He had never believed in the rite; it had been just another stupidity to go through every quarter, one that both of his First Counselors had particularly insisted upon. But what if he should have believed in it?

He had never known of a High Ruler truly taking another lord or lady's strength like that. Why now?

Because of her. It had happened in her suite, too. Rianor's own tiredness had faded after he had touched her and kissed her hand, shortly before she had run away from him and lost consciousness in the bathtub. He had blamed the supposed Ber writing on the shower then, together with her own recklessnessa"but he could not really blame a "DUMBa.s.s" writing.

"Keep eating, Linde."

He should not touch her at alla"and not only because he wanted her. Could it be the s.e.xual wanting that made him leech her so? He had never affected other women so, before. At least he did not know to have had.

"Keep eating, I tell you." Eating should help a person with diminished strength. Linden was enough of a Scientist to know that, but if she would not ... "Nan, feed her like a child if she refuses."

Linden ate now, looking as forlorn as Blake did when wrongly accused of a misdeed. Rianor turned away from her. If he did not, he risked taking her in his armsa"which, of course, would have an effect opposite to the intended one.

Besides, midnight might have well pa.s.sed by now, and the Council was not yet over. Gatherings of people, supposedly to make decisions, took so long. They never worked as they should. When Science worked, it was both simpler and more effective.

Rianor resisted a sigh. A few times this evening he had even thought to dispense with the Council altogether, but Houses where the High Ruler made the decisions alone rarely prospered. Mathilda was right; a variety of skills was needed in a House in order to survive in the world.

Besides, insight could come from unlikely places. It had been Jenelly of all people, in her elevator conversation with Linden, to say that an elevator and a watch were Artificery devices. All Rianor had known himself was that they were Ber devices, and all he knew about the inner divisions of Bers was that they had a hierarchy. A Ber's importance was denoted by the color of his or her robe. He also knew that those who could help a commoner who had drawn a n.o.ble symbol were called Adept Catechists, but he had not heard the word "Artificery" before.

Rianor's people were needed, but he wished they would work like Science did, and not in their own meandering, timewasteful ways. He had thought those ways to be the nature of life, until yesterday.

But, were they?

The High Lord pushed the thought away. There would be a time for that thought, but it was not now.

He continued talking.

Linden

Night 79 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705 By now, night must have wrapped the outside world fully, its dark fingers cradling the silent streets. It must be blurring the silhouettes of buildings and those few who dared wander: Mentor and Militia patrols, reprobates, criminals, and fools.

Commoners slept at night, old lady Mathilda had said. Commoners feared. Linden did not fear now, perhaps because tonight she was a lady.

Or, perhaps because she had crumpled the fear, squeezed it tightly, kneaded it until it was naught but a small pang inside her.

The fear, and everything else. Her stomach was heavy with food, but beyond that she felt little. She even listened to the High Lord Rianor's story as if it did not concern her at all.

He had been out in Mierber, searching for Magic since the beginning of winter, he said. Magic had been too secret before, too hidden, but then the city firepipes had failed and the Bers had been forced out of their towers.

Perhaps if a person watched carefully, the lord said, he might learn something at the wells. The wells, as well as of course the city and n.o.ble House pipes, had never been cold before. Never before had the Bers performed Magic where others could see them. What the lord had not expecteda"but what, now that it had happened, made a lot of sensea"was that he would find something else at the wells, something triggered by the Bers' new frequent interaction with commoners.

Her. And her own Magic.

As if she were "something," and not someone. As if the Magic was what mattered in her, and not at all Linden or her Science.

Which, of course, was exactly the case. She had been just a foolish girl, dazzled by the promise of Science, splendor, and a handsome young man, to believe otherwise. Dazzled, too, by everything that had happened in the last few days.

She listened to him talk about his experiences in the temple, then about making her a lady with the two of them alone together. She said nothing, and Rianor pa.s.sed on to telling about the changeling banners and how the two of them thought that lord Audric the Insane had left a message.

He said little of the Inner Sanctum and naught of swords made of light, or of basic instincts and random wenches. He only let the others know that she had entered the Inner Sanctum alone and that he had made her a lady there. For that, she was grateful to him. Their eyes even met for a moment. Then, he looked away again, his face hard, as if he refused to share those events even with her.

Well, wretch him!

Linden shoved the piece of bread, the last of a whole loaf that he had forced her to eat, back to its plate. Her hands were trembling.

