Lightborn (3 page)

She slithered down from the coach, gloved hands futilely trying to set right rumpled skirts, ruffled lace, disordered veil, disordered
self
. Two—or was it three?—nights ago, she had arrived at this entrance as a refugee from multiple disasters, with Balthasar battered and too weak to stand, and one daughter missing through abduction. She had been appalled then at the thought of coming here, with her life and social armor in such disarray. But at least then she had not had to face the entire ducal household, as it seemed she must now: Sejanus Plantageter himself had descended to greet them. She recognized his broad, reverberant sonn, like no other. In the converging echoes of the entire household’s sonn she perceived the archduke closing on his brother, by his manner equally poised to embrace him and to shake him. “
Vladimer
,” he said, in the ominous tone of someone who had waited and worried and was ready to lose his temper with the object of the waiting and worrying.

Vladimer, his head low, muttered, “Janus, I don’t
need
this circus.”

“Then don’t go frightening us like that,” the archduke rebuked him. “First they had you at death’s door, and then I heard there was trouble at the station.” At the same time, with sharp sweeps of his hand he was waving dismissal all around. Then he sonned Vladimer sharply and said in a low voice. “You’re ill. Or hurt.”

Vladimer shook his head minimally. “Not till we’re in private. It will take some explaining.”

“When does it not with you, Dimi?” the archduke said. He started to turn, and his sonn caught Telmaine, in her bedraggled state. “Lady Telmaine,” he said, in surprise. “Mrs. Hearne.”

She dropped a deep curtsy. Now in his late forties, the archduke was a man of arresting appearance who shared with his illegitimate brother their mother’s distinctive bony features, high cheekbones, and broad brow—augmented in Sejanus’s case by the equally distinctive Plantageter nose. Telmaine’s acerbic-tongued sister had once opined that the dynastic prowess of the Plantageters was surely due to that nose; where it appeared, paternity was never in question. Sejanus had been archduke for nearly forty years, and was as respected as his brother was feared.

“Lady Telmaine was good enough to accompany me from the coast, a decision I fear she came to regret,” Vladimer said.

The archduke’s brows arched. He had surely last heard of Telmaine as sheltering within his walls, and his brother was not known for dashing around the countryside with other men’s wives. But if the expression was meant teasingly, its target missed it. His brows drew down again, less in displeasure than worry.

Telmaine dipped a shallower curtsy. “If I may be excused, Your Grace, my mother and children will be wondering where I am.”

The archduke eased the frown from his face, turning to say considerately, “Ah, yes, before you become concerned, I should let you know that your mother and sister have taken your daughters back to your sister’s household. They thought the children would be more comfortable in familiar surroundings.”

None of her immediate impulses—to bolt out the door, to scream in panic, to rage at her imperious, managing,
clueless
sister—would have made the least sense to pragmatic Sejanus Plantageter—at least not until he had heard Vladimer’s report. The archduke’s brief, sympathetic smile said he was well aware of the personalities in his circle, even those of dukes’ daughters. Not to mention the challenges of dealing with a difficult sibling.

Perhaps fortunately for what she might have confided, his attention was diverted by the arrival of Casamir Blondell, hurrying in with a jubilant “
My lord Vladimer.
”

Vladimer raised a baleful face. “Blondell, what is this about having charges laid against Baron Strumheller for murder and sorcery?”

She could almost pity Blondell for having his joy at his lord’s return so harshly quenched. The spymaster’s city lieutenant drew himself up, saying in a firm voice that verged on pomposity, “It was a necessary temporizing measure, my lord, to reduce suspicions of the Lightborn and interracial tensions, and there was sufficient evidence of di Studier’s presence at the scene of the murder to make it plausible.”

“It makes a mockery of justice and came near to being a fatally stupid measure,” Vladimer rasped. “Janus, I need to speak to you now. Blondell, you should hear this, too.”

“Just tell me why I shouldn’t have you put to bed first,” Sejanus Plantageter grumbled. “Come on, upstairs.” He nodded toward Telmaine. “Lady Telmaine. My house is yours, as ever.”

