Lightborn Read online

  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 shield of the glassed garden. He heard a coarse hiss behind him, and something thumped his back with a sound like a stone striking a hung carcass, 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 thrashing efforts to free himself, but already his senses were being stripped from him, his hearing reduced to the fading rushing 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 grass or planted knee-deep with the sands of this toy garden, or, worst of all, conjoined with one of the vigilants or servants clustered 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 balustrade, 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 shivered like the film on heated milk. Then he gathered Fejelis into his lap.

  “Cloth,” he croaked. Someone handed him a cloth, and turning Fejelis faceup, he began to wipe his bloodstained lips and cheek and scrub at the gore in his fair hair. He was hardly aware that the name he whispered was not Fejelis’s, but that of his younger brother, now years dead. But this time it was a still-breathing body he cradled, not one still and beginning to stiffen in death.

  Tammorn

  “Here,” said Captain Lapaxo. He stepped aside as he spoke, removing himself with alacrity from Tam’s path, giving Tam and Fejelis a view of the balcony and the black tarpaulin heaped on it. Partly hidden beneath its folds was a southern-style crossbow, of wood and horn, with a powerful draw. A sideways glance confirmed that from here they could see the corner of Orlanjis’s balcony, some seventy yards away. Shadows had claimed that balcony entirely now. Overhead, the clouds were tinged with sunset gold. But that he was feverish with borrowed vitality, he would have shivered.

  Fejelis stooped, lifted the edge of the tarpaulin, studied the brown residue left by a man’s quenching, and let the tarpaulin down again. The captain of vigilants looked at his pallid face, his blood-soaked, torn shirt, and the tidemarks of dried blood on his cheek, and winced, visibly.

  “. . . Can you tell anything?” Fejelis said to Tam. “Who was he?”

  Vitality was fled, gone the instant the bowman pulled the tarpaulin over himself. Or had it pulled over him, Tam reminded himself; murder was entirely possible. Gone, too, was any trace of ensorcellment. The mages vigilant had sensed nothing. “No,” he said. “I presume there’s nothing to identify him or her.”

  “That’s a southern bow,” the captain said.

  Fejelis’s head turned, his eyes unreadable as mirrors. “. . . And how many from the north are experts with the weapon,” he said, calmly, “including your own peers?”

  The captain lowered his head. “Prince,” he acknowledged.

  “. . . Do not let anything close your mind, Captain,” the prince advised. “There were two men on that balcony; the bolt may not even have hit the right one.”

  Do you believe that? hovered unasked in the air. Orlanjis, hysterical, had claimed the bowman was aiming at himself, and that Fejelis had pushed him out of the way and thereby saved Orlanjis’s life. “He moved so fast,” Orlanjis had protested his perceptions of a brother known for his hesitations and spidery build.

  But Orlanjis, by all reports, had drawn his brother into that exposed corner, just before the bowman fired the bolt.

  A touch could answer that question, were Fejelis to ask Tam, but Fejelis had not asked.

  “We’re starting a census of everyone who’s still in residence,” Lapaxo said. “While it’s possible this came from outside, it’s more likely it was in the household all along. We’ll find out who was in and out of these rooms, and check why the group they were supposed to house wasn’t in them.”

  “. . . Very good,” Fejelis said. “I’ll stop trying to tell you how to do your job now.”

  The captain accorded that a nerve twitch of a smile. “It’s possible he tossed something identifying over the side, when he decided he could not escape, so we will need to search below.”

  Fejelis, looking down at the tarpaulin, said, “. . . He—or someone—was prepared. I would interpret that as meaning he was not meant to escape. . . . But I will leave you to your inquiries. I need to get cleaned up. I shall be opening the general receiving room in about an hour. Could you please arrange cover accordingly?” He raised a hand, preempting objections. Quite likely none of those watching would notice the tremor of those fingertips for seeing the blood that streaked them. “. . . We have a palace full of their brightnesses, and it is crucial that they see me.”

  “I do understand, my prince,” said Lapaxo stoically.

  “. . . Actually,” Fejelis said, in his rooms some time later, “. . . I believe Orlanjis.” Bathed and scrubbed, his hair clean and drying, he sat gathering himself for his next public appearance. “. . . He thinks the bowman was aiming at him, and Orlanjis is very good with a bow—Sharel’s teaching. . . . It was his reaction, when he saw the bowman—”

  “Whom he claimed he didn’t recognize,” Tam could not help but say.

  Fejelis continued his thought, “—that prompted mine. He was terrified.”

