Song of Unmaking

by Caitlin Brennan

  Their names were Vincentius and Maurus. Kerrec chose not to care whose sons they were. Here, as if they had been Called, they were only themselves.

  Someone had taught them decently. They could mount and dismount, and they could sit the common gaits. Maurus had something approaching grace. Vincentius was more enthusiastic than skilled. They were willing to work, and neither complained.

  On the second day, there were three of them, with Maurus’s brother Darius. By the third day, there were half a dozen. There would have been more, but Kerrec let Quintus turn the rest away. Later, with more horses, he might increase the number of riders, but for now, six were enough.

  When he first came to Aurelia, he had dreaded the prospect of long empty days and lonely nights. He still spent his nights alone, but by then he needed his solitude. His days were full. Nights were the only time he had to think and plan and concentrate on the slow and grueling task of mending broken magic.

  Best of all, the mages let him be. They watched him from a distance, studying him—sometimes he could feel the pricking of their power—but they stayed out of his way. He disciplined himself to ignore them.

  Five days after he came to Aurelia, he spent the morning in council and most of the afternoon in the riding court. The day was hot, but the court had both shade and the sea breeze. His six students were still eager to learn, enthralled with this new and wonderful art.

  Today for the first time, partly because morning council had begun early and partly because he wanted the boys to see what they were aiming for, he rode Petra in front of them. Petra was conscious of the occasion. Kerrec knew better than to ask for any part of the Dance, but the movements in themselves were beautiful.

  They flowed from one to the other, beginning with the simple gaits, the walk and trot and canter that anyone could ride. Then, little by little, they transformed into art. Kerrec was absorbed in it, but he made sure to stay aware of his audience.

  They did not see it, not at once. Maurus was the first to understand. “Look,” he said. “It’s all there in the little things we do. Like seeds—they seem so small, but they grow. If we ride our circles and watch our gaits and remember how he wants us to sit, this is what it comes to. It’s magic—but it’s ours. We can do it.”

  “We aren’t riders,” Vincentius said. “We weren’t Called.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Maurus. “Maybe the gods and the magic aren’t for us. But this is.”

  For that, Kerrec let him sit on Petra through the exquisitely cadenced trot in place called piaffe. Maurus was enchanted. To the others Kerrec said, “You’ll all ride this once you’ve earned it. Maybe someday one of you will train it. Then you can call yourself a rider.”

  “Like on the Mountain?” asked the youngest of them.

  “Not exactly like that,” Kerrec said. “You won’t be a horse mage. But you will be a rider.”

  Kerrec caught himself smiling as he made his way to his rooms to change out of riding clothes and join his sister for dinner.

  He paused on the stair as realization struck him. He was in danger of enjoying this life.

  Briana was pleased. She had brought him here to heal, and she believed she was succeeding.

  He did not want to heal in that way. Not completely. Not yet. There was one thing he had to do. Until he had done it, he could not let himself lose focus.

  There was someone in his bed. His heart knew who it had to be, even while his mind floundered.

  Valeria was sound asleep. When Kerrec stood over her, she did not stir.

  He always forgot that she was beautiful. The knowledge was in him, but it tended to slip away in memories of her strength and her skill with horses. Strangers could still take her for a boy, though her hair had grown out to her shoulders and she had stopped deepening her voice or hiding the shape of her body.

  Fully dressed and asleep in his bed, she was beautiful enough to break his heart. It was all he could do not to reach out and brush his fingers across the sweet curve of her cheek. Then if he kissed her, she would open those eyes of hers that were now green, now brown, flecked with gold like dapples of sunlight in a forest pool. She would smile and say his name. And he would be happy, and they would never be apart again.

  The vision was so clear that he could almost have sworn it was real. But she was still asleep, and he was stiffly upright above her. The reality of his purpose here was sitting like a stone under his breastbone.

