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

KADE FOUND HER warding stone along the passage into the Old Palace. It was cold and silent in the narrow little hall, and only the soft glow of a lamp they had appropriated from the Summer Residence held back the darkness. Thomas waited while Kade dug through the clay seal near the bottom of the wall to pull out the round water-smoothed stone.

He used his dagger to chip a piece off for her, and when he handed the stone back, she said, “That’s odd. It’s tingling, as if it’s still part of the warding spell.”

She was staring at the stone in perplexity, so he said, “Maybe it’s something to do with the wards over the Old Courts?”

“Maybe. It’s very odd.” But she replaced the stone in its niche and they moved on.

When they reached the Gallery Wing, the narrow passage opened into a small bare room with a curtained doorway in the far wall. Thomaspushed it open a slit, seeing that they had come out about where he had thought they should. On the right wall was the wide sweep of stairs leading back into the lesser galleries, which would eventually lead to the Grand Gallery with its terrace giving onto the park. To the left was the arched entrance to the Old Palace and the main hall. This area at least was empty, bare of any intrusion except a fall of blown snow across the parquet floor.

They hadn’t seen any fay, though twice in their trek across the palace, Kade had steered them around places where she seemed to sense some presence. Most of the creatures who could stand daylight were out hunting the streets. As for the others, and the main body of the Host, they might be hidden anywhere. It had been a cold trail marked by the dead, and the amount of damage was worse than Thomas had suspected. Now he waited until Kade put out the lamp, then he pushed the curtain aside and went cautiously to look into the entrance of the nearest gallery. At his side, Kade said, baffled, “What is this?”

Light fell through narrow windows high in the opposite wall to illuminate a formal gallery with a vaulted ceiling and delicately sculpted columns with blue and gold inlay. The floor was littered with refuse and debris, most of it looted from other portions of the palace. There were pallets made of tattered blankets, tapestry work pulled from walls, and the heavy damask of curtain material. Gold and silver plate, dented candleholders, and ornaments prized off statues formed glittering heaps. Thomas picked his way through it, thoughtful and wary of anything that might be lurking under one of those piles. Besides the loot, there were more prosaic items such as a scatter of gunflints, green glass shards from a shattered wine bottle, and more of the trash left by military camps. With the toe of his boot, he turned over an empty wooden powder flask and said, “It’s a troops’ billet.”

Kade’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Troops? Denzil’s troops?”

“Very likely. Bel Garde is a private estate, and he has the right to maintain a force to garrison it, even if it is within sight of the city.” But where are they now? Thomas wondered. Plain to see why he had to have them. You can’t take a throne without a private force whose loyalty you can trust, but why aren’t they here? Jewelry that must have been stolen from the bodies of the slain had been left casually about. He picked up a pearl clasp and saw it still held strands of long dark hair from where it had been torn from its owner’s head. He tossed it back onto the floor in disgust and looked around, entertaining the idea of torching the place. Broken furniture would provide plenty of kindling. But it would reveal their presence, and when the troopers returned they would only move to the next gallery.

He glanced back at Kade and saw she was staying on the edge of the encampment, looking around uneasily. “What is it?”

“There’s a great lot of iron in here.” She retreated to a marble bench along the wall and began to scrape the bottoms of her boots off on it.

Thomas knelt and brushed gloved fingers across the layer of dust and filth covering the warm butter color of the inlaid wood floor; he found small particles that glinted dully in the light. “Iron filings. They’re everywhere.” So these men did not quite trust their fay allies. He had wondered if they would find evidence of the human servants of the Host that had led the attack, but they wouldn’t be here in the presence of all this iron. They might have been only shock troops, to be expended in the battle. If the siege lasted much longer, the Host would certainly be able to replenish their supplies, when starvation began to drive more people out into the streets.

He dusted his hands off and went back to where Kade waited at the edge of the camp.

“If they stayed here last night—” She swiped at her boot one last time, brushing the last of the dust off. “Where are they now?”

“If we knew that, we’d be a damn sight better off.” Thomas considered a moment, weighing the danger against what else they might discover. “We have to go further in.”

She gave a half-shrug. “Very well. But I think it’s going to get worse.”

They followed a lesser-used path toward the center of the Gallery Wing, through a connected row of state dining rooms and smaller pillared halls, and it was there they found most of the dead. Many had died running, caught alone by some creature of the Host with the walls shaking from the explosion and lamps going out in the foul wind that had followed. There were small groups of Cisternan guards and sometimes servants and courtiers who must have tried to band together to escape. Worst of all, they came upon a small room with the remains of a smashed barricade across the door, where a group had held out for a time.

Hours, at least, Thomas thought, leaning against the remains of the doorframe and feeling a rage as cold as the ice outside. Judging by the condition of the room. He recognized some of the men, and one of the women. She was Lady Anne Fhaolain, one of Ravenna’s gentlewomen, and she clutched a fireplace poker in a delicate hand that had never held anything more dangerous than a sewing needle. He would have to tell Ravenna that Anne had died bravely, trying to swing a weapon. He would also have to convince himself that if he had been here the result would have been the same, only there would have been one more body in the cold little room.

He turned away to find Kade standing behind him. She was trembling in impotent fury. She said softly, “There’s nothing that can make up for this. Not if I hunt him all the way to Hell itself.”

Somehow he hadn’t expected that it would make her as angry as it did him. He said, “You take this all very personally.”

After a moment, Kade shook herself all over, like a cat coming out of the rain. “I take everything personally.”

There was more evidence of the presence of the fay. Not far from the sad little room, they found a silken web stretched across the width of an arched doorway. Kade examined it cautiously, then detached it from the doorframe. It drifted gently to the floor, all in one piece like a fine section of lacework. So far they hadn’t found any answers to their questions. The day was getting on and Thomas’s bad leg was aching from walking, and he knew they didn’t have much time