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

mandolin and viola that rose up from the rowdy crowd on the tavern’s main floor below. The wealthier patrons were drinking in the small private rooms off the second-floor gallery, the shutters propped open so the music could reach them clearly.

“Well, you’ve no troupe to recommend you,” Baraselli said, leaning back. He didn’t want to pay her as much as she might ask. His last Columbine had run off to be married, leaving without a backward glance yesterday morning.

Baraselli had come to Ile-Rien from conquered Adera years ago when all forms of the Aderassi theater were despised and confined to back alleys and peasant festivals. Now the war with Bisra was over and Ile-Rien’s capital was more cosmopolitan and free with its money. Vienne was a jewel of a city in a rich setting, standing on temperate plains roughly in the center of the country, with rolling hills and olive groves on the warmer coast to the southwest, rich forested midlands, and black-soiled farmland in the terraced valleys of the high country to the north. Baraselli had liked it, and now that Commedia and other foreign theatricals were popular he liked it a great deal more.

The woman took the mask off and tossed it onto the table. Her hair was dirty blond and her narrow face with its long nose and direct eyes was plain, too plain to ever play the unmasked heroines. Her faded red dress was old and well-worn, better than a country woman’s but no bawd’s false finery either. Whatever the rumormongers thought, whores made terrible actresses.

She looked toward him with a grin. Smoke from the candles and clay pipes below reached up to touch the tavern’s high beamed ceiling and spread out like a cloud behind her. It was an interesting theatrical effect, but there was something about the image that Baraselli found faintly disquieting. She said, “I’m not here to make my fortune. I’ll take what you paid the last one.”

She had good teeth, too. “All right, you’re our Columbine. But on sufferance, mind. We’ve got an important engagement, a very important engagement. It happens when you attract the crowds and praise we have. If you don’t give a fine performance, you’re out. If you do, well, it’s one silver per fortnight and a fair share of whatever they throw onto the stage.”

“That’s well, I agree.”

“Anton! Look out the window.” Garin, still wearing the gray beard from his Pantalone costume, came pounding up the stairs.

“What? I’m busy.”

Garin pushed past him and threw open the shutters of the window behind Baraselli’s table.

“Damn it, you’ll let the night air and the bogles in, you fool.” Baraselli stood abruptly, jarring the table and slopping wine onto the stained floor.

“But look at this.” Garin pointed. The Mummer’s Mask stood in a huddle of taverns and old houses on the side of a low hill commanding a good view of the River Quarter. Lying before them were the narrow overhung streets of the older and poorer area, which eventually led into the vast plazas and pillared promenades surrounded by the garden courts of the wealthy. Farther to the west and standing high above the slate and wooden roofs were the domes of churches, the fantastic and fanciful statues ornamenting the gables of the fortified Great Houses, the spires of the stone-filigree palaces on the artificial islands on the river’s upper reaches, all transformed into anonymous shapes of alternating black and silver as clouds drifted past the moon. But now, against the stark shadowy forms of the crowded structures of the River Quarter, they could see the bright glow of fire, a harsh splash of color in the darkness.

“Down near Cross Street, I think,” Garin said.

More of the troupe had drifted up the stairs in his wake, curious. “Lord save it doesn’t spread,” one of them whispered.

“Another bad omen,” Baraselli muttered. One of the clowns had died of fever last month. Clowns were traditionally good luck in Adera, if not in Ile-Rien, and having one of them die unexpectedly had shaken the other performers. Gods and spirits, no more omens before this of all performances, Baraselli prayed.

“Maybe it’s a good omen,” the new Columbine said, selecting an apple out of the bowl on the table and watching the worried actors with oblique amusement. “Some people think fire is.”

Dark smoke streamed into the night sky.

*

They rode through St. Anne’s Gate and into the cobbled court between the high walls of the Mews and the Cisternan Guard Barracks. The facades of the two buildings were almost identical, though time and weather had scarred the dressed stone in different ways. Each was entered by three great archways that faced one another across the length of the court. Now torches threw reflections up onto the mist-slick stone as grooms and stablehands hurried to take the horses or curious Cisternans wandered out to see what the excitement was.

Thomas dismounted and handed the reins to one of the grooms. He took off a glove to rub the horse’s nape, then let the man lead her away. This was Cisternan Guard territory, but it was also the closest entrance to the palace, and he wanted Galen Dubell within a warded structure before Grandier made another attempt on the old sorcerer.

The palace wards repelled fay, sendings, and any other form of magical attack. They were fitted together like the pieces of a puzzlebox, or a stained glass window, and drifted constantly, moving past each other, folding over each other, wandering at will over their domain. They would prevent the sorcerous abduction that Grandier had used to snatch Galen Dubell from his home in Lodun, and the palace’s other defenses were more than adequate to hold off hired swords.

