Lightborn

by Alison Sinclair

  He lifted his head. Floria half crouched over him, rapier drawn. The vigilants, Prasav, and Helenja stared up at the embedded crossbow bolts. Ember and the mages stared at Tam.

  Who reared up straight-armed from the carpet, face flushed and wild and smeared with tears and mucus, saying to no one and everyone, “You shall not have him.”

  “Them!” gasped out Fejelis, having just enough time to sling an arm around Orlanjis and pull him close.

  Eleven

  Floria

  The crossbow bolt flashed as it spun in the air between the bow and her breast, and vanished. From overhead came a staccato triplet, almost unheard for the heavier thumps of Fejelis and Orlanjis tumbling to the carpet. She kept facing the bowmen, who were all staring upward. Rupertis swore vilely, staring past her to where Fejelis and Orlanjis must be lying. Then she turned, stomach clenching with trepidation at what she must see—one or both of them pierced and dying. But the brothers were gone. Tammorn, too. With that heightened awareness that comes with preparing to kill or die, she saw Valetta’s head snap toward the archmage, who lifted his eyes from the empty carpet. In their exchanged glances, Floria saw avarice.

  Prasav stepped forward. “Bring them back!”

  The archmage regarded him in silence, across centuries and power. A distance far wider, Floria sensed, than the one between the archmage and the very young Fejelis.

  Prasav, unlike Fejelis, could not sustain that eye contact. He turned to Valetta. “I’ll contract with you to find and return the princes. I’ll offer a good price.”

  The archmage said something. “The princes,” Valetta said, “are irrelevant. The mage is ours to deal with.” And that, Floria realized, explained the avarice. Tam had broken a binding imposed by the archmage and four high masters. Now, with their numbers decimated, they would want that power in their lineages.

  Not least, if Tam could sense and manipulate magic lost to the lineages.

  “All we need is to know where they are,” Prasav said.

  Perrin said, shrilly, “You promised me Fejelis would be deposed without killing him.”

  “Don’t be naive, girl,” Prasav tossed at her. “Nobody leaves a deposed prince alive.”

  “If the compact can be amended,” Perrin snapped, “then this so-called tradition can be amended. It wasn’t always this way, that princes killed each other. I don’t want Fejelis dead.” To Valetta, “You can have the mage.”

  Prasav turned back to Valetta. “You don’t know, do you, where they are? You have no idea where he took them.”

  The archmage turned in dismissal and walked away into the inner room, sandals softly slapping his feet. The three high masters trailed at his heels. Valetta looked on as Prasav and Perrin argued, the girl’s face pale, frightened even, the man allowing his anger to show, now it had found a safe target.

  “If you think, after this display, that Fejelis is not dangerous to us, you’re more than naive; you’re a fool. You heard him speak. You heard me say he has radical contacts in the city. He’s known at court—you aren’t. That mage of his broke a binding imposed by the archmage and four high masters. Fejelis isn’t the fool nine-year-old you remember and that mage is no fifth-rank mediocrity.”

  Perrin’s head jerked back. Color rose in her cheeks as though he had slapped her—with the reminder of her own small powers. Mother’s Milk, but she was easy to make dance. The question was, whose would be the tune: Prasav’s, or the Temple’s?

  Neither was righteous. Floria supposed she should take some thought to her own survival, but she was still caught up in that vaulting disregard of life or death characteristic of the fighter’s mind. Each breath gave her a small shock of delight, and was equally a matter of indifference.

  At a sound behind her, she whirled, startling the vigilants who stood nearest, who had not yet registered it. Rupertis was the first to look over his shoulder to find the prince’s secretary standing pale but determined on the threshold, four vigilants flanking him. “There is a message for Prince Fejelis,” he said. “From the Darkborn. It is urgent.”

  Perrin sucked in a breath, “I’ll take it.”

  The secretary looked at her, trying to parse the chains of rank around her neck, her uncauled head, and Fejelis’s absence. “Give it to me,” she ordered. “I am princess now.”

  The vigilants looked uncertainly to Rupertis, their captain; he nodded, and the secretary slowly proffered the letter. Prasav made a move for it; Perrin put her shoulder between him and it, turning away as she tore it open. The sheet of paper she extracted was unevenly colored and blank of any ink, but bore the characteristic stippling of Darkborn script. Perrin’s brows drew beneath her crafted cap of hair. Unlike Fejelis, she had not learned to read Darkborn script.

