Lightborn Page 5

  Even the Prince’s Vigilance could fail in its task.

  “I do worry about him,” Isidore said. “His strongest alliances are not within court, but outside—though there are some that are potentially formidable—” She glanced aside at him, and caught the suggestive glint of a silver gray eye. None of the prince’s associations known to the Vigilance could be described that way. Disruptive, yes, formidable, no. Isidore continued. “It is time he built stronger support of his own within court; he will need it when this job falls to him.”

  Useless to protest that statement; it was the reality and they were realists. There would come a time when age or cumulated mistakes made Isidore’s deposition more acceptable than not. There would come a time when even the Prince’s Vigilance would stand aside, for the good of the state.

  But it should be years yet. Years.

  “He’s in danger of being too careful,” Isidore stressed. “Of not taking the risk of letting people close. Of not trusting people he should.”

  This was, she thought, a disturbing conversation to be having on the evening of the heir’s coming of age. Fejelis was now considered able to rule without a regent. There were those who would risk an unrighteous deposition to have a prince on a string.

  Did anyone have Fejelis on a string? What was the formidable association Isidore had alluded to? Isidore himself did not seem perturbed by it—but why alert her?

  “He has reason, of course. So I’ve been having a quiet word with a few people I trust,” the prince said.

  He said little after that, and presently left, his guards following. Floria knew she had received—along with those other few—a commission, though a commission to do what, she was not sure. She let the prince go down the stairs, and then padded along the corridor to a locked cabinet where the Prince’s Vigilance kept some of its provisions. Find water and a glass, mix in one of her own preparations to settle her stomach. In a while, she would be summoned to taste the food and drink the prince was taking into his chambers with him, and then, perhaps, if her indigestion, or this last conversation, allowed, she might sleep.

  Telmaine

  Had she been but a little quicker, she would have escaped.

  It was not to be. As she closed her door, on her way to visit her daughters, she heard footsteps on the stairs at the end of the hall. Superintendent Malachi Plantageter, with Ishmael’s lawyer trotting at his heel.

  An impulse to dive into the bedroom, squirm childlike under the bed, and pretend not to be here died stillborn. “Lady Telmaine Hearne?” said the superintendent, though he well knew who she was. They had exchanged words when he arrested Ishmael. “Is this an inconvenient time?”

  “I was just going to my sister’s to visit my children,” Telmaine said, coolly. “But I suppose this will not take particularly long.” She stepped back and let the two men in, the long-boned man with the distinctive Plantageter nose—which he came by quite legitimately, if through the distaff line—and the small rotund lawyer.

  “I understand your husband is out of the city,” the superintendent said. “Would you prefer that one of your brothers or your brother-in-l aw were present?”

  She couldn’t imagine which would be worse, to have her rigid eldest brother, Duke Stott, either of her two smart and mocking younger brothers, or her sister’s husband, Lord Judiciar Erskane. Merivan’s husband would be her best ally against the law, but if anyone found the missed stitches in her lace of lies, it would be he. She shook her head.

  “The archduke said he thought you would prefer to have your own legal representation,” Malachi Plantageter continued. She sonned the lawyer, noting his shrewd face with mixed relief and apprehension. Di Brennan was not her family’s usual lawyer, but he represented the same firm, and he and Balthasar had spoken about Ishmael’s arrest; he knew at least part of the story—one of the stories.

  “Thank you,” she said meekly. “What would you like to speak to me about?”

  Without a word, without a theatrical flourish, the superintendent held out both hands. In one was a lady’s reticule; from the other dangled a silver love knot.

  She knew her hands would tremble, but she had no choice but to accept both. She laid her hands down atop the reticule, the love knot held in her closed fist.

  “Is there anything you would like to tell me, Lady Telmaine?” he said quietly.

  “I thought I had lost them,” she said.

  “How much money was in the reticule?”

  “Sixty, sixty-five.” She ventured a small shrug of the shoulder, the insouciance of a lady to whom money comes easily.

