The Border

by A. H. Lee

  Roland laughed again. “I couldn’t blame her.” The salve did feel good on his abused shoulder. Roland had had love bites before, but never any that broke the skin. Let’s not do that next time, Sair. He fervently hoped that next time they weren’t struggling on a ledge over dogs and hunters.

  Marsden settled down with a pipe. He offered Roland tobacco, but Roland shook his head. He offered small beer, and that Roland accepted. They smoked and drank in silence for a while. Roland wondered how long Sairis would sleep. Last time, he slept for almost a day. Can we afford to stay here that long? How will I catch up with Daphne? How angry is Uncle Winthrop?

  Marsden broke into his thoughts. “It’s difficult to be with someone like that.”

  “A necromancer?” Roland wondered how many times he would need to say the word aloud before it stopped feeling like a hot brand.

  “Any of the aberrant powers, but, yes, especially a necromancer. Death is always their mistress—an obsession that can easily grow to swallow all else. They go away from their bodies, and they come back changed. Some say they come back less human...a little less every time. They have an unbalanced form of power, and it takes its toll.”

  Roland forced himself to listen without interrupting. I can’t very well say that Marsden doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Twenty years...

  “How old were you when you married him?”

  The magician blew a smoke ring. The tobacco had a pleasant odor that reminded Roland of his father. “Seventeen. He was older.”

  “Gods. And you were a...a woman?”

  Marsden gave him a half-smile. “Closer to a girl, I’d say.”

  “I meant...” Roland felt that he’d strayed into deep waters again. I’m friends with November. I should know how to talk about this.

  “A woman, yes,” said Marsden, “although I was trying on glamours even back then. I came to him the first time wanting to learn how to make them better. He was willing to experiment with forms of magic that other people wouldn’t touch. Back then, I thought that was brave. My magic was different from his. I suppose we fascinated each other.”

  Roland listened with interest. “Did he not...care? Whether you were a man or a woman?”

  Marsden considered. “I don’t know. Jonas lived for magic. I’m not sure the shape of human bodies meant much to him. He could be very kind, but he could also be very...absent. I didn’t mind, so it worked.”

  Marsden shook himself. “I realized later that part of the reason we got along was that I never challenged him. Magicians are dreadfully territorial creatures. We get along well enough when we can agree about who’s in charge, but sharing power is difficult for our sort. Sairis is at least fortunate that he hasn’t fallen into bed with another magician.”

  Roland smiled. “So that’s what happened in the end? You and Karkaroth—Jonas—had a fight?”

  Marsden pursed his lips. “You could say so.”

  When he didn’t continue, Roland said cautiously, “Sairis seems fond of him. When we first met, he called Karkaroth his adopted father.”

  Marsden nodded. “I would like to hear about that.” He scratched his head and said in a quieter voice. “When Sairis turned up in Chireese, I really thought Jonas had sent him. If I had known Sairis was acting alone, this would all have gone differently. I wish Daphne had not left me out of negotiations, although I understand why she thought two magicians at the table might be a bad idea.”

  Roland was shaking his head. “I don’t think Sairis would have admitted weakness. He was very alone, you know. Coming to Chireese. He didn’t know who I was when we met or he would never have told me anything.”

  Marsden tilted his head, eyes bright and sharp. “I have had the story of Hastafel’s attack from the queen. I would like to hear your version. I would also like to know...” He motioned between Sairis and Roland. “How this got started. If you’re willing.”

  Roland sipped his beer. “How much do you know about a tavern called the Tipsy Knave?”

  Chapter 15. Ambrosia

  A smell drew Sairis out of the darkness—something sweet with an indescribable richness that seemed to promise secrets. He opened his eyes. It was dark, but banked coals glowed a few feet away. Sairis could make out Roland’s silhouette, the firelight picking out threads of gold in his hair. Sairis would have liked to go on staring at him, but Marsden was sitting on the ground beside Sairis’s head, holding out a mug. “Ambrosia,” he said. “You’ll heal faster.”

