Darkborn

Darkborn.

by Alison Sinclair.

Praise for Darkborn Darkborn

"Alison Sinclair"s unique world of two societies, mortally divided by sunrise and sunset, provides a fascinating backdrop for a fast-paced thriller of politics and intrigue. Delightful!"

-national bestselling author Carol Berg

"Alison Sinclair"s Darkborn Darkborn plays like a sweeping historical novel in a teeming preindustrial city whose residents are divided into those who can only tolerate light and those who can only exist in darkness. A sprawling cast of characters argue and scheme and practice magic in secret-until a calamitous chain of events reveals the whole city to be under siege from a mysterious and ruthless enemy. Despite swift action, broad conspiracies, and monumental life-and-death stakes, the heart of the book is a delicately rendered love triangle that tracks the human cost of any grand adventure. I can"t wait to read the next book about these complex and engaging characters." plays like a sweeping historical novel in a teeming preindustrial city whose residents are divided into those who can only tolerate light and those who can only exist in darkness. A sprawling cast of characters argue and scheme and practice magic in secret-until a calamitous chain of events reveals the whole city to be under siege from a mysterious and ruthless enemy. Despite swift action, broad conspiracies, and monumental life-and-death stakes, the heart of the book is a delicately rendered love triangle that tracks the human cost of any grand adventure. I can"t wait to read the next book about these complex and engaging characters."

-national bestselling author Sharon Shinn

"[A] wonderful read, with an intriguing setting populated by appealing and memorable characters."-Lane Robins, author of Maledicte Maledicte

One

Balthasar

The knock on Balthasar"s door came as the bell tolled sunrise. For Imogene"s Darkborn, it was the hour of criminals and suicides, the hour of violence or desperation. In this civilized city of Minhorne, the ancient law of succor was half forgotten, and many might not have opened the door to an unknown"s knock at the brink of dawn. he knock on Balthasar"s door came as the bell tolled sunrise. For Imogene"s Darkborn, it was the hour of criminals and suicides, the hour of violence or desperation. In this civilized city of Minhorne, the ancient law of succor was half forgotten, and many might not have opened the door to an unknown"s knock at the brink of dawn.

Balthasar Hearne was not one of those; he hurried to the door and pulled it open, heavy as it was. On the step stood a lone woman m.u.f.fled in a thick traveling cloak. He sonned no carriage at her back, no living movement within his range except two cats and a small indistinct fluttering of birds. This close to sunrise the street was quite deserted. "For mercy"s sake," the woman begged breathlessly, "let me in."

He could already feel the sting of imminent daylight on his skin. He stepped back and she stumbled heavily over the threshold, pulling away from his steadying hand and fetching up against the little hall table. "Oh, sweet Imogene." She panted, leaning hard on it with both hands. "I thought I would never reach here in time. I thought I must surely burn."

He shut and locked the door against the day. There was nothing else to do. Left outside, she would burn to ash in an instant at sunrise, as would he. That was the Darkborn"s legacy of Archmage Imogene"s Curse.

Her heavy cloak had snagged and was dragging one of the ornaments on the table, and Bal reached out and freed it before it fell. It was one of his wife"s favorites, a horse with its foal pressed to its flank. He held it cradled in his hands as the woman straightened with an effort and turned to face him. He felt her sonn sweep over him, shaping him for her perception: a plain, slender man a little below average height, decently but not fashionably dressed. Certainly not as befitted the husband of a duke"s daughter, if she knew whom she faced. He returned the sonn, delicately, as one must, to respect the modesty of a lady. Her small face was puffy above the fur tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of her cloak. Her little gloved hand reinforced the clasp. She was still breathing hard. Like most women of the aristocracy, she was unfit for walking any distance, though she seemed unusually distressed. He wondered what had brought her here unaccompanied. It augured not well, for either of them. Her reputation would suffer, and his marriage, if gossip placed them together through the day.

The bell fell silent. In a few minutes, the sun would rise. They were trapped here, together, until nightfall. In the meantime his manners rea.s.serted themselves. "The sitting room is in here." He gestured her toward it.

She did not move. "Don"t you remember me, Balthasar?" she said in a clear, sweet voice. "Am I really so much changed?"

He sonned her again, but the voice had already told him, that musical inflection. "Tercelle Amberley," he said flatly.

"Yes," she said, smiling. "Tercelle Amberley. It has been a very long time."

