by Melanie Rawn
“I forbid you even to think it!”
Col had never encountered a daughterless couple who didn’t bitterly regret it. He supposed they thought of the Liwellan brat as theirs. Certainly the four brothers spoke of her as they would a real sister: they loved her, made fun of her, tolerated her foibles only so far, and assured Collan that after an unpromising adolescence she’d turned out pretty enough to do them credit. They didn’t resent that she and not they would inherit the Slegin properties and wealth. Riddon seemed relieved for the weight it took from his mother’s mind.
The newly confirmed Lady Liwellan was due back in Roseguard soon—before the eighth, Collan hoped. All they lacked in this little enterprise was a week spent chasing around Lenfell trying to find her. And quite the parade they’d be: Lady Agatine, Orlin Renne, their sons; Domna Sela Trayos, Verald Jescarin, their daughter; Sarra Liwellan, the mysterious Mage Rille, Collan himself—plus an Ostin as guide. Thirteen people traipsing about Sheve, one of them extremely pregnant. Madness.
Col shrugged mentally and sang a ballad learned in the Slegin library. A nod to Riddon signaled their surprise for his parents: a duet for mandolin, flute, and two voices, perfected just that afternoon. And thus went another family evening. Col was yawning before the mantle clock struck Fourteenth, Jeymi’s bedtime.
It took all three big brothers to get one little brother to bed. Collan nearly dropped his borrowed mandolin when affectionate Jeymi included him in his good night hugs. Lady Agatine laughed aloud after the boys were gone.
“You really can’t run once we’re on the road, you know,” she said, startling him so much that his flatpick slid from his fingers. “Jeymi would be off after you. Whatever would you do with an eleven-year-old tagging along?”
He thought it politic not to mention that she’d guessed his intention—though he knew his face had been admission enough—and instead took the attack. “It’s the sixth, and I’m packed. Are you?”
“Almost,” she replied serenely.
“I must say,” Renne commented, “you’ve been remarkably patient. Or remarkably stubborn. You haven’t said one word about our departure.”
“Would it do me any good?”
“I like practicality in a man,” said Lady Agatine. “One more song, please, before we retire for the night? I’ve an early day tomorrow.”
So he sang, and said good night, and paced his bedroom for half an hour before unpacking everything and then packing it again for something to do. Just for the snideness of it he parted the curtains and waved to his guards outside the windows.
This was the most charming jail he’d ever been in. He just wasn’t quite sure how he’d been caught. He remembered taking the bouquet into Lady Agatine’s office, and drinking something. That had been his mistake. They wanted him to stay until it was time to leave, and had done it very efficiently.
Well, they couldn’t watch him constantly on the road. He’d tie Jeymi up if he had to.
And St. Alilen damn him for a total fool if he ever accepted a favor from a member of the Rising again.
15
Sarra was feeling twinges of Ladder Lag again. She’d been from Combel to Neele, Neele to Dinn, and Dinn back to Neele in the space of four days. Because the latter two cities kept the same time, there was no one-minute-morning, next-minute-midnight confusion. Perhaps her discomfort—a slight but nagging headache and a general weariness—was due to the constant exposure of her Warded magic to the Ladders. Or maybe it was just a relapse of her cold.
Once they climbed out of the Naplian Street sewer, they collected three more Mages: Deikan Penteon, Dalia Shelan, and Geris Mirre. There had been not the slightest difficulty which, of course, had Alin in a state of nerves. None of the three knew each other and each had been contacted at a different location. By the time everyone was assembled for the long walk down Bekke Farm Road, it was dusk. Valirion was in favor of stopping for the night at a local inn. Sarra told him she would favor it, too, if their party of eleven looked like anything other than a Mage Guardian convention. So they walked on as the moons rose. And as concrete gave way to gravel, and gravel to dirt, Deikan Penteon endeared himself forever to Sarra by Folding the road.
“I’m not half as good at it as Gorsha Desse,” he apologized. “Plain ground is simple, and I can manage cobbles because the stones haven’t been combined with anything. But he can work the spell on pavement.”