  Ember stepped forward, holding out her hand. “If I may, Princess.”

  Perrin looked sharply at the woman, surely her rival now, and reluctantly extended the letter. Ember studied it, reading with her eyes what Darkborn read with their fingers. “It is from Sejanus Plantageter, his hand, his signature,” she said.

  Yet Mycene had said the archduke was critically injured. Was this truly his hand? Was the Darkborn script not the subtlety of a man limiting a letter’s readership, but an insult from one indifferent to the letter’s audience? For that matter, was Ember’s interpretation what the letter itself said?

  Perhaps so, for having read it, she returned it without hesitation to Perrin. “He agrees to meet with Prince Fejelis. He offers the chambers of the Intercalatory Council: though it is humble, it is equipped for such discussions. He suggests an hour after sunset, to give both ourselves and him the chance to bring together our retinues, and offers to clear the streets so that we may travel with lights in the open.

  “The other thing he says is that the Darkborn are having trouble in the Borders. He says that they have had a message from one of their manors indicating that it has been overrun, and names the enemy”—to the mage—“Shadowborn.”

  “So he will not wish to engage two enemies,” Prasav noted. “This works to our advantage.”

  “And if . . . these enemies are ours as well,” Perrin ventured. Ah, Perrin was herself a sport; she, too, should be able to sense Shadowborn magic.

  And suffer the same consequences as her brother for saying so. Valetta, Prasav, and Ember regarded her with similar expressions—not, Floria thought, unlike expert swordsmen waiting for the novice to make an inevitable error. Helenja shook her head, very slightly, more in resignation than in warning. Perrin’s lashes veiled her eyes, and she did not press for an answer. But she looked frightened.

  “Princess,” said Prasav, with a dangerous kindness. “We must discuss the terms of Darkborn surrender and reparations, so we can speak with a united voice. This gives us a fine opportunity to reestablish the relationship across the sunset on a basis satisfactory to ourselves. Magistra Valetta, we would be most grateful if you could attend, since you are the most gravely injured.”

  Valetta inclined her head, an expression of dark irony in her eyes.

  “Please write the Darkborn archduke that we accept his invitation,” Perrin said, thinly.

  “Do so,” Prasav added, “in Fejelis’s name.”

  Helenja was watching the exchange with a curled lip. “Mistress White Hand,” she murmured, just loudly enough for Floria to hear, “come with me.”

  Floria weighed the consequences, briefly, of refusal. But she had no wish to stay here until Prasav’s or Ember’s or Valetta’s attention returned to her. If what Tam and Fejelis had said was true, Helenja and the southerners were innocent of Isidore’s unrighteous deposition. And if Floria knew Helenja, she would want her younger son back, safe, whatever she intended for her elder. That desire, Floria thought, might be parlayed into help for Fejelis. Quietly, she sheathed her rapier and followed Helenja’s Vigilance from the room.

  One of Helenja’s many minor offenses against custom was in preferring her ground-floor chambers to the consort’s official chambers. Th
ose could be approached only through the well-watched halls of the palace, while the ground-floor chambers opened out into gated gardens with at least six gates. Easy enough for messengers to go and come, or visitors to come and go. Floria, directed to the door of lesser privilege, found herself in a receiving room whose floor and skirting were sandy-hued stone, and whose walls were sandy- hued, fine-textured wood. The reflected light was warmer than the desert.

  The dowager consort circled her. “Whose creature are you? I find that utterly impossible to decide.”

  Floria turned with her, alert for the smallest glance or gesture that might be a signal to dispatch Floria. Or try to. She had not yet returned to the world of multiple dimensions; her perceptions remained narrowed to single choices, single actions. Within that narrowed space, her focus was exquisite, her potential deadly.

  “Were you ensorcelled, or did you willingly carry that talisman to my husband, and in whose service? Are you ensorcelled now, or did you willingly shield Fejelis with your body? Do you know?”

  I know this, Floria thought. I am not yours.

