Telmaine

They climbed into the carriage, the baron moving as though his bones ached. His expression as he settled himself across from her was grim.

“She didn’t know anything,” Telmaine said.

He stirred himself. “No, m’lady. She didn’t. And you pulled on her hard enough.”

She frowned, troubled by the flatness of his voice.

“Is something wrong? Is your shoulder hurting?”

“Aye, it is,” he said in that same tone. “There’s touch-reading, and then there’s reaching in and taking. You reached in and took; I had to replenish her, and that costs me. Lady Telmaine, you’re a dozen times the mage I am. You have t’be careful.”

Hearing her one ally condemn her, for reasons she did not understand, and was not sure she could have helped if she understood, she started to cry.

After a moment she heard him stir and grumble. “Don’t do that.”

“Why? Are you one of those who can’t abide weeping women?”

“No,” he said, after consideration. “Though I can’t abide those who do it for effect.” He lowered his head into his hand and gave an absurdly girlish sob, and she felt a delicate little brush of sonn on her face; he sobbed again, and sonned again, and she could not help it: She giggled, with a little involuntary catch of hysteria. “Why, Baron,” she said, “I did not realize you were such a good actor.”

He lowered his hand. “I am a very good actor, Lady Telmaine,” he said, unsmiling. “As are you.”

She rejected the suggestion with a nervous wave.

“M’lady, you have passed for the perfect society lady. Oh, a little radical in her choice of husband, true, but nothing I had heard of you led me to suspect the reality. Until I sonned you coming down the stairs by that ridiculous automaton, with your gloves up to your beautiful shoulders.”

“Ridiculous,” she said, piqued, her mind shying from the rest of his statement.

“Aye, it was. All that machinery t’do what? Move a single silver ball?”

Telmaine drew a deep, steadying breath, glad of the moment’s grace he had given her. “What do we do now?”

“I take you home t’your husband.” She heard a rustle of movement as he raised a hand in anticipation of objections. “Telmaine, these are not places a lady should go. And I will need all my wits about me, and you, m’lady, are a sore distraction. I wish I had met you before he did.”

“Baron,” she said, “if I had met you at the age of seventeen, I would have bolted like a deer.”

He threw back his head and laughed, wincing and bracing his arm.

She waited out his laughter, since she had told no more than the truth, chewing on the inside of her lip and listening to the rattle of the wheels on the cobbles, coarser cobbles now: They were out of the fine neighborhoods. She dearly wished she did not feel compelled to ask this of him, but she had to know. “Baron . . . was she . . . ensorcelled?” She was utterly at a loss for polite and innocuous words to describe the memories she had drawn from Lady Tercelle Amberley, and felt almost faint with embarrassment for herself and for the other woman. She burst out, “What she felt for her . . . for her lover. It didn’t seem . . . decent. I’ve never felt . . . didn’t know anyone . . .” Her face was burning so brightly she was surprised they were both not falling into ashes.

“People do, m’lady,” he said, the low rumble consolingly matter-of-fact. “But you ask a good question, and I think . . .” This came very reluctantly. “I fear it’s possible. She had far, far too much to lose by letting herself be taken like this.”

“So magic can do that.”

He was silent, jolting along opposite her. When she brushed him with her sonn, he stirred and said, “What would you have me say, m’lady? That yes, magic can be used to abuse and control people? Done that way, it’s called sorcery, and by any measure a crime.” He eased forward, wincing slightly. “I’d sooner not frighten you, but it seems I must. Do again what you did then and you risk your gift, your sanity, and mayhap your life. You are not trained, and you are powerful enough to do harm. You drained Lady Tercelle quite thoroughly; without me there to replenish her, you might have sent her into a coma.”

“I . . . I never—”

“Hear me out, Lady Telmaine. Have y’heard of the Lightborn Temple Vigilance?”

“Yes, but . . . but they’re Lightborn. They have nothing to do with us.”

“Not so. There’re more and more powerful Lightborn mages than there are Darkborn mages. Mayhap they know how to bring on a child with magic; they don’t tell us. The Lightborn Mages’ Temple rules magic among Lightborn and Darkborn. They don’t much care what lower-rankers do; we’re often more menace to ourselves than anyone else. But they do care about real power misused. It goes back, all the way back to the Curse and the mages’ war before . . .”

He paused, leaning back against the seat. “Y’know virtually nothing of magic, I expect. When we say power, strength, it’s more like efficiency . Working magic means drawing on your own and others’ vital energy to effect a change in th’physical world. How much y’can do depends. Even now, you’d do far more with your vitality than I ever could with mine. First rank to sixth rank, that’s a vast difference. Th’most powerful mages alive are eighth-rank. If you’d known what you were doing, you’d not have needed a spicule to heal your husband. If you wanted to, you could make someone do whatever you wished, or drain them to th’point of death. That’s sorcery. If you were caught by the Temple Vigilance, they’d destroy your magic, and mayhap your mind. The stronger th’mage, the greater the risk. I’ve already lied for you to Mistress Floria. I’d lie for you again. But there’d be a point I’d not be able to go past, even if I wanted to.”

Her hands were pressed to her mouth, her mouth open in a silent cry in the dark. She could not even sonn. She felt him take her shoulders in his broad, warm hands. “Take care, m’lady. You’ve a power and spirit that’re beyond price.” She felt his lips touch hers.

