Everyone stared at Tan.
Tan cleared his throat. But, since he was committed, he also said, “It’s a legist’s book. Or it was. It held law. Written law—law a master-legist set down stone-hard. Binding law. Until I read it. I wonder if any legist reading this book would have stripped the words out of it, or if it was something about me? My gift?”
From their expressions, Tan rather thought that neither the queen nor any of the guard officers in the room understood what he was saying. Geroen gave a wise, knowing nod, but that was only bluff, Tan could see. The queen looked honestly blank—well, likely she had little to do with any legists or legist-magic. Iriene at least knew that the legist gift was not the same as magecraft, but Tan took leave to doubt whether the healer knew much more than that.
Mienthe, now… Mienthe had taken the blank book back into her hands. She, too, had nodded, but in her case, and not really with surprise, Tan thought what he’d said might have actually made sense to her. She was stroking her fingertips across one of the book’s empty pages, her expression abstracted.
What law was it, that Tan now held? He could feel nothing foreign or unfamiliar set into his mind… Would he feel it? Or had it simply restructured his mind and he had not even noticed? There was a pleasant thought!
But whatever the book had done to him, whatever he’d done to it, he knew with a profound certainty that he did not want to touch it again himself.
A guardsman came in, hesitated for a moment just inside the door, and finally came over to murmur to Captain Geroen. The captain’s expression, from stern, became thunderous. He bowed his head awkwardly to the queen, begged Mienthe’s pardon with a vague word about seeing to his duty, and went out. Queen Niethe seemed to think little of his going, but Tan found himself meeting Mienthe’s eyes, a common thought of Istierinan and secretive Linularinan agents occurring, he was certain, to both of them. Tan had, once again, this time knowing the risk, set his hand to a quill. Who knew what Istierinan’s mage might have done in that moment?
“Not twice in the same night,” murmured Mienthe, aloud but more or less to herself. “Not once we are alarmed and alert. Surely not.”
“No,” Tan agreed, but heard the doubt echo behind his own words.
Queen Niethe glanced from one of them to the other, but said nothing. They were all silent for a long moment and then another, waiting for any alarm to ring through the house. But there was nothing. The queen said at last, “No, indeed. Of course not.” She rose with practiced, stately grace and said to Iriene, “So the mystery has begun to be solved, has it not? We know about the strange book and the legist’s magic in it; we know why the sly Linularinans have become so bold; we are alarmed and alert. There is nothing more to do tonight?”
Iriene did not quite like to declare one way or another, but thought they might send the book to Tiearanan, where the best mages in Feierabiand studied and wrote and crafted their work. Or maybe they should look for a skilled legist who might know what a book like this one had held?
Tan did not say, You will hardly find a legist more powerfully gifted than I am on this side of the river, though he might have, and rather tartly. It was true that he would not mind another competent legist’s opinion, but he doubted the competence of any Feierabianden legist that might be found. Linularinum for law; everyone knew that, and it was true.
But he did not object. He collected his cane and his balance, rose, bowed his head courteously to the queen, and retired so that she could, as she so clearly desired, speak privately to her own people: to Iriene if she saw any point to it, and to her own guardsmen and perhaps to whatever ladies and advisers she most trusted.
Mienthe must not have been one of those, for she took the queen’s words as a dismissal as well and rose, tucking the book under her arm, to accompany Tan. Well, she was young, and Lady of the Delta rather than a constant companion in the Safiad court, undoubtedly loyal to her cousin more than to the queen. On reflection, Tan was not astonished that Queen Niethe did not keep the girl close now. At least she did not seem to take her dismissal as a slight.
Then Mienthe gave him an anxious, sidelong look, and Tan realized that in fact she had deliberately excused herself from the queen’s presence in order to stay close to him—that she did not trust any protection Iriene could provide, that she did not trust the guardsmen, no matter how alarmed and alert they might be. She had rescued Tan from his enemies twice, and felt keenly the responsibility of both those rescues. He was surprised he had not understood at once. He felt a sudden, surprising warmth of feeling toward this young woman, so earnest and so astonishingly ready to assume deep obligations toward a chance-met stranger who was not even truly one of her own people.
