Lightborn

by Alison Sinclair

  When he saw the lights, some indeterminate time later, he took them at first for merely another illusion, one with the tunneled vision, the gray fogs, the sudden sprays of sparks that had invaded his field of view. With his heartbeat thumping in his ears, he did not hear voices. But the lights bobbed closer, and he caught sight of the moving vertical shapes of men. He raised his voice, and Orlanjis charged out of the mist, nearly colliding with him. “Jay!” he said loudly, and whispered urgently, “We’re his servants, right? Play stupid.” Fingers fumbled around Fejelis’s neck, releasing the star sapphire and the talisman of immunity and shuffling both away into an inner pocket.

  Behind him the other shapes expanded and took on density and then color and detail—two men and a woman in leather and coarse open-weave fabric, clothed more heavily and completely than any city dweller. Orlanjis had on a similar vest, too large for him. All three of the railway workers were young, two fair-skinned and ginger-haired, with the west-mountains slur in their speech, and the second man copper-skinned and dark-haired, with a southwest accent. The westerners were Sorrel and Midha, and the southerner was Jade. They helped Fejelis off-shoulder the unconscious mage and laid him out on a mesh hammock. Exhaustion and relief at the arrival of not only men but blessed light made Fejelis every bit as stupid as Orlanjis’s masquerade demanded. When Jade said, “Mother’s Milk, I know this man,” he simply gawked.

  Orlanjis recovered himself enough to say—chirp, rather, “You know him?”

  “Aye, I know him,” said the man, seemingly unaware of the panicked look Orlanjis sent Fejelis. Fejelis observed to his relief that he handled Tam carefully, and not as a man would an enemy. Fejelis tried to prompt him to elaborate, carefully using the accents of a city artisan, “. . . He’s done a lot of good in the city.”

  “Thought you two were brothers,” the woman put in, more suspiciously. “That one doesn’t sound much like you.”

  “He’s the one with ambitions to rise,” Fejelis said. “Me, I dun’ care.” He wondered where Orlanjis had hidden the caul and equally distinctive jacket, but he decided he was glad, for the moment, that Orlanjis had found some story to tell. He doubted his own powers of invention, in his exhaustion.

  With a worried sideways glance at his face, Orlanjis took the fourth corner of the hammock, unasked.

  The light beyond the mist was definitely dulling, and he had had to take his turn with the carrying, before they reached shelter. Orlanjis must have run much of the way. It had been a largely silent walk, exchanges limited to those necessary to share the load. Though he had established that they were within the Darkborn barony of Strumheller, thirty miles west of Strumheller Crosstracks itself. The railwaymen’s hut was a pleasant surprise: not a hut, but a small house, raised well above head height for visibility and for protection against the occasional Shadowborn. Jade took malicious delight in pointing out the deep scores of claw marks on the supports for the edification of the city boys. Orlanjis swallowed, his eyes flashing white. Fejelis thought that the strop marks looked years, if not decades, old. He was too cursed tired to get exercised.

  On the platform, a second young woman was waiting, standing guard, a bow slung on one shoulder, a Darkborn- made rifle on the other. She greeted them at the top of the stairs, and looked down at Tam’s unconscious form in dismay. “Tam!”

  Tam’s choice of destination was appearing less and less random. The woman’s eyes flickered up to Fejelis, wary and slightly dismayed as she became aware of his attention. She was short, stocky rather than slight; though she stood only as high as his midchest, she had shoulders as muscular as a vigilant’s, full breasts and hips, and big, competent hands. Her skin was the deep olive of the southwest, with honey yellow eyes, and black hair so close-cropped it resembled fur. The hair was silvered with fine beads of mist dew. He wondered how it would feel to stroke it.

  She broke their locked gazes, turning away. He shook his head, disconcerted. Years of cultivating his resistance to the stratagems of poisonous court beauties, not to mention flirtatious artisans, and here he was, distracted by a nameless railway woman off the edge of the civilized world.

  “Jay?” Orlanjis said.

