How, then, did she come to be standing—albeit with her back to a solid wall—in a gathering of the very people she had spent eighteen years protecting her prince from?

In the center of the room, the dowager consort Helenja glowered at her sister. Helenja was a heavy woman, deceptively so, given how quickly she could move when inclined. She had a southerner’s coloring, and the ornate construction of her dull auburn hair was in the southern mode. Her usual dress, southern in its earth-hued simplicity, was decorated with ribbons and a sash in bright red, in scant acknowledgment of her mourning.

In Sharel, Floria could see the young Helenja, despite the slight physical resemblance between them: Sharel was lean, dark, and straight nosed, where Helenja was bulky, auburn, and had a nose that had been broken by a fractious horse. Nevertheless, Sharel’s arrogance and swift certainty of judgment evoked the arrogant young consort who had thought to conquer Isidore’s court.

“Of course he’s a hostage!” Sharel was saying. “You said Fejelis grabbed him just before they all disappeared. Orlanjis would never have gone willingly.”

The dowager consort looked past Sharel, toward Floria. She was squinting slightly, as though looking at a bright horizon or suffering from a headache. “Orlanjis,” Helenja said, grittily, “couldn’t have made his support for Fejelis more plain. Mistress White Hand, come here.”

Floria did not want to expose her back in this company, but she and Helenja had established a sketch of an alliance around their desire to find Prince Fejelis and his brother. Moreover, she’d never fight her way out. She obeyed.

“Tell my sister what you saw,” Helenja said.

Why Sharel should believe Floria’s account of the disappearance of Fejelis and Orlanjis, she had no idea. For eighteen years, Floria had been vigilant and food taster to Fejelis’s father, Isidore, on account of the magical asset that protected her against poisons—most of which had been plied by the southerners.

Perhaps, she thought bitterly, I have become credible because of the part I played in Isidore’s death.

Stonily, she reported, “The prince’s sister”—to refer to her by either her birth name or the name given her by the mages was equally fraught—“came running up to Prince Fejelis and Captain Rupertis in the vestibule of the palace, to tell them that the high masters had Magister Tammorn, who had been working for the prince, and were planning to burn out his magic—”

“Why?” Sharel interrupted. “He’s a mage.”

“Magister Tammorn is a sport,” Floria said. No need to explain what else the Mages’ Temple had to hold against Tam, aside from his birth outside the Temple’s carefully cultivated lineages. “Prince Fejelis went to the high masters and attempted to persuade them to release Magister Tam and to join with him in dealing with the Shadowborn.”

In defiance of centuries of protocol shielding the archmage from earthborn contact, the young prince had appealed directly to the archmage for an alliance. His appeal had been bold and moving and might have worked, except that Fejelis had made a tactical error. “He let it be known that he believed that lineage mages could not detect Shadowborn magic.”

“Was he mad?” said Sharel.

“Look out the window,” Helenja said. “And tell me.”

Out of the window was the Mages’ Tower, that thrusting assertion of the mages’ ambition, wealth, and power, which had shadowed the palace and streets beneath it for two hundred years. Its upper dome was gone, its upper stories collapsed in on themselves and fallen in slabs over the streets and buildings below, its middle and lower stories punctuated with jagged holes. The bright dust of its ruin was still settling out of the late-afternoon sunlight. That the destruction had been wreaked by material means—explosive shells from Darkborn emplacements on the far side of the river—everyone knew, but it was already widely rumored that the lethality had been magically augmented. And surely no enemy the mages sensed could have struck against them so preemptively.

“Mad, no,” Helenja said, judiciously. “But unwise to have said so outright.” She inclined her head toward Floria. “Continue.”

Floria believed the silent archmage might have been weighing Fejelis’s appeal, but her interpretation was unasked for. “Prasav”—that was Fejelis’s oldest cousin on his father’s side—“stepped forward to accuse Magister Tam of having been responsible for the prince’s—Prince Isidore’s—death, under Prince Fejelis’s instigation. He suggested that the prince and Magister Tam were lovers.”

Sharel snorted at this expression of northern bigotry.

“Fejelis asked the high masters to confirm that he and Tam were innocent of the prince’s death. They made no move to do so. Vigilants under Prasav’s command”—some of them suborned members of Fejelis’s own guard, Rupertis among them, and she owed him an accounting at her first opportunity—“took aim at Fejelis. The mages raised no objection, though there was no formal rescinding of contracts.”

That made Sharel’s eyes widen: the system of contracts by which earthborn secured the services of mages were sacrosanct. “Orlanjis tried to push Fejelis out of the line of fire. Magister Tam deflected the bolts, and then he, the prince, and Orlanjis disappeared.”

“The Temple staged a coup,” Helenja said, bluntly. “They have set Perrin up as princess—a mage princess, against seven hundred years of compact. Fejelis and Orlanjis were removed by Magister Tammorn. His motivations are obscure and his destination even more so. None of my mages”—a cold glance in their direction—“claim to be able to locate them.”

“And what are you doing here?” Sharel demanded of Floria. “You’re Isidore’s.”

“And, ironically,” Helenja said, with a smile that told Floria all their old antagonism was merely suspended, “the instrument of Isidore’s destruction.” She paused, letting Floria fully appreciate that statement.

“So that rumor about the talisman is true?” Tam believed that, under ensorcellment, Floria had carried to the prince’s rooms a talisman enspelled to annul the magic of the lights on which he depended to survive the night.

Floria did not answer. The downward flicker of Sharel’s gaze alerted her to her right hand, working on the pommel of her rapier. “Do you believe in the Shadowborn?”

For eighteen years she had guarded Isidore, as her father had Isidore’s father and uncle before him, and her grandmother, Isidore’s grandfather, unmoved by attempts at assassination, threats, seduction, and bribes. Nothing but magic could have made her part of the murder of her prince—yes, she believed in the Shadowborn.

Law might exonerate her of anything done under ensorcellment, yet she had murdered her prince and forfeited her honor, and she would do anything—make any alliance—to make and take recompense for that.

“Yes,” she said. “I believe in the Shadowborn.”

“And what do they say?” Sharel said, head turning toward the mage.

“The boys are not within the city; of that my mages are certain. Beyond that, they need a direction and distance, or time, to find them.”

“If they are caught outside at sunset—”

Helenja glanced toward the window, at the slant of light and depth of shadows. “They won’t be,” she said.

“How can you possibly know?” Sharel said.

“Fejelis is levelheaded. If he has survived the lift, he will ensure they survive the landing.”

She could not know. Tam’s feat—lifting himself, Fejelis, and Orlanjis—should have been beyond a mage of his official rank, even before he had endured the the high master’s questioning. Misjudgment in such extremity was likely.

“Whatever,” said Sharel, “got into Orlanjis?”

“The boy is fourteen, a bundle of emotions,” Helenja said. “That mage won’t have dropped them at random; it’ll be a place he knows. Floria,” Helenja said without turning, “you know this mage, I believe. Where would he go?”

Floria drew close the calm she had learned as a courtier in a mageridden court. “Magister Tam was born in the foothills of the Gyrheights—the Cloudherds,” she explained, giving them their southern name. Tam would never return there, even in mortal danger, but Sharel need not know that. The southerners romanticized their origins. “I know he likes the west coast.” It was not precisely a lie; he had visited the west coast once, but talked of it often.

Tam had not gone back, though, after he had met his artisan lady, Beatrice. They had a three-year-old son and a six-month-old daughter, and if Helenja did not already know about Tam’s family, then Sharel’s inquiries need not progress far before she came across them.

She would deal with Helenja to safeguard Fejelis’s rightful position as Isidore’s heir. Isidore had made her promise the night Fejelis came of age—the night Isidore died. But she also owed Tam her life; his magic had deflected those quarrels from her own heart, as well as her prince’s. She had a blood debt to repay.

“No matter,” said Helenja, when Floria said no more. “Start looking; I am expected in an audience with the ‘princess.’ Floria, with me.”

If Helenja and Floria made for strange bedmates, Floria found herself thinking some minutes later, then whatever would Isidore have made of this orgy of the peculiar?

She stood at ease, back to a wall, gaze shifting around the room, clashing and glancing off the gazes of the other guards and witnesses ranked around the wall. Across the room, her former friends and colleagues in the prince’s vigilance eyed her suspiciously, questioningly, or speculatively, according to their natures.

In the center of the room, beneath a rose skylight, was a round table, its edge and legs carved with ornate geometric scrollwork, decorated with silver, and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory. On the far side sat Perrin, two hours’ princess of the Lightborn, and aged a month for every minute of it. Whose idea was it that she sat in that chair, the high, flaring back of which diminished her to a child’s proportions? She wore a prince’s red-and-blue morning jacket, and her light hair had been hastily caught up in a style suggesting a prince’s caul, with deep blue beads threaded through. No one dared re-create the true prince’s caul, lost with Fejelis. By her height, her sandy hair, and her light gray eyes, she was Isidore’s daughter, but Floria had never seen that hunted expression in Isidore’s eyes, or even in Fejelis’s.

On either side of Perrin sat the two whose alliance had pitched her into power. On her right was a solid, unremarkable-looking woman in crimson jacket and trousers. The crimson was higher necked and more opaque than any ordinary Lightborn should have been comfortable wearing, which meant its opacity was magical. Her glittering chains of rank showed her to be one of the surviving high masters, the leaders of the Lightborn Mages’ Temple, and spokesperson for the archmage—definitely not unremarkable, was Magistra Valetta.

On Perrin’s left sat Prasav, dressed as politic in crimson mourning and the green caul that marked his rulership of several northwest provinces. Beside him, sleek and predatory, was his daughter, Ember, in the guise of her father’s secretary. She watched Perrin as a well-fed cat might a caged bird, idly considering possibilities for later.

Closest to Floria, Helenja laid her hand down on the table with a soft click of gold filigree rings. “So, Magistra,” she said to Valetta. “Are you able to tell me yet where are my sons?”

“Regardless of whether we complete his deposition,” Prasav added smoothly, “Fejelis is a disruptive influence.”

“Nobody,” Perrin said, “is completing Fejelis’s deposition. I told you both,” she emphasized, with a look at each of her power brokers, “I am not taking the caul stained with Fejelis’s blood.”

Floria had to appreciate her courage, if not her sense. A princess who refused the caul was no safer than a prince who had lost it.

“We are not interested in contracting to locate the princes, but we will find Tammorn, and we expect the princes will be with him.”

Her use of “princes” could not be anything but designing. While Fejelis lived, only he was entitled to the address, but it was to the mages’ advantage to have their brightnesses at each other’s throats, not least because of the lucrative contracts protecting them against each other.

