On her, the marks of age were slight, the marks of weakness none.
It was, she thought, unfair on a woman: her father was a decade older than herself when he sired her, yet if she were to pass the asset on to a child of her own, that child would have to be conceived soon. The alternative would be to pass it on to a cousin. She could not but find fault with all her young cousins, in some way or other.
She would think about this later, she decided, not for the first time.
Frowning at her vagrant shoes, now resting one across the other, she pulled on underclothes and trousers, blouse, and tunic. The front and rear of the blouse and tunic were opaque, the narrow side panels transparent. The fabric of the sleeves and trousers alternated stripes of translucent white with opaque silver, to muddle an enemy’s eye. Lightborn could not endure too dense a shadow. Black tarpaulin was even a weapon of assassination, though a victim had to be extraordinarily negligent, drugged, or sodden drunk to be taken that way.
As she buttoned the tunic up its side, memory niggled: sometime during the night, she had fastened these very buttons as part of a peculiarly prosaic dream of walking through the brightly lit halls to the prince’s quarters with—something in her hand. All she could think of was a little wood and ivory box that Balthasar had given her for a birthday years ago, filled with a sandalwood perfume cake. She had never told Bal that her asset reacted to the perfume, and the delicately carved wood and ivory were stained and mismatched, ugly to her court-refined eye. Though she still kept the box, because she treasured the friendship. Why she should dream of carrying that to her prince, she did not know, except if it had to do with his comment that the future lay in people like the Darkborn.
She shook her head in self-reproach. Of all the ills that could beset her after long duty and spice- laden banquets, why she should choose to fret over this one, she did not know. Or for that matter, why consider it a nightmare?
She combed out her hair, spun it into a coil at the back of her head, and contained it with a white mesh. Shoes, soft-soled with closed toes and mesh uppers. Glove on right hand, soft suede palm, mesh upper. Sword on left hip, pistol on right. Her great-grandfather had schemed to acquire an asset that would deflect bullets, but he had never been able to persuade the family to support the purchase of another asset, when their fortunes had still to recover from the first. The prince carried such an asset, cast on a talisman for his father. The price had been a province, one of the last pieces of land outside the city owned by the princedom.
Her father had always told her that politics was no concern of a vigilant. But when the impoverishing of the princedom led directly to the southern alliance, it had closed his lips on that argument.
As she opened her door, she heard the screaming. Faintly, from the direction of the prince’s chambers. She sprinted, hand gripping the sword hilt to steady it, through galleries, past where servants were gathering to open the many shutters, once certain of dawn. As she reached the last corner, the screams dwindled to a harsh mewing, more ghastly than the shrieks.
Prince’s consort Helenja and one of the consort’s Vigilance stood before the door to the prince’s rooms. At their feet was the prince’s daughter Liliyen, tumbled onto her side, her head lolling on her arm, her bare hand outstretched to the threshold. Floria noted the faint motion of her breathing, though that meant only that she was not, at the moment, dead. The vigilant was staring into the doorway with a face flayed with horror, fatally oblivious to everything about her. It was from her throat that the mewling came. Helenja turned her head. Her face was whey-hued and moist, her eyes wide to bulging, her broad jaw sagging. Her mouth silently opened and closed like that of a fish dragged into a boat to smother in air.
Slowly, Floria turned toward the door. It stood ajar, pushed wide open. The light from the corridor fanned across the floor and reflected dimly from the near furniture, on the periphery of a room in utter darkness.
Three
Telmaine
Alone in her rooms, Telmaine picked wearily at a late supper, grilled fish in an herbed butter sauce. She had scant appetite, having eaten a nursery supper with her daughters in an attempt to reconcile them to staying with their cousins. The effort had met with little success: though the nursery itself was familiar, the children sensed her ambivalence at leaving them there. But she could not—she would not—bring them back to a household under such threat as this one.
