by Martha Wells
"That’s the difference between us, Ari. You wanted to do it; I would have done it." But the words disturbed him. Arisilde had said some odd things under the influence of opium but hearing him talk this way was almost shocking. Nicholas had never known why his friend had taken this path into ruin and despair. God knew he had seen it happen often enough before; in the teeming streets where he had spent his childhood, men and women fell into this same trap every day.
Arisilde rubbed his face until the skin seemed like to break and Nicholas caught his wrists and pulled his hands away, afraid that he was going to blind himself. The sorcerer peered up at him urgently. "You knew I thought Edouard was guilty. You knew because I told you and we talked about it, and then later after the execution I came to you and I said you had been right and I had been wrong, remember? And it was proved later, of course, Ronsarde proved it later, remember?"
"Of course I do. That was when. . . ." I decided not to kill Ronsarde. Nicholas couldn’t finish the thought aloud, not even to Ari who wouldn’t recall this conversation by morning anyway.
"But I didn’t tell you how I knew." Arisilde let the words trail off. Nicholas thought that was all he meant to say and tried to urge him to stand, but the sorcerer shook his head. His voice perceptibly stronger, he said, "I went to Ilamires Rohan. He was Master of Lodun, then, remember?"
"Of course I remember, Ari, he tried to defend Edouard."
Arisilde stood up suddenly, dragging Nicholas with him. Ari was so slender, seeming so weak and languid most of the time, Nicholas had forgotten how strong he was. Ari’s hands were buried in the front of his shirt, almost lifting him off his feet, and Nicholas didn’t think he could free himself without hurting him. The sorcerer said, softly, terribly, "He didn’t defend him well enough."
"What?"
"I went to see him in his study at Lodun. Oh, that beautiful room. I was afraid that my judgement was faulty because I had let Edouard fool me, and he said my judgement was not impaired. He said he knew Edouard was innocent. But he had let the trial go on, because a man of Edouard’s knowledge was too dangerous to live."
"No." Nicholas felt oddly hollow. One more betrayal after all the others of that terrible time, what did it really matter? But as the words sank in, and Nicholas remembered the old man, Master of Lodun, sitting with them at the trial as if in sympathy and support, he was astonished to discover that it did still matter. It mattered a great deal.
Arisilde was saying, "Yes, the simple truth, after all the lies. I could have killed him."
"You should have told me," Nicholas whispered. "I would have."
"I know. That’s why I didn’t." Arisilde smiled, and Nicholas saw the other truth. Ari said, "But don’t think he escaped unpunished. He loved me like a son, you know. So I destroyed something he loved."
Nicholas pulled away and Arisilde released him. The sorcerer was still wearing that mad, gentle smile. Nicholas walked back toward the hearth, not quite aware of what he was doing. The fire was nothing but glowing coals, winking out as he watched. Behind him, Arisilde said, "And Rohan became such a bitter old man, who lost his greatest student, his hand-picked successor. . . ." His voice broke. "That wasn’t what I was going to tell you . . . I really have to remember that, it was very important."
Nicholas turned back as Arisilde slumped to the floor again, but the sorcerer’s madness seemed to have died with the fire. He let Nicholas guide him to the big tumbled bed in one of the little rooms off the hall. The most powerful sorcerer in the history of Lodun lay there quietly, saying nothing more, until the servant Isham returned and Nicholas left him to his care.
It was still dark when Nicholas had the hire cab let him off at the top of Coldcourt’s drive. He could see every window in the sprawling stone house was lit and there were a couple of servants with lamps patrolling the roof between the towers. It didn’t look like there was trouble now; the wide sweep of lawn was an empty landscape of shadows, broken only by the one lone towering oak and the drive. He started toward the house, almost lame from exhaustion, the gravel crunching under his boots. When he entered the circle of light from the lamps hung on either side of the front entrance, the doors swung open and Madeline hurried down the steps to meet him.