What was she doing here? She could simply walk away. She cared not about fancy dresses, carriages, and trifles. She cared not about being a lady. She cared not about young men, either; nothing good ever came out of them.

She cared about Science, about knowledge. What was it that kept her now in this place of glaring candles that swallowed both night's darkness and day's light, leaving nothing but harsh contours of grim, twisted faces? Night was not welcome in Qynnsent's Council Room, she had heard. But day was not, either.

Linden rose from her chair, and her scarf lashed around her, swiping a plate to the floor.

The plate broke.

No one said anything. The High Lord had been talking, and the others would not interrupt him even to pay attention to her own interruption.

But he was watching Linden in the eyes now, and Linden met his eyes in challenge. Would he perhaps punish her? Oh, let him try. His High Lordliness had earlier thrown her in that chair for no apparent reason, but she had been weak then. She was not weak now. And she knew, she knew, about High Rulers. She had made a choice last night.

Which was why she could not simply walk away.

The others here, except for the High Ruler himself, did not know about High Rulers, did not know of the overwhelming thirst to conquer, smash, and subdue, to be the only one. And they would never knowa"for, born as n.o.bles or having been servants to n.o.bles for many years, they had become so used to High Rulers that they would never wonder.

They would never learn, just as they would not wonder about or learn many other things that were right beneath their noses.

Things that they would thus never act upon.

It was a revelation.

Knowledge must be an easy thing to deny to people. Even to n.o.bles, who were not whipped for aberrant thoughts. You did not even need to hide the knowledge. Just make it and its applications a part of a routine, a habit. Then people would not care to see it.

But Linden saw it. She saw the elevator, for instance. "Magic," lady Jenne had called it, and perhaps Magic there were in it, but its ropes and pulleys looked like Science.

"Science is insufficient to haul people," Mister Podd had said earlier, but what did the good man know? He was always so careful, Mister Podd, trying to somehow both encourage Linden's interests and protect her. But perhaps it was time for her to protect him. Mister Podd, like any teacher, had knowledge and yet did not have enough and thus walked on the sharp edge between wisdom and ignorance. It was a harsh place, that egde.

Since Linden could see knowledgea"why, it was the thought of the elevator that had kept her from collapsing several times this night, including when his High Lordliness had shoved her soa"since she could see knowledge, she must make sure to see all of it. Then, she should give it to Mister Podd, and to the people here at the Qynnsent Council. She would give it to everyone.

People would not be so obtuse and apathetic, or anxious and bucket-overturning-on-others, if they had knowledge. If they, too, were made to see it.

This was why she was here now.

Rianor had continued talking, ignoring her. As if she were naught but an obnoxious child. The High Lord had not even thought that she might leave, had he? He certainly did not suffer from lack of arrogance. And why would he? He was a High Lord and this was his Council, the place where everyone submitted to him. The place where people knelt. She had even done it herself, and why had she? Before that she had not done it for the Ber.

Their eyes met. There was something in his that felt like little creatures creeping up her back. Then his gaze became unreadable, blank. He was a High Rulera"and he was only ignoring her unspoken challenge because he chose so.

Because there were more important things than that.

Linden sat back in the chair, a silent apology in her own eyes. He might have saved her life and taken her to this House on a whim, because of naught but his Magic curiositya"but that already meant that he had Magic curiosity. He might have thought of her simply as a Magic toy, as a mere tool for knowledge, but that meant that he sought knowledge.

Right now he was talking, and his words concerned her deeply, for they were knowledge. So, she listened. She had indeed not stopped listening to him at all, whatever her feelings. She would give her advice after he was finished, too.

She had to. Because gathering knowledge, facing knowledge, need not always be pleasant. Or easy.

Besides, they needed each other. He had walked around the wells, searching for knowledge, and yet he had not seen the symbols in his own House. She, on the other hand, had never wondered about the Healers she had grown up with. But they had met and now they both saw.

And there were things last night that Rianor had not done, despite being a High Ruler.

She looked away from him. Right now it was easier to simply listen to the words.

Inni

Night 79 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705 The thread snapped. The needle jerked. For a moment, she tried to continue but could not. Then that woman, the young woman Rianor had brought, reached out to her with a handkerchief. Inni watched the piece of silk, wondering what the woman wanted with her. To embroider the handkerchief? It was embroidered already. It would not do, laying thread where another's thread had already been laid before ...