The echoes of his sonn faded, leaving him in the grainy haze of all the reflections of random vibrations around them. He was ashamed of himself for feeling as he did. It was not her fault that he had tried ten years or more to forget his brother and everyone a.s.sociated with him.

She directed her next splash of sonn at the hallway, a lady gracefully sidestepping awkwardness. "Your home has not changed at all," she said. "Yet you married well."

"My wife and I have a family home elsewhere," he said, trying not to sound curt. His domestic arrangements were none of her business.

She heard the curtness; he heard her take a heavy step forward. "Balthasar . . . Balthasar, I would not have imposed on you were I not in desperate need. I truly believe you are the only one who can help me."

The last he had heard of Tercelle Amberley was the announcement of her betrothal a year ago to Ferdenzil Mycene, heir to one of the four major dukedoms, and the hero in the campaign to subdue piracy in the Scallon Isles. Quite a coup for the daughter of a family that had scrambled their way into the n.o.bility a scant three generations ago. The Amberleys had major interests in armaments and shipbuilding, which would attract the heir to the most expansionist of the four major dukedoms even more than the lady"s sweet face and social polish. The betrothal, Bal"s contemporaries said, was one of the many signs that boded ill for the independence of the Scallon Isles. Bal could hardly imagine how Tercelle would come to need to throw herself on the mercy of an obscure physician-scholar, even one married to the archduke"s cousin. Or rather, he could hardly imagine any good reason for her to do so.

Years of training in courtesy prevailed. "Please"-he extended his arm toward the receiving room-"do sit down."

She paused on the threshold, and in the reflections of her sonn he perceived the salon"s shabbiness, the best room in a house of impoverished minor n.o.bility. He had another home, true, a fine home to suit the lady he had married, and even though it had been bought and paid for with her inheritance, not his, when she was there, he felt it home. When she was not, when she and the children went to one of her family"s estates, he returned here. And no, this house had not changed; if anything, it had become shabbier than when Tercelle knew it. She had made no secret of her disdain then, during her long flirtation with his brother. Bal wondered if Lysander had known how little chance his suit had had, even then. He wondered what he knew now.

She walked into the center of the room and turned with some small effort of balance. "Have you ever heard from Lysander?"

"No," Balthasar said, suppressing his slight disturbance at having his thoughts echoed so deftly: Of course she would be thinking of Lysander, facing his brother. She was no mage.

She sonned him, a delicate lick of vibration. "Are you still angry with him?"

"Leaving," Balthasar said, "was the best thing he could have done. For us, his family, and for you."

"How harsh," she said in her breathless lilt. "I never thought you would become so unforgiving a man. You were always so gentle. And you adored Lysander, as I did."

True, he had, once. "Please, Tercelle, why have you come?"

There was a silence, and then a rustle of movement. "I need your help." His sonn caught her as she shrugged the unhooked cloak from her shoulders and let it slide to the ground.

Somehow he was not entirely surprised to know that she was pregnant, though he was disconcerted by how large and low she was carrying. She must be very near her time.

But her fiance had been gone over a year, harrying the Scallon pirates and conducting diplomatic forays into the neighboring island kingdoms to advance the dukedom of Mycene"s claim on the isles, their territory, and their exports of exotic fruit and spices.

"The child is not your intended"s," he said, keeping all tone from his voice.

She scowled that he should say it. She reached back and lowered herself awkwardly into a chair he had not offered. "If he learns of this child, the best that will happen is that he and his family will repudiate me. The worst is that he would kill me." She shifted her belly on her lap with a grimace. "I"d rather be dead than cast aside."

"How is it," Balthasar said, "that no one has told him?"

"When I knew I was with child I sought to lose it. I tried all the means I could discover. I even contrived a fall from a horse." He was silent, remembering the aching devastation of Telmaine"s one miscarriage. He and Telmaine had walked around the house like souls in purgatory. "It didn"t work. But I had the excuse to go away, to live as an invalid until my time came."

She pressed a fist against her abdomen, grimacing. "I . . . lay with him but four times. It was the last . . ." She could have given him the date, the hour, he knew. He felt compa.s.sion for her in her fond folly, despite his dislike of her and the danger in the situation for himself. Ferdenzil would surely believe she had sought the aid of her lover.

"He would tap on the door to give me warning, and then I would tap back and go into the next room and wait, and he would come in . . . Sometimes I wanted to lock the door; once I did and then I unlocked it again . . . I could not do otherwise. And it was in the day he came, always in the day."

