Quatrain

by Sharon Shinn

  “Where will you get the moonstones?” Baxter demanded.

  “I’ve got some!” a woman offered, and half a dozen other voices seconded her.

  “My house is protected by moonstones in every window,” Degarde said. “And my mother left behind many pieces of moonstone jewelry. I’ll slip a moonstone bracelet on her wrist. She will be safe at my house—and we will be safe from her.”

  Senneth jerked her head around to stare at him over her shoulder. “And who do you think would be stupid enough to start fires while I am in your custody?” she said scornfully. “Anyone who is operating under cover of my magic will stay in the shadows until I am free again.”

  Degarde stared back at her, his face a tortured mask of conflicting emotions. Fear—worry—shame—a lingering obsession—and a willingness to despise her, if she should turn out to be the villainess his neighbors believed. “It is the best I can do,” he said. “I do not want them to kill you out of hand.”

  She was tempted, so tempted, to shoot back a mocking reply: You have so little idea what I am capable of! I could scorch you and every soul in this town before you have time to gather your pitiful handful of rocks. You are not what holds me here for even another minute.

  “I am content to wait a day, or perhaps two,” she said. “Perhaps by then they will be calm enough to realize I am no threat. But I do not think this other mystic will come forward, and I believe your entire town will still be in danger.”

  “You’re the danger!” the big man shouted out. “Off she goes, then! To Degarde’s house! Who will split the watches with me while the witch is under guard?”

  It was a loud, angry, awkward procession from the town, up through the singed forest, all the way to Degarde’s house. Julia and Halie had arrived ahead of them, though Julia had clearly lingered in the town square long enough to hear the verdict, for she opened the door immediately to Senneth and her captors.

  “Mother’s old room,” she said in a constricted voice, not looking at Senneth. “I think it’s best. It’s small enough, and there is only the one window.”

  Baxter pushed past Julia into the house. “Take me there,” he commanded. “I will look it over.”

  The rest of them crowded into the parlor while Baxter explored the house. Someone, Senneth noted, had managed to pause in town long enough to acquire a rope, and he kept coiling and uncoiling the loops in an excited, nervous fashion. They were going to do this up right then. They were really going to keep her prisoner, bound in place and subject to an inimical magic.

  If she did not want to risk losing her freedom, perhaps her life, this was her last chance to scatter them all with fire and dash for the door.

  She waited patiently, meekly, in Degarde’s hold.

  Soon enough, Baxter was back, satisfied. “The room will do,” he said, “but I myself will see her safely settled.”

  Degarde, Baxter, and three other men escorted her up the stairs to a small room with worn, faded furnishings and a slightly musty smell. The bedchamber of Degarde’s devout Gisseltess mother, Senneth supposed, still looking more or less as she had left it when she died. Yes—a single large moonstone hung in the window and a collection of smaller gems glowed balefully on an oak dressing table.

  Baxter immediately started pawing through a jewelry chest and came away with delicate filigree necklaces hung with moonstone charms. He wrapped one of these around one end of the rope, then secured the rope to the foot of the four-poster bed. Senneth watched with interest. Clearly he believed that she would be unable to untie any knots decorated with moonstones. He repeated the process with the other end, and then grabbed her roughly to circle the rope around her waist. Through the fabric of her trousers she could feel the skittering heat of the small gems flickering against her skin.

  Baxter turned to Degarde. “You said you had a bracelet?”

  Degarde had finally released Senneth when Baxter tied the rope around her middle, and he stood there now looking wretched and unsure. “Yes, but—perhaps we don’t need anything more than the moonstones on the rope.”

  “Perhaps,” Baxter said. “And what if you’re wrong? She will burn the house down around your head, with all your family inside it.”

  “The jewels will sear her skin,” Degarde said.

  “That is nothing compared to what she would do to you,” Baxter sneered.

