The black letters reached her spiral, and rushed into it, and the deep-cut writing swept down and around and around and down and disappeared into the depths of the earth, and the polished stone closed over the place where they had been, and suddenly time, too, rushed forward, and the world slammed back toward its ordinary level with a tremendous silent crash. Mienthe staggered.
Before she could fall, Tan caught her elbow with one strong hand, steadying her until she could recover her balance. He was not looking at her, however, but at the Linularinan agent—a mage, Mienthe realized belatedly. Or, no, with that strange writing, a legist, of course. Then she followed Tan’s gaze, and found it did not matter, not for any immediate practical purpose. In startlement or terror or outrage, one of the prisoner’s guards had cut his throat. A great wash of crimson blood ran across the stone, filling the deep-carved letters the agent had drawn into the stone and trickling across the floor of the hall.
There was no sign, now, that the carved letters had ever sliced out toward Tan. But there was a crystalline spiral set directly into the stone a step away from where he stood with Mienthe. It was no wider than a man’s hand at its widest diameter: A perfect spiral of smoky quartz set right into the polished granite, turning and turning inward until the fine pattern in its center became too fine to see. Tan glanced down at this spiral, his brows drawing together in bemusement. Then he looked at Mienthe. There was no surprise in his face. He only gave her a little, acknowledging tip of his head: Did it again, didn’t you? As though he’d have expected nothing less. Mienthe blushed.
The Arobern, too, stared at the spiral for a moment. Then he turned his head to look at the dead man and the blood, and at last at the guardsman who had killed him.
The man ducked his head in uncertain apology and came forward to offer the hilt of his bloody knife to the king. “If I was wrong—” he began and stopped, swallowing. Then he drew a quick breath and met the Arobern’s eyes. “Lord King, if I was wrong, then I beg your pardon.”
The Arobern shook his head. He reached out to touch the knife’s hilt, but he did not take it; instead, he folded the guardsman’s fingers back around the hilt. “He meant his blow for my guest, a man under my protection. I would not like to have my protection fail. Your blow guarded my honor, and I thank you for it.”
The guardsman, looking much happier, bowed his head and backed away. Other men came deferentially forward to take away the body and clean up the blood. There was a surprising amount of blood. Mienthe tried not to look. She stared down at the crystalline spiral she’d drawn instead, though it pulled at her eyes and made her dizzy. It was still better than looking at the blood.
“It was your blow that protected me,” Tan said to Mienthe in a low voice. “So I’ll thank you for that.”
Mienthe shook her head. She rubbed her foot cautiously over the spiral. It gleamed dully, a spiral of ordinary smoky quartz that might have been there since the stone was carved and carried into this house and laid down to be part of the room’s floor. Tears prickled unexpectedly in her eyes, and she blinked hard. “I do things,” she whispered. “I feel things, and I don’t know why or how. There’s something in me that makes me do things, but it isn’t me and I don’t know what it is.”
Tan shook his head and, to Mienthe’s surprise, took her hand in both of his. “It’s you,” he said. “It’s all you. You simply have a gift you haven’t yet recognized. But it’s guiding you well, Mie, don’t you think? You’ve done all the right things so far, and which of the rest of us can claim as much? Until you learn to recognize and understand your gift, you might simply try trusting it—and yourself—a little.”
Mienthe stared at him. Then she tried to smile.
“Quite so,” said Lord Beguchren, approaching unexpectedly. “One does wonder what sort of gift you hold, Lady Mienthe, but it seems one might do far worse than trust it.” He knelt to trace the quartz spiral with one fingertip. Then, rising, he lifted a frost-white eyebrow at her.
He was still very angry, Mienthe knew that. Although she knew he was not angry with her or with Tan, she did not know what to say to him. She did not know what she thought about anything. She was shaking and found she couldn’t stop. Tan put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against his solid weight gratefully.
The Arobern had been glowering down at the bloody granite and the crystalline spiral. Now he turned abruptly and said to Gereint Enseichen, “Assist my guardsmen, if you please. If there is another Linularinan agent in Ehre, I think this may be a matter of some urgency. Also see to the safety of your own household. I will assuredly ask you and your lady wife to extend hospitality to my guests.”