Darkborn

"Give yourself time, my dear. It will come."

She straightened up with the certainty that Anarys planned to creep downstairs later, before the sunrise bell, when wits were beginning to blur with fatigue and wine, and when the sonn of matrons and chaperones was wearied. She suppressed a sigh, balancing duty against discretion. "You be careful, Any-any," she said, tilting up her sister"s chin with her gloved finger. "Have your fun, but remember that reputations are very easy to lose, and very hard to regain, and not all young men can be trusted."

Anarys sulked. "How do you know know these things? You weren"t perfect, either. You met Balthasar in secret." these things? You weren"t perfect, either. You met Balthasar in secret."

"I was lucky," she said. After all, it was was luck that Bal"s friends had chosen that particular summer night to scramble over the garden wall of her family"s city home and join, uninvited, the masquerade held for her seventeenth birthday. "I was lucky that he really is as special as I thought he was when I met him." luck that Bal"s friends had chosen that particular summer night to scramble over the garden wall of her family"s city home and join, uninvited, the masquerade held for her seventeenth birthday. "I was lucky that he really is as special as I thought he was when I met him."

Her sister tucked her knees up beneath her, kneeling in a billow of skirts. "Did he really come to your party dressed as a Lightborn?"

"Oh, yes." Remembering that extraordinary figure by the bookshelf, a slight young man in a densely embroidered tunic and woven hose that, but for the length of the tunic, would have been indecent; odd, narrow, ornate shoes; and a huge, wonderfully absurd hat with a bedraggled plume. "I couldn"t decide whether he was lurking by the bookcase because he knew how out of place he seemed, or because he was shy. Of course, now I know the attraction was the books."

"And you asked him to dance." Anarys sighed.

"Yes," said Telmaine a little wryly. Her mother and aunts had garrisoned her with a veritable regiment of suitable suitors. Of these, a couple frightened her; some merely bored her; the rest did and would stifle her. So when the musicians started to play the first of the traditional three ladies"-choice dances, she had bolted to the oddity standing by the bookshelves.

"I scared the life out of him, too," she said, smiling.

When he took her hand uncertainly in his to guide it to his shoulder, according to the new-shocking, to her mama-style, his hand was trembling. She had smiled rea.s.suringly at him and placed his hand, quite deliberately letting it brush the bare skin of her shoulder. He started to apologize, and then she pulled him onto the dance floor, understanding for the first time the girls who flaunted their young men like prizes won. She had touched the sweetest, brightest mind she had ever sensed, and she had found the man she would marry, whether he was duke, servant, musician, or mage.

Anarys sighed again.

"Just you be careful," Telmaine said. "Remember the things I"ve told you about. They don"t just happen in the demimonde. They happen among people like us."

Anarys pouted. "Mama would swoon swoon if she knew what you"d told me." if she knew what you"d told me."

"Mama," Telmaine said, "is a dear woman, and very sheltered. She cannot tell real dangers from minor social inconveniences." She felt a little guilty saying that; her mother did not have her insight into men"s intentions. "I"ve told you things I think every young girl should know."

"They"re not nice nice."

Telmaine settled her veil on her head, securing it with pins and folding it carefully back from her ears, as today"s liberal custom allowed. Bal would not have it any other way. "It is the way things are."

There was a crisp rap on the door, and their elder sister bustled in without waiting for permission. Merivan was a tall, perpetually discontented woman of thirty-one who sought an outlet for her abundant energies in childbearing; after six children, she was again with child, though not yet so conspicuously as to have to retire from society.

"Good evening, Merivan," Telmaine said pleasantly. "I trust your digestion has settled?"

Merivan raised a hand. Telmaine braced herself for one of Merivan"s pat-slaps, but all her sister did was reach up and tug Telmaine"s veil forward. "You sonn like a demimondaine in that dress," Merivan said sharply, while Telmaine sensed her usual mixture of envy and censoriousness through the brush of fingertips. "And your conversation is vulgar."

"I am twice a mother myself, Merivan," Telmaine said peaceably. "I know the way of it."

"And these absurd gloves of yours. Really, Telmaine, if your husband is so expert with disorders of thought, why can he not do something about your phobia about diseases?"

Telmaine"s teeth set, but she kept her tone light. "Because it troubles neither myself nor him if I wear unfashionable gloves, and our family has always enjoyed excellent health, perhaps because I am am so careful." so careful."

