Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (48 page)

“You are the first to ask that,” Rashan replied,
chuckling. “Is it any wonder that this Empire is slipping away as my conquests
come undone? Even Iridan has yet to overcome his shock enough to get to that
one. His mother is immortal—a demon, if you will—like me. Unlike me, she was
born that way. Among the small community of immortals where I met her, they
call it being ‘pureborn.’ I had hoped being half pureborn would give Iridan a
better chance of being born pureborn himself, but alas …”

“I shall want to know more about these other immortals
at some point, but there are more pressing concerns at hand,” Brannis
responded.

It seemed that Rashan had an unlimited capacity to
overwhelm his thoughts. There were a hundred things he needed to know, to
arrange, to investigate, and to plan.

“Agreed,” Rashan said, “so let us—”

“So what did he say?” Brannis broke in, deftly setting
aside one hundred things at once. Men had their weaknesses, and for all his
troubles with magic, Brannis’s greatest weakness was one particular sorceress,
as it had been ever since that one summer …

*
* * * * * * *

“So what did he say?” Brannis had asked Juliana Archon
on that day, trying to control himself from snatching the parchment from her hand
and reading it for himself.

He had pulled her aside after her early afternoon
lesson in interpreting runes. The messenger had arrived mid morning, and she
had opened it as soon as their alchemy lesson had ended. Brannis had tried to
talk to her as soon as he had gotten word, but she had played coy and managed
to avoid him thus far.

“Oh, are you referring to
this
?” Juliana
replied, offering the parchment to Brannis and snatching it away when he made a
grab for it. “I could not begin to imagine.”

She grinned mischievously and Brannis melted just a
little. He had grown completely incapable of getting mad at Juliana and was
hopelessly enchanted with her. She was still a bully and a troublemaker, but
she had left Iridan alone since the day Brannis had humbled her winters ago.
And while she was still tall for her age and best described as rail-thin, she
had acquired the curves of a woman and had taken them as her preferred weapon
over her fists. It was a good thing, too, for while at eight summers old, Brannis
was a hand taller and a gallon or two heavier, now he was nearly a head taller
and half again her weight.

Brannis made another attempt at the parchment, and
Juliana turned, holding it at arm’s length with her body blocking the path to
it. When Brannis grabbed her arm, she shifted it to her other hand, giggling as
Brannis pulled her around by the wrong side. She twisted away, but relented
when Brannis caught hold of her other arm, relaxing back up against him and
holding the parchment angled so that he could read it over her shoulder.

Brannis realized he had been tricked when he found
himself with his arms wrapped around a willing Juliana, her back pressed
against his chest and the scent of the honeysuckle perfume in her golden-red
hair filling his nostrils. Brannis had always been the tallest of the boys his
age at the Academy and mature for his age, but he had also reached adolescence
first. With a deepening voice and a jawline that was, if not bearded, at the
very least clearly unshaven, he seemed much older than the other boys. As the
girls of his class gained a more adult awareness of the boys, Brannis was the
first target of their youthful daydreams. Tall, handsome, and athletic, he was
everything most girls could hope for, and Juliana was no exception.

“So this is it?” Brannis asked, after scanning the
document. “Everything is settled now?”

“Yes,” Juliana replied simply. “I get to keep you.”

She grinned and spun free of Brannis’s loosened grasp,
then leaped up into his arms and crushed him in a fierce embrace, the parchment
still clutched in one hand. She squealed in delight, unable to contain her
excitement.

Brannis was nearly bowled over but stumbled and
managed to keep his footing. A shoulder under his chin was nearly choking him,
but he managed to wrap his arms around her and support her weight, easing her
to the ground once she had calmed down enough to relax her grip and let him go.

“Oh, Brannis, it will be wonderful. I can stop
worrying now that some other girl will get you for a husband. I cannot wait for
us to finish up and graduate. These next five winters will be an eternity!”
Juliana gushed, staring up at Brannis with eyes that were seeing him as perhaps
a bit more than he actually was. While she would graduate in four summers,
Brannis was a year younger, so they would have to wait until both finished
their studies.

