Lightborn (15 page)

But surely, it, too, could be used. Unlike Ishmael, the Shadowborn had been a mage at least as powerful as she. He had been able to set traps—like the firetraps in the warehouse—that did not need him to be present to trigger. She
liked
the idea, indeed she did, of the Shadowborn ensnared in traps of their own design.

She returned to the least comfortable of the chairs in the room, a straight-backed wooden chair that her deportment mistress would have approved. Settling into it, she leaned her head back, muted her sonn, and brushed the sleeping archduke and the restless Vladimer. She reached farther, sweeping her mage sense over the palace and finding all as she hoped it would be. A little longer stretch, a little greater effort, let her touch her daughters. Reassured, she returned her attention to Ishmael’s gift.

He had given her, indeed, a sense of how he had learned to extend and manipulate his own vitality to achieve insights and effects beyond the physical. It was an unsettlingly masculine vitality and there was a pleasurable indecency in contemplating it. As she had once told Ishmael, had she met him at the age of seventeen, she would have fled. Innocent virgin that she was then, she would not have been able to name the feelings that so disconcerted her—though she would have been well aware of their impropriety. As a married woman, and one with a thoughtful and—sometimes embarrassingly—curious husband, she was well able to name them—and was still well aware of their impropriety.

What she had not expected was the memories. She had forgotten the strange dreams she had experienced the first day after his arrest. She was not sure whether the sharing was intended, or accidental, but she tiptoed delicately amongst them: that rock-hewn old man must be his father, though surely Ishmael in forty years would be of warmer humor. That lovely woman must be his mother. Younger brother and much younger sister—both inheriting from their mother. Sister . . . Ishmael’s first unwitting working of magic, emptying himself into the fluttering chest of the tiny, premature baby. If this was how he had been born as a mage, little wonder he would not let it go. Memories of other healings, many desperate and some less so. The odd magical mischief. The curmudgeonly mage who had taken him on as a student. Phoebe Broome, mageborn daughter of the only seventh- rank Darkborn mage living. She wouldn’t—she
hadn’t
—mages had
no
morals.

She sat a moment with her hands pressed to her heated face. Sweet Imogene, now she had further reason to hope never to encounter Magistra Broome.

Composing herself, she checked upon her charges once more, and turned her attention back to examining Ishmael’s magic. While they plotted Florilinde’s rescue together, she in a carriage on the streets and Ishmael in a prison cell, she had sensed him thinking how well they worked together. And indeed, his use of his magic, the way he used it to shift vitality throughout his body and into the body of another, seemed natural to her. He was primarily a healer, limited to the manipulation of living flesh, which had a pliability far exceeding inanimate matter. Even then he was able to help only a few at a time. But by that power he had defined himself, and she could weep for its loss, as she would never have wept for the loss of her own. Oh, Ishmael.

Sounds in the corridor recalled her to self and place, the first sounds of stirring of the great household. Reluctantly, she turned her attention to the other mage’s gift. There were memories there, too, but fragmentary and repellent and inexplicable. Bal had tried to explain to her how the eye could see much, much farther than sonn could be cast and return, by the
light
of a sun immensely more powerful than anyone’s sonn. He had tried to describe
horizon
,
clouds
,
stars
. She had listened resentfully, knowing he had these descriptions from Floria White Hand. But that line there was
horizon
, where the earth curved away from the sky—or ended, as some said. And those, those were houses, windowed houses like the houses of the Lightborn. And faces—the face of a boy with features—features very like Lysander Hearne’s. The faces seemed to rearrange themselves as they moved—were they all shape-shifters? But no, Bal had talked about
shadows
. A woman’s face, as proud and remote as that of any dowager duchess—evoking in the mage a sense of worship, fear, and hatred. Who was she?

She shivered. She had no idea why the Shadowborn had forced this on her, save to triumph somehow over Ishmael. She had been unwillingly privy to more than one man’s fantasies about the daughter or wife of an enemy. But why such hatred? Because Ishmael was a Shadowhunter, scourge of Shadowborn? Because he was a mage? Some other, as yet unknown reason?

