Law of the Broken Earth (51 page)

Mienthe nodded again. She paused as they reached the door, her hand on the splintered wood, and asked tentatively, “How is Jos?”

Her cousin glanced down at her. “I offered him a place here. I told him that the Delta is a good place for exiles, even those without full use of both their hands… I think he will come. He owes me something, and of course we all owe him everything, and why should he not live near those of us who know it? He no longer needs to live close to fire, not when Kes can so easily step from one country to the other. I think… I am certain that she will not forget him again.”

“I’ll be glad to see her again from time to time,” Mienthe said seriously.

Bertaud nodded. He pushed open the door of the house, but turned to look once more back over the gardens. He still looked weary and grieved, and yet Mienthe thought there was a difference to the sorrow she saw in him now. It seemed deep as the earth, yet she thought this grief was not the same as the grief that had haunted him through the years. This one, she thought, might in time be assuaged.

He turned again, gesturing for Mienthe to precede him. “And your Tan? How does he do now?”

Mienthe shook her head. “The same. Kes told you? Nothing has changed. I have been sitting by him… Iaor made me leave him for the day, but I’m sure it’s all right if I take
you
up. Will you come?”

Tan lay, very still and pale among the bed linens, in the same tower room Bertaud had given him when they had feared he was still pursued by his enemies. Before they had known who those enemies were, or why they pursued him… it seemed so long ago. How astonishing, Mienthe thought, that it had been so short a time.

The room contained little clutter. Only the bed, and a small fire in its brazier, and a single chair framed by two small tables. The first of these held a jug of water and an earthenware cup, and the other a single glass vase from which tumbled the fragrant ivory flowers of honeysuckle in full bloom.

Iriene occupied the chair. The healer-mage was looking at Tan, though the abstraction of her gaze suggested she might not be seeing him. A heavy cloth-bound book was propped open on her knee. Geroen was leaning on the back of her chair with a patient air that suggested he might have been there for rather a long time.

Iriene did not look up when the door opened, but Geroen straightened as he glanced around—then saw Bertaud and stiffened. “My lord—”

Bertaud held up a hand to check him. “Captain Geroen. How is he?”

“There has still been no change?” Mienthe asked anxiously. She slipped across the room and hovered over
the still figure on the bed. He was not breathing—oh, of course he was, only slowly and shallowly. He was so pale—“Iriene, is he worse? He’s worse, isn’t he?”

“About the same, I should say,” the healer-mage answered judiciously. She got to her feet, nodded absently to Bertaud, and said to Mienthe, “He’s steady enough, you know. Don’t you fret over the next few hours. I don’t think there’s much likely to change any time soon. Not that we exactly want this to go on, but it can, you know, for quite a long time. I’ll just go down to the kitchens and have them warm up some broth, shall I?”

She was not really asking permission. Mienthe nodded anyway and perched on the edge of the chair, gazing down at Tan’s still face.

Her cousin came to look over her shoulder, frowning. “Lord Beguchren looked very much like this, after he…” He did not complete the sentence.

“He said you could use yourself up,” Mienthe said in a low voice.

“Gereint broke Beguchren out of his long sleep.”

Mienthe nodded. “He told me. But he said it wasn’t just that Gereint was a mage, but that he was also his friend.” Tan had been away in Linularinum so long, and he was so private a man. Iriene might have healed his knee, but she didn’t know him at all… no one knew him at all. “Beguchren said this might not be the same. He said we should just wait,” Mienthe finished softly.

Tan was so thin and pale, and he looked so cold… She took one of his hands in both of hers. His fingers were cold as ice. She said over her shoulder, “Geroen, would you please build up the fire?”

The captain silently added a pine log to the fire, so
that its resinous scent blended with the fragrance of the honeysuckle. Then he said again, “My lord…”

Bertaud turned to him, raising his eyebrows.

“My lord,” Geroen repeated more firmly. “I’ve prepared a full report for you. All the damage that was done—not much out in the town, not that that’s to my credit, which I know very well. More to the house.” He hesitated and then said, “I should never have let those Linularinan bastards get a foothold on this side of the river, as I know very well. All the harm we suffered—My lord, I acknowledge it’s my fault and my failing—”

Mienthe looked up in astonishment, though she didn’t let go of Tan’s hand. “That’s not true—”

“Certainly it seems unnecessarily simplistic,” Bertaud said mildly. “Mie, you’re well enough here? Will you send me word immediately in the case of any change, or tonight in any case? Captain Geroen, you must tell me all that happened in my absence.” He took the captain’s arm, turning him gently toward the door. “I shall assuredly be glad of your report. But let’s not be too hasty in declaring where the fault lies, shall we?” He led the other man out, and the door swung gently shut behind them.

Mienthe immediately forgot them. She leaned forward, studying Tan’s drawn face. He
was
still breathing. About the same, Iriene had said. Mienthe thought he was worse: more still, more fine-drawn, colder.

If this were an epic romance, she would sit by his bed until at last he wasted away—that was the phrase an epic would use: wasted away.
Wasted
, indeed. What a terrible waste Tan’s death would be. Bertaud had said Jos had saved them all, and of course he had; and so had Kes, and Kairaithin; and the Arobern by his courage, and Iaor by
his generosity; and so had she, and what a very strange thought that was. But most of all
Tan
had saved them all, by knowing at the last what law to use to bind the world
properly
.