"I cannot understand how you can tolerate him working in that clinic clinic. Surely he"s in contact with all kinds of disease."

She suffered Merivan to take her arm and steer her from the room, where her sister promptly revealed her real intent. "What have you been saying to Anarys? Some of the things her maid overheard, I scarcely credit."

"She needs to know these things. There are men even in society who will take advantage of innocent girls."

"Oh, Telmaine. You have gone coa.r.s.e. This is precisely what we feared would happen when you married that-"

Telmaine jerked her arm away. Merivan could say whatever she pleased about Telmaine, but she would not criticize Bal. "I am going to say good night to my little ones."

"You spoil them," Merivan complained. "You should have more; then you would not cling-" She stopped, stifled a burp, and pressed her hand to her stomach.

Telmaine pitied her. Merivan had a fine mind; she could argue Balthasar to a standstill on the need for social rules, conventions, the stifling of individual urges for the common good. As Balthasar said, she had sacrificed herself to her ideals, denied herself any intellectual outlet but marriage, childbearing, and the cultivation of her children"s minds and morals. She did not cling to her offspring; she marshaled them like a diminutive army in training.

"Meri," she said mildly but firmly. "Bal and I will raise our children in our own way."

When she entered the nursery, her daughters scrambled away from the muddle of little ones in the ornate playhouse and scampered to her. Six-year-old Florilinde chattered in one ear about the horseless carriages that some of the guests had arrived in-she was fascinated by all things mechanical-and five-year-old Amerdale babbled in the other ear about the birds in the aviary. Telmaine kept one arm loosely around each supple, squirming child while they clutched at her with their little hands, and with each touch on skin, their thoughts ran like clear streams through her mind. Amerdale"s were like Balthasar"s, open, endlessly curious. Florilinde"s were mud-died by traces of jealousy, like puffs of mud cast up from the river bottom.

The only time Telmaine had said to her nurse that she knew what people were thinking when she touched them, she had been reduced to tears by the woman"s dismay, horror, and fear. Those had made a far more indelible impression on her than Nurse"s shocked, "Please, Lady Telmaine, don"t ever ever say something like that. It"s not proper. It"s . . . say something like that. It"s not proper. It"s . . . magic magic." Magic, she had understood even at Amerdale"s age, was wicked. Magic was what had happened eight hundred years ago, when the Darkborn were made unable to live in sunlight. Magic was what happened in the part of the city where girls like her did not go. Magic was what the Lightborn did on the other side of sunrise. Later, from an ill-punched pamphlet of her brother"s called "Profane and Ekstatic Magiks"-which she had no business reading or he having-she had learned what she was: a touch-reader, as even the least powerful mageborn were, and learned what men thought a touch-reader could do. And later than that, she had realized that most men thought any woman should be a touch-reader, able to know and satisfy their every whim before they uttered it.

That had embittered her, once. Now it only saddened her. No wonder men held it as an ideal-women too, in their way. They were all so locked up in the prisons of their own thoughts, doomed never to know one another"s truths. And at the same time, they were terrified of having their secrets known and revealed, so terrified that magic must be denigrated, denounced, enclosed within the demimonde. Above all, it must never, ever enter the receiving rooms and dance halls of society. Even at five years old, she had understood that no one must know about her.

But magic had its compensations. She need never mistake anyone"s intentions, never fear their deceit. She could make the most important decision of a woman"s life with confidence, and enter marriage secure that she had chosen well.

She answered her daughters" excited questions about the ball, her dress, whether the archduke would be there, whether she would dance all night, impressions formed by a melange of nursemaids" gossip and the romantic stories told little girls. She cuddled and kissed them and told them to be good and do what the nursemaids told them to. This she particularly directed to Florilinde, who was beginning to understand the social order and explore what she was and was not allowed to do to the nursemaids. Then she left them, waving over her shoulder, and set her gloves to rights, smoothing them all the way up onto her shoulders. Despite Merivan"s accusations, her gown was perfectly decent: high necked, the bodice closed, the least possible skin exposed to a chance touch. But it was in the new, lighter style, not so many layers of cloth, less exhausting to wear. In polite company, it was more than sufficient for modesty, even without the dense lace of her undergarments.

Now, Lady Telmaine Stott Hearne thought and, smiling-for herself, not for anyone observing-started down the stairs. Though she did not, and could not, live this life forever, she enjoyed her summers, and she was glad her father had extracted this promise from Balthasar, that she would spend summers among her family.