“When you do,” Perrin said, firmly, “since my brothers are earthborn, not mageborn, they should be placed in the custody of the vigilance.”

Where they will last only as long as it takes the first suborned vigilant to reach them, Floria thought. By chance—for it surely could not be the thought—Perrin’s gaze intersected hers. The princess’s face tightened, as though she had just tasted something unpleasant. The fading—Floria hoped—ensorcellment that lingered around Floria? Perrin, like Tam, was a sport mage. And sports, Fejelis had asserted, could sense Shadowborn magic.

“Well,” she heard Prasav say, “shall we talk about the Darkborn? We’ve two hours before we meet with Sejanus Plantageter.”

He and others cast an eye toward the sunlight shining in the west-facing window, low, slanting, and yellowing. Since the Darkborn archduke and his retinue could not travel by day, they would arrive at the meeting place after dark and cede the second hour of the night onward to the Lightborn.

“That assumes,” Helenja said, “that he lives to reach the Council Chambers.”

The meeting was to take place in the Intercalatory Council Chambers, the only space designed for such encounters, though it was hardly the environment their brightnesses—or the Darkborn aristocracy—were accustomed to. The council was of relatively low status, and its representatives not aristocratic. Floria’s neighbor and close friend Balthasar Hearne had been serving intermittent terms on the council since he was of age to do so. He had described the chambers to her, the several rooms of various dimensions, to suit different-sized groups, each one bisected by an opaque paper wall supported and reinforced by heavy mesh. Darkborn and Lightborn could hear each other perfectly through the wall—as she could attest, having spoken to Balthasar through such a wall for most of the days of their lives.

Prasav stared across the table at Helenja, open distaste in his expression. “If you mean anything in particular by that, Helenja, may I suggest you think again, now. We want reparations from the Darkborn, not war with them.”

Helenja snorted. “Ever the mercenary, Prasav. Do you really think that what they did last night—last night—can be paid for in money alone? If you have any doubt, look out there.” She stabbed two fingers toward the window.

Magistra Valetta’s was the only head that did not turn. Rumors ran through the palace of high masters crushed in their beds or quenched as their lights were buried.

Helenja leaned forward slightly. “Magistra, how are we supposed to decide on our demand for reparations from the Darkborn if we do not know what lives were lost?”

“The value of even one life is incalculable,” the mage said without expression.

“Yet we are going into negotiations with the archduke of the Darkborn and the men who were directly responsible for this atrocity,” Prasav said. “We will demand justice for your murdered people, but we will also demand reparations. And it will not come cheap.”

“The city,” Helenja said.

The others looked at her, Prasav frowning, Ember with eyes narrowed in speculation, Perrin with pale, parted lips.

Valetta blinked.

“Tell them we want Minhorne,” Helenja repeated.

“I very much doubt they’d agree to that,” Prasav said. “No matter what we held over them.”

Helenja’s fist closed. “The Darkborn live here on our sufferance. They depend on our goodwill. Our light is more deadly to them than their darkness is to us: any light kills them, but only complete darkness does us. Minhorne’s the only city of any size where we have to live like this. It’s unnatural.”

“I refuse to put my name to—,” Perrin said.

“Minhorne’s the largest, most prosperous city in the Sundered Lands.” Ember’s voice glided smoothly over the princess’s objection. “Arguably, it is this way because Lightborn and Darkborn economic interests have become intertwined to their mutual advantage, at least among the earthborn. Losing their industry and innovation at this time would cost us more than we could afford.”

Prasav’s daughter, indeed. Where the entire Lightborn realm was impoverished by hundreds of years of contracts with the mages, Prasav’s scrupulous—plenty said “ruthless”—economies had let him husband his wealth.

“Then let them live underground,” Helenja growled, “the way they used to. There’s a whole network of underground streets.”

The buried streets linking the older parts of the city were hundreds of years old, and Floria had heard Balthasar’s description of their condition—most damp, some collapsed, others more sewer than thoroughfare.

“What about you, Magistra Valetta?” Ember said. “What do the mages want from the Darkborn?” She leaned back into the sunlight to regard the mage, her face grave and concerned. The only death Magistra Valetta would acknowledge was that of Lukfer, a reclusive mage of strong but uncontrolled magic whom the mages accused, with his student Tammorn, of spreading false rumors about the Shadowborn.

“We have yet to measure our injury,” the mage said at last. “But we wish to hear what the Darkborn have to say. The streets will be safe for them.”

Magic kept those lights burning. Magic—particularly high-rank magic—could quench them.

Perrin spoke softly. “We, too, must live to reach the council chambers.”

Prasav said, with distinct impatience, “We have it taken care of, Princess.”

Perrin turned her silvery eyes on him, and for a moment Floria saw her father in her.

“My daughter,” Helenja said, before she could speak, “has a point. Please describe how exactly we are to avoid Isidore’s fate.”

“When the bell sounds, runners will leave the palace, carrying lights. They will string the route so that it is as brightly lit as the corridors of the palace. We will not travel together, and we will carry lights of our own. If there were”—a cut of the eyes sideways toward Magistra Valetta—“such a thing as Shadowborn, I doubt they would be able to swallow the magic in that many lights.” He folded his hands and said to Helenja, “I am satisfied with the arrangements; whether you are is up to you.”

Helenja acquiesced with a tilt of her head.

“Shall I suggest,” Ember said, evenly, “that we hear what the archduke has to say—how, for instance, he plans to deal with those responsible—and assess our injuries further before specifying the reparations we seek?”

Prasav said, “I think not. I am in a mood to demand.” He smiled coldly across the table. “So let us demand the city, and let them take the proper measure of our outrage.”

Ember dipped her head slightly in acknowledgment.

Magistra Valetta said, “Agreed.”

Perrin, the princess, licked her pallid lips and said nothing.

How can we fight these people, Balthasar thought, Telmaine, Ishmael, Vladimer, and me? He swayed where he stood.

Sebastien thought it a fine jape and greeted the newcomers with suppressed glee more suited to the boy he was than the man he was pretending to be. “Welcome, Captain, Johannes. Come in; bring your lights. Don’t mind my brother; he’s a little nervous about the sun.”

A gust of heated air swept around the two men standing on the doorstep. Balthasar reached out with a shaky burst of sonn. The younger had the build of a man who labored for a living and the clothing of one who did no more than subsist by it: his vest was sleeveless and his trousers ended in a ragged hem. He wore thick-soled sandals with heavy, close lacing. His only adornment was a knot-work bracelet on one wrist. The older man was lean and supple, and Bal’s sonn picked out the indistinct texture of fine, soft lace in his sleeves and leggings. He carried a rapier and a pistol on his belt, and the fluid balance of his movements reminded Bal of one of the Rivermarch enforcers who was also a fencing master; it was how he imagined Floria would move.

“Balthasar,” Sebastien said airily, “fetch us some of that excellent beer.”

“None for me,” said the older man, gravel in his voice. Lightborn would not accept food and drink from those they distrusted.

“Nor me,” said the younger.

“Then come through to the sitting room.”

“I’d as soon speak here,” the older man said.

With the door open? Balthasar wondered. His mind was beginning to clear of the panic inspired by the threat of sunlight. He took in more details of their stance, their position—close to, within lunging reach of, the door. Their distrust could not have been plainer if they had shouted it.

“Balthasar, these gentlemen represent two of our allies, Captain Rupertis of the Palace Vigilance, and stonemason Johannes of the artisan’s progressive movement. Gentlemen, my brother, Balthasar Hearne, Darkborn.”

Heads turned toward him for a long moment. Was he so obviously Darkborn to sight? It must be so; Sebastien appeared pleased by their reactions. Then the older man turned his attention back to Sebastien, while the other continued to face Balthasar. The self-styled progressive movement demanded revolution and the formation of a republic, and simultaneously rejected all forms of technological innovation, especially Darkborn. They were marginal, but not as marginal as Balthasar would have preferred. But Rupertis . . . He knew Rupertis by name, as one of the several watch captains of the Palace Vigilance. A captain of the Prince’s Vigilance, suborned or ensorcelled . . . What did that mean for Floria?

“Now,” said Sebastien, with Lysander’s smile, “what have you to tell me?”

“Why didn’t you tell us that you planned an attack on the tower itself?” Rupertis said.

“Why should we?” Sebastien said, folding his arms. “You didn’t need to know.”

The man’s jaw tightened. “Well, here’s something you need to know. Isidore’s dead. Fejelis has disappeared. And the Lightborn now have a princess—Princess Perrin, ruling with the backing of the mages. Your shells didn’t kill the archmage or the head of the Temple Vigilance. And they’ve taken over. Is that what you wanted?”

Sebastien’s smile had faded. “Who’s Perrin?”

“Isidore’s and Helenja’s eldest daughter. She showed at ten as a mage and was taken into the Temple.”

Sebastien shrugged. “Not a problem, as we’ve told you before.”

“Are you sure? Perrin’s a sport—born outside the Temple lineages. Fejelis claimed that lineage mages can’t sense your type of magic, but sports can.”

“That’s impossible,” Sebastien said, voice rising. “Lightborn can’t sense our type of magic.”

“You’d better hope they can’t,” Rupertis said, flatly. “Fejelis contracted with a sport mage, name of Tammorn, perpetually on the outs with the Temple, but strong. Fejelis claimed the shells that hit the tower were ensorcelled, and the sports dealt with them.”

Sebastien’s breathing was quick and shallow. “It didn’t happen that way.”

There was a grim satisfaction in the set of the man’s lips, hearing, as Balthasar heard, the wavering. “Fejelis put this to the archmage and high masters, in front of their brightnesses. They didn’t like that, I could tell you. Prasav made a play for Fejelis’s deposition, right there and then—had to, I figure, since if Fejelis had made the contract with the mages he was asking for, we’d never have shifted him—and the high masters stood aside when we drew on Fejelis. Cursed shame, I thought, but I had my orders.” From his tone, one would never know that he spoke of the murder of a nineteen-year-old man. “That sport mage of Fejelis’s swatted the quarrels aside and lifted himself, Fejelis, and Orlanjis out of there. If the mages know where he took ’em, they’re not saying.”

He waited for a reaction, and then said, dangerously, to Balthasar’s ear, “But it doesn’t actually matter to you who is prince, does it?”

Sebastien, too, heard that undertone. “Of course it matters,” he said quickly. “That was the agreement: we help deal with Isidore and with Fejelis, and leave the way clear for Prasav. We’ll help deal with Perrin and the mages. They’re lying; they’re hurt.”