  He gave his brother a wry half smile, and, stooping, followed their rescuers into their refuge. Inside, they were lifting the unconscious Tam into what looked to be the best bed in the house. There was hardly enough space in the tiny room for the four hammock bearers, much less Fejelis, so he stood back. Orlanjis and two of the others came out; the other man, who had also recognized Tam, stayed. The second woman started to close the door, and met Fejelis’s steady gaze and his steady hand on the door. “. . . He’s th’master,” he said, trying to phrase a promise of silence in a dull- wit’s idiom. “. . . We dun say anything that he doesn’t want said.”

  “Come in, then,” she said, and, as the other man drew breath, shook his head at him, firmly. They might be brother and sister, Fejelis thought, with something of the same broad build and cast of face, though the man’s skin was coppery, and his eyes dark, rather than that oddly familiar gold.

  Fejelis closed the door carefully behind him. The woman squared herself, facing him. “Before we go any further,” she said, softly, “who are you, really? Your . . . brother spun a tale of rivalry between mages that might have been credible to someone who did not know Magister Tammorn, but failed dismally to do other than entertain me.”

  He had feared Orlanjis had been overly creative. “. . . Mistress . . .” She volunteered no name. “I have . . . good reason not to tell you my real name, since the trouble Magister Tammorn pulled us away from was mine more than his. But he is my friend, and has been for several years.”

  Her eyes narrowed, seeming to measure the distance between them. He in turn measured the strength in those well-formed arms, and kept his hand on the door handle.

  “What is his son’s name?” she said.

  “Artarian. After the brother he lost in the mountains, years ago.”

  “And who is his master?”

  “The only name he has ever mentioned is Lukfer.”

  “Can you describe Magister Lukfer?”

  Not alive, he thought, remembering the body wrapped in its torn, dusty, blood-sodden sheets. If she had known the dead mage, it seemed too cruel to deceive her with a description from a death mask. And then he remembered where he had seen eyes as golden as hers before: staring in death. “. . . No. We never met.”

  “Ah.” Aware that he was being less than candid. “If you are playing us false, I will deal with you. And if you don’t appreciate that now, you will.” She bent over Tam and set her fingers against his temples, uttering a suppressed “Oof,” as though assuming an unexpectedly heavy load. Beneath her touch, Tam groaned, and then suddenly thrashed upright. Wide gray green eyes, as panicked as Orlanjis’s had been, fixed on Fejelis. “Fejelis, look out!”

  “. . . I’m fine,” Fejelis said, distinctly. “As is my brother. You got us both away.”

  “Him, too,” said Tam, quite coherently. “No wonder it cursed near killed me. Where are we?”

  “. . . In the Borders. Where you brought us.”

  Tam swept his gaze round, saw the woman, and lost the little color he had regained. Tears came to his eyes. “Jo, I’d no idea where you’d gone. He didn’t tell me until—Jo, he’s dead. I couldn’t—he wouldn’t let me—but you’d have been so proud of him—” As suddenly as they had opened, his eyes rolled up, and he toppled sideways. As one, the man and woman snatched at him, heads colliding; Fejelis avoided becoming a third party only by being that step farther away. Jade and the woman disentangled themselves and laid Tam back on the pillows.

  “I know of only one Fejelis,” the woman said, without looking away from Tam’s face.

  Useless to deny it, now that Tam had spoken it aloud. “. . . . I expect I am that one.” He drew the sapphire pendant from his pocket, offered it to their inspection, and returned it to hiding.

  “The prince’s sons?” said the man.
>
  “. . . My father was assassinated two days ago.”

  “Mother’s Milk. Then you—”

  “Fejelis Grey Rapids was the style I had chosen for myself.” When he thought about it, it was about the only routine decision he had managed to make amidst the cascading disasters of his brief reign. Not quite the briefest reign—history told of the nine- minute prince—but certainly one of the briefest. Shock had numbed him to catastrophe and failure. He hoped it would keep doing so, a little longer.

  “Mother’s Milk,” the woman echoed, shakily, and added, “Your brightness.” She glanced at Tam, who was muttering in his sleep. “We shouldn’t disturb him. He’s badly overspent. Even with my help it could be a few days before he’s back to strength.”

