Wedding Bells, Magic Spells (3 page)

I didn’t know how something like that had happened, but I knew why.

Someone wanted Markus dead. Again.

Markus Sevelien had been presumed dead before.

It’d turned out to be a good thing then.

The house he’d been staying in here had been packed with explosives and set on fire, converting it instantly from a house to a crater. If Markus had been in there, he’d have been blown to bits. Mychael and I had gotten him out moments before everything had gone boom. Markus had worked behind the scenes to lure out some highly placed traitors both in elven intelligence and the elven embassy here. They’d been arrogant and had grown careless, and both had gotten them caught.

To keep whoever was behind killing Markus this time from getting a second chance, Mychael was entirely justified tossing protocol out the nearest window—or through what was left of the elves’ sabotaged mirror.

As the head of a security detail that was now stuck in Silvanlar, Brina Daesage had agreed with his choice.

A
rchmagus Justinius Valerian’s apartment in the west tower of the Guardians’ citadel was as secure as a vault—although most vaults didn’t have Guardian battle mages standing guard along both sides of the corridor leading to it, warriors who could kill you in various and sundry ways with a single spell. The old man had hosted security-compromised guests before, and not one of them had died while in his tower.

As long as he was here, Markus was safe.

I wasn’t so sure about myself. Though the biggest danger to myself might be me.

Even when I’d been bonded to the Saghred, my magic had never manifested itself in dark red. Red and acid green were the colors of the darker magics. I’d seen a similar deep red radiance many times over the past few months.

In the glow of the Saghred.

The shade of red that I’d produced had been closer to the Saghred end of the spectrum.

I was feeling an overwhelming urge to scream and run. While neither would accomplish anything, that didn’t stop me from wanting to.

Everyone had seen what happened, and no one had said a word. Whatever had enabled me to do what I did had saved Mychael, who had saved Markus, so as scared as I’d been of what I’d done, my magic could have manifested in purple sparklies for all I cared.

Find who attacked Markus now, care about what had happened to me later.

Brina Daesage had just seen her security plans shattered as thoroughly as that mirror. She was expressing her displeasure in the only way she could at the moment, which was pacing the length of Justinius’s bedchamber, scowling at not having anyone to punch or stab.

A woman after my own heart.

Markus was still unconscious. His heart was beating again mostly on its own and he was breathing, but he was far from stable.

Mychael and Dalis, the archmagus’s personal healer, were working on him, and Brina and I were trying to stay out of the way. Vegard was across the room, waiting on our side of the closed bedroom door. If anyone tried to come in, they’d better belong here.

We had no idea why Markus had been attacked. And until we did, Mychael wasn’t taking any chances. Most of the delegates had arrived yesterday and last night. Tam and Imala were due to arrive in another hour—by mirror. Mychael had ordered a message sent by telepath telling them to wait. It’d been successfully received in Regor. Santis Eldor, the elven ambassador, was on his way to Mid on a small agency ship that had set sail from Laerin two days ago. Mychael had ordered a message sent to the telepath aboard the ambassador’s ship with news of what had happened—though that had just as much to do with being a protective big brother. I didn’t blame him one bit. Isibel Eiliesor, Mychael’s younger sister, was on the elven ambassador’s staff and traveling with him—for the peace talks and our wedding.

Markus’s color had improved just in the past few minutes. He may not have been completely out of the woods yet, but unless he took another long trip through a short mirror, his survival chances were looking really good. I recognized the spell Mychael was presently weaving. It would put Markus into a deep sleep to allow his body time to heal.

I took a breath and tried to relax my shoulders. “He’ll make it,” I said quietly. Brina Daesage glanced at me, expression unreadable. “You had doubts?”

I gave her a tired smile. “With any other healer, maybe. With Mychael, never. I’ve seen him do more in less time with worse injuries.”

“Worse than death?”

“Try dead with a crossbow bolt through the heart.”

Mychael had brought Tam back from the dead after I’d shot him through the heart with a crossbow. It was a long story, and nothing personal.

Brina grinned. “Chancellor Nathrach. I heard what happened.”

I wearily rubbed the back of my neck. “It was a hell of a day.”

“I imagine it was. You did what you had to do.”

