by Martha Wells
"We couldn’t really see it clearly." Nicholas described what had happened at the house, letting Madeline tell what she had seen after Crack had gotten him out. That the Sending was attuned to him he had no trouble believing. He had been expecting it since Madeline had brought up the possibility. That might even have been the purpose behind the trap at the manufactory. He had been the only one to touch the door; the Sending might have focused on that.
"It reacted to the bullets from your revolver?" Isham was asking Madeline.
"It drew back, yes. It’s what kept it off me long enough for the others to get the boards off the window." She frowned, twisting a length of her hair. "You think it could be something of the fay?"
"It could be. The most powerful Sendings are made from a natural or etherical force. For example, the Sending cast against the God-King was said to be made from a whirlwind that had formed on the plain below Karsat. I would think to use something of the fay would be even more complicated than that, not that I have the slightest idea how to go about it."
"This man is a necromancer," Nicholas said.
Isham hesitated, lost in thought. He said, "It occurs to me that there must be the remains of many dead fay buried beneath Vienne." The old man spread his hands. "I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than this. I am almost at the limit of my skill now."
"We need the help of a powerful sorcerer," Madeline said. She moved to stand in front of the hearth, the firelight casting highlights on her hair. "Who else can we go to?"
"It has to be a sorcerer we can trust," Nicholas added. "That’s not as easily come by. . . . It will have to be Wirhan Asilva." Asilva had been a loyal friend to Edouard and maintained the connection with Nicholas after the trial, but he knew nothing of Nicholas’s career as Donatien. He was also a very old man by now, but he was the only other living sorcerer whose abilities came anywhere close to being comparable with Arisilde’s, and who Nicholas knew well enough to take a chance on. "He still lives at Lodun. He might be able to help Arisilde as well, or at least direct us to someone who can."
Isham had followed the conversation with a worried frown, and now said urgently, "I don’t know much of this Sending, but I do know this. You will be in the most danger during the hours of the night. And if this is a remnant of some fay monster, cold iron will still be a protection. The iron in the buildings, the water pipes, the underground railways offers some safety. Leaving the city could be most dangerous."
Nicholas smiled. He wasn’t beaten yet. "Not if I leave the city on the train."
Nicholas followed the others down the hall, but as he passed Arisilde’s door, he found he had to take one last look. He stepped into the bedchamber.
The lamplight was flickering on the sorcerer’s wispy hair, his pale features. It was hard to believe this wasn’t death. Then Nicholas noticed the book lying on the patched velvet of the coverlet, not far from the sorcerer’s left hand.
It might have been instinct that made him return to the bed and pick up the book, or some latent magical talent, but it was more likely only that he knew Arisilde so well.
The volume was very old and not well-cared for, the cover mottled with damp and the pages brown. The embossed letters of the title had worn away to illegibility and Nicholas opened it at random.
He was looking at a woodcut and for a moment he thought it depicted a modern medical dissecting room. Then he held it closer to the lamp and saw it was the scene from Valent House: an indistinct room, a man tied to a table, with his gut opened and his entrails exposed. But in this scene the victim was still terribly alive and the Vivisectionist was still present: a strange figure, stooping and leering like a character in an old morality play, dressed in a doublet and a high-collared lace ruff, a fashion out of date for at least a century or two. The caption read "The Necromancer, Constant Macob, at work before his execution." The date given was a little less than two hundred years ago.
The page was stained, just as in his childhood memory. He turned to the frontispiece and there, in faded ink and childish scrawl, was written Nicholas Valiarde.
I’m looking for a book. . . .
How like Arisilde. He hadn’t found another copy. He had found the very one Nicholas had owned as a boy.
Nicholas closed the book and carefully tucked it into his coat pocket, looking down at Arisilde once more. No, you’re not dead yet, are you? Hold on, if you can. I’ll be back.
Vienne’s central train station was like a great cathedral of iron girders and glass. Even at this time of night it was comfortably busy, if not crowded. People in all sorts of dress from every part of Ile-Rien hurried back and forth across the vast central area. Nicholas heard the distinctive whistle and checked his pocket watch, then moved to one of the bay windows that overlooked the main platform. The Night Royal was rumbling in, a huge cloud of warm steam engulfing the track ahead of it. Grinding to a halt, it was a black monstrosity with bright-polished brass rails and only about twenty minutes late.
Madeline should be back any moment, Nicholas thought. He refused to allow himself to look at his pocket watch again. She was sending the wires that contained his instructions to the rest of the organization and he knew that right now she was safer alone than with him.
Before they had left the others, Crack had handed Nicholas his pistol and now it lay heavily in the pocket of his coat. The henchman had not been happy at being left behind, but Nicholas had refused to argue the point; he didn’t mean to get everyone he knew killed. Just Madeline? he asked himself wryly. She had been grimly insistent about accompanying him.
