“What are you, cripple?” the woman mocked. “Some kind of Darkborn-lover? Some kind of darkness freak?”
Cripple?
Floria remained still. Should she call out, hoping they would give her a clear line as they turned?
The man who held the pry bar lowered it, saying uneasily, “Marle, there’s something off here. Where are his lights?”
“I don’t need lights,” the creature who was not Balthasar said. “It’s complicated to explain, but I must speak to your princess or to your archmage as soon as possible.”
“I don’t think so,” said the man holding him. His movement took Floria by surprise—took them all by surprise. He pulled his captive backward, pivoting. Floria glimpsed a white profile, whiter than any Lightborn she knew. She tracked with the revolver, her wonder intensifying. Why was the mage letting himself be manhandled? She heard the woman say, “But we can’t—”
“Got to,” the man said with a grunt. “Don’t want him telling anyone.” He heaved; Floria glimpsed a shape hurtling into the shadows. She heard a body land and another of those sounds of pain terribly familiar from the far side of the wall.
The revolver cracked before she knew she meant to fire. One of the hanging lights shattered, raining glowing fragments down on the head of the servant who carried the stand.
One of the southerners went for the rifle slung over his shoulder. She shot him in the leg. He fell, shrieking. Then she shot out another of the lights. She didn’t have nearly enough bullets to threaten them all, but the psychological effect should be enough. She said, making sure her voice carried, “Leave one set of lights and go.”
“Mistress White Hand—”
“Go!”
The woman was crouched by the wounded man, trying to get him to release the hands gripping his thigh. “He needs a mage,” she said, urgently.
The man glared out of the circle of lights, his longing to fight palpable even across the distance. But the most belligerent of his companions was wounded, the woman had abandoned all fight, and the other man was standing paralyzed. He seized one of the stands of lights from a servant and threw it down, and then gestured the other man to help the woman. Floria watched them go, unmoving, guard up, revolver trained. Yes, he turned once, his eyes promising vengeance. She had made an enemy there.
And she’d have him up before the judiciar for this night’s work. Even if the judiciary were indifferent to the Darkborn, they’d care that he had intended murder by darkness—never mind that what he intended to murder well deserved it.
On light, deadly feet, she ran forward, revolver raised.
He was still sitting on the ground with the fallen lights beside him. He was holding his left wrist, which must have taken the impact of his fall, in his bandaged right hand. She realized immediately why the southerner had called him “cripple.” She had seldom seen a blind person, and never one whose eyes were not visibly marred by the process that had destroyed his sight. Yet his dark eyes were flawless, with a brown, healthy iris and glossy cornea, except that his pupils were constricted and his wandering gaze did not fix on her.
As quietly as she approached, he was still aware of her. “
Floria?
Was that you speaking?”
She sighted the revolver on the center of his forehead.
“Please,” he whispered. “Of all people, not you.”
Her lights spilled over his face, lighting the pallor of an invalid who seldom saw the sun. A narrow, intense face, a scholar’s—or a fanatic’s. Blinded Lightborn, knowing themselves destined to look on darkness for the rest of their days, frequently committed suicide or lost their minds. On one side of his face she could see the red, shiny marks of newly healed wounds—like knife marks—from his ear to his jaw. His clothing was too thick, too opaque, to be wearable, particularly in this light, and with that uneven, natural dye reminiscent of the little box that Balthasar had given her—and that the Shadowborn had used to craft the talisman that had killed her prince. On his index fingers were matching silver rings. She had seen a pair of rings identical to those when Balthasar had slipped them into the
passe-muraille
to show her. Sitting against the paper wall, he had talked until he was hoarse about his wedding and the marvel that was his wife.
He said, almost in a whisper, “I wrote you a letter when I was thirteen. It was the first love letter I ever wrote. I imagined a meeting between us. This isn’t . . . what I imagined.”
She still had the letter, read once and unopened all those years since. She had been eighteen, Prince Benedict had just been deposed, and childish imaginings had seemed very distant. “No,” she said. “Because you are not Balthasar.”