  “I would have said until yesterday that you were my husband’s creature. Had you not been, he would have been dead at any one of a dozen times. You would have let him cut out your heart. But then, he never would have let a warrant be released against you. I was quite surprised that Fejelis did.” She tapped her upper lip with a finger, and took it away to ask, “Was it the mage’s influence? Was he jealous?”

  Floria snorted, more in annoyance than amusement. Helenja’s voice plucked and worried at the perfectly tucked- in corners of her awareness, threatening to expand it once more into multiple dimensions, blurring that perfect fighter’s mind. She measured the distance of her hand to the pommel, the distance of the tip to Helenja’s heart. Except that, in the presence of a mage, the assassination would be no more than a gesture.

  “Or did he know, as Fejelis said?” To the mage, Helenja said, “Is this woman ensorcelled?”

  Before the mage had taken a step toward her, Floria had the rapier drawn. “She can answer from there, or not at all.”

  “Madam consort,” protested the mage, turning, and, meeting Helenja’s gaze, wilted. “I sense no ensorcellment.”

  “But you were born of the lineages,” Helenja said. “I wonder what the answer would be were I to put that question to my daughter.”

  She abandoned her circling, opening the space between them to set her hips on a high table, propping herself against it. Despite her bulk, she still moved like a young woman, the haughty desert rider Isidore had contracted with. “You hate me, understandably. I was just a girl when I came to this court, foolish, crude, and proud. I brought with me ambitious men and women, and I believed with them at my back I could rule this court. Instead, they nearly ruled me, and they did things that cost me—the regard of my son, for one. I am watching my daughter make the same mistake.

  “Do you understand what you saw in there, Mistress White Hand? Through Perrin, the mages have taken control of the princedom. How long they have been planning this I do not know, though I suspect it was initially the work of a faction within the Temple, and would have come to nothing without this Darkborn madness. But Prasav wants the caul for himself, and if not himself, Ember. I doubt he will get it; whether he realizes it or not, if he makes a move, he will be lucky to live. Ember is more subtle; I have no doubt that she is already cultivating alliances.”

  Floria made her voice work, “I do not serve Prasav. I do not serve the mages. I am a member of the Prince’s Vigilance; I serve the lawful prince.”

  Helenja heard the “lawful,” and smiled. “Then it appears we have a common cause, and uncommon enemies. I am prepared to allow that you were ensorcelled, whether by one of our mages or a Shadowborn, and that any part you had in Isidore’s death was an unwilling one. I will offer you my own protection, and the protection of my mages—of whatever worth that may prove. In exchange, you will help me find my sons. Then we will settle which one is to be prince. Do you agree?”

  Fejelis

  One moment he sprawled on the mat, looking up at the bolt-pierced ceiling, the next on hard ground and matted heather, looking up at—whiteness. Orlanjis struggled free of his grip and sat up, wild-eyed; Fejelis pushed himself up, feeling no less so.

  “Where . . . ,” said Orlanjis.

  The light was filtered white, and directionless. His clothes and hair turned instantly clammy. Was this dusk? What should have been the agony of imminent dissolution was no more than a dull cramp in his limbs, no worse than when he dashed through the deep shade of full summer foliage. Not dusk, then, but cold mist.

  “. . . are we?”

  Seacoast, island, or mountains. Much more pertinent was when? How near was sunset?

  A few yards away, Tam lay on his face, one hand still braced flat, elbow jutting up, though he had collapsed over it. His breathing was imperceptible and his face—when Fejelis eased him over onto his back—mist gray. Even the freckles were grubby smudges under the smears and dirt. Fejelis’s ear on his chest found a slow heartbeat; a cheek against his nose felt a wisp of stirring air. Fejelis pinched him, hard, eliciting no reaction.

  “Is he . . . dead?” Orlanjis said, scrambling up beside him. “Did he do this?”

  “No, he isn’t, and yes, I think he did.” He settled back on his heels, sweeping a damp sleeve across a damp forehead, and started to enumerate his wants. They had no food or water, no means of keeping themselves and especially Tam warm . . . and no lights.

  “He has to take us back!” Orlanjis said, grabbing at the mage’s shoulder. Fejelis caught his wrist, using his adult strength. The white of panic showed around Orlanjis’s irises as they jerked to focus, dilated, on Fejelis. “When the sun sets, we’re dead.”

