Banner of the Damned (28 page)

Geral laughed. Tharais laughed. Ivandred shook his head, still grinning.

Everyone noticed he didn’t say no.

After supper, when Tharais caught Macael alone, she said, “Thank you. If you can keep him away from home for the rest of the summer, well… you know.”

Macael placed his hand over his heart, his generous mouth curving in a grin. “Yes, O Queen. Any further commands?”

She gave him a mock stern look. “Indeed. Since my brother refuses to use his unless the world is ending, you are to use that golden scrollcase of yours, and if anything at all happens with this princess, you are to write to me every single night.”

Macael laughed. “I promise. But you know, I did wonder about his never using his scrollcase. He’s learned some spells—he could even
make
one—so it can’t be a matter of not trusting magic.”

Macael’s laughter vanished at Tharais’s grim expression. So grim, her resemblance to Ivandred was unsettling.

She said softly, “He has it in case the world ends. The world, to him, being home.”

T

We Colendi have a word for the grief of a broken romance, which is a play on “river” and “tears.” Until that year I thought the “river” meant only the quantity of tears (which would be true) but I came to understand that it also meant the ceaseless flow of grief-stricken words. In private, Lasva talked about Kaidas, endlessly, examining every turn of his head, the exact meaning of every smile, his tone as well as his speech.

In public, Lasva spoke social nothings from Alsais all the way south to the aromatic pine forest of Barhoth, always endeavoring to smooth the ribbons of conversation that Ananda tangled. Ananda was still angry that Kaidas had actually married Carola. Young Gaszin was too experienced to exhibit any sign of emotion for the entertainment of court, but those who knew him best remarked on the sharpness of his sarcasm.

Then things changed, and the blame is mine.

One rainy day, as Lasva repeated every motion and word of a conversation that I had already discussed exhaustively with her, I thought,
So much for the reality of human passion,
as I clenched my teeth hard on a yawn, my eyes watering. I would swear that I showed no sign of how
stifled I felt that humid day, but Lasva must have seen, or sensed it. She tipped her head in that considering way, murmured that she was tired and, thereafter, all we got from her was the same superficial politeness she gave the world.

For one day, it was a relief, but then Marnda and I hovered in worry, striving to find little ways to please Lasva, to win a genuine smile, to ease the unexpressed suffering from her gaze. Guilt kept me awake nights.

When we reached the lakeside town Pirun, she began practicing the Altan fan form alone in her room, sometimes to music played by hired musicians, other times accompanied only by the sound of rain, or the river beneath the windows.

The day after our arrival was Restday, so everyone was free. I set out for a long walk, grieved that I had failed Lasva when she needed me most. I stepped down from an arched bridge, examining a window that overlooked that bridge. It was so beautiful a scene but the shutters were closed, carved with ancient acanthus-leaf patterns blurred by wind, weather, and time. Why would the inhabitants not look out?

It’s like Lasva, I thought, and made a vow to bring her outside the prison of her grief.

I returned, and it became my turn to talk endlessly—about the gardens growing aromatic blossoms both familiar and strange, about what kind of life people might have when most of the town was comprised of inns that catered to the yearly pilgrimage to the Sartor festival.

Lasva listened but gone was the delight of past years, the questions and debate. When I offered information she thanked me, but the subject died after her gratitude. I had become another social obligation. I don’t think she was punishing me. I don’t think she was aware. She had fallen into so deep a reverie, emerging occasionally to read and reread a book of poems that she had copied out herself; they belonged to the old seasonal mode, but they were really poems about sorrow.

From Pirun we transferred by magic to Lirendi House in Ilderven, which was owned by Colend’s royal family. As soon as I recovered from the wrench of magic transfer, I ran to fetch and sort through all the waiting correspondence. In the front vestibule—a plain room tiled in blue and white that served as a weather buffer—was a large shallow bowl carved from pink marble into which city runners and personal pages put letters. In Sartor they do not fold notes into shapes. They merely crease them
into thirds and close them with a blob of wax, stamped with a signet or carved seal.

Among the many notes to Lasva there was one for me, from Greveas, who had been watching for sign of our arrival.

Emras: there’s a new fad this year. They’re carrying decorated albums around, filled with sketching papers, on which they are to draw one another while listening to the music. You’ll want to have one ready—come as soon as you can.

Early the next morning, I hunched into my cloak as I hurried through the nearly empty streets.

Ilderven’s buildings are commonly five and even six stories, unlike Alsais’s, which are never more than three. Ilderven is mostly bare stone—shades of gray, warm sand, honey-brown, even a reddish rock that contrasts beautifully against the dark green pine forest on the mountain slope north of the city. The closer you get to the palace, the more marble you find.

I’d turned two corners and was heading toward the double spire above Twelve Towers, when I heard my name above the splash of my feet.

“Emras!”

I stopped at the running approach of a tall fellow wearing outlandish clothes. His round cheeks glowed with effort. Round little nose. Button chin—

“Olnar?” I gazed up in disbelief at my brother, who’d left the scribes for the magic school when I was six. I’d seen him only intermittently since, and he’d grown at least a hand since I saw him last.

“You shrank, Em,” Olnar said, grinning.

“What are you doing here?” I exclaimed.

“I’ve leave. Mother thought you might be here. I was heading for Lirendi House when I saw you bolt out like a horse from a barn, and I’ve been running after.” Olnar looked strange to me with that short tunic of shale blue coming to mid-thigh, worn over loose dun trousers tucked into low blue-weave boots. “It’s winter up north. Haven’t had a chance to change.”

