Shadowborn (38 page)

Tempe snorted. “Woman, I’ve an asset of veracity. Whether you’ve lain with him or not, you’ve loved this man as long as I’ve known you. While he was on the far side of sunset, you were safe to be the perfect vigilant. That kind of accommodation has the habit of breaking down, though seldom as spectacularly as this.”

“Thank you for your counsel, Mistress Tempe, and for your intervention tonight,” Balthasar said, steadily, though Tempe’s words had brought a flush to his pale skin. “But until the Shadowborn are dealt with, I shall stay. May I have the letters addressed to me now?”

From his pocket, he slipped a cipher. Tempe’s irritated glance at Floria rebuked their collective negligence in not finding it and questioning him for the key. He worked the cipher one-handed with some dexterity, reading the messages with the fingers of his left hand, lips moving slightly as he committed the translation to memory, and apparently quite oblivious to the activity around him as Tempe’s people gathered up the dead and wounded.

He lacked most of the basic instincts of survival in the Lightborn court, she had to admit. She had to assume that was nurture, not nature: with the exception of his brother Lysander, his lineage was sound, producing generations of civic-minded, intelligent men. Quiet men, with the kind of courage that was proven only on testing, as Balthasar had proven his. The women were less distinguished, but she suspected the diminishing effects of Darkborn expectations of their sex; Balthasar’s small daughters were promising enough.

A daughter of hers would be spared that impediment. Her lineage offered the health and athleticism and survivorship of ten generations of vigilants, plus her asset. The Mother of All determined how those offerings would be endowed—except the last—but at least they would be on offer. Even if a child inherited Balthasar’s blindness, the example of Ishmael di Studier and the Stranhornes had proven that was no handicap.... Though if a child required an ensorcellment to live under light . . .

And there was Telmaine, and Darkborn expectation of sexual fidelity in marriage, which Balthasar, unlike many of his peers, practiced. She did not need Tempe to explain to her that in a court of alliances that formed and dissolved overnight, governed by contracts that could be torn up even before the signatures had dried, that she had learned to prize, even idealize, such loyalty. If she asked him, would it lessen her in his eyes . . . thoughts . . . or herself in his?
Think highly of yourself, don’t you, woman? Assuming he’ll be yours for the asking
. . .

His movement drew her eye as he returned the cipher back to his pocket, and folded up the letters. With a shake of the head in response to Tempe’s extended hand, he pocketed the letters as well. As he drew breath, she converted the silent request into a staying gesture, and motioned forward the secretary who had just arrived. “I think it best we enter this into the record under a judiciary seal.”

Balthasar began to explain how Lord Vladimer had taken the Darkborn mages—and Telmaine—south to the Borders to contend with the Shadowborn, and were requesting Lightborn assistance. Floria, listening, thought,
And first we all three have to survive
.

“Tam’s gone
where
?” Fejelis demanded.

Jovance was a step behind him as he threw open the door to the small bedroom, on the empty bed and empty room. He turned to face her, and she put a strong hand on the center of his chest and firmly pushed him backward over the threshold. “Give us a moment,” she said, over her shoulder. “Get everything together, and tell us as soon as you hear the train.”

As she kicked the door closed, he seized her shoulders, answering her disrespectful handling of her person with his own.
“Where has he gone?”

“He has been
sent
”—she laid stress on the word—“to negotiate with the Shadowborn.”

He should not have such difficulty understanding simple words. He looked around at the bed, its covers trailing off the edge, the sheets still creased with Tam’s restless movements. If he touched it, might it still be warm? “. . . I didn’t even know he’d gone.”

“You’re not a mage, Prince Fejelis.”

The title—reminding him who and what he was, and why this might be a disaster much larger than betrayal by a friend. “. . . Gone to the Shadowborn?”

“Sent,”
she reminded him, forcefully. “It wasn’t voluntary, that I can tell you.”

“But Tam’s—”

“Very strong. My grandfather said seventh-rank potential, sixth-rank fulfilled, fifth”—a sour expression—“acknowledged. But against the high masters, he had no chance.”

“. . . He got us away.” He felt dazed and blundering, and knew it showed.

“Only with the archmage’s help, he told me. They anticipated needing him to do this—and the archmage had taken a liking to you. You remind him of someone from his past.”