I nodded once. “I did it. I didn’t like it, but I did it.”

The apartment doors opened, and Brina and I both went for our blades.

Justinius Valerian.

I sheathed my blades. Brina hesitated, then did the same. She’d never met the old man, and if he hadn’t been wearing his formal robes, she—or anyone else—wouldn’t peg him as the most powerful mage in the Seven Kingdoms. He was lean to the point of appearing scrawny. What might have been a luxurious head of hair decades ago was now a fringe of white tufts on a liver-spotted head. Only a pair of gleaming blue eyes gave a clue to the power inside the man. Though at the moment, those eyes were as hard as agates. Yep, the old guy definitely wasn’t happy.

It was his apartment, so I wasn’t surprised to see him, but seeing the look on his face, I wouldn’t exactly say I was glad. I’d seen the old man pissed before, but nothing like this. Even though I hadn’t been the one to cause the figurative thundercloud over his head, I couldn’t help experiencing an internal cringe with a side order of impending doom.

When I’d come to Mid, the first thing Justinius had done was a mind link to determine if—because of my link with the Saghred—I was too dangerous to live. He’d determined then that I wasn’t. I wondered if he’d ever regretted that decision.

“You all right, girl?” he asked me.

“Physically, yes. Emotionally, I’m reserving judgment.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.” He glanced at Markus in his guest bed and grunted in satisfaction. “Looks like he’ll live.”

“He will,” Mychael said without turning or pausing in his work.

“I’ve got Cuinn Aviniel taking a look at that mirror,” Justinius said. “Or what’s left of it.”

Since Carnades Silvanus’s death, Cuinn Aviniel was now the best mirror mage on the island. Everyone had hated Carnades; no one felt the same about his replacement. Cuinn was a nice guy who actually liked sharing his knowledge of mirrors, unlike most mirror mages, who wanted to be the only ones who understood how and why linked mirrors behaved as they did. He was also a mirror-travel scholar. If anyone would know what had happened to Markus, it would be Cuinn.

Justinius held up an envelope. The seal was broken. “I’ve got news on the elven ambassador. A messenger was on his way from the communication room with this for you.”

“It’s been opened,” I noted.

“By me.”

“And you’re entitled, sir.”

“Yes, I am. And as winded as that squire was, I knew it was something I probably needed to read. Mychael?”

Mychael paused in his work and turned.

“It’s something you need to read, son.”

Oh no. Mychael’s sister.

No one said a word as Mychael read the message. He then passed it to me and nodded to Brina. As Markus’s security chief, she’d certainly need to know if anything had happened to the elven ambassador. She read over my shoulder.

“They couldn’t make contact with the
Blue Rose,
” I summarized. “Could the ambassador’s ship merely be—”

“When you’re dealing with our telepaths, no contact is the same as bad news.” Mychael’s expression was utterly blank. It was the face he wore when he’d been kicked in the chest with bad news, news so bad it had to be cast aside and dealt with later.

“I take it they’re your best?” Brina asked the archmagus.

“They are. There was no distortion. The signal should have come in loud and clear.”

If there’d been a signal to receive.

If there had been a ship still afloat to send a signal from.

I spoke into the tense silence. “Could a sky dragon patrol—”

“Already deployed,” Justinius said.

“Thank you, sir,” Mychael said.

“You’re welcome. Occasionally I can pull my weight around here. If the ambassador’s ship left Laerin two days ago, it would have been southwest of Mermeia by now. Those shipping lanes are heavily traveled. If that ship was attacked, it’s likely there would have been witnesses.”

“Witnessing is one thing,” Brina said. “Few could or would have stepped in to stop it.”

Not necessarily. I had a little spark of hope. “I know a captain in those waters right now who could and would have stepped in and ensured the attacker never did it again.” I turned to Justinius. “Sir, I need one of your telepaths to reach out to the
Fortune
. Phaelan has a telepath on board.”

Mychael glanced back at Markus, a muscle working in his jaw. “I can’t leave him—even for Isibel.”

I gripped the message in my hand. “I’ll take care of it. Phaelan will find that ship.”

If there was a ship left to find.

