Fiddler Fair (anthology)

defense, hmm?”

“How could I not? Martis—lady—love—” His eyes warmed to her unspoken approval.

She laughed, and leaned into the soft cushion behind her. “I suppose I’m expected to reward my defender now, hmm? Now that you’ve fought for my honor?”

He chuckled, and shook his head. “Silly and primitive of us, doubtless, but it does rouse up certain instinctive responses, no?”

She slid a little closer on the couch, and reached up to lace the fingers of both hands behind his neck, under his long hair. Not even the silk of his tunic was as soft as that wonderful hair. . . .

“You know good and well how I feel.” The healing-magic of his people that he had used to save her life had bound their souls together; that was the reason why Lyran did not refer to himself in the third person when they were alone together. And it was why each tended to know now a little of what the other felt. It would have been rather futile to deny her feelings even if she’d wanted to . . . which she didn’t.

“Are you happy, my Mage-lady?” She felt an unmis­takable twinge of anxiety from him. “Do the words of fools hurt you? If they do—”

“They don’t,” she reassured him, coming nearer to him so that she could hold him closer and bury her face in that wonderful, magical hair. She wondered now how she could ever have thought it too long, and untidy, or why she had thought him effeminate. She breathed in the special scent of him; a hint of sunlight and spicy grasses. And she felt the tension of anxiety inside him turn to tension of another kind. His hands, strong, yet gentle, slid around her waist and drew her closer still.

But a few hours later there came a summons she could not ignore; a mage-message from the Council. And the moment the two of them passed her threshold it would have been impossible for anyone to have told that they were lovers from their demeanor. Martis was no mean actress—she was diplomat and teacher as well as sorceress, and both those professions ­often required the ability to play a part. And Lyran, with his incredible mental discipline, and a degree of training in control that matched and was in fact incorporated in his physical training, could have passed for an ice-sculpture. Only Martis could know for certain that his chill went no deeper than the surface.

He was her bodyguard; he was almost literally her possession until and unless he chose not to serve her. And as such he went with her everywhere—even into the hallows of the Council chamber. Just as the bodyguards of the five Councilors did.

The carved double doors of a wood so ancient as to have turned black swung open without a hand touching them, and she and Lyran entered the windowless Council Chamber. It was lit entirely by mage-lights as ancient as the doors, all still burning with bright yellow incandescence high up on the walls of white marble. The room was perfectly circular and rimmed with a circle of malachite; in the center was a second circle inlaid in porphyry in the white marble of the floor. Behind that circle was the half-circle of the Council table, of black-lacquered wood, and the five matching thronelike chairs behind it. All five of those chairs were occupied by mages in the purple robes of the Mage-Guild Council.

Only one of the Councilors, the cadaverous Masterclass Mage Ronethar Gethry, gave Lyran so much as a glance; and from the way Ronethar’s eyes flickered from Lyran to Martis and back, the sorceress rather guessed that it was because of the gossip that he noticed her guard at all.

The rest ignored the swordsman, as they ignored their own hirelings, each standing impassively behind his master’s chair, garbed from head to toe, as was Lyran, in Mage-Guild hireling red: red leathers, red linen—even one, like Lyran, in red silk.

The Councilors were worried; even Martis could read that much behind their impassive masks. They wasted no time on petty nonsense about her private life. What brought them all to the Council Chamber was serious business, not accusations about whom she was dallying with.

Not that they’d dare take her to task over it. She was the equal of any of the mages in those five seats; she could sit there behind the Council table any time she chose. She simply had never chosen to do so. They knew it, and she knew it, and they knew she knew. She was not accountable to them, or anything but her conscience, for her behavior. Only for her actions as the representative of the Guild.

The fact was that she didn’t want a Council seat; as a Masterclass mage she had little enough freedom as it was. Sitting on the Council would restrict it still further. The Masterclass mage served only the Guild, the powers of the Masterclass being deemed too dangerous to be put at hire.

“Martis.” Rotund old Dabrel was serving as Chief this month; he was something less of an old stick than the others.

“Councilor,” she responded. “How may I serve my Guild?”

“By solving a mystery,” he replied. “The people of Lyosten have been acting in a most peculiar and disturbing fashion—”

“He means they’ve been finding excuses to put off a Guild inspection,” sour-faced and acid-voiced Liavel interrupted. “First there was a fever—so they say—then a drought, then the road was blocked by a flood. It doesn’t ring true; nobody else around Lyosten is having any similar troubles. We believe they’re hiding something.”

“Lyosten is a Free City, isn’t it?” Martis asked.“Who’s in charge?”

“The Citymaster—a man called Bolger Freedman.”

“Not a Guildsman. A pity. That means we can’t put pressure on him through his own Guild,” Martis mused. “You’re right, obviously; they must be covering up something, so what’s the guess?”

“We think,” Dabrel said, leaning over the table and steepling his fingertips together, “That their local mage has gone renegade in collusion with the townsfolk; that he’s considering violating the Compacts against using magecraft in offensive manner against nonmages. They’ve been feuding off and on with Portravus for decades; we think they may be deciding to end the feud.”

“And Portravus has no mage—” said mousy Herjes, looking as much frightened as worried. “Just a couple of hedge-wizards and some assorted Low Magick practitioners. And not a lot of money to spare to hire one.”

Martis snorted. “Just what I wanted to hear. Why me?”

“You’re known;” replied Dabrel. “They don’t dare cause you any overt magical harm. You’re one of the best