At first Thea seemed only glad to be free of her chain. She whirled around the cell, mocking the bolted door with every line of her body.
Yet at length she quieted, dropping panting to the floor beside the bed. She grinned at Anna, who stared levelly back and said, “It’s no good, is it? You can’t get us out.”
Not yet, Thea said, inspecting each child with care, washing Liahan all over until the memory of Simon’s touch was scoured away. But he’s cocky. He’s leaving me free enough inside this place, though every wall is also a wall of power. He’ll learn to regret that.
“He could be listening to you now.”
I know he is. Thea leaped up again, as if her long captivity in alien shape had left her sated with stillness. She prowled the cell, coming to a halt under the lamp cluster.
Her eyes sparked. The lamps burst into a blaze of sudden light. She stood beneath them, watching them, while Cynan stalked her manifold shadow.
The light died. Thea’s eyes closed; she seemed to dwindle, to shrink into herself. He’s strong, she said. She sank down slowly.
There was a little water left. Anna wheedled it into her. It seemed to strengthen her; she raised her head, drawing a long breath. I’m not in the best of condition for this.
“Is anyone?”
I plan to be. I won’t give in to those cursed Hounds, and I don’t intend to die for it.
“Maybe someone will come,” Anna said.
Thea rounded on her. Pray for it if it suits you, but don’t lie back and wait for it. We’re hidden completely. We’re not even in Rhiyana.
Anna had guessed that much. But to hear it spoken made it real, a knot of pain where her stomach should be. “Then where—”
Rome, Thea answered. Old Rome itself, that’s more than big enough to hide us even if anyone can track us here. He knows it, that captor of ours. He’s very pleased with his own cleverness.
“He’s a horror. To call himself Simon after the notorious wizard, the first heretic—”
Or after the Prince of Apostles, for the matter of that. No; he’s not our captor, he’s merely our jailer. I meant the other. The mastermind in the guise of a fat fool. Brother Paul as his mind was trumpeting to me, loudly enough to make it certain that that’s not the name he was christened with. He’s the one to look to. He’s the evil genius in this.
“But he’s only human.”
Thea laughed with a bitter edge. Poor Anna! We’ve ruined you. All our visible power, our disgustingly pretty faces, our stubborn refusal to let time touch us; we’ve let you think we’re perfection, or as close to it as earth allows. We’ve failed completely to teach you something much truer. No one’s only human, Anna. He might be as ugly as Satan himself; he’ll certainly be dead in a hundred years; he hasn’t a glimmer of our magic. But he has something more powerful than all the rest. He has a brain. A thinking brain. Whether by chance or his own black brilliance, he’s caught one of us, trained him to jesses and a lure, and hunted him with all too much success. You can be sure he’s not resting on it.
Anna shook her head obstinately. “The fat one might be giving the orders, but the other is only letting him. If he really has that much power—”
He has more. Do you remember how Alf held down the dance the night—Thea’s mind-voice caught for the merest shadow of an instant—the night the babies were born? Do you remember how he was? Ruler in the circle, master of enchanters—as Brother Simon himself has said, greater than a king. Now remember your worst and falsest image of yourself. That’s how much weaker Alf is than this second Simon Magus.
“Then how can anyone control him, let alone that fat lecher of a monk?”
I don’t know, Thea said, but this Paul can. And does.
Now came Anna’s time to pace with Cynan for escort, and Thea’s to watch in silence. Except that Thea gave it up after a turn or two and turned her attention on Liahan.
The little witch had not moved since Simon set her down, not even to protest her rough and thorough cleansing. Her eyes were wide still, bright and fixed. And yet when Thea nosed her, they blinked; her tail wagged very slightly in recognition.
Anna stopped, alarmed. “What has he done to her? Has he hurt her?”
Thea’s response was slow in coming. No, I don’t think…he wouldn’t dare… Her lip wrinkled. He wouldn’t dare!
Anna knelt beside them. Liahan did not flinch or snap when Anna lifted her. She felt as she always did, warm and silken-furred, wriggling a little against Anna’s shoulder. “Her mind,” Anna said. “Her wits. Has he—”
He can’t, Thea snapped. Cynan, jealous, scrabbled at Anna’s knee; his mother caught him by the scruff of the neck, roughly enough to startle him, and all but drove him to nurse. Her head whipped back toward Anna. I’m nothing to that tower of strength, but I bore these children in my body. While I have any power at all, he can’t touch them.
“The other one—Paul—he said—”
I’m a long way yet from losing my mind. Liahan— Thea tossed her head, a very human gesture, yet also very canine. I can’t touch her mind. It’s walled and guarded. There’s no stench of Simon Magus about it; and yet she’s too young. She can’t know how to shield. Not like that. Not from me.
Anna caressed the hound-child, stroking her favorite places, behind the ears, along the spine. She squirmed with pleasure, climbing higher, burying her cool wet nose in Anna’s neck. “Liahan,” Anna said, for what good it could do, “he’s gone. You can open your mind now.”
Thea made a small disgusted sound. Talk. As if she could understand.
Anna ignored her. “Witch-baby, shields are splendidly useful things, and you are a wonder for having made one so young, but it’s making your mother angry. Open a chink at least and let her in.”
