City of Night

by Michelle West

  “She is the titular head of the Order of Knowledge.”

  “I see.” She did not look away from Rath. Rath, however, looked away from her. Sweat beaded his forehead, and he was afraid, for a moment, that the protections he wore against otherwise undetected use of magic would suddenly throw off both light and sound. They did not, and he took a steadying breath. “This is her aide, Matteos ACorvel. He is also a member in good standing of the Order.”

  He turned back to her, as if everything were entirely ordinary, or would be again. “It is very seldom that a mage of Sigurne’s stature graces a purely social event; your lord is a very fortunate, and very influential . . . patron.”

  “Oh, indeed.” She smiled, and the smile was at once ice and fire.

  “You are perhaps needed,” Sigurne told Lord Cordufar. “I am an old woman, and I do not walk quickly, but we will of course return to the great room for your niece’s presentation.” She took the arm Rath offered. “Your niece, as your companion has pointed out, is waiting, as are your guests.”

  Sorna Shannen stood for a moment in the gallery, the man to her side inconsequential. If Lord Cordufar had seemed forbidding—and he had, and dangerous as well—it was forgotten; she drew herself up to her full height, and her hair rippled down her thighs in a cascade that seemed to absorb both vision and light. Her skin was the white of a woman who has never known any labor not of her own choosing, but it was a white, as well, that suggested rage.

  Rath thought she would speak, and she opened her mouth to do just that, but her jaws snapped shut. The sound was audible. She turned instead, her train swirling at the speed of the movement, and she stalked down the hall.

  Even in the startling absence of grace or manners, Rath could not take his eyes off her until she had turned the corner and disappeared entirely from view.

  Lord Cordufar’s lips curled up in a smile that was, in its own fashion, as exquisite as Sorna Shannen’s. He watched her leave, and then, turning to the Magi, bowed once, exactly. “I will, as you so gracefully remind me, return to my duties. Ararath,” he added, “you are indeed an interesting man. I hope to see more of you in the near future.”

  Ararath bowed. It was not as smooth or precise a bow as he would have liked, for his gaze was still drawn to the now empty hall through which Sorna Shannen had walked. Lord Cordufar moved away, down the same hall.

  Sigurne touched Rath’s arm, then. “Ararath.”

  He shook himself and looked down at her.

  “Be wary of her. It is as you surmised, I fear: she holds the reins here, even though Lord Cordufar is not human.”

  “What does that make her?”

  “Among her kind? Powerful, if she can bind a demon who can assume and maintain the illusion of mortality. She is dangerous, and she is now aware—as is Lord Cordufar—of the opportunity you might afford them.” She hesitated and then added, “I thought it was clumsily done, on your part.”

  He inclined his head in agreement.

  “They are capable of subtlety, Ararath.”

  “They are. But they are capable of greed, as well. I do not think that I have harmed my cause, this eve; I think that I have furthered it.”

  “I think you have placed your life, and possibly the life of your godfather, in grave danger.”

  “There are,” he replied, as he began to move, “worse ways to die, surely.” His smile was slight and sardonic.

  Hers was entirely absent.

  Even before they had reached the great room, they became some part of it; the sound of speech, laughter, and the occasional unfortunate shout, carried into the gallery, surrounding them before they could see the crowd to which it belonged. Softening that noise was the sound of violins, or perhaps just one; the piece was difficult enough that it was hard, at first, to tell. It was, however, a modern piece; Rath did not recognize it. Was chagrined at the lack of recognition, and then at his reaction to his own ignorance.

  “I admit,” Sigurne said, in a louder voice than she would normally be forced to in quieter circumstances, “that I do not miss the crowds when I absent myself from such gatherings—but I regret the lack of music. The music,” she added, “was one of the first things I discovered when I came to Averalaan. Meralonne invited me to attend Senniel’s annual recital. I was not certain what to expect, and perhaps that was for the best.

  “When I first began to study in the Order, I had enough time to frequent concerts, but I was not exposed to society in Averalaan until I rose in the ranks of the Magi. I was deemed suitably inoffensive, however, and when I had proven my worth—if such a proof can ever be accepted without constant testing by other members of the Order—I began to attend debuts such as this.

