“Mother—” Viyelle’s face flamed with humiliation.
Sanda flicked a hand to silence her, and to her disgrace, Viyelle complied. For a moment. “No, Mother. I am five years past twenty-two. You cannot forbid—”
Torchay touched Viyelle’s hand, calming and stilling her as Kallista spoke. “We have the blessing of the Reinine. If need be, she will make it an order.”
“Even the Reinine cannot order such a thing.” Sanda’s face changed color with her anger, alternating red and pale. “Viyelle is promised to Kendra’s ilian.”
“
No
, Mother.”
Kendra smirked behind their parents, where they couldn’t see her smug satisfaction at Viyelle’s too obvious distress. Viyelle knew that Kendra would adore having her to torment.
“No,”
Viyelle said again. “I will never join Kendra’s ilian. Ever. You cannot force me to it.”
“
Di pentivas
oaths have lately come back into fashion.” Sanda gave a significant look to the bands with their looped chains around Joh’s ankles.
“Mother!” Shock raced through Viyelle, so deep and profound she would have fallen if Joh hadn’t steadied her. He nodded at her faint smile of thanks.
“
Di pentivas
is for men,” Kallista said. “And only for those taken in war or other specific situations. Not for our own daughters—or our sons—even if their choices displease us. And the Reinine can indeed order it. You may not recall, but our ilian was formed last year on the Reinine’s orders.”
Saminda spoke for the first time since greeting Viyelle. “Why?”
Kallista pivoted a quarter turn on her heels to face the prinsep. “Because we have been marked by the One. Our ilian is godmarked, Saminda Prinsep. All of us. Including Viyelle. She is already bound to us by things greater than a temple ceremony. She literally cannot be separated from us.”
“Preposterous.” Sanda Prinsipas crossed her arms.
“Oh?” Viyelle had had enough. She shouldered her way past her mother, striding across the broad, windowless room toward Kendra. She felt the slight dizziness that warned her she was moving too far, and kept going, shoving through it, hurrying, rushing to reach her goal before they could stop her.
She heard one of the men, heard Kallista call her name, but it sounded faint and very far away, the last thing she knew before every muscle in her body wrenched itself apart. She screamed and lost herself in the pain.
“You little idiot.” Joh held her in his arms, smiling his insults down at her.
Kallista stood above him, scowling. “That was foolish.”
“Probably.” Viyelle licked dry lips. Goddess, even her tongue hurt. “Did it work?”
She looked beyond Kallista, saw her parents’ faces—her mother’s scowl, her father’s worry, Mother Saminda’s frown. She patted Joh’s arm and held her hand out to Obed for assistance in standing.
Viyelle faced her parents. “You cannot separate me from my ilian. You cannot choose my life for me. It is what it is.”
“Naitan.” Mother Saminda had clasped her hands together and was tapping her forefingers against her lips. “Your uniform indicates you are from Turysh prinsipality?”
Behind her back, Viyelle hooked her little fingers together in a childish request for luck. One of her parents had moved from denial to asking questions. It was a beginning.
“Yes, Saminda Prinsep.” Kallista moved to stand beside Viyelle. “My parents have been with Riverside Temple in the city of Turysh for many years now. My mother is a healer, specializing in accidental injuries. Torchay’s family are Korbin prinsipality horse breeders, as are Joh’s people in Filorne. Obed is a trader from south of the Mountains of the Wind. We also have three other iliasti who are escorting our daughters to safety.”
“Saminda, you can’t seriously be considering—” Mother Sanda broke in, but cut herself off when her sedil-ilias raised a hand.
“You realize,” Mother Saminda said to Kallista, “that if our daughter insists on going against our wishes, she could well be cut off from
all
family funds.”
Viyelle stiffened, understanding exactly what she meant. It wouldn’t matter, except Grandmother Viyelle had settled that money on
her
, not on the family as a whole. It both hurt and infuriated her that Mother Saminda would threaten to take it away.
“We have more than enough to support our family” Kallista was saying. “Obed’s business is a very profitable one. We do not—”
Viyelle interrupted before Kallista could give anything away. “But I haven’t been supported by the family since I came of age, have I, Mother? I have my own funds. Mine and no one else’s. And they will stay that way. I need nothing else.”
