Lightborn

by Alison Sinclair

  He bit off the end of the word, preventing others from escaping; he, of all people, could not afford intemperance of speech in a city reeling between paralysis and violence. But he had just come from the servants’ quarters beneath the outer wall, adjacent to the tower. Blocks of dazzling carved alabaster fallen from the tower lay amongst shattered brick and adobe of the servants’ homes. A glittering ice field of broken glass covered the roadway in front, and the servants’ gardens. Glass frost rimed flowers and hedges. Servants, palace staff, and mages together searched for the residues of high masters and servants’ children, mingling in death as they never would in life.

  Having seen that, how could he not call it by name?

  Perrin, recalled to guard him, had stood trembling by his side, tears streaking a face still dusty from their efforts on the far side of the wall, until he had insisted that she go indoors. As she walked away, he heard his sister beginning to sob aloud.

  “. . . I need an answer, Captain, even if I have to go over to the palace, and demand it in person.” Which he would, their murderous brightnesses, argumentative vigilants, and riots notwithstanding. To his secretary, “. . . Prepare another copy of the initial message.” To the captain, “. . . Recall four vigilants—or as many as you think needed to get a message over to the archducal palace. I don’t want to send another courier into that chaos. Ask them to wait half an hour for an answer, and if there is no answer, to come back and report to me.”

  “Yes, my—” Rupertis broke off and turned as five figures appeared in the outer doorway, thrusting Fejelis into the shelter of his body. Fejelis did not resist; he and Lapaxo had settled that, hours ago. But as the figures stepped out of the light, he recognized three cadet members of the Vigilance, Mistress Tempe, and Floria White Hand. Floria’s red clothing was shredded and saturated, the skin it exposed mottled with purple and painted bruising, her hair hung in a wrung- out coil over her shoulder, and her eyes had the expression of glazed ferocity he had become all too used to seeing around him in the past hours. For all he knew, he would see in his own mirror, had he time to look. “. . . Mistress White Hand. Good—to see you.”

  Her smile had a crazed quality. “Prince Fejelis. Good to see you, too.”

  Tempe reported, to the prince and the captain equally, “We found her trying to stand off a mob in front of Bolingbroke Station, solo. Got there just as they dragged her off the fountain statuary and set out to drown her in it.”

  “The hinges of the station door were starting to give,” Floria rasped, and coughed. “Prince, I’ve been at the archducal residence. Last person I spoke to, before the one who let me out, was Duke Sachevar Mycene. He claimed to be in charge of the regency council for the archducal heir, and that Sejanus Plantageter was dying of a magically induced injury. He said Vladimer Plantageter had had a mental collapse—though I spoke to the man only hours earlier and he was sharp as a stiletto. But Mycene seemed very sure of himself.” Her gaze probed his face, looking for what, he did not know. “I’ve more information, but . . . I’d better give it you in a more private place.”

  “. . . If it’s what you put in a letter to Magister Tammorn, I’ve seen that.”

  Her shoulders slumped slightly, with what, he could not tell. He had not studied her nearly closely enough, trusting in his father’s assessment of her as an unshakable loyalist. Could he have noticed any inconsistencies in her behavior, signifying her ensorcellment, if he had? Most useless word in the language, “if,” his father’s phantom voice pointed out. He did need to know whether the ensorcellment persisted. He needed Tam or Perrin—and he was glad the doors stood wide at their backs, flooding the vestibule with sunlight.

  “. . . Go and get cleaned up, Mistress Floria.” By the red seam of a fresh-healed wound above her brow, he inferred she had had a mage’s attention already, and the Vigilance prided themselves on their stoicism. “. . . I’ll speak to you presently.”

  It took an effort for her to move off with her old, deadly lightness of step, but he doubted that anyone other than he and her fellow vigilants would know it. Rupertis waved off one of the novices and one of the vigilants to escort her: wise, given that rumors of her wrongdoing would have sunk deeper into the cracks in the walls than word of his rescinding the warrant.

  Tempe said, “She wouldn’t answer questions on the way back. Without a warrant . . .”

  Which frustrated the judiciar, that was plain. Fejelis had the vagrant thought that that asset of veracity must make for a difficult time in love.