To her relief, Merivan had been indisposed with her latest pregnancy, delivering her ultimatum that she and Telmaine must speak later from beneath a mint-scented facecloth. She had not even asked what had become of Balthasar. Telmaine had had to speak to Merivan’s husband about her daughters’ protection, a small ordeal, that. Despite careful forethought and despite invoking Lord Vladimer’s name to account for both her fears and her constraint, there had been several precarious moments. The lord judge understood better than most Vladimer’s capabilities, ruthlessness, and limitations. She maneuvered carefully between convincing him and alarming him, lest he feel it his duty to order her under his own protection. In the end he let her go, making her promise that she would ask for help if she needed it, while he promised in turn to shelter her daughters. He was, she thought, more than Merivan deserved.
She had wept all the way back in the carriage, barely caring about threats from sunrise or Shadowborn, or the presence of her maid.
So she dipped her fork in sauce, and wondered whether she should summon the maid from her own late supper to pour her a bath, or defer the bath for tomorrow, or simply fall asleep where she sat. The archduke’s vitality pulsed in her awareness; even three hours after sunrise, he showed no indication of retiring. And Vladimer had, in the last hour, awakened and grown restive.
Nevertheless, the note was an unwelcome surprise. Kip carried it in one hand, hurrying her unhappy maid along with the other. The note was brief, untidily punched, but quite legible. “Join us, immediately. Oak receiving room. V.”
Of course, she thought, a man who could fire a fatal bolt from a cane, left- handed, would surely be able to write passably with that same left hand
With the help of her maid she scrambled into a fresh dress, still damp from the pressing it had received in Merivan’s laundry, and pulled her hair into approximate order. Veils covered a multitude of sins. Kip was chafing in the sitting room when she came out; she thought for an unsettled moment that he was going to take her by the arm to hasten her along. But he contented himself with keeping her pattering after his long stride. He had, she noted, acquired a footman’s uniform that fitted tolerably well, though not the graces to go with it.
Since she couldn’t protest to Vladimer, she did so to Kingsley. “A lady needs time for her toilette.”
He halted and turned so abruptly she almost collided with him. Snapped sonn before and behind them, confirming the corridor was empty. Bent his head to hers to say in a low voice, “The archduke’s about to go into session with the dukes over the ducal order and this and that that’s happened—the Rivermarch fire, and Lord V.’s ensorcellment. But Lord V.’s just had a message—something’s happened with the Lightborn, something serious.”
“Will Lord Vladimer be there?”
“Yes, more fool he,” said the apothecary. Shook his head. “Don’t suppose he’s much choice. Here we are. Over to you, m’lady.”
Over to her, indeed. Quick pat of hands to veil, hair beneath it, collar, bodice, gloves, skirts. Draw spine very straight and sail forward into the sonn of the two footmen. “Lord Vladimer is expecting me,” she proclaimed, with emphasis on the name.
She could hear voices raised in argument behind the closed door, muffled by its thickness, unnervingly loud as the doors swung open before her. She almost shied on the threshold, but forceful interlaced sonn pinned her there like a naturalist’s beetle, and the voices went suddenly silent at her unexpected appearance.
“Lady Telmaine!” said Claudius’s voice. There was a general rustle of movement as the men rose to their fee
t. The movement struck her then as peculiarly sinister, a closing of ranks. She walked steadily forward, striving to project composure. “Lord Vladimer asked me to attend, Your Grace.”
“Thank you, Lady Telmaine,” Vladimer’s voice said. “Indeed I did.”
There was a brief, low exchange; though she could not make out the words, she could well guess the content. Then Sejanus Plantageter’s voice said, “Bring a chair for the lady. There will do.”
There was in the empty space at Vladimer’s side, Sejanus dealing a little discomfiture Vladimer’s way. She risked a light stroke of sonn over the figure in the armchair, the one who had not risen. Vladimer was fully dressed, even overdressed, his formal coat more suited to winter than summer. Social armor, or warmth? His left hand rested atop his cane in a familiar pose—and she would think very respectfully of that cane hereafter—and his right arm was propped carefully on the chair arm. His face was drawn, his lips dry, but his expression was alert, his sonn crisp. Too alert, and too crisp, for a man with his wound. She tallied signs she had learned from Balthasar, with his interest in treatment of addictions, and realized that the apothecary’s “more fool he” was not merely a comment on Vladimer’s being on his feet. Stimulants could negate the effect of injury and blood loss, for a time.