Her embrace, in his current state, almost knocked him off his feet. She said, "I was getting worried. The others thought you would be right behind them."
"It. . . took longer with Ari than I thought," he told her. "What’s happened here?"
They entered the welcome warmth of the entrance hall and Madeline paused to secure the doors, saying, "There was something, I think it was the same sort of creature that you saw under Mondollot House, up on the roof. It was peering into Edouard’s old attic. Nothing seemed disturbed and no one was hurt, so perhaps it was only scouting us out. I don’t know what it wanted."
"I don’t know anything anymore." Nicholas laughed bitterly. "I suppose Reynard told you what we found."
"Yes." Madeline’s face was drawn and harsh in the lamplight as she turned back toward him. "Could Arisilde tell you anything of use?"
Nicholas stopped at the foot of the stairs to look at her. Sometimes Madeline surprised even him. Any other woman would have had the decency to be shocked out of her wits, or to be made ill, or to invoke heavenly wrath on the perpetrators. He didn’t know whether to attribute it to her general bloody-mindedness or the self-absorption and self-possession that usually characterized potentially brilliant actors. He ran his hands through his hair, trying to get his thoughts together. "I don’t think Ari’s going to be of much help."
"The opium?"
"I think it’s finally got the better of him. He was telling me things. . . ." Nicholas shook his head. "I don’t know. Either that or he’s gone mad. Somehow Octave has had access to Edouard’s work. That’s how he’s managing these spirit circles. He has a sphere, like the ones Edouard made with Ari and Asilva. Where that butchery in Valent House comes into it, I don’t know. . . ."
Madeline linked arms with him and towed him up the stairs. "You’re exhausted. Sleep until dawn, and then make plans."
"Damned optimist."
"Damned realist," she corrected with a weary smile.
Nicholas left Madeline to make the arrangements for a second, more thorough search of Valent House while he tried to sleep for what was left of the night. What he actually did was retire to his study on the second floor to lay out the notebooks and the scraps of paper their first search had brought to light.
The notebooks proved to be what he had originally thought, a student’s copying from a probably forbidden text on necromancy. Reading through them, he couldn’t see any evidence of the copyist inserting opinion. He hasn’t scribbled his name, present direction, and future plans for destroying the world in the margin either, Nicholas thought sourly. It’s always helpful when they do that. It might be illuminating to ascertain which text the notes had come from. Arisilde, of course, would probably recognize it at a glance. If Arisilde was sane and in any state vaguely approaching sobriety. But Arisilde had been out of touch with Lodun for years and would no longer know who kept such books in their private libraries, so perhaps there was not much point in it anyway. But to find out whose student Octave was, and when. . . . Perhaps he would ask Arisilde anyway.
The scraps of paper from the desk were more intriguing, though not much more helpful. The fragments of words were indecipherable, though Nicholas wanted to say that he recognized something about the handwriting. It wasn’t Edouard’s, which would have been too much to hope for. Though perhaps it didn’t matter either. He knew Octave had somehow re-created Edouard’s work. Perhaps the method was immaterial. Yes, keep telling yourself that.
Speaking of method. . . . Nicholas took down a heavy volume from the bookcase above the desk. It contained the memoirs of a very methodical man, the bureaucrat who had been responsible for cutting the new streets and plazas through the decaying slums of Vienne. It wasn’t so much a memoir as it was a chronicle of work, describin
g in exacting detail the alterations that had been wrought on the ancient city. Nicholas had always found it extremely helpful since few reliable maps had ever been made of Vienne.