Vladimer, who had set his cane preparatory to taking a first step, hesitated and said through half-gritted teeth, “Lady Telmaine should come as well, if she would.”

If this was as unexpected or unwelcome to the archduke as it was to her, he did not show it, only set a firm grip on Vladimer’s sound arm, a grip that Vladimer did not resist. Casamir Blondell’s curiosity was almost palpable, but he had the courtesy not to probe her with his sonn.

The archduke steered them into the first room at the top of the stairs. “Claudius is here; shall I bring him in on this?”

“Yes.” A footman peeled off to carry the orders. Vladimer faltered before the challenge of lowering himself into a chair with only one working arm. The archduke said, “Come,” set his hands under his brother’s armpits with a readiness that suggested he had done this before, and eased him down. Vladimer leaned carefully against the cushions, letting his head fall back.

“Right arm, is it?” Sejanus said.

“Yes.”

“Happened at the station?”

Vladimer’s lips twitched. “And you accuse me of never waiting for a story to unfold. Yes, we were ambushed as we came off the train.”

“The person responsible is dead or in custody, I presume.”

“Two of three.”

“Only two of three. You must be losing your touch.”

Telmaine was still trying to decide whether this was meant as brotherly humor or archducal rebuke when Duke Rohan arrived. Claudius Rohan had been the youngest member of the regency council during the archduke’s long-ago minority, and, though fifteen years Sejanus’s elder, was still his closest adviser and friend. His relationship with Vladimer, however, had the meticulous formality of two men who subsumed their incompatibility in a strong mutual loyalty. “Vladimer,” he greeted the archduke’s brother. “Welcome back. What’s this about bullets and fires at Bolingbroke Station?”

The archduke said, in a tone of distinct irritation, “You already know more about this than I, Claudius. Sit down. Vladimer has a report for us.”

“I think . . . I will ask Lady Telmaine to explain, since much of what I know I heard from her, her husband, and Baron Strumheller. It is largely thanks to those three I am sitting here now.”

Telmaine froze, first with simple social dismay at being thrust from her observer’s role, then with concern—was he having her tell it because he did not have the strength?—and finally with horror as she understood his strategy. He was inviting—or challenging—her to perjure herself before the archduke. Her tongue suddenly seemed too large for her mouth.

“Strumheller?” said the archduke, sharply. “I had a report he’d died in prison.”

“A necessary ruse, Janus. Telmaine, if you would be so good. Tell my brother the story.”

She heard a double meaning in that, no doubt intended. But it stiffened her resolve. She
would
tell the archduke the story. On her, as much as on Vladimer, lay the responsibility to convince him of the threat.

She sought just the right tone of reliable willingness. “Your Graces, when I was down at the summerhouse, at the last grand ball, Baron Strumheller asked me if I would permit him to escort me back to the city. Lord Vladimer had asked him to consult with my husband—” She faltered, aware that the men around her had stiffened at the mention of Ishmael’s name, and remembering that Blondell at least was hostile enough to have Ishmael charged conveniently with capital crimes. Did these men know that those years going in and out of the Shadowlands themselves had left Ishmael with a dangerous compulsion to return? The people who lived along the Borders, Ishmael’s people, knew it as the Call to the Shadowlands, and dreaded it. But if the archduke did not know, she would not expose Ishmael’s vulnerability. “Regarding a personal matter,” she amended. No one challenged or contradicted her. She continued her account, keeping her tone steady with some effort: arriving at her door to have her daughter snatched from her arms as a token of blackmail. Finding her husband severely beaten—abruptly, she decided to omit all mention of the magic used to save Bal’s life, hers,
and
Ishmael’s. Learning what the kidnappers wanted: the bastard twin sons of Lady Tercelle Amberley, recently delivered by Balthasar and his sister, Olivede. Children whom Balthasar believed to have been born sighted, as no Darkborn had been since the Curse that had created their races.

“Tercelle Amberley,” Rohan said sharply. “Ferdenzil Mycene’s betrothed.” His tone was skeptical, though no more than she would have expected. Tercelle Amberley had been betrothed to the only son of the second most powerful duke in the land, after the archduke himself.

“There have been rumors, Your Grace,” put in Blondell.