Inni pulled her own thread to finish the st.i.tch but could not. Her hands, too, were shaking. If she blinked and watched them for some time, she could start seeing the motion, fast and jarring in the Council Room's light. Slowly, she started feeling it, tooa"and with that, other things.

She had broken the thread.

Her index finger had become crimson, the needle clasped deep underneath the nail. The young woman Rianor had brought waited, then suddenly yanked the needle out, poured water over Inni's finger, and wrapped the handkerchief around it.

"I am sorry, but I don't have antiseptic." Her voice was barely a whisper, but still Inni heard it. "I will ask Nan, after we are done here."

How dared she!

Now Inni could hear Nan, too, and see hera"could hear the old woman's slow, controlled breaths and see the soft gray of her dress, wrinkled at the back.

Nan had not seen or heard Inni, bent as she was over the table and Rianor's drawing. But Inni could hear and see them all now. She saw their disquieted faces, heard their aberrant, treacherous words. It was all that woman's, that Linden's, fault. How dared she!

Inni shifted her eyes away from them, watching her own, now empty, hands. The glove she had been preparing for Rianor had fallen by her feet. The silk-threaded wolf that had been arising from her needle now lay half-complete, forlorn and crumpled.

She picked the glove and inserted the thread into a new needle; she would not touch the blooded one, the one that the woman had touched.

She made a st.i.tch, and then another one. And another onea"but they were all skewed, and she still could hear the others' words. Time and light did not wrap themselves this time, like before, together in a swirl that brushed her fingers and made beauty flow between them. Her st.i.tching did not make other sights and sounds blurred. Inni did not feel the peace now, the peace that was a special gift for her from the Master while she made pictures with thread.

Rianor would never wear that glove. She would never give it to him. The wolf itself was marred now, marred with ill thoughts and ill wordsa"for she had been hearing them, even before, even when she had thought that she had not. She had broken the thread today, even though she had never broken a thread for all these years.

And it was all Linden's fault. She, who had come with her aberrant smile and treacherous words, she who ... No. Inni stared at her still needle.

No. Rianor had brought the woman himself. He was saying the treacherous words himself now, himself writing what should never be put onto paper. Rianor himself was defying the Master, Him who brought life and light to them all.

The High Lord was the Master's own Deputy, the Master's own voice and eyes and mind in the Housea"and if the High Lord himself had turned against the Master, did that not mean that the Master had turned against himself?

How could, then, one most faithful to both the High Lord and the Master help them? What should Inni do?

Not fight, even though it was fighting that Rianor was talking about even now. "Fighting not with swords, at least not yet," he was saying, "but fighting by having knowledge."

As if he did not have the knowledge alreadya"that everything, good or bad, would come through the Master, that the Master was the only way, to anything.

"Do you really, really need to do this, Rianor?" Inni whispered, surprised by the sound of her own voice. How many years was it since she had last said something on her own, something that was not an answer to a question or a part of a rite?

No less surprising was that she had risen from her chair and now stood before the High Lord.

"We all know that the Master's love is both unfathomable and limitless," she whispered, "and that sometimes the Master sends us trials. We know that he wants to make surea"that he wants us to make surea"that we are good." She raised her eyes to Rianor's, pleading. "Do not talk about fighting, please. Love is so much more important."

Rianor glared at her, and for a moment Inni thought that she would receive an outburst such as Jenne had received earlier. She cringed in deserved expectation. Rianor's eyes, however, softened into a strange, almost not angry expression.

"If you can tell me what 'good' is, I might listen," he said softly. "Or 'love.' "

She said nothing. For a few moments there, she fought to find the words.

"Well, Inni, if you can't tell me, go back to your embroidery, will you? And what on Mierenthia have you done to your hand?"

"It is fine," she whispered, tears now gathered in her eyes. She had never cried before him, not since she had been three years old, when she had cried for a perfume and he had been punished for it.

He sighed, then hugged her. She put her own arms around him.

"Don't cry, Inni. Even the Master doesn't know the proper definitions of such generic concepts as 'good' and 'love.' "

He kissed her forehead. "We'll just have to figure them out ourselves. Go sit now."

She did, now fighting to still the new trembling of her hands.

Fighting. First, fighting for words, now fighting her own hands. It was not right. It was not right at all.

Then, slowly, her hands became still on her lap. With them, unlike with her worlds, her fighting had succeeded.

Inni had not been raised to fight, aunt Mathilda had said.

But today Inni's thread had been broken.

END OF BOOK ONE.