A Play of Shadow (68 page)

A short while later, and smelling more like the river than whatever Glammis had him doused with—an improvement—Bannan checked the belt around his waist. The compartments remained sealed. “So, sister. Still giving me baths?”

After leading him on a dash through darkened streets, then down to the lesser canals, Lila’d stopped them in one of the alleys that held stairs to the upper city. Mist hung low, trapping light and smothering sound. Bannan looked deeper to be sure, reassured by the silver tint. He was back, inside the edge. Where Jenn Nalynn existed.

Where she must still exist.

Lila sat on a step midway between the cobwebbed lamps, a shadow herself. “Ancestors Baffled and Bewildered. What did you do? Crawl through a midden?”

Bannan twisted river water from his braid, then looked her in the eyes. “I was trapped by magic. The stench was what remained of the remedy, though I’d wager my captor knew to hide my scent.”

“You brought Scourge!” As if it was the first thing he’d done right.

He’d be jealous tomorrow. “Something like,” he evaded. “I’ve a story to tell.” He stepped up to hold Emon’s knife in the faint light where she could see it, feeling, more than seeing, her tense. “So do you. Who should go first, Lila?”

The knife clattered to the step as Bannan found himself slammed against stone, her arm like steel across his throat. “You,” she suggested, cold and harsh. “Tell me who bled on the snow. Tell me why my sons sleep protected by a dragon.” Lila leaned in, eyes feral green. “Tell me who is the woman made of power and why you traveled through madness. I love you like life, brother. I gave you my sons. But you?” Her voice lowered in threat. “You’ve given me nightmares.”

Heart’s Blood, it was true, every word of it. Unresisting, Bannan stared down at his beloved sister, feeling pity war with the beginnings of indignation.

Indignation won. “You’ve been dreaming me!? For how long?” Had he ever had privacy?

She shoved herself back. “For always. Don’t look at me like that. What was I supposed to do? Tell my baby brother whenever I fell asleep, I’d see out his eyes? It took years for me to control it. To be able to sleep without dreaming. Would you have helped?”

Lila, with her knack for knowing when he’d had a rough patrol. Lila, with her uncanny insights into everyone and everything around her. “Ancestors Great and Glorious,” he breathed. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Then you didn’t pay attention. Our nurse spoke of truedreamers. Larmensu lore claimed our great-great—some bother of greats—grandfather to be the last with this gift.”

The gift Glammis coveted. “Until you. A truedreamer.” Bannan shivered inwardly, thinking of Marrowdell and a small boy. Ancestors Cruel and Calamitous.

“Sometimes.” Lila grimaced and sank to the stair again. “What of you? I ordered a patrol up the Northward after ’dreaming blood through Weed’s eyes, but the road was storm-closed. What of the boys? Tir—? My men: Rowe and Seel?”

Bannan sat with her. “Your men didn’t make it,” he said quietly. “Tir took care of those who hunted them, and the boys. The dragon?” He smiled. “His name is Wisp and he brought them in from the storm. I do believe he’s adopted them. So’s Scourge.” He took a breath. “They sense what Werfol is. A truthseer.”

“Heart’s Blood.” Rare to see Lila blanch. “It can’t be—Bannan, no. He’s so young. Too young for a gift.”

“I know.” He cupped her head in his hand and kissed her forehead. “Weed will be all right. He’s a tough lad and I’ve started his training. Besides, Dear Heart, he has Semyn, as I had you.”

“Semyn.” Lila sighed like someone letting go. “I blink and he’s grown, that one. Hearts of our Ancestors, I’m Beholden you were there for them both.” With a snap, “Why aren’t you still?”

He closed his eyes, then opened them. “Because Werfol has your gift as well as mine.”

“Are you certain?” she asked, but her face was bleak and without hope.

“I see no other explanation. You asked why I’m here. Weed brought forth an image in a mirror. We saw this place,” he gestured, “through your eyes. Then he dreamed on his own, seeing your cell—the chains. The boys insisted I come to Channen and I can’t say I argued.” The light flickered and Bannan glanced up. A moth circled it, which moths did. He looked back to his sister, crossing his arms on a knee. “Though it seems you didn’t need rescuing.”

