Darkborn Part 6

Reluctantly, she tucked her husband's hand away under the blankets, stroked her daughter's hair, and with a great effort pushed herself to her feet and followed him out of Bal's study. Out on the landing there was a little curtained alcove with two chairs pushed haphazardly back into it. He pulled the door to, until he heard her draw breath to protest.

"We'll hear them from here," he said quietly.

She sank into the chair and drooped there like a drought-ridden plant. Years of rigorous deportment training could not overcome the debilitation of body and spirit that came with such a healing. He eased the other chair as far back as it would go against the curtain, acknowledging his own weariness. He had tried to rest, but the pain in his shoulder precluded that.

"All Mistress Floria knows is, I was the one healed your husband, using th'spicule. All you did was lend your vitality. That's all anyone need ever know, from me."

"Thank you, sir," she breathed. "Bal . . . does not know."

As he had thought. And who was he to say she was wrong? He remembered her sweeping through the ill.u.s.trious ducal gathering, entirely at ease in such company, spilling the largesse of her self-confidence. He said, "M'lady, that's remarkable that n.o.body knows. A mage as strong as you are is rare." He paused, and with the habit of honesty that grew between mages said, "I envy you."

"Envy me!" Her sonn washed across his face, revealing that he was quite serious. And then she leaned forward and began to cry, stifled, almost inaudible sobs. He took her wrist in his gloved hand and held it until she spoke.

"If I could give it all to you," she said in a thread of a voice, "I would. Let me go."

He heard more than one meaning in that. He let her go and leaned back. She drew a deep breath and straightened. "And as to my control, clearly you know nothing of a woman's life."

She did not understand, he thought, though perhaps she would have said the same of him, each of them with a different meaning. "Your husband would have died without it," he reminded her.

She straightened and then leaned wearily back in her chair. Let the echoes fade between them. "Why were you afraid?"

Of course she would have sensed that, given the circ.u.mstances. Her voice had an undertone of merciless challenge about it. There There, it said, convince me that magic has any good in it, if you were afraid. convince me that magic has any good in it, if you were afraid.

"My lady, it's etiquette among"-he rejected mages mages and and our kind our kind-"people like ourselves not to mention chance-gained knowledge, unless there's need, or two people are close." He raised his hand as she drew a quick breath, choosing to a.s.sume she would apologize rather than deny the intimacy. "We're not keeping tally, r'member. . . . And you have the truth of it: I was afraid. You've that much more power than I do-fifth or sixth rank, I'd say, to my first-and you're untrained. You could have drained me to a husk t'give to your husband, and there'd have been nothing I could've done t'stop you."

Her breathing was harsh. "Then why did you do it? Does the magic . . . demand its expression?"

"Not so as to make a man lose what common sense he's born with, no," Ishmael said wryly. "Y'need never use your power-" At her quick-drawn breath, he said roughly, "Don't shy from it, m'lady. Your power's real, and it's yours. Y'need never use it in a way that seems wrong to you." There were qualifications to that statement, but it would stand for now.

"I don't want it," she said sharply.

"I know," he said. "But you have it."

"Take off your gloves," she said suddenly.

"What-"

"Take off your gloves." With swift, jerky motions, she s.n.a.t.c.hed off her own. "Give me your hands. I want to know know this man who knows the worst of me." this man who knows the worst of me."

He gripped the chair arms. "No," he said. "My lady, no."

Her small, bare hand trembled between them. It was not her power he feared. His first fear, the fear that had driven his refusal, was that what she learned from and of him would repel her. His engagement in his power, his years as a mercenary Shadowhunter, his encounters with the Shadowborn, and the Call that twisted and hauled on his very core. His private sins and torments were reasons enough to dread her touch. But there was a greater fear: that if she pressed touch on him, despite his express refusal, he would know that he had misjudged her. He would know that he could not trust her to wield her power well.

He said intensely, "Lady Telmaine, you should not want want t'do this." t'do this."

Then she shuddered, revulsion crossing her face, and s.n.a.t.c.hed back her hand and thrust it into her glove as though it represented some indecency. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry."