He took a shallow breath. “I told you what Tercelle Amberley said: that her lover had come to her through the day. I now know who the man—men—were who used her so, how they moved through the day and what they wanted from the Amberleys. I know why the children were born sighted.”
“A Darkborn can no more live in light than a Lightborn can live in darkness.”
“I am living proof to the contrary. Which is why I
must
speak to your princess and the mages of the Temple.”
“I can’t allow that.”
“Floria,” he said, so familiar. “It
is
your voice. Were you with the party that spoke to the archduke?”
“No, I had a separate errand.”
“How much do you know?”
“I know,” she said, “that their brightnesses do not believe in such things as Shadowborn. I know that I do.”
A beat; pain crossed his face. “Prince Isidore,” he said, compassionately.
She did not answer. She would not let him feed on her pain, whatever he was.
She heard the bells change their rhythm, signaling warning to the Lightborn that their part of the night was at an end. If she let him up, if she risked leaving him alive, dared she bring him to the palace for questioning and punishment?
Whom did she serve? Isidore, who was dead, but who had commissioned her to watch out for his son, and Fejelis, whose steadiness in the midst of chaos and disaster had won her respect.
Would it help either of her princes if she took a Shadowborn into the palace?
It would be proof of her innocence, and of Fejelis’s. And a . . . curse on their enemies.
Her voice rasped. “Stand up.”
He did, clumsily, holding his wrist close to his body. She ignored that; injuries could be faked to put an opponent off guard. But his clothing jarred her. Mages could ensorcell clothing to appear opaque, but the cloth usually retained the texture of the sheer cloth most wore.
And he carried no lights, nor did he ask to pick up the fallen stand.
“Turn around,” she said, testing him. “Walk. Back to me—look round, and I’ll shoot.”
He turned without hesitation to face the darkness, and began to walk in the direction of the palace. “Floria,” he said, “I am so very sorry about Isidore, about the tower. If we’d realized faster what it was we faced—”
“Don’t talk,” she said. For all she knew, he had woven an ensorcellment into the words.
He continued half a block in silence, then spoke again. “Telmaine . . . is dead. Part of me simply does not care if you do shoot me. Except that I would rather it not be you. And I have undertaken to do what I can to persuade their brightnesses that another force has been working to destroy the peace between us.”
“Your dukes had more than a little part in it themselves.”
“Yes,” he said. “Duke Mycene is dead—he faced down a Shadowborn. Duke Kalamay—I think the archduke will deal with him as soon as he can, but his power is compromised. Telmaine—I don’t know how much you heard, how much they told you, but my wife was a mage.”
“A
mage
?” Prejudiced, proper, jealous Telmaine . . . She reminded herself, forcibly, that this
could not be
Balthasar, but why should any impersonator think she would care about Telmaine, with whom she had no more than a speaking acquaintance?
And who could not be dead, whatever he said, because she had freed Floria from her prison before her lights ran out.
He was speaking again to the night before him in as bleak a voice as she had ever heard. “She had had no training, and she went up against—fought—a Shadowborn. I don’t know what he did to her, but something went wrong with her magic. I can’t believe she would willingly have harmed the archduke, much less nearly kill him.” He halted without warning, and she nearly jammed the revolver into his back. “Keep moving,” she said.
“She healed him, but they took her prisoner. Took her prisoner and put her in a room and opened it to the light—they executed my beloved wife for sorcery, and I was not there to protect her,” he finished in a gasp, suffocated by pain.
She remembered Telmaine—or the voice that sounded like Telmaine—saying, “Tell Balthasar we spoke. It is very important.”
If this were a Shadowborn, it might think to disarm her with Balthasar’s grief, not knowing that she would know it lied. Or be soliciting information, if Telmaine were, implausibly, a mage. “Keep moving,” she ordered.
After that, he did not speak again until they reached the walls of the palace and passed through into the gardens. And then she saw him falter before her, heard him faintly breathe, “Sweet Imogene. I never imagined . . .” She did not have time to walk him around to the rear, bring him close to the terrible ruin of the tower, which was just as well—if he were Shadowborn, she would not give him the chance to gloat, and if he were not, if he were, impossibly, Balthasar, then she could not inflict such pain on him.
