L. Modesitt - Magi'i of Cyador

“It’s unfair.” Myryan almost pouts, but reins in the expression. “You can have a merchanter girl, and all anyone cares about is to make sure there’s no child, and you’re back in time for dinner, and there are a few laughs about wearing too much scent. Can you imagine what would happen if I arranged a tryst with a handsome merchanter-or an outland trader?”

“You wouldn’t like the outland traders. They do smell, most of them.”

“Is that why …?” Myryan arches her eyebrows.

Lorn laughs, easily and openly. “I don’t think so.”

“You saved her from a fate worse than death?”

“Once or twice,” Lorn admits.

“How can you say that and be telling the truth?” Myryan shakes her head, trying not to laugh. “You’re impossible.”

“What about Ciesrt?” Lorn asks again.

“He’s dull as a pillar, and he’s not even sweet. People think he’s nice because he’s quiet. He’s quiet because he’s only half alive. He only talks about being a magus.”

Lorn nods.

“Father doesn’t want to see.” She shakes her head and looks down.

“I won’t promise … but maybe I can do something. Talk to father, or Vernt.”

“They won’t listen. Ciesrt’s going to be a full magus, and no one could be a more wonderful consort than that.” Her voice, normally full and warm, carries a bitter edge that Lorn hears seldom and likes not at all.

“Talk to me about healing,” Lorn suggests.

“Jerial knows more.”

“I’m not interested in knowing. I’m interested in seeing and feeling,” Lorn replies. “Scroll or book learning aren’t enough.” His mouth quirks into a self-deprecating smile.

“It’ll be hard for you,” Myryan says.

“If you say so.”

“I mean it. You’ve been handling chaos.”

Lorn raises his eyebrows.

“Don’t look at me like I’m daft. There’s a white shimmer around you. Father practically glows all the time. So does Vernt. You’re not so bad.”

Lorn nodded. “And there’s a blackish haze around you and Jerial, but it’s stronger around you.”

“You can see it?”

“More like feel it,” he admits.

“Good. Vernt can’t, you know. He thinks healing is all imaginary because he’s order-blind. Father can’t sense it, either, but he knows it works.”

“Father is a pragmatist.” After a pause, Lorn adds, “About most things, anyway.”

“And there are two kinds of chaos,” Myryan continues, “the deep white-gold kind-like surrounds the Quarter of the Magi’i-and the ugly reddish white kind, and that’s what you feel when a wound goes bad or someone looks like they’re going to die. Healing’s not what people think it is,” Myryan states flatly. “A good healer can combine order-that’s the black-with wound chaos, so that someone can heal, and we can bind things together for a time-”

“But their bodies have to heal by themselves,” Lorn finishes.

Myryan waits.

“How do you bind or wrap the order to someone?” he finally inquires.

Myryan laughs. “I asked Kyrysmal the same thing. People have chaos and order within them. You have to work with that.”

“Show me.”

“Are you sure? They say that the Magi’i shouldn’t work with both.” Myryan looks intently at her older brother.

“I’m not going to be a magus,” Lorn replies. “Before yearend, I’ll be a lancer, and healing will help.”

“You’re going to give up on magery?” Myryan’s eyes flick toward the closed door, as if to make sure that Lorn’s wordsdo not leave the room. “What will father say?”

“He already knows, but he’s hoping that it won’t come to that.”

“But why? Father says you do well at your studies and that no one learns things better than you do.”

“I don’t like being confined between walls of granite. That much chaos … presses in on me.” Lorn shrugs helplessly. “I can’t hide that. Lector Hyrist would have thrown me out a long time ago if father weren’t a Lector and if my studies weren’t so good. The Magi’i want people who eat, think, breathe, and sleep chaos transfers and manipulation. Like Vernt … or father.”

“All right.” Myryan sighs as she swings her legs around and stands. “Give me your hand. If you had a slash there that wasn’t healing it would be red and maybe puffy … really, you wouldn’t need healing. You could-”

“Cut it open and drain it, and wash it with clear winter brandy or something.” Lorn smiles. “I know.” He stands and extends his hand. As she steps closer, he can smell the clean scent of frysya. “But if I were going to lose it …?”

“I’d reach out and gather free order … like this.”

Lorn’s senses follow hers as the unseen but still real darkness forms above his left hand. He tries to replicate her ordergathering. After a moment, a smaller, more diffuse, block of darkness appears beside hers.

“Oh … you should have been a healer.”

“Men aren’t healers-not in Cyador,” he points out.

“Like women aren’t Magi’i,” she replies.

Near-identical ironic smiles appear on each sibling’s face.

“How do you bind it or move it?”

“You take the affinity within your body ….”

Lorn’s eyes and senses are fully intent, his amber eyes both searching and hard as he concentrates on his sister’s demonstration of order healing.

TWO FIGURES STAND on the westernmost balcony of the Palace of Light, enjoying the comfortable breeze that heralds the beginning of the cool but moderate winter in Cyad. Below them, the green and white awnings on the small plaza to the west and north of the harbor piers ripple with a gust of wind coming off the Great Western Ocean, enough of a gust that the rippling is visible nearly a kay away on the Palace balcony.

“Someone used chaos to create the fire in the warehouse district,” First Magus Chyenfel says to the Majer-Commander of Lancers.

“Was there any damage beyond the one warehouse?” inquires Rynst.

“No. The damage was confined to the western end. It had been rented to an outland trader by the Jekseng clan.”

“Outsiders, again. Everywhere, from the barbarians to the traders, we have difficulties with outsiders.” After a pause, Rynst ventures quietly, “Some had mentioned seed-oil burning.”

“It was-but you cannot get that heavy oil to burn with a striker-or even a fallen candle or lamp.” Chyenfel smiles ironically, his sungold eyes flashing.

“Cammabark?”

“There wasn’t any sign of an explosion, and there were bodies and bones there. The dead men didn’t try to run.”

“The fire was to cover their murder, then. Anyone important?”

The High Lector and First Magus shakes his head. “No. The bodies seem to be those of the man renting the warehouse-a most unsavory Hamorian thought to be a smuggler-and his two bodyguards.”

“How unfortunate. How very unfortunate.” Rynst lifts hiseyebrows. “Then we cannot suspect the Hand of the Emperor?”

“No … not in a dispute between traders, not unless it is far more than it seems to be. But then, you know that.” Chyenfel smiles lazily. “You would like to know who the Hand is, would you not?”

“Many would.”

“True,” muses Chyenfel. His face hardens. “Perhaps, just perhaps, the most unfortunate demise of this Aljak may put an end to a string of recent disappearances among the merchanters.”

“You do think it was retribution?” Rynst turns so that the afternoon sun falls full on his back, bright if cold in the green-blue sky, and so that he can watch both the First Magus more closely and the harbor.

“It probably was, but we don’t know who killed Aljak.” Chyenfel offers a theatrical shrug. “Unhappily, the man comes from a prominent Hamorian trading family. They have threatened a ten percent increase in the cost of Hamorian goods … or so Bluoyal tells me.”