He did not want her restrained in her power by revulsion, but by common sense and courtesy. He said, "We Darkborn mages have our own authorities, m'lady, for all that they're hardly recognized either by our own state or th'Lightborn. We've got to govern ourselves, or suffer the Temple's justice. I'll not claim we're all perfect, but we can't but know th'pain of others, and want t'ease it if we can. You're that way yourself: Y'can't tell me you didn't dance with me out of kindness."

From the study, Balthasar Hearne moaned in his stupor, and she rustled to her feet and went quickly past Ish to go to her husband, to soothe him, no doubt, with her touch. He wondered whether Hearne or their daughters had ever known a day's illness or suffering before this. He doubted, somehow, that they had, but it was too soon to make her aware of it.

He did not expect her to return, and decided he would wait for the sunset bell and leave as soon as someone she could trust arrived. There were still things she had to know about her power and its obligations, but he could only hope that they could wait until she was less fragile.

He started out of a still and amorphous reverie at the sound of a rustle of a hem and sonned her sharply, too sharply, perceiving something of her shapely private form beneath her graceful dress. She said, "Mute your sonn, sir!"

"I'm sorry, m'lady. You startled me."

"Did I?" She spoke with an effort. "Good."

"Take care how you spend your energy," he warned, hearing the fatigue, knowing its source.

"It is mine to spend."

He smiled thinly; he had answered so with equal arrogance, and less cause, before bitter experience taught him otherwise. He gestured her to the chair. "Thought you'd've lain down by your husband and gone back t'sleep."

"Did you? You might have been done with me; I certainly am not done with you. What do you know of all this? What has that woman told you? Who did this to him, and why? Where is my daughter? Where is my daughter? " Her sonn stung him, but it was a genteel sting, nothing like the raking that she no doubt intended it to be. She was too well-bred to use or even know the full power of her sonn. " Her sonn stung him, but it was a genteel sting, nothing like the raking that she no doubt intended it to be. She was too well-bred to use or even know the full power of her sonn.

He honored her intent, nevertheless. "This is what I had from Mistress Floria. Two nights before last a woman came t'your husband's door just as the sunrise bell tolled, begging t'be let in. Her name was Tercelle Amberley."

A soft indrawn hiss of breath, her posture intent, but no words. He waited a moment, then continued, "She was great with child, a child she said was fathered by a lover-not her betrothed-who came to her in the daytime. Her pains began before the sunset bell and she gave birth to twins. Your husband thinks the babes were sighted, like Lightborn. Th'mother tried t'expose the children at the next sunrise, which your husband put a stop to, and at sunset she left the house. Your husband's sister took th'infants yesterday, promising t'find them a home. I heard from Mistress Floria that Mistress Olivede had a visit at her clinic from a pair of rogues like the ones who set on your husband, who met a sorry welcome. Unfortunately, they were rousted before she'd a chance to know it was other than an attempt at robbery, or she might have sent warning. She'll be here as soon as it is safe to travel."

A sharper hiss of breath.

"I can call in one of your leeches, if you'd rather," he said un-charitably. Did she imagine that nonmage physicians could have kept her husband alive? "I doubt they'd do him any harm, with you there."

"Go on," she said, ignoring the provocation.

He subsided. It was unfair to blame her alone for the prejudices of her cla.s.s. "That's the sum of it. I'll be glad to lay it before Lord Vladimer, let him find the pattern in it."

"By all means, entertain Lord Vladimer with your mysteries," Telmaine said. "But I have to find my daughter."

"I've not forgotten the little one. Come sunset, if Mistress Floria's part of it has not borne fruit, I'll be speaking to a man who knows the underworld. We can speak to the public agents, too, if you'd like."

"And have it appear in the broadsheets?" she said. "My family would never forgive me."

As one who had provided ample fodder for the broadsheets' excesses, he could sympathize. "Notorious Mage Baron" was his usual sobriquet, interspersed with "the Shadowhunter" when he chanced to be in favor. And the ill-paid public agents who were the city's law enforcement supplemented their incomes with sales to reporters.

