“Shut up,” Timenard said, almost conversationally, and they were instantly silent. He had not looked back, but Rathe could feel the focus of his attention change, center on the mine and the dark entrance. He was sure Timenard couldn’t see them, no one looking out from the waxing mage‑light could see into that darkness, but the magist’s eyes were fixed on the spot where he and Eslingen stood.
“And is this how you repay maseigne’s hospitality?” Timenard went on. “We have very strict notions of correct behavior for guests here in the Ile’nord, you know. I strongly suggest you come out of there right now. Or these children will die for your rudeness.” His tone had not changed in the slightest, as though he considered bad manners worthy of a capital punishment. Rathe scowled, torn between anger and a sudden deep fear, and he saw Eslingen stir.
“Oh, right,” the soldier muttered, his eyes roving over the magist and the guards. “And how’s he going to do that? I don’t see any weapons on him, and his people have their hands full with the kids…”
His voice trailed off, less confident than the words, and b’Estorr took a step forward. “He can do it,” he said. “Dis Aidones, can’t you feel it? He can certainly do it.”
Denizard nodded, wordless, her face pale. The lantern trembled in her hand; she looked down at it, frowning, and braced her free hand against the rock of the wall.
Rathe could feel it himself now, a shifting in the air like the presence of b’Estorr’s ghosts, or the tingle of an oncoming storm–and most of all like the clock‑night, the unnatural, uncanny wrongness of it. He could feel the ghosts shy back from it, a cold current nipping his ankles before retreating toward the mine, and tasted dust and heat and something strangely metallic, like lightning gathering. The mage‑light was stronger than ever, clustering into motes of light that swarmed like insects around Timenard and his horse, and Rathe was abruptly certain that the magist could do exactly what he’d threatened. He stepped fully into the entrance where the reflection of the light could reach him, and lifted a hand. “Timenard! Killing the children won’t do you any good at this point. And you need them–”
Timenard made a dismissive gesture and the motes of light seemed to follow, a streak of pale gold in the thick air. “There are others, others more easily obtained than these. My work is too close to completion to be so easily thwarted, and I don’t intend to argue with you. Come out now, all of you, or these children die. It’s a simple equation.”
He crooked his fingers, and the motes of light swerved and clustered, gathering around his hand. Rathe could hear a faint drone, a humming just at the edge of audibility, like the echo of a swarm of bees. “And what happens to us?” he called, struggling to find the words that might delay the magist, stave off whatever powers he called for even a moment longer. “Our deaths for theirs–I don’t know–”
He broke off at the sound of hoofbeats from the Mailhac road. The guards swung, startled, and the biggest of the children wrenched himself half away before the man holding him could grab him again. Rathe swore under his breath, seeing that, and Eslingen cocked his pistol.
“It could be Coindarel,” he began, and in the same instant de Mailhac and a good dozen of her household swept into the clearing. She was hardly dressed for riding, a battered traveling cloak thrown on over the silk dress she had worn to dinner, the embroidered skirt hiked awkwardly up so that she could ride astride, showing practical boots over delicate fancywork stockings.
“What in all hells have you brought down on us, magist?” she shouted. “There’s a royal regiment on the Mailhac road, and the woods are full of your damned children.”
Timenard ignored her, his eyes still fixed on the mine entrance, but Rathe heard the humming fade, felt the unnatural pressure ease a little. De Mailhac lifted her face to the skies, her hair tumbling unbound over her shoulders. “You stupid, ambitious bastard, you’ve finished us. We’ve lost, and all we have left is barely enough time to get away from here and over the Chadroni border.”
Timenard sighed then, and swung in his saddle to face her, his voice still bizarrely calm. “Why should we flee? Why on earth should we flee? This royal regiment will arrive too late, maseigne, a week ago they would have been too late. My work is too far advanced now, they cannot keep me from its completion. Now. I’ll need your men to help me rid the mine of these intruders.” He turned back to the entrance, raised his voice again. “I’m reluctant to shed your blood in the mine itself, but I will do it. And I will kill these children.”
De Mailhac swung herself down from her horse, skirts flying, and started across the yard toward Timenard. She carried a sword, Rathe saw, incongruous over the bright green silk, and there was a small pistol jammed into her sash. Clearly she intended to fight, and Rathe wondered if there was any way they could make use of that.
“We’ve lost our chance to influence the queen’s choice, can’t you see that?” she demanded. “We’re discovered, and we’ve no hope of further gain–of any gain at all. Unless we flee, and now, we’ll take Belvis down with us.”
Timenard ignored her, lifted his hand, fingers crooked, and the air thickened again, the light coalescing into a swarm. Rathe swore under his breath, glanced wildly at the magists behind him.
“Isn’t there something you can do?”
Denizard shook her head, and b’Estorr said, “I’m a necromancer, I don’t even know what he’s calling–”
“Timenard!” de Mailhac demanded. “We have to protect Belvis.”
“Belvis is expendable,” Timenard said, impatiently, as though to an importunate child. “Leave me alone, woman.”
With an inarticulate cry of anger, de Mailhac drew her sword. Timenard flung his hand back, not even bothering to turn, and the swarming light shot from his fingers, struck the landame with a soundless snap. Her arm hung in the air, her whole figure tensed, frozen in mid‑motion. Only her eyes still moved, burning with fury and fear. Not dead, then, Rathe thought, trying to make sense of what he’d seen, not a mortal blow after all, though who knows what it would have done to the kids–
Timenard sighed then, the motion of his shoulders obvious beneath his heavy robe, and swung himself down from his horse. As his feet touched the ground, the horse shimmered as though the air around it was warped by a furnace’s heat. The strands of its mane and tail seemed to fuse, become a solid sheet, and then its neck curled down and its hind legs buckled. For a confused instant, Rathe thought it was reaching for nonexistent grass or trying to sit, but its head curled further, its neck bending impossibly until its nose was tucked under its belly. The strong outlines of its muscles were blurring, too, fading, its forelegs curling under, and its color ran like water, shifting from sorrel to true gold and then to something beyond gold, an unearthly, shadowless luster. The last ghost of the horse‑shape fused and vanished, and in its place stood a set of nested spheres, impaled on a yard‑long axis. Rathe shook his head, trying to deny what stood before him. He had seen the great orrery at the university, both as a boy and at the ceremony that had confirmed the true time, and he recognized the form of the thing. But where the university’s orrery had been brass, solid and secure in its mechanical connections, this was delicate as filigree, the shapes of the rings and the planets outlined with a peculiar iridescence. It had to be made of aurichalcum–of pure aurichalcum, he corrected himself. Even the coin aurichalcum b’Estorr had shown him had lacked that unearthly color.
“Sweet Sofia,” Denizard murmured, and made a warding gesture. b’Estorr took a step forward, towards the entrance, towards the orrery, then stopped, shaking his head. Denizard closed a hand around his arm, her fingers white‑knuckled, but the necromancer didn’t seem to feel her grip.