  “They were like theater to me, then. Or perhaps spectacle. All of these men and women, dressed so very strangely, and at such obvious expense. We had nothing of this kind in my childhood, and looked for nothing of this kind when we were deemed adult.

  “But in my early years as a mage, there were always stories, if one knew how to listen. There are stories here, tonight. There is no magic in them, but sometimes, faint and attenuated, the type of beauty which magic can never emulate.” She smiled. “I feel my age.”

  Rath looked at the crowd that now surrounded them on all sides. He failed to see the beauty of which Sigurne spoke, but he had always failed to see it; even as a young boy, crouched between the banister rails at the side of his sister, Amarais, and stealing a glimpse of the glittering adult world, he had seen only the type of beauty that could be bought and put on display.

  “Do you find her beautiful, Ararath?”

  He glanced at Sigurne.

  “Who?”

  “Lord Cordufar’s mistress.”

  He considered the question with far more care than he might have if the questioner had been any other woman. “I will answer,” he said at last, “if you will also offer your opinion on the same matter.”

  She laughed then, and the sound of her laughter was so unexpected, it invoked an unfettered and entirely genuine smile in response. “My apologies, Ararath. I am not in my element in this particular arena, but I feel, given everything, that I should be. It makes me somewhat nervous, and in a First Circle mage, this is not considered a desirable state of mind.

  “But I will answer. She is beautiful to my eye.”

  This surprised him.

  “But, so, too, was the companion of the Ice Mage. It was not glamour and it was not enchantment; he was beautiful, and compelling. I remember him well.” She listened as the strains of the violin song grew sharper and faster. “But in the North, at that time, beauty and deadliness were often wed. The white bears that hunted in the Northern snows were, in their fashion, beautiful. The economy with which they could kill, the speed at which they could move—we respected these things. We made warnings of our stories, and the unaccompanied songs we sang, but there was always some quiet admiration for the deadliest of things that nature had created in both.

  “She is like that, to me. Compelling not in spite of the fact that she is Kialli, but in part because of it.”

  “She is Kialli?”

  Sigurne glanced at his face, and then away. “I would say so. I cannot be certain without more of a confrontation than this crowd would survive.”

  And you? Rath thought. Would you survive? He did not ask.

  Instead, he inclined his head slightly. “Yes, Sigurne, I find her beautiful. But it is, as you say, the sinuous beauty of the coiled snake, the delicate beauty of the poisonous spider’s web; it is entirely what it is. There is no pity in her, and were I to be entirely smitten with her, I would expect to find none; there is no kindness, nothing that is not, in the end, about her own power. Love, if it were professed, would change nothing, acquire nothing.

  “But in one guise or another, we are often attracted to power, and we are also often attracted to those who do not fear it.”

  “I have feared it,” Sigurne said, as the last strains of music were buried beneath the constant
rain of spoken words. “I have feared it for all, for almost all, of my life. Even when it is beautiful. Perhaps especially then.

  “But encountering such beauty at the debut ball of a young girl is jarring. I wonder, at times, how Duvari endures it.”

  “Duvari?” Rath’s eyes rounded slightly. “You speak of the head of the Astari?” The Astari were the men—and women—who stood in the Kings’ shadows and protected them from assassination. Unfortunately for the patriciate, they were both thorough enough and paranoid enough that they could see the assassin’s hand in anyone who had accumulated enough wealth or power.

  “Indeed.”

  “You should abstain. It’s rumored that any mention of his name draws the full force of his attention.” It was only half a joke.

  “That,” Sigurne replied dryly, “is hardly much incentive, given that the Magi are already blessed by the questionable benison of his suspicion. But he is a young man. Don’t make that face, Ararath; it does not suit you. He is young, as you are young. And I appreciate him in exactly the same way that I can appreciate Sor Na Shannen.”

  Rath frowned. Her pronunciation of the name was slightly different than Lord Cordufar’s had been.