So instead of three hours, the trip lasted a little over one. Their goal was a well halfway to the Bekke Farm for which the road was named, where travelers could rest and refresh themselves. Alin took them in three groups down a metal ladder (“In or out, out or in/Ladder steps of shiny tin”) into the magical Ladder. It lacked a few minutes before Thirteenth when Sarra, last to go through with Adennos and Shelan, found herself in a place blessedly different from her arrival in Neele. This Ladder was the circular pantry of the Knife and Fork Inn, where the air was fragrant with spices rather than pungent with smells better left unidentified.
Val had already alerted the proprietor, a former slave who ran the tavern for Lady Agatine, and rooms were ready for them upstairs. The taproom patrons never even knew they’d arrived.
Waiting were the last three Mages: Ilisa Neffe, her husband Tamosin Wolvar, and Tamosin’s uncle Tamos. There ensued a family reunion of sorts, for Ilisa was Keler Neffe’s sister and these Wolvars were close kin to the Shelans and Mossens. Sarra left them to it in one room, repairing to another with her own unacknowledged kinfolk.
Val poured wine. Alin paced and fretted in silence. Sarra sat on the bed, back propped with pillows, and drank half the wine in two swallows.
“This isn’t the itinerary you originally told me about,” she said.
“Well, no,” he admitted. “We had to make a few adjustments, based on information received at Ryka. Alin, sit down.”
Alin ignored him, and kept right on wearing the polish off the planks.
“Information you didn’t see fit to share,” Sarra observed. “Where do we go from here?”
“Back to Neele, where a boat’s waiting to take us up to Roseguard. We may get there the same time as Captain Nalle and the Rose Crown, and we may not. Doesn’t much matter.”
“We won’t be arriving as ourselves,” she interpreted, “and in any case, I will already have arrived in the form of Mai Alvassy.”
He snagged Alin’s arm, turned him around, and pushed him into a chair. “I said, sit. And tell me what’s bothering you.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try us,” Sarra suggested.
Alin drained his wine and stared into the dregs. “It’s too damned easy,” he muttered. “I don’t like it. Did you know that these two groups got flower messages as well? Same as the ones we picked up in Combel.”
“So?” Val shrugged. “We learned at Ryka Court that we might have to move faster than planned.”
“I don’t like it,” Alin repeated.
“Would you rather be a half-step ahead of the Council Guard, or have the local Watch breathing down our necks, or—”
“You see?” Alin burst out. “You don’t believe me. I told you you wouldn’t.”
“Alin,” said Sana, trying to soothe without patronizing, “we’re here, we’re safe, there’ve been no mistakes and no problems. It seems to me we ought to thank St. Miryenne for her favor and hope she continues to smile on us.”
He looked up, eyes dark. “And if she doesn’t.”
Val answered lightly, “Then we’ll change allegiance to Garony the Righteous and Pierga Cleverhand, the patron of prisoners and the breaker of locks.”
Casual as his voice was, yet there was worry in his eyes—not for what Alin feared might happen, but for Alin himself. Sarra felt a small, poignant ache center somewhere around her heart. To love someone that much, so much that every hurt was instinctively shared . . . to be loved that much, so much that no hurt wen
t uncomforted. . . .
It might almost be worth it.
Maybe that sort of loving happened only with a member of one’s own sex. Sarra thought about it for a minute, picturing women she knew and liked. She felt friendship, affection, pleasure in their company—but no desire for physical contact more intimate than a hug. Certainly not what she’d seen in Val’s and Alin’s eyes sometimes. Or Agatine’s and Orlin’s—or her own parents’.
Well, hell, she thought with an inner sigh. Women don’t interest me. It’ll have to be a man. One of these years I really must do something about it.
After all, she’d be twenty-three soon and that was positively ancient to be still virgin, even for someone whose Name Saint was Sirrala.
The next morning she was again trudging the Bekke Farm Road, this time back to Neele. The fourteen of them split into three smaller groups an hour apart. They were to meet at the St. Mittru dock by sunset, there to board the Summer Star—captained by an Ellevit, owned on paper by a Senison, and owned in fact by Lilen Ostin.