"I'll have to engage private agents," she said wearily. "Maybe my brother-in-law can help."

Thus a lady prompted a gentleman to take up her burden, he thought, though in truth he'd have needed no such prompting. "Lord Vladimer should have no objections t'my tapping his network for this, and we're as good as any private agents. I'd be cooling my heels until your husband was well, as it is."

"Thank you, Baron Strumh.e.l.ler. You put my mind at ease." She leaned forward, surprising him by offering him a cus.h.i.+on, which she eased under his braced arm, carefully avoiding all possibility of touch. Then, straight-backed, she went into her husband's study and closed the door behind her.

Ishmael Olivede Hearne arrived almost as the last echoes of the sunset bell had faded, under escort, in a rattletrap carriage pulled by two of the rawest specimens of horseflesh Ishmael had met outside the hill villages of the Borders. She must have left shelter as soon as it was safe to do so. Like Hearne, she was of modest height and build, with an even-featured, somewhat delicate face; unlike him, she had the guarded manner of a woman who lived beyond the pale. Her accent was soft and cultured, revealing her origins amongst the minor aristocracy. She exclaimed in disapproval at finding her brother still lying on the floor, a disapproval mitigated somewhat as she realized how grave were his injuries. Ish settled in the armchair, out of the way. Telmaine stood to Ish's left with her drowsy daughter mumbling in her arms, clearly divided between being close to Balthasar and being too close to his mageborn sister.

Eventually, Olivede stroked Balthasar back to sleep and climbed to her feet. Telmaine s.h.i.+fted closer to Ishmael, though he doubted the movement was conscious.

"I've done what I can," she said. "I asked Magister Kieldar to come, and he can do more. I have a great deal to thank you for, Baron Strumh.e.l.ler."

"We took th'same training and the same vows, Magistra Hearne," Ish said. "But I never refuse a lady's thanks."

"Can I do anything for you?" She gestured toward his shoulder.

"I'd be grateful," he said, though he was aware that Telmaine had tensed, and carefully avoided showing any awareness of her. "Give me a moment," he said, to give himself a chance to settle into a light, meditative state, bringing to the forefront of his awareness an impression of the still water of the lake downhill from his manor just after sunset. That, Magistra Olivede's skill, and the vows they shared would mean that she would sense no more than that impression. The lake was restorative in itself. The touch of her cool hands, dulling the pain to the ache of a fresh-healed break, was pure bliss. "Magistra," he said, leaning his head back, "if I thought you'd take me, I'd propose t'you."

"You were starting a fever," she said dryly, and brushed the fever neatly aside, like an efficient housekeeper with a feather duster. He sneezed, either at the touch of magic or the comparison. She waited a moment-for a resurgence of fever, or proposal, perhaps-and then eased his collar closed and left him to b.u.t.ton his s.h.i.+rt, turning to Telmaine. "Telmaine, how are you?"

"I am . . . as well as can be expected," the lady said with a brittle smoothness.

The exchange told Ish a great deal about the relations.h.i.+p between sister and wife: civil, but not confiding or close. How could it be otherwise, when Telmaine so feared discovery? Olivede stroked her little niece's hair, and Telmaine did not stiffen or protest. The touch, tendered to her daughter, connected them.

"What do you know about this?" Telmaine said at last. "Where are these infants of Tercelle Amberley's?"

"By now," Olivede said, "I don't know. As soon as I found out about this, I sent word that they should be moved as soon as possible."

Telmaine breathed, "I would trade those children for my Flori in a heartbeat."

There was a silence; the warning, or ultimatum, was understood. "Telmaine, we're going to move Bal to a bed. You can put Ami down as well-in your room, if you'd rather not leave her."

Ish said, "You'll be well guarded, m'lady. You have my word on that."

She nodded, turned, and rustled out.

Olivede pressed her fingers to her forehead. "Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, what do you know about this?"

"Only that it has something t'do with those twin infants of Tercelle Amberley's. I hope your word was a strong warning. Someone wants them, and likely wants dead anyone who knows about them."