  Sairis blinked up at the mug. Undifferentiated magic was difficult to distill and store. Sairis had never had much interest in trying. Most magicians couldn’t incorporate it anyway. Ambrosia was food for demons and faeries, although it made a powerful ingredient in raw spells and potions.

  “It’s...?”

  “Infused into alcohol. Not easy, not cheap. Sit up and drink it.”

  Sairis rose awkwardly to hands and knees and shivered as the chilly night air penetrated his warm nest. He realized he was naked and pulled the blanket tight around his body. As he moved, his burns reasserted themselves with scalding intensity. In addition, his nose was so swollen that he could not breathe out of it, and he found that he could barely open one eye. His magic still seemed non-existent. Healing as a mundane is terrible.

  Sairis squinted at the proffered mug, then at Marsden’s face. His voice came out thick with his swollen nose. “Trying to get me drunk now?”

  Marsden shrugged. “We need to move soon, and you’re not well enough. You need magic to heal yourself. It’s this or a massacre, and on balance, I’d rather get you drunk.”

  Sairis reached for the mug with the careful movements of a person with only one eye. “Why didn’t you give it to me earlier?”

  “I thought you might use the magic to set me on fire.”

  Fair point. Sairis sipped at the liquid and coughed. Warmth spread through his stomach, along with an electric sense of pleasurable energy. It is like a massacre in a cup, he almost said, but didn’t.

  Marsden watched him. “You injured three of my students yesterday, Sairis. If you actually kill any of them, we will not be friends.”

  “I would hate to know what you’d do to me if we were not friends.”

  “Yes, you would. Do you really suppose it wouldn’t have been easier to kill you?”

  “Do you really suppose I’d be this beat up if I had no compunction about massacring people?” Sairis knew he was revealing a weakness, but he couldn’t take any more of Marsden’s self-righteousness.

  “No,” said Marsden after a moment, “I don’t suppose you would.”

  Roland spoke, his voice hesitant. “Did I do that to your eye, Sair?”

  Sairis shook his head. “Tree branch hit me in the dark. Fell off the damned elk.”

  Roland gave an uneasy laugh.

  “Twice,” added Sairis. He tilted his head back and touched the bridge of his nose experimentally. “I think you might have broken my nose, though.” He could almost feel Roland’s discomfort and added, “I was threatening to push you off a ledge at the time.”

  “I still wish I hadn’t.”

  “I’m really quite durable, appearances notwithstanding.”

  Marsden retrieved his pipe from a rock beside the fire and made himself comfortable. “I brought you some clothes that should fit. Although I doubt you’ll want to put on a shirt until those burns are a little better.”

  Sairis was surprised and more relieved than he wanted to admit. He had not been looking forward to trying to figure out how to hold up a pair of Roland’s trousers. He knew he should say thank you, but what came out of his mouth was, “Anything else you’d like me to wear?”

  Marsden said nothing.

  Sairis shut his eyes. The pain of his burns had already decreased remarkably, and he could mostly breathe out of his nose again. The alcohol was making him feel chatty. Against his better judgment, he said, “I used to attend your lectures.”

  Marsden looked at him in surprise. He thought for a mo
ment. “The guest mirror... I set it up for the Falcostan practitioners. They have to hide... You attended? For how long?”

  Sairis found his glasses beside him on the ground. He picked them up and began cleaning them on the blanket. “I don’t know. On and off for a few years. You taught me most of what I know about fire magic.” Don’t tell him that, snapped a voice in Sairis’s head. He doesn’t deserve to know that.

  But he’d drunk half the liquor in the mug and another voice answered, Why not?

  Marsden set down his pipe. “You—?”

  Sairis talked over him, “So, you see, Professor, I am one of your students, too.”

  “I...wish I had known that. Did Jonas—?”

  “No, of course he didn’t know,” continued Sairis. “I was all ready to sign up at one point. Had my bags packed to run away, join the university, do whatever it took to get out of that tower.”

  A long pause. At last, Marsden said, “I take it he stopped you?”

  Sairis shrugged. “Not exactly. He just showed me what happens to the ones you collar.”

  Marsden went still.

