The Mageborn Traitor--Exiles, Volume 2

by Melanie Rawn

  Elin looked around, saw Cailet, and rose from the chair. “Granon, calm her, please.” He went to her at once, whispering a few words before he sat down and began to croon wordlessly to the little girl, stroking the black curls from her forehead.

  Elin drew Cailet into the farthest corner, out of the child’s sight. “Are you shocked?” she asked harshly. “We’re both from old, proud families, Bloods and Mageborns on both sides—but our daughter is everything the stories say a Fifth Tier used to be.”

  Cailet could only stare at her.

  Elin gave a small, sharp shrug. “Physically, Piera is exquisite, if small for her age. You can see that for yourself. We didn’t notice anything different about her until she reached the age for talking. We told ourselves she was just a little slower than other children—she was born four weeks early. She was never ill, she was always so beautiful—but she didn’t speak. But sometimes she’d scream for hours and hours, and nothing I did was any good.”

  “Elin—” Cailet swallowed the thickness in her voice. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? If it’s to do with her magic, then maybe I can help—”

  “It’s not Wild Magic. Granon’s seen that before. It’s nothing like that in symptoms—and we don’t think she has any magic at all. I hope she doesn’t, because when she’s old enough—who knows what could happen?”

  “What can be done for her?” Cailet asked quietly. “Tell me what I can do.”

  “Nothing,” said the mother, with the bleak certainty of having tried everything to no avail. “We had to give her a room to herself when she was two. She’d wake screaming in the night, or get out of bed and—we found her one morning lying by the door, her forehead bleeding from trying to batter the door down.” Elin glanced over her shoulder as Piera’s cries faltered, then ceased. “Granon can almost always soothe her. There’s nothing in this room but the bed and the chair because objects can suddenly frighten her, even if she’s been around them her whole life. There was a tapestry, just a little thing, of cats playing. She loved it, she’d croon to it as if the cats were real. It was the only emotion she’d ever shown. So we gave her a kitten. For three weeks she wouldn’t let it out of her sight. Then one day she ripped the tapestry off the wall and tore it to shreds, and then she tore the ears off that poor kitten and broke its legs and strangled it. She’s incredibly strong in her frenzy.” Elin reported it as if making an observation about the weather. “We don’t dare leave Piera alone. She knows the two servants who tend her, but you’re a stranger and when she saw you—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Elin shrugged away the sympathy. “She’s lived in this Warded room for over a year. We explain her absences from the usual functions by saying she’s still very young and terribly shy. I don’t know what we’ll do when we have to make excuses for not sending her to school. Grania’s very good with her, she reads to her and sings, and plays finger-games. . . .”

  “There must be some kind of help—someone who knows something about—”

  She laughed bitterly, the numbness of continual grief broken. “Children like Piera aren’t even supposed to exist! Who could we tell without ruining our entire family? Piera is living proof that my line and Granon’s are tainted. I’m a Blood, this isn’t supposed to happen to me.”

  Suddenly Cailet remembered that Sarra had said much the same thing after miscarrying her First Daughter twenty years ago. The brutal measures enacted after The Waste War had eliminated contamination from Lenfell’s bloodlines. Or so it was avowed. Cailet looked over at the bed, where Piera lay calm again as her father’s voice droned on and on, lulling her with meaningless sounds. And Cailet remembered a night long ago when Gorynel Desse had taken a newborn baby away from Ostinhold, and Lady Lilen had told her about places where these tragic children could grow up and live out their lives in safety.

  Gorsha—tell me where. Tell me, so I can help this child and her parents and sisters out of this nightmare.

  He was silent within her mind, but she could sense his sorrow. Granon Mikleine was the grandson of his old friend; Elin, the granddaughter of his own beloved sister. Cailet perceived no shock, no horror in him that such a thing could happen, only pain for them and the child.