  Which did not, Tam thought, exempt the possibility that Orlanjis was merely playing out his assigned part. Fejelis was capable of steadily watching murder done in front of him; Orlanjis was not. “You saved his life, nearly at the cost of your own.”

  “. . . I’m sure the mage vigilant would have dealt with any wounds.”

  Fejelis had not been conscious to hear the mage vigilant demand, “What did you do? I couldn’t—” She had drawn back from publicly admitting t
hat she had felt Fejelis dying under her hands. When Helenja had arrived with her entourage, Tam had watched the mage convince herself that she had simply not had time to muster effective healing magic before Tam had preempted her.

  There was a short, suspended pause. “. . . But thank you,” Fejelis said. “Again.”

  “I wish,” Tam started, and stopped. The wish he was about to express was that either he or Lukfer had sensed the talisman before the bolt had been fired. It had certainly been potent enough to touch.

  If Lukfer had not annulled the ensorcellment on the box, he might have been able to get a sense of distance. But if Lukfer had not annulled the ensorcellment on the box, he could not have annulled the ensorcellment on the bolt so deftly, and Fejelis might have died. “Are you warm enough yet?” he filled in the unfinished question.

  He himself felt the room near stifling, but Fejelis had complained of cold even after a hot shower. He had hidden the worst of his reaction behind a locked bathroom door, and the accounts of his composure would be flying through the halls even now. Tam had seen his accomplishment in Lapaxo’s response to him.

  “. . . It is a pity,” Fejelis said, “we did not take the bowman alive, or find anything other than the bow. . . . If it was retaliation from the northern faction for my father’s death . . .”

  “Jay,” Tam said, a little raggedly, “the Vigilance will take care of it. They have rather a lot to live down now.”

  Fejelis considered him, his expression oddly thoughtful and compassionate for so young a man. “. . . You called me by the name Artarian, back . . . then. Your son’s name.”

  Mother of All, he had been distraught, to let that name slip. “Artarian was . . . my younger brother. He died at eighteen, defending me, after one of my messes. Stabbed . . . in the back. I reached him just in time to feel the life go out of him. I didn’t know how to help him.”

  “Ah,” Fejelis said, quietly. “Thank you. I’m honored that you would think of me in that way. I’m glad, too . . . that there is someone in the palace who will understand why I simply reacted.”

  Not exactly, thought Tam, for he was far less sure of Orlanjis than Fejelis seemed. He wanted to remonstrate, to warn Fejelis that even magic might not always be able to rescue him, and to tell him how nearly it had not, this time.

  The prince got to his feet, testing his legs. “. . . I must show myself. I will keep the room open for an hour.” With wintry amusement, “Anyone who does not appear by then is so far removed from either information or influence to be irrelevant, and can wait until morning.”

  Tam stood behind Fejelis’s chair, listening as the prince exchanged brief words and assurances with the seemingly endless procession of people filing past him. Word seemed to have reached all the palace’s guests, and they had all turned out to inspect their prince. “For cracks,” as Fejelis had put it, with that dry detachment that was sustaining him. Vigilants flanked Fejelis, vigilants guarded all the entrances, and vigilants had been stationed on all the balconies. The full contingent of the mages vigilant contracted to the palace had been turned out as well. With the exception of one Captain Beaudry, who was missing, and Floria White Hand.

  The corner of Fejelis’s mouth had quirked at the sight of his massed guardians, but one look at Lapaxo’s face and he had yielded without a word. On his left, within their own stockades of vigilants, sat the dowager consort with a shocky-looking Orlanjis, and other members of the southern faction. The dowager consort did not disguise her speculative attention on her elder son. On his right were Prasav and his cousins of the northern faction. Tam could not tell, from the surface, what they felt beyond their carefully expressed outrage.

  All the time the pageant continued, Tam watched the steady blue-cauled head in front of him, and felt his rage grow. This extraordinary young man, this bright hope of the forgotten and dispossessed, had nearly died on the first day of his reign. Tam, for all his power, had failed to anticipate it and nearly failed to prevent it. Lukfer’s wariness of their Temple superiors, justified as it may be, deprived them of potential allies and of latitude of action. But behind Tam’s anger were fear and an appalling sense of powerlessness. He had not even sensed that bolt, except through Fejelis’s agony as it struck.

  The taking of a life, as he well knew, required no magic whatsoever. Even a first- rank mage could heal—or cause sickness—and execute elementary talismanic magic. A third-rank mage could have created that bolt—perhaps the apprentice who had had a part in creating the box.

  Unlike most mages, Tam had no natural bent for healing, though with considerable effort he had grown skilled. He was a master of matter, not vitality. Had he not sensed the bolt, might he not sense other magic as inimical to life, because he lacked the sensitivity?

