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  “I am a member of the Prince’s Vigilance,” she said. “With all that implies.”

  “. . . How long do I have to prove myself?” To whom, he did not specify.

  “As the inheritor of an unrighteous deposition,” she said quietly, “you have very little time.”

  His eyes closed briefly, although she could have told him no more than he knew. “. . . I did not kill Isidore. I did not conspire for his death. I’m not ready, and I know that.” He did not protest that he would never have conspired to kill his father, or wished him dead, though Orlanjis, in such a position, would have protested—and believed it of himself. Fejelis said, “. . . Will you give me a chance to convince you that I am not stupid enough to do this?”

  “. . . I am your brilliance’s servant,” she said. For now remained implied.

  “Of all vigilants, he kept you closest.”

  “That,” Floria pointed out, “was because of your mother’s exercises in poison.”

  To give him credit, he did not flinch or evade the implication. “. . . If this is Helenja’s or the southerners’ doing, why should they not wait until Orlanjis came of age?”

  She fed it to him, hard. “Because you will take all the blame and anger for Isidore’s death to your own darkening, clearing the way for your brother.”

  His self-control was not quite equal to hearing so stark an assessment. But, impressively, the wavering was only momentary. “. . . Until and unless I am deemed deserving of righteous deposition, will you continue to serve me as you did my father?”

  “On one condition,” she said. “Please, go sparingly on the spices.”

  He smiled. “That will be a pleasure. I’ve lost count of the number of times I left my parents’ table with my stomach burning. Now”—the smile fell away—“tell me what you know about my father’s death.”

  “The prince—” He did not react to that petty impropriety. “Your father,” she allowed, “retired to his rooms last night as usual. The magical checks were carried out on the wards, and the usual inspections. We left him wine, water, and food that I had tested myself.

  “And we all missed something,” she said, though she doubted he would have insisted on the admission. “As far as we can tell, sometime shortly after your father retired, the light in his chambers failed.”

  He glanced at the blazing lights arrayed across the white and silver ceiling. “. . . How could that happen?” he said, his voice hushed.

  “Here are my thoughts so far,” she said. “The lights are enspelled to absorb daylight during the day and release it through the night. The light normally lasts two, three days without being recharged. A light that is nearly discharged changes color, conspicuously. Anyone in the room would have noticed.

  “Next, the magic. Magic dispels when the mage dies. For that reason, quality lights are enspelled by at least two mages. The prince’s were enspelled by no less than four. In the rare event that the enspelling itself is flawed, the light fails within minutes of its first use.

  “So the magic did not naturally dispel, and did not fail; therefore, it was annulled. The manner of the prince’s death prompted immediate inquiry into any unusual magic exercised in or around the palace. The mages have admitted no such activity.

  “There are assets against certain kinds of magic, although the pricing is prohibitive. For an individual with an asset to use that asset, he or she would have to be in the room, and would die with his victims. Not necessarily a deterrent to some, but there was no evidence that anyone else was in the room, except for your father, the captain of vigilants, and two of the staff. And the Temple has a record of all living assets.

  “A talisman, though, could have been created years or decades ago. Lights are talismans themselves. One need only be given to an individual—mage or nonmage—with access to the prince’s quarters. And its action could be delayed.

  “The weakness in all those theories is that the members of the Temple Vigilance contracted to the palace should have sensed that magic.”

  “. . . And what about the Darkborn?” he said.

  “Darkborn law and policy does not countenance assassination,” she said. “Or they’d have dealt with your great-grandfather, or with your mother before she even bore you.” Privately she doubted that chance alone had led Odon the Breaker to his end in the claws of a Shadowborn that normally hunted at night, while he was chasing refugees into the Borders. The baronies made their own laws. “And the only way for a Darkborn to have reached your father’s rooms would have been from the outside, at night.”