  “As you know, my cousin Glenin wrote to me,” Elin was saying in a colorless voice, her brief emotion gone. She stared fixedly at her hands, turning around and around on her thumb a signet ring carved with the Alvassy Castle Spire. Cailet recognized it with a jolt; it was the family’s First Daughter ring, centuries old. Sarra had worn it during her imposture as Elin’s sister Mai. “She hopes I’ll actively cooperate with her and Vellerin Dombur. There was an appeal to family loyalty—my grandfather was Telo Ambrai, Lady Allynis’s brother. Glenin seems to have conveniently forgotten that she murdered my sister.”

  She also tried to murder me. She’ll try again. I’m too dangerous to let live, too old for childbearing—and she’ll have Taigan and Mikel. But the only one she really needs is Taigan.

  “She also seems to forget that I’m a Mage Guardian, not a Malerrisi,” Elin was saying, stubborn pride steeling her voice now. “My grandmother’s brother was Gorynel Desse, Captal Garvedian’s First Sword. Glenin will have nothing from me.”

  “Except your silence,” Cailet murmured. “Because of Piera.”

  Shoulders sagging, she gave a weary nod. “If anyone found out—it would be the end of the Alvassys and the Mikleines, and of all we hope to accomplish in Ambrai. Children like her are born sometimes, but not to Bloods. My brother wouldn’t escape, or his children—can you imagine what Geria Ostin would do if she discovered her First Daughter’s cousin is like this?”

  “I understand.” Cailet turned away, rubbing her face with both hands, then raked back her uncombed hair and faced Elin again. “I do understand. You couldn’t risk so many Mages here, they might sense your Wards and find out about Piera. So you sent them to Ryka Court.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can’t oppose Glenin openly, in case she targets you the way she has me—and puts someone inside the Octagon Court the way someone got inside Mage Hall. I understand your silence, Elin, and the reasons for it. It breaks my heart for you and Granon and Piera. I won’t tell anyone what I’ve seen here.” Her cousin nodded slowly. “But there may be a small hope for her. There are places—”

  “No! I won’t have her taken away from me! She’s my child, my baby—” Elin visibly controlled herself. “You’re not a mother, you can’t understand. Society tells me I should reject and fear this child, that when I suspected she wasn’t—normal—I should’ve killed her and said she died in a fall, or a fever, or—but she’s my daughter. I won’t give her up.”

  “Forgive me, I should have realized.” But one day it would become impossible to keep Piera at the Octagon Court. Elin already knew that; she already worried about excusing the child’s absence from regular schooling. Eventually she’d see the wisdom of removing Piera to one of the safe places. And Cailet—as much a product of their society as Elin—suddenly loathed their world that offered mothers of such children two choices: murder or abandonment.

  Cailet left them, and returned to the Mage Academy grounds. They were all looking for her—Elo and Lusira and Dessa, Taigan and Mikel, Jored and Josselin, all except Marra and Avin. The former had elected to stay in Ambrai at the new Healers Ward, in case the Ladder journey had adversely affected her unborn child. It was Elo’s opinion that the baby was not yet developed enough for its brain to suffer any harm—if indeed it was Mageborn. But Marra would not risk another Ladder, and Cailet didn’t blame her. In a week or so she’d travel overland to The Waste, and live at Maurgen Hundred where Aidan had spent his childhood. As for Avin Sonne, he intended to go to Cantratown where his niece’s daughter Jiora was.

  So they were eight crammed into the Ladder to Telomir’s rooms at Ryka Court. He was waiting for them, and the third early morning Cailet had experienced in a single day shone brightl
y through the windows as Telo told her that Glenin Feiran and Vellerin Dombur were expected at Ryka Court early next week.

  4

  THE Council regularly divided itself into thirds for discussion of regional matters. Subcommittees for North Lenfell, South Lenfell, and the Island Shirs met every other week while the Council and Assembly were in session, usually on an informal basis in one of the Members’ suites. Sarra, as Councillor for Sheve, was hosting her colleagues for Tillinshir, The Waste, Ambraishir, and Cantrashir on this fifth day of Maiden Moon—and studiously ignoring their broad hints that after more than two hours of discussion, sustenance more substantial than coffee would be welcome. It was getting on for Half-Eighth and people were getting hungry. But it was Tarise’s shrewd ploy to serve nothing except drinks: “Empty stomachs and full bladders—nothing will clear a room quicker.”