“Was it Beaudry’s own plan to quench himself after he put a crossbow bolt through Fejelis?” Rupertis said. “We found his residue bundled up in a black tarpaulin. He didn’t even try to get away.”

“I don’t . . . ,” Sebastien began, and checked himself. “I didn’t order him to do that.”

“Floria White Hand is still alive,” Rupertis said. “Fejelis put a warrant out on her himself, sooner than we expected. We sent a team after her, but the woman’s as sharp as her rapier. She cut through the screen into her Darkborn neighbor’s house. Got out that way—” His face swung toward Balthasar. “That’s where I’ve heard the name. So you’re part of this, too.”

“No,” Balthasar said, fiercely; that much the ensorcellment did not forbid. “Never of my own free will.”

The captain’s face clenched, as if he heard an accusation. “You’d understand better if your rulers had beggared you with taxes to pay mages to protect them against other mages. My family used to have lands and a name—his did, too.” He gave another jerk of the head toward Johannes. “We were bled white by taxes from our lord and by our own Temple contracts. We turned vigilant, hired swords, but decades of service, decades of practice . . .” He flexed his sword hand. “We’re no more than glorified footmen, hired for a show of wealth, because earthborn are cheap, and when the money finally runs out, we’ll slip another step down toward begging in the streets.”

From his council service, Balthasar knew the price that the Lightborn had ultimately paid, both for the original compact with the mages and for their own murderous customs. By the compact, mages could not use magic against earthborn in their own interests, but could be contracted to do so by earthborn—and thereby indemnified of the consequences. Over time, as the tradition of deposition of heads of houses established itself, anyone at risk must contract with the temple for their protection, against threats both magical and secular. Now, after hundreds of years, much of the wealth of the princedom resided not in the hands of the prince and their brightnesses, but in the hands of the mages, who had much less interest in employing earthborn. And every year the number of starving in the provinces and vagrants in the city increased.

“Isidore tried to fix it, but he’s been bled white, too.” A grim smile. “They’re all fussing about the prince’s caul having gone with Fejelis, but the thing’s no more than wire and glass. Some of our lineage turned jewelers, and I have their word on it. Prasav is the only one who’s been able to hold on to his wealth; he seemed the best bet, the best gamble, for those of us who’d rather not be eating the garbage from the streets.”

“I have served several terms on the Intercalatory Council; we know, as much as anyone can know on the far side of sunset, how it is with you. What”—another question for which he did not want to know the answer—“was the warrant for Floria—Mistress White Hand—for?”

“The deposition of Isidore. Fejelis said she’d been ensorcelled to take a talisman to the prince’s rooms, a talisman that would annul the lights around it.”

“No,” whispered Balthasar. “She served him all her adult life—”

“Tasted every dish he ate,” the captain confirmed. “Closer than a wife, to Helenja’s ire.”

For a long moment, ensorcellment or no, Balthasar simply hated the Shadowborn. How many people’s loyalty, how many people’s despair, had they used to craft their way to power? For their design was power, he had no doubt of that. They did not care which Lightborn became prince, because their aim was their own ascendancy. Did Rupertis know what he worked for?

Johannes spoke for the first time, his voice suffused with anger. “We’ve got the Prince’s Vigilance out on the streets. We’ll have mages’ vigilant investigating, and assets questioning. Tempe Silver Branch is questioning the people arrested in front of the railway station. No one can lie to her.”

“That’s their problem,” Sebastien said. “If they were stupid enough to get caught. You said you wanted a revolution. What’s that song you sing?” He affected a nasal, though true-pitched tone. “Streets running with blood and fire.”

“There was a servant with Isidore when the lights went out,” Johannes ground out. “Nobody cares about him—it’s all Isidore, Isidore—but he was my cousin, one of us! You’re no better than the rest, you callous bastard.” His hand went to his knife—and was enveloped in flame as the scabbard and pommel caught fire. Rupertis slashed with his dagger at the ties on the sash, yanked them, let the scabbard fall with a clatter of metal and a scattering of ash. Even in those few seconds, the blaze had almost completely consumed the leather.

Johannes slowly folded to his knees, holding out his burned hand before him.

Balthasar started to go to him, but Rupertis spoke, and the tone of his voice made him pause. “Fejelis said something else. He gave a name to the magic and to the people who practiced it: Shadowborn.”

Sebastien was breathing quickly, suppressed glee and horror in his expression. “Shadowborn are a Darkborn myth.”

“Moving from dark to light,” Rupertis said, half to himself. “Ensorcelling men, burning—” Balthasar took a step forward. Ever after, he would be uncertain whether it was his professional instinct to defuse conflict or an impulse born of the ensorcellment to draw Rupertis’s attack on himself. He was too late for anything more. Rupertis’s rapier came from its scabbard like a breath driven out by a blow. Sebastien fell backward with a screamed, “Stop!” but Rupertis had already started to uncoil in a lunge, as oblivious to command as a falling boulder. Sebastien shrieked a word or a curse, and the captain’s body exploded into flame of such intensity that Balthasar threw his arms up to shield his face. He heard the man’s last breath roar out in agony. The blazing corpse dropped to the tiles with a meaty crunch that—like the sizzle of meat and fat, like the stench, like the postmortem spasms as muscles cooked—Balthasar knew he would be revisiting in his nightmares. The blade clattered to the tiles and broke.

Too late, far too late, Sebastien cried, “Stop!” and the flames went out.

Johannes staggered to his feet, eyes bulging with horror. He backed away, one step, two, three, stumbled backward and through the door, colliding with the lintel without a cry. Sebastien did not appear to notice his leaving. “He made me do it!” he cried.

Balthasar, repelled though he was by the sentiment, could not entirely disagree. Perhaps death had been Rupertis’s intent; perhaps it was simply a risk he had accepted in trying to kill the young mage.

“I’ve never burned a man before,” Sebastien blurted, still facing the body of the man he had killed. “I’m not a monster. I’m not. They said I’d be if I stayed. Just like they said.”

Balthasar swallowed. “It was a reflex,” he said, and before the boy could seize too hard on that as exoneration, he said, softly but sternly, “But if you are going to use your magic to defend yourself, you must learn different ways to do it.”

Sebastien turned on him. “How am I supposed to learn?”

“Neill seemed willing to teach you.”

“She’d stop him. She doesn’t want me taught.”

He was tired of pronouns and circumlocutions. “Was your mother the one who warned you about becoming a monster? A powerful mage needs training, or even with the best will, he can do great harm.”

“None of them want to teach me. Save Neill, and she’s got him so ensorcelled—”

“Sebastien,” Balthasar said, “what do you want? You, not Emeya.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want.”

“Your mother and father got away from her.”

“They left me behind.”

“You chose to stay behind, you said. I doubt, with your strength, they could have taken you against your will. But I don’t think you know what you chose then. You know better now.”

The boy did not answer, his face sullen. “Smell, Sebastien,” Balthasar said, almost in a whisper. “Is this what you want to be?”

Sebastien’s throat worked on a suppressed gag. “I hate you.”

Balthasar flinched, but said steadily, “You ensorcelled me to care, and therefore I must care if you court destruction. From what Captain Rupertis said, someone did counteract the ensorcellment on the shells. You felt that last night.”

“I know it worked. I felt it.”

Balthasar was courting destruction himself now. The boy need not call fire to burn him, not with the door open to daylight. “If you make the Temple come for you, they will destroy you. If you go to them now, they may spare you. You have a form of magic new to them, and if you can prove that you were acting under the influence of another, then their laws may protect you.” He could not convince himself that it was a certainty, even under Lightborn law. Yet he was certain that if the boy continued on this course, it would be to his own end. Under Darkborn law, Sebastien would be condemned to death for sorcery. If nothing else, if he had fathered Tercelle’s twins, he was guilty of sorcerous seduction.

“You don’t believe that,” Sebastien said dully. “You think they’re going to kill me.”

“You haven’t been taught what you need to know,” Balthasar said, “about magic and about morality. I would make them understand that.”

Sebastien stood a moment longer, head turning from the charred and reeking corpse to Balthasar and back.

“You do not have to do this,” Balthasar said.

Sebastien suddenly straight-armed him, hand to the chest, making him stagger. “Be quiet. Go back to your room. You’re not turning me against her. You can’t.”

Breathlessness forced her to slow from a sprint and then to a jog. Her ribs ached; her throat was raw. She was still feeling the effects of being nearly drowned in the fountain outside Bolingbroke Station. Up on the crowded hill of New Town, sun warmed red walls and white roofs. To her left was Darkborn land, the estate of Duke Kalamay, and the raw, brown wound of the mages’ retribution and the explosion of the guns and stored munitions that had carried away half the hill. Nestled in deep shadow, the house itself still stood untouched, but the sky above it was smudged with smoke from outbuildings near the crest of the hill. The last time she had crossed this bridge, there had been smoke in the air, too, the smoke of the burning Rivermarch.

She glanced down at the dock below the estate; it was intact. If the occupants of the estate were wise, they would leave later tonight. Fejelis had today put almost every vigilant at his command on the streets to protect Darkborn, but she would be surprised if Perrin extended the order tomorrow, so she doubted Kalamay’s grand house would be standing by tomorrow night. Mycene’s estates were in the country, in Darkborn lands, but pity help the city household that had had him as a guest, if the rioters knew.

As she reached the far side of the bridge, on the road approaching, she met a party of two dozen guardsmen and -women. They looked like they’d had a long, hard afternoon, and were dusty, weary, cut, bruised, and carrying three of their number on stretchers. “Mistress?” one called, though it was a hail, not a challenge.

Barely checking stride, she rasped, “Nothing for you, unless one of you’s a midwife.”

They shifted to let her pass, with weary well-wishes. There was more than one gray or balding head with experienced eyes in it, who might well think to ask a few questions about a fair, running woman with her particular collection of bruises, dressed for court and armed for trouble. It would be too much to hope that her rash stand in front of the railway station would not be one of the stories told in the barracks tonight.

Worry about that later. Up the hill she ran, feeling every stride in the center of her chest. The bundled lights in her backpack bounced on her shoulders. She had her hand on Tam’s gate when she thought to wonder what kind of talismans and protections he kept around his house. Would they recognize her as a friend in his absence? What if he had thought to ensorcell them against Shadowborn magic, including the ensorcellment that still lingered about her?