Liahan stiffened a fraction. Anna cradled her, holding her face to face. Her eyes were all gold. Winter-gold like Alf’s, shining as his shone when he wielded his power. “Oh, you are your father’s child. Your mother’s, too, stubborn as you are and laughing in it. Won’t you lower your shield? Just for the practice?”
The little witch blinked. Anna reeled with sudden dizziness. Those eyes—
Liahan! Thea’s will cut like a sword, severing the spell.
Yes, Liahan was laughing even now, though chastened, reaching to lick Anna’s cheek, begging to be set down. Once freed, she set to nursing as if she had never been more than she seemed, a very small and very hungry gazehound pup.
Witch, Thea said, half in exasperation, half in pride. Born and bred contrary, and determined to stay that way. I almost pity our poor enemy.
“Pity that?” cried Anna.
That, Thea agreed. She began to bathe her son, who, sated, lay on the verge of sleep. Anna watched in silence that stretched into peace.
The air’s singing shattered it. Anna watched the bowls and cups appear. It was no less uncanny for that now she knew how they had come, and by whose will.
One would think… Thea mused. She shook herself. No.
“What?” Anna snapped the word viciously.
Thea lowered her head to her paws, reflecting. Simon the Magus is a coincidence. Of course a man of the Folk, if he were tall and light-eyed and flaxen fair, would look uncannily like Alfred. It’s the cast of the face—it’s the same in all of us. But that he should be so very like, and be so bitterly our enemy…that must be God’s black humor.
“He’s not quite…right, is he?”
One could not deceive Thea with an air of indifference. Not that it mattered. Thea had never weakened anyone’s will with a show of compassion. He’s utterly mad. He’s a travesty; a caricature. A nightmare of a might-have-been.
“He makes me think of Nikki, too. Somehow. In the way he’s twisted; in the way he seems to be missing something. I remember how my mother used to talk, once in a great while, when she didn’t know I could hear. Before Alf came and changed everything. She’d been told to raise my brother like a colt or a puppy, because that was as close to a man as he’d ever get; she could train him, maybe, and she did housebreak him and teach him to eat decently. But he’d never be properly human.”
He would never have been like yonder creature.
“How do you know?” Anna flared at her. “How can you imagine what he would have grown into? You know what a mind he has. Alf set it free. What if Alf had never come? Maybe we all would have died when the City fell. That would have been a mercy. But if we hadn’t, if Nikki had grown up, trapped, treated the way people never could help but treat him—all that wit and all that wildness with no way out of his head and no way in…”
I can imagine it. Thea’s inner voice was so flat that Anna stopped short. Remembered, and felt the heat rise to burn her cheeks. Her tongue had run away again. Would she never learn?
Thea was choosing not to take offense. Nikephoros would not have let himself sink into a madman. No more than Alf did. He’d have raged; he’d have fought. He would have tried to make something of himself.
“Sometimes I think, if you ever got tired of Alf, you’d have Nikki in your bed before the hour was out.” No. Anna would never learn.
An hour? Thea laughed. That long? Anna Chrysolora, you credit me with altogether too much restraint.
“So that’s why you won’t marry my elder brother. You’ve got your eye on the younger.”
Of course. Would I be myself if I didn’t?
In spite of all her troubles and her festering temper, Anna began to laugh. Thea had the eye and the tongue of a notorious harlot, but for all of that, her heart was as fixed and immovable as the roots of Broceliande. She could look, she could laugh, she could tease; she could no more turn from her dozen years’ lover than she could make herself a mortal woman.
Not, she agreed, at the moment. There’s a significant lack of opportunity here. As for Brother Magus… Have you ever suspected how very little I like smooth-skinned fair-haired boys? I’m one for a fine black eye and a warm brown skin and plenty of curly beard to play with.
“Nikki doesn’t have enough to—”
He will when he’s a little older. No, Anna; I despise a pale man. You can imagine how shocked I was when I discovered that I’d fallen in love with the palest of all pale men. All he had to commend him was a good breadth of shoulder—which he was always managing to hide—and a certain indefinable air. This fetch of his obviously has neither.
“How can you tell under the habit?”
Thea’s eyes sparkled wickedly. How could I tell under Alf’s? Sometimes I forget you never knew him when he was Brother Alfred. He was the loveliest boy who ever put on a cowl, the meekest white lamb who ever lay down before an altar. A more perfect monk never graced an abbey. But now and then when he was most off guard, I could catch it. A look, a word, a hint of something else. And there were always those shoulders; not to mention another attribute or two, once I got the habit off him.
If Brother Simon was listening indeed, this was surely driving him wild. Anna inspected the food that Simon’s power had left, found it much the same as ever. She brought the meat to Thea, settling herself with the rest. Between bites she said sagely, “Oh, yes. Those attributes.”
Thea nibbled the edge of her portion, her eyes bright, amused. I admit, though I was expecting more than a weedy boy, that first good look… I was a hound at the time; he was bathing, and he didn’t even know I was there. Saints and angels! What a lovely moment that was! Then he saw me, or more likely heard me panting, and he didn’t do anything I’d expected, except blush in the most fascinating places. He just kept on washing, ignoring me steadfastly and not saying a word. Not hurrying to hide anything, either. That was when I knew I had to have him. White skin, white hair, and all. She sighed, letting the meat fall back into its bowl. My poor love. Left all alone, and Alun gone who might as well have been another son… Damn these devils of monks!