  He thought of the mage he had sensed in the archduke’s palace. The vitality was Darkborn, but the magic was Shadowborn. Could the archduke of the Darkborn know what he harbored? Sejanus Plantageter distrusted magic, but he was scrupulous in ensuring the law was observed even as it applied to mages and Lightborn. Or were the Shadowborn attacking the Darkborn, too? It was the Darkborn who had suffered most from the Shadowborn-set fires.

  If that was the Shadowborn apprentice, or if that was a Darkborn mage allied with the Shadowborn, then there was only one way to be certain that he did no more harm. Tam’s conscience would not allow killing on mere suspicion, but after twenty years around Lukfer, he knew how to bind another mage’s magic. And perhaps, in so doing, he might learn enough of the other’s purposes to know what additional action he must take.

  He would not tell Lukfer; it would distress the older mage, and alarm him with the possibility Tam might rouse the interest of the Temple Vigilance. But he doubted that those worthies would much concern themselves with an assault on an unknown, low-ranked Darkborn mage. And it was worth the risk, to protect Fejelis. Let Tam get through this interminable hour, and let him get Fejelis back to his rooms and resting safely, and then he would deal with this mage, and his magic.

  Telmaine

  After a sleep broken by strange dreams and anxieties, Telmaine’s evening toilette was interrupted by the arrival of her mother and, shortly thereafter, Merivan. Telmaine’s brother the duke had received an invitation to breakfast at the archducal palace, and his duchess was still at their country estates for the summer, so he had appealed to his mother for support. The dowager duchess had brought two of the best early-evening dresses of Telmaine’s wardrobe, and supervised Telmaine’s maid with an anxious expression meant to reassure, though she said only, “We will discuss it later, dear,” when Telmaine asked.

  Telmaine had expected that they would be escorted to one of the more intimate receiving rooms on the upper floor, but they made their way to the main and public part of the palace and down to the level of the grand ballroom. A steady flow of people—couples and families with their retinues—were crossing the wide foyer from the doors and entering the ballroom. Telmaine swept out before her with her mage sense, and her next step stumbled over the density of vitality it met. The entire ballroom had been opened out and was filling up with people.

  Behind her, Merivan said, sharply, “What is it?”

  She regained her balance and her nerve, having confirmed that amongst the mass she sensed no taint of Shadowborn. “I was a little—startled, that was all,” she said. “When you said breakfast—I expected—something—small.”

  “Lady Telmaine.” A footman stepped up to her side. “Lord Vladimer requests a moment of your time.” Even as he did so, another footman was leading her mother, brother, and sister into the ballroom, letting her detach herself. She trailed the footman between the rows of seated guests and the rows of poised servants, trying at once to hurry and to be unobtrusive. Surely Vladimer must have had word of Bal.

  An exquisitely dressed young woman suddenly twisted in her chair with a rasp of lace. “Telmaine!”

  “Sylvide!”

  Her dearest friend, Sylvide di Reuther, caught her skirts; she had
to stop. “What happened to you?” Sylvide cried. “Where did you go?”

  Yes, the last Sylvide had known, she had set Telmaine down at Bolingbroke Circle, ostensibly to hire a carriage to take her back to the archducal palace and safety. Instead, Telmaine had taken a carriage to the docks and a walk through the fire. So the question absolutely could not be answered with the truth. Telmaine stooped low, easing Sylvide’s grip, and bringing her mouth close to Sylvide’s veiled ear. “I’ll have to tell you later. Lord Vladimer wants to talk to me.”

  “Lord Vladimer? Why ever—”

  Telmaine became aware of the silence around them, Sylvide’s neighbors—her husband, her mother-in-law, her sister-in-law—all listening intently. She patted Sylvide’s hand, whispered, “Tell you later”— though what, exactly, she had no idea—and bade them all good evening in the dulcet tones of a blameless woman. Sylvide’s husband was the only one who replied. Oh, dear.

  Vladimer was waiting for her in a small side room, standing propped on his cane. A cup and saucer sat within reach on a high table, but there was otherwise no sign of breakfast. Vladimer was finely groomed and as elegantly dressed as she had ever known him be. The lines of current fashion should have suited him, with his height and the angular lines of his face, but the skin seemed tight-drawn on the bones, and his vitality quivered in her awareness with pain and the hectic energy of fever and stimulants.

  “Before you ask, there’s been no further word from the Borders, bad or good,” he began without a greeting. “There’s been a report from the Stranhorne train station of abnormal weather, a very heavy snow, immediately around Stranhorne.”