  After a moment, Roland turned and spoke to Marsden with an edge in his voice, “I thought you said you wanted him to live at the university. That he wouldn’t be hurt.”

  Marsden shifted on his bedroll. “Yes.”

  Sairis downed the last of the liquor, the magic creating a sense of melting pleasure in his core that spread outward over his skin. “Better than sex,” he would have said...although that was before he’d had sex. Sairis slid his glasses onto his nose, and there was no pain. He spoke to Marsden matter-of-factly. “Are you going to tell him what happens to witches when the school gets hold of them?”

  “You’re not a witch,” said Roland.

  “I might be. How would you know?”

  Marsden interrupted. “I’m not sure witches exist. I’m not sure it’s possible to sell your soul or anyone else’s for magic. I am sure that some people are born with aberrant powers that thrive on the sacrifice of human life. Those powers are stronger and more dangerous since the Sundering.”

  “Do you hurt them?” demanded Roland. “You said—”

  “No, we don’t hurt them. Unless they seem to have an ingrained taste for blood magic. We—” Marsden massaged his temples. “In the fifteen years since I’ve been dean of magical studies, we’ve dealt with a couple dozen aberrant powers, including three necromancers. Usually we find out about them because they begin using other people for magic. Or they engage in other dangerous practices, such as consorting with faeries or demons, which will certainly get them named a witch in any rural village. Sometimes their parents bring them to us.”

  “So what happens to them?” said Roland impatiently.

  “We collar them. First with iron if they’re uncooperative, later with more sophisticated spells. We give them the option of working at the university where they can have limited access to their magic and help in our research. Or we can give them a more permanent inhibitor that completely blocks their access to power. They can live their lives as normal people. If their families are poor, we offer to pay for training and help them find placement in a trade of their choice. Most peasants would be delighted to have such options.”

  “And then?” asked Sairis sweetly.

  Roland looked between them with mounting impatience.

  Marsden let out a long breath. “They kill themselves. Five years is the longest any of them has lasted. It’s frustrating. They often seem to be doing fine, although there’s certainly some depression related to the loss of power. And then, one day someone finds them hanging from a rafter.”

  There was a long, terrible pause. Then Roland got to his feet.

  Marsden stood up, too, his expression wary.

  “You told me you weren’t going to hurt him,” grated Roland.

  “I wasn’t. We are getting better at the collars and the inhibitors. We can’t improve without practice—”

  “You are not going to practice on him! You say you care about hurting people—”

  “I do! They were my students, Roland! Do you have any idea—?” He caught his breath. “I do not want them to come to bad ends! But do you really suppose their lives are more valuable than those of their victims? I have seen what happens when a decent person is given that kind of power. I’ve seen—” He bit back the words. “I’ve seen what happens.”

  Roland did not sit down. His face, half-lit by the coals, looked intimidating—jaw clenched, lips pressed together. Sairis felt vaguely surprised. He hadn’t meant to make everyone so angry. I am really very drunk. He decided that he shouldn’t be the only person sitting and tried to stand up. He felt lighter than air, but his legs were uncooperative. He staggered, nearly lost his blanket and ended up clutching it around his waist.

  “Don’t fight.” Gods, listen to me! Sair, the necromancer-peacekeeper. Sairis looked up at Roland, at the firelight glowing on the planes of his face. “He’s right. I am dangerous.”

  Roland’s eyes flicked from Marsden to Sairis, started back towards Marsden, and didn’t quite make it. The line of Roland’s jaw relaxed a little. Sairis considered what he must look like—a gaunt young man, half naked and fish-belly pale, clutching a blanket around his waist. Roland’s mouth twitched. “Dangerous.”

  Sairis gave him the kind of grin he certainly would never have given sober and announced, “I am terrifying! You said so yourself.” He attempted to make a sweeping gesture and nearly dropped the blanket. “Scourge of the realm! Dark Lord of the Styx!”

  Roland swallowed a laugh as he reached out to keep Sairis from stumbling sideways. “I think you’re going to be an embarrassed dark lord in a moment if you don’t put some clothes on.”

  Sairis took a lurching step around him. “I am clothed with darkness.”

