Law of the Broken Earth (26 page)

Mages—young people who woke into magecraft and then actually decided to be mages—studied for years to learn how to use their power, and here Mienthe was, trapped in the dark, with a single high-pitched note
winding up around her, and neither teachers nor time to study.

She did not panic. Or maybe she did panic. She had no way to run in circles, and no way to hear herself if she screamed, so how could she even tell? There was nothing in the dark with her except the inaudible whining note—other people heard the glittering voices of the rain, and here she was with nothing but this unpleasant mosquito-whine. That seemed almost funny, though not really.

Mienthe followed the sound she almost heard because it was the only thing she could follow and she could not think of anything else to do. She could not have said how she followed it, because she had no sense of actual movement. Nevertheless, she pursued it up and around, up and around, up and around. She found herself curving in a tight inward path. It wound infinitely tight, she knew. It would never, ever let her out… she might have panicked then. She wanted to panic, but she still had no way to scream or flail about or cry, so instead she fled back the way she had come, down and around, down and down further still.

The sound deepened and deepened. Mienthe found she could
see
it, running before her, a narrow, faint ribbon of glimmering light—well, it was not light and it did not glimmer, but it was like that, in a way. It widened, and widened again. Mienthe could not see her own body, she could not see anything but the ribbon of light, but she imagined herself running, her legs moving, her arms, the impact of her feet on the road, the wind of her own motion against her face.

The ribbon widened and widened, and opened; Mienthe skidded down it at a great rate so that she began to be
afraid of falling, of the height from which she might fall, of where she might fall to, only she was more afraid of stopping, of being trapped motionless within the confines of the path. Though it was not very confining, anymore. It had widened so far it seemed to encompass the world. Its faint light surrounded her, pale as the glimmer of moonlight on pearl, and then she saw that a faint light
did
surround her, that it
was
moonlight, and with a tremendous sense of motionless, forceless impact, she found that she was standing once more in the night-dark solar, with the windows open before her and moonlight pouring through her hands and the breeze chilly against her face.

There was no whining spiral wrapping itself around her, no blind darkness. Only the ordinary night, and the sounds of men calling to one another and of distant battle. But in a way, she almost thought she could still see that rising ribbon of light twining through the darkness, and the deep hum the spiral had made still echoed somewhere—she could not tell whether she was only remembering the sound it had made or whether she was still truly hearing that sustained note that was not quite music. Or, if she was still hearing it, whether that was only in her mind or actually out in the world.

Blinking, she set her hands on the windowsill and shook her head. She tried to decide whether she’d ever truly heard—seen—experienced that strange magecrafted spiral at all. Whether she’d drawn it into the night air herself, or… No, she knew, even as the thought occurred to her, that
she
hadn’t drawn this spiral.

A Linularinan mage had drawn it. Someone who had meant to trap her in his crafting? She was afraid that might be so. Tan’s enemies might not have known she
existed earlier… Could that have been only the previous night? Everything had been happening so fast, and nothing that happened made any sense. Except that maybe the Linularinan mages had discovered her, or had realized that she was their enemy, or had decided that they needed to clear her out of their way before they renewed their search for Tan.
That
made sense.

Mienthe took a breath that was half a sob and pushed herself away from the window.

The guardsmen who had previously been in the hall were gone, replaced by three others. Mienthe wondered whether the shift had been about to change when she’d stepped out earlier or whether she had been caught in that magecrafted spiral much longer than she’d thought. Though it couldn’t have been
so
much longer, or she supposed it would not still be night. Unless it was some other night? No—it couldn’t have been that long, or the guardsmen would surely look a great deal more disturbed. She felt relieved but also surprised, as though it would really have been easier to believe that days had passed. Or weeks. Or years.

“I’m going outside,” she said abruptly.

“My lady—” the senior of the guardsmen protested, but Mienthe went past him without pausing and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time like a child, and thrust open the door that led to the gardens and, past the gardens, to the stables and mews.

She stopped there, right outside the door. The clamor of battle seemed much closer—much too close—she could make out individual voices shouting within the clamor, hear the thudding of horses’ hooves on cobbled streets, see the flash of swords through the shrubbery. A
single arrow rose in a long, high arch, its wicked steel point shining like a chip of ice in the moonlight. The long smooth track of its flight caught Mienthe’s eye and she watched it rise, seem to hesitate at the apex of its flight, and then fall. It sliced through the air with a high, singing sound and, by some singular chance of battle, buried itself in the garden earth directly before Mienthe’s feet. She stared down at the humming feather-tipped shaft and thought how oddly like the hum of the spiral its whistling flight had sounded.

“Lady!” one of the guardsmen said urgently, catching hold of her arm. “Lady—”

“Yes,” Mienthe said dazedly.

“You can’t stand here in the garden!” the guardsman said. “It’s not safe!”

This was abundantly clear, yet Mienthe resisted his pull. She did not even know why. She began to speak, but then did not know what to say. Somewhere near at hand, men were shouting. Somewhere even closer, someone screamed, a high, agonized, bewildered sound.

“It was a horse, that was only a horse!” said the guardsman when Mienthe flinched and gasped. “But it might be
you
next time, lady! You can’t stay here!”

Mienthe stared at the man. If she’d meant to flee Tiefenauer, she should have gone with the queen. She’d thought the Linularinan commanders would send someone to the great house. She’d thought… It was hard to remember what she’d thought. But it certainly hadn’t occurred to her that Linularinan mages might specifically attack
her
. And if they did—
if
they did—she turned suddenly and looked east, as though she could see right through the town and the surrounding marshes and past
the rivers and upper woodlands, right to Kames at the very edge of the Delta. Where she had sent Tan. Where, she found herself convinced, his Linularinan enemies would pursue him. Even there.

