Lightborn (18 page)

“In any contest concerning power, the one willing to use it to dominate always wins.”

“There are many kinds of power.”

“But few that matter,” Vladimer said. “Do not weary me by preaching ‘moral power.’”

There was a silence. “There are certain types of power one has to experience to know,” she said, with quiet conviction.

Vladimer said sourly, “Sit down, Magister Broome, if you are staying. Leave if you are going.” He sounded stung. Perhaps even he was susceptible to virtue, Telmaine thought. Which was an odd opinion for a respectable lady to form about a woman who was both a mage and a loose woman, but there was an undeniable uprightness about Phoebe Broome.

“As you pointed out, unless something has substantively changed, for the Lightborn mages to mount such an elaborate and oblique attack on us makes no sense—and the Lightborn head of state appears also to have fallen victim. Which, finally, leaves the Shadowborn. Ishmael di Studier describes their magic as having a particular quality—repugnant and chilling. That description has been confirmed by a second mage, who has never visited the Shadowlands. So I return to my original question as to whether you might have sensed something similar recently.”

“Yes,” she said, slowly. “Maybe.”

“Around the Rivermarch?”

She swallowed. “Lord Vladimer, you must understand what else we sensed—sense—around the Rivermarch. A hundred and sixty people died there, their vitality riven from their flesh in the most excruciating manner. Eight Lightborn mages summoned a storm; the sense of that lingers. So yes, perhaps there was a—taint—there, but—I cannot say for certain.”

“Anywhere else?”

She faltered. “Not—for certain. No, not for certain.”

He waited, but she offered no more.

“Well, then, I bid you good evening and thank you for coming. I hope you will be prepared to inform me should you learn more, and I may ask for your help again. And I trust that events simply do not overtake us both.”

She heard him ring the bell for the footman, and give instructions as to how his guests were to be shown out. She lifted her head from her hand and slumped backward in the chair, the many unbreakable rules of a lady’s deportment remote now.

The club of Phineas’s magic through the wall took her by surprise, like a crude hand thrust into her face to tear away her veils. She lashed at him, hard, with her magic, and through the contact between them heard him cry out. She thrust him away, forcefully, but without the revulsion that she had felt for the Shadowborn; indeed, the sense of his magic was not unpleasant, almost reminiscent of Ishmael’s. But his hostility was palpable. How
dared
he? he cried.

Then she smelled smoke, sonned before her, and found the blurred roil of flame that was several sheets of paper. Frantically, she snuffed it out.

“Telmaine,” Vladimer said from outside, “if you would be so good as to join me.”

He must not smell the smoke, he
must
not. She crumbled the charred, chilled paper into her reticule. A sweep of her hand found the latch; she released it, half fell into the room, and slammed it closed behind her. Vladimer’s sonn caught her as she stumbled against an armchair and braced herself upright on shaking arms.

“You didn’t tell me that you didn’t trust the Broomes,” she accused before he got out his first word. “You didn’t tell me that you would have had me hold them while you shot them. How
dare
you!” A lady’s carefully groomed vocabulary had no words to express his offense and her outrage. Had she been near enough, she would have slapped him. Had any object been in reach, she would have thrown it. The impulse quivered in her muscles, tingled in her gloved palm, but she was deeply grateful it was afforded no outlet. Vladimer’s response might not be tempered by gentlemanly courtesy, but she was even more afraid of something inchoate and inadmissible, something embodied in the heat and turbulence of flame. If she let herself be as angry with him as he deserved, she did not know what might happen.

Vladimer sighed. His energy was once again palpably on the ebb, his voice hollow. “I had to be certain that they had no part in it. The woman may protest their unworldly intent, but I do not disregard their power.”

“You baited them,” she rasped. “You used me as a stalking gun.”

“Should they consider aligning themselves with the enemy, I intend them to know that their treachery will be known and rewarded—the brother is my concern, there. You did put him in his place, I trust.” He sounded satisfied and she again wanted to slap him. Men could struggle for mastery with impunity; for a woman it was dangerous.