  She weighed telling Fejelis the strange tale of Tercelle Amberley. She still thought it more likely the children had been born of an ordinary dalliance of the kind that so offended Darkborn morality, yet on its account, Balthasar Hearne had been nearly battered to death and his daughter kidnapped from his doorstep.

  “. . . And the mages amongst the Darkborn?”

  “Perhaps fifty able to dispel midrank magic, but again, the Temple Vigilance would know.”

  “. . . So, once again, it comes back to the Temple Vigilance. Whom can we trust?”

  She smiled, very thinly. “Your father once said that trust was irrelevant now.”

  She watched him for his reaction. Isidore had been careful to maintain equal distance from all his children, marking none out for favor—a care that had become even more scrupulous after Fejelis had nearly died. But it was obvious that he and his father had grown closer, and last night’s conversation—last night’s only—suggested that Isidore considered Fejelis a political player with his own mature agenda, and an ally.

  “Why should they cause trouble?” Floria concluded. “They have everything they want.”

  “. . . Is there any one of them we can trust?”

  For the first time she paused, to weigh her reply. “I believe we could trust Magister Tammorn.”

  “. . . I’ve heard that name,” said the prince, after a longer pause than usual. “He is not contracted to the palace.”

  Could he remember? She had taken a risk—for all three of them—in putting that name before Fejelis. But surely after ten years . . .

  “Your father may have mentioned him, or you heard some gossip,” she spoke lightly of that. “He hasn’t been around the palace much. Tammorn is not of the lineages; he was born up in the northwest. His magic came in late and unrecognized, and brought him all kinds of trouble. He was a petty criminal when he crossed paths with my father, who used to advise for the city watch. My father recognized him for what he was, had a word with the prince, and brought Tam to the Temple’s attention.”

  Without Isidore’s patronage, the high masters might have elected then to burn out Tam’s magic, for all his past offenses—including his great impertinence of being born with power outside their carefully tended lineages. “Tam will be one mage who’ll be wearing full mourning, and meaning it.”

  Fejelis blinked, but otherwise betrayed nothing. “. . . His rank?”

  Might Fejelis actually remember? A nine-year-old child, fatally poisoned, muscles spasming uncontrollably, face mottled slate gray with asphyxia. Chance—in the form of a desultory flirtation—had put Floria in the orchard with Tam at her side when they heard the sounds of what they thought at first was a small animal in distress. Tam had acted before either of them thought of the compact and the law, and the contracted mages who should, rightfully, be summoned. Even the saving of a child’s life was a grave violation of the compact.

  “Fifth, by Temple reckoning. Were he not a sport, it might be higher.” Even after five years with his magic bound, the Temple had not forgiven Tam.

  “Ask him,” the prince said, without hesitation—the effect almost one of blurted words. “. . . Have him come to the salle, at the end of my regular practice time.”

  “And may I tell him why?”

  Fejelis nodded slowly, light sliding on his hair. “. . . Yes,” he said, at last. “Tell him why.”

  Floria

  Unlike most high-ra
nked mages, who lived in the Temple or in its immediate vicinity, Tammorn lived in Minhorne New Town, across the river from palace, Temple, and indeed any destination of any account. Which meant that the brisk mage wind that cleared the lingering smell of the burned Rivermarch bore it toward the New Town. All the way across the bridge, the smell of ash followed her.

  Yet almost as soon as she reached the far bank, the breeze abruptly changed direction, and leaves, litter, and scorched scraps whirled suddenly skyward. The wind tugged her tunic, lifted her hair. Ten yards on, the air was sweet, still, and flowing lightly from the north, as the clouds indicated. Somebody with power enough to deflect winds cared about the place. She thought she knew who.

  The New Town was home to artisans, merchants, and craftsmen who had failed, through lack of luck, industry, or skill, to establish themselves in the city proper. It was also the gathering place of an unruly collection of self-styled revolutionaries and idealists who preached liberation from dependence on magic, and enthusiastically adopted Darkborn inventions. An unlikely place to find a high-ranked mage—but then, Tam was an unusual mage.