Only the thinning of Mother Saminda’s lips showed her reaction to being thwarted.
“What, exactly does this ‘godmark’ mean?” Father spoke to the group for the first time. “I have heard about it in old stories told by jongliers, but never thought it could be real.”
Kallista’s smile twisted. “Neither did we. The mark is literal. All of us are marked here.” She touched the nape of her neck. “But it could be anywhere. The last godstruck—Belandra of Arikon—and her iliasti were marked here.” She indicated her upper right arm, where Torchay’s rank was tattooed.
Viyelle wondered if his tattoo explained why the mark had moved to its new location. But then he had been the last of them marked before Joh, according to what they’d said.
“Belandra of Arikon is also more than merely a jonglier’s song?” Father looked as if his curiosity might turn his favor.
“Yes.” Kallista said nothing more, to Viyelle’s relief. She didn’t think her parents would soften if they knew Kallista spoke on occasion to a legend, a woman a thousand years dead. “The godmarked carry magic that I, as the godstruck naitan, can use.”
Kendra’s laugh was scathing. “Viyelle has no magic. She never has. She’s never been anything but idle and useless.”
“She has been a courier serving her Reinine with distinction.” Kallista’s voice cut cold and sharp, and warmed Viyelle through.
She
had
been idle and useless. Before. And restless and unhappy. Wanting without knowing what it was she wanted. Joining the courier service had helped. This was better. She had a place where she could be busy and useful, and perhaps even happy.
Kallista was still speaking. “I did not say Viyelle
had
magic, in the way that you mean. Magic she can use. I said she
carries
magic. She
is
magic. All of our iliasti are. She brings something to the whole that no one else can bring.”
That sounded good. Viyelle couldn’t help asking. “What?”
“She—” Kallista stopped in midspeech, her mouth open. She blinked a time or two and Viyelle wondered if she understood what had been asked.
“I mean—” Viyelle edged half a step closer “—what do I bring to the whole?”
“I knew that.” Kallista smiled. “I just had to think how to explain it. Originality will serve. Your magic brings a new way of looking at things. Different solutions to the problem.
“When we were fighting the demons in that flying boat, I tried everything I could think of, and couldn’t get through the protective warding around the boat. When you were bound into the whole, I suddenly saw that I didn’t have to attack the demons directly, or even the boat. I could disrupt the winds that carried the boat and we could defeat them that way.”
Kallista’s smile made Viyelle’s stomach hurt, in a good way. It was pure approval. No backhanded criticism. No “you could have done better.” Just approval.
“We could not have done it without you,” Kallista said. “The whole city could well have gone up in flames.”
“Wait.” Mother Sanda broke through the warmth where Viyelle bathed. “Do you mean to tell me that
you
drove that—that abomination away? Do you expect us to believe it?”
“
We
did, yes. All of us together.” Kallista shrugged. “Whether you believe it or not, that’s your choice.”
“I don’t believe it,” Kendra said. “Viyelle has no magic. She’s a perfect null. Magic won’t have anything to do with her.”
“True once, perhaps,” Kallista said. “But no longer.”
“You were out? In the city?” Father’s voice shuddered with horror. “During the fire attack? Are you mad? You could have been killed.”
Viyelle reached past Joh to squeeze her father’s hand. “I’m a courier, Father. It’s not exactly a safe occupation, either. But at least now, if I’m killed, it serves a purpose. When I was running with the bravos, I could have been as easily killed in all that brawling and dueling. What purpose would that have served?”
“She’s safer with us than anywhere else.” Torchay spoke up for the first time, startling everyone. “Kallista can heal us better and faster than any East naitan I’ve known. I was spitted through with an arrow a pair of weeks ago, and I walked out of healer’s hall before dinner that same day with no more than another pretty pink scar.”
“Viyelle has no magic,”
Kendra said for a third time. Viyelle was getting more than a bit tired of it.
So, apparently, was Kallista, for she rounded on the younger woman. “It is a pity your self-worth is more concerned with what your sedil
doesn’t
have, rather than what you
do
. Can you see magic? See when someone else calls it? Uses it?”
“I can,” Mother Saminda said. “My talent is with animals—training them to obedience—but I can see when magic is called.”