Her father had taken his time to make up his mind on Bal"s suit. Bal proved to be neither duke, servant, musician, or mage; he was a young physician-in-training, of old though impoverished and eccentric family, and descended from the archducal line itself through a succession of daughters and younger sons. Of his family, he was the respectable one. His sister had not only trained as a physician herself, but was an acknowledged mage. His older brother had vanished years ago; society had largely forgotten him, and Bal never spoke of him, though he thought of him, and Telmaine knew more of Lysander Hearne than she ever wanted to. Bal"s princ.i.p.al blemish, as far as society was concerned, was his relationship with the woman behind the paper wall, Floria White Hand, spymistress and a.s.sa.s.sin to the Lightborn princes, and his involvement in the council that mediated affairs between the two peoples. Society much preferred that the Lightborn, with their violent customs, shocking mores, and cultivated mages, did not exist. For all his personal virtues, Bal certainly wasn"t the safe, aristocratic husband that her family wanted for their daughter.

Her mother and brother objected, wheedled, and dangled inducements. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to defy them, in one respect, for if she would not say, "I do," then they could not make her marry. She could not but know that her mother truly desired that she marry happily in addition to well. Her brother was not much concerned with her happiness; she was a woman and her happiness was irrelevant, as was his own. He was insecure, terrified of his own inadequacy as lord and heir, and thus desperate to gather around him all the proper relationships, friends, behaviors. She pitied him, but she would not let him trap her.

She neared twenty-one, unmarried. She watched her friends blossoming, even the ones whose marriages were compromises, or surrender, or-she could not but know-mistakes. Time only firmed her resolve that hers would be none of those. In the third year, her father suddenly gave his permission, and it was her turn to blossom, and then discover that marriage was far more complex and satisfying than the novels said. A month after her wedding, his secretary found her father dead in his study. An aneurysm, one that the doctors had told him could rupture at any time. His permission was his last gift to her.

She floated down the stairs, luxuriating in the familiarity of the sounds of music and many voices blending together, sounds that for her entire life had meant antic.i.p.ation, excitement, and romance. Even more so now that marriage and motherhood had liberated her from the marriage stakes, and now that as a woman married to no one in particular, she need not engage in the political intrigues of the high families that aligned themselves around the four major dukedoms. She need not speculate how far Ferdenzil Mycene"s territorial ambitions might extend beyond the Scallon Isles, or that the Duke of Zegravia also had designs on the isles but was being thwarted in their advance. She need not listen to whispers about the archduke"s younger half brother and spymaster, Vladimer, and whom he might now be investigating. She need simply enjoy herself.

The sudden cascade of sweet metallic chiming startled her. She cast her sonn over the display automaton standing in the center of the great hall. As the Darkborn repudiated magic, they had embraced technology as a replacement. Boys of the aristocracy studied engineering and mathematics at the ducal schools, and the cleverest young men continued their studies at the university. Fashionable salons discussed the latest developments, and progressive girls" schools and governesses argued for women"s right to study these marvels. A mechanistic art was all the fashion, moving sculptures artistically arranged to challenge the mind with the complexity and fineness of the machinery and please sonn and ear with the frequencies. Telmaine privately found the art tiresome; she"d rather hear living musicians, and she had no interest in studying a piece exhaustively to appreciate how neatly each minute cog fit into each minute wheel.

She did not notice the man standing half behind the structure, still amongst all the shimmer of interference and small rippling movements. Feeling the brush of her sonn, he stepped clear of the automaton, and his sonn swept over her more forcefully than was polite. She felt her skin heat at the sense of exposure, and hoped that none of her family was nearby. Since her marriage, they did not trust her to remember her station and properly remind others of it; they would feel obliged to make a fuss that would embarra.s.s her more than this boor.

The boor was not a tall man, and appeared all the more squat for being so broad in the shoulder and long in the body, though his plain dress jacket was well tailored. The shirt and trousers underneath were equally, almost defiantly, plain. He was not young and life had not been kind to him. Two parallel scars ran from the side of his mouth to his chin, real, untidy scars, not the duelist"s marks affected by a certain set among the young men. The deeper of the two pulled his mouth slightly awry. His nose was upturned, the nostrils wide, rippling a little as she approached. Her mouth set. She had encountered that gesture among the women-peddlers in the demimonde, a vulgar, demeaning insult to virtuous women.