From the house there came an infant’s screech: Tam’s daughter had a voice proportioned to her will. Nothing else but to take the risk. She eased cautiously through the gate. No unseen barrier stopped her, no sudden weakness collapsed her, no roar of thunder met her. She padded across the garden, trying to steady her breathing enough that her voice would sound normal. Beatrice was wary of her at the best of times.

Her pull on the doorbell elicited a sweet carillon and a clamor of, “Mama, mama, mama, attadoor, attadoor.” There was a thud, as of a small body striking the door, and Floria winced. For some, “head-on” was not merely a metaphor.

The viewing hatch opened; Beatrice’s pale face floated in its frame. “Floria?”

“Issadaddy?” the unseen child demanded.

“Let me in,” she said. “Please.”

“Tam’s not here.”

“I know. And I know when and how he left the city. Will you just let me in?”

Beatrice closed the hatch. Floria drew her stiletto—if the woman would not let her in, then she would force an entry—and pushed it quickly back into its sheath as she heard the bolt slide back. The door opened slowly. Beatrice stooped to keep a hand on her son’s collar, her posture wary. Disappointment filled his upturned face and eyes at the sight of her. “Isnadaddy.”

A crash behind her made Beatrice whirl, releasing the boy. The red-haired baby, propped up in a chair, had hurled a wooden toy onto the tiles, and was glaring at Floria. She could feel the little boy trying to squirm past her legs.

“Is there someone who can take the children while we talk?”

“Have you come to tell me he’s dead?” Beatrice said tensely.

Tam would surely not have left her uncertain of his survival after the tower was destroyed. “He’s not dead. But he’s in trouble. Do you have anyone you can go to for the night—someone you know who would shelter you?”

The baby screeched. Beatrice moved to collect her while her son mounted an assault on the door. “Did he send you?”

“Tam lifted out of here with Fejelis and Orlanjis, saving Fejelis from deposition. Helenja has Sharel trying to find where he might have taken them, which means learning more about Tam. It won’t take her long to learn about you.”

Beatrice’s lips pinched. The southerners’ reputation in New Town was dismal; they were loud, reckless, destructive in their entertainment, and careless in making reparations. They had disrupted more than one market with their rumpus, and while more lay behind the failure of Beatrice’s family business than a single stall full of broken crockery, Beatrice’s thoughts about southerners were far from charitable. “It’s too late to go anywhere now,” she said.

“There’s to be a meeting between their brightnesses and the Darkborn court, and an hour after sunset the bells are to be rung to allow their brightnesses to travel to the meeting place. The Darkborn will keep to their houses. You can move then.”

“I never—”

“It’s not common knowledge. We don’t want any mischief done under its cover. We’ll not meet anyone in New Town.”

And if we do, she resolved, I will deal with them.

“I don’t think—No.” Her fine lips set. “If I decide to go, I’ll go first thing tomorrow.”

“And if the southerners come for you tonight? They’re used to the desert, used to traveling by night.”

“I’m not taking the children out on your word alone, Mistress Floria,” she said, narrowly. “For one thing, I hardly think it will help us to make our way to safety if my son and daughter scream in terror the whole time. I thank you for your concern, and I will act on it if I choose.”

This was the woman who had refused Tam for nearly five years, though he was as decent a man and besotted a lover as anyone could ask. And she had a point about the children and the noise they would make. Floria might have been able to concoct a potion, even from household herbs, to sedate the children; if she hadn’t had water on the brain as well as in the ears, she would have brought a potion.

“All right,” she said. “When you go, don’t take any talismans with you that Tam made. Nothing, not even protection or toys for the children.” Some of Tam’s uses of magic were playful and inventive. “Mages would be able to trace you through them.” She wondered whether to mention that the Temple might be taking a renewed interest in Tam’s lineage, given the strength he had shown. If they were, there was probably very little any earthborn could do, and they, at least, would treat the children well.

She had her hand on the door when she heard the sunset bell begin to ring. The first hour of the night was for the Darkborn. She turned back, ignoring the resentful expression chased off Beatrice’s face. “Make yourself at home, Mistress White Hand. I must go and put the children to bed.”

That was a ritual that would occupy her for the better part of the next hour, Floria suspected. She made her way through into the social room and sat down on one of the long couches. Her first glance had already measured the room and eliminated all threat in it; now she studied the brightly painted tiles mounted on the walls and in brackets in alcoves, Beatrice’s former livelihood. In the corner was a clay sculpture, a tree with coiled and twisted roots and huge, enameled copper leaves. The tree drew her eye and made her uneasy. It suggested turmoil, unhappiness. Though when she had said as much to Tam, he had laughed and said she did not understand artists. Being a mage, he could not avoid knowing what his lover felt, that she liked him well enough, but she did not love him—though he could be consoled that she loved no one else better.

She was hardly one to judge the bargains others made, she who frequented the vigilants’ house of companions, when she felt the need. Perhaps it was time to engage a matchmaker, as more than one of her relatives had suggested, and cease to be so choosy. Or accept that the priceless magical asset against poisons she had inherited from her father would pass to one of her cousins or their children.

Old thoughts; useless thoughts. Better to spend her time thinking what else to tell Beatrice that would make the woman move the moment the sun came up.

“You didn’t tell me about your wife!” Sebastien shouted, in Lysander’s voice.

Balthasar started to stand, and then realized that standing would place him above the full heat of the blaze. “No,” he said, more faintly than he would have liked. “I didn’t.”

“You ought to have. She was a danger to me! She helped murder Jonquil.” That last seemed to turn his anger more calculating. “Well, it doesn’t matter.” It wasn’t just the shimmy of the flames that distorted his face, Balthasar realized. His voice completed its shift toward the boy’s. “Your wife’s dead.”

The edge of the cushion was catching. “Put out the flames, please,” he said, arm shielding his face.

Sebastien quenched the flames with a sweep of the hand, his expression ugly. “Did you hear what I said?”

“I did,” said Balthasar. He took a precious moment to compose himself, and stepped down and over the scorched carpet. “I have no reason to believe you.”

Sebastien’s hands closed into fists. “She tried to use our magic and lost control. She nearly killed the archduke, and then she came back to heal him, and they captured her and he had her executed. They put her in a room with a skylight and opened the skylight.”

That made two of three implausible statements. The only one believable was that if Sejanus Plantageter were hurt, Telmaine would try to help. “As I said, I have no reason to—” And he remembered what Ishmael had sensed from Telmaine while they were in Stranhorne, and what Stranhorne’s son had telegraphed to his father. And that the archduke, judicious ruler though he might be, had a profound distrust of magic. That was enough for the ensorcellment. An abyss of belief and despair gaped beneath him.

The boy’s hands loosened their clench, and his lips eased into a smirk. That was worse; that was Lysander’s smile of considered cruelty. “You ought to have told me,” he said. “I’d have been able to save her.”

“She would never give in to you. And I refuse . . . to believe she is dead.”

“Believe it,” the boy said.

At the words, the ensorcellment twisted inside him, trying to tear out his hope, tear out his heart, tear out his love. It wrung a sound from him that was midway between a gasp and a groan, the sound of a man who had taken a mortal injury. There was no argument reason could make against the imposed conviction that Telmaine was dead. “I will not,” he said, strangled. “I will not.”

“Tidy yourself up,” he heard the boy say, dismissively. “We’ve a visit to make.”

His body moved, somehow. He wondered that a man could endure so much pain and still live. He could barely draw breath for it; he found himself leaning, dizzied, against the side of the wardrobe.

Promise me, Telmaine had said, as they began to reckon the danger they were in, that if anything does happen to me . . . promise me you will still live for, love, and care for the children.

Their daughters, who were sheltering with Telmaine’s formidable elder sister. Florilinde, who had a fascination with all things mechanical, and little, strong-willed Amerdale, whose sixth birthday was a mere two weeks away, and whose one immovable desire was for a kitten of her own.

Amerdale will not have her birthday in a city ruled by Shadowborn. Whatever had happened to Telmaine; whatever happened to him. Balthasar pushed himself away from the wardrobe. His hands sought the pouch of bottles he had taken from the medicine chest and obstetrical kit the night before. He remembered the pleading Don’t leave me from the night before and set the thought, Chloroform, for painless surgery first and foremost in his thoughts as he wrapped the small bottle of chloroform and pushed it into his pocket. Morphine, for the relief of pain, and a syringe, in the other pocket. He did not count himself as religious—it had always seemed to him that religion was a product of psychological frailty as well as a triumph of imagination—but now that he stood face-to-face with his own psychological frailty, he whispered a prayer as he rose: that he be given the moment he needed, the opportunity he needed, for he surely could not choose.

He followed the boy, once more in his Lysander form, down the steps, to the tolling of a warning bell. Sebastien had said the night had been ceded to the Lightborn to allow their brightnesses to travel to negotiations. The air that brushed his skin felt like night air, just after sunset, though with Sebastien’s ensorcellment on him, he did not suppose it mattered whether it was night or day. Nothing much mattered. Not the tolling bell, not the eerie, huddled quiet of the city beneath it. He heard no voices from the streets, no carriage wheels, no horses, not even any machinery. Only the wind stirred. Sebastien said, disgruntled, “There aren’t any coaches. I don’t want to waste myself lifting.”

He is afraid, Balthasar thought, insight penetrating his dullness. He roused himself. “Where . . . are we going?”

“Your council chambers. The Lightborn princess—whoever she is—and her nobility. They’re all going there to meet the archduke and his council.”

Balthasar forced himself to pay attention to the undertones of that gloating. He said, quietly, “You do not have to do this.”

The boy in his brother’s shape halted and swung on him. “Do what?”

“Whatever you are planning to do—” No, that was weak. “Kill the archduke, kill the princess—is that it?”

“You don’t think I can do it? I’m a strong mage.”

“Yes,” Balthasar said. “I think you are entirely capable of it.”

“Good.”

“I also think you do not understand what you are doing. But for me to make you understand—for me to even start to make you understand—between here and the council chambers is quite beyond my capacity.”

The admission stirred a vague impulse of alarm. He needed to care—he needed something to use against the ensorcellment. “Tercelle’s children—they are yours, aren’t they? Truthfully?”

“You don’t think I’m old enough?” Sebastien challenged.

No, thought Balthasar; he had been nearly ten years Sebastien’s elder, and still not old enough, when the midwife set Florilinde in his hands. She had thoroughly disapproved of him, he recalled. Telmaine had told him later that she had been outraged to have a husband underfoot who fancied he knew something about childbirth. He stopped with a gasp, remembering her laughter. It felt as though he had just scraped a scalpel across the raw wound of her loss. “Did you feel anything—anything at all—for Tercelle Amberley?”