  Roland was shaking with laughter. “You are really drunk.”

  “Yes, but I have healed my burns. I am off to conquer the world.”

  Roland put out an arm to steer him around the glowing coals. “Are you sure? You seem more likely to sit down in the fire.”

  “I might be off to take a piss,” Sairis allowed.

  “Would you like some assistance?”

  “Based on everything you know about me, how do you think I’ll answer that question?”

  Roland ignored this, which was probably just as well, because a horse loomed out of the darkness and Sairis nearly lost control of his bladder prematurely.

  Somewhere behind them, Marsden called, “More steak?”

  “Yes!” bawled Sairis, dimly aware that some aspects of this evening might give him pause tomorrow. He fumbled to relieve himself without fouling his blanket. After a moment, he added over his shoulder, “Sorry about setting you on fire! I mean, not really!”

  “Can we say I feel the same way about the charm?”

  “Can we say I’m better at fire magic than you? Because I melted your godsdamned—”

  “Sairis,” said Roland, “how about we stop shouting before we attract unwanted attention?”

  When they returned to the fire, Marsden had more steaks sizzling in a pan over the coals, along with vegetables. He’d topped off Sairis’s mug with water. “That was quite an impressive display with the collar,” he said as he poked the coals to life, “although I think it had more to do with whatever you’ve done to those glasses. Is that a focus?”

  Sairis didn’t see any point denying it.

  “I’ve never seen one so small.”

  “There’s a lot you haven’t seen.”

  “There’s a lot he’s going to see if you don’t stop waving your arms around,” said Roland and helped Sairis to the ground.

  “Did you leave the glasses behind on purpose?” asked Roland. “I found them under a bed.”

  Marsden shook his head. “There was a struggle. Sairis was just returning to his body; he was confused. The glasses must have gotten kicked across the floor and we missed them.”

  Sairis shook his head. “I
had a guide for the mirror maze—the bound ghost of a mouse. I think it hid my glasses. It had completed its task and would have been seeking another. Ghosts in that state can be highly attuned to their binder’s desires, even when those desires are not clearly articulated. Ghosts can’t hide much, but they can obscure little things, sometimes.”

  Roland looked at him curiously. “It didn’t hide them from me. It showed me where to find them.”

  “My ghosts like you.” Sairis set down his plate and tilted his head back against Roland’s shoulder. “Also you probably still smelled a bit like my magic.”

  Roland put an arm around him. “I knew you wouldn’t leave your glasses behind.”

  “I didn’t mean to leave you behind.”

  “It seemed like you wanted to back there.”

  “That was...” Sairis rubbed at his eyes. The food had diluted the alcohol and now he just felt drowsy. I’m not ready for this conversation, whispered a voice in his head.

  You have to tell him some of it, whispered another.

  “Your uncle knows about your romantic preferences,” said Sairis. “He said he was going to let you take me back to Daphne, and I was supposed to bring him reports. He said that if I talked about it or didn’t cooperate, he would use me as bait to catch my master.”

  Roland’s whole body stiffened.

  “There’s more,” continued Sairis. “He doesn’t think Daphne can hold the kingdom. He thinks you’ll be king in the end, and he’s worried about your behavior. He wants a way to control you. He thought I might do.”

  There was a long, terrible pause, during which Roland did not move at all. Then he said, in an oddly flat voice, “Sairis, I am sorry.”

  Well, now I’ve made him sad, thought Sairis. And all I really want to do is crawl into his arms and wrap this blanket around both of us.

  “I should have seen this,” muttered Marsden. “Your father asked me to keep an eye on him.”

  Roland’s head snapped up. “On Uncle Winthrop?”

  Marsden nodded. “He asked me to ingratiate myself to your uncle about two years ago and keep an eye on his interactions with the barons. Daphne was aware of this and I have spoken to her regarding your uncle a few times. I didn’t know about your situation, though. About the potential for blackmail.” Something on Roland’s face made him draw back. “Roland, I am not criticizing you, but this secret does present a massive opportunity for leverage over a potential heir to the throne. I wish Daphne had told me, but I’m sure she wanted to protect you.”