She stopped before him. "Your sonn, sir, needs be muted."

The challenge startled him, but his voice was deep, soft, and courteous, and he dipped his head. "I am sorry, m"lady. I . . . I am too used t"rougher and more dangerous places."

It was a more civil response than she had expected. His accent was Borders, mitigated, she thought, by travel. "May I have your name, sir?"

"So you may set your husband on me?" he said dryly, then, in a conciliatory tone, "I am Baron Strumh.e.l.ler. Ishmael di Studier."

She caught her breath despite herself; this was not merely one of the formidable border barons, who held the fringes of the civilized lands against the Shadowborn, but the most notorious of them all, the celebrated Shadowhunter. Ishmael di Studier had made his name-and, she presumed, collected those scars-killing monsters. He"d only lately begun moving in society circles, and then seldom.

"I expect," she said, recovering her poise, "that usually ends any conversation."

He stepped back and bowed in the old courtly fashion, hand to heart. "I hope not, m"lady," he said formally. "I do apologize if I have offended you. Might I know your name?"

She hardly heard that for realizing that the hand he held to his heart was gloved, a long glove like a falconer"s. It was not the fashion for men to wear gloves indoors, any more than it was the fashion, just now, for ladies to do so. She remembered one of the reasons for his notoriety: People said Ishmael di Studier was a mage.

She pushed down her alarm, saying briskly, "I am Lady Telmaine Stott Hearne, sir. Wife to Dr. Balthasar Hearne."

He bowed again, hand at his side. "M"lady Telmaine. I know something of your husband. We have a mutual acquaintance in the Lightborn Mistress Floria White Hand."

"Like draws like," she said tartly. It was irrational to be jealous of a woman one"s husband could never touch and barely sonn, but there it was.

"I will take that as a compliment," he said. "The Lady Floria is said to be a fine swordswoman-she would be a fine swordsman, if she were male."

"It must be an agreeable sensation," Telmaine returned, "to be able to decide what you will take as a compliment, and what you will take otherwise. To trust so in one"s competence."

"M"lady, y"need no special competence for that. You need only character. Competence only means that you do"t with more or less safety. Setting aside safety, then you may take or reject compliments as you please."

Somehow this reminded her of meeting Bal for the first time. Not that they said the same thing, the shy scholar and this Shadowhunting baron, but that they said the unexpected thing, and neither could be readily provoked.

The automaton commanded their attention with a jubilation of arpeggios. The baron sonned it and snorted softly, unimpressed. That raised him a little in her estimation. Then he returned his attention to her and set his heels together, dipping his head. "Pleased t"have met you, Lady Telmaine. Mayhap I might hope t"dance with you later this evening."

And he left without waiting for her answer. She did not sonn after him, but still the echoes of others" overlapping sonn built a suggestion of easy, powerful movement. She sensed she had been rebuked, though she was not sure for what.

A dress rustled behind her. "Telmaine!" She turned and sonned a young woman clinging to the banister, mouth wide, lacy veil slightly askew. "You can"t possibly possibly dance with him. Have a care for your reputation!" dance with him. Have a care for your reputation!"

"Sylvide!" The woman slithered down the steps and rushed into Telmaine"s mannerly embrace "like two roses kissing in the wind," as her deportment mistress, an aspiring poet, had styled it. "Dearest Sylvide, how long have you been back?" Sylvide"s husband had been sent as envoy to the contested Scallon Isles five years ago.

"A month ago, and then we all came down with this dreadful feverish cold, and the baby-you know we were blessed again, six months ago?-the baby was so sick, and we"ve all been so low. Dan-sin still has such a terrible cough. . . . If this is the summer, I shudder shudder to think of what the winter will be like: I"ve become so used to the to think of what the winter will be like: I"ve become so used to the warmth warmth. But how are you? The last time I visited you, before we left for the isles, you were at home."

"Five years ago," Telmaine agreed. "Just before I was blessed with Amerdale. She"s five, and a delight. They both are."

"And where is that quietly fascinating husband of yours?"

