Lightborn

by Alison Sinclair

he said.

  she said, and did so, smothering the flames as readily as she had done those kindled in her folded papers.

 

 

  he said, suddenly sounding desperately tired. Like Ishmael, at times, she thought, and fought a softening.

  She began again, from her meeting with Ishmael di Studier and their arrival on her husband’s doorstep to find Balthasar battered and dying. . . . He asked no questions; perhaps he did not need to, understanding far more of magic than she. The truth, unadorned, did not take very long. At the end she said,

  Utter lack of compromise in his tone.

  And after sunrise, she could not travel at all. Maybe there was a way through the tunnels that would bring them close to the archducal palace. Maybe since the archducal palace was well away from the prince’s palace, maybe being a healer mage, she might last long enough outside . . . if she did not lose her reason first. Her courage shriveled at the memory of the sear of light on her skin.

  he said, anguished again at some memory. She sensed him fighting for composure.

  I am not—a twitch of old reflex. he said, his tone a slap.

  she said, with all the outrage a woman could summon.

 

  she demanded—thinking of Ishmael returning burned, shocked, and reeking from beneath the burning Rivermarch, thinking of her daughter screaming as the warehouse blazed around her, thinking of Vladimer, laid out unconscious on his bed. Of Sylvide’s fading presence, and the wet warmth of her blood. And them, the Lightborn mages, aloof in their superiority.

  he defended himself. A moment’s wrestling with himself, quite palpable across the link between them.

  The overtones of his mental voice made her wary.

  He was remembering a much-beloved, dangerous man, and the measures that the mages had taken to restrain that man’s powers. she said, in horror.

  he said, and she sensed a surge of bitter grief—the man had died with the others in the tower. There was, she thought, something calculated about that disclosure, for all she felt it to be true. And his feelings around his own binding were almost—content. As though being bound had let him set aside his responsibility for his powers and be other than he was for a while. She could understand.

  How very kind of you, she thought, not quite back at him.

  His mental voice was slightly mocking, but she did not doubt, and let him know she did not doubt, a mage of his power and experience could hide any malign intent until it was too late.

 

 

  And she was again alone, in a small suite decorated with the fading grandeur of burlesque memories. Merely another of the extraordinary places she had passed through since she had met Ishmael di Studier. She pushed herself out of her chair and went through to the bedroom. Merivan was lying limply on the bed, on her back, damp cloth on her forehead. By the fullness in her figure, she would have no choice but to retire from society very soon.

  “Oh, Meri.” She reached out a consoling hand, both for her sister’s present misery and future unhappiness, remembering just in time that she wore no gloves. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’ve just had a—conversation—with a Lightborn mage. I lit the fire to attract his attention. If it’s any consolation to you, I have been most roundly scolded.”

  “It’s no consolation,” Merivan said, faintly. She lifted the cloth and sat up, mustering her authority. “I had entertained some foolish hope that this was—some fantasy, some exaggeration, something that—we could recover from. But that—demonstration of yours . . .” She paused to dab her face and throat with the cloth. “It is one thing, Telmaine, to trespass with touch. Another to . . .” Do that, her wordless gesture said.

  Telmaine had also cherished hopes that Merivan might bring herself to accept Telmaine-the-mage, or at least forgive her, as their mother seemed ready to do. Vain hopes, it seemed. She said, quietly, bare hands clasped together, “You thought something like Ish—Baron Strumheller’s. Truly, so did I. I had no idea myself what I was capable of; I still don’t.”

  “Baron Strumheller,” Merivan said, with a wraith of her old ire. “This is all his doing. And that husband of yours.”

  “And what does it matter whose doing it is, mine, theirs, or the gods? If the archduke dies—particularly now, with what Mycene and Kalamay have done—it will all be on my conscience.” She paused. “The Lightborn mage said he could help me get back to the palace safely. In return he wants to bind my magic so I will no longer be a danger.”

  “Is that possible?” Merivan said.

  “He seems to think so.”

  “It would be better,” Merivan said slowly, “if he could take it away entirely.” The stroke of sonn that followed was as deliberate as a gallant’s glove slap.

  She remembered the crumbled-charcoal sense of Ishmael’s magic. She remembered the dread with which he had warned her against the Temple Vigilance, who would burn out the magic and perhaps the mind of a renegade mage.