Had their enemy intended to enslave her to his will? He—or another of his kind—had certainly demonstrated himself capable of it; Tercelle had yielded to the lover who had ruined her. And Vladimer . . .

She sensed—she knew—that she should take this information to
someone
who might be able to infer from it what she could not. But Balthasar and Ishmael were beyond her reach, and Vladimer—Vladimer was the last person to whom she could confess. And surely his agents or Vladimer himself would read any letter she tried to send.

No, she was alone with her magic and the knowledge it brought her, as she had been alone with them all her life. Brief, illicit intimacy did not alter that.

Tentatively, she examined the Shadowborn’s magic. Were those bizarre manipulations of vitality to reshape tissue the basis of their shape-shifting? It was repugnant to imagine such corruption of the healer’s magic that Ishmael practiced so diligently. . . . She remembered the moment, after she had secretly granted Guillaume di Maurier a chance of life, when she had finally understood
why
Ishmael had thought his home and inheritance fair exchange for his meager powers.

Could she, with this knowledge, with
her
power, reshape
herself
? She raised a hand, and sonned its familiar shape, remembering the claws that had raked Balthasar’s face as he and the Shadowborn struggled together in Vladimer’s bedroom. Almost, almost, she knew how to do it. Revulsion at the very thought stopped her from full realization. How could anyone, any
thing
, reshape his flesh into something
monstrous
? Even the speculation tainted her with corruption, as had the speculation that she could change the archduke’s mind. She shuddered.

No, she merely wished to learn how the Shadowborn set their traps, so that she might neutralize them if she met them again. Vladimer’s idea that she learn to quench their fires was a sound one. She carefully did not consider what Ishmael might have thought, or said.

But to quench a fire, she might light a fire. In one of the drawers she found several sheets of loose writing paper, and walked over to the unlit fireplace, folding the paper into a small, neat fan. Holding it over the hearth, she concentrated on the sense and essence of fire. With that sense came the memory of the warehouse. Searing heat washed up her face; she barely stifled a shriek and dropped the blazing paper, and staggered back from the hearth clutching her hand, her nostrils full of scorched lace. On the hearth, fire utterly consumed the paper, leaving a smudge of ash.

Several minutes passed before she could compose herself enough to heal her hand and tuck her burned glove up her sleeve. With a trembling hand and a hearth brush, she swept the ash into the fireplace. She wondered what the housemaids would think. Secret messages. Or more likely, love letters. She should disturb the stylus and frame before she left.

She folded another sheet and this time set it down on the hearth, touching it only with a finger. She carefully held in her mind the sense of an unlit fire, then a flame no larger than an orange blossom, and snatched back her hand as the entire paper burst into a bounding blaze. This was more difficult, more unnatural, than she had thought. She would have to lay hand on a supply of paper, one other than expensive palace stationery. Frugal Bal would be appalled. Carefully, she extended her magic, and muffled the blaze into a small flame, the flame into embers, the embers into smoke.

Three sheets of paper later, each of which had flared up like the one before, she heard the sunset bell with a sense of relief she remembered from the schoolroom. She cleared the last of the ash into the fireplace, and replaced the cleaning equipment. She had done what Vladimer asked, tested her ability to quench flame, but she was vexed and dissatisfied at her tenuous control in the lighting; she would need more practice. At the desk, she took care to shift the position of the stylus and writing frame. If only she dared write to Bal, and to Ishmael . . . but no. A few hours’ sleep, and then her vigil would resume.

Vladimer’s summons roused Telmaine two hours into her craved- for sleep. Sweet Imogene, but the only other time she could remember being this tired was the last weeks before Amerdale was born. With her maid’s help, she put on a moderately formal evening dress and set her hair in good order. By the time she arrived at the botanical library, she was walking more or less straight and wishing that Vladimer were not himself ailing; archduke’s brother or no, he was due a piece of her mind for treating her like some clerk to be ordered to his whim.