  Julia was already at the dresser, going through a small drawer. She didn’t seem willing to take chances. “Here,” she said, turning toward Baxter. Something dangled from her fingertips, icy cool gems of muted white fire linked by coils of silver. Baxter grabbed it with a chortle and stomped over to Senneth.

  “Hold out your hand,” he demanded.

  “I don’t think—” Degarde began, but Senneth merely extended her left arm.

  When Baxter fastened the bracelet around her wrist, for a moment she thought she would scream. She felt each gem branded against her skin, a separate, specific torture; from wrist bone to elbow, her flesh flushed with an external flame. It was such a strange sensation. She was used to heat, she was accustomed to fevers raging through her blood, but this was altogether different. More like a raw scrape from a rough surface. More like ice so cold it felt like fire.

  “That’ll keep her from doing any mischief,” Baxter said in a satisfied voice.

  “How long do you intend to keep her here?” Degarde asked.

  “How long will it take to convince you she is the one who has set all these fires?” Baxter retorted.

  Julia spoke from the doorway. “There were no fires while she was in the Lirrens with Albert.”

  “Three days,” Degarde said. “If three days pass and nothing else burns—”

  “Then what?” Senneth demanded. She was standing very straight by the foot of the bed, her arm still extended to keep the bracelet away from her body. If she breathed quite carefully, she could almost ignore the ongoing pain. At any rate, after the first sweep of agony, the intensity had abated. It was tolerable now, if she held her arm motionless. “What do you plan to do to me?”

  Baxter came close enough to leer into her face. His breath smelled of onions. She was tempted to kick him in the groin, just to prove that she didn’t need magic to do some damage, but on the whole she thought she was better served by pretending to be submissive. “What usually happens to mystics who have offered harm to innocent people?”

  “I think you will not find it quite so easy to kill me,” she replied coolly.

  “No one is going to kill you,” Degarde spoke up swiftly.

  Baxter kept his face inches from hers; his smile was evil. “I think a mystic dies as easy as anybody else.”

  She stared back at him fearlessly. He was only a couple of inches taller than she was—heavier, of course—but she was pretty sure she could beat him in a fair fight, using only swords and no magic. “I am expected in Ghosenhall within the week,” she said. “Are you going to explain to King Baryn what has become of me?”

  Baxter didn’t even flinch. “Either you’re lying,” he said, “or the king doesn’t know how dangerous you are. If we kill you, we serve the king and protect the realm.”

  “We’re not going to kill her,” Degarde said.

  Baxter had had enough conversation. “Everyone out,” he said, sweeping his long arms before him as if to herd the others into the hall. “Degarde, find something to feed us all while we decide who will stand watch.”

  Degarde gave Senneth one quick, desperate look. “But—”

  Julia put her hand on her brother’s arm. “Come downstairs now,” she said quietly. “Let us all discuss what we’re going to do.”

  A moment later, everyone had shuffled out the door, and Senneth heard the lock noisily fall in place.

  She was alone in a warded room, bound by moonstones, and on sufferance for her life.

  Perhaps Rinnae had been right. Perhaps she really did need friends.

  She backed slowly toward the bed and, when she felt the frame against her knees,
slowly seated herself on the mattress. Just as slowly, she brought her left arm around, holding it at eye height so she could examine the moonstone bracelet. She could still feel each individual gem, both the ones that lay against her skin and the ones that dangled just below her wrist because the bracelet was not particularly snug. But oddly, the jewels were beginning to cool a little—they were still hot to the touch, but not unbearably so—and the smaller gems set in the rope around her waist did not trouble her at all.

  This was odd. This was interesting. She had never attempted to keep a moonstone in contact with her skin long enough to learn if its touch would become endurable. She had never heard of any other mystic being able to tolerate the gems—indeed, she had seen mystics with scar tissue from where a moonstone had been pressed too long against their flesh.

