Lightborn (6 page)

Floria studied the broad sullen face of the woman on the dais, and wondered if she still would not. She feared otherwise. Fejelis had survived with his health and spirit intact, but with a new wariness. As far as she knew, he was close to no faction at court, neither south nor north, which might protect him from becoming ensnared in the enmities of his allies, but gave him no allies against his own enemies. But until Orlanjis came of age, Fejelis should be safe—or at least as safe as his father—or at least from that quarter.

She shifted her eyes back to watch Fejelis weave through a line of other dancers, the swift turns and partner exchanges evoking the disorder of foam spilling onto the shore. Yes, he would be his own man, and not a puppet of the southern factions. But was he his father’s as much as Isidore seemed to think? The Prince’s Vigilance monitored his activities, of course, but he could be disconcertingly adept at dodging their observation, when he so chose.

Again the prince’s unsettling perceptiveness. “I’m well aware that he has affiliations he prefers I not know about and far more radical ideas than I. But I’ve never believed that policy should outlive the prince. The world changes, year by year, for all we deny it. If nothing else, our friends on the other side of sunset would see to that.”

The intrepid, inventive Darkborn, who filled the night with the sounds of their industry and, with their light-sealed factories and day trains, were encroaching upon the day. Their inventions crept across sunset, no longer merely affecting the lower classes. Several of the costumes down on the dance floor were dyed with by-products of Darkborn chemistry. The Vigilance carried guns made according to Darkborn designs; alas, so did their enemies. Even the precariously static world of the Lightborn would not remain unchanged, with them near.

“Did your Darkborn friend recover his daughter?” Isidore said, unexpectedly.

She glanced at him; she had forgotten that she had told him about Balthasar’s troubles. “I haven’t been home since shortly after Ishmael di Studier took him and his family to the palace, thinking they’d be safe there.” She would have been more worried about Balthasar had not the influx of visitors—southerners—for the ceremony kept her preoccupied with the well-being of the prince. Except for intervals of snatched sleep, she had been standing guard and tasting food for days.

Tomorrow she should be able to stand down, if only for a few hours. Then she could return home, send a message by day courier to the archducal palace. Find out what had happened to Bal, to Florilinde, even to Balthasar’s prickly wife.

Isidore said, “Fejelis thinks the Darkborn are most important for our future.”

She swung her head to look at him. He half turned toward her, his patrician face in three-quarter profile. The molding of the caul picked up the lines of his cheekbones and followed his brows. They exchanged glances, hers dubious, his calm, a gray so light as to be silver, like mirrors. About some things, even a prince could not speak openly.

Seven hundred years ago, the last remnant of Lightborn mages had thrown themselves on the mercy of the strongest chieftain of the sundered lands. From their bargain had arisen the compact that governed the use of magic in the affairs of those without magic, the earthborn, to this day. It prohibited mages from using their magic in their own interest where earthborn were involved. It prohibited mages from using their magic either for or against earthborn, except at the behest of another earthborn. It established a complex and rigid set of laws as to when and how an earthborn might righteously contract the services of a mage. Any acts under contract were then the responsibility of the earthborn; the mage was made immune by law.

Thus the mages had survived, and the chieftain had ended his days as master of the daylight lands. Would he have made the compact, Floria wondered, if he had envisioned that the few dozen desperate petitioners would become thousands, with some amongst them with the power to become essentially immortal, or conjure up a storm, or—it was rumored—reverse time itself ? If that chieftain had envisioned that one day the earthborn palace, large as it was, would be . . . shadowed . . . by a Temple tower four times its height? Or that the transfer of wealth from hundreds of years of contracts would leave his state a hollow shell?

Had he known that, he should have had his petitioners’ hearts pierced then and there, or been deserving of righteous deposition.

The Darkborn had resisted making such a bargain, had thrust magic to the periphery of society, and had nonetheless prospered. Idealistic and radical factions within Lightborn society wished to follow their example, and escape their dependence on magic, a dependence that extended—she glanced upward—to the very lights they lived by, through the night.