  When he proved resistant to the hint, she said to her captain, “If I’m not needed here, then I’ll go over to the jail, help them sort out their catch.” Rupertis, though he twitched a little, gave up the two novices to accompany her.

  “Might I suggest . . . ?” Rupertis began to him, and then both he and Fejelis swung toward the sound of running footsteps.

  “. . . a stiff drink?” Fejelis said under his breath, drawing a startled look and a grim smile from the vigilant.

  The runner was Perrin, still dusty and almost as distraught as he’d last seen her. She skidded up to him. “They’re going to burn him out,” she blurted. “They’ve bound him and they’re going to burn him out.”

  “Who?” said Fejelis, though he already knew. And she confirmed it, “The high masters. They’re going to burn out Magister Tammorn.”

  “Come,” said Fejelis, but three strides on, he caught Perrin’s arm. “. . . I’m going to want backup for this. Find Orlanjis, Mother, Prasav, Ember. Bring them and their retinue, and anyone else of their brightnesses you think might carry weight. Floria White Hand as well.” She gulped. Fejelis said, “. . . I know it’ll cost me, but I owe Tam and I need him.” Her eyes widened a little, but he didn’t have time to settle gossip. He spun her toward the stairs, released her, and ran for his chambers, to exchange his vigilant’s helmet for the caul. Prayed he was not too late.

  The mages had eventually taken over the entire south wing of the palace, including the southwest-facing rooms that had once been Perrin’s and he had offered to Orlanjis. He trusted that Orlanjis and the palace staff—whose labors since the coming-of-age ceremonial had been nothing short of heroic—would eventually forgive him. The archmage himself had appropriated Perrin’s former suite.

  It might be mannerly and politic for Fejelis to knock, but it was not tactical, since he was sure his entrance would be barred. He twisted the handle, shouldered open the door, and had crossed the threshold into the streaming sunlight from skylight and windows before he met an invisible wall.

  Five people turned to look at him from where they stood encircling Tam, who lay facedown on the southern tent mat that served as carpet. Only his outflung hands moved, groping for purchase on the rough weave. His dusty auburn head lay between the bare feet of a small man in a clean white loincloth and a single chain of rank, and nothing else. The man’s head would have come no higher than Fejelis’s shoulder, and by eye, he was somewhat past middle age, his copper skin lacking the luster of youth, and his black hair thinning. They had never met, but he had heard Tam’s descriptions often enough. The prince who had ruled when this little man was born, in a hidden mage’s redoubt deep in the south, was three hundred years dead. It was not merely the pressure of the barrier that made Fejelis’s breath shallow, his voice thin. “. . . Magister Archmage.”

  The archmage waved someone forward with a flick of his fingers, his gaze not leaving the intruder. His black eyes had the fierce, dislocated outrage of a newly trapped hawk.

  “. . . I am Fejelis, Isidore’s son, and prince of the earthborn. Your host for the duration . . . I . . . . have an interest in this mage.”

  Magistra Valetta stepped into his line of sight, breaking his eye contact with the archmage. “Prince Fejelis,” she said, “the contract was not finalized and has now been canceled.”

  “. . . Actions taken even under provisional contract are covered by the compact, and are therefore the responsibility of the earthborn primary.” He coul
d feel the inexorable pressure of their magic, forcing him backward. He kept his voice level. “. . . Under whose contract do you use magic against me?”

  The pressure stopped so suddenly, he nearly pitched on his knees, and by the thud behind him, someone else was less agile. He did not look behind him, merely found his balance, keeping his posture easy. It was entirely possible his relaxed stance meant no more to the high masters than a cat’s lax sprawl. He did not know how mages so powerful would construe threat. As humans did, or otherwise?

  The archmage said something in an archaic dialect. Valetta said, “Prince Fejelis, this mage is not under discipline for anything done under contract; it is a Temple matter entirely.”

  “I’m glad it is nothing that I asked Magister Tammorn to do. But I am not certain that this is not earthborn business, given how my father died.”

  He heard movement behind him, and despite himself, the skin of his back tightened against a blow. Helenja’s voice said, “Fejelis, what is this?”