  The topics of discussion this morning, however, were much too urgent to abandon. The calamity at Mage Hall and the imminent arrival of Vellerin Dombur and Glenin Feiran: these and their possible relation to each other were thrashed out in all conceivable permutations by five women old enough to recall living under Anniyas’s rule and young enough to have lived most of their lives free of it. They were not favorably disposed toward Vellerin Dombur’s ambitions—though they did not believe her goals included their own Shirs. On this they all agreed, except for Sarra, who intended to speak in private to Eskanel Rikkard of Ambraishir regarding Glenin.

  The political dynamic of North Lenfell was skewed toward the Mage Guardians. Sarra’s reasons for favoring the Captal were obvious (but for the true, secret ones). Lusian Wentrin of Tillinshir was not only infuriated that violence had been done in her Shir, but grieved the death of her nephew Jioram, a Prentice at Mage Hall. Though Grispina Wytte of Cantrashir had no Mageborn relations, Viko Garvedian had been her lover ten years ago and they remained close friends. Eskanel Rikkard held her Council seat by her own merits and the wholehearted support of Elin Alvassy. Maidine Karellos, youngest of them at thirty-six, counted among her friends her third cousin Mircia Ostin, First Daughter of Geria and her husband Mircian Karellos, whose husband was Pier Alvassy.

  So it was pretty much all in the various families. North Lenfell’s support fell to the Mages. Sarra never discounted the power of such relationships; they were the foundation of social order, the adhesive that glued the economic structure of the Webs, and the reason Shirs never went to war with each other.

  She just wished they’d get out of her salon so she could go see Telomir and demand he send Cailet a message telling her to come to Ryka Court instantly.

  Gradually, as Lusian Wentrin returned for the sixth time to her anger over what had been done not a hundred miles from the smallhold where she’d been born, the scents of fresh hot bread and spicily sauced beef drifted into the salon from the half-open door to the next room. Within minutes, the other Councillors excused themselves to their own suites—and lunch. When all were gone, Collan came in with a laden silver tray, looking insufferably smug.

  “You did that on purpose,” Sarra accused, grinning.

  “You bet I did. Let’s have lunch out on the balcony—and let’s do it now. I’m starved.” He laughed as her stomach growled agreement to the proposal. “Although if you don’t stop stuffing yourself, you’ll never get into that new gown and Timarrin Allard’s heart will break.”

  Sarra stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Don’t do that unless you plan to use it.”

  She looked around for something to throw. Her fingers had just closed around a pillow when Tarise burst into the room from the antechamber, her husband Rillan right behind her, both of them practically dancing with excitement.

  “Sarra! There’s someone here who simply must see you immediately—”

  Sarra groaned. “No. I refuse. I’m hungry!”

  “Whoever it is can wait,” Collan seconded.

  Rillan laughed aloud. “You won’t be saying that once you see who it is!”

  “Who, then? And it better be good,” Col warned.

  “The best,” Rillan promised, and turned with a flourish of one hand to the door.

  Sarra half-rose from her chair, then sat back down hard. Her knees weren’t working too well. Six people walked into the room, but she really saw only two of them. They’d washed their faces and combed their hair, but their clothes were so crumpled and soot-stained and travel-torn that they resembled derelicts from the filthiest slum on Lenfell. Both looked as if they’d slept perhaps four hours in the last four days. She had the confused impression that they’d grown at least two inches apiece. Maybe it was the way they held themselves now, with a poise that physically reflected the changes in thought and perception and experience that had created adults of the girl and boy she’d last seen.