"Up in the city," Telmaine said, with a trill of laughter. Sylvide, feather-wit though she might seem, had the redeeming virtue that alone of all Telmaine"s friends she had wholeheartedly approved of Bal from the moment they met. Sweetness recognized sweetness. "Father made me promise that I would join the family for three months of the year. Bal and I came together until I was blessed with Flori, but Bal was miserable. He has no frivolity in him, and my family behaved impossibly. So now we all come down for a little while, just long enough to dispel any gossip"-or hopes of an estrangement-"then Bal goes back to the city and I stay. I dance my shoes to tatters, stay up all day if I please, and sleep half the night away, and have all the indulgences my frivolous heart desires. He lives in his parents" old house and immerses himself in his scholarship, gets up before sunset, eats whenever and whatever pleases him, spends nights and and days up at the Physicians" College debating microbes and the unconscious mind and all the latest pa.s.sions in his profession." She need not mention Floria White Hand, or the clinic in the demimonde. "And when we go back to the city it"s like being newlyweds again. And how is days up at the Physicians" College debating microbes and the unconscious mind and all the latest pa.s.sions in his profession." She need not mention Floria White Hand, or the clinic in the demimonde. "And when we go back to the city it"s like being newlyweds again. And how is your your husband? Is he glad to be back? Is he getting a better position?" husband? Is he glad to be back? Is he getting a better position?"

She caught, with her sonn, the creasing of Sylvide"s brow. "You have not heard?" her friend said in a low voice. "He was forced to resign: Ferdenzil Mycene wanted his own man in. If Dani had not gone willingly, he would have found himself in some kind of disgrace. His uncle is furious at him." Dani"s uncle and patron was a younger son of the Duke of Zegravia, an ambitious man who used up his tools and blamed them for their failings, in influence no match for the son of the Duke of Mycene, rival to the archduke, and his ambitious son.

She said, "But you don"t want for a living-"

Sylvide tossed her head. "Oh, we don"t want for a living. We could be gloriously idle all our days-but that"s not what Dani wants."

Telmaine said, "I will speak to my brother. He has the Duke of Imbre"s ear." Imbre had no love for Mycene, and did not approve of Mycene"s expansionism, and she thought he would help a victim of Mycene"s ambition. But she did not say so. Dani had all the p.r.i.c.kliness of a man whose aspirations exceeded his abilities, so let him think he had been helped out of merit, and not because he was wronged. "But I"m going up to the city in two days" time. When will you be coming?"

Sylvide grimaced again. "If we came up to the city, we should stay with Dani"s family, and his mother would find some way to blame me for his losing his post."

"If you came up to the city, you should stay with us. We have plenty of room, and and Bal would surely persuade Dani to write a monograph about the islands, which would keep him from fretting and would help his career. We might hear nothing of the men for days on end, but we have ever so many ways to amuse ourselves." Bal would surely persuade Dani to write a monograph about the islands, which would keep him from fretting and would help his career. We might hear nothing of the men for days on end, but we have ever so many ways to amuse ourselves."

Sylvide smiled. "Dear Telmaine, what a good idea. I shall put it to Dani. He likes Bal. And you, of course."

And I will not let him try my temper, Telmaine resolved. Dani was easy around Bal not only because Bal was adept in making him so, but because he found nothing to envy in Bal"s ancient, extinguished lineage. He was not easy around Telmaine, not only because she was richer and more highly born, but-and this was much less forgivable-because she had married beneath her station. She represented an unwelcome possibility: that of social descent. Why Sylvide should choose to wrap her cottony good nature around the spiny climbing vine that was her husband, Telmaine did not know. Except, as Sylvide had more than once insisted, Dani needed her.

"You know Ferdenzil"s betrothed, don"t you?" Sylvide said. "Tercelle Amberley, of the armaments and shipbuilding Amberleys. She used to keep company with your Balthasar"s brother, or so people said."

"I"ve met her, but I"ve never met Lysander Hearne," Telmaine said, to close any further discussion of him. If this were an opera, and she one of those turbulent heroines, when she met Lysander Hearne it would be with a loaded pistol for the wrongs he had done her gentle husband. But she was not, and she hoped Bal"s brother would never return from his exile.

Sylvide wrinkled her dainty nose. "Nasty little nouveau riche. She and Ferdenzil deserve each other. But it"s tragic tragic to think what he"ll be able to do in the isles with access to her family"s money and factories. They"ll build ships and arm them for him." to think what he"ll be able to do in the isles with access to her family"s money and factories. They"ll build ships and arm them for him."

"But surely," Telmaine said, "putting down the piracy is a good thing."