Sebastien caught him by the arm and swung him around, wrenching aching muscles. “I loved her, stupid! She was so beautiful. The way she spoke, the way she held her head, her grace—she wasn’t like the women where . . . where I come from. It was just once, for me and her, the first time I ever . . . I didn’t expect . . . I didn’t think about . . . I didn’t even know she was pregnant. I couldn’t even look for her because Jonquil would have known. And it was all for nothing. Jonquil had her killed. When I felt him die, I danced. And if anything’s happened to my sons because of you, you’ll die—horribly.” He spun and started running, slowing to a walk halfway down the block. He might have been sobbing. But if he had been, he was composed again when Balthasar caught up with him.

Balthasar considered and rejected several questions, among them whether the men who had nearly beaten him to death had been sent by Jonquil or Sebastien himself. “What . . . would you like to do after this is over?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, once you have done what has been laid upon you to do,” Balthasar said, choosing his words carefully. “What will you do then, if you had a choice?”

“Get away,” Sebastien said, head down. “Take my sons and . . . live far away from people. I’d set magical talismans all around, so that no one would approach, and if anyone dared, I’d raise storms and lightning. I’d build a house for them, out of stone and earth. We’d eat fruit and berries, and we’d raise oats and barley and potatoes, but not lettuce—I hate lettuce. And meat. We’d collect stones—beautiful stones—and make mosaics. You’re laughing at me.”

“No,” Balthasar said. “No, I’m not.”

Perhaps he did not entirely keep the sadness from his voice, for Sebastien halted. “You didn’t believe all that, did you? That’s where I’m really going to live.”

Balthasar oriented himself to Sebastien’s grand gesture and the direction, and realized he must be pointing at the Lightborn palace. “I’ve heard it’s very beautiful inside,” he said, “though much of the beauty is in the colors, and would be wasted on such as myself.”

Sebastien stared at him. “Would you like to see?” he said, unexpectedly. Balthasar tried to conceal his sudden dread that the boy was about to turn his magic on him. “Doesn’t the dark . . .” His voice suddenly trailed off, but Balthasar heard, quite clearly, frighten you?

“I was born in darkness,” Balthasar said, mildly.

“You nearly wet yourself when I opened the door.”

“So would you have,” Balthasar said, “if you’d known your whole life that sunlight would burn you to ash. . . . I wish I understood magic better, to know how you were keeping me from burning. It’s an . . . exceptional thing. Your people must understand the Curse very well.”

“Yeah,” Sebastien said, “we do.”

The Intercalatory Council Chambers were just within the boundaries of one of the newer Darkborn districts, small row houses occupied by the homes and offices of minor civil servants and not-yet-established professionals. Had he married according to his station, he might well have had his first home here. A couple of streets away was the start of an equally modest Lightborn district that for two or three hundred years had been home to Lightborn artisans, artists, and craftsmen. He liked to believe both districts had prospered in unexpected ways from their proximity. The outer walls of the council chamber had been plastered smooth, so that the Lightborn could paste posters, which offered the people’s commentary on politics and society. He could rely on Floria to describe those that his colleagues on the council were too politic to translate.

He set a hand on the wall as they approached the steps, and felt damp, lumpy paper. The lumps compressed as he pushed at them: fresh paste, hastily applied. And then his hand brushed something tacky, and he caught the smell of blood. He halted, midstride, the memory of those hours in surgery coming back to him. Sebastien, on the stairs, turned. “What is—ugh! Leave it! Leave it. Nasty thing.”

“What—”

“Leave it! It’s vile!”

Balthasar pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands, keeping his mind closed to the stickiness. Sebastien rattled the handle. “They’re locked!” He threw his weight against the doors, unavailing. “I’ll have to burn through!”

“No!” cried Balthasar, remembering the stench of smoke rolling out from the gaping wall of Stranhorne. “I know where there’s a key.”

Distrustfully, Sebastien watched as Balthasar hoisted himself up to the lowest rank of gargoyle. Floria had been appalled when she learned about it—why, she demanded, didn’t they just leave the door unlocked? His groping hand found the key, spilling it onto the paving stones with a clatter.

Sebastien simply stared at it, while Balthasar slithered down, collecting moss on his borrowed formals. “Tradition,” he explained, as he bent stiffly to collect the key.

Sebastien stood at his shoulder as Balthasar plied the key and pushed the door open. Deep in the building, a bell rang, and Sebastien started. “What’s that? ”

“The council works day and night—it’s best someone’s warned when the door is opened.”

“You didn’t tell me.” He caught Balthasar’s arm. “Do they keep explosives here, too?”

“I don’t know any reason for them to.”

“You’ll die, too,” the boy threatened.

“I might count that a mercy,” Balthasar said, and cursed himself for the indulgence. He said, more quietly, “We don’t have to go in.”

“Yes, we do.”

He opened the inner door, and found himself caught by the sonn of half a dozen armed men of the archduke’s guard. Instead of the pistols that formed part of their usual, ceremonial regalia, they held revolvers as modern and, he had no doubt, deadly, as Ishmael’s.

Sebastien jarred up against him, catching his arm. “What is it? It’s dark.” Belatedly, he used sonn, and caught his breath.

Balthasar croaked, “Wait!” What inspiration might have come to him, he would never know. A door flew open at the end of the hall, and a compact, handsome man built like an athlete threw himself out to confront them, followed a step behind by his own sister.

“Lysander!” Olivede cried out.

“No!” the man said. “Shadowborn.”

Bal recognized Phineas Broome, the fourth-rank mage who was one of the co-leaders of the commune that Olivede belonged to. “Kill them!” shouted Phineas.

And Balthasar heard the thunder of revolver fire from behind him as Sebastien lifted both of them the length of the hall. Shouts, an explosion. His wild backward cast of sonn caught the guards as they spilled aside, thrown or throwing themselves away from a figure who was simply falling amidst a feathery echo that Balthasar knew as spurting blood. He started back down the hall in trained response, and behind him he heard Phineas Broome groan deep in his throat. The mage stood with arms outspread as though to bar the door, face contorted with extreme effort, the muscles in his neck like ropes. The smell of smoke thickened the air, though Balthasar did not know where from. He gasped, “No, Sebastien. Remember how it smelled!”

A backlash of heat seared his face as Sebastien fleetingly wavered and the weaker mage prevailed. And then Phineas cried out and fire flashed up his clothing, from trouser cuff to collar. The door to the main chamber slammed open and a revolver boomed. Sebastien lurched; the flame unwrapped from Phineas like a cloak, and then Balthasar heard a man’s mortal scream, felt the heat, and heard and smelled, for the second time, a man being incinerated alive by Shadowborn fires.

In the move he had rehearsed in his mind a dozen times, he pulled cloth and bottle from his pocket; twisted out the plug; dropped it, freeing his hands to sluice the chloroform onto the cloth; and discarded the bottle in turn. He caught Sebastien around the chest, clamped the rag across his mouth and nose, and held him with all his strength in a travesty of an embrace. He could feel, against his wrist, the warmth of the boy’s blood. In Sebastien’s ear he rasped his half-deranged babble of justification: “I can’t let you do this. I can’t let you destroy yourself. You would destroy yourself. It is because I care for you that I am doing this, because you demanded I care. . . .”

The boy wailed something unintelligible, muffled by the rag. Bone and muscle rippled and swelled beneath his arm; claws dug into his wrist. Heat mounted around him; he could smell the acrid stench of singed wool and hair, and pressed his face to Sebastien’s neck, praying that the mage could not turn the fires on them both. With one last uncoordinated rake at his hand, Sebastien slumped against him. Balthasar half collapsed, half guided him down to the floor, and then squirmed urgently out of his smoldering jacket. In unconsciousness, Sebastien had shed his borrowed form, and Balthasar, panicked by the memory of the Shadowborn who had transformed as he died, tore open his collar until he had exposed the bleeding wound at the join of neck and shoulder, and sonned the pulse in his throat. “Olivede,” he said, “help me.”

“Busy,” she gasped, from inside the council chamber. “Sweet Imogene—”

He heard, then, a pistol hammer being drawn back. He dropped forward onto his hands, shielding the unconscious body. Two men dragged him to his feet, their expressions murderous. Both wore the livery of the Duke of Mycene. “No,” he shouted, trying to struggle free, as a third man went down on one knee and laid his revolver behind Sebastien’s ear.

And then, blessedly, the archduke’s voice cut through it all. “Hold.”

The moment teetered; Balthasar sonned the tension in the finger that rested on the trigger. Then one of the men who held him rasped, “Aaron, wait. This is too cursed quick.”

Balthasar felt, more than heard, a growl of approval from the gathered men.

Olivede said, breathlessly, “Please, someone give me a hand here—”

Of Phineas Broome, he could sonn only his booted feet. The archduke gave some quiet orders; someone in the rear ranks dragged him clear.

“Balthasar Hearne,” the archduke said.

“My lord archduke.” The expression on the archduke’s face killed his last hope that Sebastien had lied. He could not imagine any other reason why he should sonn shame as well as raw-nerved suspicion on that face.

At his feet, Sebastien moaned. Revolvers leveled. Balthasar crouched and held the chloroform-soaked rag over Sebastien’s nose until the boy stopped twitching. He could not even say “I’m sorry,” in case regret weakened him fatally. “I’m going to stop the bleeding,” he said, asking no one’s permission.

“Explain, please,” said the archduke, “how you come to be here? Who is this . . . boy?”

“I have heard,” Balthasar ground out, “what happened to my wife.” He went on before anyone could speak. “Whether I shall ever”—forgive would have been the honest word, if not the most politic—“reconcile to it is . . . a question for another day. I am still a servant of the state, still your servant. But this boy is my brother’s son, and I claim his life.”

No one questioned his assertion, but, then, the proof was there in the resemblance. Nor did they respond to his claim. It was enough for the moment that they not interfere. He opened the boy’s jacket and shirt to expose the narrow, childish chest, pulled off his own shirt, and tore strips from it to make a compress and bind it down. It was awkward, clumsy work, but he got it done.

“Lysander was living among the Shadowborn,” he said as he worked. “He fathered a child by a Shadowborn mage. There are at least two factions of Shadowborn. Lysander and his wife fled from one to the other, but they did not succeed in taking their son. I first met him, though I did not know it, at Strumheller Crosstracks; he arrived in the guise of a member of Mycene’s troop. In Stranhorne . . . do you know that Stranhorne was overrun by Shadowborn?” Stark, and not the way to break such news, but he was past delicacy.