“It is only four winters and two hundred nineteen days
actually,” Brannis said, grinning.

While he was less outwardly overcome with elation, he
was still both relieved and overjoyed that Juliana was going to be his wife one
day. Both of them had known from a young age that their marriages would be
determined for them by the Imperial Circle’s blood-readers, who oversaw the
couplings of all the scions of the major bloodlines. The blood-readers had
ensured the purity of Kadrin Empire’s sorcerous houses for centuries, keeping
the most promising blood intermixed. Despite his painfully slow development
magically, the high sorcerer’s prophecy kept Brannis’s name high among the
potential mates for young sorceresses. As granddaughter of the high sorcerer,
Juliana Archon had been deemed a suitable match.

Houses Solaran and Archon had been crossed so many
times that the rivalries that appeared on the surface never ran too deeply.
While both were competitive and proud, the familial links were too numerous to
allow for things to grow too contentious, and violence had thus been kept
largely in check among the Imperial Circle for generations, as the two
strongest houses allied themselves in all but name. Had either of them the
patience to research their family histories, Brannis and Juliana could have
figured that they were cousins some three generations removed.

“Well, anyway, these are going to be the longest four
winters and however many days you just said of my life,” Juliana replied,
punctuated by an overly dramatic sigh.

She twirled away from Brannis’s embrace, causing the
green silk skirts of her dress to billow out in a spiral to keep up with her.
While the Academy provided room, board, and clothing to all students, many of
the wealthier ones still saw to their own wardrobes, especially among the
girls. Juliana always preferred to adorn herself in the latest fashions,
shunning the plain grey and black of the Academy’s official wardrobe.

“Nothing wrong with that, you know. We have all the
days we could ever hope for. Who says we should not enjoy them now?” Brannis
said, smiling cockeyed at Juliana, challenging her feigned martyrdom.

Unlike his newly betrothed, Brannis wore nothing but
the plain garments the Academy provided. He stood out in every other way, for
better or worse, and did not wish to further separate himself by flaunting the
Solarans’ immense wealth. He was the best student in class in every subject
that did not actually involve performing magic, and even at that, he was
technically flawless, just lacking completely in native talent. He was also the
largest boy his age, at least in height, and was always favored in the yard
when the boys gathered to sport. More than one slight about his ineptitude with
the aether had been repaid in bruises or a bloodied nose by “accident” in the
Academy’s courtyards.

“Why, Brannis … are you suggesting you intend to court
me?” Juliana asked in mock surprise.

In truth, she had been trying to get him to court her
for quite some time and found his stubborn naiveté incongruous with his
otherwise quick wit. It did not help matters that half the girls in their class
made eyes at him and smiled whenever he looked their way, but unlike the rest
of them, Juliana was not only serious but had reasonable grounds to believe she
was entitled to him. Rumors had been circulating for at least two summers that
she was aware of, regarding the two of them being matched. It made sense to
her, what with them each being the youngest of one of the major bloodlines—her
being the granddaughter of the high sorcerer and Brannis’s father being in the
Inner Circle.

“If you would rather I did not, we could always just
wait until our wedding. No one would—”

“No, I never said that,” Juliana interrupted, just a
little too quickly to maintain her facade of aloofness.

Brannis’s smile widened just a hair. “Very well, then,
yes. I shall court you properly, starting tonight. Meet me at the stables after
dinner,” Brannis told her.