When,
she wondered,
did I begin to doubt?
Since she was not in attendance on their brightnesses, she had not come to the door of greater privilege, but one of the doors of lesser privilege favored by the vigilance, because it gave them quick access to most of the places vigilants needed to be, including their own internal barracks. At the top of the steps four vigilants stood within a shelter of light, watching them. She recognized Captain Lapaxo, the most senior surviving of the captains. Parhelion had died at his post with Prince Isidore. Beaudry had apparently committed suicide or been murdered after making an attempt on Fejelis’s life. Although, given that Rupertis had apparently transferred his allegiance to Prasav, perhaps
he
was in charge of the vigilance and Lapaxo exiled to guard duty. The captain’s eyes, tired and suspicious, moved from Balthasar to Floria and back again, seeing exactly the same anomalies she had. “Mistress White Hand,” he said, neutrally.
“I need a mage to question this man, urgently.”
Her prisoner said, “A lineage mage won’t be able to—”
“Would you kindly
be quiet
,” she said, tense with doubt and the potential for disaster.
Lapaxo said, “Go through; wait inside.” She heard him ordering one of the other three, the last two to take down the lights and close up, to follow. He joined them, flanking Floria and watching her prisoner. It was easier to think of the prisoner as such now, to believe that whatever he was, it was not what he appeared to be. Out in the night . . .
Inside was a short, wide vestibule with another vigilant post at the end. To those guarding it, Lapaxo signaled,
Bring a mage
. A woman disappeared through the door beyond the post.
“I would quite like to sit down,” her prisoner said diffidently.
“It won’t be long,” she said.
It wasn’t. The vigilant returned not only with a mage wearing the badge of the palace judiciary, but with Tempe Silver Branch of the judiciary—not mageborn, but magically endowed to detect lies, as Floria was magically endowed to detect poisons. The mage was less than Floria had hoped for, merely third rank, born of the lineages, and quite likely as young as her oval face. She was dressed entirely in mourning red—tunic, trousers, headband, and gloves. Her wheat-colored hair was meticulously braided into multiple neat loops, attesting to vanity, poise, and an understanding of the need to maintain appearances. Despite that understanding, she had something of the harrowed, heavy-eyed look common to many of the younger mages in the aftermath of the tower’s destruction. Though where most of them looked merely stunned, her eyes smoldered with rage.
Floria said, “Magistra, could you please tell me what this man is. I warn you, he may be dangerous.”
“How so?” said Lapaxo, and she realized that her prisoner was not the only one under suspicion.
“He claims to be Darkborn. Indeed, he claims to be a close friend of mine. That is, as we all well know, impossible.”
“Even so, you don’t quite believe that,” Tempe said, quietly.
Floria laughed bitterly. “My notion of what is and is not impossible has been somewhat tried of late.”
“Where did you go tonight?” Tempe said.
“To warn someone that the southerners might be about to take an unwelcome interest in them. I would prefer not to say who.” Especially not in the company of a mage. “I will say—listen to me, Tempe—that the party I went to warn constitutes no danger whatsoever to any of their brightnesses, the vigilance, or the Temple.”
“Truth,” said Tempe, somewhat reluctantly. She turned her attention to Balthasar. “Who are you?”
Floria had been vainly hoping that she would not start with that question.
“My name,” said her prisoner, “is Balthasar Hearne.”
Both Lapaxo and Tempe looked at her; they recognized the name. The mage did not. She had not moved, had not shown any indication of initiative. Absorbed by her own anger, she would do nothing without a direct order.
“. . . And, yes, I am Darkborn.”
The mage’s lip curled. “Do you want me to examine . . . him?”
There was a silence. Tempe said, as uncertain as Floria had ever heard her, “He is speaking the truth—as he believes it. Lapaxo—”
Lapaxo returned the mage’s glare with his own, one of a captain of vigilants. She was the one who dropped her eyes. “Please, Magistra.”