Bal frowned. Ballads and broadsheets told of Lightborn demon lovers, crossing the sunset to seduce Darkborn girls. The stories were absurd, since the Lightborn could no more abide the darkness than the Darkborn the light; such was the nature of Imogene"s Curse. Part of his irregular physician"s practice was treating people, usually young women, with a dangerous obsession with the Light: Lightsickness, it was called, a delusion that could end in an impulsive, fatal stepping into sunlight. He wondered why Tercelle would tell him a story they both knew was impossible.

She heard the skepticism in his silence. "He came from the Light, I tell you," she cried out. Sonn showed her pulling herself forward in the chair. "That"s why I came to you. You have friends among the Lightborn. You You can take the child, whatever it is. And if it cannot go back to the Light, then there are places where yet another b.a.s.t.a.r.d will hardly pa.s.s notice, places can take the child, whatever it is. And if it cannot go back to the Light, then there are places where yet another b.a.s.t.a.r.d will hardly pa.s.s notice, places you you know." know."

Ah, there was that, if he set all the rest of it aside. The demimonde, the Rivermarch, where fallen women, mages, and criminals gathered to ply their disgraceful trades. The rejected of society gathered there. He had worked at a demimondaine clinic as a student, and still did when Telmaine"s aristocratic family left him, and her, in peace-and the physician in him did not like the appearance of Tercelle. He wondered how far she had come on foot. Coach drivers insisted on being under cover before the sunrise bell began to toll. He stood up. "Tercelle, the rest of it can wait. You are here now, and you have had a hard walk for a lady in your condition. You should rest now."

He showed her to his parents" room, which he had kept well aired since their deaths six years ago. It had an ample four-poster bed, the bed in which he and his brother and sister had been conceived and born, the bed in which his parents had died within weeks of each other. She had brought nothing with her, so he offered her a nightgown that had been his mother"s. He found a jug of water, a gla.s.s, and a bowl for her bedside, and said that he would leave the door ajar so that she might call on him at need.

He went quietly up the stairs to his top-floor study. As soon as he opened the door, he knew that Floria White Hand was in her salle salle. He could hear the soft-footed shuffle of her solitary practice from behind the wall. Nothing rested against that wall, not table, not bookshelf. Much of its length consisted of two layers of heavy paper, sandwiching a fine metal mesh that was proof against accidental perforation. The remainder was an extension of the bookcase, and set into that was a low cabinet with a lightproof door, a pa.s.se-muraille pa.s.se-muraille.

Elsewhere in the sundered lands, the Lightborn had their perpetually lit towns and cities and the Darkborn their perpetually darkened underground caverns and aboveground keeps. Here in Minhorne, Darkborn and Lightborn lived side by side. The streets were the Darkborns" by night, the Lightborns" by day, and each race had its private s.p.a.ces for the hours its members could not be outside. This row of terraced houses ab.u.t.ted another row adjacent to the Lightborn prince"s palace. It was not a fashionable address amongst the Darkborn, but for the past five generations Balthasar"s family and the Lightborn family of White Hand swordsmen and a.s.sa.s.sins had lived in amity and trust, as demonstrated by this paper wall. Were the wall to be torn, the light by which Floria lived would burn Balthasar to ash. As a youth, Balthasar had enjoyed an intense infatuation for the unattainable Floria, expressed only in abundant daydreams, poetry, and words, at least until he had met Telmaine. Floria had abetted his courtship of his future wife with an enthusiasm that was, in retrospect, unflattering. His young self had had been rather slushy, and with maturity-and marriage-he had learned to keep his feelings to himself. He in turn had carried messages through the night to abet her rise in her prince"s secret service. been rather slushy, and with maturity-and marriage-he had learned to keep his feelings to himself. He in turn had carried messages through the night to abet her rise in her prince"s secret service.

Floria said, "Bal? That wasn"t Telmaine"s voice, was it?" He was not surprised she had heard, even through the closed door. Her hearing was not a Darkborn"s, but for one of the Lightborn, it was uncommonly good. She cultivated her senses, she said, as she did everything that helped her survive and prosper.

He sat down in the chair nearest the paper wall, his arm laid on the armrest so that his fingertips would rest against the wall. She could not see him-she could never see him-and with the mesh he could no longer sonn her through the wall. Telmaine had insisted on the mesh before she would even bring their firstborn into the house.