He flipped through the worn pages, looking for the section on Ducal Court Street. And here it is. . . . Tearing down tenements, the old theater, what was left of the Bisran ambassador’s home after the last time they burned it down. . . Ah. "I informed the Duke it would not be necessary to sacrifice Mondollot House"— I’m sure he was pleased— "but that its neighbor Ventarin House would have to be taken down." The bureaucrat, a man not entirely without finer feelings, had regretted this, finding that Ventarin House was more pleasing to the eye and would have made a better ornament to his street than Mondollot. Ventarin, however, was in the wrong place and presently occupied only by servant caretakers, the family having moved to a country estate to finish dwindling into obscurity in peace. They had not opposed the destruction. "They had no need of the old place, having not indulged in public life for many generations. . . One of their most illustrious ancestors was Gabard Alls Ventarin, a notable of some two centuries past. . . who held the position of Court Sorcerer under King Rogere."
Nicholas closed the book and sat for a while, staring at nothing, tapping one finger on the polished wood of the desk. So the chamber that Octave’s ghoul had broken into had once been part of the cellars under the home of a former court sorcerer. Had the old Duke of Mondollot known what was there? Had he perhaps opened that door, seen what it guarded, and ordered it sealed up again? That was undoubtedly what Octave had wanted to know when he had tried to convince the Duchess to let him contact the late Duke. Something was there, and Octave’s ghouls took it away. But it wasn’t right. Either it wasn’t what he wanted, or something was missing from it. One of the best uses for necromancy was the discerning of secret things, whether past or present. There were other ways for sorcerers to divine the hidden, but none so easy as necromancy provided. It also taught methods of creating illusions that were solid to the touch, ways of affecting the minds and wills of people, animals, even spirits.
In the end Nicholas swept all the fragments together with the notebooks and carefully locked them away in one of the concealed drawers of his desk, and then trudged wearily to a bath and bed.
Nicholas managed to rest for only an hour, feeling the sun rise behind the heavy drapes over the window and listening to the mantel clock tick almost but not quite in time to his heartbeat. Madeline was sleeping deeply, her time in the crowded accommodations used by chorus performers having inured her to any amount of restless twitching on Nicholas’s part. He kept having to fight the impulse to wake her, either to make love or to talk or anything to keep his mind off Octave’s theft of Edouard’s work. Finally he got out of bed, half furious and half depressed, dressed and went down to the library.
It was a long room at the back of the house, the floor to ceiling shelves overflowing with books. Books piled on the warm upholstered armchairs and the rich Parscian carpet, books stuffed into the two boulle cabinets and the satinwood escritoire. I’m going to need a bigger house, Nicholas thought, looking at it. His gaze stopped at the tiny framed miniature on the desk. It was the only remaining portrait of his mother, painted to be placed inside a gold locket which had been sold when she had brought him to Vienne. His father had commissioned the piece not long after the wedding, when there had still been money for such things, though no doubt his family had made a great deal of trouble over the expense. They had not begun to actively plot against her then, but they would have argued over any money being spent on something not directly related to their own comfort. It was not a good likeness of her anyway, at least not according to Nicholas’s memory. The portrait showed only a young, fine-featured woman with dark curling hair, and the artist had captured no nuance of expression or gesture that would have given the little image life. Of course, his father had probably paid three times what the painting had been worth and never knew he was being cheated. Nicholas looked away, banishing the old memories.
He meant to make a thorough search of the historical texts, both the dry scholarly and the lurid popular, for that trace of memory that had bothered him so at Valent House. The more he thought about it, or tried not to think about it, the more vivid that shadow picture became. It was a woodcut, he thought. And the page was stained. That didn’t help. He didn’t have any of his old books from childhood. All those had gone when his mother died, along with most of their possessions. The books in this room had been Edouard’s or had been bought since Nicholas had come here years ago. But the history section took up the entire west wall of the room and from his earlier delvings into it he had high hopes.
He searched, thoroughly engrossed, barely noticing when Sarasate brought in a tray with coffee and rolls. Between Cadarsa’s History of Ile-Rien in Eight Volumes and an ancient copy of Sorceries of Lodun, he stumbled on The Pirates of Chaire, a children’s storybook with illustrations. "What in God’s name is this doing here. . . ." Nicholas muttered, flipping the much battered book open to the flyleaf, There was writing there and he stared at it a moment, taken aback.