  “Perhaps,” di Brennan said to the superintendent, “you might explain.”

  Plantageter leaned back with a sigh that she felt in her own weary bones. “Yesterday evening young Guillaume di Maurier was found seriously wounded—he had been shot in the abdomen.” The lawyer’s brow drew briefly in sympathy. “I sent one of my agents to take a statement. Di Maurier said he had been searching for a lost child—you may know he acts in an irregular capacity for Lord Vladimer—and had traced her to a warehouse in the Lower Docks. It was while he was there he was shot. He had given this information to the child’s mother with the expectation that she and”—a slight emphasis on the contested title—“Baron Strumheller would act to free the child. As the young man seemed in extremis, the agent did not tell him of Strumheller’s arrest. A kindness, you understand, if he were to die.” Telmaine made a small sound in her throat; Plantageter paused, awaiting her question, but both sonned di Brennan’s warning headshake. Breathing shallowly, gripping Bal’s love knot, she held her peace.

  “That was around one fifteen of the clock. A little after half past, a coachman delivered a lady matching Lady Telmaine’s description to the Upper Docks. Further reports had the lady walking in the direction of the Lower Docks. At around two of the clock, fire broke out in a warehouse in the Lower Docks. An extremely fierce, hot fire. One or two witnesses claim they sonned a woman carrying something from the direction of the fire, but in such conditions such testimony could be challenged. Somewhat later, the lady returned to the waiting coach, smelling strongly of smoke and with a sick child in her arms. She asked to be driven to the archducal palace, claiming to have lost her money but to be acting in Casamir Blondell’s interest. Out of sympathy for the child, the coachman agreed. He was paid on arrival, and the cloak he had lent to keep the child warm returned. I received the information from Casamir Blondell that the child Florilinde Hearne had been restored to her parents. He knew of no female agent assigned to work the docks.”

  Telmaine controlled her breathing and her expression with an effort. He waited; she had a sudden impression of a cat waiting by a mousehole, and felt a flare of unwise temper at the idea he should toy with her.

  “I also received a message from the prison that Baron Strumheller had collapsed and expired at about the same time the warehouse burned. However, I now know that is not so.”

  “In what way?” said di Brennan, frowning.

  “He is not dead.”

  “The order of succession has been dispatched, and we are making the arrangements required to execute the late Baron Strumheller’s will.”

  It was, Telmaine thought, a cat-to-cat contest now, and she was very glad to crouch quietly in her mousehole.

  “I would hold on that will,” Plantageter said, with a trace of humor. “Lord Vladimer Plantageter arrived by the train from the coast just after sunset tonight. By his account Lady Telmaine, her husband, and Baron Strumheller interrupted an attempt on his life and killed the sorcerer responsible. Strumheller had escaped prison with the collusion of the prison apothecary, whom I believe he had known in the past.”

  “I am truly gratified,” di Brennan said after a pause. Telmaine heard genuine emotion in his voice, and her heart warmed to him. “I have known Ishmael di Studier, boy, man, and baron, since I was a student, and despite all his irregularities, I have never felt that by serving my client I was not serving justice.” Then
the unguarded moment passed; the lawyer returned, keen-edged. “Then the charges are dropped?”

  “We must discuss that at a later time, Master di Brennan,” Plantageter said.

  Smoothly, the lawyer accepted that with a murmured “Of course.”

  “The charges must be dropped!” Telmaine said, unable to restrain herself. “We know who tried to kill Vladimer and we know who killed—who must have killed—Tercelle Amberley.”

  “Unfortunately, my lady, knowing and proving before law are two different matters,” Plantageter said, with some emphasis. “The remains of four men were found in the ruins of the warehouse.” A flush of heat washed over Telmaine as she remembered brushing by the foot of one of the corpses. That realization, that distraction, would have been the death of her and Florilinde, but for Ishmael’s sacrifice.

  “Lady Telmaine, did you arrange for that fire to be set, to enable you—or someone else”—as di Brennan shifted in his chair—“to free your daughter?”