“I trust,” the archduke said dryly, “that we can now proceed.”
“Yes, Sejanus. I apologize.” Trying for bland, Vladimer sounded merely sardonic.
“Then, my lords, I was explaining why, on Vladimer’s request, I signed and sent ducal orders to the Borders, authorizing the raising of troops by the five baronies beyond the allotment stipulated in the order of six twenty-nine.”
“And I was saying,” Sachevar Mycene growled, “that it is the most ridiculous farrago I have ever heard—” and once again, everyone was talking at once.
Telmaine started as a hand gripped her sleeve; it was Vladimer, leaning over to hiss beneath the hubbub, “They’re all themselves, I take it.”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“A shame,” said Vladimer, and eased himself upright, leaving her to ponder his twisted humor. Which of them would he prefer were a Shadowborn, or Shadowborn touched? Sachevar Mycene, the archduke’s political rival? Xerxes Kalamay, devout follower of the Sole God, opposed to the least accommodation with the Lightborn?
“What’s happened?” she risked whispering.
“Wait.”
Though she had met these men at social events, here, in their power, they seemed to use up all the air. Of the four major dukes, the next tier of rank down from the archduke, three were present.
Xerxes, Duke of Kalamay, did not turn his head at her sonn, though its pitch and quality would have marked it as feminine. As with the archduke, experience and character had engraved itself on his face. It might have been a benign face, had he achieved his youthful aspirations to the service of the Sole God and the hand of the merry daughter of a fellow cleric. But one short summer’s night his elder brother wandered staggering drunk from his fellows and was not missed until past sunrise, and within two years Xerxes was his father’s deputy and wed to a melancholy heiress. Time had scored his disappointments deep.
Beside him sat Sachever, Duke of Mycene. He was small and wiry, like his son, with a finely shaped, hairless head that, in its poise and swift turning, evoked a hunting hawk. Time rode him lightly. Even in his sixties he was pugnacious, driven, and a master of sports and weapons. He delighted in outwitting or outlasting men a third his age, and still made his plans as though he expected to pluck their fruit himself, even fruit thirty years in the ripening.
The Duke of Imbré sat to her left hand, the nearest of them all to Vladimer. He was more than eighty, as eroded and immutable as a sandstone outcropping; no predator but time would pull him down. Age had brought him wisdom and the respect even of his enemies.
The five Borders barons stood approximately level with the next tier of dukes in social rank, though their vast, sparsely populated lands encircled the Shadowlands and extended almost to the south coast. Two of the five were here, with the heir to the third, Stranhorne. And Ishmael’s city representative, a cousin, surely, with that broad figure and blocky profile.
The archduke’s raised hand elicited silence. “Perhaps we might like to hear each other’s questions.”
Sachevar Mycene had half sprung from his chair. “Di Studier murdered my son’s betrothed and he and his—associates are using this—farrago of lies and insinuations—to distract us from his guilt.”
“For all we know,” the heir to Kalamay said, “he seduced the lady.”
“There was no seduction and there are no children,” Mycene snarled. “The physician who claims so—”
“Lady Telmaine’s husband,” Vladimer murmured.
“—was in Ishmael di Studier’s pay.”
“My husband was in nobody’s pay.”
Vladimer tapped Telmaine’s arm, in caution. “I have two independent examiners’ reports that Lady Tercelle Amberley had borne a child within a few days of her death.”
There was a shocked silence. Imbré winced and shook his head. “This is an outrage!” Kalamay said. “To violate a lady’s modesty so in death—Sejanus, your brother has gone too far!”
