Magi'i of Cyador (25 page)

"And to you, Captain." The thin man turns his head and murmurs, "Carefully, Kilenya." He slides out the open door, then turns to offer his hand to his daughter. The young healer apprentice looks neither at Lorn nor at her father as she takes a small green bag from under the seat and slips from the compartment.

The lancer majer eases his sabre from beside him, takes a single kit bag, and leaves as silently as he had entered so long before, offering a brusque nod to Lorn. In turn, the sharp-faced merchanter inclines his head to Lorn.

"Go ahead," Lorn says with a smile. "I've a great deal under the seat."

"For your courtesy." The merchanter nods once more, and slips from the firewagon.

Lorn reclaims his sabre and clips it in place before sliding out the two bags that hold his kit. Once on the platform under the granite pillars of the portico, he takes a slow breath of sea-perfumed air, air far damper than he has felt in three long years. He steps closer to the nearest pillar and sets down his gear, waiting for the others to leave the pillared portico, watching as the provincial mage and his daughter take the first waiting carriage, and the majer the second. The merchanter talks with a white-haired enumerator, both standing by a wagon waiting on the far side of the platform, presumably for some goods that will be unloaded from the center compartment of the firewagon.

Lorn picks up his gear and crosses the narrow way to the carriage-hire lane, where he addresses the first driver of the pair of carriages remaining. "The Road of Perpetual Light, at the crossing of the Tenth Way."

"Yes, ser."

Lorn opens the carriage door and sets the two duffels that contain his kit on the floor, then adds, "Straight down to the Third Harbor Way, and then out." He grins. "It's faster that way."

"Yes, ser. As you wish, ser." The driver bobs his head nervously with each word he utters.

Lorn slides into the uncovered carriage and closes the half-door, settling back into the upholstered seat and taking another long breath of the moist air of Cyad. For a moment, he glances up at the thin white clouds seem to hang motionless.

As the two horses pull the carriage southward, Lorn, studies the harbor, the white granite piers that hold near-on a dozen vessels, more than two thirds long-haulers with stern ensigns of either Hamor or Nordla. He sees but a single white-hulled fireship and two ships with the blue of Cyadoran houses, and he wonders if one might be a ship in which Ryalor House holds an interest. He laughs softly, telling himself he has no claim on Ryalor House or its assets. None whatsoever.

Except... he shakes his head.

The chill of a chaos-glass screeing him comes over him, as it has intermittently since he went to Isahl, although this imaging is warmer. His father? The feel is similar. He shakes his head. He must work that out- and somehow reconcile his father to Ryalth.

But can he even work matters out with Ryalth? Without her suffering for his transgression of having been a student magus? Will she even consider it? And what of Myryan? Is there anything he can do to remedy her consorting with Ciesrt? Or did he have but one chance where he has already failed?

His eyes do not truly see the City of Light as the carriage conveys him toward the harbor and then eastward beneath and past the Palace of Light, for he wrestles with all the questions seething behind the composed expression upon his visage.

"Ser? This corner?" asks the coachman for hire. "Is this where you wished to be?"

Lorn straightens, glances toward the northwest corner, toward the four-story dwelling where he was raised. The house is larger than he recalls, a dwelling that would be a merchanter palace in Syadtar. "Yes."

"Three coppers, ser. It was half the city."

Lorn offers four, and opens the carriage half-door, easily lifting the two duffels, and instinctively managing to keep the sabre from striking anything as he alights. By the time he has carried his kit to the front and formal gate of the house, Jerial is standing on the lower steps, well before the green ceramic privacy screen that protects the main entrance overlooking the Road of Perpetual Light.

His composure shatters into a broad smile.

As his boots touch the steps beyond the gate, Jerial shakes her head. "I felt you were coming. Then I wasn't sure. You look so... removed, so Lancer-like-I almost didn't recognize you." Then she smiles, and for a moment, the formal facade of healer fades. "I was hoping it wouldn't be long after your last scroll."

Lorn drops his kit and hugs her, amazed once more at how small she truly is, for she has always seemed so much larger.

For but an instant, she clings to him before deftly slipping out of his embrace. "You're stronger."