  “. . . Given that three crossbowmen just fired on us, having until sunset is an improvement. . . .” Orlanjis’s rolling eyes reminded him that not everyone appreciated princely humor. He said more gently, “For the moment, we’re safe.”

  “Safe . . . ? He’s the only way back, and he’s out cold.”

  “He’ll have had a reason for bringing us here. Let’s try and get our bearings.” He laid a hand briefly on Tam’s chest, trying to communicate reassurance, before standing up. “You and I are going to walk off until we can just still see Tam. I’m going to walk out from you until I can just see you, and then we’re going to circle Tam, not losing sight of each other.”

  “Don’t leave me,” Orlanjis said to their feet.

  “. . . I won’t.” He smiled, and squeezed Orlanjis’s shoulder, lightly. “Not knowing how you stood by me, back there. . . . Don’t lose sight of Tam and if I’m moving out too far, beckon me back in, all right?” As from a skittish horse, he backed away until Orlanjis grew indistinct. He knew his reds would stand out, easing Orlanjis’s panic. He turned shoulder on to his brother, and slowly began to pace out a circle. After two dozen slow paces, he spotted a distinct gray line almost at the limits of vision. He squinted; yes, it was real. “I see something—no, don’t come!” He pulled off his jacket, bundled it, and laid it on the ground, crossed halfway to Orlanjis, and tipped the caul from his head and set it on the ground, before going the rest of the way.

  “. . . We’ll pick it up on the way back,” he promised his gaping brother. “. . . Stay there while I get Tam.”

  He returned to Tam, crouched, propped the limp mage up, and muscled him into an awkward shoulder carry. They followed the line of the caul and the mourning jacket to where Fejelis had seen the track, Orlanjis obeying without objection Fejelis’s, “Pick these up, would you?” though he handled the caul like a ball of spines. The mist had closed in once more, but Orlanjis said, “I’ll go,” and walked forward. “It’s a railway track. But where—”

  Fejelis grunted, “Not so fast,” as Orlanjis blurred in the mist, and followed with all the haste he could muster. He came upon Orlanjis standing on a narrow, paved road, staring down at the adjacent railway track.

&nb
sp; “We’re in the Borders,” Orlanjis said, whitely.

  Hilly terrain, no smell of the sea. “. . . You sound very certain.”

  “This kind of track was only laid between Stranhorne and the end of the southern railway. We’re—in the Borders.”

  “. . . That makes a certain sense,” Fejelis said. It also suggested Tam had not been thinking as clearly as he might, to drop them in this barren land that the Lightborn had abandoned. He hid his despair as he looked along the empty track as it emerged on one side of him and disappeared into mist on the other, as uninformatively as it had come. In the sky, the position of the sun was not even marked with a brighter smudge. Orlanjis, picking his way along the track with apparent purpose, suddenly said, “Fejelis, we need to go this way.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nearest railwayman’s hut. There are dozens of them along the tracks, for the use of the people who maintain the tracks and switch points for the day trains. I know they say there are no Lightborn in the Borders, but there are. Because of our eyes, we’re much more efficient at checking track.”

  “. . . I never knew you were interested in railways.”

  Orlanjis’s scowl deepened; he shrugged self-consciously. “I thought if I couldn’t stand court anymore, I’d run away and work for the railways.”

  Fejelis managed to keep his lip from twitching. Orlanjis’s knowledge could be lifesaving. “. . . So how far?”

  Orlanjis looked at him, at the inert mage on his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  “. . . Could you go ahead along the track, then? Get help, if possible. I will follow as I can.” Then if sunset caught them, Orlanjis would have had the better chance of finding shelter.

  Orlanjis swallowed. Fejelis waited, keeping his regard steady, confident, hiding his own fear. Orlanjis gave a single jerky nod, and then turned and plunged into the mist. Not daring to go more slowly. “Follow the track,” Fejelis shouted after him. No answer came back, only a muffled suggestion of running feet. The mist closed around him, his sole companion now. Fejelis took a more solid grip of the awkward burden of his protector and friend—shoulder-carrying an adult was far more difficult than the vigilants made it look—and concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other for as long as he could.