“We do. The details are scant and we don’t have time; the Lightborn should be here very soon, unless it pleases them to make us wait. Go on.”

“With the help of another mage who survived the destruction of the manor, he brought me here.”

“As what? His collaborator or his captive?”

“His captive.” He paused to wind a strip of bandage around his wrist, and from his pocket fumbled the morphine and syringe. He cleaned his hands as best he could, and with still-tacky fingers he filled the syringe and used his knife to slit Sebastien’s sleeve and expose the thin arm.

Sebastien moaned and rolled his head weakly. Balthasar placed the tourniquet, braced his arm, slipped the needle into the vein, and injected the drug. He released the tourniquet and hung over the boy until sure his breathing was steady. He could hear men moving past him, three men carrying another, and Olivede giving steady instructions despite the strain in her voice, to the accompanying drone of a prayer from Duke Kalamay.

“You seem most concerned for someone who has held you captive,” the archduke observed.

“The boy is sixteen at most, and has been cruelly used,” Balthasar said. “Ill taught—fire and shape-changing seem to be the magic he knows best. The other mage, the one Ishmael di Studier killed at Vladimer’s bedside, was the elder and the dominant partner.”

“You will have to keep him drugged,” the archduke said, “and if that does not kill him, and he does not die of thirst or hunger, we shall—”

For almost the first time ever, he heard Sejanus Plantageter fail to complete a sentence. He was glad of it: his desperate accommodation with the ensorcellment would not survive a threat of execution for sorcery. He shuddered, the ensorcellment racking him. “I know,” he gasped, “that this situation cannot pertain indefinitely.”

“Indeed,” said the archduke, grimly. “The situation will assuredly change, and possibly not for the better. Let me be plain: is your will your own?”

“As long as I believe that I am acting in his interest”—a desperate belief, held fast, despite accumulating evidence of harm—“then I believe my acts will be my own. I am quite certain that permitting him to continue on his planned course would only lead to his destruction.”

“So ensorcellment is amenable to solipsism.”

“He is a boy, Your Grace, uneducated, unsophisticated, abandoned, and abused. He has the emotional maturity of a young child. He demanded first of all that I love him as I love my own children—impossible, but it gave me latitude to act for him as a father would. As his father,” he said harshly, “should have.”

Sejanus Plantageter pinched the bridge of his nose. “I am under the impression that the Lightborn could not sense this ensorcellment,” he said, slowly. “Thus your acquaintance, Floria White Hand, was able to deliver the ensorcelled talisman to the prince’s room.”

Balthasar realized a beat too late that the statement had been a test of what he himself knew, and his reaction had betrayed him. “I was not thinking . . . about that, Your Grace. About other things, but not that.”

“Mistress Floria was, I understand, quite unaware of her own ensorcellment. That was why I permitted your wife to be condemned to death. I had no other way of being certain that my mind was my own.”

Balthasar said, in a voice that shook with repressed feeling, “You were wrong.”

There was a silence. “I am truly sorry,” the archduke said, and his face twisted as he heard his own words. “I said that to your wife—”

“Wait,” said Balthasar, forcing himself to reason through numbing grief. “Sebastien said . . . Sebastien said that none of the Lightborn could sense Shadowborn magic—he believed that no one could. But Ishmael di Studier could. Phineas Broome could—sense it and fight it. And when the attack was launched on the tower, Sebastien reacted as though the Lightborn had somehow counteracted or annulled it—”

“They demolished the gun emplacements.”

“But there was also an ensorcellment on the munitions, Sebastien said, to make them . . . to increase their harmfulness. The boy’s vitality had been used to support the magic—”

“Only that?” said the archduke, very still.

“I don’t know,” said Balthasar, “but I do know he suffered a seizure immediately after the emplacements were destroyed.”

“Sejanus.” Claudius Rohan, the archduke’s closest counselor and friend, shouldered through the group of guards. “Sejanus, the Lightborn have arrived.”

The archduke turned away, paused. “I’ll spare the boy’s life for the moment,” he said, his back to Balthasar. “I will not promise more.”

A feather plucked from a very dead bird, she amended. Farquhar Broome was himself Darkborn, but the magic he was toying with had originated with the Shadowborn themselves. And though Shadowborn magic did not actually smell, it left her with the unsettled conviction that she had smelled something thoroughly foul.

“Father,” protested Phoebe Broome, but resignedly.

Her father quenched the flame with a belch of that nauseating magic, and held out the taper to Phoebe. “Try it, dear girl,” he invited. “Just do as I did.”

Dutifully, Phoebe took it. She was a tall, switch-thin woman several years older than Telmaine, her dress so plain as to be masculine, and her manner awkward and self-conscious—except when she forgot where she was and who her traveling companions were. Her father, too, was tall, of an indeterminate age, with a wizened-apple face that wrinkled into merriment at the least invitation. His suit and coat had to be at least four decades out of date. Had Telmaine encountered them under other circumstances, she would readily have typed them: difficult father with long-suffering daughter; he charming in his disregard of social convention, and she carrying a double burden of it. But had someone been so indelicate as to mention the name Broome to Lady Telmaine, the duke’s daughter, she would have cut the speaker dead. Mages, even the leaders of the largest and best organized commune of mages in Minhorne, were not discussed in polite society.

And yet here she was, sharing a train compartment with Farquhar Broome, said to be the strongest living Darkborn mage, and his daughter. Here she was, a condemned sorceress, spared execution by the archduke’s last-minute, secret orders, carried out by Vladimer with imaginative scrupulousness. Would anyone, even the archduke, know that that heap of ash in the execution room was not hers, with her own wedding rings and Balthasar’s silver love knot cushioned on it?

She imagined some footman or courtier laying the jewelry in Balthasar’s hand. She imagined her husband’s face—imagined what she would sense if she touched him—and bit her gloved index finger until it hurt. She had not even dared leave Balthasar a message—save an oblique word to Floria White Hand, of all people, safe on the other side of sunrise and accomplished in keeping secrets—for fear she might compromise the ruse. But when would Floria be able to pass the word on, if she even would? How long would Balthasar think her dead, and what would he do in the meantime?

Phoebe Broome slipped her gloves from her long hands and laid the gloves aside, and then unwound a thin, controlled ribbon of magic, quenching the flame almost as soon as it came into being. Farquhar Broome beamed approval. “Not nearly as unpleasant when you do it yourself, is it, now?”

Phoebe smiled back, reluctantly. “No, Father.”

Telmaine sank a little deeper into her seat, determined not to attract their attention. Earlier, she had demonstrated Shadowborn fire setting to them—having learned it, entirely against her will, from the Shadowborn themselves—but even her most tentative and careful coaxing had created a burst of flame that had instantly burned the taper to a strip of ash. She had just managed to quench it, leaving their compartment reeking with smoke.

That was not the worst. Across from her, Lord Vladimer had jolted upright in his seat, snatching at his revolver. She had gone utterly still, terrified, knowing what he remembered: that catastrophic breakfast, Telmaine’s uncontrolled fires blazing up around Vladimer’s brother, the archduke. She herself remembered her dear friend Sylvide crying, “Lord Vladimer, no!” and throwing her arms around Telmaine just as Vladimer fired. He had been aiming at Telmaine—aiming to kill her magic with her—but with his right arm wounded and his aim unsteady, he had mortally wounded Sylvide instead.

After a moment, Vladimer deliberately removed his hand from his holster, his bony face a sick mask, pulse beating hard in his temple. He apologized to the Broomes for alarming them, and excused himself—to rest, he said, completely ignoring Phoebe Broome’s efforts to ease the atmosphere or mind his comfort. The mage was as gauche as a provincial sixteen-year-old. But, then, Telmaine thought, how should Miss Broome, mage and social outcast, know how to behave around a duke’s daughter and the archduke’s half brother?

She heard Farquhar Broome tear another strip from the broadsheet and fold it, and sensed another pulse of Shadowborn magic. “Now, my dear”—Telmaine sonned him holding out the unlit taper to Phoebe—“try to set it off. No, don’t take it; I’m not quite sure how vigorous—” The taper burst forth with a jet of flame several inches high; Farquhar Broome promptly dropped it. Magic leaped out from father and daughter and the taper was snuffed, leaving a scorched ring in the broadsheet. Farquhar Broome shook his fingers, then lifted the sheet and explored the hole.

“I wonder that they have not refined it,” he said. “It should be possible. It’s an intriguing approach to latency. I’m sure it could be applied in other areas.”

It already has been, Telmaine thought. The murder of the Lightborn prince had been carried out with a talisman, spelled to annul the magical lights Lightborn needed to survive the night.

She sensed, passing between father and daughter, a ripple of magic, such as she had sensed passing between Phoebe and her brother, Phineas, when she had listened to—spied on—their conversation with Lord Vladimer. Then Phoebe got to her feet, politely excusing herself so she might check on the well-being of the fifteen or so mages who comprised the rest of their party. As though the group was not well able to communicate even through walls. Telmaine repressed a sour little smile. She could recognize an engineered opportunity.

Farquhar Broome turned his face toward her, his smile now only a memory in the lines of his face, though his expression was gentle. He was as circumspect in his use of sonn as Ish, she had noticed; perhaps magic substituted, or perhaps he was simply accustomed to other people taking care of him. “Dear lady,” he said, “what a shock this must be to you.”

Statements of the obvious were not confined merely to vapid society matrons, apparently. She said tightly, “I have lost my reputation, my place in society, and but for the archduke’s clemency”—belated, secret, and ambivalent clemency—“I would have lost my life. I am well aware that with another man”—Duke Mycene, perhaps, or, Mother of All avert it, Duke Kalamay—“I would have lost my life. I don’t deny what I did. I don’t deny my responsibility.”

He nodded, as though none of that took him by surprise. “It was a serious thing you did, and a brave thing in coming back. Your sureness in healing is remarkable, for a young woman who has kept down her magic for most of her life. With your strength, my dear, someone should have recognized what you are.”

“I was always careful to stay away from mages,” she said. Until Ishmael, who had guessed within minutes of meeting her. But, then, Ishmael did not allow prejudice to interfere with his perceptions, and he could hardly reject outright the notion of a nobly born mage. “My husband is a physician, and I had Ishmael’s—Baron Strumheller’s—guidance, too,” she said, challengingly. Phoebe Broome had come close to expressing the sentiment that Ishmael was not a suitable preceptor for her.

“You do understand, dear girl, that you cannot go on in this fashion. Your magic—well, it is like a ball gown. Once it is out of its box, then it will not be pushed back in again, not without violence to its fine fabric.”

