The Mageborn Traitor--Exiles, Volume 2

by Melanie Rawn

  And she saw none of them in complete combination in either of the young male Prentices at her table. They were nice enough, but not to her taste. Glancing over at Ollia Bekke, she realized for the first time that what applied to herself must also apply to Mikel. He would husband a Mage Guardian. She eyed her brother critically, deciding that he had the looks, charm, and wit—St. Tirreiz knew he had the dowry!—to catch any woman he wanted. But all at once the thought of him as a father to Mageborn children (to any children, for that matter) made her giggle under her breath. Imagining Mikel as a husband was stretch enough; picturing him with three or four little carpet-crawlers throwing up on his boots was too funny.

  The youth opposite her, believing he had scored with his latest joke, beamed in pleasure and enjoyed the chagrin of his companion. Taigan didn’t even notice.

  She did notice when a dessert of cookies and fresh fruit was brought around to the table. She had a sweet-tooth, inherited from her mother, but the chocolate triumph of the baker’s art interested her not at all. The young man carrying the platter did.

  He was a year or two older than she, tall and broad-shouldered, the rest of his body hidden by a loose smock that kept his clothes clean of kitchen spills. His face was quietly handsome—not spectacular like Josselin Mikleine’s, and all the more attractive for it to Taigan’s way of thinking. (She had never forgiven Josselin—or herself—for her reaction at first sight of him in Roseguard.) The young man’s nose was straight and proud, his eyes slate-gray with flashes of silver, his mouth finely made, his skin deeply tanned. Thick black hair waved smoothly back from his brow and curled over his collar. (No coifs at Mage Hall; Mikel would appreciate that.) He set the platter at the head of the table, looked up, and met Taigan’s eyes in a long, assessing look that came close to making her blush. The Prentice across from her said something; the young man nodded a greeting but did not speak, and after a sidelong glance at Taigan returned to the kitchen.

  She felt as if a Clydie stallion had stomped on her chest. With all four split-toed hooves. Shod. Maybe in iron spikes. Not that it hurt, exactly; she just couldn’t breathe very well. She wished she’d taken the time to brush her hair. She wished she’d worn the green shirt that set off her eyes. She wished she’d heard his name.

  She wished she could start breathing again without this catch in her throat.

  After the meal, she sought him out. She roamed Mage Hall looking for black hair and gray eyes. She thought she saw him once—but it was only Josselin Mikleine, too tall and too dark, with hair that curled too much.

  He appeared from nowhere in the main courtyard as Taigan paused beneath the oak tree. The kitchen smock was gone. Abruptly confronted with the outlines of a lean, supple body, all she could think was that compared to him, Josselin was as crudely muscled as a blacksmith’s overworked apprentice.

  “Good day, Lady Taigan,” the young man said, and his voice was velvet vowels and silken consonants. “Are you pleased with what you find here?”

  She wanted to sink into the flagstoned walk, for though the words ostensibly referred to Mage Hall, she knew he was politely rebuking her for staring. She felt unbearably stupid and hideously young. But as she met those silver-shot eyes, she realized that he was as interested in her as she was in him. Confidence came back—enough, anyhow, for her to say, “I’ve been promised a tour. Would you care to show me around?”

  “I have duties until sunset, but perhaps after dinner.”

  “I’ll meet you here.”

  He nodded, and a lock of thick hair fell forward over his eyes. He swept it back with a careless hand—the fingers long and powerful and sensitive. “Your mother, Lady Sarra—she’s very beautiful.” A slight pause, and the gray eyes looked anywhere but at Taigan as he added, “You favor her.”

  The horse stomped on her chest again.

  He paused, then shook his head as if he’d said too much. “Until later, Lady Taigan.”

  “Please—just my name.” She didn’t know she would say it until the words left her mouth.

  Her reward was her first sight of his smile: a glory of generous lips and straight white teeth and bright eyes and a warmth that reached right into her vitals.