  Maybe his visions were a lie and his obsession simply that—a blind delusion. He could let them go. He had a life here. With her to help him, he would heal and they would build their own school, and the empire would prosper.

  Dreams and delusion. The empire was at war with enemies it was only imperfectly aware of. Kerrec was broken and struggling fiercely to mend before the empire broke as he had. Valeria should not be here.

  He set his teeth and shook her awake—maybe not as roughly as he should. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  She woke quickly. Riders learned to do that. It was part of their discipline. “Kerrec,” she said. Her eyes took him in, and she broke out in a smile. “You look wonderful. Is it the Healers? Or did you find someone else to help you?”

  That smile had been more men’s downfall than Valeria would ever know. It nearly destroyed Kerrec’s resolve. But he had a little discipline left. He said coldly, “I cannot imagine that Master Nikos gave you leave to go dangling after me. What possessed you? How could you abandon the school now, when it needs every scrap of power it can find?”

  It tore at his heart to see her smile die and her face take on a bruised look, with blue shadows under the eyes. “Aren’t you at least secretly glad to see me? I can help you. Together we can—”

  “Together we are doing nothing,” he said. “You do not belong here. Take a day or two if you must, to rest—but then you are going back to the Mountain.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I have to be here.”

  Gods, she was stubborn. But so was he. “You should not be here. You’ll lose everything you’ve gained.”

  “Would you rather we all lost everything?”

  Kerrec turned his back on her. It was as hard a thing as he had ever done. “Keep the room,” he said. “I’ll find another.”

  “Good,” she said behind him. Her voice was nasty. “The bed’s like a board.”

  He left her there. For a while he dreaded—or hoped—that she would come after him, but it seemed he had done what he set out to do. He had driven her away from him, if not from Aurelia.

  Twenty-Five

  Valeria had not been fool enough to expect an effusive welcome, but this bitter coldness left her stunned. When she first woke and saw Kerrec, she had thought he looked notably better than when he left the school. He was mending. Her working was acting on him again. He was closer to the Kerrec she had first known.

  Then his eyes went cold. They were odd in dark-eyed Aurelia, the color of rain or darkened silver. When he was angry or disturbed, they went as pale as water.

  Before he turned away, they were nearly white. He had shut her out completely. There was nothing left for her at all.

  She sat for a long while on that hard ascetic bed. She was not a woman who cried easily, but even if she had been, all the tears were frozen out of her. Her heart was still and cold.

  She wrenched herself back to the warmth of the summer evening. If she had learned anything since she was Called to the Mountain, it was that the face Kerrec showed the world had little to do with what was under it. If he showed her something devastatingly like hatred, it might have nothing to do with her at all.

  That did not make it easier. What she felt for him was too deep for words. What he felt for her…who knew?

  For a while she had been sure he loved her. Then he had drawn away from her little by little until he was gone. The torture that had broken his magic seemed also to have shrunk and twisted his heart.

  She flung herself to her feet. She would not be
lieve that. She refused.

  Kerrec had gone to the palace. The servants were obliging when she asked. “Oh, yes, lady. He’s dining with the princess regent tonight.”

  “Alone?” she asked. “Or a state banquet?”

  “Not a banquet,” said the chief of the servants. “That, we’re sure of. He won’t go near one of those.”

  Valeria thanked him, flashing a smile that left him blinking.

  There was a passage from Riders’ Hall to the palace, which was wide and high enough for men riding four of the white gods abreast. It led to the Hall of the Dance in the palace, but there were side passages with which she had become familiar the year before.

  One of those opened on the princess regent’s garden. Briana was nearby—Valeria could sense her presence that in its way was so much like one of the Ladies. She made a deliberate effort not to look for the cold and guarded stillness that was Kerrec.

  They were dining alone, in the way of princes. There were only half a dozen servants standing about.

  The room in which they sat had wide doors, paned with glass, which were open on the garden. Roses grew inside, and a small tree with deep-green waxy leaves and blossoms sent out a dizzyingly sweet scent, and flowers in pots hung from the ceiling and marched in rows along the walls.