Up north—he meant on the other side of the world.

“Where are you running off to?” he asked.

“Guild. There’s a new fashion—”

“What?” he exclaimed. “Sartor doesn’t
have
fashions. They repair and redo and replant, but it looks like it did a thousand years ago.”

The surprise encounter had shocked my wits into a tangle. I glanced
around wildly, for I could not speak of my foremost problem—the desire to distract Lasva from her private grief—and my gaze caught the stylized knotwork in the corbel above us, a motif echoed in the collar around a gargoyle across the street. “Isn’t this city amazing? I wonder how old yon bird-creature is. And if it represents something real.”

“You’d be surprised what lives in the north, especially the wilds of Helandrias,” Olnar said grimly, eyeing me. “So what’s this fashion that seems to have you running from shadows?”

“Sketching albums. They’re sketching one another this year, while they listen to the music.”

“Why don’t you just send a page to the bookmakers for a bound book, and come to breakfast with me?”

I frowned at him. “Is this a hint that you find my work frivolous?”

“Ah-yedi, sister! Enlighten me.” He tapped his fingers together in peace mode.

“Olnar, she’s a princess. What album she’ll carry reflects on me. I need to see the paper, the covers, and the ribbon marker, and I’ll want to make certain the binding is good.” It was reasonable, it was true, and it also concealed my worry about Lasva.

Olnar rocked back on his heels, squinting up at the crouching owl creatures staring down with hooded stone eyes. Mist beaded on his eyelashes. “Ah-ye,” he said. “So it has to be the best. And even if everyone else throws theirs away as soon as they get home, she’s a princess—maybe even heir—so hers becomes an artifact.”

“She’s not the heir anymore.”

“I’m behind in southern news. Ah-yedi! I will come along with you, and we can catch up.”

He fell in step beside me as I told him briefly about Princess Alian’s birth.

At the end, he peered down into my face, furrowing his nondescript eyebrows so like mine. “You’re hiding something. If you talk about something else, your tone is normal. As soon as our conversation touches the princess, you go flat. Em, I hope your heart is not given.”

“Heart-given!” I hiccoughed on a surprised laugh. “My heart is ungiven, and so is hers,” I said. “It’s just that… things are difficult right now.”

“With her losing a crown? I can imagine.”

My tongue shaped the words to deny that, then I hesitated again. Why not let him believe it? The world probably did.

So I sought another subject and found one. “Now the problem becomes all the suitors everyone expects. But I can leave that to the queen.
And the Grand Seneschal, who will have to find room for them. Olnar, why magic? When I asked you before, all you’d tell me was that I’d find out later. Cousin Tiflis and I both found that very condescending.”

Olnar grinned. “It’s an odd thing. I know your age, but in my mind you are still six.”

We dodged around a party of workers carrying bits of scenery—looked like a false castle—across the square. Then I said, “Can you tell me now?”

“It was a girl,” Olnar admitted. “I’d passed my Fifteen late, so I was near sixteen by the time the practice rotations put me at the palace relay desk.”

“Oh, that was so tedious,” I said, remembering that month of monitoring the ensorcelled tile to which magically transferred messages were relayed. We had to note in a log book when messages were received, and who they were for, then file them in the slotted shelves against the wall.

“There was a mage student on pickup rotation. Never mind her name. Our passion faded within a month, which is to be expected at sixteen. But in that month I found every excuse I could to delay her, and so I asked questions about magic. The more I heard, the more I got interested in it. We stayed friends, and so, when I was hauled in for my career discussion that next winter, and I asked about transferring to scribe mage, she was the one who showed me around. I’m a full mage now,” he said, taking me by surprise. “Happened just this spring. I’ve a head for spells, it turns out. But we don’t write about what we do in letters. So I tell Mother and Father what I can, and you know how discreet they are.”

We’d reached the boulevard lined with venerable linden trees, one over from Quill Street. “So tell me how magic works. I know that spells do different things—you have to gabble Old Sartoran codes and make comic gestures.”

Olnar frowned. “Emras! You know mages don’t talk about it. They must have told you that a hundred times in scribe school.”

I sighed. “I do not want the secrets of spells, I only want to know how it works. But if you cannot tell me even that…” I made the formal Peace.

And my brother blushed. “Well, there’s no harm in generalities,” he said, and I tried not to see condescension in that. “Shall I come with you, since I’ve the time? I miss fine paper and inks, I have to admit.”

“I would be delighted in your company. Please, go on, if you will.”

“So. Generalities only! Think of magic potential as a giant lake. Got that image?”

“Yes.”

“And magic is the water.”

That seems obvious
, I thought, but I only repeated, “Yes.”

“You’re standing at the edge of the lake. You’re thirsty, but you haven’t a cup, or a thimble, or even hands. You have no lips. How do you drink?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“Our ancestors—so we are told—used to be able to think magic into action. But we need the lips to sip, and the cup, and the hands to hold the cup. That’s what spells are: the lips, hands, and cup. The water is still water—its nature doesn’t change—but we need all these things to get and use it.”

We’d reached the corner of Quill Street, with Twelve Towers Archive on one side, the Scribe Guild on the other, and the royally appointed paper and book makers on either side.

“We used to hear warnings about Norsunder, the land of death beyond time, and their use of dark magic. ‘Dark’ meaning that its uses are evil, sending magic out of the world. But it made little sense. How can you send anything out of the world?”

“Think of steam—ah-ye, that’s not right, for steam beads up into water again. Think of the water boiling dry, and forget the steam. Think of the danger of the fire that is doing the boiling.”