Mienthe, unaware of the sudden shift in Tan’s regard, tapped the empty Linularinan book against her palm, glanced quickly up and down the hall, and said hesitantly, “I’m—that is, I have a comfortable couch in my sitting room.” She had clearly forgotten her own authority in this house, for she did not make this suggestion into an order, but ducked her head apologetically as she offered it. “You might… I know you have your own room upstairs in the tower, and I’m sure that is probably perfectly safe for you, now. But I wonder if you might rather… a couch where no one at all knows to look for you… where I would be able to see you myself… I know it’s not really a proper suggestion…”
The windowless tower room seemed now, in Tan’s reflection, rather less like a refuge and more like a trap. A couch in a room where no one would expect to find him, a last-minute offer no one had overheard, from this young woman who’d shown such a gift for extracting him from the hands of his enemies… That seemed very practical. He was not too proud to say so. He said, which was even the truth, “I think it’s a very proper and brave suggestion, from the Lady of the Delta to a guest who’s under her protection. I’ll accept, lady, and thank you for the consideration.”
Mienthe looked relieved. She nodded her head to show him the way. “I was going to ask one of my maids to bring tea, but maybe it would be better not to let the kitchen know where you are, either. Though my maids are discreet. I think.”
In Tan’s experience, maids were never discreet. He didn’t quite know how to say so. He could hardly suggest young Lady Mienthe invite him to stay unchaperoned in her own rooms.
“Karin can be discreet,” Mienthe said, in the tone of one coming to a necessary conclusion. “She chatters, but that’s all just show for the young men. She won’t talk about anything important.”
Tan said nothing.
“I swear I won’t tell,” the young maid Karin promised solemnly when Mienthe told her that Tan might be spending the night on a couch in her sitting room. She was a buxom girl with an outrageously flirtatious manner. “Not even my string of lovers,” she added at Tan’s doubtful glance, and winked. Oddly, Tan felt the girl might actually be telling the truth about her discretion, if not her string of lovers.
Mienthe made Tan take the best couch and settled in a cane chair, tucking her feet under her skirts like a child. “Well,” she said, looking at Tan, and stopped, clearly not knowing what to say, and small blame for that.
The maid had settled, more or less out of earshot, across the room on the hearth of a fireplace. She busied herself with some sort of needlework, pretending, in the immemorial way of maids everywhere, not to listen.
“So,” Tan said, low enough that the maid might not overhear, “and are you rising into mage power, Lady Mienthe?”
“No!” said Mienthe at once, but then hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. How can one tell?”
Tan, not being a mage himself, had no idea.
“And you?” Mienthe said. “Do you feel anything? Have you, since you found that book?”
Tan had to admit he could not tell. “It’s all very… very…”
“Alarming? Well, but exciting, too, don’t you think? It could have been anything, couldn’t it? Well, anything valuable,” Mienthe amended. “Something that your Istie
rinan would be desperate not to lose. Something to do with the magic of language and law. Maybe you’ll be able to speak all languages now, do you think? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Erich tried to teach me Prechen, but I couldn’t get more than a word or two to come off my tongue. Or maybe you’ll be able to tell when someone is speaking the truth, or when they’re writing a contract with intent to deceive. It stands to reason a legist would put only some wonderful, strong magic in a book, doesn’t it? Only he didn’t expect another legist with such a strong gift to get it out again, did he? Only then you did.” Mienthe paused, staring at Tan in speculation.
Tan tried not to smile. He liked her optimism, and hoped she was right, and hesitated to say anything that might reveal his own terror of what his mind might now contain.
Somewhere, distantly, there was a shout. Indistinct with distance, but definitely a shout. Mienthe jumped up in alarm, and Tan reached for his cane.