  Valeria stood outside in the garden, hidden in dusk. They sat in a glow of lamplight, drinking wine and laughing—yes, even Kerrec. Valeria could not remember ever seeing him laugh like that, as if he had no care in the world.

  She had had thoughts of joining the party, or else waiting until after he left and sharing her sorrows with Briana. But Briana seemed to have none, at least not as far as her brother was concerned.

  Valeria slipped away into the darkness. It was a long way back to Riders’ Hall.

  It was not as if she was alone in the world. She had the stallions—all of them, a ring of calm white shapes deep in her heart—and the Ladies beyond them. But sometimes she needed her own kind.

  She needed Kerrec. But he was wrong—she had not come trailing after him. She was needed here, though why or for what, she did not yet know.

  She found a room to sleep in. It little mattered which. She lay awake for long hours, while the moon climbed the sky and began to sink.

  Kerrec came in late. She felt him in the house.

  He did not come into the room where she was lying. Part of her wished he would, but most of her was glad. If he was cruel to her again, she would finish what his brother had started.

  For the second time in as many days, Valeria woke under a man’s stare. The chief of servants stood waiting for her to notice him, with clean clothes—not a rider’s uniform but plain riding clothes—and instructions. “You’re to tend the horses, lady,” he said. “First Rider’s orders. Quintus in the stable will show you what to do.”

  Valeria supposed she should be glad. There could have been a caravan waiting and a place for her in it.

  Kerrec was gone already, though it was barely sunrise. Quintus the stableman was forking hay into mangers when Valeria found him.

  He nodded to her. She nodded back and set to work cleaning stalls.

  He knew who and what she was. He was not awed by it, which suited her perfectly. Once the horses were fed and watered and the stalls cleaned, there was tack to clean, aisles to sweep, horses to turn loose in the riding courts for an hour or two of exercise.

  By then it was past noon. Valeria shared a loaf of bread and a bowl of soft herbed cheese and a jar of well-watered wine with Quintus. He was not a talkative man, but she was not given to chatter, either. They were both comfortable with silence.

  After they ate, Quintus went off on errands of his own. Valeria had nowhere to go and no further orders to obey. There was Sabata, waiting to be ridden, and the bay Lady was hinting at it. The rest of the horses seemed to be expecting guests.

  As she fetched the brushes and began to groom Sabata, she heard voices out in the court—young, male, and excruciatingly aristocratic. They bubbled and babbled closer, until they stopped outside the stable.

  She counted three sets of footsteps, then a fourth running quickly to catch up. That one was breathless. “Tigellus said start without him. He’ll be late.”

  “So?” said one of the others. “Where’s Maurus? They aren’t together, are they?”

  “Not that I know of,” the newcomer said. He was breathing a little easier now. “He’s fighting his family to do this. Tig’s afraid he won’t be able to keep coming.”

  “What, his brother again?” said one who had not spoken before. “He thinks the whole Mountain ought to come down, and the horse magicians with it. They’re mountebanks, he says. They’ve tricked the empire into worshipping their horses and manipulated the emperors into feeding their power.”

  “I’ve heard that,” the newcomer said. “And now the Mountain’s stealing mages from other orders. My cousin’s an oneiromancer. He says the strongest Journeyman in a hundred years got the Call, and now he’s gone and the order can’t get him back. All the orders have to submit to the Call.”

  “Even the emperor had to. He lost his firstborn to it.”

  “Tig’s brother says it’s all a plot to get and keep power. He says there’s a better way.”

  “What, the Unmaking?”

  There was a moment’s perfect silence. Then the newcomer said, “Don’t say it! We’re not supposed to know about it. We’re too young, remember?”

  “Who’ll hear us here?” said the young person who had so alarmed him. “The horses aren’t going to tell on us.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” the other said darkly. “Nobody’s supposed to say that word. It’s too dangerous. It’s everything the emperor and the riders are not. If they know we know about it, we’ll be in trouble. And our brothers and fathers and uncles will be even worse off. They could die.”