“If those two have any wisdom, they will apply their powers to the information I—and Ishmael, it seems—have given them, and confirm and extend it. I will be interested to hear my informants’ reports.” He paused. “Thank you, once more, Telmaine.”

V
ladimer’s third summons of the night interrupted Telmaine’s bath, though at least his timing had allowed her a little time to savor it. She sent his messenger back with a firm promise that she would be along when she was ready, and settled to let her maid dress her hair. That maid was a source of perplexity to Telmaine’s sisters, since she lacked the refinements they expected in a lady’s maid, and Telmaine had driven their mother’s housekeeper to distraction with her fussiness—for reasons she could never explain. But this maid had a gift for mathematics, and it occupied her to the exclusion of all merely human interests or intrigues. Her touch, with its flow of mental shapes and symbols, its warm absorption in the abstract, was as unobtrusive as any Telmaine had experienced.

With her maid’s help, she donned a new and lushly fashionable visiting dress that she had ordered before going to the coast. Every season, she outfitted herself to remind society that, whomever she had married, she was still the daughter of a duke. Tonight, she needed to remind
herself
of that, that Lady Telmaine in full feather had
nothing
to do with the woman whom Vladimer had co-opted to his intrigues. She tucked her embroidered gloves into the cuffs of the inner sleeves with relief; autumn meant covered arms, no more conspicuous long gloves.

Vladimer was waiting in his private rooms. His lips compressed with irritation, though whether at her tardiness or her plumage, he did not indicate. Spreading her abundant skirts carefully, she sat where he directed.

“I’ve had a telegraph from Baronette Strumheller to say that Ferdenzil Mycene came through Strumheller and insisted on taking your husband on with him. They left on horseback, bound for Stranhorne.”

Telmaine caught her breath. She had traveled in the Borders only twice in her life—while visiting her best friend Sylvide’s family—and her recollection was of exhausting carriage rides on bone-jarring roads. “What are you going to do about that? Balthasar is not strong enough—”

“It is but five or six hours’ ride, by roads that are reasonable in the main.” He paused, sonning her face, which was unimpressed, since she very much doubted Vladimer had entrusted his precious bones to Border roads at
any
time in his life. “He will simply have to find the strength. I shall ask Maxim Stranhorne to advise his father that no formal charges have been laid against your husband.”

“I would be most pleased,” Telmaine said, stiffly, “if you would remind
everyone
of that.”

She resolved that she would
not
ask after Ishmael and allow Vladimer to torment her. Though he did not seem to be in the mood for torment. He sat gripping the head of his cane, hunched around his sling, his expression grim. Her sense of his vitality betrayed what his pride would not: he was feverish and in pain. She would
not
feel sorry for him. She eased back slightly so that her back was just touching the back of the chair, and waited.

“There is something I need you to do,” he said, at last.

Courtesy would demand she acknowledge his statement. She decided that she did not feel in the least polite toward him, either.

He twisted the tip of the cane into the carpet, head lowered. “If I had thought that Sejanus would broaden the ducal order, I would never have urged him to issue it to the Borders. But I was so fixated on the new threat that I overlooked the old.” He lifted his head. “Mycene would take back the archducal seat if he could. Kalamay would be another Odon if he could. I have to know what they mean to do with the forces released to them under the order.”

She could understand that, she thought, but what had it to do with her?

“They have requested an interview with my brother. I will arrange that they wait together. Though I doubt they will talk about their plans here, they will surely think on them.”

Now she understood. “No, Lord Vladimer,” she said, in a stifled voice. “No, I will
not
.”

“Will not,” he noted. “Not cannot.”

“I agreed to protect you against Shadowborn. I did not agree to spy for you! You would not ask this of Ishmael!”

“Ishmael had not the power,” Vladimer said, matter-of-factly. “They would never have allowed him near enough to touch. But you do have the power. Our enemies have agents here, in Minhorne, as you well know, and who knows what kind of allies.”

“There was no taint of Shadowborn on Duke Mycene or Duke Kalamay,” she said. “I told you that. But beyond that—” She was trembling. “Beyond that, I will not go.”