  “I don’t know what the effect would be on me,” Telmaine said.

  “But if it could be done without ill effect, you would have it done.”

  How typical of Merivan, Telmaine thought, to deliver such a question in a manner that was no question, was a decree. And if it could be done, if she could surrender it in a way that did her no harm, if she could be what she had always—until this last week—taken care to seem to be . . . She realized she did not want to answer that question, here and now, much less give any kind of promise to Merivan, who would surely hold her to it.

  “Telmaine? You surely cannot want to go through the rest of your life—and have your daughters go through theirs—known as a mage.”

  “I’ll decide later,” she said, bravely, knowing that quite insufficient even for a sickly Merivan. “Meri, I can—help your arm. And your indisposition.”

  Merivan had drawn breath to interrogate Telmaine’s hesitation, but at the offer her expression suddenly rippled between nausea, uncertainty, and fascination. Suddenly, wincing, she thrust out her bandaged hand, fist clenched. “You know it all anyway.”

  Telmain
e brought both hands around her sister’s, warily, but could not repress a whimper as she received the full force of Merivan’s thoughts, directed straight through their touch at Telmaine’s heart: bitter accusation of the ruin Telmaine had made of her life and of her innocent daughters’ lives, and the shame she had brought to her family. She whispered, “You don’t understand,” but gathered her magic. It flooded up Merivan’s burned arm, closing raw and weeping skin. She heard Merivan gasp, felt her appalled wonderment for several heartbeats before she snatched her hand away.

  “I feel quite restored,” she allowed, with suffused civility. “Thank you.”

  Telmaine smiled sadly. Whether her healing had in any way mitigated Merivan’s anger and estrangement, her relationship to her sister would never be the same. Merivan was the determined upholder of society’s norms and prejudices, and Telmaine had just shattered those norms. She said, “I’m going to go to the archduke now. I don’t know how long it will be before it will be safe for you to go home. But your children and husband should be safe.”

  “Assuming,” Merivan said, “the Lightborn do not retaliate against us for the toppling of their tower. Sweet Imogene, what were Mycene and Kalamay thinking?”

  Telmaine could have answered that, had she chosen. Merivan said, “Yes, it is imperative that Sejanus live. We cannot have a regency council ruled by the very same dukes who might already have had us at war with the Lightborn.” At Telmaine’s drawn breath, she tilted her head and cast a cool splash of sonn over her. “Little sister, your tender conscience is the least of this. Hasn’t that husband of yours educated you at all? A twelve-year-old archduke and a nineteen-year-old prince cannot possibly manage this crisis.”

  And in that, Telmaine thought, was the reason for the mage’s willingness to help her. He loved the prince, as a younger brother, a hope for the future, a son, even.

  Merivan crossed to the little sink and hung the towel over the edge. Without turning, she said, “It is as well Mama encouraged a little independence in her daughters, or else I would be quite helpless without a maid. Do go, if you are going.”

  Mage sense led her up another flight of stairs, to Kip’s room. The apothecary answered the door to her knock, his face relaxing as he sonned her. “Lady Telmaine.”

  “Do let me in,” she said. Despite the gravity of her errand, she could not avoid sonning the room itself, curiously, since it had until recently been Ishmael’s. She was disappointed: Ishmael did not accumulate possessions. He would be even more appalled than Balthasar, who at least had a weakness for books, at her accumulations of trinkets and jars and jewelry.

  “Good t’have you up and about again,” Kip said, his face wary.

  “You know, don’t you?” she said, simply.

  A half shrug, spread hands. “Don’t prevaricate,” she said. “You know what I am.”

  “A mage,” he said, cautiously. When she did not take prompt umbrage, he grinned cheekily. “So that was why Magister di Studier was so taken with you.” His next voiced thought quenched the grin even more quickly than she would have quenched it with a cutting remark. “We’ve a cursed disaster on our hands, m’lady, if Kalamay and Mycene brought down the Mages’ Tower, and the archduke’s dying.”

  “I’m going back to the palace,” she said.

  “There’s no way, from here,” he said, flatly. “The underground streets near it were filled in during the Borders uprising.”

  “There’s a Lightborn mage going to help me.” She decided to omit the price of that help. “I need you to look after my sister. She knows—I’ve just told her—about me. I need you to help her get home. Then if you want to risk coming back to the palace . . .”

