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

the sorceress’s powers and talents to her own ends. He didn’t think Ravenna would understand the bitterness of wounds that had never healed.

“A child’s revenge,” Ravenna said, looking into the fire. “I wish I had a child’s revenge. Fulstan wore away at them, both of them. When I discovered all he had done… And I didn’t realize it until he’d made my son a coward.”

Fulstan’s treatment of Roland and Kade had been at its worst when Kade was fourteen and Roland twelve, at the time when Ravenna was away on the borders during the last Bisran War. Thomas had been a lieutenant then, traveling with Ravenna and the rest of the Guard. There had been no one at the palace with the courage to inform the Queen that while she was managing supply lines and browbeating her generals into cooperation, Fulstan was destroying Ile-Rien’s future through its heir. Thomas had long wondered if Fulstan hadn’t known exactly what he was doing. If he wasn’t striking back at Ravenna in the only way open to him. God knew she had been indifferent to anything else he’d ever done.

At this time it had also been an open secret that Thomas was Ravenna’s lover. Most of his conversations with the late king had been limited to details of the execution Fulstan had planned for Thomas the day Ravenna died, or grew tired of him. He did have a gift for words. Perhaps he would have been happier as a poet than a king.

Ravenna was saying, “Had my children been bastards I think all of us would be the happier for it.”

Thomas let his breath out, suddenly weary. “Very eloquent. Now what are you going to do about it?”

She stood up and flung her sewing to the floor. “Sixteen years ago when I approved your appointment into my guard, I knew I was making a mistake,” she shouted.

“Probably,” Thomas agreed. “And I suppose that bit of misdirection, while admirable, though not quite up to your usual standards, is the only answer I’m going to get.”

She stared at him a moment, then shook her head, her expression turning wry. “If I had an answer, I wouldn’t need misdirection.” After a moment of thought, she asked, “Can we trust Galen Dubell?”

And that was that, even if he stood there and argued until he fell down dead of old age. Thomas rubbed the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t the first time Ravenna had given him a headache. He said, “I think so.”

“Really?”

“I don’t think he knew she was coming here.” Thomas shrugged. “But he’s genuinely fond of the girl, and there are people who are going to mistake that for collusion. It would be against your best interests to be one of them.”

“Yes, we need him. Braun and his little apprentices are no good for serious work like this. The sorcerers we sent for from the Granges and Lodun haven’t even reached the city yet. That’s suspicious in itself. I’ll tell Renier to send more messengers.” Ravenna paused, her back to him, her slender form silhouetted against the light of the fire. “I want you to watch her, Thomas.”

“I gathered that,” he said dryly. “I’ve already arranged for it.”

There was a discreet tap on the door, and Ravenna irritably called, “Enter.”

It was the steward who had made his escape from the solar earlier. He said nervously, “My lord High Minister Aviler is requesting an audience, my lady.”

“Oh, he is? Well, I’m in the mood for him, as a matter of fact. Tell him he may enter, and don’t think I didn’t notice when you disappeared earlier, Saisan. Let’s not make a habit of that, hmm?”

The steward bowed. “No, my lady.”

As the servant withdrew, Thomas said, “Fond as I am of Aviler, I have some things to attend to.”

“Thomas?” she said quietly.

“Yes?” He stopped halfway to the door.

“You’re the only man I know who doesn’t hate, dislike, or fear me, and it is a blessed relief simply to speak to you; did you know that?”

Because the High Minister was already coming through the door behind him, Thomas swept off his hat in his best formal court bow and said, “My lady, it is my very great pleasure.”

*

On his way back to the Guard House, Thomas took the immense circular stairwell that led up from what had been the main hall of the Old Palace two centuries earlier and now linked the wing that held the Grand Gallery with the older defensive bastions. The gray age-old stone of the banisters and the central supporting column were carved into flowing ribbons and bands that ended in the heads of gryphons, lions, and unrecognizable animals from the artisan’s imagination. The lamplit twilight of the stairwell was cool, and echoed faintly with the humming activity of the rest of the palace.

Thomas wondered what Kade Carrion the fay sorceress was doing now.

