The Sleeping Life

Chapter Nine

Rennyn glanced out the window at grey, damp sky, then back to the warm cabin that had been home for the past two weeks. "Can you hear music?"

The range of expressions in return for her question clearly told her no, and were also a nice illustration of the different personalities before her. Sukata concentrated, even though Kellian hearing meant she would ordinarily have caught any sound before Rennyn. Fallon was analytical, searching for a double meaning to the question, while Aven Meniar’s light smile gave way to a quick, professional survey, on the off-chance that she’d suddenly developed a fever. And Kendall was just suspicious, convinced as ever that half Rennyn’s actions were for her own quixotic amusement.

"Guess not. Sorry for interrupting." She gestured for Meniar to continue, though the impression of notes too distant to be truly audible hadn’t gone.

"For bone-work, caulding isn’t a replacement for a splint," Meniar said, with a shrug. "For all kinds of reasons, you don’t want to rely solely on magic to keep fractures in position. With a clean break, once the bone is set you don’t truly need caulding at all after the splint is in place, but where the bones have been shattered, where there are many fragments, caulding might be the only thing to save a limb. And to cauld a bone you need to see the bone, which is what this casting is all about."

The Sigillic was straightforward, but Rennyn had found the lecture interesting for the new words that stood for all the different layers of people. She’d only ever learned the most basic of healing magics, because the study of how living creatures worked required many more years than she could devote. This trip had become a good opportunity to explore new avenues, and she and her students had enjoyed a round dozen of these lectures from Meniar and the other Sentene mages, as well as the specialist ship mages.

This Sigillic had been written in a circle around a flat bowl filled with water, and as Meniar began to activate, the liquid took on a silvery sheen while a faint glow appeared around his left hand.

"There are many variations of this casting, depending on just what it is you wish to look at," Meniar said, touching his left hand to the back of his right. "Term substitution is possible, but only useful for issues that can be diagnosed simply by looking."

Rennyn leaned so she could see the bowl more clearly, watching a collection of bones flex in time with Meniar’s hand. It was an eerie sight.

"This isn’t the spell everyone uses when they look at my ribs," she commented. "At least, not illusions in bowls."

"This version’s mainly for when trying to set the bones," Meniar said. "When it’s necessary to see the movement. Sukata, you give it a try."

The Kellian girl was a confident caster. Her Sigillics were always precisely written, and she didn’t rush or hesitate, but had a nice surety. Rennyn enjoyed watching her, especially the pleasure in her eyes, for Sukata straightforwardly enjoyed magic. Fallon had said he liked it too much, but though he cast without effort she felt as always an underlying lack of certainty. Kendall usually pretended to be bored during Sigillic lessons, since she wasn’t yet permitted to use them, but this was far too intriguing for her not to crane forward wide-eyed.

"Do you feel up to casting?" Meniar asked Rennyn.

She considered how much or little she wanted to peer through the faint mist of rain in hopes of an early glimpse of Port Avecna. They’d followed a cup-like course south, west, then north, making port frequently to take on supplies and trade cargo, and finally to part ways with most of the Sentene. It always seemed they would reach land while Rennyn was sleeping, and she’d been looking forward to Avecna, but knew she was more curious to see the ribs that had given her so much trouble.

Not bothering with the sigils, she touched one hand to her side and the other to the bowl, and considered the image in the water. Finding this too small to be satisfying, she lifted the illusion to the air before her and expanded it to cover all of her from the waist up. Much easier to examine.

"Is this blurring the calluses?" she asked, frowning at the faint dark cracks interrupting smooth bone.

"The part of them that has transmuted to bone," Meniar said, shaking his head at her variation of the spell. "Take a couple of deep breaths, will you?"

Wrinkling her nose, Rennyn obeyed. She’d had to do lots of breathing exercises the last couple of months, which she was told would stave off chest infections and help her lung not collapse again. It still hurt, but nothing like the knife of the first month.

Meniar circled the table for a better look, and nodded, pleased. "There’s definite progression. Another month or so and it should be well knit."

"That’s supposed to be encouraging, is it?" Rennyn asked, then laughed at the way the fleshless skull flapped its jaw. "This would be very interesting cast on a dancer. Or perhaps to use for a Death Day March." She wondered if Seb would be more interested in such pranks, now that they no longer had the pressure of the Black Queen’s return hanging over them, and pushed away the immediate pang. She’d known she’d miss Seb. There was no point dwelling on his absence.