"It was Tercelle Amberley. She was courted by my brother, once." He told her what had brought the lady to his door. Beyond the paper wall, he could hear the distinct sound of her sharpening a stiletto.

"I mislike this," she said. He heard her set aside the stiletto and begin to pace, the pacing broken with small shuffling fencer"s steps. Unlike Darkborn women, who cultivated decorative repose, Floria was seldom still, always testing her body, refining her physical skills.

"I can"t understand why she should tell me such a ridiculous lie."

"To avoid telling you a revealing truth, such as the father"s name," Floria said tartly. He heard her take up a practice rapier, the distinctive rattle of the swords in the rack. He envisioned her as she prowled the room, stalking the mannequin. There was a shush-shush shush-shush of soft soles, the thud of a blade driven home. "Take my advice and get her out of here as soon as night falls. She"ll have somewhere she can go: She didn"t travel all the way from her obscure country estate today. She"ll have had some plan to cover not finding you here, or your not taking her in. Even if it"s merely a fanciful story to cover her follies, she"s betrothed to Ferdenzil Mycene, and the risk of his knowing of this is high, too high. The man"s dangerous, and he would have society"s outrage on his side. He"d expect her to bolt to the father of her b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and you are the brother of the man she was once pursued by. Think of Telmaine and your daughters, if you have no care for yourself." of soft soles, the thud of a blade driven home. "Take my advice and get her out of here as soon as night falls. She"ll have somewhere she can go: She didn"t travel all the way from her obscure country estate today. She"ll have had some plan to cover not finding you here, or your not taking her in. Even if it"s merely a fanciful story to cover her follies, she"s betrothed to Ferdenzil Mycene, and the risk of his knowing of this is high, too high. The man"s dangerous, and he would have society"s outrage on his side. He"d expect her to bolt to the father of her b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and you are the brother of the man she was once pursued by. Think of Telmaine and your daughters, if you have no care for yourself."

Floria, Bal reflected, was an expert with sharp objects. And gave good advice, even if it was advice that he doubted he could follow.

He said, "Floria, there have been mages trying to reverse the Curse for two centuries. Is it possible that someone has succeeded?"

"Do I hear one of the Darkborn talking about mages?" she said dryly.

"Yes," he said patiently. She well knew he did not share his people"s prejudice against magic. Even without his family"s generations-long a.s.sociation with the Lightborn, who had preserved and elevated magic, his own sister"s choice would have forced him to confront any unthinking a.s.sumptions. Indeed, he had a trace of magic himself, though in him it was manifested only as uncommon diagnostic acuity; he could not read thoughts with a touch, the way even the weakest true mage could. His sister, Olivede, could, and more, and at the age of twenty had chosen to leave respectable society to live among the demimonde as physician and magical healer. Magic aside, she was a better midwife than he, and he would have to get word to her that he was likely to be calling on her services soon. Tercelle"s child appeared very large for a small woman to deliver easily.

A shuffle of feet, the soft, rhythmic thump of a lunge, recover- forward, lunge sequence. Her salle salle, she had told him, was a hall of mirrors, strong reflectors of light as all hard surfaces were reflectors of sonn. She and her master-at-arms were the only people she permitted in it; given the danger to the paper wall of an uncontrolled blade, he was glad of that, though he was sure that, fond as she was of him, it was less for his benefit than hers. She needed her secure and private retreats in a dangerous profession in her prince"s dangerous court. Neither Lightborn princes nor their White Hand guardians expected to die of old age.

"The prince has increased the reward for the breaking of the Curse. Fifteen thousand in gold. Of course," she added, "the amount is irrelevant. Anyone who can break the Curse would claim the princedom, archdukedom, and all the island kingdoms and shift the balance of the world."

"Do you think it can be done?"

"We"ve been trying for the better part of a thousand years and we still do not understand all of it. Without full understanding, we have no hope of counteracting it. And doing so would take an Imogene and her followers, twenty-four eighth-rank mages all mad with sacrifice. Those it didn"t kill, it ruined, but they had lost everything else to their war; none of them cared to live any longer. To undo something with that much emotion in it would take equal numbers with equal power and equal compulsion." He heard her rubbing her hands together. "It was a more pa.s.sionate, more barbarous time. We are civilized." Her voice, as ever, was ironic.