The dance ended. Fejelis had no sooner bowed to his partner than another southern cousin pushed through the throng to claim him. She was as fair as the first had been dark, but no less shapely and supple. Floria sensed a campaign, Helenja’s, or someone else’s. From his not-so-casual remark about his son, Isidore seemed at ease with the idea that Fejelis might ally with a southerner.

Floria was not, but then she was the one who, for eighteen years, had tasted every dish the prince ate and cup he drank. Fejelis would be safer if the southern faction thought he could yet be brought to heel—unless the northerners turned against him, determined that there would be no more southern alliances.

Even the Prince’s Vigilance could fail in its task.

“I do worry about him,” Isidore said. “His strongest alliances are not within court, but outside—though there are some that are potentially formidable—” She glanced aside at him, and caught the suggestive glint of a silver gray eye. None of the prince’s associations known to the Vigilance could be described that way. Disruptive, yes, formidable, no. Isidore continued. “It is time he built stronger support of his own within court; he will need it when this job falls to him.”

Useless to protest that statement; it was the reality and they were realists. There would come a time when age or cumulated mistakes made Isidore’s deposition more acceptable than not. There would come a time when even the Prince’s Vigilance would stand aside, for the good of the state.

But it should be years yet. Years.

“He’s in danger of being too careful,” Isidore stressed. “Of not taking the risk of letting people close. Of not trusting people he should.”

This was, she thought, a disturbing conversation to be having on the evening of the heir’s coming of age. Fejelis was now considered able to rule without a regent. There were those who would risk an unrighteous deposition to have a prince on a string.

Did
anyone have Fejelis on a string? What was the formidable association Isidore had alluded to? Isidore himself did not seem perturbed by it—but why alert her?

“He has reason, of course. So I’ve been having a quiet word with a few people
I
trust,” the prince said.

He said little after that, and presently left, his guards following. Floria knew she had received—along with those other few—a commission, though a commission to do what, she was not sure. She let the prince go down the stairs, and then padded along the corridor to a locked cabinet where the Prince’s Vigilance kept some of its provisions. Find water and a glass, mix in one of her own preparations to settle her stomach. In a while, she would be summoned to taste the food and drink the prince was taking into his chambers with him, and then, perhaps, if her indigestion, or this last conversation, allowed, she might sleep.

Had she been but a little quicker, she would have escaped.

It was not to be. As she closed her door, on her way to visit her daughters, she heard footsteps on the stairs at the end of the hall. Superintendent Malachi Plantageter, with Ishmael’s lawyer trotting at his heel.

An impulse to dive into the bedroom, squirm childlike under the bed, and pretend not to
be here
died stillborn. “Lady Telmaine Hearne?” said the superintendent, though he well knew who she was. They had exchanged words when he arrested Ishmael. “Is this an inconvenient time?”

“I was just going to my sister’s to visit my children,” Telmaine said, coolly. “But I suppose this will not take particularly long.” She stepped back and let the two men in, the long-boned man with the distinctive Plantageter nose—which he came by quite legitimately, if through the distaff line—and the small rotund lawyer.

“I understand your husband is out of the city,” the superintendent said. “Would you prefer that one of your brothers or your brother-in-l aw were present?”

She couldn’t imagine which would be worse, to have her rigid eldest brother, Duke Stott, either of her two smart and mocking younger brothers, or her sister’s husband, Lord Judiciar Erskane. Merivan’s husband would be her best ally against the law, but if anyone found the missed stitches in her lace of lies, it would be he. She shook her head.

“The archduke said he thought you would prefer to have your own legal representation,” Malachi Plantageter continued. She sonned the lawyer, noting his shrewd face with mixed relief and apprehension. Di Brennan was not her family’s usual lawyer, but he represented the same firm, and he and Balthasar had spoken about Ishmael’s arrest; he knew at least part of the story—one of the stories.

“Thank you,” she said meekly. “What would you like to speak to me about?”