He had been fending Juliana off halfheartedly for what
seemed like ages, waiting to find out whether she was going to be the one. He
found it awkward talking to other girls, but Juliana was different. He had
wanted to court her since his baser urges had started suggesting that such
interests ought to be among his priorities, but he did not know how he would
have handled it if he had been promised to another. Dinarah Gardarus seemed as
likely a match for the blood-readers to make, and Brannis did not want to end
up caught between her and Juliana if it came down to that. While Brannis had
befriended nearly every boy his own age, he was not sure Juliana had any true
friends. Instead she kept company with a small coven of rivals, each constantly
vying to outdo the others. They were the highborn girls, all either from the
major bloodlines or the wealthier lesser lines. Brannis preferred to keep well
clear of them when they were all together, and wanted nothing to do with them
fighting over him.

Brannis also suspected that long before dinner,
Dinarah Gardarus would find herself someplace quiet and private to have a long,
loud cry. For all that she did to his brain when she was there in front of him,
Brannis was still aware of Juliana’s faults. She could be downright cruel when she
chose to be.

That night, Brannis and Juliana had ridden down to the
pier at Solaran Estate. Brannis had been surprised how well she rode, since she
seemed to spend much of her time at more idle pursuits. She had changed out of
the green dress she wore earlier and had donned riding leathers, along with a
white silk blouse covered by a black vest, along with a hooded traveling cloak.
As ever, her reddish-gold hair was unbound, and it trailed behind her as they
rode, occasionally getting in her face as the winds gusted; she seemed not to
notice, or at least did not pay it any heed.

They took the long way to get there, skirting the
pastures and grasslands of Solaran Estate’s off-city side rather than taking
the streets. They gave their borrowed horses rein to run and raced once they
were safely away from the Academy and could afford to be less than stealthy.

They tied the horses near the pier, and Brannis took
them out on one of the small rowboats his family kept for enjoying the peace of
the lake, either for fishing or just enjoying the lake for its own sake. It was
small and sturdy, ringed around the edge with tiny runes that would keep it
from tipping far enough to be dangerous. And while many of Brannis’s kin would
have propelled it with magic, it was nonetheless kept equipped with a
functioning set of oars, which Brannis put to their proper use.

As he rowed them out to Dragon’s Eye Island, the
little forested oasis at the center of Dragon Lake, he bid Juliana look in the
satchel he had brought. Inside was a bottle of ice wine he had pilfered from
the Academy’s wine cellar, and a rolled-up woolen blanket that was wrapped
around a pair of the fancy goblets that were kept aside for when the Academy
was expecting important guests. Juliana looked up from inspecting the satchel’s
contents and smiled her approval. It was so quiet and peaceful out on the lake
that they had hardly spoken a word since Brannis began to row. The rhythmic
slosh of the oars as they entered and exited the water was the only sound.

The late-spring air was still warm, even as dusk set
in and the stars came out as they made their way across the lake. The breeze
carried only the faintest of chills that made Juliana huddle beneath the cloak
she had worn. She might have worn something prettier than the riding gear she
had chosen, but Brannis had told her to meet him by the stables. She had
gathered that he was going to have them ride somewhere. It might not have been
a masterwork of deduction, but it had still made him feel like she shared his thoughts.

As for his plans for the evening, he left her guessing
at the details. He had read enough storybook romances to know that anticipation
and mystery were all but essential. Little had he realized at the time, but
Juliana had plans of her own, far more adventurous than his.

 The maids that kept up Archon Estate were
incorrigible gossips. Juliana’s ladies’ maids and the girl who cleaned the
floor where her room was had taken a rather keen interest in her education
while she was home from the Academy one winter. After comforting her through
the confusion and worry following her first moonflow, they had taken her into
their confidence as if she had just passed an initiation rite. No longer
guarding their tongues in the presence of “young ears,” Juliana had gained a
courtesan’s education by the time she arrived back at the Academy that
springtime.

Brannis could see Juliana's breath come quick by the
time they neared the island. With no oars to busy her hands, she fidgeted in
her seat, some thought clearly occupying her brain. That night, she told
Brannis that he was the kindest, bravest, all-around best boy—no, strike that,
he was a man—she had ever met. The Inner Circle had seen fit to let her have
him, but she would be flogged before she would wait nearly five winters to
claim him.