Lorn understands. "I hope so. I tried to follow what you said." He pauses. "Where's Myryan?"

"She is consorted... father wrote you, I know...."

He shakes his head. "I knew. I... Myryan..." He shrugs. "What you don't see is sometimes hard to picture."

"She and Ciesrt have a dwelling. You can see her in the morning. She spends the afternoons at the infirmary."

Lorn holds back the frown. He understands that message as well.

"Father used the chaos-glass, but he and mother are still waiting upstairs."

"Decorum," Lorn says dryly.

"Always," responds Jerial, her tone as dry as Lorn's has been.

Lorn picks up the duffels once more, and the two walk up the lower steps and then around the decorative tiled bricks of the privacy screen and into the lower entry. Side by side they ascend the marble steps of the formal staircase. Only the servants' quarters are on the lower level-where breezes are rare.

Lorn's mother-her once-mahogany hair now almost entirely white- stands at the back of the second-level entrance hall. Beside her is Lorn's father, in shimmercloth white, the bolts of chaos glowing on the breast of his tunic.

"It's so good to see you." Nyryah's smile is shy, if warm. She does not move toward her son.

"It's good to be here." Lorn sets down his kit, steps forward, and hugs her firmly. Her embrace is firm, but without the strength he has recalled.

When Lorn steps back, Kien'elth inclines his head to his son the Mirror Lancer captain. "Welcome home."

"Thank you."

"It's good to see you, Lorn. You have grown... in more ways than one." Kien'elth's smile is both welcoming and strained.

"I've tried." Lorn's smile is practiced and easy. "The Mirror Lancers make you work and think."

"Work, certainly. You have a few more muscles," offers Nyryah.

"I'm as scrawny as ever," Lorn protests.

"No, you're not," Jerial counters. "Mother would know."

Lorn shrugs helplessly.

"I would like a few words with Lorn." Kien'elth smiles, first at his son, and then at his elder daughter, and then his consort. "But a few words, and you may have him back."

"I will check the dinner," Nyryah says. "We may be able to find some tarts, or a pearapple pie."

"Mother..." Jerial smiles despite the slight exasperation in her voice.

"Lancer captain or not, I doubt that Lorn has lost his taste for sweets... of all kinds," Nyryah says firmly. "He does take after his father."

Lorn can't help but grin at his mother.

Even Kien shakes his head ruefully, if barely.

Lorn carries his bags up the second flight of stairs, leaving them in the third level foyer. He unclips the sabre and lays it across the green bags, then follows Kien'elth up the inner steps and to the study on the uppermost level. With an inner sigh, Lorn notes the slight shuffle in his father's walk and the thinning of his white hair.

The senior magus closes the study door before making his way to the chair behind the polished white oak table-desk. He sits carefully and not - quite - heavily.

Lorn takes the chair closest to the desk, careful not to let his boots scuff the polished wood of the legs. He waits as his father studies him in the comparative dimness of the paneled study. The sun-gold eyes have lost none of the intensity Lorn recalls.

"I said you had grown in more ways than one. I think you understand to what I refer," Kien states.

"Yes, ser."

"It is a dangerous course. Few complete it."

Lorn shrugs, understanding all too well why his father will not mention Lorn's growing power and control of chaos. "I've followed what Myryan and Jerial have advised as well, for my health, of course."

"They would know, but best you not mention that again, even to me."

"Yes, ser." Lorn forces himself to recall that he is back in the City of Light, where every statement may be truthread, and every movement caught in a screeing glass like the one which rests, covered, on his father's desk. He frowns, as his eyes study the light amber of the wood which frames the glass.

Kien follows his eyes. "Yes, it's only a year or so old. The old one vanished when I traveled to Fyrad last year."

"That's odd," Lorn says.

"Most odd," reflects his father. "I packed it when I left Fyrad, but when I unpacked here, it was gone."

Lorn nods slowly. He is indeed back in Cyad.

"With no sense of it in a year, I doubt its fate will ever be known." Kien leans forward in the chair and studies his son. "You may recall Alyiakal?"

"The lancer emperor?"

"The lancer-magus emperor. Any Mirror Lancer who has such talents may well turn Cyador over to the barbarians."