  But he would recover; Fejelis drew reassurance from her simple confidence in her own abilities and Tam’s strength. “. . . And you are?”

  “Jovance. Yes, I’m a mage, and no, I’m not a member of the Temple—which is how I come to be here, working the railroads with the other misfits, rebels, and dropouts. Your brightness, may we please go into the main room, and you then can tell us the real story?”

  Orlanjis was slumped in one of the worn sling chairs set close to the fire, his childishly supple neck awkwardly crooked. Thoughtless reflex made Fejelis’s heart thump alarm, but Orlanjis’s breathing was easy, his face almost its normal color, his trailing hands relaxed. The sleep was one of simple exhaustion. Fejelis lifted a cushion from one of the other chairs and used it to prop his brother’s head in an easier position. Orlanjis did not even twitch.

  Jovance, who had observed this, pointed him to the other chair close to the fire. She brought a high stool to his side, and the others took their places on chairs, stools, and the floor. “Looks like cursed politics has caught up with us,” she remarked to her fellows. “Magister Tammorn—Tam—is my grandfather’s student.” To Fejelis, “That’s Magister Lukfer.” Then she continued, “And Tam’s had almost as much trouble with the Temple as I have. But this is no servant, but his brightness himself, Prince Fejelis Grey Rapids. I’ve never seen him, but I have seen his father and I knew his sister, and there’s enough of a likeness to be convincing, even without what I got from Tam—though that was pretty cursed confused. The youngster with the stories is the prince’s brother, Orlanjis.”

  To Fejelis she said, “I would wait on asking you to confirm the truth of what you say”—by touch, she meant—“until Tam is well enough to stand by you; I know he would prefer that. He clearly cares about you.” She straightened and drew in a breath. “But knowing that I will, would you tell me how you came to be here?”

  He did so, starting from his being awakened by word of his father’s death—filling in his relationship with Tam, Floria’s suspected ensorcellment, and the Darkborn’s crises. Jovance was the only one who asked questions, the others seemingly too intimidated to do so, though the copper-skinned man—half brother, perhaps—prompted her with glances she seemed to have little trouble interpreting. Half brother, some impossibly rash part of him hoped, for the longer they spoke, the more remarkable she seemed to him. When he came to describe Lukfer’s death, he did so haltingly, groping for words that would not evoke in her mind the pictures that came so readily to his. Even his chosen words were cruel to speak, and to hear. She and Jade wept quietly, her arm around the young man’s shoulder, but she wordlessly gestured Fejelis to go on. He finished with the Temple’s betrayal, his fall, and Tam’s desperate exertion in saving them all. Done, he sat spent of words and emotion.

  There was a long, long silence. “Broke a binding by five high masters, did he?” she murmured, a growl beneath the murmur. “Did they ever underestimate him.” A pause. “And the Temple finally made a move on the princedom. Doesn’t surprise me, having met your sister. Shouldn’t wonder if it weren’t her idea in the first place.”

  She wiped her tear-streaked face, studied the moisture on her fingers with a bitter expression. “My turn, then. I’m the strongest of Lukfer’s grandchildren—or children, for that matter. Jade”—she glanced at the other man—“didn’t even get the magic. . . . But I fell in love with an earthborn, and the only children I wished to bear were his. That was what the Temple could not abide, that I not agree to be bred like a mare for their lineages. My lover—my consort,” she claimed him, “was a trader. Like one of those wild cranes, endlessly roaming, up and down the length of the lands, in and out, even. He was tall and gangly and fair, no beauty by any conventional measure, but with a bold spirit unlike any other.” Her smile passed through and beyond tall, gangly, fair Fejelis. “We planned to make our lives outside the lands, beyond the reach of the Temple. Others had, not many, but a few. Then one day he went over the boundary and never came back.” A silence opened up, filled only with the crackle and snap of sticks in the fire.

  “I believed—still believe—the Temple arranged that,” Jovance said, defying him to disbelieve her. “I didn’t care then whether I lived or died, only that I thwart them. Lukfer brought me here, before I did something fatal. The one place they would not look.” Her eyes slowly refocused on him; she returned to their close little shelter, and their situation. “I think you’re probably safe here, at least for a little. If not—well, it’s just trouble deferred, isn’t it? Theirs.”

