Shadowborn (29 page)

She jerked off her red glove and tucked it into her belt. “Fine,” she said. “Hold him.”

“There’s no need,” their prisoner said.

“I’ll determine the need,” the mage said, shortly. “Hold him.”

Floria took one arm, Lapaxo the other. The mage said to Balthasar, “I’m going to touch your face.”

“I know,” he said. “My sister is a third-rank mage.”

The touch was almost a slap, though it quickly softened as she took hold of herself, her hand molding to his cheek. Floria watched her face as her magic penetrated his thoughts, watched her expression shift from anger to confusion and then, abruptly, to deep pity. Floria could not see his, though he shivered a little in their grip.

The mage dropped her hand and stepped back. “He needs a healer, not me,” she said, staring at their prisoner in undisguised pity and dismay. “He’s—he’s quite mad. He is convinced he
is
Darkborn. He believes he was held prisoner by these Shadowborn, ensorcelled by them, made able to walk in daylight. He believes he is on a mission to prove that the Shadowborn exist and are responsible for everything that has happened. He believes he is blind, believes it so strongly that I cannot see through his eyes, yet he behaves as though he is able to see. Something terrible must have happened to him. . . . If you were to make inquiries among the people who lived around the tower, you might well find someone who knows him.”

Their prisoner made a sound that might have been the ghost of a laugh or the ghost of a sob.

Tempe said, “Does he intend anyone harm?”

“No,” she said, with certainty. “He wants to save us—Darkborn and Lightborn both. Even the Shadowborn. He cares. He cares passionately. And he grieves.” To their prisoner, she said, awkwardly, “I’m so sorry.”

Floria said, “Do you sense any ensorcellment about him?”

“No!” The mage bristled at that question, taking it as accusation.

As a pure-lineage mage, she would not.

“Thank you, Magistra,” Lapaxo said. “That answers some of my questions.”

She dipped her head, turned away, and left at a walk just shy of a run, fleeing the presence of a man driven mad by tragedy.

Their prisoner sounded shaken. “She’s wrong. I’m not mad.”

Lapaxo said, tiredly, “We’ll hold him here, under guard. Find his family in the morning.” If they had survived. And even if they had survived, what was the likelihood of their being able to pay for a healer to restore a mind so broken?

Yet that voice. That manner. Every word he had spoken, every action he had taken,
was
Balthasar. Perhaps she was as mad as the mage said he was. She said, choosing her words carefully, “May I look after him? I brought him here.”

“And why was that?” Tempe said, promptly.

“I couldn’t leave him out there,” she said, truthfully. “We were due to hand over the night, and he’d already run into some of Sharel’s retinue, who’d been amusing themselves by battering in Darkborn doors.”

“They came through half an hour ago,” Lapaxo said. “Spitting fire and swearing vengeance against you.”

Their prisoner said to Tempe, “Then I wish to lay charges against these four individuals, by the compact of eight sixty-four, dealing with matters of legal transgressions across sunset. The charges will certainly involve property damage and assault.” He held up his wrist, the swelling and new bruising prominent on the pale skin. “I was in imminent danger when Mistress Floria stepped in: by their words and behavior, they did not intend me to survive as a witness. There may be further charges, depending on what else they did.”

For once, Tempe seemed at a loss, caught between the insistence of her asset that he believed every word he said, and her own certainty that he was severely delusional. She said, weakly, “I’ll . . . send a clerk to take a statement.”

“Thank you,” said their prisoner.

“Permission granted,” Lapaxo said. “I’ll want a guard on you both.”

That was precisely what Floria did not want, but she took what she could get—them past the guard post and into a small holding suite. It was starkly lit and equally starkly furnished, with a modest living and eating area, three beds in separate rooms, and toilet facilities. The prisoner investigated the stretched mesh of the seating with interest before sitting down and leaning back. “Floria,” he said, in a strange, wondering tone. Then, purposefully, “Do you think I could get ice and a strapping for this wrist? I don’t think it’s broken—there’s no tenderness at the expected spots—but it’s swelling. And then I
have
to speak to a mage who can actually detect this ensorcellment.”