And what could a seventh-rank mage and a man know about ball gowns? But she understood. The magic she had kept tucked well within her skin was restive now. “I know I need to learn how to control it,” she said.

He smiled his imp’s grin. “And I believe you will do well.”

Assuming, she thought, we survive what we find in the Borders.

As though one of his threads of ambient magic had snagged the thought, he said, “There is another painful matter I must bring up, dear lady. That nasty thing in your mind will give you no trouble in and of itself now, although had Ishmael been less timely and sure with those firearms of his, you would likely not be sitting here.”

“That nasty thing” was a legacy of her battle with the first Shadowborn that had tried to kill Lord Vladimer. She had come away from that encounter with a cyst of Shadowborn presence in her, an infection or parasite of magic forced on her by the Shadowborn. With the Shadowborn’s death at Ishmael di Studier’s hands, the magic in it was extinguished and it could no longer ensorcell her, except that the Shadowborn had also given her its knowledge. Her experiments with that knowledge had awakened her magic in dangerous ways.

“I will not use it again,” she said, a heartfelt wish.

“Dear lady, you must. Or, rather, you may have no choice. Why do you think we have been amusing ourselves with tapers and fire? It is because we must understand this magic before we meet it. We are already under strength—I am quite sure of that. You have not sensed ahead, have you? I thought not.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. In the last few sentences, the fey manner had slipped away. “We may have right on our side, but we simply do not have the numbers or might to match the Shadowborn. We are fortunate in Lord Vladimer, who is certain to favor an oblique approach—he is renowned for it. But he will be the first to insist that we need all the information we can get if we are not to blunder into a confrontation we cannot win.”

“I will tell you everything I can,” she said.

“Though it pains me to say, that may not be nearly enough, because your understanding of magic is a novice’s, strong as you are. It would be of immeasurable help to us if you would permit me or my daughter, Phoebe, to examine the Shadowborn’s gift directly.”

For a moment, she resisted understanding that he wished to touch the thing in her mind, magic to mind. Through stiffened lips, she said, “I cannot believe you are making such a suggestion to me, sir.”

She hoped—she fervently hoped—that she was convincing in her outrage.

His smile was very sweet. “I am,” he said, without apology.

Should she leave the compartment in umbrage? Order him out? She had a distinct feeling that he would not oblige. He could sweep the knowledge from her mind with the barest effort, as she had the knowledge of his plans against the tower from Duke Kalamay, and then he would know. . . . Frantically, she pushed down the thought.

“I know this is far too soon,” he said, as though, she thought dizzily, he were an impulsive suitor offering a premature proposal, “but please give it some thought. Neither Phoebe nor I would ever force you, especially now that we face a living demonstration of violation of our principles. Compose yourself, dear lady; we do not want to alarm the good people on this train, or disturb young Lord Vladimer’s rest.”

Then she was alone in the backwash of his magic, for he had not even opened the door to the compartment. She gulped at such a casual display. How could she possibly resist? She thought she smelled smoke and frantically made her mind blank, holding her breath. When she had to breathe, it was only the stale air of the compartment, like old cigar smoke, that she inhaled. Perhaps she had only imagined the smoke.

Sweet Imogene, the thought of Farquhar or Phoebe in her mind appalled her, though not nearly as much as it would have before she had met Ishmael. Ishmael she would, and had, let into her mind without hesitation. Society had not the least notion of all the improprieties possible through magic—she had not had the least notion.

If she could only speak to Ishmael, she would have laid her confession before him, even though . . . even though . . . Would he understand how she had come to know about Duke Mycene and Duke Kalamay’s plans to launch an attack on the Lightborn Mages’ Tower, undeclared and unprovoked—except that to such men, the very existence of the tower, and the mages it housed, was an offense. Would he understand why she had misused her magic so? He would understand why she had taken the knowledge to Vladimer, trusting him to act on it? Ishmael was deferential to Vladimer’s greater cunning. And she thought he would understand why Vladimer had chosen to do nothing.

But that was because, after years of service and friendship, he knew Vladimer, and Ishmael’s was not a nature given to outrage or bitterness. He would not hesitate to condemn Vladimer’s silence, but he would understand it. She could not trust that the Broomes, who barely knew Vladimer, would be forgiving.

Vladimer—and she—could not do this alone. They needed the Broomes and their commune. She could not—

A woman screamed in full-voiced horror. Telmaine lurched to her feet, sweeping aside her skirts, and threw open the door as Phoebe Broome cried out, “Phineas! ”

The mage was standing in the corridor, bracing herself against the walls, her father at her side. “Phineas! Oh, Mother of All, Phineas.” She stretched out an arm, back along their track, and Telmaine could feel the magic streaming out of her.

“What is it?” Vladimer said, harshly, from behind Telmaine. He was framed in the door of one of the two staterooms, supporting himself against the lintel, coatless, hair disordered, and shirt loosened.

Phoebe gave another cry of “Phineas” and fell to her knees, curled palms held up before her, as though cupping water or life. Behind them, mages crowded the corridor; behind Vladimer, the door to the engine opened and one of the engineers stepped through, revolver drawn.

Phoebe lifted her face to her father. “Why didn’t he call on us!”

“It was too quick, dear girl.” He put his hands beneath her elbows and lifted her with an implausible ease. Telmaine sensed magic. Phoebe hung, limp as a pennant, on its prop.

She heard Vladimer dismiss the engineer, assuring him that he would take care of it.

“I just felt my brother die,” Phoebe told them all, between sobs. “I don’t know what happened. Olivede is there, but I can’t get her to respond. I could feel her pouring out magic . . . healing. . . .”

“It is not death you felt, dear girl,” Farquhar said.

“Then why—Oh, no. He feels like Ishmael. He feels just like Ishmael. Phineas—”

“Telmaine,” said Vladimer, so close behind her she could feel his breath.

“I don’t know,” she answered the implied demand for information. Phineas Broome had been lately in the service of the Duke of Mycene, though exactly why he had taken such service, perhaps only he knew. He claimed loyalty to the state, protecting Vladimer and the archduke from a dangerous mage—Telmaine herself. Vladimer inferred he wanted access to the Mycene armory for his revolutionary associates, and using that inference, Vladimer had struck a deal with the mage: silence for silence on Telmaine’s escape. Telmaine had been immensely relieved that Phineas had not joined them, that his actions appeared to have estranged him from his family, because Phineas knew about Vladimer’s silence over the tower.

If Phineas had remained with the Duke of Mycene, and Olivede Hearne had been there, then it was not too far to assume that the archduke was there also. And if by “he feels like Ishmael,” Phoebe meant that he felt dangerously overspent, burned out, that meant the Shadowborn—

Vladimer said, “In here,” in a voice meant to be obeyed.

“My dears,” said Farquhar to the rest of his party, “we will tell you as soon as we are able.”

He steered the stumbling Phoebe into the compartment, moving as steadily as if he were walking through the halls of the immense, immovable archducal seat. Phoebe subsided limply into her seat, with a murmured, “I’m sorry.”

Vladimer sat down. “Magister Broome,” he said, in a voice that caused Telmaine’s stomach to clench. “Inform me.”

Farquhar Broome sighed. “I wish I could, dear boy. . . .” Vladimer’s lips thinned dangerously at that, though whether it was the evasion or the solecism, Telmaine didn’t know. “I cannot sense either Phineas or Olivede now; there’s too much Lightborn magic blocking me. They are quite a bit stronger than I.”

“It is customary, particularly when sensitive negotiations are proceeding, to block magical surveillance.”

“Magister Broome, I could order this train to turn around, this minute.”

“Dear boy, what would that possibly achieve? What is happening in Minhorne would be long over by the time we reached there, and what is happening in the Borders very much needs attention.”

Vladimer accepted that with obvious reluctance. “Were the Lightborn responsible for the attack on your son?”

“No,” Phoebe said, faintly. “It was Shadowborn. It felt stronger than Phineas. He was trying to stand against it. . . . There was fire . . . and he . . .” She put gloved hands to her face. “I’m sorry, Lord Vladimer, but he’s my brother—”

“And was my brother there?”

She swallowed. “Yes,” she said, more steadily. “Yes, I think he was. I don’t know where they were, but I don’t believe it was in the archducal palace. There were other people there—you’d know who should have been there better than I. But the first thing I sensed for certain was Phineas’s alarm, and panic and pain—agony—as he tried to quench the flames. And then I felt him wring himself out with the effort, and—from Olivede, Dr. Hearne’s sister, and not as strong as Phineas—I sensed only healing effort, on a man. Two men. And . . . emotional turmoil, something to do with family. She wouldn’t, or couldn’t, respond to me. And then I lost all sense of them.”

“The Shadowborn have used the guise of Lysander Hearne in the past; perhaps they did so again. That would certainly disturb his sister—it did his brother.”

“Yes,” said Phoebe. She put out a hand, groping, and after a moment, her father took it.

Vladimer braced himself as the train shook and rattled over uneven tracks. “When we arrive in Strumheller Crosstracks, I will immediately wire north for information. But if you learn more by other means,” he said through his teeth, “I need to know.”

“Balthasar,” his sister said, lifting a face that seemed to have aged twenty years in minutes, “I am so sorry about Telmaine. I had no idea that she was mageborn. If she had only trusted . . .” Her voice faded.

For Olivede, there had never been any question of not following magic, or any expressed regret at the life and place in society that she gave up to do so. But the open, sensitive girl had become a guarded woman, bruised by the many hurts the world dealt her kind, and Balthasar was not certain that she knew how much she had changed. He did not think she could understand—could have understood—his wife.

Olivede pushed herself to her feet and came along to where Balthasar sat beside Sebastien, whom he had made as comfortable as possible on a long, padded bench. The bleeding had almost stopped; the boy snored slightly in his drugged sleep. There was a suppressed revulsion in Olivede’s face as she sonned the boy, though whether it was at his magic, his actions, his resemblance to their elder brother, or all three, he could not know.

She took Bal’s bandaged arm—he had strapped it properly with the help of one of the guards—in hers, checked it, and let it go. Wasting magic on so minor an injury was out of the question. “I can’t annul the ensorcellment on you,” she said in a low voice. “I haven’t the strength, even if I had much left after”—a twitch of the head toward where the body of Duke Sachevar Mycene lay in an improvised shroud. Even so, the smell of his death tainted the air. “He so willed to live. He gave everything to the struggle. How could I give less?” Her smile twisted in a peculiar mingling of compassion and repugnance. “To him, the only profanity in magic was that he had none himself. He liked power.”

