Lightborn (26 page)

“Lord Vladimer,” she said plaintively, “can’t I simply have the vapors and lie down?”

A brief taut smile, startled out of him. “If
I
may not, you certainly may not.”

“And what are
you
going to say?” she challenged. “Or
will
my husband have a profession and reputation to return to?”

“I am not,” he said flatly, “in the habit of discussing my activities, or my agents’ activities, with the gossips of society. Be assured that the men who matter
will
know the services your husband has rendered.”

And will they be grateful?
Telmaine thought—but managed to stop herself from saying.
Oh, Bal, what a reward for your loyalty: social ruin.

“Lord Vladimer,” she murmured, and, hiding alarm and resentment behind a practiced, social smile, let herself be escorted from the room. She would
not
let Bal be sacrificed, not even for Sejanus Plantageter. She
would
not.

Sylvide di Reuther, at once the first and the very last person she wished to talk to, had inveigled the footmen to bring an extra chair and set an additional place next to her. The one consolation was that they were adjacent to the archducal table, close enough to sonn without her being obtrusive. She did not need magic to sense the thunderous atmosphere around her; Lady di Reuther was in fine high dudgeon, and Sylvide’s breathing was quick and shallow and her heart- shaped face set. Telmaine ducked her head and nodded assent to the hovering footmen. Even if she could not eat, she could be spared having to speak while she picked at her plate. She lifted her fork in a trembling hand.

She had not thought she could eat—had expected even to be sickened by the smell of it—but when the first slice of breakfast pie was laid on her plate, she found herself having to restrain herself from an unladylike greed. The aroma of island spices poignantly evoked the memory of the imprisoned Ishmael confiding a wish or whimsy to retire to the Islands and grow spices.

“Telmaine,” Sylvide said, from beside her, “how is little Florilinde?”

As safe, and unsafe, a question as any. “Back with us now,” she said, laying down her fork. “And unharmed.”

Sylvide breathed out. “That is so good. I hear Master di Maurier is still holding his own, and I’m sure that knowing she is safe will do him good.”

“You are
not
communicating with that reprobate, Sylvide,” decreed Lady di Reuther. “I was
appalled
to hear that you had visited him—and you, Telmaine. I thought better of you.”

“Master di Maurier is a
hero
,” Sylvide said, her voice pinched.

“Master di Maurier is a disgrace,” Lady di Reuther declared.

Sylvide confined her argument to a tight little shake of the head. Softhearted Sylvide remembered Gil di Maurier from the nursery, her little boy cousin. To Telmaine’s mind he was both hero and disgrace, but the experience of the underworld that he had gained pursuing his dissipations had let him find Florilinde. Her covert attempt to heal him had been no more than she owed him.

“Are you aware of the
reason
for your daughter’s travail?” Lady di Reuther demanded.

“Yes,” Telmaine said. “Confidential information that my husband refused to divulge.”

“You do realize, Telmaine, even if your husband does not, that it is not appropriate for men and women of our class to become the subject of such reporting as has surrounded this affair.”

“And little Amerdale,” Sylvide said, desperately. “How is she?”

Telmaine took firm control of herself, knowing that she was merely a goad or two from some unwise outburst. “Counting the days to her sixth birthday,” she said, brittle and airy. “We have promised her a kitten. She is quite infatuated with them.”

“My Dorian is the same, only with him it is birds. There was an aviary in the Islands court; he would have stayed there night and day if he could. Once,” she said to the table, “he persuaded me to take him to an all-day opening. The visiting area was covered with a canvas, set up so that the birds can go outside by a series of tunnels that don’t pass light. It was quite terrifying, and at the same time utterly diverting, because the birds are so much busier and sing so much more by day. The staff made up beds for us, but neither of us slept at all.”

“Dani,” said Lady Calliope, “did you know about this?”

“Of course, Mother. If I had not had work, I would have gone as well.”

“Reckless,” Lady Calliope deemed it. “Dorian is your heir.”

“It was quite safe,” Sylvide said, breathing quickly. “Dorian is my
son
.”

“No, Dani, it was reckless. I trust there will be no repetition.”

Sylvide jabbed at a piece of bacon and sent it skittering across the plate and onto Telmaine’s napkin. Telmaine snatched it up and quickly laid it aside on the plate, trying equally to avoid a stain and further comment from Lady Calliope.