“Then see.” Kallista removed the glove from her left hand—her nondominant hand—and held it up, her eyes on Viyelle.
With a smile, Viyelle reached out to clasp it, but Kallista shook her head. “Give me your fingertips, ilias.”
Not understanding exactly what was wanted, Viyelle let her hand hover in midair. Kallista laid her four fingertips gently against Viyelle’s, holding her thumb back. “Because Viyelle was only marked on Peaceday last, the link between us has not yet fully formed. In three or four more weeks, we’ll no longer have to touch to call magic, and she will be able to move farther away from me.”
“Then why is marriage necessary?” Mother Sanda asked. No one paid her any attention.
Viyelle waited, not sure what would happen. Then something touched her. Inside, where no physical thing could reach. It strummed across her senses, drawing her taut with pleasure, and she gasped.
“Can you see it?” Kallista moved her fingers, opening a small gap between her and Viyelle. The tiny motion stroked Viyelle with pleasure again, so intense she had to bite back a moan.
“I see it.” Mother Saminda nodded her head.
“What are you doing to Viyelle?” Father Vanis demanded.
“The magic feels good,” Torchay said. “When she calls it.
Very
good.”
“But that’s—that’s—” Mother Sanda sounded utterly scandalized.
“One of the reasons marriage is necessary.” Kallista did something and the magic slid back the other way with as much of a delicious caress as it made when she called it out. Viyelle could almost feel it, as if it curled down inside her to sleep, like a cat in a cozy hideaway.
“We are already bound, Prinsipas.” Kallista addressed herself to Viyelle’s birth mother as she slid her glove back on. “The magic has bound us just as it bound the first ilian over two thousand years ago. Do you honestly think that Viyelle could live among us until our link is secure and then go back to the way she lived before? Join some other ilian?
“What other ilian would endure the fact that through the link I know where my godmarked are at all times, and often what they are feeling? Who would allow her to travel with us while we carry out our duties? And if they would allow it, why would she want to be part of an ilian that cared so little about her? Why would you force such a thing on her?
“
We
want her, Prinsipas. We value her.” Kallista smiled, opened her hands to show herself harmless. “We care for her. But you should know this. I said that we did not come here seeking permission. We do not need you to allow this binding. It is done.
“We would like to have your blessing. Viyelle would value your approval. She is your daughter, after all. But if you cannot give it, so be it. It changes nothing.
“Viyelle belongs to the One, and the One has given her to us. She
is
ours.” Kallista ended her impassioned speech—apparently unusual for her, for the men stared at her in something like amazement—and she looked from one to the other of Viyelle’s parents.
Their expressions did not change. Father Vanis still looked worried. Mother Sanda still scowled. Mother Saminda appeared thoughtful. No one spoke.
“So be it, then.” Kallista clasped Viyelle’s hand still hovering forgotten in midair, and gestured for Obed to lead the way from the candlelit room.
“Wait.” Mother Saminda’s voice stopped their retreat. “You cannot blame us for our concern for our daughter, our eldest child.”
Viyelle didn’t think their concern was for her at all. Maybe Father’s was. He did love her and want what was best for her, and he was insightful enough to know her joining an ilian with Kendra in it would be disastrous. But still, his ideas of “what was best” had little in common with her own.
Mother Sanda’s concern was similar, except she was three times as stubborn and never could see what was before her eyes—that Kendra was a vindictive witch. Moreover, Mother
hated
to have her plans thwarted. Mother Saminda’s concern was for the family as a whole first, and then for Shaluine. Sometimes in the opposite order. Viyelle and her sedili came in a poor third.
But Kallista didn’t know that. She stopped. Waited.
“I have heard,” Mother Saminda said, “that you dined privately with the Reinine not long ago.”
“My ilian and I were privileged to join the Reinine and her ilian for dinner, yes.” Kallista sounded cautious. Smart naitan. Clever major.
“With a daughter of Shaluine as ilias, I am sure you would be willing to speak a word into the Reinine’s ear on Shaluine’s behalf from time to time.” Mother Saminda smiled around her forefingers pressed to her lips once more.
“Certainly, Prinsep.” Kallista inclined her head. “Just as I would be happy to speak a word for Turysh and Korbin. And Filorne.”