  That sense of humor would not be misplaced amongst princes, he thought. “You said you weren’t surprised that the Temple would break the compact.”

  She leaned forward, bracing herself with her elbows. “I knew the temptation was always there, though I doubted it would come to it. But now—do you know how many of them died?” An odd expression crossed her face, as though for the first time she was thinking of other people she, personally, knew.

  He shook his head, now basely glad he did not know, and have to tell her.

  “Course not. They must be beyond terrified that earthborn could do that to them. They’ve never had much respect for earthborn technology. And now you and Tam have brought into the open another failing.” She tilted back to study him. “Your brightness,” she said pointedly, “the way you told it suggests that you thought it a well-laid plot. To my ear, it sounds like desperate improvisation. I’ve no doubt that various people had schemes, but their coming together seems entirely fortuitous. Prasav ad- libbed an invitation, and Valetta seized upon it. The archmage didn’t declare himself, either way; people may get a shock when he does. If it happened that way, it won’t last. I could count three ways the Temple will split over Viola as princess, no fingers needed. Their brightnesses won’t countenance a mage princess. Prasav won’t countenance magic used against the Darkborn, any more than you would have. He’ll see the precedent. She knows she’s climbed on a tiger, politically as well as magically, if she can sense that magic—I can’t, by the way, too much lineage in me. The Temple’s bleeding in a shark pond, with the tower brought down and your revelations about the Shadowborn, though it’s still a cursed big fish for the eating. Your court’s going to get indigestion, trying. So for you it’s just a matter of finding the right time to return with bandages and bellyache medicine.”

  Her incisive, derisive dissection of his usurpers’ prospects had stirred an uncharitable sense of hope, where before there had been just a numb need to survive. At the mention of bandages and stomach medicine, he almost smiled. She was right, he thought; his reign, with all he wished to achieve, was not yet over. Alive, he remained undeposed.

  She got abruptly to her feet, discomfited by his grateful look. “It’s gone sunset, and we’ve no idea when the next train’s going to come through. At least one of us has to be awake to man the telegraphs, but the rest of us should get some sleep. So we can deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.”

  His neck had never had Orlanjis’s enviable bonelessness, precluding slithering down into the chair and sleeping until midwinter. He contemplated the enticing plane of the floor. Except that someone would probably tread on him.

  “We’ve pallets for visitors. Not what you’re used to, I’
m sure, but”—she glanced down at the sleeping Orlanjis, with a wry smile—“I think you’ll manage.”

  To say that he preferred a pallet on the floor amongst friends to luxury amongst enemies would be premature, as well as presumptuous, but he thought it, nonetheless. “Thank you.”

  Telmaine

  When Telmaine and Vladimer emerged onto the station concourse, an emergence timed to meet the evening rush, they found it unnervingly empty. Vladimer halted and blocked her next step with his outstretched arm, cane in hand. “There’s been trouble,” he muttered.

  She thought for a moment he would draw back, but instead, he handed her the cane and unholstered the revolver. “Take it.” She did, setting down the carpetbag that held their few necessities. “Don’t use it unless you’re certain,” he said, a warning with bitter meaning to her ears. She nodded curtly, handed him back the cane, and retrieved the bag.

  She followed closely on his heels, closely enough to be aware of his stiffening. The concealing hat and veils he had insisted she wear hampered both her perceptions and her movement, and the muffling of her magical senses unnerved her. She could not help thinking what had happened the last time they passed through this station. Her sleep had been interspersed with wakeful spells of futilely plucking at the binding and dreams of being trapped in a spider’s web, in a cocoon, in yards and yards of winding silk, smothering dreams—the very dreams she had suffered as a sought-after heiress, before she had met Balthasar.

  Vladimer had suffered his share of nightmares, too; she had heard him grinding his teeth and muttering. She did not allude to it; nor did he mention whether he had heard her crying. They confined their conversation to practicalities, to gathering a change of clothing and a few necessities into a bag—which was left to her to lug.