She was not going to tell him that the only sport mage in the palace, as far as she knew, was the princess herself. She decided to deal with the practicalities, and spoke to their guard, requesting bandages, ice, food, and drink, and a dose of painkiller from the vigilant’s store.

The vigilant returned with the medical supplies and the food and drink. She mixed a dose of the painkiller into juice, sweetened it with honey, and tasted it. She had half expected recent events to have undone her efforts in educating court in the futility of poisoning her. But it was unadulterated.

She offered it to him, not certain whether he would take it. He put their shared thought into words. “I’m trusting you haven’t put something in here that will knock me out until morning.” He did not mention a simple, lethal dose, though if he did not think about the possibility, he
was
insane.

“I’ll call in Tempe, if you want. Let you ask me in front of her. She wouldn’t let me poison you.”

He considered her thoughtfully for a few heartbeats longer and then drained the glass. “I must get you to teach me how to make medicines palatable,” he remarked. “Most of the ones I was taught to prepare taste thoroughly vile.”

Despite his seeming calm, she saw his relief as moments passed and he felt no ill effects. “My wrist?” he prompted.

Wary of touching him or letting him touch her, she pulled up a stool. It was her turn to feel relief when she took his arm and nothing happened. His skin was pale and cool, with a slight rash or chapping across the back of his hand, and no calluses of manual work or sword training. She examined the wrist, feeling the tendons and probing the fine bones, ignoring his flinches—provoking them, even. He let her hurt him, enduring. “I don’t think it’s broken, either,” she said at last.

He relaxed as she wound the coarse mesh of the bandage deftly across his palm and around his thumb. “Do you remember,” he said, “mixing up a hangover cure for me, after my friends and I celebrated passing our final exams?”

She did; she had been worried about him—about Balthasar—as he had been so miserably ill. She finished strapping the wrist. “Let’s have something to eat.”

Somewhat to her surprise, Tempe did respond to their request, sending a clerk to record both the prisoner’s statement and hers in his impeccable shorthand. The prisoner’s account was precise and well observed, including details of appearance and posture. The mage must be right; he
could
see.

Or he was Darkborn, and Balthasar Hearne.

She needed to know for her
own
sanity.

The clerk gathered together his materials and started to rise. The prisoner said, “Wait.” And when the clerk looked at him—and away from those disturbing eyes—he said, “I have a request that you take down another statement, under the seal of the judiciary.”

“Under the seal of the judiciary” meant that the statement would enter permanent record. The judiciars considered the integrity of their records as sacrosanct as the Temple did their contracts.

The clerk looked at her for confirmation; she nodded slowly. Whoever and whatever their prisoner was—mad or sane—he understood Lightborn law, and under that, he was fully entitled to make such a statement.

“It may take a little time. Would you like something to eat or drink?”

The man shook his head vehemently, and Floria felt the corner of her mouth twitch. Of course not; not in the presence of a notorious vigilant assassin whose asset made her immune to poisons.

In a measured voice, the prisoner began, “My name is Balthasar Hearne, and I am a physician, born Darkborn in the city of Minhorne. I am an adult of sound mind and a citizen in good standing, and I make this statement of my own free will to place on record my knowledge of the troubles that beset Minhorne, specifically the burning of the Rivermarch, the assassination of Prince Isidore, and the destruction of the tower of the Mages’ Temple.”

She knew part of the story, but not all, and certainly not what had happened in Stranhorne and after. His account of Captain Rupertis’s treason and death brought her to her feet, fists clenched. She rang for a guard and demanded that Rupertis come down and see her. The guard told her that Rupertis had not reported in, having left on an errand during the day. After that, she could not sit down again, but paced while, in a still place in the center of the room, the man told his story. The clerk’s moving hand faltered several times during the narrative, as did their prisoner’s voice, but he told it to the end, listened as it was read back to him, and signed in an uncertain but recognizable script when the last sheet was offered to him. “Put that before your Mistress Tempe, if you would.”

He managed to hold his composure until the clerk left, and then he laid his face in his hands.

