.

The sunrise bell's tolling stopped. The baron's footsteps returned. He set a case-a gun case, she realized-down inside the door, and his sonn swept over her. Then he sighed, and knelt beside her and took her hand, which had been stroking Bal's forehead, and forced it down to the place that was seething with pain. She tried to free herself, but he pinned her hand in place, his touch conveying strength-resolution-irony strength-resolution-irony . . . and potent fear. His whisper was harsh and steady. "Th'way this works is y'feel his pain, and send your healing into it. Feel what is wrong in him, feel what is right in yourself, and use that to make it right in him. Can't explain it any clearer. Can show you, though." . . . and potent fear. His whisper was harsh and steady. "Th'way this works is y'feel his pain, and send your healing into it. Feel what is wrong in him, feel what is right in yourself, and use that to make it right in him. Can't explain it any clearer. Can show you, though."

"Di Studier," Floria said, "what's going on? Isn't the spicule enough?"

"Hush, mistress. Now, Telmaine," the baron murmured. There was nothing seductive in the murmur, or in the pressure of the large, warm hand over hers. She felt a gathering of energies, a focusing of resolution, and then a sudden heat in her fingers and lightness in her bones. She gasped, suddenly realizing what he was about. "Yes," he whispered, breath warm on her ear. "I know what you are. Only way t'do this now. Listen to me." With his deep, almost breathless whisper and with his thoughts, he pressed pictures into her mind that were like and very unlike the diagrams in the books that Bal studied, because the diagrams, no matter how beautiful, were inanimate, and Ish's voice was alive. And as counterpoint and undercurrent, the words and images and sensations pa.s.sed between them, and she could feel, she could feel feel Balthasar's torn blood vessels and broken bones weaving together as though drawn by the finest thread. Balthasar's torn blood vessels and broken bones weaving together as though drawn by the finest thread.

Abruptly the baron said hoa.r.s.ely, "That's it, I'm done; I've no more," and he pulled their hands from Bal's side, and her bones turned suddenly and irrevocably to lead, and she herself slid against the base of the paper wall.

She had no idea how long she would have lain there, but that she heard Bal's whisper: "Telmaine."

She levered herself up and snapped a sonn in the direction of his face, making him frown with the force of it. His answering sonn was as weak and unfocused as his voice. His breath was foul, stale with old blood; she fought not to gag. "Mmm," he breathed, "I've missed you so," and dropped away from her into unconsciousness or deep sleep. She started to sit up, but she never completed the movement. Her last awareness was of a strong hand easing her down beside her beloved, and a sense of the warm embers of a spent fire.

Ishmael The effort of settling the lady beside her husband made Ishmael reel; kneeling, he rested his cheek on the gritty hem of her skirt, half wis.h.i.+ng that the small sun in his shoulder would flare and turn him completely to ash and out of his misery. Working a healing-working any magic-magnified any physical weakness in a mage. His cracked collarbone had broken entirely, and he had the sick feeling that an infection had seeded into it. And he'd thrown himself into the healing against all caution, even when he realized she wasn't the first- or second-ranker he'd a.s.sumed. What by the Drunken G.o.d of All Follies did he think he was doing doing, aiding an untrained mage with her strength in a healing that would have taxed four of him?

"Who'ze Drunk G.o.d of Follies," said a small voice. He pushed himself painfully upright, and sonned Telmaine's younger daughter sitting upright amongst her mother's skirts like a baby gannet on its nest.

He hadn't realized he had muttered aloud. "My patron deity," he allowed. He'd long since given up addressing prayers either to the Mother of All Things Born, G.o.ddess of forerunners, Lightborn, and mages, or to her usurper son, the Sole G.o.d of respectable Darkborn. His patron deity might be imaginary, but to Ishmael, he sufficed. He was certainly the only ent.i.ty who might understand predicaments like this.

Amerdale sonned him, a fast, firm train of pulses, and declined to talk theology. "What did you do to my mama?" she demanded suspiciously.

Ish gathered his syrupy wits, thankful that Hearne's daughter was not a stroppy little boy, ready to back the demand with fists and weight. Of course, a chatty little girl brought her own problems. The child had witnessed everything that had happened, and would no doubt comment on it to her father.

Who-unless he was much mistaken-had no idea his wife was a mage.

Well, he'd deal with it then. "Your mama needs to sleep," Ish said. "She was helping me help your papa." If Balthasar Hearne had the wit to realize a healing had been worked on him, Ish could always claim to have drawn on Telmaine's vitality. That should be enough to annoy a doting husband into losing command of logic.

"You're not a doctor," she declared with the absolute authority of the small.

"No, but I've cared for people with hurts like your papa's." Most of whom died, Ish privately noted.

"Papa is is going to be all right." going to be all right."