He moved away from the window and strolled back to the center of the main area. Sleepy families were huddled on the benches against the wall, waiting for trains or for someone to meet them. There was a lounge for first class passengers on the gallery level and every so often, past the mingled voices and the dull roar of the trains he could hear the music from the string quartet that entertained there. Nicholas preferred the anonymity of the main waiting area, especially when something was trying to kill him.
His instructions had amounted to telling everyone to go to ground for the next few days. Reynard would watch Doctor Octave, but from a distance, and Cusard would do everything necessary to put off the plans for entering Count Montesq’s Great House. Nicholas had sent a wire to Coldcourt, to warn Sarasate, and he only hoped Isham was right and that the Sending would concentrate on him and leave everyone else alone.
A delegation of lower-level Parscian nobility were disembarking from the Night Royal, their servants shouting, gesturing and requiring the assistance of almost every porter on duty for the large number of heavy trunks. That would slow things down a little more. The Night Royal’s next stop was Lodun and Nicholas intended to be on it.
It would be better for Madeline if she didn’t return in time, he thought wryly. The Sending had only turned on her when he was out of its reach, though he had to admit, Lodun was probably the safest place for both of them. But if he left without her, she would only take the next train and be considerably put out with him when she arrived.
He saw a figure coming up the concourse then and recognized her walk. No, it isn’t her walk, he realized a moment later. Madeline was walking as if she had a heavy dueling rapier slung at her hip; it was the way the character Robisais walked, from the play Robisais and Athen. It was one of Madeline’s first major roles, that of a young girl who disguised herself as a soldier to cross the border and rescue her lover from a Bisran slave camp, during the Great Bisran War. He wasn’t surprised he recognized the walk; he must’ve seen the damn play twenty times and Madeline had been the only worthwhile aspect of it. She must be very tired, to slip from her character of Young Man to Robisais. Of course, she could probably do Robisais in her sleep.
She climbed the steps and nodded to him briskly. She had borrowed a hat from Reynard and gathered her hair back up under the wig, so there was nothing to reveal her disguise. "Everyone is warned, now. I suppose that’s the best we can do," she said. S
he glanced around the waiting area. "Nothing’s happened here?"
"No," Nicholas said. At the last moment he remembered to link arms with her as he would with a man and not take her arm as he would a woman’s. "We’ll have a little time. Not much, but a little. Our sorcerous opponent shouldn’t have drawn so much attention to himself. The Crown will take notice of this. After tonight, he’ll have the court sorcerers, the Queen’s Guard, and everyone else after him."
"And they will all be looking for us, too, if we’re not careful," she pointed out.
"They can’t trace ownership of that house, I’ve made sure of that. The driver’s body can’t be identified. We’re safe enough." Nicholas felt the book in his pocket thump his leg as they strolled toward the platform and thought, Safety is always relative, of course.
Madeline’s brows lifted skeptically but she made no comment.
The flurry of porters around the Night Royal had calmed, indicating the train was almost ready, and in another moment the bell above the booking area rang and the conductors began to call for boarding.
They took their place with the other passengers gathering in the damp cold air on the platform and through persistence and not being encumbered by baggage they soon managed to successfully board the train.
Nicholas found them an empty compartment and drew the curtain over the etched glass of the inner door to discourage company. Sinking down into the comfortably padded upholstery, the gaslit warmth, the familiar smell of combined dust, cigar smoke, coffee, and worn fabric, he realized he was exhausted as well.
Settling next to him, Madeline said, "I wonder if the dining car still has those cream tarts."
Nicholas glanced at her fondly. And this woman had the audacity to suggest that he was distanced from reality. He dug the book out of the pocket of his greatcoat and handed it to her. "Don’t let this ruin your enjoyment of the trip."
He had left the page with the woodcut of Constant Macob folded down and she stared at it, then turned to the accompanying text.
Nicholas wiped the fogged window to look out at the gradually clearing chaos on the platform. He had read the section earlier, as he had waited for Madeline in the station. It briefly, and probably inaccurately, described Constant Macob’s history as the sorcerer whose experiments with necromancy had turned it from a despised and barely tolerated branch of sorcery to a capital offense. A capital offense, if you live until the trial, Nicholas thought. In the past several sorcerers, most of them probably innocent, had been hung in the street by mobs before the accusations could even be investigated.
Madeline closed the book and laid it back in his lap. "Doctor Octave’s sorcerer friend is imitating this Constant Macob."
"Yes, or he believes he is Constant Macob. He is practicing the worst sort of necromancy, the spells that require pain or a human death to work, as Macob did. He is taking his victims from among the poorest class, apparently in the belief that the disappearances won’t be noticed, as Macob did. And, like Macob, he can’t tell the difference between beggars and the poor working class and occasionally takes a perfectly respectable dressmaker’s assistant or some laborer’s children and gets himself into the penny sheets." Nicholas turned away from the window. "Inspector Ronsarde must be very close to finding him."