  For a moment she saw her First Daughter as she had been: a lovely sixteen-year-old with clear, fresh skin, and lustrous blonde hair, and green eyes by turns shrewd and candid. That Taigan disappeared, giving way to a young woman Sarra didn’t know. There were small burn-scars on the right side of her face: one on her cheek, another at her temple near the hairline, a third at the angle of her jaw. Tendrils of hair shorter than the rest of her golden mane curled where locks had been singed off. The green eyes had lost all innocence.

  And Mikel—where was that lanky boy with Collan’s height but not yet his strength, Collan’s handsome features but not his sleek good looks? What had happened to his cheerful humor and that ingratiating crooked grin in a faceful of freckles? This young stranger had broadly muscled shoulders, and a stubbly red beard, and a keen-eyed, uncompromising self-assurance that left her speechless.

  Sarra felt the poignant ache of a mother who sees that her little girl has grown to a woman, and her little boy to a man. Ah, but such a woman and such a man as they had become! Pride surged up, flooding away her sense of loss. Her children, life of her life and her beloved’s life, grown poised and strong with knowing their true worth, and with power awakened in their eyes—

  Still, they looked so much older. She’d seen this same expression in Cailet’s eyes at just this age, eighteen. Was the price of knowledge always to be paid in such grim coin?

  Sarra couldn’t seem to stand up, couldn’t make her legs carry her toward her children who were children no longer. Collan had no such trouble. After a moment’s silence, he let out a roar half-laughter, half-astonishment, and seized Taigan and Mikel in a fierce hug. Sarra watched him surround their children with his arms, hoarding them like a miser did gold.

  Then she heard Cailet’s soft voice at her side. “I guess they’re kind of a shock, all grown up like this. I watched it happen, so I never notice the differences.”

  Sarra looked up, and sight of the weary grief in her sister’s eyes was more of a shock than sight of her grown daughter and son. She rose, knees a bit wobbly, and hugged Cailet tightly, and for once in her life had no words.

  Only a minute later, one word pierced Sarra’s mindless hurt for Cailet’s hurt. Taigan spoke it—Taigan, who hadn’t said it since she was eight years old.

  “Mama—?”

  Cailet let go, then gave Sarra a little push. And Sarra found herself hoarded by her children, locked so fast in their arms that she could hardly breathe. Not that breathing seemed all that important right now.

  “Mama,” said Mikel, “are you crying?”

  “Don’t be silly, of course not,” she mumbled into his shirt.

  “Liar,” said Collan.

  Somehow over the next ten minutes Tarise organized them all for the noon meal. Food enough for twenty arrived, and they all sat around the salon with plates in their laps and big mugs of coffee at their elbows. Sarra was embarrassed to discover that the reunion had been witnessed by two others—Josselin Mikleine and Jored Karellos. She didn’t mind about Telo, he was practically family himself, but she hated to have her private emotions seen by strangers.

  Right off, Collan indignant
ly demanded to know why they hadn’t come immediately here from Telo’s rooms. Telo replied, “You had too many guests who’d ask too many awkward questions—and besides, they all look destitute, not at all fit for polite company. An old man’s clothes don’t fit any of these young bucks, and the days when I kept spare gowns for lady guests are long gone—along with the lady guests, I sorrowfully admit.”

  “Old man!” Tarise scoffed. “And to whom, might I ask, belong these crescent-shaped pearl earrings I saw on your bedside table the other day?”

  Her husband arched his brows. “What were you doing in Telo’s bedroom?”

  Sarra wondered where all this light, teasing chatter had come from. It bounced among them almost giddily, like kittens batting a ball of yarn.

  “Crescents?” Collan’s very blue eyes went wide. “Outlined in diamonds?”

  Tarise nodded vigorously. “The very same. They’ve been in the lady’s family for at least six Generations—”

  “I still want to know why you were in his bedroom,” said Rillan.

  “I know those earrings,” Collan stated. “Telo, you old dog, you’ve been sleeping with the scrumptious Shonnia Somme!”

  “You might very well think so,” Telomir said serenely. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”