  “Perhaps I appreciate him more; I understand his goals, and I find them more personally acceptable. Come. There is Lord Cordufar, unfettered by his lovely companion. The girl by his side is his niece.”

  “About time,” Matteos grumbled. When Sigurne frowned up at him, he added, “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  Meralonne APhaniel joined them for dinner. The great hall had been suitably furnished, and the hundreds of guests likewise seated at rectangular tables across which fine linens had been draped. The table runners were a lace embroidered with the colors of Cordufar. The napkins were likewise embroidered, but the insignia on these was small and tasteful; the rest, Rath did not consider important enough to notice.

  Nor did Meralonne APhaniel, although when he produced his pipe, Sigurne glared it into nonexistence. They sat in a silence accentuated by the quiet music of musicians whose task it was not to interrupt conversation.

  “We did not see you in the great room,” Sigurne said, engaging Meralonne when his hand strayed, again, to the folds of his robe.

  He glanced at her. “I was much occupied with the somewhat confused architecture of this mansion, and eventually ended up in the wine cellars.”

  She raised a silver brow, and then, after a pause, she relented. “Wine cellars?”

  “They are quite, quite good, even to my admittedly jaundiced eye. And no, before you ask, I did not choose to test the vintages.”

  “Imagine my relief.”

  He raised a brow that was not dissimilar to her own. “You have obviously had a more interesting evening than I have managed.”

  “Indeed.”

  “However, I sensed no magic, and heard no raised alarm. I’m somewhat bored.”

  If Sigurne found his utter lack of conventional manners annoying, she hid the annoyance well. Rath wondered, and not for the first time, what a meeting of the Magi must be like. “Very well,” Sigurne said. She slid her hand into her robe for a moment, and then withdrew it. “We may speak freely. We met, and spoke with, Sor Na Shannen, Lord Cordufar’s mistress.”

  Meralonne raised a brow. “And?”

  “She is kin.”

  “Kialli?” The single word sharpened syllables that should have been soft.

  “I did not think to test her in a crowd of this size. I would appreciate it if you likewise refrained.”

  “What did you speak about?”

  “Ararath of Handernesse.”

  Meralonne frowned. He reached for his pipe for a third time. It remained, unlit, in his hand. “You play a dangerous game,” he said, speaking now to Rath.

  “So I have been informed. If I am not mistaken, Member APhaniel, you yourself do likewise.”

  “In the cobwebs of a wine cellar?”

  “Many a man considers the wine cellar the heart of his home.”

  Meralonne laughed. “And clearly, this is one such man.” He set the pipe to one side on the table. “There is magic in the wine cellars of Cordufar, and it is not a magic that is easily tested; without care, I think it would pass undetected.”

  Sigurne, silent until that moment, froze in place.

  “You expected no less.” Meralonne spoke softly.

  “You used Summer magic?”

  He nodded.

  Rath frowned. “Summer magic?”

  “It is an old branch of magic, and one not studied now,” Sigurne replied. “It is not forbidden, but in order to test its efficacy, one would require a practitioner of arts that are forbidden.”

  Rath did not ask how Meralonne had studied the school.

  Instead, he examined an entirely internal map of the undercity, as Jewel called it. It was not a map in the way that the maps Jewel had saved from a burning building were. It was some part of his eleven years of experience in the silent dark: The feel of dirt beneath his feet as it gave way, by descent, into stone; the solid stone of the safe roads; the worn stone of stairs; the rough and sharp edges of cracked walls, cracked statues, cracked pillars and columns; the trembling edges of open crevices; the mustiness of air that was never disturbed; the sound of bats, like high-pitched thunder, when they took sudden flight.

  He knew the width of most of the roads; he knew the shape of them, the way they turned in on themselves, the way they cut and bisected other roads. He knew that the undercity traveled for miles beneath Averalaan. He knew, as well, that some of the exits and entrances that he used opened up near the Merchant Authority, and in that section of town, real estate was costly. But not so costly as the Cordufar Estates; they were old.

  How old?

  “Ararath?” Sigurne said, and Rath shook his head slightly.