There was a firm knock on the door before he could get to his feet. A guardsman opened it, leaned in, and said, “Lady Mienthe?” He looked a little embarrassed, but determined—the very picture of a man driven by orders to a forwardness that was not his by nature. It was Tenned son of Tenned, which amused Tan even under these circumstances. “You do find yourself on duty at the most fraught moments,” he commented.
“Yes,” said the young guardsman in a harassed tone. “Nothing like this ever happened before you came to Tiefenauer. I don’t think I’ll ever complain of boredom again.”
“What now?” Mienthe asked.
“Esteemed lady—” Tenned began, but paused. Then he said, out in a rush, “Captain Geroen says he’s getting reports from riverside, they say there’s an awful lot of activity across the river, and Captain Geroen wants to undeck our half of the bridge, and send men to watch all the fordable parts of the river upstream and down, and muster the men. And the other captains, as were in command of the different divisions before Lord Bertaud appointed Geroen above them all, they don’t want to do any of that, they say it’s a fool who sees smoke from one campfire and declares the whole forest is burning. And the captain of the royal guard, Temnan, you know, he wants to send after the king to see what he should do—”
“That’s a fool,” Tan murmured. “Indecisiveness is the worst of faults in a captain—other than shyness, and that send after the king could be a sign of either. Or both. I don’t know what influential family the king would be accommodating to have promoted a fool to a captaincy, but I wonder if this is why he left the man behind?”
“To guard his queen?” Mienthe objected. “And his daughters?”
“He can’t have expected anything to happen…”
“I’m sure Temnan is perfectly competent,” Mienthe declared, but her eyes hid worry.
“However that is, Captain Geroen, he sent me to find you, esteemed lady, and beg you come and tell him he can undeck the bridge—”
“That can’t be necessary,” said Mienthe, rather blankly.
The bridge between Tiefenauer in the Delta and Linularinan Desamion had never been a truly permanent sort of bridge of stone and iron; the history of the Delta was too complicated. It was a timber bridge, which meant that rotted timbers had to be replaced from time to time, but also meant that either side could undeck the bridge if times became suddenly uncertain.
“Lady—” Tenned began.
“Esteemed Mienthe—” Tan said at the same time.
Mienthe held up her hand to quiet them both. Possibly Tan’s comment about indecisiveness was echoing in her ears, because she said to the guardsman, “Go tell Captain Geroen to give whatever orders he sees fit about the bridge, and about setting sentries around Tiefenauer. Mustering the men—isn’t that something we sometimes drill? Don’t I recall my cousin ordering a muster once just to see how fast the guard could respond?”
“Four years ago, yes, lady,” said Tenned respectfully. “Just after I joined.”
“We could do that now. Couldn’t we? But in the middle of the night? Maybe we ought to wait for morning?”
“The captain—”
“I’ll come speak to Captain Geroen,” Mienthe decided. “But I think—wait a moment.” She caught up the blank-paged book and darted with it into the other room. But in only a moment she was back again, breathless, the Linularinan book gone. “All right, let’s go,” she said to Tenned, and waved at Tan to accompany her.
“Kohorrian cannot possibly be planning to march troops across that bridge!” the captain of the royal guardsmen was—not quite shouting, Tan decided, but very nearly. “Earth and iron, man, you’ll have Her Majesty in fits to suit your own silly humors! Are you a guard captain or a little girl, to be afraid of moving shadows in the night?”
Geroen simply stood with his head down and his eyes half shut, in much the same attitude he might have shown in a storm. He seemed otherwise unmoved by the other’s vehemence. Next to Temnan’s polished courtier’s grace, Geroen looked decidedly lower-class, mulishly stubborn, and even rather brutish. But he also looked like the very last man to be moved by tight nerves and silly humors.
“I’m not entirely certain we can be perfectly confident of what the old Fox may and may not do,” Tan put in smoothly, in a tone of polite deference. “And, after all, though the move must naturally prove unnecessary, I’m certain the city guard will profit from a little exercise.”
“What is Her Majesty’s opinion?” Mienthe asked.