  He was sitting on a bench in his front garden, gently jiggling the infant draped over his thigh and gumming on a double fistful of his scarlet trousers. That particular red was one of the new chemical dyes, a by-product, ironically, of the blind Darkborn’s experiments with tar. Its touch made Floria’s asset-imbued skin itch. She had been meaning to take the matter up with Balthasar when his next term on the Intercalatory Council came around: there were poisons enough in the world without creating more.

  “Tam, you can wear that color; just don’t let her chew on it.” Tam’s expression took on a momentary expression of focus as he used his magical senses, and then he nodded and righted the baby, setting her so that she straddled his knee. Thwarted, she promptly turned puce—she had her father’s complexion—glared at Floria with tearing eyes, and began to screech.

  Tam glanced toward the door of the house behind them. A tall, fair-haired woman in a potter’s smock emerged and came to retrieve her daughter with a wary glance at Floria and a reproachful frown at Tam. She was Beatrice, Tam’s lover of some six years. She was not mageborn, but an artisan, and to the Temple she would never be other than a concubine, for all the Temple had also shown little interest in Tam as a contributor to their own precious bloodlines. Tam’s eyes followed her warmly as she carried the child into the house, arriving at the door just in time to thwart the escape of their venturesome three-year-old son.

  Tam looked weary. Mourning red drained his pink and freckled complexion and clashed with his ginger hair and brows. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, although she knew him to be at least a decade older than herself. To a high- rank mage, accomplished in healing, arrest of aging was almost trivial. The archmage was more than three hundred years old.

  “Can you ensure we’re not overheard?” she said.

  He sketched a tiny circle in the air. “Done.”

  “Magister Tammorn,” she said formally, “the prince wishes to discuss a contract with you.”

  Tam blinked. “Fejelis?” he said, surprising her by his ready use of the first name. “Did he say what?”

  Could there be any question? “To find those responsible for his father’s death.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “I recommended you as one likely to do a thorough job of it.”

  “Floria—” He stopped, and gestured. “Sit down.” She did, tilting her rapier, and observing him closely. It was obvious he was disconcerted. The question was, why?

  “There are mages contracted to the palace, mages whose contract Fejelis now holds.”

  “Yes,” she said, “there are. But the way the prince died—I cannot see how magic could not have been involved. The prince—Prince Fejelis—asks that you visit him in the salle, at his usual practice time which is four of the clock.”

  “Has he anyone else?” he said.

  “No. I suggested you; he accepted it.”

  Tam stared away into the distance. She did not even think he saw the Mages’ Tower, which even from here loomed immense on the skyline. “What do you know about the prince’s death, Floria?”

  There was a stress on the pronoun that he surely did not intend to betray. Despite her certainty of her own blamelessness, despite the sunlight, she felt uneasy. Mages—unsettled—even a mage she had known since her father brought home the ginger-haired vagrant who spoke in monosyllables and refused to meet anyone’s eyes. What did he know that she did not?

  She recited the same analysis she had given the prince.

  “You are so certain,” he said, “that it could not have been done other than by magic.”

  “The lights were discharged, dark, not removed, not covered, not smashed—even then the fragments would have continued to glow. Besides the prince, there were three people in the room, one a captain of the Prince’s Vigilance. Their—residues—were all exactly as I would expect them to be: prince and secretary by the desk, Captain Parhelion by the door, and the prince’s manservant readying the bedchamber. All the lights, in all the rooms—and there were seventeen of them—were affected at once, with no warning, no signs of a struggle or an attempt to flee.”

  He was watching her with a disturbing intensity. “Are you certain that the three other men in the room with the prince were who you thought they were? Quenching leaves very little—just fragments of clothing and personal ornaments. You assume that the clothing was being worn by the people you expected to wear it.”