Her last disbelief had crumbled, listening to a voice she had known for close to thirty years speaking without a mischosen word or misplaced inflection. She sat down beside him, resting an arm along his spine and gently kneading his neck as though he were another vigilant. “You need to pull yourself together,” she said, quietly. “As soon as Tempe reads that, she’ll be along, wanting to hear you confirm it to her asset. You’re liable to find yourself up before the Temple or the princess very shortly after that.” She closed her hand on the tendons of his neck, pulling gently back. “Balthasar, sit up and listen to me.”

He let her draw him up, his head in profile to her. She said softly, “It’s a dangerous thing to show weakness in the Lightborn court. Whatever you feel, whatever anger or hurt or grief you’re carrying, you
must
conceal it. Otherwise, you won’t be believed. Otherwise, you’ll be a target.” Those were, she recalled, the very words her father had used to her, nearly thirty years ago. They were words she had used to any number of vigilant cadets in the years since.

He turned his head. “You said my name. You believe me.”

“I believe you. But if others do . . . you have to know that they may decide this ensorcellment makes you too dangerous to live.” First, they would want to extract all the information from it that they could.

He leaned back, his face drained of emotion. “Why do you think I dictated it under a judiciary seal? Even if I die, my testimony has entered the record.”

Clever. And no less than she would have expected of Balthasar. She reached for the dish of hot towels that had come with their meal, finding them still somewhat warm. “Let’s get you tidied before they come for us.”

“We’ll be into th’Crosstracks in a matter of minutes, m’lord,” the engineer addressed Vladimer, ignoring his companions. “All seems t’be clear.”

Vladimer was sitting with his sound shoulder propped against the wall. He roused himself. “You’ve made better time than I expected. My compliments to you and the rest of the crew.”

The engineer paused. “Aye, well,” he said, in his Borders accent, “I’d as soon we none of us had t’do this again.”

“I would add my wish to yours,” Vladimer said, dryly, “if I thought it would be heeded.” The engineer touched his cap lightly and started to close the door, but Vladimer spoke again. “Even if it does appear to be clear, I want you and your crew to be on the alert as we come into station. Given what happened the last time I got off a train.” When he and Telmaine had been ambushed by a Shadowborn and his agents, leaving Vladimer wounded and an engine and carriages blazing.

“Aye, my lord,” said the engineer. “That y’can count on.”

“Though I trust,” Vladimer said with grim satisfaction, “that should the Shadowborn try an ambush here, they will meet with an unpleasant comeuppance.”

The bordersman’s expression flickered at the reference to Vladimer’s traveling companions, though not with the prejudice Telmaine might have expected; he appeared almost gratified by the prospect. Telmaine wondered if he were from Strumheller. If he were from Ishmael’s barony, that might explain it.

“Do you expect there to be trouble at the Crosstracks?” Phoebe said as the door closed.

Vladimer leaned his head back. “Better to expect trouble and have none, than not expect trouble and walk into it. I have no idea of their numbers or how they communicate, although I would deduce that at least in Minhorne, they are relatively few, since they have caused as much mayhem through their agents as directly. It may be we have been able to keep ahead of them—assuming that none of the nonmageborn in your community were serving them without your knowledge.” Phoebe did not rise to that lure. “And assuming that Sejanus and his staff have been able to maintain the fiction of my incapacitation.”

The drawn cast to his bony features gave the lie to that “fiction,” in Telmaine’s opinion.

There was a silence; then Phoebe Broome drew in an audible breath. “Lord Vladimer, I would like you to let me hold your revolver until after we arrive.”

The extraordinary demand startled Telmaine into sonning her. She found her leaning forward with a determined expression, all trace of the gauche, socially intimidated woman gone.

“If you will not let me or one of my people heal you, then you should let me have the revolver. If Ishmael were here, he would insist.”

“Would he, indeed?” said Vladimer, in that brittle tone that intimidated Telmaine every time she heard it.

“He might weigh the risks differently. But, tell me, Lord Vladimer, would
you
leave a man in your condition in charge of a loaded weapon?”