As Thomas crossed the court toward the two sorcerers, the Cisternan Commander Vivan joined him. The Cisternans were the regular guard for the palace, their ranks drawn from the families of the wealthy merchant classes or the gentlemen landowners. Vivan had held the post of Commander for the past five years, and even though the Cisternans were ultimately under the King’s authority, Vivan had no particular political ax to grind, and Thomas found him easy to deal with. The Commander said, “A midnight expedition? How exciting.”

“I would have preferred to stay here and help you guard the stables, but duty called,” Thomas told him.

Vivan snorted. The old king Fulstan had made the Cisternans his bodyguard out of dislike for the Albonate Knights, who had held the post traditionally. When Fulstan’s son Roland had taken the throne, his mistrust of anything belonging to his father had led him to demote the Cisternans and return to the Albons. Going from the King’s Own to the King’s Old had been a great loss of prestige for them and the Queen’s Own had never let them forget it. Another sore point was that their ceremonial tabards were dark green trimmed with gold, making them good targets and appropriate decor during midwinter festivals.

Gideon reined in near them and dismounted, asking, “Captain, what orders?”

“Send these gentlemen back to the Guard House.” As the lieutenant came closer and Thomas could lower his voice, he added, “Go to Lucas. Tell him what happened and then wait to see if the Dowager Queen has questions for you. I’ll see him after this meeting.” He wanted to double his share of the guard placements and put a watch on Dubell.

“Yes, Captain.” Gideon nodded.

Vivan was eyeing the old sorcerer with grudging curiosity as Galen Dubell and Braun dismounted. He asked, “What were you doing, kidnapping scholars out of the Philosopher’s Cross?”

“Exactly,” Thomas said as he went to join the sorcerers. “I could never keep anything from you.”

Thomas led Dubell out of the wet chill of the courtyard and through the inner gate at its far end, passing under the spikes of an old portcullis. Dr. Braun trailed behind them. In the wall beyond, a heavy ironbound door guarded by two alert Cisternans led into one of the corridors that ran inside the protective inner siege walls. The corridor was raw stone, lit by oil lamps and undecorated except for scribbled writings by present and long-dead occupants. Dubell shook his head. “I lived here for many years and there are still parts of this place I have never seen. I am quite lost, Captain.”

“We’re in the siege wall opposite the south curtain wall. The Summer Residence and the Adamantine Way are behind us at the opposite end of the corridor, and we’re going toward the King’s Bastion.” This siege wall divided the newer section of the palace with its open garden courts, domed Summer Residence, and the terraces and windowed facades of the Gallery Wing from the jumbled collection of ancient blocky bastions, towers, and walls on the west side.

A steep stairway led up into the King’s Bastion, which loomed above the Old Courts and the Mews. As they climbed, the surroundings began to show rapid signs of improvement, the rough stone softened by hangings and overlaid by carved paneling. The ancient cracked tiles had been recently scrubbed and polished, reflecting the light from hall lanterns of stamped metal and glass as soft pools of gold. They passed Cisternan guards posted on each landing, and began to hear the bastion’s hum of activity, never still at any time of night. At the fourth level, Thomas led them out of the older stairwell and across the landing to the carved-oak Queen’s Staircase. They were in the heart of the bastion now, and the men posted here were Queen’s Guards.

Dubell paused on the landing, looking up at the wide staircase with its dark wood carved into flowing bands and banisters set with fragments of mirror glass. Then he shook his head as if at his own folly and said, “It has been a long time.”

The old sorcerer had been led this way the day of his exile ten years ago, to see the Dowager Queen and to hear his sentence, which so easily could have been death. Thomas acknowledged the guards’ salute, and thought it fortunate all around that Ravenna had been lenient with Galen Dubell.

The top of the staircase opened into a vestibule, the first room in the Dowager Queen’s State Apartments. The King’s State Apartments were on the opposite side of the bastion, and the young Queen Falaise lived in another suite on the floor just below. They passed the young pages waiting in the vestibule and went in to the Guard Chamber, a long richly paneled room lit by several glass drop chandeliers. Gideon was already there and several Queen’s guards surrounded him, demanding to know how the night’s work had gone. They called greetings as Thomas entered, and he went forward to ask Gideon, “Did you see Lucas?”

“Yes, and he spoke to Ravenna. But the Bisran ambassador came in and demanded to see her. They’re in the Privy Council Chamber now.”

“Damn. What does he want at this time of night?”

“Who knows?” Gideon shrugged. The ambassador was a diplomat, not a soldier, and the young lieutenant didn’t think him a matter of much importance.

Thomas considered a moment. Something to do with Grandier? If it was, then there went all hope of keeping the River Quarter incident quiet.

“Queen Falaise has been asking for me.” Gideon looked uncomfortable. “Will you need me anymore tonight?”

Thomas eyed him a moment, but said, “No, you can go on.”

As Gideon left, Thomas saw Dubell was taking his leave of Dr. Braun, who had apparently decided not to brave an interview with the Dowager Queen. The other guards were watching the sorcerer curiously, which at least meant that news of their adventure hadn’t flown too far ahead of them. There were also two young Albonate squires waiting self-consciously in the corner. So Renier is