Sylvide leaned close to her. "Tellie, putting down the piracy is an excuse excuse. I won"t say it doesn"t happen, but the dukes of the isles are well aware of the effect it has on trade and shipping, and it"s in their interest not to let it get out of control. Ferdenzil and his father want want the isles-not just the Scallon Isles, all the little island dukedoms. They"ll swallow them up one by one. And then they"ll swallow up the archdukedom." the isles-not just the Scallon Isles, all the little island dukedoms. They"ll swallow them up one by one. And then they"ll swallow up the archdukedom."

Politics was the last infection Telmaine had expected Sylvide to contract. She shrugged her shoulders under her elegant gown. "And what can we women do about any of it?" she said lightly. "Damaris notwithstanding, we have no say." Lady Damaris, only daughter of a minor duke, was campaigning for women to have the same inheritance and political rights as their brothers. Telmaine couldn"t think of anything more tedious; she knew how his work in the Intercalatory Council wore on her Bal, and stole time and energy from the medicine and scholarship he loved. She was glad she need have no part of it.

"Come into the ballroom," she said, and turned her friend toward the door into the ballroom. "You won"t have danced any of the new waltzes. Mind you, they won"t be the very newest; those are considered too shocking for the archducal residence. I"m told the chaperones carry canes with rulers on the end, and they push these between the dancers to make them move to a proper distance. . . ."

Ishmael Ishmael de Studier, Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, leaned his back against one of the carved columns along the side of the ballroom and settled into stillness, observing his surroundings without sonn. It was a hunter"s skill, to perceive without offering others the chance to perceive one in turn. Though he was more accustomed, he thought wryly, to doing this in the open air, and interpreting the subtle intelligence of nature: whispering leaves and gra.s.ses, rustling small animals, and stray odors carried on the wind.

There was no subtlety here. Music from the small orchestra bounded from the raised half balcony to reverberate beneath the domed ceiling. Dresses swished and rustled; shoes clicked and squeaked on the wood inlay and tile of the floor; gla.s.ses clinked on gla.s.s tables and silver trays. Men"s and women"s voices lapped against one another, and bright female laughter chimed with a sweetness as cultivated as the scents that wafted in from the garden. The air was thick with the colognes worn by women and men alike, the aromas of wine and spices that lingered on breath and hands, and the odor of bodies in joyous or frantic exertion. The revelers battered one another with sonn, desperate to resolve the last detail of fashion on those around them, the least hint of straying interest from those with them. The dance floor was a stirred miasma of interlaced echoes in which he might briefly perceive the sweep of a woman"s dress, or the turning line of a man"s flank and leg, before each was folded again into the acoustic shambles. Around the edges of the dance floor, the watchers cast out brilliant bursts of sonn at the dancers and one another. Young girls or young women too shy, plain, or overchaperoned to make desirable partners. Young matrons enjoying the last of society before their latest pregnancies confined them. Older matrons whose pleasures had given way to the satisfaction of judging others" pleasure. Among the men there were those too clumsy, corpulent, or timid to dance, or doomed instead to dance attendance on the whims of a wife or aunt. And, of course, those awaiting their moment.

He smiled a little, and admitted to himself that he was loitering here in part in expectation of summons and in part because he knew that Lady Telmaine was out there, somewhere. He was waiting to learn the bare sketch of her shape, as he would any rare creature that had caught his attention. But what he would do then, he did not know. Most of the rare creatures whose shape and habits he learned he then hunted to kill. And he could hardly walk up to her and say, "By the way, my lady, do you read people"s thoughts when you touch your skin to theirs?" could he? The question would cause a social outrage more profound than if he had asked her how she preferred her husband to make love to her. He could only interpret the unspoken messages of her appearance. The unfashionable gloves that rode snugly up to her shoulders. The gown, high necked but entirely lacking the encrusting of embroidery and gems that a woman especially concerned for her modesty would adopt. And a vibrant social confidence perceptible even at a distance, that might be merely the glow of a happy matron, but might be something else, the surety of a mage to whom no secrets were hidden.

He knew other mages, most of them men and women who, wherever they had started out, had come to inhabit the demimonde with the other useful pariahs from polite society. Many were more powerful than he, able to transform their own and others" vitality to greater effect, but others were like himself, with only enough ability to ensure their estrangement from society. He had never met a mage who maintained a comfortable position in high society. He had never known such a thing was possible. His own father had certainly not believed it so, when he cast out his sixteen-year-old son to live or die by his own wits.