“The queen has long since retired for the night,” Temnan said stiffly, by which Tan understood that he was not so confident of his own position that he wanted to risk the queen’s overriding him. Not that Tan was in the least interested in the queen’s opinion, personally. He glanced sidelong at Mienthe, wondering how to convey a suggestion that, at least tonight, they might best take any warnings very seriously.
Mienthe did not seem to need to hear this advice from anyone. She kept her gaze on the royal captain’s face, lifted her chin and said, “Well, though I should be glad of Her Majesty’s opinion, in the Delta my cousin’s opinion is foremost.”
“I’ve sent after His Majesty and Lord Bertaud—”
Mienthe continued as though the captain had not spoken, “And since my cousin is not here, I will decide what we will do.” Tan, standing close behind her, was aware that the young woman’s hands were trembling. She had closed them into loose fists to hide the fact. From Temnan’s stuffed expression, he did not realize Mienthe was nervous—but he did know that she was right about where authority rested in the Delta, and that he’d been in the wrong to try to overrule Tiefenauer’s own captain.
Mienthe turned deliberately to Geroen and said, “Do as you see fit to guard the Delta and the city and this house. We will say it was a practice drill, if nothing comes of it. Do as you think best in all matters, Captain Geroen, and then come and explain to me what kind of activity it is that you think you’ve seen on the other side of the river and what you think it means.”
The captain gave her a firm, satisfied nod. “Lady.”
“Very well.” Mienthe looked around once, uncertainly, as though hoping to see good advice carved into the walls or the ceiling. She said, “I wish—” but cut that thought off uncompleted. She looked at Tan instead. He gave her an encouraging nod and no suggestions at all, because she was already doing exactly as he’d have advised her. She looked faintly surprised, as though she’d expected argument or advice and was a little taken aback to receive only approving silence.
Mariddeier Kohorrian, the Fox of Linularinum, might or might not have desired soldiers bearing his badge and wearing his colors to march across the bridge, but someone—Istierinan Hamoddian, or someone he was advising—had indeed pulled together a surprisingly strong muster and pointed it toward the Delta. Geroen brought Mienthe that news almost before they’d gone—not back to Mienthe’s rooms to wait, but to the solar, the one room in the entire great house that offered the best view of the city.
It should have been a quiet view, a peaceful night in t
he city. But there were lanterns everywhere, and torches and bonfires down by the river. Men moving in the streets, some with aimless confusion, but many quickly and with purpose.
Geroen brought descriptions of what he’d done with the city guardsmen, how he’d arranged them—along with a grim assurance that the eastern half of the bridge had been successfully undecked and bowmen placed on the rooftops to be sure the Linularinan troops could not easily redeck it from their side.
“But they want to,” the captain told Mienthe, without any satisfaction at being proved right. “They’ve tried twice, under shields.”
Mienthe said, voicing the common shock, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe they’re really trying this. How can they dare? Are you sure?” Then she waved this away, embarrassed. “Of course you are, of course—I can’t believe it, but I believe you.”
“None of us can believe it, but there it is.” Geroen didn’t sound panicky, or even excited. He sounded, Tan decided, rather more morose than anything else. There was a scrape across one cheek and his shoulders were slumped with weariness, but he met Mienthe’s wide-eyed gaze with commendable straightness. He said, “Now, that lot trying to cross on the bridge—they’ll have a hard time getting the job done, too hard a job if you take my meaning, and it’s my opinion they’re just meant to draw the eye.”
“What?” Mienthe did not, in fact, quite seem to take captain’s meaning.
“Ah, well,” he said, more plainly. “I can’t see as any sensible man would start up a war over some fool magic book, but it looks a great lot like maybe someone over there’s maybe not sensible. If it was me and I meant to do a right job of it, then I’d be sliding around through the marshes and never mind the bridge until I could get control of both ends of it, do you see?”
Law of the Broken Earth: The Griffin Mage Trilogy: Book Three Page 15