He leaned on the chair arm, casting that probing sonn over her. “Very well,” he said wearily. “But I shall still ask you to confirm that there is no taint to them before they speak with my brother.”

She hesitated, distrustful. She had expected a longer, more taxing argument. Was he feeling so ill that he would simply accept her refusal?

His smile was thin, with an edge of malice. “Kingsley will show you to where you should wait.”

She knew the room, having waited here herself with her family before an interview with the archduke, the last time to discuss her father’s death and her marriage. She drew in a sharp, disconcerted breath as he released the catch on the heavy decorative fretwork on one wall and swung it aside on its hinges to reveal the alcove it hid. He gestured her forward and in. She carefully gathered in the rustling billow of her dress. It would be in need of ironing after this. She noted the position of the catch as Kingsley closed it on her.

The alcove was open on both sides. Benches spanned the alcove at each end, barely wide enough for the shoulders of a slight man, or a woman. She settled into the one nearest the hatch she had entered by. But no sooner had the dukes entered the waiting room than she realized she could never leave the alcove unheard, not in this dress. She could hear every rasp and creak of clothing, and they would hear hers. Now she understood Vladimer’s smile. The two men were quite free of Shadowborn ensorcellment, but her own ill judgment and Vladimer’s craft left her condemned to listen to their every word.

“Kalamay,” Sachever Mycene said, and the other, “Mycene.”

She heard a creak of leather and a crack of knee joints as the Duke of Mycene sat. Even his formal attire followed the style for riding or some other vigorous pursuit. Yet for all she knew Mycene was ambitious, she could not believe him treasonous. Vladimer’s envy—for surely a man crippled at nineteen must envy a man so vigorous at sixty—must be distorting his judgment.

Would that the archduke summoned them soon.

A footman arrived to reassure the visitors that the archduke would see them presently. They accepted the offer of tea, but she heard cup light on saucer maybe twice, the barest gesture. Kalamay coughed, dryly. His cologne filtered through to her, a faint scent of lemon and lavender that she associated more with dowagers than dukes. She had just decided that they were going to wait in silence when Kalamay’s husk of a voice said, “Have you heard from Ferdenzil?”

“He telegraphed from Strumheller Station,” Mycene said. “He’d had word that the train arrived, but di Studier had jumped it, likely going overland to Stranhorne Manor. Ferdenzil planned to mount and pursue.”

“Ferdenzil should be here now, not playing public agent.”

“Oh, he’s not playing,” Mycene said, distinctly. “Trust my son not to miss his chance, if it comes to him.” There was no doubt about what he implied. Telmaine’s hands fisted in the lace of her sleeves.

“Di Studier has been an affront to the Sole God and society for decades.” Telmaine set her teeth, though the impulse thus contained was less one to speak out than to snarl. Kalamay continued, quite deliberately. “Signing the order of succession nine years ago was a mistake; I counseled Sejanus so then.”

“I suspect he knows that now,” Mycene observed.

There was a brief silence, as actors pause after the opening of a play to note the temper of the house.

“Though di Studier’s dangerous,” Kalamay said. “Twenty-five years Shadowhunting.”

“Twenty-five years vermin hunting,” Mycene said, dismissively.

“Do you think he killed the woman?”

“No,” Mycene said, without hesitation. “I’d lay my money it was the father of her bastard.” The other man shifted, with a rustle of his austere vestments. Mycene continued. “I had my physician examine the body. She bore a child. Regardless of who goes to the shackling post for her death, I’ll settle with the man responsible, for the insult he’s dealt my son and my name.”

“And what of that fancy of Vladimer’s?”

“I think a commonplace explanation far more likely, don’t you?”

“I presume you’ve not been able to get at her servants, yet.”

“Not yet. But I might have something better. Di Studier has so far eluded arrest, but Ferdenzil has his traveling companion. He’s Balthasar Hearne, the same one as attended Tercelle in childbed. I’m told that a woman often cries out the name of the father of her child at such a time. I have telegraphed ahead to Stranhorne to suggest that Ferdenzil send the man to me, if he cannot bring himself to question him himself.”