"I have the impression," he observed, "that you think the breaking of the Curse after all these centuries would not serve us well."

She snorted; this was an old gambit. They argued hypotheses with as much changing of places as in a galliard, though he tended to optimism and she to pessimism. "Bal, first off, you have an archduke and we a prince. Only one would rule in the end. You expect your women to be beautiful ornaments, and punish them when they are not. The first gallant who decided that a Lightborn woman was as available as any wh.o.r.e would learn otherwise at the point of a stiletto. You have denigrated magic as feminine irrationality and are now endeavoring to suppress it entirely. We school our magicians to their fullest potential and regard an untrained mage as a danger to be contained. Need I go on? We are better apart. Send that woman away; you owe her nothing." She finished her exercises without speaking again, and went out.

He sighed. Debt was not the point. Tercelle"s unborn child was. Seeking distraction, he went to the bookshelf. He rested his hand briefly on a stack of minutes from the Intercalatory Council of Interracial Affairs. Both Bal and his father had been called to serve multiple terms on the mixed council that-through a paper wall-negotiated conflicts between Darkborn and Lightborn interests in Minhorne, everything from land development to road repair to the Lightborn"s wish to regulate Darkborn mages. He was due to serve another term this autumn, but conscientiously followed the proceedings between his terms. Which were, due to the current chairman, as dull as they were important. Bal guiltily shifted his hand and pulled down one of his father"s favorite travel histories.

He was deep in a two-hundred-year-old account of a journey to Pelalethea, the largest underground city of the Darkborn, two weeks" hard travel into the eastern mountains, when he heard Tercelle call for him.

His diagnostic ac.u.men had not deserted him. He found her as he had expected, doubled up and outraged by the cruel presumption of pain. He ran back to the study to leave a note asking that Floria get a message to Olivede for the night, and then set about making Tercelle as comfortable as he could and gathering together what he would need to deliver her child.

The child was still unborn when Olivede arrived promptly after nightfall, striding into the room with unfeminine vigor, shedding her cloak and setting down her doctor"s bag. She was three years his elder, as slender and nondescript as he. Her expression, habitually guarded against the insults of the world, was warm to his sonn.

"Floria pa.s.sed on your message," she said, and bent to brush her lips lightly across his cheek. He welcomed the kiss; they had long ago come to terms with her mageborn ability to discern his thoughts with a chance touch of skin on skin. She did not comment on what else Floria had said, or ask any questions.

"h.e.l.lo, Tercelle," she said, making a matter-of-fact claim to familiarity.

Tercelle sonned her, and turned her head away. Olivede was beyond scandal: a woman physician, a practicing mage, and a respected citizen of the demimonde. "Don"t touch me," Tercelle said through her teeth.

Olivede pulled a pair of fine gloves from her bag. As a magehealer, she wore gloves not only for sanitary reasons, but so as to signal no intention to intrude upon her patients" inner life. Bal, understanding magic, knew she did not need them: She had the strength and training to contain her touch-sense without them, and she had sworn vows that further restrained her. But the gloves were a necessary concession.

"Don"t be silly," she said crisply. "I"m not going to learn anything from you that you don"t tell me aloud. Bal," she said, briskly, bending over the straining woman, "do make yourself useful elsewhere. I"ll call you if I need you."

The night dragged on. Between spells of bitter silence, Tercelle groaned and cursed the Sole G.o.d and her careless lover, though never by name, Bal noted. Olivede offered the comforts of her magic; and Tercelle, predictably, declined, no doubt repelled as much by the thought of what she might reveal to the mage"s touch as the notion of the magic itself. It was well into day when, from his exile in the study, he heard an infant"s cry rise over Tercelle"s hoa.r.s.e shriek.

Olivede"s voice called, "Bal, I need a hand here!"

Olivede was stooping over the bed, reaching between Tercelle"s drawn-up knees. She said, without turning her head, "We"ve got twins here. Mind that one." Within the crib, a baby twitched in its blankets, hastily wrapped and laid aside. He slipped his hands beneath it and lifted it from the crib to the dresser, catching up a pad of folded towels. Behind him, Tercelle screamed through clenched teeth, and Olivede said, in a tone of utmost concentration, "Just one more now."

