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Sonea hugged Lorkin tightly for the third time that morning, and pulled herself away because if she didn't, she might be tempted to monopolize him completely. Waving him off towards peers who were yet to speak to him since he had last been a resident of the Magicians' Quarter, she chose an entirely different direction - the stairs to the University roof.
On the heights, a biting breeze cooled her face, and failed to tease her hair, under a personal shield to protect the ornaments pinned into it. It pleased Sonea to see that the northeasterly wind whetting itself on the stones of the Guild buildings was scattering the clouds, rather than bringing more. The guests at a wedding of magicians did not have to worry about being rained on, but magic had its limits, and she was glad that those coming from outside the Magicians' Quarter would not have to contend with spring mud on their arrival or departure.
Well, mostly. Some members of the wider House Paren might have benefited from a blow to their dignity. Even with Regin's best efforts to smooth the way, she had not achieved cordial relations with all of his relatives.
But it did not behoove her own dignity to imagine them on their backsides in the muck. Pushing the thought aside, she smiled as she saw a group of hospice helpers - Adrea, Irala, and Sommel - get out of a carriage that had just pulled up to the gates of the Guild. While some guests today had been invited for the sake of harmony or obligation, many more were there simply because she wanted them to be.
"Sonea. I came to let you know that Osen has started bringing guests up to the Lookout."
Regin's voice behind her was as warm as the wind was cold, and she turned to it with another smile. Marrying at this point in life - having borne and raised a child old enough to himself be married, while her husband-to-be was marrying again - seemed like a more relaxed way of doing things than the weddings of younger people. They'd each meditated for an hour last night - a Vindo marriage tradition popular among magicians - but no one would have expected them to do it in seclusion, or to avoid seeing each other before a certain point in the ceremony. Sonea's cousin Hania had arranged her hair, having a talent for it, but had kept to a simple style. With the Guild servants and her friends to oversee guest arrangements, and with nothing further to add to her appearance, a moment to herself felt like a luxury, but one that cost little.
But she was not averse to sharing the moment with Regin.
"You look beautiful," he added, taking in her bright green dress with its black sash and black-tipped sleeves, a complement to his darker green tunic and red sash. For him, the colours were obligatory; those of his House along with red for his discipline as a Guild magician. While her black sash was similarly required in substitution for her robes, green was simply the choice she'd made.
If she'd never learned black magic, she might have worn green, as a Healer, most of the days of her life.
"I'm coming around to this," she agreed, a joke they'd been tossing between each other for months, that he had won her grudgingly over to the idea of marriage by practical arguments and bargaining. "I could get used to having a reason to put aside my robes."
His lips curved upwards in amusement even as his eyes stayed innocent. Stepping closer, he kissed her quickly - a promise for later that evoked pleasant memories of earlier promises kept.
He stepped back. "Shall we go down?"
"Yes." Sonea gathered up her skirts, and grimaced slightly. "Well, one moment." Scanning the ledge at the edge of the roof, she laid a thin shield over it - to protect her dress from dirt - before sitting down to adjust her shoes. While lovely, they were not quite as comfortable as she'd hoped, and she could tell she was going to have to keep soreness away during the day with minor Healing.
"Can I help?"
"Only if you can figure out how to re-shape these without compromising their structure," Sonea said, holding a shoe out to him. "If it were just the width at my toes, it would be easy, but it's my heels that are protesting."
He gave her a sympathetic grimace, and the shoe a careful inspection. "Without your usual shoes to compare these to, and more materials to draw on, I think I'd likely do more harm than good."
"Ah well." She accepted the shoe back from him and rose with his offered hand. "We'll make do. But if you see Lord Tavvin approach for a dance, help me evade him. With my luck, he'll trip over his feet then over mine."
"Distraction - a suitable use of my skills as a Warrior," Regin agreed cheerfully.
Which still left getting down the stairs and up to the Lookout. She rarely used magic for something like this - but on a day like today, Sonea thought even the most conservative of her colleagues would react with amused tolerance. Clasping Regin's hand, she created a disk below their feet to levitate them off the wall and over the grounds. Regin, well used to combined maneuvers with other Warriors, tightened his grip only slightly, showing no other surprise or adjustment; they sailed through the air as if a giant's hand had picked them up between forefinger and thumb.
Magicians and non-magicians alike applauded as Sonea's disk sank into the grass below the Lookout tower.
*
Regin's mother Farla stood at his side; Sonea's son Lorkin stood at hers. Rothen, facing them, pressed a dot of scented oil first on to Regin's forehead, then Sonea's. "As you have come to announce your commitment before witnesses, speak the vows you wish to have heard."