She drew a deep breath, twisting her hands one in the other. "My brother is not equal to this-he is a gentle man. Not unworldly, but not . . . I know I have no claim on you, that Balthasar has no claim on you, and that the mage's vows do not tie your other skills to service, but in the name of justice and protection of those who cannot protect themselves, will you help?"

"Aye," he said easily. "That's already long decided."

She had brought with her three of the irregulars whom the mageborn in the demimonde employed for protection, when their own skills did not suffice. She pressed all three, and Telmaine, into service as orderlies, helping to move Balthasar Hearne onto a stout rug and carry him through to his bedroom. She and Telmaine stayed to settle him, and the three men drifted back, one to guard the outer door, and two, both of whom Ish knew slightly, to speak to Ish in the study.

From them, Ish learned details of the thwarted attack on Olivede, and from that, Ish had little doubt that that attack would have ended like the one on Balthasar, or worse. "She needs to stay elsewhere, next day," he said. "Well away from her usual goings. And she needs t'be guarded. She mustn't send any more messages after th'twins. Everyone along th'trail needs to be guarded, and anyone close to her. They've taken Hearne's daughter, so that shows their thinking. I want you to put out a description . . ." He described the kidnappers, pulling details out of his memory that he had not been aware of noting during their brief, drastic encounter. "Hearne may be able to give us more, by and by." He would not need to be strong enough to talk; glimpses of memory or nightmare would be enough for the touch-reader.

Olivede Hearne showed herself a woman of impressive common sense, capitulating without argument to his advice that she not follow her usual rounds. She grasped immediately that she could bring harm to the very people she wanted to help. She would stay, she said, to care for her brother. Which eased one set of worries and created another, because it made it more exigent that this household be well protected. Olivede had her magecraft, and her three guards. By contacting Vladimer's other agents in the city, Ish could raise a layer of more potent temporal protection around the family.

And if those failed, there was Telmaine, whom no enemy could antic.i.p.ate. How close was she to realizing that she could as readily maim and kill as comfort and heal? If she did, did she have any sense that with her strength she need not touch to kill? He thought not: She had experienced her magic only as expressed by touch, and kept it stifled within her skin. Yet if she were the last one standing between murderers and her husband and daughters, she would use everything she had and was against them. And she would not know how. If she attacked with magic she would try to do it through touch, and there would be a knife in her heart or across her throat first.

Should he tell her that it might be done? Could he try to teach her how, though the actual doing of it was beyond his own strength? The vows that he had taken when he had committed to his own training had bound him to do his best for any mage he discovered, and placed no constraints on what he might teach them so that they might make the best lives they could in a world hostile to them. Though he would answer for what he taught and how it was used until his students could answer for themselves. He would teach her to use a gun, if he thought she needed to know. Why might magic be different?

He was not a great thinker, and so he could only accept that to him it was. He might be awed by and attracted to her, but he did not have the core-deep sense of her that would let him trust her. He wished, now, that he had taken her bare hand in his, for he would surely have come away with the knowledge that would have let him decide. But he had not.

He heard, but did not appreciate, a soft footstep and a rustling hem on the stairs-neither was a threatening sound. A man's voice did command his attention. He came quickly to his feet and was out the door. From the distorted images of their sonn, he perceived the two figures confronting each other before the door, the irregular, a broad and rather shy young man, nevertheless barring her exit. Telmaine was saying, "I am am going out. I have to find my daughter." going out. I have to find my daughter."

"Lady Telmaine," Ish said, startling them into a double ping of sonn that caught him midway down the stairs. He brushed them lightly in return, the lady's upright, shapely figure in the coat, gloves, and veil she had arrived in, and the young man, intimidated but equally determined to do his duty.

"I am going to find Tercelle Amberley," she said. "I will not leave my child in this odious captivity one minute longer. My husband, if he were able, would go, but since he cannot, I must."

