The Element of Fire, Martha Wells [books for new readers .txt] 📗

THOMAS SAID, “MAY I congratulate you on a spectacular entrance?”

The sorceress looked up at him from the floor. After a moment, her lips twisted ruefully. “It was one of my best.”

Dubell moved to Thomas’s side. He looked at what was left of the Arlequin, at the destruction in the gallery, and down at Kade. “Was this your doing?” His voice was incredulous.

For a moment her expression was that of a small boy caught stealing an apple. “No.” As she got to her feet, Thomas saw there were wood chips in her hair from the broken column the Arlequin had thrown at her. She looked defensive. “It followed me here.”

Thomas moved a few paces away from them. The Cisternans and his own men were scattered, collecting the wounded and the dead. There were still courtiers milling around toward the end of the room. Now would be a terrible time for a pitched battle.

Dubell met Kade’s eyes a long moment, then he said thoughtfully, “Did it really?”

“Well, in a way it did.” She began to pull the splinters out of her hair. “But it joined the troupe before I did, and I think it killed one of the clowns to get a place. I would have stopped it sooner but I’d touched some iron, and it took a bit to wear off.”

Renier and a group of Albon knights burst in through the archway and started toward them. The hide and sackcloth coats they wore over the lace and velvets of court finery made them look like ancient barbarians arriving to loot a city. Thomas went forward quickly to stop Renier. “Let Dubell handle her,” he said in a low voice.

Renier signaled his knights to halt. “Who is she?”

“Kade Carrion.”

Renier stared. “My God, we’ve got to…”

“No,” Thomas said pointedly. “If he can get us out of this without a bloodbath, we’ve got to let him try.”

The big knight considered a moment, then nodded tensely. “Very well.” He signaled the other knights to move back.

Thomas nodded, thankful that while Renier wasn’t a particularly brilliant statesman, he wasn’t a bloodthirsty idiot either.

“Did she cause all this?” Renier asked, looking around at the chaos in the gallery.

Thomas glanced back at Kade and Galen Dubell. She was watching them, wary and a little angry. Her brows were darker than the pale blond of her hair, so the effect was that when she was looking at you, you knew it. He thought about her leaping to push the other actress out of danger and said slowly, “I don’t think so.”

Then Kade’s eyes focused past them and her expression changed. Thomas followed her gaze and swore. Roland stood in the archway the knights had come through. Thomas said, “Renier…”

“What?” The knight looked around and gasped, “Damn that boy.” He sheathed his sword and strode toward Roland, deliberately placing himself between the King and the sorceress.

Thomas looked back toward Kade, aware that the other guards in the room had held off on his order. He would have to decide what he minded more, dying or behaving this stupidly.

Galen Dubell was watching Kade thoughtfully. With gentle firmness he said, “Kade, don’t.”

She looked up at the older man, her eyes losing some of their intensity. “I didn’t come here to kill anyone—even him.”

Renier, as Preceptor of the Albon Knights and the only man in Ile-Rien allowed to touch the King without his permission, seized Roland’s arm and hustled him out of sight. Dubell watched as they disappeared, then turned a worried eye on Kade. “Then why did you come here?”

She smiled. “For an audience with my dear brother, of course.”

And that, Thomas thought, is not going to help matters at all.

*

The gallery smelled of ash and sour wine. Many of the chandeliers and lamps had gone out, throwing the upper half of the huge chamber into shadow. The court had been dispersed, and Ravenna, Roland, and Falaise had retired to a nearby solar with watchful guards. A breeze, created by an open door or window somewhere up one of the long galleries, swept gently through the huge chamber, lifting the heat and the stench for a moment.

“How long had he been with the troupe?” Thomas asked Baraselli.

The Aderassi actor-manager moaned and would have sunk to his knees again but for the two Queen’s guards who were struggling to hold him up. The Master of Revels hovered worriedly nearby; it was on his responsibility the troupe had passed the final check at the gate.

“No one’s done anything to you, and no one will, if you just answer the question.” Thomas kept his voice mild, despite his growing irritation. It was easier to question recalcitrant anarchists under torture than someone who was so busy collapsing that he could hardly stay coherent enough to speak.

“Only a month. Only a month. I didn’t know.”

Dubell had moved quietly up behind the actor-manager. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment, then he looked up at Thomas and nodded. Baraselli was telling the truth.

“Who recommended him?” Thomas nodded to the guards, who cautiously released their hold of the man and stepped back.

Baraselli swayed on his feet, but stayed upright. “It was his first mask, he told me. He’d learned it from an old actor he lived near. He did it well, and he came to us just after Derani died…”

“Who was Derani?”

“He played the Arlequin until he died of fever.”

Dubell asked, “What were the symptoms?”

Baraselli whipped around, staring up at the tall sorcerer in fear, but something in Dubell’s expression and mild demeanor calmed him and he said, “He… His skin was hot to the touch, and his wife said he couldn’t keep anything down, not even water, and he had blood in his, pardon, piss, and… We paid to have the apothecary in to him, but he just died.”

There was something familiar about that. And convenient, for the Arlequin. Thomas asked, “When was this?”

“Last month. Well, a month and a fortnight ago.”

Thomas shook his head, pressing his lips together. There was a pattern here, a deadly one. He looked up at Dubell. “About a month and a fortnight ago Dr. Surete’s assistant Milam fell down a stairway in the North Bastion and broke his neck. A week after that Surete himself died of pleurisy. It came on suddenly, and by the time anyone realized how serious it was, he was dead.”

Dubell’s brows drew together as he considered it. He said, “It’s the easiest of dark magics to bring sickness, and the hardest to detect. It’s simplicity itself to send a bookish and uncoordinated young scholar down a staircase. If one has the stomach for that sort of thing, of course.” He nodded at Baraselli. “He’s telling the truth, and I doubt he can reasonably be held responsible for Kade’s actions. What will be done with him?”

Even without the confirmation of Dubell’s truth spell, Thomas was inclined to believe Baraselli. He had observed enough people under stress to read the sincerity in those hysterics. He told the Master of Revels, “Give him his money and tell him to take the others and go away.”

Baraselli sobbed and tried to fall to his knees in thanks. The Master of Revels gestured sharply to the Cisternans waiting nearby, who intercepted the actor-manager in mid-grovel and hauled him away.

“It’s either a hell of a coincidence, or a hell of a plot,” Thomas said quietly to Dubell. He knew which he favored.

The old sorcerer sighed. “There are no coincidences.”

Thomas watched him thoughtfully. “I would have thought it difficult for a wizard to hex another wizard, especially someone like Dr. Surete. He was the Court Sorcerer for two decades.”

“If a sorcerer is in fear for his life, he might test every object he is about to touch with a sprinkle of gascoign powder or some other preparation that reveals the presence of magic.” Dubell made an absent gesture. “But Surete and Milam were not in fear for their lives. The spell could have come to them on anything—a forged letter purporting to be from a friend, an apple