  “Oh, come, Vincentius. That’s ridiculous. It’s an excuse to get together and drink wine and wink at girls, that’s all. If they want to pretend they’re saving the world, where’s the harm in that?”

  “Plenty,” said Vincentius, “if it’s connected to that.” Valeria could hear the shudder in his voice. “You don’t know what it is, do you? None of you was at the emperor’s Dance. I was. I saw…something. It wanted to swallow us all. All that is. And nothing less.”

  “If it’s that bad,” his friend demanded, “what do you think the riders can do about it? They didn’t do very well that time. How do you know they won’t do even worse when it comes again?”

  “I don’t know,” Vincentius said. “I don’t want to talk about it. It makes me scared.”

  Somewhat to Valeria’s surprise, no one mocked him for it. A few moments later, a fifth boy burst in, babbling about taking forever to get there, and the darkness dissipated.

  The door to the court rattled open. Five young noblemen trooped in together as if this were a daily occurrence. Horses’ heads appeared over stall doors. One or two whickered.

  There was a flurry of brushes and hoofpicks and saddles and bridles. In the middle of it, a tall and lean young thing happened to glance into Sabata’s stall. When he spoke, she recognized Vincentius’s voice. “Hey! Who are you? Is he letting new ones in, then?”

  Valeria straightened from cleaning Sabata’s hoof. Sabata was mildly interested in the row of faces that appeared above the stall door, but most of his effort was going into pretending to be an ordinary dappled-grey cob with a thick short neck and a hanging lip. He found it endlessly amusing.

  “I’m Vincentius,” the tall boy said, then jabbed his chin at each of the others. “Short one’s Maurus, pretty one’s Granius, and those two with the identical stupid expressions are Titus and Tatius. They’re twins,” he said as if it were not obvious. “One can ride and one can’t. Trouble is, we can’t tell which is which.”

  That set off an eruption that kept them occupied for quite some time. Valeria finished grooming Sabata and reached for the saddlecloth. As she fitted the saddle to the stall
ion’s back and reached under his ample barrel for the girth, Vincentius said, “I don’t remember you from anywhere, do I? Is that your horse?”

  “He belongs to himself,” Valeria said. She tightened the girth carefully—Sabata would bite if she took any liberties—and reached for the bridle.

  One of the boys was holding it. Maurus, that was his name. She thanked him.

  Granius, who certainly was pretty, though not as pretty as Kerrec, lifted Maurus bodily and set him in front of a red mare’s stall. The others were already at work, grooming horses and saddling them.

  It was clear Valeria would have company in the riding court. She considered retreating to the second court, which was on the other side of the stable, but it was much smaller and less airy. At this time of day, it would be stifling.

  She left the boys to their work and led Sabata into the court. He was still pretending to be a mortal horse. It was hard for him to plod as heavily as he imagined he should, but he managed. He barely even fluttered a nostril at the mares who came out one by one.

  None of them scuffed the sand like a tired old plow horse. They were all ladies of lineage, glossy and sleek. At least one of their riders, once mounted, looked down on Sabata and ever so slightly sneered.

  Valeria resisted the urge to mount as clumsily as Sabata was pretending to move. Once she was on him, she was having none of that. He had to move out as he well could, for the discipline and because she was not in sympathy with the game he was playing.

  Sabata slanted an ear. His back tightened.

  Kerrec walked into the center of the court as she had seen him do a hundred times before. This, next to Petra’s back, was his ordained place in the world. Nothing could change that.

  He began the lesson calmly. The exercises he set were painfully rudimentary—which these children truly needed. The beauty of them, of course, was that every rider needed them, and Valeria as much as any.

  Sabata needed them, too. Like Valeria, he was young. As great as his powers were, he had much to learn when it came to order and discipline.