  “Thank you. I’m honored.” He bowed and vanished through one of the breezeway arches.

  Taigan watched him go, and it was a full two minutes before she realized she still didn’t know his name.

  She and Mikel got the grand tour that afternoon. That evening thy were privileged to dine with their mother, Falundir, Taguare, and the Captal in the latter’s quarters. Taigan didn’t eat much.

  “Too excited to appreciate the cooking?” Taguare teased. “Well, it won’t hurt you. But try to get some sleep tonight. You’ll need it.”

  She met the young man in the courtyard after dinner, as arranged. His arrival was announced as much by the sudden lurch in Taigan’s chest as by the whisper of his footsteps.

  “Is there anything special you’d like to show me?” she managed. “I’ve seen everything now—all the rooms that weren’t in use, I mean, where we’d disturb people at work.” She was babbling—she, First Daughter of a Councillor, offspring of a Minstrel, both with a talent for words that suddenly seemed to be the very last thing Taigan had inherited.

  “Special?” he echoed, then nodded and smiled. “This way.”

  The Ladymoon, five days past full, was the only illumination in the long, lofty chamber to which he took her. Upstairs from the Oak Court, cool white light spilled through a wall of open windows onto a glossy tiled floor, leaving the barrel-vaulted ceiling in shadow. There were no furnishings and no decorations—not even carving on the doors or chiseled patterns on the stone arching high overhead. The only adornment was the central design of the tiles, and Taigan walked forward to inspect it.

  From the black floor all around, silver tiles outlined a square twenty feet on each side, with its corners at the cardinal points of the compass. Diagonals formed four equal triangles. Four more triangles, equal to each other but not to those in the center square, projected outward with their apexes at the compass midpoints. The whole formed an octagon in silver on black. As Taigan bent to touch the smoothly perfect ceramic, she noticed close-to what moonlight washed out at even a few steps’ remove: a single tile in the very center of the square was black, painted with three interlocking octagons—green, gray, and red. Healer, Scholar, and Warrior Mages, she thought to herself, nodding. After the meager attention to architecture and decoration in the rest of the complex, at last she’d found a place worthy of Mage Guardians.

  “Beautiful,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder as she stood upright. The room and the man—but he didn’t seem to notice her double meaning.

  “This is the place we enter as Prentices,” he said softly, “and emerge as Mages.”

  “What happens?”

  “No one ever says. It’s just Prentice and Captal, for anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.” He walked to the middle of the room, moonlight flooding his body. “After comes the Listing, with due ceremony before everyone. But that’s only a formality, after this.”

  “Will it come soon for you?”

  He shook his head, smiling again. “I’m a slow learner.”

  “I’m glad.” Hearing how that sounded, she felt her cheeks burn. “I mean, I’m not glad, not that you won’t become a Mage soon, but that you’ll be here a while, so we can get to be friends, maybe.” Saints, she was stammering like a fifteen-year-old at her first tea social.

  “I’d like that,” he replied. “But perhaps you need to know my name before we can start being friends.”

  She waited for him to offer his name, and when he didn’t immediately do so, she couldn’t even think up words to ask him. This was insane. She was rich and important; the brains her parents had bequeathed her, she knew how to use; she was pretty and amusing and everyone said she was too clever by half; she was more than accustomed
to roomfuls of good-looking young men competing for her attention.

  So why couldn’t she ask a simple question?

  “I’m Jored Karellos.”

  “Jored,” she repeated idiotically.

  “It’s from St. Jiorto Silverhelm.”

  “Patron of armorers,” she supplied automatically, and he gave her a half-smile.

  “I hope it’s appropriate—I’d like to be a Warrior Mage someday. Though I’ve no idea what my mother meant by naming me that.”

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “I never knew her. I was orphaned shortly after my birth.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “The Karellos Name took me in—I’m not really one of them, but Lady Lilen Ostin’s example in adopting strays like me is widely admired in The Waste.” He shrugged. “Everybody takes in at least one, just so they can say they did.”