Vladimer stirred slightly; Telmaine’s sonn caught a quelling hand gesture toward his deputy.

“There are always rumors,” the archduke said. “Where is Hearne now?”

“On a train to the Borders,” Vladimer said. “Continue, please, Lady Telmaine.”

Charging Ishmael to find her daughter. Waking to the smell of smoke from the blazing Rivermarch, hearing the rainstorm summoned by the Lightborn to drown the fire—making no mention of the magical tempest that had almost sucked her into itself. The return of Ishmael di Studier, burned and suffering from smoke poisoning, to sweep them away to what he believed was a place of safety here in the archducal palace. Ishmael’s arrest for the murder of Tercelle Amberley and the suspected ensorcellment of Lord Vladimer, found unconscious at the ducal summerhouse. Learning where her daughter was, from one of Vladimer’s other agents, and setting out to rescue her.

“Very foolish of you, Telmaine,” Vladimer said, in a tone that was dry, but otherwise not interpretable.

“I am a mother, sir,” she said, realizing only then that he might be referring not to the act itself—of which he knew the true story—but of her daring to lie about it here. But
he
had set her up to do so.

“This ensorcellment,” prompted the archduke, toward his brother.

Vladimer’s lips tightened. “I don’t remember, Janus. I was in my private study, I heard a sound behind me, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in my own bed, four days gone.”

He had said the same to Ishmael, Balthasar, and herself. Balthasar believed that he lied, that the sorcerous coma had followed a sorcerous seduction, cruel and damaging to a man as aloof and distrustful as Vladimer. Did Sejanus Plantageter, with his lifelong knowledge of his brother, hear the lie?

If so, he did not pursue it, “Go on,” he said, equally to Telmaine and Vladimer.

Telmaine did. Though she thought with some despair it seemed a wildly coincidental tale, a fire breaking out in the warehouse at just the right moment to distract her daughter’s guard. No mention of her own walk through the inferno. She prayed that it did not differ too greatly from anything else the archduke might have heard.

It seemed so wrong that she could not tell them what Ishmael di Studier had sacrificed to save her and Florilinde from the flames.

Vladimer said, “You’ll notice a pattern in this. The Rivermarch. Now warehouse thirty-one. Our enemies like fire, as a weapon.”

The other men made noncommittal noises. The archduke said, “I heard about that fire. Malachi is keeping me apprised of the investigation.” He considered a moment, and then leaned toward her. “A word of advice, Lady Telmaine: you might be best to admit to your accomplices. Given the circumstances, it will likely not go too ill with them, or with you.”

What he meant to imply, she realized after a moment’s bewilderment, was that he thought
she
had had others set the fire for her, as a diversion. While she gulped, he said, in that same quietly warning tone, “I am given to understand that some of your personal effects were recovered from the hands of people from the area.”

The reticule and jewelry she had lost during the rescue, including a distinctive silver love knot that Bal had given her during their courtship. Were the archduke and his agents assuming that those had been her bribes? Her mouth was very, very dry at the thought the public agents had been speaking to people who were on the Lower Docks. She’d thought she could not possibly have been sonned walking out of the flames, because of the chaos and turbulence, but suppose—

In undermining her listeners’ disbelief in the potent and strange, she was undermining her own best protection.

“I would be p-pleased to talk to the superintendent, should—should his inquiries not satisfactorily conclude. But I know—no more than I have told you.” Should she appeal for their protection, in the name of her sex and class? She had no idea.

Shaken, she stumbled on with her account, which grew yet wilder toward its conclusion. Receiving word of Ishmael di Studier’s supposed death in prison. Being persuaded by her husband that they should take the day train down to the summerhouse because—because Balthasar strongly believed in Ishmael’s innocence and Vladimer’s importance, because Balthasar had past experience in a small way of being an agent. It all made her Bal seem desperately reckless, whereas while the decision
had
been his, driven by his profound sense of civic duty, it had been made with knowledge from both herself and Ishmael that there were Shadowborn mages at work in the city.

“But why did Balthasar take you with him, Telmaine?” Claudius said, worried. He had been a friend of her father’s; she knew he felt protective of her.