Sianim 01 - Masques

unclean death had left. Or not. The ae’Magi was the lord of mages, after all, and they could only use their powers to the extent he allowed.
    She was scaring herself again—that was really not useful at all. Biting her lip, Aralorn gazed at the dancing nobles in an effort to distract herself. She matched names and countries to the dancers’ faces with the ease that made her the valuable spy she was.
    The ae’Magi had killed an old man, an old man without a spark of magic—human or green—about him and used the power of the death to turn the walls of the great hall a sparkling white. “An illusion,” he’d told her. “It takes some power, and I don’t like to use my own when I might need it at any time.”
    That had been the first night. On the second, he’d brought a man—one of his own guardsmen. With that blood, the ae’Magi had worked some magic so foul that the taste of it lingered on Aralorn’s skin still.
    The boy had been the worst. Only a child, and . . .
    Dozens of the rulers of the kingdoms of the Anthran Alliance were present. Some of them had been members of the Alliance for centuries, others were newer than that. The Empress of the Alliance wasn’t here, but she was six, and her guardians kept a sharp eye on her lest any of her subjects decided to make her cousin the new empress instead. Just because they were allied didn’t mean they were loyal subjects. The squabbles among the Alliance helped keep the coffers of Sianim full.
    Gradually, she managed to replace the boy’s dead eyes with dates and politics, but she still paced her cage restlessly. It wasn’t just the horror of her discovery of exactly what kind of man held the power of the ae’Magi that kept her from sitting down—it was fear. The ae’Magi scared her to death.
    There was a kaleidoscopic quality to the dance: the brilliant colors of the rich fabrics twisting around and around only to stop, rearrange themselves, and swirl into motion once again. More like a clockwork than a dance populated by real people. Perhaps it was a side effect of all the magic. Or maybe it was deliberate, the ae’Magi amusing himself. He liked to make people unwittingly do his bidding.
    She saw the Duchess of Ti and the Envoy of the Anthran Alliance dancing cordially with each other. Ten years ago, the Envoy had had the Duchess’s youngest son assassinated, sparking a bloody feud that left bodies littering the Alliance like a plague.
    The Envoy said something and patted the Duchess’s shoulder. She laughed gaily in return as if she hadn’t had the Envoy’s third wife killed in a particularly nasty manner only a month ago. She might have thought it a clever ruse designed to put the other off guard, but the Envoy was not particularly politic or clever. Aralorn wondered if the effect of whatever spell the ae’Magi had apparently cast upon his guests was specific to them and whether it would last beyond this evening. Just how powerful was he?
    When the musicians paused for a break, people crowded around the Archmage, Geoffrey ae’Magi, drawn to his twinkling eyes and mischievous grin the way butterflies surround the flowering coralis tree. When a butterfly landed on the sweet-smelling scarlet flower of the coralis, the petals closed, and the flower digested its hapless prey over a period of weeks.
    There were some times when her penchant for collecting trivia wasn’t an asset.
    Like the coralis, Geoffrey ae’Magi was extraordinarily beautiful, with blue-black hair, high cheekbones, and the smile of a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar.
    Aralorn had been in his presence before. The Spymaster liked to use her in the rarefied society of which the ae’Magi was a part because she knew how to negotiate it without betraying herself. She’d attributed the wave of magic that surrounded him to his being the most powerful mage in the world. His beauty had stunned her at first, but it hadn’t taken her long to decide that the attraction lay in his gentle warmth and his self-deprecating humor. Four days ago, Aralorn, like every other woman who’d ever laid eyes upon him, had been more than half-enamored of him.
    Aralorn turned her gaze away from the ae’Magi and back to the room. While she’d been watching the Archmage, someone had stopped next to the pillar nearest her cage.
    Leaning lazily against the polished pillar, a short, square-built young man wearing the colors of the royal house of Reth also observed the throng: Myr,