  She inspected her wrist. Reddened, yes, as if she had carelessly poured hot water over the skin. But even that was beginning to fade.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I wonder . . .” Holding out her right hand, palm up, she willed fire to flush from her veins. She had to concentrate harder than usual, and she felt the muscles of her belly tighten with effort, but flame began to build up in her hand. Red and yellow tongues of fire licked between her fingers and snapped upward as if hoping to migrate to the ceiling, or maybe travel as far as the faded drapes. For a moment, as the flames grew brighter, the moonstones on her wrist and around her waist flared with their own contained heat; but then they quieted down again.

  “So the Pale Mother’s talisman has no real power over me,” Senneth said aloud, though very softly, in case one of the guards had been posted at the door. “This whole exercise might have been worth the trouble just to find that out.”

  That still didn’t make her current situation any less precarious. She drew her feet up to the bed and sat there cross-legged a moment, thinking hard.

  There was clearly another fire mystic operating in Benneld. Despite the very real possibility for tragedy that had been posed by the blaze in the forest, Senneth had the impression that whoever this other mystic was, he or she was not truly malicious. Today’s demonstration of leaping fire had been playful rather than destructive.

  “A child, maybe?” she mused. “Just learning what he’s capable of? And not entirely understanding how great his power is and how devastating it can be?” She thought for a moment. “And how very much people will hate him once they discover what he can do?”

  She had allowed them to take her prisoner—Degarde and Baxter and all the other angry townspeople. She could have escaped them at any point up until the moment they bound her with the moonstone-encrusted rope, could have turned every single body into a living torch. She could have brought the whole town down on them, if she had wanted to teach them not to mishandle a mystic—and if she’d wanted to confirm their worst fears. Hell, she would scarcely have had to do any harm at all if she had just wanted to get free. She could just have ringed them with an enchanted fire that would burn out within an hour, while she grabbed a convenient horse and cantered away.

  But she had chosen to stay. She was intrigued by the mystery—and she felt a sense of obligation. To Albert and Betony, perhaps even to intense, bewildered Degarde. She had been welcomed here and treated warmly. She could not allow her new friends to be destroyed by magic that no one else would have a chance of containing once Senneth had left town.

  She was not sure how she would uncover the truth. And she was pretty sure she had only three days to find out.

  Six

  The afternoon passed slowly. Since Senneth had discovered she could still call fire, she didn’t even have fear to keep her occupied, and so she was heartily bored. The rope wasn’t long enough to allow her full use of the room, but she could make it to a few choice spots, including the chamber pot, the window, and the old woman’s dresser.

  The chamber pot, of course, was welcome. The window showed very little of interest—a brown patch of worked ground that was probably a garden in the kinder months, a stretch of lawn, and then the edge of the forest that sloped down the hill toward town.

  The dresser contained no reading material, which was what Senneth had been hoping for, but a number of small, loose moonstones lay scattered across the top. Senneth picked one up and cupped it in her right hand. At first it brightened with a malevolent white glow, burning like a live coal against her skin. And then its fever subsided to a sullen, sluggish heat.

  “It is like it possesses some kind of magic that comes to life when I touch it with my magic,” Senneth murmured. “That’s why it burns my skin. But my power is stronger than the power in the jewel. Or the fire in my blood is hotter.” She didn’t know. She didn’t really care. But she was fiercely glad to learn that she never again had to fear the touch of a moonstone.

  The rest of the dresser—the small boxes on its lace-covered top, the six drawers that Senneth opened one by one—yielded nothing of interest. A few baubles, some underclothes, sachet bags so old that no hint of scent remained. Senneth sighed and retreated to the bed again to sit and wait until something might happen.

  She had been Degarde’s prisoner for perhaps three hours when there was a substantial commotion belowstairs. She jumped up and drew as close to the door as her rope would allow, trying to identify speakers. That one might be Betony—that one most certainly was Albert—and that was probably Baxter, shouting at the top of his lungs. A number of other voices rose and fell. Senneth had the impression two factions had formed in Benneld, one of them strongly opposed to condemning a mystic to death.