Sonea spoke first. "Regin of the family Winar and the House of Paren, I choose you as my husband and pledge to you my life in loyalty. From today we will share our fortunes and soothe each other's misfortunes."
These were not words she'd ever expected to say. Even in the last days of the Ichani Invasion, when she had fought and planned beside Akkarin, her hopes for their partnership had been general and unformed. In the decades following, even though it had often been difficult to raise Lorkin without another parent, her emotional needs had never quite taken the shape of partner. She had had Rothen, and Jonna and Ranel, and trusted colleagues, and a vocation that gave back to her as well as took. She had also had the long habit of keeping herself apart so that no connections could be used against her, and even as that eroded, her status as a black magician had kept some at distance. Across that distance, knowing herself to be the slum girl who had defied their laws, she had not realized that, more and more, her colleagues' deference related to respect, not wariness.
There was no gap in her life that only a husband could fill, but she had chosen to open up that space for Regin anyway.
For Regin's part, there was no ruefulness on his face or hesitation in his voice as he pledged his own loyalty. The thought of Wynina, two years past their divorce, seemed to sit lightly on him as he made these vows for a second time. Sonea knew herself to be worthy of trust, but was still touched that Regin was capable of it after that first bitterness. Then again, she had come to trust him after a hostility that cut deep. Change, it seemed, was one of his virtues, even as he promised constancy to balance it.
*
Following the ceremony, the guests mingled in the shadow of the Lookout tower, empty for now of prisoners and only fulfilling its usual functions of Guard training station and weather observation point. For today, large banners hung from its side, snapping only occasionally in the dying wind:: House Paren's incal, the Guild sign, and a stylized gate that was gaining popularity at weddings where both parties were not of a House.
Most of the people of Imardin had no house incal to display on formal occasions - though Sonea was still in the minority of magicians for whom this was true. So in recent years, some had chosen to use a version of Imardin's city flag as if to declare that they were "of Imardin" rather than "of no family in particular".
Most of the House of Paren had made sufficient peace with their son's choice of wife to regard the banner with bland dignity, at least in front of Sonea, but she caught a pained expression on Lord Garrel's face. The old man had never been fully reconciled to the Guild taking in novices from outside the House, and clearly disliked a further visual celebration of this circumstance. Sonea would not have felt a need to make the point for its own sake - today was not her battleground - but, with that banner absent, the remaining pair of House Paren and the Guild would have suggested that the Guild was her only allegiance. And that was not true. The Guild had taught her, given her friendships, listened to her voice, and given her meaningful work. It had raised her high - but it had not raised her.
If Lord Garrel was still dismayed by "lowies" after a quarter-century, then she was almost indulging him by giving him a focus for his dissatisfaction.
She left him in peace. It was easy enough to avoid him among the other attendees. Most of the Guild had turned out to see one of its black magicians marry; Dannyl had teased her in letters that she had offered Imardin one of the events that would define that year's spring. The pomp of it all had also not appealed to Sonea for its own sake. But it had meant that rather than asking her son to give up his duties in the reformation of Sachaka to attend a family occasion, she was asking Lorkin and Tyvara to attend an event that had diplomatic advantages as well.
It was not an ingenious framing of the occasion. She happened on another of the guests regarding the banners before he turned to her, but King Merin's expression, in contrast to Lord Garrel's was wistful.
Once, she had hated this man for continuing the annual Purge his father began. Since the Purge ended, they had had more nuanced encounters, and she had not resented acting as his voice when negotiating with the Traitors as his ambassador. "Your presence is very reassuring to the more traditional members of the House of Paren, your majesty," Sonea said drily. "I hope you're enjoying the occasion."
"Indeed; I am glad to attend," the king said, meeting her frankness equally. HIs glance at her forehead, and wry smile, were at odds with his next words. "I counted Akkarin as a close friend while he was High Lord."
Sonea's eyebrows rose.
"I am sure he cared for you deeply," the king said, "and I know you cared for him. I am glad my friend's beloved is happy."
So he had forgiven Akkarin, then, not just as High Lord but as his friend. She wondered when that had happened. So many had treated the revelation of Akkarin's black magic as a betrayal, when in some ways it was their judgment of him that better bore that label. The king thus declared his own redemption, perhaps, rather than Akkarin's.
It was a kinder thought than might be expected from one bringing up a former lover on the day of a wedding. She decided it did not need a complicated response.
"Thank you," she said. She glanced on instinct down the hillside, towards Akkarin's grave, but her gaze was first caught by Lorkin's - standing by Tyvara - and Vinara, Dorrien, and Nikea standing together - and Lillia and Anyi - and Rothen -
The cherished living did not crowd out the ghosts at this wedding, but they did outnumber them.