In a romantic epic, she would have fallen in love with Tan, and now she would watch him slowly waste away, and then she would go fling herself to her death from the highest tower of the house. Not that even the highest tower of this house was very tall, and it was surrounded by gardens and not paving stones. Probably, even if she were such a fool, she would only break her leg or something. So the romances had every detail wrong.

Or nearly every detail.

A mage who was also a friend could break this stillness. Mienthe came closer to being a friend than anybody else, but she wasn’t a mage.
I just did things that came to me to do
, she had said to Bertaud, and that was true. Nothing came to her now, though she would have welcomed an urge to draw a spiral, any sort of prompting toward anything that might help. But there was nothing, though she tried to clear her mind and heart invitingly. She had no idea how to coax Tan out of his deep silence.

She might find a quill, fold his fingers around it, and offer him a book with blank pages. The feel of a feather quill, the smell of paper—that might draw him out of himself. Except, not if he had burned out his gift. Mienthe thought; then the grief of realizing his loss might drive him further away into his silence rather than drawing him back into the world.

She leaned forward, reached out with one hand, and touched his cheek. “Tan,” she said, and realized with a faint despair that she did not even know with any
certainty whether that was his name at all. He lied so easily about who he was… He lied with his words and his voice and his face, and then told the truth with his own blood, drawn out on the page… She said her own name instead, because she knew that it, at least, was true.

His eyelashes fluttered.

Mienthe was too startled to move, or to speak again.

“Mienthe?” he whispered, in a voice as scraped and raw as though he’d bound new law into the world by shouting and not with a quill.

That broke her stillness. Mienthe laughed, and found she was weeping. As weak as his voice was, the echo behind it was very strong. In fact, the echo behind
him
was suddenly very strong. She knew at once, though she could not have said how, that he had not lost his legist gift, that he had not lost anything. In every way that mattered, he was still himself, and she was suddenly glad of the strange new perception that let her be certain of that. She said through her tears, “Tan! I’m here—so are you—we’re safe, we’ve fixed everything, we’re all done, we’re home—Do you remember everything? Do you remember anything?”

Tan blinked, and blinked again, and turned his head to look at her. A slight crease appeared between his eyebrows, and he frowned. “Home?” he whispered. “Silvered by the tears of fall, jeweled by the touch of winter, quickened by the breath of spring, and nourished by the generous summer… Am I come home?”

“Yes,” said Mienthe. She touched his cheek again, lightly, fearing to hurt him. “Oh, yes. Don’t try to remember.” Mienthe poured some water into the cup for him. Then she was doubtful whether he could sit up—whether
she should try to coax him to sit up. Maybe she should shout down the stairs and send someone running for Iriene—

“I do remember,” Tan said, in a hoarse but stronger voice. He moved vaguely to sit up. “Mienthe—”

“I was so frightened we’d lost you.” She folded his hand around the cup, and added in a much lower voice, “That I’d lost you.” She looked up quickly then, meeting his eyes.

Tan’s mouth crooked, but he shook his head. “Your cousin—”

Mienthe was surprised. Then she smiled. “You saved us all,” she said. “So did we all, but mostly you. Do you think my cousin doesn’t know it?”

“That’s not exactly as I remember it—”

“It’s certainly how
I
remember it,” Mienthe said firmly. “Tan—
is
that your name?”

He tilted his head a little to the side, but he did not look away. “That is my name. My mother’s name is Emnidde. My father was, as they say, careless.” He waited, seeming to hold his breath, though how she could tell she did not know, as shallowly as his breaths came.

“Tan,” Mienthe said firmly. “Son of Emnidde. That will do, if you’ll promise me to answer to it. I never again want to call you, and then realize I don’t even know with certainty what name to call—”

Tan closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the pillows, and for a moment she was frightened. But he only whispered, “Whatever name you call, I’ll answer to it.”

“Will you?” Mienthe wanted to believe him. “Do you promise me you will?”

Tan barely smiled, his eyes still closed. “I promise you. I might lie to anyone else, Mienthe, but I’ll always tell you the truth and I’ll always answer when you call. Only promise you will call me.”

He meant his promise, Mienthe realized. She could hear the deep, shadowy echo behind his voice, and she knew it was the shadow of truth. “Then sleep,” she said gently. “Sleep. And when the dawn comes, I promise I’ll call you.” Then she sat quietly, very still and perfectly happy, her hand lying over his, and watched his breaths deepen again.

Rachel Neumeier
started writing fiction to relax when she was a graduate student and needed a hobby unrelated to her research. Prior to selling her first fantasy novel, she had published only a few articles in venues such as
The American Journal of Botany
. However, finding that her interests did not lie in research, Rachel left academia and began to let her hobbies take over her life instead. She now raises and shows dogs, gardens, cooks, and occasionally finds time to read. She works part-time for a tutoring program, though she tutors far more students in math and chemistry than in English composition. Find out more about Rachel Neumeier at
www.rachelneumeier.com
.

If you enjoyed
LAW OF THE BROKEN EARTH
,

look out for

HOUSE OF SHADOWS

by Rachel Neumeier

I
n a city of gray stone and mist, set between the steep rainswept mountains and the sea, there lived a merchant with his eight daughters. The merchant’s wife had died bearing the eighth daughter and so the girls had raised one another, the elder ones looking after the younger. The merchant was not wealthy, having eight daughters to support, but neither was he poor. He had a tall narrow house at the edge of the city, near his stoneyard where he dealt in the blue slate and hard granite of the mountains and in imported white limestone and marble. His house had glass windows, tile floors, and a long gallery along the back where there was room for eight beds for his daughters.