“Your husband’s letter case was delivered to me,” he said, by way of greeting. “One of them was ciphered.” He had read them, read her husband’s heart openings to the people he loved. “Can you interpret that cipher?”

It was too much to hope that Vladimer be ashamed of himself. “No.”

“What is your husband’s relationship to this Lightborn woman?”

“They are friends from childhood,” she said. Only her mother and her closest friend, Sylvide, knew what she felt about Floria White Hand. Vladimer certainly did not need to.

“She was highly placed in the Lightborn Prince’s Vigilance, was one of Isidore’s special agents. What,” Vladimer said, “would he tell her?”

She caught herself, realizing that there was more staked on this than her womanly pride. “He would tell her,” she said, carefully, “everything he thought she needed to know as a servant of the Lightborn prince.”

“Did he not trust the official channels of information?”

Vladimer might distrust her, but he must
not
distrust Balthasar. “My husband has served several terms as an Intercalatory Councilman. He
is
part of the official channels of information.”

Vladimer braced his cane and pushed himself to his feet. “We have an unexpected visitor. I trust you will tell me if she is who she claims to be.”

He led her through a labyrinth of stairs, halls, and corridors, all the time providing steady commentary on the history of the palace. Merivan’s two eldest sons, reluctant students and with the gruesome tastes of young boys, would have been enthralled. For herself, she found Vladimer in the role of history tutor disconcerting, even without his recital of treachery, villainy, and horrific death.

They turned into a corridor as wide as some dancing halls she had seen, whose finish did not disguise its rough construction. Two massive doors separated it from the rest of the palace; at the moment, both stood open, but the aspect was not inviting. This was no wing for guests, even unwelcome ones. Vladimer jerked his head toward a plain door. “Execution room,” he said, and she thought—with relief—he would not elaborate, but he said, “The skylight can be opened from outside. Been more than a few traitors who’ve ended there, quietly. And a number of criminals.”

And for those he had sent there himself—for he surely had—he showed neither pride nor regret. Something she would not have understood before these last days.

“It’s not always a boon in law to be wellborn,” Vladimer added. “The common-born have protections that may be denied us.”

Any explanation he might have offered was preempted as they turned a corner and arrived at another narrow door. “This needs two hands,” Vladimer said. Telmaine pressed where he indicated, and pulled as she was bidden, until the door opened. She followed him into a tight vestibule, and waited as he struggled one- handed with the mechanism of the inner door. Grudgingly, he yielded up that secret, too, and let her open it.

The room they emerged in was small, and, like the study in Bal’s family home, the far wall was no more than paper reinforced with mesh. She caught her breath in visceral alarm.

“Lord Vladimer,” she hissed. He gestured her to silence and pointed to the wall. She sensed a familiar vitality on the other side. And an equally familiar taint, faint, but detectable.

“Mistress White Hand?” said Vladimer. His sonn, and his frown, prompted Telmaine to nod in confirmation, of that identity at least.

On the far side of the wall, a body stirred. “Balthasar?” Floria’s voice said.

“No. But I have with me his wife.”

“Telmaine?” Telmaine had no desire to respond; she had never accepted that she and Floria should be on first-name terms. And with that taint about her . . . “Telmaine,” Floria persisted, “is Balthasar all right? Where is he?”

“Balthasar is quite well,” she said, politely. “Thank you for inquiring.”

The woman on the other side of the wall gave a choked laugh. “This is hardly a social call, not at this hour, Telmaine.”

“Mistress White Hand invoked the law of succor,” Vladimer said, neutrally. “Arriving at the palace as the sun-bell was tolling. She is in one of the rooms we keep for the purpose. It goes without saying that she brought a light source with her.”

“Who are you, sir?”

“I am acting in the interest of Lord Vladimer Plantageter,” Vladimer said. “You may regard everything you say to me as being said to Lord Vladimer himself.” There was a small table with recording materials against one wall. He set his cane across the table, and eased himself down into the chair. Telmaine stood beside him, her mage sense extended through the wall.