Far more likely, his impression of her was a fantasy born of his own loneliness.

Ish felt a light brush of sonn, smelled a trace of a particular spicy cologne worn by no one else in the room, and turned his head in the direction of the man who had just reached his side. He did not need sonn to recognize him, not with that cologne clinging to him. The man bowed and murmured, "He will receive you now."

Ish trailed behind the aide, weaving through the decorative columns and the other wallflowers. Sonn brushed him peripherally, curiously; out of habit, he remained alert for threat. None came. An ornamental column adjacent to the arch of the door made a small awkward s.p.a.ce, cramped for one, never mind two. His escort slid a key into the lock of the small door in the wall and opened it inward. Ishmael followed him through, closing the door firmly behind him and ensuring that the lock slid home. Back against the wall, he eased along the narrow corridor to pa.s.s through another door of its ilk, between two bookshelves.

In the center of the room, the archduke"s half brother lifted his head from a game board he was contemplating and sonned him. "Thank you, Pasquale. Ishmael, do come and appreciate this."

Ish sonned the array of carved counters. There were two different sets of patterns, and two different faces. Intricate rules guided the allowable juxtapositions. He knew enough to know that here was a game well under way. Otherwise nothing. He was no game player. Perhaps because, as one of is few friends had remarked, if he could not sonn the pulse of a carotid artery, he did not find it a challenge.

"Here," said his host and preceptor, leaning forward and turning one counter so that the complementary symbol was uppermost. Ishmael silently pointed out the other four that would be affected. "Ah, but then . . ." Vladimer leaned forward, and his long, bony fingers flicked a spreading wave of counters all the way to the periphery. "And now . . ." He reversed a single counter and traced the wave"s collapse. "I have not found any other combination that allows so drastic a change in fortunes." He lifted his head, frowning. "You appreciate that, don"t you?"

"Now you"ve shown me, aye."

Vladimer brushed him with a light sonn, with head tilted as he weighed this answer. "Ah, well, even so. Will you have something to drink?"

"Watered wine, my lord, thank you." A man might try to match drink-softened wits with the archduke"s spymaster, but a wise man did not try to do so twice, and a fool would not be granted a third chance.

Vladimer moved out from behind the table, leaning on his cane. To this day, Ishmael had no idea whether his need for it was real, habitual, or affected. Vladimer had suffered a near-fatal carriage accident at the age of nineteen-one Ishmael well knew to have been no accident-and since then he had lived in retirement, at least as far as society was concerned. In reality, he maintained a vast and diverse network of contacts that included everyone from border barons to former labor agitators, from high-cla.s.s madams to public agents. Like his elder half brother, the archduke, Vladimer had inherited their mother"s ascetic bony face, with its broad forehead, wide cheekbones, and hollow cheeks, which was as deceptive of his nature as it had been of hers. The archd.u.c.h.ess had been notable for her luxuriousness, her gambling, her political intrigues, and her many lovers, both as matron and widow. Nonetheless, her husband, no fool himself, had loved her for some of those things and tolerated the rest. She had had the discretion, at least, to bear her illegitimate son a full two years after her husband"s death. Rumor had it that his father was the young, unmarried Duke of Mycene, who would later father Ferdenzil; if so, neither family had acknowledged it. Her son Vladimer had her skill at gambling and delight in intrigue, but as far as anyone could tell, he took neither women nor men to his bed.

Vladimer eased himself down into a chair and gestured for Ish to sit. They waited until Pasquale served the wine. "So," Vladimer said amiably, "it would seem that the settled life is finally starting to agree with you. You"ve lost that gaunt and witchy aspect you had when we first met. And your tailoring"s better. You may still be shaped like an ape, but at least it"s a well-dressed ape."

Since Vladimer had taken a hand in that, as in many other things to do with Ish"s acceptance into Minhorne society, Ish merely said, "Glad y"approve, my lord."

Vladimer leaned back. "I do approve; I know the hold that the Shadowlands exert on a man." There was a brief silence, though Ish waited in readiness for what would come next. Vladimer was not above probing deep, though the impersonal a man a man rather than the personal rather than the personal you you suggested he would not just then. suggested he would not just then.

Vladimer steepled his fingers. He was plainly in a mischievous mood. "So, how goes your search for a bride and mother of your heirs? Be advised that my lovely cousin Telmaine is known to be a faithful wife. Though I"ll allow you"ll need a wife with character."