“. . . And the Shadowborn?” Fejelis said, disregarding anything else for the moment. “Has he a chance there?”

Her eyes asked him not to make her answer that question. “Not . . . if they’re hostile. Tam . . . said to tell you good-bye, to give you his love, to give you his regrets. He made me promise I’d look after you. Said you’d look after me, Beatrice and his children, the artisans. . . .”

Fejelis felt his shoulders bow under the weight of all Tam’s love and lost hopes.

She tipped her forehead forward, bouncing it lightly on his chest. With him pinning her arms, she could move neither forward nor back. “He didn’t have a choice, Fejelis. If nothing else, you must understand that.”

“. . . Could we go after him?”

She lifted her head, honey-colored eyes narrowing. “
No
, Fejelis. He . . . gave me an impression of what he sensed just before he
lifted
. It’s ugly and it’s very, very strong.”

“Where?”

“West of us. I’d say close to the Darkborn barony of Stranhorne. Directing or driving the force that overran Stranhorne.
No
, Fejelis.”

Can I believe her?
he thought, with a sudden and too-welcome suspicion. Suppose it was the Temple who had found Tam, seized him, and took him unwillingly—Fejelis believed that, at least—back to Minhorne? He’d rather have her a willing traitor and a liar than Tam a traitor, a tool of the high masters, and a prisoner of the very monstrousness that had produced the things they had fought.

She was still in his hands, and he realized that through his grip on her shoulders, through the coarse weave of her sleeves, she could know everything he was thinking. He let her go, like a coal that had fallen into his hand, and at the flicker of pained emotion in her eyes, promptly regretted that. “. . . I’m sorry.”

“I know.” She hesitated. “I should have cloaked my touch-sense, but . . . I had to peek.”

His lips formed something that was not a smile. “Now you know.”

She sighed. “I too wish it had been that way, Fejelis.”

“. . . Is there nothing—nothing we can do for him?”

“No. If the Shadowborn kill him, then we can try to avenge him. It didn’t occur to him to veto that.”

Her smile was wondrously cold, but in her eyes was the knowledge that death was not the worst that might await Tam. The silence was punctuated by a chime. “We need to go,” she said quietly. “The train’s coming.”

He opened the door just as Jade was raising his fist to knock.

“We wait until they stop and blow the whistle twice,” Midha said, as they gathered around the door. “That’s the usual routine if we have to come down to a train in the night. Either the caboose will have been cleared for you, or someone in it will shout instructions.”

They had Jovance’s assurance that there was nothing living nearby except for those on the train and themselves, but Orlanjis was still shivering slightly at the thought of going into the night. Fejelis put a hand on his shoulder, drawing his gaze, full of unspoken questions and uncertainty. Fejelis managed, from somewhere, to summon a grin. “Have you ever actually ridden a Darkborn train?” His brother had shown a surprising—perhaps lifesaving—knowledge of the Darkborn railways, and admitted to a desire to escape court to the railways. “This’ll be a first.”

Orlanjis managed, from somewhere, to summon a pout. “Don’t tease.”

Then the whistle sounded, and Midha opened the door. They dropped a rope with lights down either side of the ladder and climbed down one at a time, with only Jade staying on guard above. Orlanjis suddenly blurted, “I have to get something.”

Midha, frowning, nodded to Sorrel. “Make it quick.”

Lights in hand, she flanked him on his dash underneath the platform to a tarpaulin that, from its profile, covered a stack of drums. He reached underneath and withdrew a bundle of red: Fejelis’s ceremonial caul and jacket, which Orlanjis had hidden in a futile attempt to disguise their identities. He was sweating when he returned, his arm blanched with exposure to shadow.

Fejelis accepted the bundle and tucked it under his arm with a quiet “Thanks.” He could feel the hard wire of the caul against his ribs.

The door to the caboose opened with a crack that made them all jump, and a great fan of light spilled across the gravel and scrub alongside the tracks. A man’s huge silhouette waved at them and a voice barked from inside. “All aboard that’s coming aboard. This train’s got a schedule to keep.” By its pitch it could be man or woman, aged but still strong.

“Les?” said Sorrel. “Les!” Their boarding was briefly obstructed as Midha and Sorrel crowded into the doorway to confirm and shout greetings; then the train whistle blew warning and Midha boosted Jovance aboard. Fejelis and Orlanjis scrambled after. Midha closed the door and bolted it behind them.