"I hope so," Ish said truthfully. He and Telmaine had managed to seal off the bleeding from Hearne's spleen, and reduce some ugly bruising on his kidneys and lungs. Hearne's broken ribs were now merely cracked, though they wouldn't hurt any less for it. They'd even managed to s.h.i.+ft much of the internal hemorrhage back into his bloodstream. And the a.s.sailants had left his face and head alone, presumably so he could speak. Whatever the reason, Ish was relieved, since he doubted he and Telmaine could have addressed a head injury, even given his experience. Balthasar Hearne was still in a precarious condition. And right now, Ish himself couldn't have cured a fleabite.

"Are you going to make these men give back Flori?"

"Yes," Ish said, starting to feel slightly beset-he hadn't much experience a.s.serting himself against small children. "I am that."

"Ami," spoke up Floria White Hand from the other side of the paper wall, "it is daytime just now, so I I am searching for your sister. Would you like something to drink?" am searching for your sister. Would you like something to drink?"

She considered that. "I'm thirsty," she allowed.

"Wait a moment," Floria said.

A gla.s.s was poured; there was a pause, and then the door to the pa.s.se-muraille pa.s.se-muraille was slid open and shut. Amerdale spared him another scowl before she deigned to accept the offering. She was truly thirsty, judging by the way she slurped at the gla.s.s. Ish managed not to lick dry lips in envy. He suspected he knew what was coming. His conscience niggled a little; he doubted that Floria's troubled her at all. was slid open and shut. Amerdale spared him another scowl before she deigned to accept the offering. She was truly thirsty, judging by the way she slurped at the gla.s.s. Ish managed not to lick dry lips in envy. He suspected he knew what was coming. His conscience niggled a little; he doubted that Floria's troubled her at all.

Amerdale thrust the gla.s.s at him. "More," she demanded, and abruptly dropped onto her bottom. She pulled herself over onto all fours and crawled back to her mother's side, where she settled, head down, rump up. Bracing his useless arm, he eased over to nudge her onto her side, retrieve a fold of Bal's blanket, and tuck it around her. She must have her mother's temperament, he decided. His ill-formed sense of Balthasar was of someone more diffident-though with some sinew to him, to have withstood that beating without breaking.

"Is she asleep?" Floria's voice said after a moment.

"Sound asleep," Ish said, stirring up his muddy wits again to something approaching fluid. "I'll take a gla.s.s of that, if you would, minus the sleeping draft, but with anything you have for pain. I caught a sap on the clavicle, and the healing's done it no good." He didn't need to explain further; as a Lightborn, she knew the physical penalties of magic.

He heard another gla.s.s being poured, and wondered how one weighed the recklessness of taking a draft from a premier Lightborn a.s.sa.s.sin against that of aiding a powerful untrained mage in a critical healing. "Knew you knew Hearne, here," he remarked. "Didn't know this was a twinned house." Nor did he think that one of the Lightborn Prince's Vigilance would a.s.sent to share a paper wall with any Darkborn.

"It's of very long standing: five generations. We don't advertise. Less controversial that way, and safer, though in truth the danger in a breach is more to Bal than myself." She hesitated. "I heard him speak. Is he-"

"What I can, I've done," Ishmael said. "He'll take more healing, or be a long time laid up, but he'll do till sunset."

"Thank the All-Mother," Floria said quietly. "Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, you have earned my abiding grat.i.tude. Balthasar Hearne is one of my oldest friends."

If he had heard those words spoken in such a tone by a Darkborn woman, restrained as the tone was, he would have said there was more to the relations.h.i.+p than that.

"I'd rather hear an explanation," he said, making his way back to the pa.s.se-muraille pa.s.se-muraille. "This isn't a simple robbery."

"If I had one, di Studier, I'd gladly give it, and let you take it back to your Lord Vladimer. As it is, you can take back only a mystery."

Retrieving the gla.s.s from the lighttight cabinet, he settled his back against the leg of the heavy armchair. "What is't you know?"

While he sipped-and felt the infernal little sun slowly dim-she told him of the birth of the two sighted infants, of their mother's attempt to murder them and then Bal, and of her escape. Balthasar's sister, the healer mage and midwife, had taken the children away last night, and this night two men had arrived to threaten Balthasar, and then to beat out of him the children's whereabouts.

"What in perdition did you do t'drive them off?" Ish said, setting aside the question of whether he believed such an extraordinary story.

"p.r.i.c.ked the wall with a needle and shone through a torch. Light travels in straight lines." So that accounted for the burns across the men's faces. "I risked killing Bal, I know, but he'd have been dead anyway." She paused, controlling her voice, he thought. "Now, your turn," she said. "Did you draw on Telmaine? It certainly sounded like it."

"Yes," he said, having considered and readied the lie. "I had to. I couldn't use th'spicule as well as I should. Not got th'strength."

She sighed. "Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, if it worked, then no apologies are needed. Bal will understand the magic but not the drawing-he has very few of the prejudices of his cla.s.s-and Telmaine will likely forgive the drawing but not the magic-she has all the prejudices of hers."

