“I have enough to do, without teaching mageladies.” Arranha shrugged. “If a weapon falls into your hand, you either learn to use it, or your enemy uses it against you.”
Luap looked up as a strong, slender hand slapped down on the account rolls. He started to complain, but the look on the magelady’s face stopped the words in his month. She was white around the lips—with fury, he was sure—and he half-recalled hearing Gird’s bellow only a few minutes before.
“You!” she said, in a voice that had some of Gird’s bellow in it, though not so loud.
“Me?” He could not help noticing the hilt of her sword, her fine and reputedly magical sword. The jewel set in the pommel glinted, as if with internal fires. And every bit of metal she wore glittered, bright even beneath the cloth that shaded him from midday sun. Her eyes, when he met them again, seemed to glitter as well, fire-bright and angry. What could he have done? She had always seemed remote, but calm, when speaking to him.
“You,” she said, very quietly now, “you have mageblood.”
Luap shrugged, and looked away. “Common enough, lady; if you look closely, there’s bastards aplenty in this army.”
Her hand flipped this half-truth away. “Bastards in plenty, yes, but those in whom the mageblood stirs and wakes are few enough.”
He stared at her, shocked almost into careless speech. But he caught the unspoken question back, and tried to school his face. He could see by her expression that she wasn’t fooled, or maybe she could see his thoughts. She nodded at him, mouth tight.
“Yes. I do know. You have the magic, the light, and you know it. You could be what I am, were you not obedient to that—that churl out there!” Her arm waved. Luap felt a bubble of laughter tickle his throat. “That churl” must be Gird, whatever he’d done this time to anger the lady.
“It may be so,” he said, trying to keep even the least of that laughter out of his voice. “There was a time I thought so, but truly, lady, I have no desire for it now.”
She rested both fists on the little table and leaned close to him; he could smell her sweat, and the onion on her breath from dinner. It did nothing to diminish her beauty, or her power. “It has nothing to do with your desires, whatever your name really is. It is given to you, like the color of your eyes, the length of your arm: you cannot deny it.” He said nothing, facing her with what calm he could muster. Her eyes looked away first, but she did not move. Then she straightened up, with a last bang of one fist that crumpled the supply roll. “No. You are more than just a bastard, and you must learn it.”
Suddenly she was alight, blinding him at first, and then the heat came, scorching heat that blackened the edges of his scrolls. Without thought, he grabbed for power, and threw a shield before him, swept the scrolls to safety behind him.
“Stop that!” he said, furious and frightened at once. She laughed, a scornful laugh he remembered from his earliest childhood, the laugh of one whose power has never been overcome. Above his head, the fabric caught fire, the flames hardly visible against her brightness and the noonday sun.
“You have the power; you stop me!”
It was challenge, challenge he had never expected to face, that Gird would never have had him face. And he felt within a surge of that uncanny power, whose ways he had never learnt, never dared to explore. But as he had startled Gird, perhaps he could startle her, and so he let it out, in whatever form it might choose to come.
It came as a fiery globe, that raced at her; she slapped it away, first with a laugh and then, when it surged again against her hand, with a startled expression. She drew her sword, now glowing as brightly as she, and swiped at the globe. Luap would have been fascinated, if he had not also been involved. He could feel a vague connection between himself and the globe, as if he had a ball of pitch at the end of a long and supple reed.
With a final pop like a spark from sappy wood, her brilliance vanished. Luap blinked. Her shadow stood behind her, lean and black; the sun was overhead—he realized then that he was alight as she had been. She was staring at him, her first expression changing to respect, and then awe.
“You,” she said, in a very different tone from her first approach.
“Yes?” Whatever was in his voice, it worked on her. Her mouth moved, but she said nothing. Finally she shook her head, and managed speech.
“Do you know whose bastard you are?” she asked. Luap kept his mouth shut tight; if this was where she was going, he was not going to help. But she nodded, slowly, as if this confirmed something she’d hardly dared imagine. “The king’s,” she said quietly. Calmly. “You have the royal magery; it could not be anyone else—and I think you knew, Luap. I think you chose your name of war precisely.”
“And if I did?” he asked, relaxing slightly. The shadow behind her blurred, as if his light dimmed. He could not tell; his eyes still refused to answer all his questions.
“If you are the old king’s son, born with his magery—”
“They said not,” said Luap. “Like all bastards with no magic, I was fostered away—”
She laughed, this time ruefully. “Luap, they erred, as you must have known long since. You are his heir—in blood, and in magic—and the evidence is right here—in what just happened. Show this to any of the old blood, and you would inherit—”
“Inherit!” For an instant his old dream sprang up, bright as ever, but anger tore it away. “Inherit a kingdom torn by war? Inherit the fame my father had, that made men glad to see him dead? Inherit his ways?”
Her voice lowered, mellowed, soothed him as honey soothes a raw throat. “You have thought of it, Luap; you must have. He was a proud man, a foolish man . . . even, in some ways, a cruel man. He should have had more sense than to foster you away. None of our people have done all we should. But you—you know better. You could be—”
“I could be dead,” said Luap. He wanted to hit her; he could feel her attempt to enchant him like a heavy weight of spring sunlight. It had been bad enough to go through this once. He shook his head at her. “If you had asked me two years ago, lady, I might have been foolish enough—I would have been foolish enough to agree. What my father did to me—the vengeance I wanted, the power I had always envied—yes. I would have. Even a year ago, maybe. But I’ve learned a bit, in this war. Even from you.”
“Even from me? You mean, because of me, you would not—?”
“Not you alone. But, lady, I can see what Gird sees now; I can see the cost of your counsel, down to the last dead baby, the last poisoned well—”
“We are not all evil!”
“No. But—you tell me, lady, what it is that made you angry this time? What sent you here to work behind Gird’s back?”
She whirled away from him; he let his own power flow out to her, and she turned back, unwilling, but obedient—recognizing even as she fought it the source of her compulsion. He released her, and she staggered. “He—he’s an idiot! He knows no more of governing than any village bully!”
Luap chuckled. “He is an idiot, that I’ll grant. But he’s far more than a village bully, and if you can’t see that, you’re not seeing him yet for what he is.”
“He lets those fools of merchants blather on, bickering about the market rules—”
“What should he do, crack their heads for them?” Luap could see she had thought of that, with relish. He shook his head at her. “Lady, Gird’s as likely to lose his temper and bash heads as any man I’ve ever known. If he lets them bicker on, wasting time as you’d say, then he has his reasons.”