Lorn waits.

"I'm aging, Lorn, and I am too fond of pontificating. Yet I would ask that you bear with me and not ask any questions." At those words, Kien'elth turns in his chair so that he does not look at the lancer captain and cannot even see Lorn. "All who are of the Magi'i are bound to serve chaos, and thus limited by chaos. Those who are lancers are restricted because Cyador can but support limited companies of the Mirror Lancers with firelances. A senior lancer officer who could muster chaos would not be so bound or restricted, and both the senior commanders of the Mirror Lancers and the most senior Lectors are bound to find and assure such never become senior officers. None speak of this; none who are not first level adepts or lectors know of such."

Lorn remains silent in the pause that follows his father's words. Technically, Kien'elth has not addressed his son, yet he has risked much even to speak as he has.

Kien turns back to face Lorn. "Some from Cyador romanticize the freedom of the barbarians." His white eyebrows lift. "Would you be one of those?"

"No. Once I asked myself about that freedom." Lorn laughs harshly. "That was before I got to know them."

Kien nods. "A man free of all restraints is a slave to chance and order. The barbarians are slaves to chance, even while they proclaim their freedom."

"They're dangerous, and there seem to be more of them every year," Lorn points out.

"I suspect it has seemed that way for many generations," Kien says. "Cyador endures, and the barbarians dash themselves in vain against the lancers."

Lorn nods, but he recalls Jostyn and Cyllt-and others who had shattered beneath such vain dashing.

"You'll be here for a season?"

"Five eightdays."

"Good. We'll get to see you." Kien smiles. "So will a number of young women, I suspect."

Lorn shrugs, looking appropriately sheepish.

The older man rises. "I will not keep you from your sister and your mother. Otherwise we both will hear of it."

With a smile, Lorn stands.

"We will see you at dinner?"

"Of course. Where else could I get pearapple cream tarts?" Lorn's smile expands into a broad grin.

Kien shakes his head as Lorn turns.

Outside the study, Lorn glances through the portico columns that ring the open sides of the upper level, his eyes checking the southwest and the harbor, though he cannot see the building that houses the Clanless Traders... and Ryalor House. After a moment, he walks slowly down to the second level, toward his own quarters, if they can truly be said to be such after his three-year absence.

In the foyer, he looks for his bags, but someone has moved them, and then continues toward the rear, slipping through the open door. His bags have been set beside the wardrobe beyond the archway to the sleeping alcove. The sabre lies across the desk. The chamber has not changed, except in the feel of disuse and the lack of small items. There are no spare coppers in the small tray in the corner of the desk, nor any paper in the open-topped white oak box beside the empty inkwell.

He glances at the bags, then offers a crooked smile to the emptiness of the room before turning and walking back toward Jerial's door.

"It's open. You can come in, Lorn."

Jerial sits behind the desk. She replaces the cupridium-tipped pen in the holder and stoppers the inkwell, her slender fingers quick and deft. The piercing blue eyes turn on her brother, and both narrow and finely defined black eyebrows arch into a question.

"A warning about not repeating the mistakes of my past," Lorn answers.

"Were they really mistakes?"

"In father's eyes, I suspect."

"There was more, but I won't press."

"Thank you." Lorn slides into the armless chair at the corner of the table desk that could have been a match to the one in his quarters. "How are matters with you?"

"For a healer without a consort... as can be expected." Jerial shrugs. "I'm good enough, and I can always be counted upon to be there. For that, all I receive is enormous condescension, but the pressure to be consorted isn't as bad." She displays a crooked smile. "I'm older now than most of the junior adepts who need consorts, and those who are left don't wish a sharp-tongued healer."

"Especially one with brothers such as yours?" Lorn's tone is idle.

"Vernt is most accepted."

"I would have thought so."

"And a lancer who fights the barbarians is respected."

"In short, I'm expected to die young and respectably, and Vernt will carry on." Lorn's tone is totally without bitterness, as though he states a fact so obvious that there is not a doubt of its veracity.

"No. You are expected to act heroically and effectively." The eyebrows arch a second time. "Isn't that what lancer captains do?"