And she would not be with him. She would not be there to counter any Linularinan mage who found him. Because the Linularinan mages had found her here, and if their first attack had failed, then they would only try again. Unless the ordinary swords the Linularinan soldiers carried killed her first.

Mienthe caught her breath, shook free of the guardsman’s grip on her arm, and ran for the stables.

There were no horses there. “They took them all—the town guard needed them,” said the senior guardsman, looking sick with dismay. “We didn’t know—we didn’t know you’d need them, my lady.”

Mienthe stared at him. She said at last, “How could you have known? Where’s Geroen?”

The guardsmen did not know.

“East,” said Mienthe. “East. I’ll go on foot.” She took a step that way and found the three guardsmen falling in around her. She started to protest, but then did not know why she should object. And then she did: If the Linularinan mages found her again, she knew she would not be able to protect these men. But she could not send them away. She needed their help, and besides, they would not go.

There was fighting immediately to the south and west of the great house, and more than a few disturbing sounds to the north, but the east seemed relatively clear. The cobbled streets were narrow and dark, well suited to barricades, and there were plenty of barricades. The
Delta had always been pressed between Linularinum and Feierabiand; a large proportion of all the male townsfolk belonged to the militia, or had, and most of the rest were willing to fight. Even some of the women would fight: Plenty of upper windows held a woman with a bow, overlooking her husband or son in the streets below.

And the people recognized Mienthe, which surprised her—they would look at her guardsmen and then at her, and then they would haul back an overturned cart or some other part of a barricade to let her through. At first she thought they would be dismayed to see her fleeing the great house, but instead they nodded to her and smiled grimly and promised her that those Linularinan bastards, begging her pardon, would have a hard time getting through
these
streets.

Mienthe hoped they were right, but she couldn’t believe how quickly the Linularinan soldiers, however careless their fathers might have been, had pressed through the town to come to the great house. She thought she could almost
feel
them, or someone, behind her: a dark, looming, seeking presence that pressed hard at her back, humming with power. She thought they knew where she was—she found herself terrified, certain that if she looked over her shoulder she would find someone there. When one of her guardsmen put a hand on her arm, she whirled, only the tightness of her throat keeping her from a scream.

“There’s some Linularinan company up ahead there,” whispered the man, not so much to Mienthe as to the other two men. “Hear that? That’s not townsfolk up there.”

Mienthe realized he was right. Up ahead, where the
town gave way to farms on the drier bits of land and marshes between the farms, there was a low sound of men moving. A lot of men, moving through the darkness, coming into the town from the east. Muttered curses as they moved without a light over rough ground and muddy roads… The east should have been clear, but some clever Linularinan officer had thought to send a force around this way, either to block Tan’s escape or to flank Tiefenauer’s defenders. Mienthe found she had no doubt that the Linularinan officers knew about Tan, or at least that someone in Tiefenauer might break for the east and that they should stop him. It occurred to her that they might even have caught him—no. She took a breath and let it out again, slowly. Tan was, she knew, well away, far to the east. If this Linularinan company had been sent around to the east to stop him, it had gotten to its position too late.

But not too late to block
her
.

The senior of the guardsmen touched her arm again and jerked his head to the right,
This way
. Mienthe followed him down a narrow lane until he stopped in a doorway. The door was locked and no one answered the guardsman’s cautious rap, but the doorway was in deep shadow and offered at least a little shelter. “Likely they’ll go on past,” whispered the guardsman. “Likely they won’t search too close—only enough to be sure there’s not a great lot of militia or guardsmen ready to come after them and stick them in the back. But then, we’re obviously guard, and that means you’re obviously a lady, and I don’t know what they’d do if they found us.”

The guardsman was probably thinking the Linularinan soldiers might take Mienthe as a hostage, but what
Mienthe thought was someone in that company might recognize her as the one who had rescued Tan from their hands. She had a vivid, awful picture of coming face-to-face with Tan’s particular enemy, Istierinan. He would… if he caught her, he would… She had no idea what he might do, and she didn’t want to find out.

The guardsman must have read some of this in her face because his expression became, if possible, even more grim. He said, “You two, lead them off if they come this way. My lady, if you will please come with me.” He led Mienthe farther down the lane. “There’ll be a side street or alley,” he muttered to her. “We’ll get around them in the dark. Even if they do spot us, they’ll not look too close. A man and a woman fleeing the town, that’s nothing to draw attention. Here, lady, watch your step.”

Mienthe was well past worrying about a little mud. The street was too narrow for the moonlight to provide any illumination; it was too dark to see even the cobbles of the street. It was so dark there was a constant risk of running headlong into an unexpected wall, but she could hear—she thought she could hear—the tramp of soldiers entering the town. The sounds echoed oddly in the narrow streets so that it was hard to tell their direction and distance, but she was sure it was soldiers. Boots, mostly, and the unidentifiable sounds of a lot of men moving in company, but occasionally also the ring of shod hooves. That was bold, but then maybe the Linularinan soldiers had a few people who could speak to horses in that company; the gift wasn’t possessed
only
by the folk of Feierabiand, any more than straight light brown hair was possessed only by the people of Linularinum. But the sound of hooves made her check and turn her head,
wishing
she
had an affinity for horses and could call one away from those soldiers.

“Lady!” whispered the guardsman, realizing Mienthe had paused. He, too, was all but invisible in the darkness.

Mienthe took a step forward.

Light bloomed beyond the guardsman, lamps carried high on poles so that their light shone out before the approaching soldiers—another company, or part of the same one, but either way wholly unexpected. The guardsman spun around, his hand going to his sword and then falling away because there were far too many soldiers to fight. But then he drew after all, setting himself in the middle of the narrow lane.