  “They’ll not let you at the archduke,” he said. “Not to heal, not after—” He stopped suddenly.

  She did not read magic to know his thoughts, the conclusion he had reached. She said in a low voice, “I never meant to hurt him, or anyone. The Lightborn mage thought I was a Shadowborn, or Shadowborn agent, because I had been experimenting with Shadowborn magic. He tried to disable me, and I lost control. We’ve reached a better understanding since.”

  “What a cursed mess,” he said, with feeling. “No need to get further into it with me. I can guess some of th’rest, from what Magister di Studier said. A high-society lady, and a mage.” His grin was wicked. “I do like it.”

  “I’d rather,” she said stiffly, “you said nothing about this to anyone else.”

  A flicker of an ironic expression warned her that he appreciated how hollow the request was. “Lord V. know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Th’Mother help you, Lady Telmaine. That’s not a man you want for an enemy.”

  Her thought exactly. But she could not help asking, “Do you not mind magic?”

  “Because society doesn’t?” he returned. “What’s society ever done for the likes of me but toss a few coin our way and deride us from its pulpits as drunks, whores, and bastards? We’ve had far more good of magic than we have had of virtue.” He paused, and then remarked, with breathtaking gentleness and impertinence, “You’ll be welcome among us, if they turn you out.”

  Tammorn

  said the Darkborn lady.

  He had been aware of her, ready to restrain her magic, if need be, though he had hoped it would not be necessary. She had a natural gift for healing, he thought, and was displaying something of the profligate exuberance of a younger mage, newly come to her full strength. As well as a desperation to recoup as much virtue as she could from her fallen state.

  Lightborn customs were cruel and self-serving, imposed by the Temple in their own self-interest; knowing that, living that, had turned him to rebellion. Yet Darkborn beliefs were as cruel, allowing the earthborn to condemn the mageborn merely for their very nature.

  he said.

  He was aware of her ambivalent relief, though she tried to mask it from him, that she might be safer, but also that he might be sparing the greater part of her power. She had little sense of her own true potential. But were he to explain all that he was taking away from her, she might refuse to let him do it, and if she understood her own strength, she might resist his restraint—successfully, perhaps. Leaving him with the problems of her untrammeled power, and the dying archduke. This was for the best. It was only temporary.

  she said, and while he was puzzling over the word, she explained,

 

  She did. A Lightborn, man or woman, would be asking questions, not waiting with this semblance of docility—a semblance, he knew, because he could sense the conflict in her between the wish to question him and the wish to know no more than she did.

  He could not miss a sudden rill of fear and rejection from her at a memory of another mage’s mental scream of agony. Piqued at the comparison between himself and a Darkborn first-ranker, he said,

  She was not reassured, but said nothing.

 

  she said, but he could not help but feel her hope that once she healed the archduke, everything would start to come right. As gently as he could, he said,

  She didn’t answer.

  im?>

  she said, flinching, and he felt her flex her magic and reach out. He took from her mind the sense of that vitality, agonized and failing as it was, and expanded his awareness around it. Two old men, one younger, the younger one with his own quota of physical and, especially, mental torment. He lingered over that vitality, realizing it must be the Lord Vladimer who had permitted the slaughter of the tower to proceed. It would be so simple to tear open the vessels in his wounded shoulder in such a way that no one could stanch the bleeding. Darien or Floria White Hand would. But he, he was no assassin. The man was who he was, had done what he had done for his own reasons. And, as such unprincipled men often did, he would likely find his own punishment.

  Tam extinguished the three consciousnesses with the lightest of touches and the reverence the task required, like pinching off the wick of a ceremonial candle.

  He slipped the sheath of his magic over her, just as he had watched be done with Lukfer and experienced himself, letting it shape itself around her form as around the form of a talisman. He left only her hands free. It was not a perfect binding, but he did not believe she had the conscious mastery to use that gap in the binding to free herself. Her understanding of her magic was still too much influenced by the first-rank mage who had made himself, inappropriately, her teacher.

  He felt the binding quiver slightly; she must, he thought, have tried to speak to him. he said.

  He centered himself, concentrating inwardly for a few heartbeats to ensure he had no physical weakness primed to bloom as the magic drained his vitality. The Temple trainers had a wide repertoire of cautionary tales, some grotesque. Then he coiled his magic around the woman and lifted.

  Nine

  Telmaine