  Orlanjis sidled up beside him on his left, his wide eyes taking in the bound Tam, and the archmage. By his indrawn breath, he recognized the latter immediately. The barest flicker of his attention betrayed his urge to look sideways at Fejelis, and then he stared front, unblinking, as he would a deadly sand viper. Fejelis heard their mother hiss Orlanjis’s name.

  “Fejelis,” Prasav said, “show some common sense. You cannot interfere in Temple matters.”

  Floria White Hand moved silently up on his other side. She had changed her clothes, but her hair was a toweled tangle and she was sashless and barefoot. And quite deadly, poised on the balls of her bare feet, her bruised face a cool, attentive fighter’s mask. Remembering her ensorcellment, he felt his skin prickle.

  Too few allies, and the man he most trusted lying bound on that tent rug. He had no choice but to risk—he did not know what. “. . . I think I must, since I believe it concerns the magic that killed my father, specifically, the magic of Shadowborn.”

  “Shadowborn are a myth,” Prasav said, curtly. “You’re just making a fool of yourself.”

  A flicker of movement to the right of him, Perrin, in her dusty clothes, reaching a hand toward him. “Jay,” she said, voice urgent and low, “don’t. I—mistook what was happening here. It’s—it’s Temple discipline. Yes, I know it looks bad—but—it’s really not as bad as it looks. Just go now.”

  Did he know her well enough to believe her before the testimony of his eyes? No. And why, having summoned him here, was she so bent upon having him leave now? “. . . Are the Shadowborn a myth?” Fejelis asked the high masters quietly. “Or are they something you have known to fear for five hundred years, because lineage mages cannot sense their magic, and so cannot counter it?”

  Valetta’s eyes flicked past him to whoever stood behind him. He heard his mother breathe, “Oh, you young fool.”

  Valetta said, “Prince Fejelis, we forgive your confusion. This mage, Tammorn, was influenced by a deranged and uncontrolled master.” From the mat, Tam gave a gargling shout of rage. “It is probably as well that Lukfer died in the Temple’s ruin. We may still be able to salvage Tammorn.”

  She lied well, Fejelis thought, but watching her, watching her with all the experience gained in surviving court, he knew she lied.

  He walked slowly forward, alert to any motion toward him. The archmage watched his approach with those black eyes whose depths went down three hundred years. From the vantage of his mere nineteen, Fejelis tried to fathom those eyes, those centuries. How long since the ancient mage had spoken directly to an earthborn, even to a prince? Did he even know modern language? Was this by his preference, or that of the high masters around him? Had he been sealed away beneath layers of veneration, growing ever more isolated amongst his own? Princes had met that fate, too, though only over decades, not centuries.

  Still holding the archmage’s eyes, he knelt and gently squeezed Tam’s outstretched hand, trusting that while the mages might have bound magic, mage sense, and speech, they had discounted touch and its consolations. He heard an indrawn breath from their brightnesses, likely offended by the symbolic submission in his kneeling, or maybe by the touch. He didn’t care if their brightnesses were offended, if the mages respected compassion for one of their own.

  He said quietly, “. . . I may be too willing to believe an explanation that implicates a third party and exonerates my family. But no one else has been able to tell me why the lights in my father’s room failed.”

  The woman started to speak; the archmage held up his hand. Fejelis’s heart beat faster, as the copper- skinned little man studied him. “. . . Magister Lukfer, Magister Tam, and at least two Darkborn mages sensed magic behind multiple fires that killed Darkborn, and the annulment of the lights that caused my father’s death. Magister Lukfer said that he had come to associate such magic with the Shadowborn.

  “. . . Yet I have had no mention, no report whatsoever, from the Temple of this magic, or of justice meted out for its abuse. I was also informed that the Darkborn are beginning to wonder at the Temple’s apparent inactivity. . . .” He paused, gathered himself. “Magister Tammorn told me that the crossbow bolt that nearly took my life, despite the initial efforts of a mage of the lineage, was ensorcelled to annul life. I—believe—that that same magic might have accounted for the many deaths among you, even more than the Darkborn’s shells.” He heard Perrin’s indrawn breath, but the high masters were very still, frighteningly still. “To defeat this enemy, we need to come together—princes, brightnesses, earthborn, Lightborn and Darkborn. In the name of a compact that has served us for seven hundred years, please, help us, as Magisters Tam and Lukfer tried to do, in their own, perhaps flawed, way. And let us help you.”