Sylvide said, “Your
hand
, Telmaine. It’s all right.”

“Quite all right,” Telmaine said, remembering too late she had planned to favor that hand when next she met Sylvide. “Oh, it stings still, but it must not have been as bad a burn as we feared. It was fright as much as anything that made me faint.”

“I am so glad,” Sylvide said. She caught Telmaine’s wrist, pulling her close to whisper, “Telmaine, whatever they say, I don’t believe any of it.”

“About what?” Telmaine whispered back, wondering if there was more than Vladimer had hinted at, but Sylvide said nothing more. Telmaine cast a wary sonn around her dining companions. Across the table, Lady Calliope’s aspect was haughty and disapproving, but she was ever thus. Beside his mother, Daniver di Reuther sat in sullen obedience. Telmaine thought guiltily of her lapsed resolve to speak to her brother the duke on Dani’s behalf. Dani had been ousted from his post in the Scallon Islands by Mycene’s intrigues, and the sooner he found another, the sooner he and poor Sylvide would escape his mother’s reach. At Dani’s side, his unmarried sister was teasing the food on an almost full plate, thin wrists protruding from her fashionably puffed sleeves. She was twenty-seven and still unwed, having outlived two fiancés and been jilted by the last. On Lady Calliope’s right sat her older son, on whose account she had no right whatsoever to sneer at Gil di Maurier. By his drooping posture and sagging face Xavier di Reuther had planned to be abed by now, sleeping off a day’s excess, rather than socializing to ducal order. At least the table should be spared his thumping wit, though not his heavy cologne. Merivan had stationed herself on his far side as sentinel to her erratic sister and was manifestly unhappy; her pregnancy made her extremely sensitive to odors.

Lady di Reuther was opining, disapprovingly, upon the behavior of her southern neighbors, and in particular the wayward daughters of the barony. Knowing that Ishmael was fugitive in Stranhorne lands made Telmaine listen, though she did find herself rather shocked; surely it was not true that the Baronettes Stranhorne had dressed in boys’ garb to ride out to hunt Shadowborn.

Sylvide said, unexpectedly, “I thought it was very brave of them.”

Xavier roused himself to a chortled “Like to sonn you in breeches, sister dear.”

Dani started to stand, his expression ominous. His mother put a manacling hand on his arm.

“I don’t think you would, sir,” Telmaine said. With her early-maturing figure, her sweet nature, and a family who showed scant concern for the security and happiness of a girl, Sylvide had suffered far more presumption and trespass than she deserved. Xavier was more bluster than malice, but he still would not say such things to a woman he respected—Telmaine, for instance. She smiled sweetly into his bleary face and reached across the table with her magic. “I understand your sister-in-law is quite a fair shot.” A delicate, internal nudge—it didn’t take much—and he was pushing back from the table, stumbling away with a hand clapped over his mouth. She felt an indecent thrill as two footmen swiftly converged to steer him into a side room.

Her blood chilled. The voice had the crystal edges of a Lightborn, and the touch, brief as it was, exuded power.

“Telmaine?” said Sylvide.

She gripped the table, to hold herself in place. <
Who are you?
>

There was no answer. For a moment she struggled with the urge to flee—but where could she possibly flee to, if the Lightborn Temple Vigilance had discovered her? A whimper tried to escape; she swallowed it down.

“Telmaine!” Merivan hissed across the table. “Control yourself!”

“Daniver,” Lady Calliope said, far more audibly. “Sit
down
. One of you making an exhibition of himself is quite enough.”

Sylvide turned in her chair and took Telmaine’s hands. “Telmaine, dear, are you ill?”

Quite possibly she was going mad. Quite possibly she had, under strain, imagined that voice in her mind. Had Sylvide not captured her hands, she would have chewed on her gloved fingertip. Instead, she bit her inner lip until she tasted salt and iron.

“You’ve had a bad few days,” Sylvide commiserated. “I know.”

The intrusive voice stayed silent. She breathed more steadily and managed to smile at Sylvide. “Tell me,” she said, her voice almost under her control, “what absurd things
are
the broadsheets saying about my husband?”

Across the table, Lady Calliope drew breath at her audacity at approaching the subject so brazenly.