  “My apologies, Sigurne. Meralonne, did you detect this magical disturbance only in the wine cellars?”

  Meralonne watched Rath closely, his gray eyes narrowed. After a moment, he nodded.

  “Near a trapdoor or some other method of descent?”

  “A curious question.”

  Rath said nothing.

  “This is not a game, scion of Handernesse.”

  Sigurne placed a hand on Meralonne’s arm. He affected not to notice, and his eyes were shining slightly. The light and the color of those eyes made them seem, for a moment, like blade’s edge.

  “I don’t know,” Rath replied, meeting the gaze, and aware of how little corresponding light shone in his own eyes. “What lives do gods lead? They fear no death, they suffer no pain; what is left them, in the end, but the dalliance of long games?”

  “They fear death,” the Magi replied quietly. “But for the rest, I will concede your point, and will offer information I feel you already know: there is a concealment and a protection cast upon the floor of the farthest of the wine cellars. The concealment is a trivial magic; the protection, I fear, is not.

  “Had I discovered the wine cellar first—had I been apprised of the import of descent—I might have been able to untangle the protections that lay upon it. As it was, I had a scant hour.”

  “An hour?” Sigurne asked.

  “An hour, but . . . there was some surveillance, and in order to ward myself against detection, I had to move slowly, and within the sphere of the watcher.”

  “What spell?”

  Meralonne glanced at her. “It was a simple spell,” he said, grudging the admission, “but it covered the whole of the last two rooms.”

  “And you were not discovered?”

  “No. But the wine cellar was visited.”

  “A servant?”

  “No. You need not look at me in such an accusatory fashion, Guildmaster. There were no deaths, and no disincorporation.”

  “I feel less than entirely reassured.”

  “I could do neither, while I wished to avoid alerting the master of the house.”

  “What did you do?”
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br />   “I observed,” he said coolly and with genuine distaste. “And while I fail to see the necessity for subtlety at this time, such subtlety was practiced at your request.” He turned, then, and glanced down the long hall, to the head table. There, in the center, was Lord Cordufar.

  “He is not the master here,” Rath found himself saying.

  Meralonne glanced at Rath.

  “She is,” Rath added.

  Into the hall, unescorted and unattended, strode Lord Cordufar’s mistress, her blue dress swirling in a way that suggested thigh without exposing so much as an ankle. With all of the guests seated, she made a statement of her simple strides. Rath watched her until he found the watching uncomfortable and forced himself to look away.

  To look at Meralonne.

  There was no lust, no expression of desire, upon his face. The lights in the long hall paled his skin, and if time had etched lines there, they were gone. But there was a hunger in the way he watched her, and it reminded Rath of death.

  Sigurne once again put her hand over Meralonne’s wrist, and he shrugged and turned away, but his expression did not, and had not, changed.

  Chapter Ten

  DINNER PASSED. Rath ate and found, to his surprise, that he enjoyed the food; that he enjoyed the variety of small and elaborately prepared dishes. Soup, in shallow, slender bowls, water and wine in elegant cut crystal, partridge eggs, poached, tiny perfection, laid out against a bed of greens, with strips of smoked meat laid across them. He appreciated the baked cheese, in a deep pastry dish, and also the beef that followed, garnished by long, slender new beans.

  He thought it a pity that Andrei could not, or would not, drink the wine, for it was a vintage worthy of the Araven wine cellars. Dessert, when it came, was a chilled custard.

  During dinner, musicians played, and the sound of laughter, and the occasional raised voice, drifted across the great hall. When dinner drew, at last, to a close, Lord Cordufar’s attendants rose to announce the opening of the ballroom, and the subsequent dance.

  Meralonne grimaced, but did not speak. Rath privately doubted that words were necessary; the expression itself spoke volumes. The mage drew his pipe from its place on the table, and he took out leaf and began to line its bowl. Matteos looked both pained and annoyed, and he cast a furtive—and hopeful—glance at the reigning guildmaster. No rescue came from that quarter, and in any case, pipes were brought to the tables, and tobacco followed.