The archduke, Telmaine suspected, might have agreed; even she herself, with no love whatsoever for Tercelle Amberley, was dismayed. Vladimer continued, unruffled as a pond in summer. “While I have no wish to slander the lady’s memory”—a lie, given his indifference to slander against his own reputation—“or offend your lordships’ sensibilities”—another lie—“we do know at least one other man might have an interest in Tercelle Amberley’s life or death.”
“The child was Strumheller’s,” Randalf Kalamay said.
“An extraordinary feat of magic, that, given that he was in the Borders at the pertinent time.”
Vladimer, Telmaine decided, was enjoying this exercise of wits too much.
“There was no child,” Mycene said, “and my son will have anyone who repeats this slander outside this room on the dueling ground.”
Which was a threat to give anyone in this room pause. Ferdenzil Mycene’s aim had publicly been proved deadly on several such occasions.
Old Duke Imbré said slowly, “You must know how implausible this sounds, Vladimer. Ferdenzil’s bride is dead. The child or children have disappeared, so their origin or even their existence cannot be proven.”
“Never mind these children,” Duke Kalamay himself said. “Sejanus, is it my understanding that you have given a ducal order into Ishmael di Studier’s hands?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” the archduke said, calmly. “I received an order of succession for Strumheller prior to the issuing of the ducal order. I had no reason then not to sign and seal it. Reynard di Studier is now Baron Strumheller.” A small, pointed pause. “As for Ishmael di Studier, last evening I commissioned Lord Ferdenzil Mycene to travel down to the Borders and apprehend him.”
Telmaine heard herself gasp. She swept Vladimer’s face with sonn, demanding explanation. His face was still and his grip on his cane, knotted. The announcement had surprised him, too, unpleasantly. She felt ill, remembering Ferdenzil Mycene, when he had paid court to her, or rather to her bloodline and properties. Herself, he had perceived as no more than a pleasing female shape and a vessel for his dynastic ambitions. She had seldom touched a man so potent and so cold.
“I thought it more than likely Ferdenzil would take matters into his own hands,” the archduke said. “And Ishmael di Studier loose in the Borders is too much fox for any city agent. I was quite explicit that di Studier is to be returned alive, and frank in my displeasure if any harm comes to him. If he is innocent, then I wish his name cleared; if guilty, then he shall be punished by law.”
The Duke of Mycene seemed to be examining his son’s commission like a gift of dubious providence, uncertain as to its hidden purpose or price. The Strumheller representative raised his jaw from his fist. “It might seem t
’me that you do not trust Bordersmen t’respect th’law.”
“Lord di Gruner,” the archduke said, gravely, “I trust the majority of Bordersmen to respect the law, but there are precedents when fugitive Bordersmen have been sheltered within the Borders.”
“Aye, and northmen have hidden in the north from retribution from their crimes,” di Gruner said, in a Borders accent achingly like Ishmael’s. “Th’baron near died three times in th’cells. It needn’t be guilt that makes him shy t’return.”
“Then set your mind at ease; he will be well protected until the truth of the charges is known.”
“Yes,” said Vladimer, one spare word, heavy with the weight of his reputation.
“Now, I had thought to have Superintendent Plantageter report to you on progress with the investigation of the Rivermarch fire, but decided to defer that report. In brief, the fire started simultaneously a dozen places and burned extremely fiercely. Since it started in daylight, we asked for reports from the Lightborn. There was suspicious activity near two of the locations, but it proved to be ordinary criminal activity. There is no evidence of coordinated arson.”
“They would say that,” said Kalamay.
“A second such incident involved a fire in a warehouse in the Lower Docks, this time at night. The warehouse had been largely unused for some time, except for illegal purposes. Again it appears that the fire started in several places at once and burned extremely fiercely.
“A third such incident occurred this evening, on a train newly arrived at Bolingbroke Station.” He clearly did not want to mention whose train. “Fortunately, the fires were contained before great damage was done or injury sustained.”
Claudius said slowly, “Janus, are they saying the fires were unnatural?”
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