But when they converged on the rickety wharf, no mast flew the white and brown Senison flag with its coiled hooded Snake sigil; no pennant trailed from any stern bearing the Ellevit Dagger on green and crimson; and there was no ship named Summer Star in the whole of Neele Harbor.
16
Collan woke with a vicious headache—as if his dreams had been filled with all the names that had ever pierced his skull. The pain was so bad that he didn’t bother with shoes or shirt before seeking out Lady Agatine’s Healer. A potion tasting like what she’d given him that first night sent him back to bed until nearly noon.
Bathed, shaved, and decently dressed, Col took a purposely meandering path to the kitchen to scrounge something to eat. Even though the day of departure was—must be—tomorrow, he saw no indication that anything was other than perfectly normal. Just another day at Roseguard.
But as a cook sliced bread and tomatoes, a trio of grooms came into the kitchen, snatched up journeypacks, and left in haste. Collan sauntered to a window. In the back courtyard, the three mounted up on the finest horseflesh Col had ever seen. Orlin Renne and Rillan Veliaz, Master of Horse, were there to see them off. Both men looked grave as the grooms clattered out the gates.
The cook produced a plate of bread, cheese, tomatoes, liver paste, and watered wine. Col sat down to eat, and after a minute or two said casually, “Long road to Sleginhold.”
“Truly told, Minstrel. They’ll sleep as well as eat in the saddle the whole way.” The cook didn’t even look alarmed at having revealed the information. Maybe he thought Collan privy to Lady Agatine’s plans.
Jeymi Slegin ran in, skidded to a stop, and exclaimed, “There you are! Mama says to attend her at once, but you can probably finish your lunch first.”
“I’m done,” Col told the boy, slathering liver paste on bread and folding it around cheese and tomatoes. “Not polite to keep a Lady waiting.”
Agatine was in her oval reception chamber, clearing out her desk. She was unhurried and unworried as she stacked papers into a box held by her personal maid—a pretty blonde Col might have been interested in had she not been so definitely married to the Master of Horse.
“And these to the Temple,” Agatine was saying as Col and Jeymi entered. “That’s the last of it, Tarise.”
“Yes, Lady.” Tarise looked up and saw the new arrivals. “He’s here.”
“Good. That will be all for now.” Tarise went out, carrying the box, and Agatine turned to Col. “Domni Rosvenir, you said you were packed.”
“Yes, Lady.”
“Good. Jeymi, go find your brothers. Tarise will join you in your rooms and tell you what to do.”
“Yes, Lady,” her youngest son said, serious as a courtier, and shut the door behind him.
“Is Taig Ostin here yet?” Col asked.
“Taig? Saints, no. Why would you think—oh. The message with the Ostin colors. No, it’s Ostinhold we’re bound for. Taig has no part in it.”
“Then who’s the Guide?”
She smiled slightly and nodded to a tapestry to Col’s left. Its folds parted, and Gorynel Desse stepped into view.
Naturally. Who else? Collan thought, then stopped thinking as anger claimed him. “You son of a Fifth!” he snarled, advancing on the elderly Warrior Mage. “You got me into this—”
“Yes, I did,” Desse replied. To Lady Agatine, he added, “Any more headaches?”
“What do you know about—” Col began.
“Calm yourself, boy. You’ll understand in good time. Yell if you like, get it out of your system. You have one minute.”
“Why don’t you just spell me to silence?” Collan spat. “Go ahead, work more magic on me—I won’t know the difference!”
“Well, as a matter of fact, you would. But that’s another conversation. Are you finished? Ready now to listen to what must be done to save your life?”
17
Sarra ordered her charges to scatter all over Neele in their original groups. Sirralin Mossen, Deikan Penteon, Tamos Wolvar, and Elomar Adennos kept tiny Globes tucked in a cupped palm as links. These small wonders, set by Wolvar, would flare at Adennos’ command when it was decided where they would meet again. A picture of the rendezvous would appear for less than a minute before the Globes winked out of existence. No one, not even Gorynel Desse, could match Tamos Wolvar’s artistry with Mage Globes.