It was in Edouard’s hand and it read Don’t you dare get rid of this book.
Nicholas smiled. Edouard Viller had known him better than anyone.
The only reason Nicholas was alive now was that some forgotten benefactor had told Edouard that the Prefecture were always picking up stray children in Riverside. When Edouard had decided he needed a son to fill the lonely days after his wife died, he had gone down to the cells at Almsgate to look for one.
Nicholas barely remembered his own father and the moldering, disgraced, debt-ridden ancestral estate where he had spent the first few years of his life. His mother had brought him to Vienne when he was six and taken back her maiden name of Valiarde, preferring the slums of the great city to coexistence with her husband’s relations. She had made her living by piecework laundry and sewing and if she had ever had to supplement her income by the form of employment more common to destitute women in Vienne, she had never allowed him to find out about it. When he was ten she had died, of some congestive lung ailment that every year carried off hundreds of the poor who crowded into the broken-down buildings in Riverside and the other slums. Nicholas had already dabbled in thieving. After her death he had taken it up as a profession.
He had been lucky enough to encounter Cusard, and before that worthy’s second stint in prison, Nicholas had learned from him the pickpocket’s and cracksman’s skills that would give him an edge over the other street boys. By twelve he had been leader of a local gang and had made them all wealthy and wildly successful by ambitious burglaries and by dealing with fences rather than rag and bone shops. This success brought the attention of the Prefecture. They had set a trap for him with the help of a disgruntled rival and Nicholas had ended his first illegal career in the filth of the Almsgate cells, beaten within an inch of his life and waiting to be hauled off to the real hell of the city prison.
He had been cursing the guards in fluent Aderassi, which his mother had taught him. There had been a fashion at the time for young gentlemen to learn the language so they could go to the court of Adera to complete their social education and she had never forgotten that his father’s family had been noble, despite their poverty and well-deserved obscurity. Nicholas had discovered that he could call people the most terrible things in it and they would not understand him.
Edouard had come to the barred door and called, in the same language, "You have a very foul mouth. Can you read?"
"Yes," Nicholas had replied, annoyed.
"In what language, Aderassi or Rienish?"
"Both."
"Perfect," Edouard had said to the jailer. "I wouldn’t want one I had to start from the beginning, you know. I’ll take him."
And that had been that. Nicholas replaced the storybook on the shelf.
This time they entered Valent House through the front door. Nicholas was prepared to prove he was an estate agent for a firm on
the other side of the river and that Cusard, Crack and Lamane were builders, here to give advice on possible renovations.
For all these elaborate preparations, the street was deserted and no one demanded to know their business, though the builders’ wagon standing outside was probably explanation enough for the curious.
Earlier that morning, when the sun was almost high enough to officially qualify as dawn, Nicholas had gone into the guest bedroom to waken Reynard. Waiting impatiently until the cursing stopped, Nicholas had asked him to make the rounds of the cafes and clubs today to find out when Octave’s next appointment for a spirit circle was, and to delicately ascertain if the good doctor had asked any of his other summoned spirits about lost family wealth. To Nicholas’s unexpressed relief, Madeline had decided she could be of more help finding out about Madame Everset’s late brother, and what had been aboard his ill-fated ship that Octave had been so interested in, than as one more searcher in Valent House.
Standing now in the dust and ruin of the house’s foyer, Nicholas was sure he was right about Octave’s original purpose in holding the circles. It only remained to discover how and why Octave had turned from thievery to necromancy.
Cusard had also brought Lyon Althise, who had trained as a medical doctor but been asked to leave the College of Physicians because of a fondness for drink. He was well known in Vienne’s criminal underclass as being willing to use his medical skills for almost any purpose as long as he was well paid, but Nicholas doubted even he had ever seen anything like this. Althise and Nicholas made another examination of the bodies while the others searched the house under Crack’s direction.