"M'work's been worse met," Ish said, in a dry tone that she would surely misconstrue. "Now, going back to these children-never heard of such a thing."

"Not even amongst the Shadowborn?"

Unusual, he thought, to hear a Lightborn mention the Shadowborn. The Lightborn had abandoned the Borders some five hundred years ago; no one knew why. The best explanation he had heard was that the aura of Shadowborn magic made the Borders uninhabitable. Even he, weak mage though he was, could sense the chilling, repellent aura of it, if the source were close enough.

He reviewed the parade of monsters from a quarter century's Shadowhunting. "Sighted creatures-birds, dogs, lynxes, and th'like-don't sonn. Most Shadowborn sonn-some don't. We've not been so worried about the ones that don't sonn; they're th'easier to kill, hunting at night." He considered this uneasily. "Y'believe this, about th'sight."

"From Balthasar, yes," she said.

Which told him more about Balthasar Hearne. Intrigues amongst the Darkborn n.o.bility might be vicious, and drive men to suicide or murder and their families to ruined desperation, but those were the exceptions; by and large, even the most savage skirmishes were conducted with words. Whereas the Lightborn prince's father and granduncle had both been a.s.sa.s.sinated, that being the usual way of deposing a weakening or unpopular prince. Members of the Prince's Vigilance were not known for trust or, for that matter, sentiment.

"Have y'taken this up with your mages or scientists?"

"Not yet," she said grimly. "I thought it a curiosity that could be examined at leisure."

He appreciated that. "Have y'any sense or word of any kind of magical aura about the children?"

There was a brief silence. "I have no such sense, no. Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, I am needed at my prince's court. I will have a watch put on Balthasar's house, since I mislike the notion that these infants' father might have come through the day."

"Can't say I care much for it myself," he rumbled, ruminating upon that silence, and whether her words meant no more or less than she said-that she she had no such sense. She had changed the subject with unusual alacrity. had no such sense. She had changed the subject with unusual alacrity.

"I will also send a message to Balthasar's sister, to make sure she is warned. I'm certain she'll come here as soon after sunset as is safe."

"I'd be glad of that," he said. "She's a solid third-ranker. I'll be glad of anything else you get to know. Lord Vladimer has no liking for tales that are short on meat and long on stuffing."

Balthasar Balthasar Hearne woke to the tolling of the sunset bell and the feel of a wooden floor underneath him. He was confused. He thought he had gone home from the college, and even if he had not, the last time he had fallen asleep in the library he was an overworked student, and then he had dozed off with his head on a desk, not the floor.

There was a woman sleeping beside him: He could feel her warmth and smell her perfume. He smiled slightly, deciding that this was one of those revealing dreams where one found oneself doing something indecent in a highly improper place-something that one school of his profession argued indicated repressed desires. He was no doubt about to discover three or four of his most feared and respected preceptors arrayed in armchairs around him. Very likely, he thought hazily, one of the occupants of the armchairs would prove to be his father-in-law.

But when he managed to raise his head, he sonned only one figure, a broad-shouldered, scarred stranger, sitting in Bal's own familiar armchair beside the paper wall in his study. Bal started to raise himself, and was stopped by an eruption of internal agony. He gave a choked cry, and the strange man dropped quickly to one knee beside him, bare hand spread over his abdomen in a disconcertingly familiar manner. The pain eased appreciably.

"Take it from someone who has collected th'odd beating himself," the man said in a dry rumble, "the less you move, the less you will hurt."

"Beating . . . ?"

"Aye, Dr. Hearne. Those two bravos in here last night. Cursed near beat you to death, if you'll excuse my Lightborn. Took one of the most powerful magical spicules I've ever handled to pull you back from the edge. You've a debt to your Lightborn friends you'll be some time repaying. So just you lie still. When we get some reinforcements we'll be moving you t'somewhere more comfortable, and then we can deal with the rest of it."

If the pain was reality, then the woman . . . "Telmaine . . ." He strained to lift his head without using his trunk muscles, and this time the stranger eased his hand under his shoulders and supported him so that he could sonn Telmaine's crumpled shape and the much smaller form of Amerdale. He tried to pull himself up further, and groaned, and the stranger eased him back onto the floor. "Florilinde . . ." he protested. "Where's Flori?"

"Aye, she said you had too much wit for your own good," the stranger murmured. "Best you go back to sleep now." Bal felt a callused hand brush his temple. He recognized the touch of a healer mage as the stranger pressed him down into sleep.

Ishmael "Bal," said Telmaine Hearne, stirring in the shambles of her skirts. Her sonn, wavery with sleep, brushed him, just raising his fingers from her husband's temple. "What are you doing?" she said, her tone sharp with suspicion.

"Putting him back t'sleep," he said, with no apology in his voice. He settled back on his heels, a.s.sessing the extent of her recovery. "If you can wait t'go back to sleep youself, I need t'talk to you before Mistress Floria returns."