  “If there had been anything anomalous, Captain Parhelion would have raised the alarm. If he had not been in his appointed place, the prince or the prince’s secretary would have questioned it. Tam, it was our routine.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “You think Helenja was involved?”

  “Had it happened the morning of Orlanjis’s coming of age, there’d be no doubt. But to depose the prince now and elevate Fejelis—”

  “You think Fejelis is unacceptable?” Tam said, in a neutral voice.

  Less so than she had thought, she privately admitted, but it did not change the realities. “I give him six months, less if there’s a crisis. That’s for your ears only, Tam.”

  The mage’s expression was in-turned. “What has been done with the prince’s rooms?”

  “The residues have been removed, and the rooms were searched by members of the Prince’s Vigilance and the Palace Vigilance.”

  “And yet you want me?”

  “We missed this, vigilants and mages both.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “You did.” He stood. “I want to see his rooms.”

  “The contract has not been signed.”

  “Members of the Temple might be involved; I want to see the rooms.”

  “Magister—”

  “Mistress Floria, even you could be involved, being in the palace on the night.”

  She let out her breath. “The prince wanted your involvement kept covert until the contract was declared.”

  “It will be. But before I declare any contract, before I agree to do this, I want to see the rooms and speak to the prince.”

  Tammorn

  High in the Mages’ Tower, Tam leaned against the wall to catch his breath, feeling magic pushing at him like a blustering wind before a squall. he sent, needlessly, for the mage he had come to see already knew it. The courtesy was just another example—like his climbing the stairs rather than using power to glide up them—of the earthborn habits that caused the Temple to regard him with suspicion.

  On the other hand, Magister Lukfer was entirely capable of dropping an importunate visitor down the shaft, intentionally or unintentionally. He had done that to Tam at the beginning of their relationship. Although that, Tam had concluded, was meant as the old bear meant when it greeted the cub with a cuff to test its spirit before taking it in its jaws to confirm its proper bearish taste. It was an initiation.

  Even so, he braced himself before n
udging open the broad, bronze door with a magical touch. Lukfer kept his rooms nearly as dim as a bear’s lair, disquieting to all, and painful to many, including Tam. His eyes fixed at once on the windows on the far side of the room, curtained though they were with a half-opaque fabric. Sweating, he crossed the length of the room to clutch and push back the curtains, drinking in sunlight. Only then could he acknowledge the man sitting in shadows.

  Like Tam, Lukfer was a sport, born in a small desert village amongst people even more desperately poor and ignorant than Tam’s own mountain clan. Unlike Tam, whose powers had been bewilderingly slow to emerge, Lukfer had had touch-sense almost from birth. The unrelenting intrusion of the anger, fears, and suspicions of those around him had driven him mad before his fourth birthday. The Temple’s care had restored his sanity, but neither their efforts nor his had enabled him to control his power. By now, he should have been one of the high masters, occupying these rooms by right. Instead, he was the high masters’ ward, kept close so they could contain him, if need be. His living in shadows, disturbing as it was, bled off his power in constant healing effort.

  Meeting Lukfer, knowing how much worse his own fortunes might have been, had been a salutary experience for the surly lout whom Darien White Hand had brought before the high masters. In the bright-lit amphitheater at the apex of the tower, Tam had stood scowling in disapproval at the opulence around him, studiously ignoring the discussion of his fate. He remembered the check in the deliberations, and the shocking sense of his bitterness and resentment, washing back against him as though from an emotional mirror. He whirled round to stare at the man who had floated above the stairs’ wide shaft: a hulk of a man, bald and dressed horrifyingly in black.

  “So this is the new sport,” the man had said. His voice had startled Tam with its quality, a velvety rasp like a wolf skin taken in winter. “Sixth rank, maybe seventh, by the feel of him. Take good care of him, or you’ll have another like me.” To Tam, he said, “I’m Lukfer. You’ll hear about me; what’s not tripe is true. When you’ve some control, come and see me.”