  “Of course not!” Telmaine said, in what she hoped was the tone of someone hearing that outrageous accusation for the first time.

  “Did you bribe anyone to set the fire, with the money in that reticule and your jewelry?”

  “My husband gave me this when we were courting,” she said in a thin voice. “It would be the last thing I would ever—”

  “Did Baron Strumheller start the fire?”

  Now she was genuinely appalled. “No! Baron Strumheller—” She caught herself; di Brennan’s hand signal was redundant warning. “Baron Strumheller was in prison, half the city away.” And, brazenly, “I know he has the reputation of being a mage, but I—I simply don’t believe it.”

  “Baron Strumheller’s supposedly fatal collapse occurred at the time the fire began,” he noted, but without any real conviction. “Lady Telmaine, what did you plan to do when you confronted those men in the warehouse?”

  She would not think of Ishmael’s agonized scream in her mind as he had reached across the distance between them to hold back the flames—an impossible effort for a first-rank mage. “I planned to bribe them to free my daughter,” she said, as steadily as she could. “I would have promised them no one would know. They could not know that Master di Maurier had been able to give testimony. Is he—” Her voice wavered. “Is he still alive?”

  “I believe so, but if he does live, it will be a miracle. It does make me ask what you thought you were doing, going to the same place.”

  She bit her lip. “In truth, Superintendent, I fear I was a little mad. My husband had been beaten, my daughter stolen away from me, and the man who had been helping me find her accused of the vilest crimes.”

  “You should have come to us, Lady Telmaine.”

  She clutched her gloved hands together. “It was—I was afraid of the publicity, Master Plantageter. Afraid that it would hurt my daughter. Baron Strumheller promised us he could use Lord Vladimer’s networks. And Master di Maurier found her. I do hope he lives. When he told me—Florilinde was all I thought about.”

  He leaned back in his chair and his sonn washed deliberately over her. “I cannot decide whether you are a blessed innocent who has used up a lifetime’s luck in a night, or a woman so cunning she has been able to conceal all the traces of her crimes.” He paused, and sonned her again, catching her with her mouth a little open as she sought—truly sought—to find an answer for him. “When did the fire in the warehouse start?”

  “As I set foot inside the building.”

  “The description was that it was explosive.”

  “It may have seemed so from outside,” Telmaine said, steadily, her heart beating hard. She must hold her nerve, hold it with all her strength. If she did not waver, they must take her testimony for what it was, or think the unthinkable. “The downstairs was passable.”

  “But the guards did not escape,” he said. “And if there was time for you to reach and free your daughter, there was time for them to flee. Did you have them drugged, Lady Telmaine? Was that what your bribe money was for?”

  “No,” she said, cleared the croak out of her voice and said again, clearly, “I did not drug them. I do not know why they did not escape. I paid them no heed. All I could hear”—a shallow gasp, quite unfeigned—“were my child’s cries.”

  There was a silence. Plantageter said, in a confiding voice, “I suspect, Lady Telmaine, that not a court in the land would convict you.”

  “Do not respond to that, Lady Telmaine,” cautioned di Brennan.

  She sonned di Brennan, her brow furrowed in temper. “No court should even charge me, sir. I have done nothing wrong.”

  There was a silence. She did not dare sonn the man’s expression until his sudden movement startled her into a nervous cast that visualized him rising from his chair. “Thank you for your time, Lady Telmaine.”

  Di Brennan rose also. Telmaine remained where she was, resisting the desire to melt into the chair. Di Brennan followed the superintendent to the door but, instead of following him through it, closed the door softly and firmly behind him.

  Turning, he sonned her lightly, his face thoughtful. “When I met your husband, I thought him a clever young man. Now I appreciate he has an equally clever wife.”

  “I don’t understand you, sir,” Telmaine said, struggling to summon up offense. “I have done nothing wrong. If the Sole God were not watching over me, then his mother was.” She regretted the statement immediately: the Mother of All Things Born was the goddess of Lightborn and mages, not of respectable Darkborn. She brought her hand to her lips. “Forgive me,” she said, from behind it.