“Be careful,” Balthasar breathed. “If Kalamay—”

“Between Mycene and Kalamay and the Shadowborn, they murdered dozens of Lightborn mages,” Olivede said, as though she had not heard, her head still turned toward the dead duke. “But that death was obscene.” She sonned him. “Balthasar, you’re in as much danger as I am from Kalamay. You cannot protect this boy.”

“I must,” he said, throwing all the weight of meaning he could into the two words and imploring her to understand.

She masked her face with her hand, denying him the chance to sonn her expression. “The Lightborn are preventing me from reaching anyone, but I don’t suppose Master Kieldar could come, until the curfew is raised.” Even in here, they could hear the warning bell. “Phineas needs more than I can do for him, and Phoebe must be frantic. I didn’t respond because I . . . didn’t want to explain.” She sighed and sat down beside him, her worn skirts folding almost silently—unlike Telmaine’s starched, scented rustlings—and slipped her arm around him. “My poor little brother,” she said quietly, “you’ve sustained a dreadful loss. I cannot imagine what you have been through. But you have your daughters to think of. Just remember—”

She brought up her hand as though to draw his head against her shoulder. He sonned the bare skin, thought of the ensorcellment, and ducked out of her embrace. And then realized what she had meant to do: spend the last of her magic in rendering him unconscious. “I am not distraught with grief,” Balthasar said angrily. “At least not distraught beyond reasoning.”

“Balthasar,” she said. “Please let me—”

From the main chambers, they heard a shout: “Will you listen to me!” Balthasar’s experience of the archduke was slight, generally gained as part of a large audience to Sejanus’s masterful public performances. He had never heard the veteran statesman even raise his voice in anger, much less shout. He took a step toward the door.

“Not with that ensorcellment about you! If any of them can sense it—”

There was real fear in her voice, but, still angry with her, he disregarded it. “I know more about the Shadowborn than anyone here. I’m used to conducting business with Lightborn—six terms on the council, Olivede! And if there is someone who can sense it, my ensorcellment would be proof—”

“Of further Darkborn involvement. Don’t, Balthasar. There’s at least one high master in the building—I can sense the strength. It’s important—it’s vital—that this is dealt with as a matter between earthborn. If the Lightborn mages decide we had anything to do with it, they’ll crush us like cockroaches. Phineas—”

“If it were to be dealt with earthborn to earthborn, would they have a high master with them?”

“Archduke’s orders were that none of you were to leave,” one of the guards said civilly from his station beside the door. In deference to his injuries—his face was bound with cloth torn from a pennant—it was a seated station. But if his hand on his revolver was not quite steady, it was purposeful. Brave men, Balthasar thought, knowing what they guard here.

Olivede wrapped her arms around her ribs. “Phineas went to warn Dukes Kalamay and Mycene about Vladimer’s mage, who was your own Telmaine. But because he was involved with them, he might be accused of ensorcelling the munitions that destroyed the tower.”

He could not keep his temper; she sounded so frightened and forlorn. He lifted his scorched jacket and put it around her shoulders. She leaned against him with a sigh, and he rested his cheek cautiously on her hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry you have to fear your own people as well as the Shadowborn.”

She pulled away, wrinkling her nose. “Ugh, Bal, that ensorcellment is revolting.”

She had worn exactly that expression at twelve when he had run to her in outrage after Lysander had pushed him into a pigsty. Though the muscles of his face moved like clay, he smiled at the memory.

They heard the door to the main council chambers slam open, and a moment later, Sejanus Plantageter swept into the room, a brace of Mycene’s guard scrambling ahead of him. Balthasar found himself up and standing between them and Sebastien before he was aware of having moved.

Dukes Imbré and Rohan followed the archduke together, Rohan lending an arm to the oldest duke. Then came a young man who, by his resemblance to Xavier Stranhorne, was surely Maxim di Gautier. At his shoulder was a stout older man who steered his young baron with the gentlest of touches and cast a challenging sonn over Balthasar and Olivede. In his other hand, he held a staff in a grip that dared anyone to menace his baron. Duke Kalamay followed, fingers kneading an amulet that Balthasar recognized as one distributed to followers of the Sole God as a shield against magic. Behind Kalamay came his heir, whom Balthasar knew as a clever man of malicious wit and considerable theological knowledge, and one who took as much pleasure in demolishing the fallacies of faith as those of skepticism. He stumbled on the threshold, caught himself against one of the benches, and lifted a face sagging with shock. “You said there was nothing to it. Nothing,” he said, to his father’s back.

Imbré laid a hand like a gnarled root on the archduke’s shoulder. “Well, Sejanus, now we know.”

“W’can’t yield, of course,” said a stocky man in a Borders accent, setting his stance before the archduke.

“You shall not treat with mages,” Kalamay said.

The archduke ignored him. “Lord di Gruner, while yielding is as repugnant to me as it is to you, I cannot ignore the fact that, should they choose, they could trap us in our homes, day and night both, with their lights. I doubt most households have more than two weeks’ sustenance to hand, and the poorest will have less. Not to mention the havoc it would cause for business and trade.”

“Are they,” Maxim di Gautier spoke up, hesitantly, “a legitimate government? Is this princess a legitimate ruler, or does authority still properly vest with Fejelis?”

“Of whose whereabouts we have no idea,” said Rohan.

“I got the impression,” the archduke said, “that neither did they.” He started to pace. “I should not have let myself be thrown by the fact that they brought forward a woman. I think even Vladimer stopped keeping a dossier on Perrin when she dropped out of the succession. I thought if Fejelis went down, it would be Orlanjis. And his mother, likely—Odon’s granddaughter, indeed. I wonder if this order of expulsion was her idea.”

“Our people won’t stand for it.”

“Indeed they won’t—and I wonder if theirs will, too. Oh, there’s feeling against the Darkborn—the riots and the vandalism tells us that—but there are sectors of the economy and parts of the city that owe their prosperity to trade with us.” He paused, his expression one of concentrated thought. “We are vulnerable to the light, but we have other, subtler means to hand. But I think I do not want to discuss any of our options until we are well out of this building.”

Balthasar got stiffly to his feet. “Your Grace,” he said, “am I to understand that the Lightborn still insist this is a matter between Lightborn and Darkborn—that they do not accept the part played by Shadowborn?”

Sejanus hesitated briefly—whether because of Balthasar’s insignificant status or his involvement—and then said, “You understand correctly, Dr. Hearne. As far as the Lightborn are concerned, the attack on the tower was entirely Darkborn. As to what happened just before their arrival—they didn’t even acknowledge that.”

But even lineage mages should have been able to sense Phineas and Olivede’s efforts, and the injury and deaths of Darkborn on this side. So how much of the denial was authentic and how much politic? First and foremost, the Mages’ Temple served its own interests, and those interests would not include admission of so profound a vulnerability. Mages contracted to the various members of the Lightborn nobility would obey the letter of their contract—no more. But what of the princess herself? She was born outside the lineages, to a family with no known magical members. Was her magic of the sport form?

He said, slowly, “My ensorcellment makes me immune to daylight. As long as that ensorcellment lasts”—as long as Sebastien was allowed to live stood implied, he hoped—“I would be able to go into the courts of the Lightborn and act both as envoy and as living proof of the existence of the Shadowborn. To my best knowledge, even the high masters would not be able to reproduce the feat of allowing a Darkborn to survive in light, or a Lightborn in darkness. If they cannot sense my ensorcellment, yet there I am, alive, they must ask themselves why.”

“Bal—,” Olivede began, and fell silent at a gesture from the archduke.

“If they do not simply kill you to restore congruence to their worldview,” Plantageter pointed out.

“I believe that I will be sufficiently intriguing and offer sufficient possibilities that they will keep me for study.”

“Why should you take the risk? ”

Because I hope the Lightborn will spare the boy, he told the ensorcellment. “Your Grace,” Balthasar said, “I have served several terms on the Intercalatory Council, as my father did before me. I know about and care about the relationship between Lightborn and Darkborn. I have a family connection to the Shadowborn. I have been their victim—it was only by my wife’s and Ishmael di Studier’s doing that I did not die twice over. I have lost my wife to a series of events that they initiated. Regardless of what happens to me, I do not want my daughters—or even my brother’s twisted child—to live under Shadowborn rule. By their acts, I know them. I can do this. I am uniquely qualified to do this.”

“How much of this is your own will, and how much . . . his?”

“He has never intimated that I should cross the sunrise, but as long as I believe that I am acting in his interest, then I believe my acts will be my own. As I have demonstrated, I believe.”

“And how is your crossing over in his interest?”

Balthasar swallowed; he had not wanted to be asked that question, much less answer it truthfully. “Because I believe that Lightborn law will be more lenient to his crimes than Darkborn, and that the Temple mages have the strength to train and discipline him properly, which we do not.”

There was a pause. He could not tell, from the archduke’s face, what he was thinking. “We have received what amounts to a demand for complete submission to Lightborn rule and a surrender of the city itself. The Lightborn deny that Shadowborn exist, and blame Prince Isidore’s death on us, though they cannot say how we might have achieved it. Mycene’s and Kalamay’s guilt in the destruction of the tower and the deaths of mages is inarguable. One more offense, and I do not think they will refrain from tearing down our walls. How am I to know you will not be the agent of that offense?”

“It is my belief,” Balthasar said, “that Floria’s ensorcellment was the work of the other Shadowborn mage, who was also the one responsible for ensorcelling Vladimer.” A muscle ticked in the corner of the archduke’s mouth at the mention of his brother’s name—Bal wished he knew more about Vladimer’s condition. But what was said was said. “That Shadowborn could keep Floria unaware of what had been done to her. The boy does not have that ability. I have been aware of my actions all along.”

“While unable to control them,” the archduke said. Balthasar turned in appeal to Olivede, but the archduke said, “Miss Olivede is your sister, and I am barely acquainted with her. Her efforts to try to save Mycene’s life and ease his passing speak well of her—but I cannot take her word regarding you.”

“Your Grace,” Balthasar said intensely, “am I the man you would send on an assassination? My marksmanship is risible. I am no mage. I may know drugs, poisons, and anatomy—but I would be entering a Lightborn court where assassination is a mechanism of succession and their brightnesses surround themselves with layers of secular and magical protection. The fact that Floria had to carry a talisman to the prince suggests that such magic cannot be centered in a living body, and therefore I argue that I cannot be carrying such an ensorcellment. If you are concerned about anything else I might be carrying with me, then have me stripped and searched before I go.

“You need the Lightborn to accept the existence of Shadowborn, Your Grace. I am the best proof you have.”