"Do you think you could translate whatever it is you’re doing into a Sigillic?" Meniar asked. "It would be a valuable variation."

"I expect so," Rennyn said, and glanced at her three students. "As a first step to that, each of you can draft your suggestion for how the Sigillic should read. You can have three days. No peer consultation or actual casting attempts, please."

The door opened as she said this, and she smiled at Illidian, who had been on deck training with Keste Faral. He was thoroughly damp, since he didn’t consider misting rain anything more than a useful extra challenge to a sparring session. Usually he returned from practice lightly energised, but Rennyn caught a hint of a frown before the sight of a moving skeleton in the middle of the table distracted him.

"The headland has been sighted," was all he said, wiping one of his duelling swords with a cloth before sliding it into its sheathe.

That was a signal to pack up. Rennyn dismissed the divination, and her small class cleared the table and moved it away from the window seat to where it could be bolted in place. They followed Illidian back through the door, and Rennyn glanced out the window again, but wasn’t tempted to get wet and cold. For her, each day had two halves, and this was the end of the first.

"Your Grace."

Everyone except Kendall and Illidian was still very formal with her, and Rennyn had long since given up reminding her companions her name was Rennyn. Fallon, just like Kendall, was splendidly intractable. But while Kendall was a prickly ball of resistance, Fallon obliged on all but a few points.

"Questions?" she said, easing off her shoes.

"I would like a…an unsparing opinion on whether it is possible for any of us to reach your level of Thought Magic."

Rennyn considered the question then said: "Why would it be impossible?"

"It’s obvious from your approach with Kendall that you feel it necessary to ground her in Thought before moving on to Sigillic. Centuries of mages who started with Sigillic never accomplished more than basic lifting with Thought, before it was abandoned altogether. Have we destroyed our chances of fully embracing Thought because we muddied the waters with Sigillic? Or…is it a Surclere trait? No-one outside your family is known to have achieved this."

"Given the reputation of the Elder Mages, I wouldn’t say that’s true."

"Your family and some near-mythic mages who are long dead, then."

Rennyn considered her family’s past. "The Surcleres possess natural strength, but I don’t believe the line is distinctive in other ways," she said. "There have been those in my family who never stepped beyond basic Thought manipulation, and I would put that down simply to it being difficult.

"Starting with Sigillic increases the probability of you inadvertently killing yourself, since you have more power to do damage, but it doesn’t make it harder to gain control. I can’t guarantee or guess as to how far you’ll be able to progress, or whether any of you have the combination of discipline and…intuition that allows a mage to reliably Thought-cast. Both Sukata and Kendall are progressing well in physical manipulation, but it will be a long time before I ask them to do anything abstract."

"Will I be permitted to begin the exercises, once we leave the ship?"

She nodded. "The delay was only because of the danger to the ship. You’ll make the very early attempts in a clear area so you’re away from others, and if you achieve some measure of control will follow the same series of exercises as Sukata and Kendall. Increasingly complex physical manipulation. You will not attempt anything outside the exercises until I consider you ready."

"Do you—" He stopped, apparently changing his mind about the question. "Thank you, Your Grace." He gave her a slight, formal bow and left, passing Illidian, who had been waiting in the doorway.

Rennyn stripped off her thick woollen socks and wriggled her toes while her husband closed the door. He was even damper than before—he’d doused himself as a makeshift post-practice bath—and she watched him dry and dress himself with the spare efficiency that was so characteristic of him.

"Was that the first time you cast complex Thought Magic before DeVries?" he asked, tidying away his discarded clothing.

"Must be." During the trip, Rennyn had made a point of casting every day, but usually the most minor of things. "I hadn’t seen anything like the reaction you noticed before now."

"He kept it from his face, but the intensity is palpable."

Rennyn nodded. Illidian had told her that Fallon had come close to fainting when she’d first agreed to speak to him. She’d only seen a boy with a clever stratagem to catch her interest, but hadn’t doubted Illidian’s ability to gauge reactions, and had taken the boy as a student at his request. Today she too had glimpsed an overmastering need behind Fallon’s questions about Thought Magic. Desperation. She or Illidian would puzzle out the reason eventually, and hopefully be able to help him. Or stop him, if it was all some complex stratagem of his Uncle’s, as a few had hinted.

"He does truly love magic, but he’s frightened of it as well, which isn’t surprising given the family history. At least that seems to have pushed him away from trying to work Thought out himself. Too many won’t be so cautious, now they know what’s possible."