Balthasar unwrapped the baby, setting aside the damp blanket, and rubbed the tiny, naked body dry, playing his sonn lightly over it so as to match impression with feel. It appeared to be a healthy baby boy, somewhat small, as twins usually were, with normally flexed limbs and a round, soft belly. His features were normal, though his eyes, unusually for a newborn, were wide-open. Bal wondered if they appeared large because of that. He reached across the baby to lift a soft cloth, and as the cloth pa.s.sed close above his eyes, the baby blinked.

He could so easily not have noticed, he thought later. A few seconds later and he would have heard the first cry of the baby"s brother and turned his head. Or he could have muted his sonn. Or he could have noticed but not wondered. Except he knew about Lightborn senses and reflexes. He had heard Tercelle"s extraordinary story. He flicked his finger close to those wide eyes and the baby started and blinked again. He sensed no sonn, which was not unusual: Sonn might take several weeks to establish.

When younger, Bal and Floria had spent hours trying to explain to one another their unshared senses. To her, a world a.s.sembled solely from the echoes of unseen sound-as the Darkborn understood their unique gift-was as incomprehensible as one revealed by light was to him. Theories of sound were fundamental to Darkborn science, whereas theories of light were, and always would be, a fringe interest. Bal could hardly imagine color, or transparency, or the reflections of gla.s.s in water. Floria struggled to explain the existence of horizon, sky, stars stars, to Balthasar, whose immediate awareness extended only to the limits of sonn, at its most forceful, a city block.

"Balthasar," Olivede said in some exasperation. "I asked you to help help me, not play patty-cake, and I hope you haven"t forgotten how quickly they get chilled." me, not play patty-cake, and I hope you haven"t forgotten how quickly they get chilled."

He finished wrapping the first baby and returned him to the crib, where Olivede had set the second one while she delivered the placenta and began to clean the exhausted mother. The second was also a boy, smaller than his brother, with a tense, anxious expression on a face that seemed no larger than a prune and almost as creased. Bal crooned to him as he dried and bundled him, his sonn playing lightly over the infant"s form. As the infant relaxed, his eyes opened wide, fixing on Bal. Bal hesitated, then moved his hand suddenly before the baby"s eyes, and the child started, a small convulsion, and began to cry. Bal gathered him up, murmuring apologies. Holding him, he crossed to the fire, which to his sonn was an indeterminate shimmer of turbulent echoes, and a potent heat across his face. Fire, he knew, gave light, though firelight alone was not enough to sustain the Lightborn or burn the Darkborn. He found a taper from the kindling and held it into the flame, and then, crouching, pivoted to put his back to the fire and raised the taper, holding it away so that heat would not betray its presence. The baby did not react, its face still toward Bal, its anomalous eyes wide. He raised the taper higher and sonned a twitch in the skin around the eyes, as though the eyes had moved. He dared not sonn deeply enough to discern the movement of muscles behind the tender, thin infant skin.

"Balthasar, what are are you doing?" his sister said. you doing?" his sister said.

The baby turned his head toward the taper.

It could, Bal thought, have been a twitch or a reflex. Slowly, he lowered the taper and the head turned further, before the baby lost interest and turned back to . . . stare? . . . at Balthasar"s face. With a slightly unsteady hand Bal tossed the taper into the fire and stood up.

Tercelle lay with her head turned away, her hands on her flattened belly. The air was thick with the smell of blood. Olivede was stripping off her soiled gloves. Within the crib, he sonned movement, a small arm already working itself free of its swaddling. He crossed to offer his finger to the little hand, which closed on it as lightly as a flower, the skin as dry and intact as a Darkborn"s should be in darkness. He cleared his throat.

"I believe," he said, "they may be sighted."

Balthasar "Sighted," said Floria, a soft, fascinated sibilant. "Yet are unaffected by the dark . . ."

Balthasar and Olivede listened to her light, restless footsteps, a few paces, a pa.s.se-avant pa.s.se-avant, a few more paces, several advances. "Is it so impossible?" Bal said, half rhetorically. Olivede"s confirmation of his observations, and reluctant agreement with his interpretation, had left him shaken.

"Not that I know of," Olivede said. She sat weary and straight-backed in their father"s wide leather chair. "I know of no instances of a child born sighted among us. Do you know any of a child born blind among you?"

Floria paused. "I am not a physician," she said-disingenuously, Bal thought, for her profession required a physician"s knowledge of injury and poison. "But the prince"s physician makes a study of abnormalities and has a record, and blindness is not listed as a congenital defect. We can become blind through trauma or disease."