“I don’t…” Mienthe hesitated. She rubbed her forehead, searching for… something. The memory of pain? The echo of a shape she had drawn into herself, into the earth? “I don’t… I don’t truly know. I don’t think… I don’t think I did anything, exactly. There was something strange, something about shadows, and spirals…”
“You most certainly did do something. You did magecraft. I saw it.” Iriene’s voice had gone oddly gentle. “You sat down on the path and drew in the gravel, and the Linularinan working tangled up in the shape you drew and spun away and out.”
Mienthe stared at the mage. Iriene had said she couldn’t be a mage because she didn’t hate her cousin’s griffin friend. And she didn’t feel at all like a mage. And yet… yet… she supposed she didn’t really know how a mage was supposed to feel. And if she’d done magecraft, didn’t that mean she had to be a mage? She said uncertainly, “No one in my grandfather’s family has ever been a mage. Hardly any of us are even gifted…”
“Well, you will be the first, then,” Iriene said practically. “Perhaps you have it from your mother.”
Mienthe stared at the mage. She had never been able to recall the least detail about her mother. Tef had described her for Mienthe long ago, when she’d wondered with a child’s curiosity about the mother she’d never known. A pale little mouse of a woman, he had said, always tiptoeing about in terror of drawing the attention of some stalking cat. A woman with colorless eyes and delicate bones and a pretty voice, though she seldom spoke. She had been afraid of Mienthe’s father. Mienthe understood that perfectly, but she wished now that she could remember her mother.
“Fortunate for us, wherever you have it from!” declared the queen, speaking for the first time in several moments. She studied Mienthe with a lively curiosity that made Mienthe feel rather like a fancy caged songbird. “You must have a great deal of natural talent, surely, to notice this skillful Linularinan mage and know without training or study how you might expose and dismiss him. And you truly had no least inkling of your power?”
Mienthe truly had no least inkling of it now, except she couldn’t deny that she seemed to have somehow used it. She began to answer the queen, found she had no idea what answer to give, and stopped.
“We all have an inkling of it now!” said Tan. “I would kiss your hands and feet, esteemed Mienthe, except I would have to rise, so I hope you will excuse me. How very splendid you are! An ornament to the Delta, to the city, and to your cousin’s house!”
Somehow this excessively flowery speech settled Mienthe where the queen’s warm approval had only worried her.
“I don’t know about ornaments,” Iriene said, with a lowering glance toward Tan, “but it seems to me that broad events are tending to pivot here, that this year the Delta has become a linchpin for the world. I suppose that’s Mienthe, too, or else those Linularinan mages. I don’t know. Everything looks strange.”
“It’s not me!” Mienthe said at once. She thought she might understand what the mage meant about pivot-points and linchpins, and this made her almost more uncomfortable than being accused of being a pivot-point herself, because she could see that no one else in the room understood at all.
“I don’t know,” Iriene said doubtfully. “It seems to me it is you, lady, but then everything looks strange in this house right now. I could almost think it was him”—she nodded toward Tan and finished—“except if anybody’s at the heart and the hub of whatever’s moving in the Delta, lady, it should be you and not some nice young Linularinan legist.”
Tan tilted his head, looking curious and amused at this characterization.
Mienthe understood the amusement. So little of that description was actually true. How very strange and uncomfortable, to be aware that someone’s appearance was deliberately cultivated and thoroughly false. She wondered whether Tan could possibly be at the heart and hub of all these recent events. That seemed much more likely than that she was. She said aloud, “It isn’t me they’re trying to kidnap.”
“That’s true,” said Geroen, and glowered at Tan. “What was it you brought away with you from Linularinum, huh? What did you steal from the old Fox’s house?”
Tan opened his mouth as though to say, as he had said all along, Nothing. But then he looked suddenly extremely thoughtful. He said instead, “Esteemed Captain… I’d have said I took nothing from Mariddeier Kohorrian save information. But it’s clear Istierinan believes I took something more, ah, tangible. He must indeed hold this as an adamant conviction. I thought… I had concluded that someone else was using my, ah, my work to disguise his own theft. But before this, I would not have said the Fox’s spymaster could so easily be led astray by mere clouds of obfuscation. Certainly not to acts of war.”