Lila’s grin lit her face. “Ever the hero. I appreciate the thought.”

He found himself chuckling. “Trust me, I’ll try to do better. What were you doing?”

“I ’dream Emon, if I’ve reason. He knows,” Lila added, without apology to the brother who hadn’t. She stared outward. “After he left for Channen, I discovered a malcontent among our original staff. I’d no idea how far the rot had spread, Bannan, but we’d already a house divided. I ’dreamed Emon at once, to find him in hiding, reliant on those I could no longer trust. I sent the boys to safety—or so I thought—with you, then came after him.”

“‘Ever the hero,’” Bannan chided gently.

“My family.”

No arguing with that tone. “The city jail?”

“It has windows,” she said, as if amused, then went on more seriously. “I came in secret. Without knowing who to trust—or the city—I needed Emon to find me. Where easier? Besides, it was a safe place to truedream. There’s risk, to what I do.” She left it at that, though Bannan ached to know more.

Or did he?

“How did you do it?”

She shrugged. “Found an empty cell and made myself at home.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And no one noticed?”

“M’name’s Lornn Heatt,” she announced with a wicked leer. “Killed m’layabout partner, I did, and would’a donnit twice if he’da let me.” Her face and voice returned to normal. “Guards don’t expect someone to put themselves in jail and I didn’t need long. I put crumbs on my windowsill. Emon’s clever birds spotted me by the second day. We conveyed messages.” She grinned. “Emon wasn’t happy.”

No surprise there.

“I assured him no one knew who I was, my cell was doubtless more comfortable than wherever he was hiding, and that when he could do so without risk, he was to bribe a guard to get me out.”

The truth, which was, Bannan decided, a surprise. Though if anyone knew how to mislead him, it was his sister.

Now was not the time for it, but before he could probe for more, Lila faced him, her eyes cool and gray. “Your turn, little brother. Was that your Jenn I saw, through Semyn’s eyes? Is—that—what she really is?”

At the turn. Ancestors Blessed. Jenn worried about how to greet a baroness. He’d been waiting for this, the moment Lila would decide if she considered Jenn friend or— it had to be friend.

“Jenn is a woman, my love, and, yes, magic, too,” Bannan said, treading with care. “You hadn’t seen her before?” Oh, and didn’t he blush, now appreciating what that meant?

Lila snorted. “I ’dream you only when I’ve no choice, Bannan Larmensu. Especially once you discovered what hung between your legs.”

Yes, he could blush hotter.

She took pity on him. “I learned to silence my gift. It was that, or never sleep.” Oh, so casually said. But he remembered a young Lila, always awake to soothe him from a nightmare. Remembered, now that he understood, her napping in the saddle. A soldierly skill, she’d called it.

Heart’s Blood.

“These days, to truedream someone,” his astonishing sister continued, “I taste something they’ve touched and use a sleeping draught to stay long enough to make sense of what I see.” All the while helpless; risk indeed.

“So no,” she finished, “I hadn’t seen your new love as other than a blue-eyed woman who runs around barefoot. Until,” her voice hardened, “Semyn saw her otherwise. Magic, you tell me. What sort? Dire or perilous.”

“Good-hearted,” Bannan countered, making her blink. “Brave. Jenn brought me here through a realm of magic—of the perilous sort—so we could arrive in time and save you. That realm—” as comprehension flared in Lila’s eyes, “—would be the madness you saw.”

“Bannan!”

The truthseer hunted for the right words, then held out his hands. “Our world,” the right. “The dragons’,” the left. He laid the palms over one another. “Where they overlap is something else again. On the dragons’ side, it’s called the Verge and teems with magic. That’s where we traveled. My gift lets me see the truth of it; the beauty as well as peril. On our side?” He nodded to the mist overhead. “The edge. The Shadow District lies within it, as does Marrowdell. Magic slips through from the Verge. I see it here too.”