  He had to wait for an answer now, thought it took all his courage to resist flinging more words after these, the best he could find.

  “I find it hard to believe you care about the compact, Fejelis,” said Prasav, from behind him.

  Fejelis did not wish to turn away from the archmage, but even less did he wish Prasav at his back. He knee-stepped to one side and pivoted, to find Floria there, silent as ever, blocking Prasav’s approach. Perrin had a hand on Orlanjis’s arm, trying, against Orlanjis’s resistance, to draw him back.

  Prasav tossed something down onto the mat. “That mage,” he said, “and this prince, who is hardly worthy of the name, have conspired together to undermine the compact, using Darkborn technologies to replace magic.” He let the fragile electric bulb bobble around on the carpet until they had all recognized it and then, deliberately, stepped on it, crushing it to glass shards and wire. “Contrary to the impression they have so carefully conveyed, they’ve known each other for four years, during which the mage has drawn Fejelis into a circle of treasonous radicals he has cultivated.”

  “. . . Innovation is not treason,” Fejelis said, to the archmage. “The artisans are idealistic young people trying to find ways to ease the burden on the tower. And my father was well aware that I knew Tam.”

  Prasav smiled down at him, the expression a travesty of Isidore’s. “Magistra Valetta, if you were to tell us the truth, might you not say that the murderer of Isidore, the captain of vigilants, and two others is that mage there, who ensorcelled the woman Floria White Hand to place a talisman capable of annulling the lights in Isidore’s room, and then removed that talisman once it had done his work? He did so at the behest of the prince, his lover. He has violated the laws of the compact before, on behalf of this prince. It may be awkward to admit that any mage should be so corrupt, but there are always bad apples. You deal with your bad apple; leave us to deal with ours, and no word will ever leave this room.”

  “. . . None of that is true,” Fejelis said, surging to his feet. “. . . A touch will tell you.” He offered his hand, striving neither to appeal nor importune by the gesture.

  Valetta said nothing. Nor did she move to take his hand, and accept the truth. Fejelis felt suddenly chilled, tasting peach. Tasting betrayal
. Floria, at his side, took the one measured side step needed to free them both for action, her hand slipping to her rapier pommel.

  Rupertis said, “Floria, these men ensorcelled you. Move aside, if you can.”

  “If I am ensorcelled,” the vigilant rasped, “then let the mages vigilant release me, if they can.”

  From outside the door, three vigilants stepped into the room, one moving up behind him and two to each side, crossbows coming to bear. It did not take Orlanjis’s skill to triangulate their target. Floria stepped into the line of the woman on the right, though at this range, it might not matter.

  Perrin cried out, “Don’t. I won’t take the caul stained with his blood. You promised!”

  “You!” said Orlanjis and Helenja together. “You have no standing here,” Helenja said. “You gave it up, ten years ago.”

  “It was taken away from me, ten years ago,” Perrin spit. “And you let them do it to me, and you’ll let them do it to him, all for your precious Orlanjis.”

  “Not for me!” Orlanjis cried out. In his horrified eyes, Fejelis could see his memory of the day before, his anticipation of what was about to happen.

  “I’m sorry, Fejelis,” Perrin said. “I tried to warn you. You just wouldn’t understand what this outrage meant to the tower.”

  “. . .The compact does not allow a mage to be . . . ,” Fejelis said.

  “Even the compact can be amended,” said Prasav, and gestured. Orlanjis shouted, and lunged forward too late, too short. Fejelis twisted frantically sideways, knowing the futility. He had a blurred impression of Floria moving, her rapier’s edge slicing light as she drew, and then Orlanjis tackled him and brought them both crashing down onto the mat.

  Winded, gasping, he waited for the sear of pain in his chest, the gurgle of blood in his throat. Lying on his back and staring at the ceiling . . . where the painted sun had gained three extra rays.