  “You’re from The Waste?”

  “Probably. During the Rising there was a lot of confusion, a lot of refugees. I don’t know where I was born. One of the Equinoxes of 969 is all I know about the date.”

  “Like Josselin.”

  “Yes. He and I have quite a bit in common.” Jored smiled again, and her heart heeled over. “People around here sometimes refer to us as ‘The Twins,’ like the two Adennos girls.”

  “I met them this afternoon.”

  He nodded. “But now there’s a real pair of twins here—you’re the first, you know, you and your brother.”

  “Are we?”

  “Mageborns are rare enough. But twin Mageborns—especially as powerful as you are—”

  Taigan blinked. “Are we?” Saints and Wraiths, she was a scintillating conversationalist tonight.

  “Oh, yes. I can sense it in you. And a little bit in your mother.”

  “She’s the one we get it from. I kind of think it comes from my father, too, except that everybody says he isn’t—but I don’t know, music is a kind of magic, isn’t it? And he was Warded a long time ago by Gorynel Desse, before the Rising when he and my mother and the Captal defeated Anniyas and Glenin Feiran together, and—” Aware that she was not only babbling but bragging, she shut up.

  “Your parents are remarkable people,” Jored said. Then he turned his head toward the door. “Someone’s coming.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “I do.” He escorted her to the door, closed it behind them, and bowed slightly. “Good night, Taigan. I enjoyed our talk. If it pleases you, I would like us to become friends.”

  She managed to nod. Jored melted into the darkness of the hallway, and Taigan went to her tiny chamber—and slept, incredibly enough, as soundly as a stone.

  24

  “STAY another day,” Cailet urged.

  She and Sarra had hiked up to a glade on the banks of Willowfall Creek, where she and Collan had gone the day after her exhausting work with Toman. Cailet was determined not to think about the boy, and how she’d almost botched the whole job. The day was too fine for thinking about anything but the grass, the sky, the cool water, and the lavish picnic lunch the cook had prepared.

  The sisters had spent the morning discussing everything from current politics to what the twins would learn in the next several years. Then Aidan had flung open Cailet’s office doors and banished them outside with a grin and a laden hamper of food. The sunlit climb had refreshed them both, clearing out the tangle of concerns, but in the heat the cool shadows of the willows and oaks were more than welcome.

  “I should go back,” Sarra replied.

  Cailet crouched beside the creek and scooped up a handful of water. She looked into it for a time, seeing the lines and sword-calluses of her palms through clear liquid. She’d been born with the creases; the calluses, she had earned. But though her hands were marked, they were never filled.

  “You should stay.”

  “I need to be at Ryka Court.”

  “You need what’s here.”

  Sarra paused, the basket half-unpacked around her on the grass. After a moment she said slowly, “You’ve never asked that of me before. Why now?”

  “Just what I said. You need to learn—”

  “It’s too late for me, Cai. Let my children do it. Don’t try to make a Mage Guardian of me, too.”

  “As you wish.” She let the water trickle from her fingers.

  “There’s no time for it. You have to see that. There’s never been enough time.”

  “I can’t keep you here if you don’t want to stay.”

  “You’re the Mage, not I. It’s not necessary for me to learn magic.”

  Cailet looked sidelong at her. Despite the words, the conflict was there in Sarra’s black eyes: she knew enough to want to know more, yet she feared the knowledge. Cailet understood that only too well. But if Sarra had no access to her magic, if she had no idea how to use it, she would be helpless in the face of what Cailet knew was coming. If only she’d stay just a little while, learn just a little. . . .

  Cailet could not compel her to stay. She couldn’t shape her sister’s destiny to her own will. That was one of the hardest lessons of being Mageborn, of being the Captal, and one of the most insidious darknesses inside her. Cailet knew she could have arranged Sarra’s continued presence here; the Code of Malerris provided several methods. But she refused to exert that influence, even for Sarra’s own good.