Illidian drew her to her feet. "You can’t take every would-be Thought Mage as a student."

"I know. Seb kept saying the same thing, and told me I should write a basic manual for the hordes." She leaned into his arms. "Just by being a Thought Mage I’ve started something that I can’t control. The most I can do is be open about my methods and hope people will believe me about making an honest appraisal of a mage’s abilities before any attempt to step beyond basic. Having taken the risk myself, I can hardly forbid them from trying to become…"

"A real mage?" Illidian asked when she hesitated.

"I’d rather not put it like that."

"Much as you’ve tried to qualify it, it’s how you and Sebastian regard yourselves."

She sighed, and went to climb into the bed because she was starting to feel too tired to stand. "Full mages, perhaps. Real is the wrong way to look at it, though there’s no way I’m telling Kendall and Sukata that non-Thought Mages always seem so…half-made to me. I don’t want anyone to consider Thought Magic a mandatory part of being a mage. So many shouldn’t even make the attempt at basic manipulation: they’re just not suited. To take the step beyond that really can be dangerous, and I can’t even be sure that any of my three can manage it. Sukata may do it—she has that combination of confidence and intuition. And any of them could kill themselves in the process. And I will hate myself a little if that happens, and every time I hear that some child has died trying to be me. I’m working on not dwelling on it too much."

The impact of her family’s casting techniques on mages in general was something she had not anticipated. Her life-long focus on killing Solace had left little thought to spare for what came after. A rise in Thought Magic should have been obvious—but she had not foreseen it any more than she had imagined that she would so completely link her future with the Kellian.

She was fortunate to have a husband who knew how useless it was to tell her not to feel guilty for existing. Better still that he chose to distract her with several long kisses. The time on the ship had shifted their relationship, the aspect of patient and nurse receding rapidly once Illidian had decided it was safe to touch her. That he chose to match his day to hers, to break it in half and stay with her when she went to bed after lunch, was something she appreciated so much she doubted she could put it into words. She was not good at enduring her complete lack of stamina, and the matter-of-fact way Illidian adapted to her limitations lessened her sense of being a dreary burden.

The limits of her physical health never went away, and when she was tired the hurdles in their immediate future seemed insurmountable. There was no guessing how much chasing about they would need to do to locate the Black Queen’s son. And would these missing mages of the Emperor’s be a clue or a distraction?

Looming large in the list of things Rennyn wished to be distracted from was the visit to Aurai’s Rest, the settlement the Kellian had established in the massive forest north of Kole. Those who waited there troubled her even more than her apparent career killing her relatives: the Kellian descendants who chose not to serve in Tyrland, and the nine surviving originals. A different set of relatives.

"When was the last time you saw your mother?"

"Five years ago. Most of us will visit the Rest at least once every decade. Often more frequently."

Illidian had made clear that he doubted his mother would be enthusiastic about their marriage, and so the best approach to meeting her was exercising Rennyn’s mind a good deal. "Does she ever come to Tyrland?"

"Never." Propping himself on an elbow, he traced a stray lock of her hair, a favourite gesture. "Mother feels we should manage our relationship with humans more strictly. That living as a minority among them will inevitably create a situation where we are driven out and hunted." His eyes were shuttered, grey as the clouds. "Events may yet prove her correct."

"What was worrying you when you came in?" she asked, abandoning the vexing issue of Darian Faille for the moment.

"A sense of unease with no focus. As if the future was overcast. Nothing useful." Illidian’s voice was wry. The refined senses people called Kellian instinct were excellent for dealing with direct attacks, but tended to plague him when the threat they were responding to wasn’t so easily defined. "Knowingly bringing you closer to Prince Helecho is not an easy matter."

"If he does still have my focus, it’s probable he intends to lure me or hunt me at some point," Rennyn admitted. "Our best chance is to catch him unaware. Even then—" She paused. "We can only guess at how much strength he’s gained while I’ve been recovering. He may have grown into a threat that will require armies to combat. And how we deal with that without looking like an official Tyrian expedition I can’t guess."

"The hunting of Eferum-Get is something that should not, and usually does not care for borders. But this is a monster that could be a political tool, or pursue its own ambitions. Queen Astranelle would prefer him dealt with quietly. I—" Illidian shifted, the muscles in his back bunching. "I just wish him dead."

"Everyone does," Rennyn murmured, and hoped it could be done without her ever having to even see her Wicked Uncle again.