Brina Daesage
stayed with Markus for obvious reasons
.
Justinius and I went downstairs to the citadel’s communication center. Vegard and the old man’s four bodyguards followed, close enough for protection, far enough for privacy.

I took advantage of it, though I still kept my voice down.

“How are you doing, sir?”

A perfectly normal question, usually the opening for polite small talk. Neither Justinius nor myself were known for our politeness. And most people who asked the question weren’t interested in a response other than “fine.” I knew the old man wasn’t fine, and I wanted to help if I could, even if that help was just to lend a sympathetic ear.

Archmagus Justinius Valerian had his hands more than full. The old man had to be close to overwhelmed, though he’d never admit it.

The Conclave of Sorcerers had never been a squeaky-clean organization, but no one had ever attempted to clean house to the extent Justinius had in mind.

As archmagus, Justinius was the ultimate power and authority on this island and over the Conclave of Sorcerers, and he was using that authority to its limits and beyond. If anyone had a problem with him bending the law until it squealed to clean up the Conclave, they weren’t speaking up. They probably fell into one of two camps: those who were cheering him on, and those who were plotting his death. Weeding out traitors was a lot like weeding a garden—unless you got the roots, those weeds were going to come right back.

“Good analogy, girl,” Justinius said. “Though I was thinking more along the lines of bad apples.”

I smiled a little. “I keep forgetting you can read minds.”

“You’re an easy read. Besides, you asked how I was doing, and you know what I’m trying to do. And you know better than anyone just how nasty the men and women on this island can get when there’s power at stake.”

“Power corrupts—to say the least,” I muttered.

“And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Things had been bad for years; that was why I brought Mychael in as paladin. I knew it was too big a job to do by myself. The Saghred surfacing for the first time in centuries, and you being able to use the rock without going off the deep end…Well, it kicked the greed to new heights.”

Mychael had brought the Saghred here to keep it safe. I’d come to Mid for help in ridding myself of the rock’s bond to me. We’d set off the firestorm Justinius Valerian was trying to stomp out. If anyone could do it, he could, but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty about striking the match.

I winced. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault that at least half of the mages here have the morals of a Nebian snake oil merchant. Besides, it lured the lot of them out in the open like the swarm of cockroaches they are. And since you’ve smashed the rock, now there’s nothing left for them to get their power-grubbing hands on. I’ve started at the top and I’m working my way down. By eliminating the wealthy traitors first, though, we gave the little ones time to squirm their way back under the rocks they’d come out from under.”

“So they got away.”

Justinius waved a negligent hand. “Some. People like that won’t risk anything—most of all their lives and livelihoods—if they won’t be well paid for the trouble. I took away the people paying the bribes, and half the problems on this island vanished overnight. That leaves the other half of the problem—the mages with plenty of magical
and
political power. They’re not rich; they’re just dangerous. Some of them wisely turned in their resignations, so they can do their plotting in private. Others have been more reluctant to give up their lucrative positions.”

I grinned. “I’ll bet you ate their reluctance for breakfast and their excuses for lunch.”

The old man snorted, a sort of laugh. “The smart ones were gone by dinner. That left the stupid and the stubborn. The stupid will take care of themselves, always have.” Any sign of humor vanished. “That leaves the stubborn, the patient. They’re biding their time and making alliances while they wait. And while they scurry around like rats behind a wall, I’ve got entirely too many vacant positions, important positions. As a result, I’m not exactly operating from a position of power here. Hell, only half the mages are left on the Seat of Twelve. It’s more like the Park Bench of Six.”

Damn. Six of the most powerful mages in the Seven Kingdoms had been corrupt, either living in a power broker’s pocket or—like Carnades Silvanus—had minions of their own.

Justinius scowled. “With the bad guys down but definitely not out, and the good guys not all that plentiful, the winner’s going to be whoever can get their feet underneath them first. I want mages who know what they stand for, and stand for it openly. I may not agree with a mage’s politics and beliefs, but I respect their right to think that way. Say what you believe in and stick to it, don’t skulk around in corners. Ass-kissers, bootlickers, and two-faced turncoats have no place in the government of this island or holding any power over the magic users in the Seven Kingdoms. I’ve started the ball rolling on making some appointees of my own.”