  He said, “Please mind what you say, Lady Telmaine. Even to me.”

  Floria

  Floria woke, unrested, eyes squeezed against the dazzle of the lights overhead. She had slept naked for want of her usual night attire, a thigh-length lace vest, Darkborn-made, that Balthasar had given her as a birthday gift years ago. Tangled sheets bound her legs; the sheet against her back felt clammy. She threw an arm across her face, ignoring the prickling of her shadowed skin, and tried not to taste the inside of her mouth. The thought might be unworthy of the prince’s loyal servant, but she could not help hoping that Isidore had paid just a little for yesterday’s overindulgence.

  But the festivities had passed without major incident. Yes, several duels, three with pistols—a deplorable habit adopted from the Darkborn—and two deaths. Many alliances and schemes, some of which would no doubt lead to trouble. Numerous dalliances, some of which would produce inconvenient children. The Lightborn did not have the Darkborn’s sensitivities about legitimacy, since magic could answer questions of paternity, but alliances amongst their brightnesses were of necessity political, and even the brightest were susceptible to base jealousy. But today the guests would begin to disperse, taking with them the most uncouth from the south and the least forgiving from the north, and she could stand down.

  At least there was no occasion around breakfast. The business of the princedom must go on, whether or not a son comes of age, and the prince habitually woke early, worked before breakfast, and then ate breakfast privately with one or more intimates. Today, it was his flighty daughter Liliyen. Floria angled her arm to view the clock; it was as early as she feared, given the way she felt, but not, alas, as early as she hoped, also given the way she felt. She kicked free of the sheets, rolled to her feet, and began her morning stretches.

  Stepping wide for a side lunge, she bruised her bare foot on one of her own shoes. She caught it up and pitched it beneath the form carrying her court costume before she thought—she had not left it there.

  She had not left it there, and none of the palace servants could possibly have come into this room without her knowing. Which left—she began a methodical search of the room, looking for the evidence that would surely be there if one of her own colleagues was counting coup on her. It had to be a game, for if someone had found a way into her room with malevolence in mind, she would not have lived to awaken.

  She f
ound nothing, no mocking note or hidden counter. Perhaps, she thought, that was the object, to unsettle her. Sooner or later someone would make a point of letting her know.

  She rounded off her exercises in irritable haste and went to bathe. One of the compensations of an overnight stay at the palace was the sybaritic facilities. The huge bathtub and sink were milky porcelain, chipped and marked with the fine frieze of age. They had originally been enspelled to absorb the daylight from the wide window, but subsequent economies replaced that by the usual magical lights in mirrored brackets. By habit, she noted their healthy color and brightness. A light whose store of sunlight was dwindling passed through all the colors of sunset before it went out.

  It was too early to open the shutters, still before dawn. She turned away from the light and found herself facing a mirror. She assessed herself with detachment. A woman of more than average height, lean, muscles like straps and cords, bulkier on the right arm and leg. Fine lines of age around eyes and mouth, but only to those who came close. A little softening by time of the contours of breast and buttocks, but only to one who remembered. Shoulder- length hair, not much darkened from the white gold of youth, a fortunate color amongst Lightborn. She should consider it so; it was what made her father notice her mother, all those years ago. Several old scars, white on fair skin. The tattooed mandala of faded yellow and brown that spread across most of her upper abdomen.

  She rubbed the mandala lightly. She had not been awake when the asset was cast upon her, the tattoo cut into her skin. Her father’s doing; he knew she would not have consented, otherwise, to assume the asset that had preserved his life and profession until then. Only one member of the White Hand lineage could carry it at any one time.

  For the remaining four years of his life, she had tasted his food, too. Then he had set aside his caution, and died. Another had brought the poison to the table, she understood that—and had had her vengeance—but he had brought his indifference to living longer, now that the weakness of age was fully upon him.