Without a word, without a theatrical flourish, the superintendent held out both hands. In one was a lady’s reticule; from the other dangled a silver love knot.

She knew her hands would tremble, but she had no choice but to accept both. She laid her hands down atop the reticule, the love knot held in her closed fist.

“Is there anything you would like to tell me, Lady Telmaine?” he said quietly.

“I thought I had lost them,” she said.

“How much money was in the reticule?”

“Sixty, sixty-five.” She ventured a small shrug of the shoulder, the insouciance of a lady to whom money comes easily.

“Perhaps,” di Brennan said to the superintendent, “you might explain.”

Plantageter leaned back with a sigh that she felt in her own weary bones. “Yesterday evening young Guillaume di Maurier was found seriously wounded—he had been shot in the abdomen.” The lawyer’s brow drew briefly in sympathy. “I sent one of my agents to take a statement. Di Maurier said he had been searching for a lost child—you may know he acts in an irregular capacity for Lord Vladimer—and had traced her to a warehouse in the Lower Docks. It was while he was there he was shot. He had given this information to the child’s mother with the expectation that she and”—a slight emphasis on the contested title—“Baron Strumheller would act to free the child. As the young man seemed in extremis, the agent did not tell him of Strumheller’s arrest. A kindness, you understand, if he were to die.” Telmaine made a small sound in her throat; Plantageter paused, awaiting her question, but both sonned di Brennan’s warning headshake. Breathing shallowly, gripping Bal’s love knot, she held her peace.

“That was around one fifteen of the clock. A little after half past, a coachman delivered a lady matching Lady Telmaine’s description to the Upper Docks. Further reports had the lady walking in the direction of the Lower Docks. At around two of the clock, fire broke out in a warehouse in the Lower Docks. An extremely fierce, hot fire. One or two witnesses claim they sonned a woman carrying something from the direction of the fire, but in such conditions such testimony could be challenged. Somewhat later, the lady returned to the waiting coach, smelling strongly of smoke and with a sick child in her arms. She asked to be driven to the archducal palace, claiming to have lost her money but to be acting in Casamir Blondell’s interest. Out of sympathy for the child, the coachman agreed. He was paid on arrival, and the cloak he had lent to keep the child warm returned. I received the information from Casamir Blondell that the child Florilinde Hearne had been restored to her parents. He knew of no female agent assigned to work the docks.”

Telmaine controlled her breathing and her expression with an effort. He waited; she had a sudden impression of a cat waiting by a mousehole, and felt a flare of unwise temper at the idea he should toy with her.

“I also received a message from the prison that Baron Strumheller had collapsed and expired at about the same time the warehouse burned. However, I now know that is not so.”

“In what way?” said di Brennan, frowning.

“He is not dead.”

“The order of succession has been dispatched, and we are making the arrangements required to execute the late Baron Strumheller’s will.”

It was, Telmaine thought, a cat-to-cat contest now, and she was very glad to crouch quietly in her mousehole.

“I would hold on that will,” Plantageter said, with a trace of humor. “Lord Vladimer Plantageter arrived by the train from the coast just after sunset tonight. By his account Lady Telmaine, her husband, and Baron Strumheller interrupted an attempt on his life and killed the sorcerer responsible. Strumheller had escaped prison with the collusion of the prison apothecary, whom I believe he had known in the past.”

“I am truly gratified,” di Brennan said after a pause. Telmaine heard genuine emotion in his voice, and her heart warmed to him. “I have known Ishmael di Studier, boy, man, and baron, since I was a student, and despite all his irregularities, I have never felt that by serving my client I was not serving justice.” Then the unguarded moment passed; the lawyer returned, keen-edged. “Then the charges are dropped?”

“We must discuss that at a later time, Master di Brennan,” Plantageter said.

Smoothly, the lawyer accepted that with a murmured “Of course.”

“The charges must be dropped!” Telmaine said, unable to restrain herself. “We know who tried to kill Vladimer and we know who killed—who must have killed—Tercelle Amberley.”