Returning to Dinn was out of the question. Although the owner of the Knife and Fork Inn was Rising loyal, Dinn was even farther from Roseguard than Neele. What they needed was a Ladder to Roseguard. But the only one Alin knew was the Old Kenroke Mill. Nobody wasted any time trying to plot a way to get there.
Sarra led her own little group on a shopping tour. All of them pretended to scrutinize window displays; none of them saw a single thing. They were too busy not looking over their shoulders.
“It’ll have to be Combel,” Sarra said, staring at a display of cutlery on black felt.
“I agree.” Valirion angled himself so the window reflected the street behind him. “I don’t see anybody watching—which means bloody damn-all.” He had succumbed to Alin’s jitters. “You heard what Keler Neffe said about the flower messages everyone received.”
This was what had finally convinced him—and Sarra—that Alin was right to worry. Huddled at the docks and trying to digest the fact that there was no Summer Star to board, Keler Neffe had suddenly torn off his coif and ripped it to shreds in fury. Sarra snapped at him to calm down and explain himself. So he did, and his tale made grim hearing.
Jenira Neffe, Keler’s great-grandmother, had been a sometime poet whose most famous work was Rose Rhymes. Its hundred verses gave personalities to nearly every variety of rose on Lenfell, based on ancient ballads collected over twenty years. Every Neffe of her direct line was required to memorize it by the age of ten; Bard Falundir had even borrowed some of her images for the song that had been his downfall.
The point was that where to young Tiron Mossen, the black and white roses had indicated the Bower of the Mask, Rose Rhymes taught that this pairing of colors meant “The Sender Betrays.”
Tiron’s panicked remorse was quelled by Sarra. “It’s not your fault, and I forbid you to think that it is. Guardian Neffe, that goes double for you.”
“Whoever sent those flowers is laughing at us!” the Mage fumed.
“And who says we can’t laugh right back?”
“You remembered,” Val put in. “At least we’re warned.”
“Too late,” Neffe muttered.
“Are we dead yet, or in chains?” Sarra scoffed. “Very well, then. Hush up about it.”
The flowers had been tied with Desse colors; that Gorynel could be the betrayer was a stark impossibility. Also in all cases, the bouquets had simply shown up on doorsteps. There was no name or face to connect with the sender.
Two things only were certain: the flo
ral code was hopelessly compromised, and there was a traitor in the Rising.
They did not linger at the docks to ask if a ship named Summer Star was due in port. The fourteen split up and vanished into Neele, connected only by Tamos Wolvar’s little Mage Globes, still safely anonymous.
It was Sarra’s responsibility to get them all to real safety. As she paused to look unseeing into shop windows, she decided they would use the drainpipe Ladder to Combel and then travel overland back to Renig.
“Longriding would be better,” Alin murmured. “There’s a Ladder there that goes to Ambrai.”
“Is there?” she asked, knowing there was. Gorynel Desse had used it to get Sarra and her mother to safety long ago. “Then that’s where we’ll go.”
“What?!” cried Val, then bit his tongue between his teeth. Taking Sarra’s arm, he steered her across the street to the greenswath median and practically shoved her onto a bench under a linden tree.
“That’s insane! Ambrai? The Captal’s own quarters? What makes you think the traitor won’t be watching? And following! We have to assume all the known Ladders are compromised.”
“Where’s the first place a Mage in trouble would go? The Mage Academy! Which is precisely why Glenin Feiran won’t look for us there!”
“Glenin?”
“Do you seriously mean you don’t think she’s the one behind this?” Sarra knew it without thinking about it—which meant she was certain it was true.
Val sank back against the wrought iron bench. “All right,” he said. “I understand. But it’s going to take a long time to get there.”
“So? We’ll be in The Waste—the land you and Alin and Elo know best.” She grasped the fingers that still held her arm, taking them between both her hands. “Val, every minute we spend here gives her another minute to get here—for all I know, she already is. We have to get to Roseguard with these Mages.”
“And you want to go by way of The Waste—to pick up Cailet.”