“They ordered me out because of this cursed hip,” explained the railway legend in frank disgust to Jovance. “Put Lomand and his gang in place. Didn’t know anything about it until the train stopped and they all got out. I’ll skelp the lot of them if we don’t find our hut entirely as we left it.” She was a small woman whose weight made scarcely a bulge in the netting of the hammock slung for her. It seemed implausible that the deep, forceful voice could be hers, or that the hulking Nathan could be her son. He had an inch on tall Fejelis and at least half his weight.

Then again, Fejelis knew within two minutes of climbing into the caboose that if personality had mass, the engine would have been in for a hard pull on the hills. Celeste inspected them with pale blue eyes, unimpressed. “Who’re these’uns? New blood? Look an unlikely pair. Pair of city lads run away from trouble?”

“In . . . a sense,” Jovance said, with a quick, cautious glance at Fejelis.

Gently, so as to show he had taken no offense, Fejelis said, “. . . I am Fejelis Grey Rapids. This is my brother, Orlanjis.”

She scowled. “If you’re going to pull my leg, my laddie, pull the one that’s not broke.”

His thoughts seemed to hit an unseen obstacle—
thump
. At his side, Orlanjis started to quiver and sank down to rest against the rocking wall of the caboose. Fejelis realized his brother was laughing. Jovance said, tremulously, “It’s so, Les,” and undermined her assertion by collapsing, giggling, beside Orlanjis.

After that, Celeste could not be convinced, particularly since, when she chose to fire some testing questions at them, Orlanjis had the answers. “Why would a prince’s son learn about trains?” she demanded. To that, Orlanjis had no response. To Fejelis he might confide his dream to flee court for a simple life as a railway engineer, but not to others. Fejelis left them to talk trains, glad to have Orlanjis distracted from the horrors of the night. He had heard the undertone of hysteria in his brother’s laughter.

He had no such diversion. “What am I going to tell Lord Vladimer?” he murmured, as he and Jovance sat side by side on the floor, backs against the rough wall of the carriage.

She made a small hand gesture, one he knew from Tam when he sealed a conversation against eavesdropping. He had always thought it was a quirk of Tam’s, but perhaps it was one they had both learned from Lukfer.

“What can you tell him?” she said, close-cropped head bent close. “He should know he’s reaping what he sowed.”

He twisted to face her. “The only thing he is guilty of, by Tam’s testimony, is inaction. The rest was other men’s doing.”

A flash of yellow eyes, unreadable.

He took his best guess at an answer to that flash. “. . . Jovance, I’ll treat with whomever I have to, to achieve my ends.”

“Which are?” she said, neutrally.

He let out a breath. “. . . My position back, of course.” He bounced the red bundle on his hand and had to snatch at it before it unraveled, sending the caul skittering across the cabin. “Unlike Jis,” he said, “I’ve never given any thought to an alternative occupation.” Then, more soberly: “. . . I have to speak to the archmage again. I’d like to be able to convince him that this is folly, but if it’s not—if it’s quite simply that the Shadowborn are too-strong mages and we have the choice of death, enslavement, or collusion—then I must know that. It may be”—he rolled his head on the rough wall to look at her—“that I too must treat with the Shadowborn, to try to secure the best possible terms.”

“For whom? For you? Their brightnesses?”

“. . . For myself, their brightnesses, the palace staff, the artisans and craftsman and merchants and indigents . . . for us, the Lightborn. I would count it my failure if Minhorne suffered what Stranhorne Manor has and I had done nothing to avert the stroke.”

Jovance’s hand opened and closed. Something moved in her face, something grim, powerful. Despite himself, he remembered the viscous red rain of a body ruptured in midair.

“Fejelis,” she said, slowly. “If it’s death or enslavement, I’ll take death. I’ll not have done to me what’s been done to Tam.”

He felt the words physically as a pang in his stomach or beneath his heart. He drew up his feet, bracing himself with his angled legs, and wondered what to say to her. Her determination would not change his decision—could not, even if he knew that by some choice or conciliation of his own, he could save her. Yet to say so aloud seemed cold, and he did not feel cold toward her fate.