  That would have been good news if she really had been worried about her safety.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs, so she quickly retreated to the foot of the bed again and took up a demure pose. The lock was thrown, and five people pushed through the door in rapid succession. Senneth barely had time to identify them—Betony, Albert, Baxter, Degarde, and one of the townsmen who had been in favor of stoning—before Betony flew across the room to embrace her.

  “Senneth, Senneth, I am so sorry—I am horrified—Evelyn will never, never forgive me if something happens to you—”

  “I don’t expect anything to happen,” Senneth said, patting Betony on the back. It was a little ironic, she thought, that the prisoner would be the one to reassure the visitor.

  “It certainly won’t,” Albert said grimly. “I’ve already sent Seever with a message to the king. I imagine his majesty will have plenty to say about how badly you’ve been treated.”

  There was no chance that Seever could get to the royal city and back in under six days, so there was no hope of rescue from that quarter; but it might give these vigilantes pause to think that a murder would be quickly avenged by the king himself.

  “I am not afraid,” Senneth said quietly. “Not for myself. I worry for Benneld itself. I believe there is a mystic operating here, who might not know his own power, and who offers far more of a threat than I do.”

  Betony flung herself away from Senneth to confront Degarde. “And you have tied her up like some kind of common criminal!” she cried. “Have you fed her? Have you provided her water and the barest necessities? Shame on you for allowing such a thing to happen! And for treating her so badly!”

  Degarde looked even more unhappy. “My sister is bringing her food even now,” he said stiffly. “I do not—we have not treated her badly—but she is—there is no way to be sure—I believe there is some possibility that she is the one who has put us all at risk.”

  “Enough whining and bickering!” Baxter exclaimed. “She is in a safe place, with a fine bed, and no one plans to starve her. But you must see that she is a danger to everyone in this town. She must be restrained until we discover the truth.”

  Albert gave Senneth a serious look. “I’ve sent for Curtis and my brother,” he said. “The three of us will share the watches here. They will not dare to do anything to you as long as one of us is on the premises.”

  “I appreciate that,” she said. “But Baxter is right, you
know. You don’t know me very well. You do not truly have a reason to trust me.”

  Now his expression was set. “I trust you,” he said with finality.

  “And I swear to you that your faith is not misplaced,” she replied.

  Betony brushed by the men still gathered at the door. “I’m going to fetch you some food,” she said.

  “You’re not staying here in the room with her!” Baxter shouted after her. “I’m not going to risk having you cut her bonds and set her free!”

  If Betony bothered to answer that, Senneth couldn’t catch the words.

  It was another hour before Senneth was left alone again. She devoured the meal that Betony brought up—she had missed lunch, she realized, and it was now nearly dinnertime—and took no part in the ongoing arguments between Albert and the irate townsmen. Eventually, Baxter insisted they all leave the room to carry on the argument downstairs. Senneth’s guess was that she made him uncomfortable, with her unflinching gaze and the somewhat mocking expression she allowed her face to show.

  “I’ll be back in the morning,” Betony promised, clinging to Senneth’s hands.

  “Perhaps you could bring me something to read,” Senneth said. “Or a project to work on. Something to distract me.”

  “Do you like to sew?” Betony asked, then took in a quick, dismayed sip of air. Senneth could easily follow her line of thinking: I’ll bring Senneth her dress to finish. The dress she was to wear to the dinner tomorrow night! There will be no dinner! What a terrible day!

  “It’s all right,” Senneth said gently, disengaging her hands. “I told you I wasn’t very good at dinner parties.”

  Truth to tell, except for the boredom, she was just as glad when they all finally cleared the room. It was too exhausting to feel such strong dislike for Baxter, such pity for Betony and Albert—and a growing disdain for Degarde. He could not seem to settle on a conviction, whether for her or against her, and she actually thought the uncertainty was making his situation even worse than her own. Whenever he was in the room, he stared at her hopelessly, joining almost no conversation, but if she turned her sharp gaze his way, he instantly looked away.