  So I’m helpless to prepare Sarra for what Glenin will surely do soon—and Sarra will he helpless to defend herself. Ah, but when was “helpless” a word to be used about this woman? She has more strength than anyone I know. Whatever comes, whatever happens, Sarra will survive it—probably even thrive on it. Don’t you think so, Gorsha?

  But he remained silent.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Sarra said softly. “I know you want to help, but there’s no time, Caisha. And, truly told, no need. But I would like to see you at work, sit in on a class tomorrow, if that’s all right.”

  “If you’d like, then tomorrow morning at first light you can watch something very special. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  “What?”

  She grinned. “That’s a secret I’ll keep to myself for now.” She scooted over on the grass to help unload the food—cold spicy chicken, marinated vegetables, bread, three kinds of cheese, and a salad of rice, nuts, and apples. There were bunches of crimson grapes and paper-wrapped chocolates for dessert, and to wash it all down the sweetest, coldest water in all Tillinshir right to hand. Sarra laughed when Cailet produced a pair of crystal goblets to drink from.

  “Aidan takes very elegant care of you!”

  “He and Marra try, anyway,” she replied with a shrug. “I don’t really have the right instincts. But we’ve made improvements over the years. We’re not quite camping out, the way we used to.” She gestured to the sprawling buildings below, barely visible through the trees.

  “I was right about the roses. Was I right about Josselin Mikleine as well?”

  “You know you were.” And I hope to all the Saints that I’m wrong about him, and about Jored, too—but I can’t be wrong about both, if not one then the other—unless I’m completely wrong about all of it.

  Sarra tore off a hunk of bread, munched, swallowed, and said, “How does he get the roses to grow so fast? I only sent them—what, last summer?”

  “Magic,” Cailet teased. “The oak in the courtyard grew two feet last week.”

  She made a face. “Very funny, little sister.”

  They ate every scrap of lunch, then sat licking chocolate from sticky fingers like a pair of six-year-olds. Afterward, both sat beside the stream, boots and stockings off, to dangle their feet in the cold, clear water. Cailet hated to bring the rest of the world back into their tiny corner of it, but eventually she had to ask.

  “How’s the Dombur situation shaping up in the Council?”

  Sarra lay back flat on the gras
s, sighing. “Do you want the long version or the short?”

  “I already know the latter. Vellerin Dombur is setting herself up to be the next Grand Duchess of Domburronshir.”

  Sarra squinted sideways at her. “Now, how did you figure that out? All she’s done so far is decline to run for a Council seat.”

  “Why should she bother? Her close cousin is the leading candidate to replace poor old Isibet Omarra.”

  “Any word on whether that accident was an accident?”

  “Nothing to indicate otherwise. After all, one does take a few risks when one insists on climbing mountains at the age of seventy-three.”

  “So how did you know about Vellerin’s ambitions?”

  “I have a contact at Census. She wasn’t sure at first, so I only heard about it recently, but all winter she’s been getting seemingly unrelated requests for official Dombur documents—none of them traceable back to the good Mayor of Domburron, of course. But you stack them all on top of each other in order, and you’ve got their family history back to Veller Ganfallin.”

  “It’s absurd,” Sarra declared. “As if someone who died over two hundred years ago has any bearing on what her descendants are today!”

  “You can say that—you’re a Blood,” Cailet responded wryly.

  “So are you.”

  “No, I’m Third Tier, and I know what it means to have people who lived eight hundred years ago determine your place in the social structure.”

  “Not anymore,” Sarra said stubbornly.

  Cailet let it go. Shrewd as her sister was, to some things she was blind.

  “And anyway,” Sarra went on, “all the children of the so-called Grand Duchess died or were executed.” When Cailet made no reply, Sarra sat up abruptly. “Do you mean one of them survived? Is there evidence for that woman’s descent from Veller Ganfallin?”

  Cailet shrugged and wriggled her toes in the water. “More than there is for my being a Rille. I was going to tell the next Minstrelsy visitor about it, but since you’re here. . . .”