The first time Kade had used her power against the court had been on a Saints’ Day ten years ago. It was held on Midsummer Eve because combining the Church’s holy days with the Old Faith’s festivals made it easier for the priests to get a respectable turnout for the services, especially in the country where most of the population still considered themselves pagan. Outside, the city streets had been packed with costumed entertainers, traveling merchants, and celebrating crowds, while in the High Cathedral the bishop was saying the Saints’ Day Mass before the royal court. At the culmination of the service, pandemonium had erupted. Objects levitated and smashed into walls. Candlelamps, altar vessels, and stained glass windows shattered. It had been a display of raw uncontrolled sorcerous power.

Dr. Surete had been Court Sorcerer then, and he had immediately sensed the cause of the disturbance. It was Kade.

Galen Dubell, who had been at court working with Surete, admitted that for most of the past two years he had been secretly teaching Kade the rudiments of sorcery. This in itself was not much of a crime. But Kade was the illegitimate daughter of the king. She was older than Roland and courtlaw gave her a claim on the throne. She was also half fay, and elements at court and in the Ministry had been advising Ravenna that Kade was dangerous almost since the girl’s birth. The next day Ravenna had banished Dubell to Lodun and sent Kade out of the city to the Monelite Convent, perhaps knowing she would not long remain there. Many had wondered at the time why Ravenna had shown the daughter of her husband’s mistress that much mercy, when no one in Ile-Rien except the disgraced Galen Dubell would have objected to Kade’s execution. But they knew that Ravenna did everything for her own reasons, and asking for an explanation when none was offered was useless.

In the solar, Ravenna had unintentionally said “my children” and Thomas didn’t think she was including the two stillborn girls buried in the High Cathedral’s crypt. Ravenna had wanted Kade to be the canny beautiful daughter she had never had, and in some ways she still wanted that. But that was exactly what that brave, daft, strange-eyed sorceress would never be.

There was a clatter as Martin appeared on the landing above and called, “Captain?”

“What is it?” Martin had been sent with the other Queen’s guards to see that the palace was secure after the Arlequin’s disturbance. Thomas suspected the expression of relief on the young man’s face indicated that he was about to pass a thorny problem on to someone else.

“Trouble, Sir,” Martin said as Thomas reached him. The young guard led the way off the landing to a short pillared hall. “We just found him. It’s Dr. Braun.”

On one side of the hall an oaken door stood open. Thomas followed Martin into a small room furnished as a salon which had been used as a waiting room for foreign ambassadors when the Old Hall had been an audience chamber.

Braun lay crumpled on an eastern carpet whose rich color was distorted by his blood. He lay as if he had been sitting on the stool at the high writing desk when he had slumped to the side and fallen to the floor.

Two more Queen’s guards waited there, Castero and Baserat. Both were looking at the corpse as if trying to decide what to do with it. Thomas went past them and knelt beside the body. The carpet was soaked with blood and squished unpleasantly underfoot. Carefully he lifted the young sorcerer’s head and saw that his throat had been cut. The edges of the wound were straight, not ragged. It had been done smoothly, with a very sharp knife. The body was cold and beginning to stiffen. “Who found him?” he asked.

“I did,” Martin said. “We came past this room earlier on the first quick search and missed him. You can’t see the body from the door since the secretaire is in the way. When we were working our way back just now doing it thoroughly I walked all the way in and saw him.”

“He’s cold, so he must have been here before that, Sir,” Baserat added.

“Yes, and he must have been killed here,” Thomas agreed. The carpet was evidence enough of that. Braun had been leaving from the gallery, going back to the King’s Bastion, and must have stepped into the little room to speak to someone. Someone who had come up behind him at some point during the course of the conversation and skillfully slit his throat.

“What is this?”

Thomas looked up to see High Minister Aviler standing in the doorway, watching them suspiciously. It wasn’t surprising that the High Minister’s audience with Ravenna had been a short one; in her current mood it would have been succinct, to say the least. Thomas answered, “At first glance it appears to be a dead man.”

“I realize that.” Aviler stepped into the room, his long state robes brushing the floor, keeping a wary eye on the other guards. As he well might, Thomas thought, if this were really the murder in progress the man obviously half hoped it was. Martin and the others, who were probably still uncertain whether they had neglected their duty and didn’t appreciate Aviler’s presence as a witness to it, were no doubt helping this impression by their obvious attitudes of belligerence and guilt.

The High Minister came to the edge of the blood-soaked carpet and stopped, frowning, as it became apparent the death was some hours old. “Braun,” he said in surprise, recognizing the young sorcerer. “Who did it?”

“That’s a good question.” Why? is another good question, Thomas thought, though he could guess at least part of the answer. Poor bastard. He said it wasn’t important…