Sylvide’s smile wavered. “They’re saying that he—that he—oh, Telmaine,
must
you ask?”

“I’m sorry, dear Sylvide, but how else am I to know what nonsense I am to refute? A lady came to him in distress; he aided her. Should he be condemned for that?”

“I hardly think,” Lady Calliope said, frostily, “this is a suitable topic for this breakfast table.”

Telmaine set her hands beside her plate, and leaned forward. “Why
not
? Why should everyone be free to whisper slander at the breakfast table, and I not be allowed to speak truth? My husband is innocent.”

“Then where is he?” Dani asked her.

She drew a deep breath. “Balthasar is undertaking an errand on request of Lord Vladimer. That is all I can say; you must take it up with Lord Vladimer himself.”

“How convenient,” said Lady Calliope, frigidly.

“Not at all,” Telmaine said, with feeling. “I would much rather he were here than risking his life and health on this errand.”

“With Ishmael di Studier,” Lady Calliope said. “That is what the broadsheets say, that he is in collusion with that—practitioner.”

“Baron Strumheller is no sorcerer. There”—she pointed in the direction of the ducal table—“sits your proof. Lord Vladimer, here, and willing to testify in Baron Strumheller’s defense. And Baron Strumheller never laid a
hand
on Tercelle Amberley.”

“Telmaine!” said Merivan.

Belatedly she recalled that one of the rumors accused Ishmael of fathering Tercelle’s children. She was too angry to be embarrassed. “I will not listen in silence to this slander of two good men.”

Over at the archduke’s table, where Sejanus Plantageter sat with his brother, the Duke of Imbré, and his eldest daughter, a footman stooped to speak quietly in Lord Vladimer’s ear. Telmaine’s attention was caught as Vladimer’s thin frame went rigid. The footman laid something in his hand. Lady Calliope was talking still; Telmaine hardly heard. Without warning, ignoring his brother’s effort to speak to him, Vladimer stood up, spilling his cane on the floor. As he did so, the object he was holding tumbled free and swung from the chain tangled in his fingers. Telmaine recognized the shape of the large amulet she had last sonned hanging around Casamir Blondell’s neck, the amulet of protection against magic. Sejanus Plantageter reached for it, steadied it. Telmaine could not resist extending her magic to gather in the words he murmured to his brother, “
Face
, Vladimer.”

He lifted the amulet into Vladimer’s hand and let Vladimer close his fingers on it, then patted Vladimer’s hand, rising with an easy smile. The entire table, as etiquette demanded, stood with him. As Sejanus moved away, drawing attention with him, Vladimer thrust the amulet into his pocket, accepted back his cane, and limped toward the door. Her sonn caught his face, still an imperfect mask over shock. Only the fear of gossip inhibited her from rising to hurry after him. Something terrible had happened.

Surely if it were to do with Ishmael or Balthasar, Vladimer would have given her some signal.

And if she went after Vladimer, it would draw people’s attention to his state, attention that the archduke was skillfully diverting. Sejanus was making his progress around the table next to Telmaine’s, receiving bows and curtsies from intimidated heirs and heiresses, and exchanging easy pleasantries with their elders. Like his brother, Sejanus suited the lines of current fashion very well, though he was the bolder dresser.

He reached their table and they all rose as one, Sylvide with a soft gulp. Telmaine squeezed her hand, though her own racing heart betrayed her nervousness. She had ceased to be socially intimidated by the archduke years ago, but that was before she had brazened her way into his higher councils, attached herself inexplicably to his brother, and, worst of all, started to spy on him with magic. Feeling the vibrant presence of his vitality, so close to her, gave her a mortifying sense of having been revealed in turn. She tucked her magic as tightly within her skin as ever she had.

Lady Calliope, the terror of her family and inferiors, was utterly charming to the archduke, who charmed her right back. Dani was stiff and shamefaced when brought to admit to the loss of his diplomatic post, but the archduke assured him that there was always work for able men, and left Dani standing straighter. He was gentle with Dani’s sister, managing to elicit her whispered agreement to his mention of the beauty of the city’s botanic gardens in late summer. Merivan’s courtesies were initially subdued, but the archduke’s sly reference to a particularly controversial play to be staged that autumn drew the true Merivan out of cover, and he gave every indication of appreciating her tart opinions.