Sianim 01 - Masques

Prince—no—King now, of Reth. His face was strong-featured, even handsome in other company. There was a stubborn tilt to his chin that he’d inherited from his paternal grandfather, a formidable warrior and king.
    It wasn’t his appearance that caught her attention; she’d expected that he was the person from whom the ae’Magi had been hiding his slave. It was the expression of distaste that briefly crossed his face as he looked at the crowd, remarkably different from the vacuous smiles that everyone else wore.
    He shifted unexpectedly and met her gaze. He looked quickly down, but then began to make his way through the edges of the crowd toward her cage. When he reached the platform, he tilted his head down so that no one could read his lips, and asked in a low tone, “Do you need help, Lady?”
    Shocked, she glanced quickly at the mirror that covered the back of the cage. The ae’Magi’s illusion of a snowfalcon stared back at her indifferently.
    She knew that Myr was no mage—he wouldn’t have been able to conceal that from her, not with her mother’s blood in her veins. Green magic could usually hide from the tamed stuff that the more human mages used, but the reverse was not true. Still, there was no doubt that he saw a woman and not the rare bird the ae’Magi showed his guests.
    Rethians believed they were the descendants of an enslaved people who had risen up to kill their masters. They were taught at their mother’s knee that to take another human and own him was evil beyond comprehension.
    Even so, even for the King of Reth, it was a bold move to offer to help one of the ae’Magi’s slaves to escape. There were a lot of mages in Reth who owed obedience first to the ae’Magi and second to the king—obedience enforced by their own magic. To move against the ae’Magi could spark a civil war in Myr’s kingdom. His offer was heartfelt and showed just how young this new king was.
    Perhaps it was his rash offer that appealed to her or that she had been born Rethian and part of her still thought of Myr as her king. In any case, she answered him as herself, and not the slave that she played for the ae’Magi.
    “No,” she answered. “I’m here as an observer.”
    There were rumors that the ruling family of Reth had occasionally produced offspring who were immune to magic. There were stories, and Aralorn was a collector of stories.
    “A spy.” It wasn’t a question. “You must be from either Sianim or Jetaine. They are the only ones who would employ women to spy in as delicate a position as this.” Women were important in Reth, and they were far from powerless politically. But they didn’t go to battle, didn’t put themselves in danger.
    With a half smile, Aralorn clarified, “I get paid for my work.”
    “Sianim mercenary.”
    She nodded. “Pardon me for asking, but how did you see past the illusion of the snowfalcon that the ae’Magi placed on the cage?”
    “Is that what you’re disguised as?” His smile made him look even younger than he really was. “I wondered why no one said anything about the beautiful woman he had in the cage.”
    Interesting. He saw through the ae’Magi’s illusion but not her altered shape. No one had ever called Aralorn beautiful. Not in those tones. Maybe it wasn’t only altruism on his part that had him offering to free her. That made sense, though; when she’d taken the likeness of the slave girl, magic had altered her—not just other people’s perceptions of her as the ae’Magi’s illusion did.
    She felt eyes on her and glanced up under her lashes to see the ae’Magi not ten paces away, staring at Myr in fascination.
    Myr might have been young and impetuous, but he wasn’t dumb. He caught the subtle tension of her body.
    “Aren’t you a pretty thing,” he murmured softly, though a little louder than he’d been speaking before. “I wonder if you are trained to glove and jess?”
    “Ah, I see you admire my falcon, Lord.” The deep, resonant voice of the ae’Magi could have belonged to a musician. Not only was the Archmage physically beautiful; he even sounded beautiful.
    Myr straightened abruptly, as if taken by surprise, and turned to look at the ae’Magi, who strolled up to stand next to him in front of the ornate cage.
    “She is extraordinary, isn’t she?” the ae’Magi continued. “I purchased her a month or more ago from a traveling merchant—she was captured somewhere in the Northlands, I believe . . . I thought she