Ish made a swift decision. "I'll go with the lady. We will be back as quickly as we may. Before we are, there will be a guard on this house, but until I'm back, please don't be thinking that anyone you sonn is friendly. I'd not let anyone even as near as the steps without Magistra Olivede's say-so." He ran a hand around the jamb of the door, measuring it and finding it solid for a domestic door, though unlikely to resist a determined a.s.sault. It would take someone more mage than he to reinforce it, inanimate as it was.

Telmaine flinched as the door closed behind her, her expression wavering, briefly heart-torn and then resolute. She started briskly down the stairs, pulling out a little whistle, on which she blew a clear arpeggio. A cabdriver at the stand at the end of the street flipped his reins and started his cab toward them.

"How are you thinking t'find her?" Ish said as they settled inside. "If she was far gone with child, she'd not stay with family or friends, or anywhere that she'd chance meeting them."

Her lips thinned. "I have a notion," she said, and leaned out of the window to call an address up to the driver. It was on the other side of the city, in a neighborhood known for its new wealth and decadence.

"And that is?" Ish said, as the carriage began to rumble and rock down the street.

"Not yet," the lady said, and leaned back, folding her hands in their gloves, the image of contained preoccupation. But a moment later she said, "Balthasar's brother, Lysander Hearne, left her a house."

So there was the connection that had brought the lady to Balthasar's door on the eve of her confinement. He tried to recollect what he knew of Lysander Hearne, but could remember only that the man had disappeared some sixteen or seventeen years ago, before Ish himself came to the city.

"How well," Ish said, choosing his words carefully, "do you know her?"

"Not in that way," Telmaine said, almost as though the knowledge were carnal. "Through society. Her family members are the most arrant social climbers."

He said in a measured voice, "M'lady, you've heard my and Mistress Floria's thoughts, but you've not shared yours. What's between the lady and your husband that could draw him into this?"

"Nothing's between them," she said, her small mouth firmly closing on the last syllable.

"Lady Telmaine, it needs no touch-reader to know you're lying," he said. She caught her breath and he gave her an edged smile, the smile telling how utterly irrelevant were the standards of society, where telling a lady she was a liar was simply not done. "Lady Telmaine," he said softly, "mayhap you'd sooner not know because the knowledge offends you, or the way you came by it offends you. But your husband was nearly murdered last night, and your daughter was stolen."

"Brute," she said in a shaky whisper. "I cannot tell you."

"Who'd you want to protect more than that man resting back there in the shadow of death, or that little girl out there alone?"

"Brute!" she said more loudly, and pressed the knuckles of both gloved hands against her lips, shuddering with stifled sobs.

He sat back, grim of face and heart. He had delivered the most telling stroke he knew, hurt her cruelly, and she still would not tell him.

They rode the rest of the way in silence, of voice and sonn.

Telmaine With the jolting of the closed carriage, her exhaustion, and the baron's harrowing at her conscience, she felt quite ill by the time they alighted in front of the ostentatious house Lysander Hearne had bequeathed his paramour. The heavy, musky-sweet scent of the blooming night roses nearly completed her undoing; in a cold sweat, she pressed her fingers to her upper lip and willed her stomach to stop heaving. If Ishmael sonned her, she wasn't aware of it, but she abruptly felt his gloved hand on her wrist, pulling it down, and felt the lip of a flask pressed against her mouth.

"Drink," he said.

She drew a breath to protest, but what she smelled was not liquor but something herbal. She let herself swallow. "It's an old Southern Isles remedy for seasickness," he said. "I'd to take th'coastal steamer up from Stranhorne, and though it's mere fancy that a mage can't cross water, I'm a Borders man, blood, bone, and belly."

Mint and astringent, it did help. She nodded acknowledgment of the fact, carefully concealing her horror at the mere thought of traveling by sea. No doubt, like her husband, the baron could discourse endlessly on the detailed maps, the clever navigational devices, and the extensive system of warning bells on coasts and rocks that enabled Darkborn to venture on the waters despite the limitations of sonn. No matter. She had never set foot on a boat, and never would.

He let her precede him up the steps to the elaborately decorated door and stood at her shoulder as they waited to know whether anyone would respond to the ring. A footman opened the door.

"Tercelle Amberley, please."