He released the kiss an instant before she would have pulled away. They rode the rest of the way in silence, and with a proper but not fulsome farewell, he handed her down from the coach and stood guard until she had climbed the steps and opened and closed the door. Through the door she heard the clatter of his carriage leaving, and she braced her gloved hands against the door and leaned her forehead against it. She had never, ever in her life touched someone who could touch her back; never, ever in her life known what it felt like to be known. She knew what it was to be desired, yes: Every time they came together, she drank of Balthasar’s desire like a sparkling wine. It was to preserve the heady clarity of that desire that she would not let Bal make love to her after they quarreled, until they had healed the quarrel with words. But when the baron—Ishmael—kissed her, she had felt the pain of his injured shoulder, felt the anger he still harbored, felt his fear, felt his desire like a resinous brandy, felt the aching loneliness of the outcast. Then she had felt his emotions shift as he felt hers in turn, the anger mitigated, the fear falling away, the desire becoming mingled with surprise, the loneliness become a yearning toward her. For a moment, pure revelation of reciprocity had held her, and then she broke away, and she knew that he knew how nearly she had not broken away. Sweet Imogene, what manner of wanton was she, with her husband lying beaten near to death upstairs? Magic was as corrupting as everyone claimed.

“Telmaine,” said Olivede from behind her.

She turned, at bay. “Don’t come near me!”

There was a silence, and then Olivede’s sonn brushed her very lightly. “So your errand was not successful. I am so very sorry.” She stepped back and gestured toward the sitting room. “My colleagues are upstairs,” she said. “You might be more comfortable if you waited here until they’re done.”

Could the mageborn woman—standing square in the hall, blocking the way to the stairs—sense the wild impulse working in her to scream at them to leave Balthasar alone, to beat or drag them away from him if necessary? She tamped down the scream to a single gulped sob, which reactivated the turmoil in her stomach. There was no baron to offer her his potion—she pushed past Olivede into the downstairs privy. Olivede, blessedly, finally left her alone.

Shaky and purged, she crept into the sitting room and closed the door. She sat, her head back, sonn quiescent, and did not stir as she heard footsteps come down the stairs. Cheap soles, she recognized, cheap soles and the weary tread of a strange man and woman. She braced herself as outside the door she heard skirts rasp and rustle and words quietly exchanged: Olivede, thanking her fellow mages, followed by a low-voiced argument as to whether they should take a cab. She knew what she should do—rise, go to the door, open it, face them, offer them money for a cab, offer them her thanks. She shuddered; there was that part of her that could not believe that Balthasar was not lying dead, or if not dead, as corrupted as she. And so she huddled in her chair while the argument concluded, with Olivede saying finally, “You will take a cab and an escort. I cannot let you return unguarded. Baron Strumheller would have apoplexy.” A moment later, through the door came a piercing whistle of the most common sort. Telmaine winced at the thought of her genteel neighbors—even the cabdrivers—hearing that. And plainly, the cabdrivers agreed, for the whistle was not followed by the approaching sound of a cab, but by silence and another whistle, and a, “Curse them,” from Olivede.

“We should be able to get a cab on the avenue,” said the young woman resignedly. “Perhaps I could walk there and bring it back.”

“D-do you think”—that was the young guard—“the baron would mind if . . . if we used his automobile? I can drive it. My b-brother builds them.”

Telmaine started to her feet, suddenly finding it intolerable that they should linger a moment longer in the hallway of her—of Bal’s—home. Never mind that she well knew that Bal should not likewise find it intolerable. She handed herself from chair arm to chair back and leaned upon the doorknob as she pulled the door open. “I will summon you a cab,” she said.

She stepped out into the night air, the young guard at her shoulder, and blew upon her whistle. There was a moment’s silence, and then, from the direction of the rank, the jingle of a harness and a cab coming slowly into motion. She waited with her head high, aware that her dress was rumpled and her veil slipping, and refusing to acknowledge either. When the cab drew up and the driver’s sonn brushed lightly over her, she lifted her skirts and stepped lightly down to the curb. “You will take the magistra and magister wherever they need to go, please. They have done my household great service tonight.” From her pouch she took a half-solar and put it in the coachman’s hand; for that he should be prepared to drive halfway to the Borders. Then she turned, and, sweeping her skirts aside, she passed the mages as they came down the stairs. For the first time she sonned their faces, the young woman a young girl, actually, no older than Anarys, though much plainer, and the man well past middle age. Both moved with that bone-aching weariness she herself felt, drained by magic. The man’s sonn caught whatever of her unwelcome empathy showed on her face, for he paused, and then said gently, “You have a remarkable husband, Lady Stott. What he lacks in constitution, he makes up for in spirit.” He did not sonn her again, so he did not sonn her frozen apprehension of his words. She took the last few steps at a stumbling run, and Olivede and the guard stood aside to let her pass.

“He’s asleep,” Olivede said, a penetrating whisper, as Telmaine set foot on the stairs. “Don’t wake him.” Telmaine turned; Olivede spread her hands. “The longer we can leave telling him about Flori, the better. I may be the mage, but I’ve never been able to keep anything from Bal.”

Nor I, lodged in Telmaine’s throat, so painfully she thought she would gag on it. Teeth clenched, she pressed on upstairs.

Bal lay on his side, on their bed, his breathing slow and deep beneath the quilts piled over him. There was no dreadful sickroom odor, no fumes of bizarre herbs or potions, just a faint scent of new-cut grass. You had to think to know that it did not belong here, in this small city house. She chose not to think. Very carefully, she drew off her gloves, eased her weight onto the bed, and crept her hand across the quilt to overlap his. Through his skin she could feel how much stronger he was since the last time she had touched him, his breathing no longer an effort against gravity and air, his pain merely monotonous rather than agonizing. He was not healed, but he was healing, and his sweet essence was unchanged. She curled up with her forehead against his hand, drinking in that essence. He did not stir.