“Magic,” Lila echoed, looking around as though expecting Wisp to appear from a shadow. “So that’s it.” A tinge of color appeared on her cheeks. “I see what you see, little brother; I’ve never seen with your gift. But . . . sometimes I’ve ’dreamed what can’t be real, yet I know is. Silver rain and blood-red eyes. Your dragons,” with the tiniest of smiles.

“Because in the edge, sunset—the turn—reveals such things,” Bannan explained, his heart lighter. “That’s when Semyn saw Jenn as magic. Admittedly, he was more interested in Wisp.”

He surprised a laugh. “I think I’d be too.” She gave his ear a snap.

“What was that for?” he complained, rubbing the sting.

“To remind you, magic or no, I know best.” Something grim settled around her. “And what I know is time’s passing, little brother. Our friend Glammis went back inside. I’ll not lose him.”

Bannan stared at her. “You know who trapped me.”

“I followed him here.” Smug, that was. “To your good fortune.”

“I was making my escape,” he protested stiffly, choosing not to mention being used for bait.

Lila chose not to mention the three on the deck. “The manor is served by someone Emon trusts, who’s set up a meeting—for tonight—with those who matter here. Glammis poses as a magic-user from Essa, having business of his own with the shadow lords—”

“It’s no pose,” Bannan interrupted. “He has a wishing to bind a truthseer, gift and will.”

“Does he.”

“Whatever else his business here, Glammis hunts those with the Larmensu gift. He would take our magic, Lila, for himself. Take us.”

Her silence as she absorbed this stole warmth from the air. Then, an eyebrow lifted. “Indeed.”

He heard the end of the man in that word.

“Whatever else,” Lila echoed calmly, “I know Glammis serves those who wish to dissuade my dear husband from making his case.” She jumped to her feet. “Let’s fetch him.”

“What of Emon?” The truthseer stood as well. “Shouldn’t he be warned?”

Lila gave him a pitying look. “Once we deal with Glammis, he won’t need a warning. Besides.” She grinned. “When my clever Emon hides, even I can’t find him.”

“But I thought—” Bannan closed his mouth. Lila hadn’t waited for Emon to free her from jail. Hadn’t needed his help.

Hadn’t wanted it.

“Don’t think so hard, little brother,” she suggested archly. “Your head will hurt.”

“You—” All at once, the light dimmed. Both looked up.

The lamps to either side were smothered in moths, small and desperate. More climbed the stone walls, wings aflutter.

Then the mist above turned white, as moths filled the air like snowflakes that refused to fall. They settled in the alley, leaving one way open.

Up the stairs.

“Bannan . . . what’s all this?” Was that uncertainty in her voice?

All was well—very well—if all was as he believed. “I believe, dear sister, we must leave Glammis for a while yet,” the truthseer announced, heart grown light and trying hard not to laugh. “It seems Jenn Nalynn would like to meet you.”

“I’d like to meet her too,” Lila Larmensu stated, sounding not the least amused.

It wasn’t until they were at the street level, moths to either side, that Bannan thought of something else.

“When you kept after me to write home—”

“It was so I could ’dream you,” Lila told him. “If I didn’t like what I read,” she added, as if that were a comfort and not confirming his worst fears. “Your Jenn wrote to me. Did you know? Quite a nice letter.”

Worse there was. Bannan couldn’t find words.

Lila pushed him ahead of her. “Don’t fuss, little brother. I’m no fool, to truedream magic.”

They would say later that never had there been so many white moths in Channen, nor any so filled with magic. To follow one was to find your heart. So many did, that special night, nine months later midwives were the busiest they could remember, though every babe was healthy.

And not a one cried.

Strays, be they four-footed or on two, found homes that night as well, while constables stood by in amazement as their cells filled with thieves who’d followed the moths and wished, most ardently, to put what they’d stolen back where it belonged.

Well before sunrise, the moths had vanished. In the days after, the Shadow Sect quietly spread word of how the moths had been a gift of the Source to Channen, and all should be Beholden.

What went unremarked?

That most of the moths returned to a single rooftop, followed by those particularly invited . . .

To find Jenn Nalynn.