"Yes, he was watching Doctor Octave at Gabrill House and he sent Doctor Halle to look at that drowned boy in the Morgue. He studies historical crimes, doesn’t he? He must have looked at all the disappearances reported to the Prefecture, and recognized Macob’s methods. That means—"
"He’s only a step or two away from us. When he takes Octave—and if he realizes Octave is involved with the creature that destroyed the house in Lethe Square, he might very well take him tonight—Octave will tell them everything he knows about us."
"And we can’t dispose of Octave while he has this pet necromancer defending him." Madeline tapped impatient fingers on the seat.
"After what we saw tonight, I know we can’t take the chance. Not now. Not without help. This sorcerer could be using Octave and Edouard’s device to contact Macob, or at least he thinks he’s contacting Macob. But it would explain where all their knowledge of necromancy is coming from." He shook his head. "If I can get this Sending disposed of. . . ."
Madeline sat back in the seat, staring in a preoccupied way at nothing. Whistles and bells sounded outside on the platform and the compartment shook as the engine built up steam. "Why didn’t you tell Reynard about this?"
"Because if the Sending follows us to Lodun and kills us, I didn’t want him trying to avenge us."
"Then there won’t be anyone to stop them," Madeline protested, brushing aside the idea of her own death.
"Yes, there will be. Ronsarde and Halle will stop them."
"For deadly enemies, you have a great deal of faith in Ronsarde and Halle."
"There are deadly enemies, and there are deadly enemies," Nicholas said. "Now let’s go and see if the dining car still has cream tarts."
Lodun was a lovely town. Houses and cottages painted white, or ocher and blue, or a warm honey-color lined the ancient stone streets. Most had vines creeping up their walls and gardens or large courts with old cowbarns and dovecotes, relics of the time when they were farmsteads in open country, before the town had expanded to embrace them. Nicholas remembered it as even more beautiful in the spring, when the flowers in the window boxes and the wisteria were in bloom.
Asilva lived close to the rambling walls of the university, almost in the shadow of its heavy stone towers. The house was on a narrow side street, flanked by similar dwellings, each with a small stable on the ground floor. The entrance to the living area was reached by a short flight of steps leading up to an open veranda on the second floor. Asilva’s veranda was cloaked by vines and crowded with potted plants, some still covered for protection from the last of the cold weather.
Nicholas hadn’t liked the implication of the tightly shuttered windows and when he had climbed to the veranda, his knocking at the blue-painted door had brought no response. A neighbor had appeared on the recessed balcony of the next house, to explain that Asilva had left over a week ago and that they didn’t expect the old man back for at least a month.
Cursing under his breath, Nicholas went back down to street level and through the little stone barn beneath the house and into the garden. He knew that as Asilva had grown older, the sorcerer had come to find Lodun more and more confining and had taken to travelling for several weeks at a time throughout the year. I expected my luck to hold, Nicholas thought, disgusted at his own presumption more than anything else.
Madeline was standing on a stone-flagged path, almost hip deep in winter-brown grasses, contemplating an assault on the back of the house.
"He’s gone for an indeterminate period," Nicholas reported. It was early morning and the air was mild; it would be warm later. He pushed his hat back, looking over the garden. "We can’t stay here long." With a sorcerer living on practically every street there was breathing space, though not much. And if the Sending came after him here and was destroyed by any of the number of sorcerers whose attention it would attract, the questions raised would be impossible to answer.
Madeline rubbed her eyes wearily. They had had coffee and pastries in the dining car on the train and very little sleep. The overgrown garden around them was mostly herbs, dry and bushy from the end of winter. Herb gardens were everywhere in Lodun, grown not only for the benefit of cooking pots but for their magical uses and for the dispensaries at the medical college. Nicholas was conscious of movement in the undergrowth, quicksilver sparkles of light. Asilva had always allowed flower fay to inhabit his garden, another example of his eccentricity. The colorful little creatures, as harmless as they were brainless, were drawn by the warmth of human magic, apparently heedless of the fact that the owner of this garden could destroy them with a gesture.
"There’s no one else, I suppose," Madeline said thoughtfully. "Asilva was the last of Edouard’s old colleagues."
; "Yes." Nicholas looked toward the towers of the university. Seeking help there meant explanations, discovery. "I haven’t been here in years. He’s the only one who might have helped us and kept quiet about it." Nicholas realized he was saying that he didn’t know what to do next, an admission that would normally have to be forced out of him under torture, yet he could say it to her without a sensation of panic; it was odd.
A gossamer puff of blue-violet, with a tiny emaciated mock-human figure in its center, settled on Madeline’s shoulder. He flicked it off and it tumbled in the air with an annoyed squeak.
"I might know of someone." Madeline became very interested in the dead weeds at her feet.
"Might know? Who?"
"An old . . . friend."
Nicholas gritted his teeth. Madeline’s fellow artists in the theater mostly behaved as witlessly as the flower fay gamboling in the weeds around them now. Occasionally, when she was unsure of herself, Madeline imitated their behavior, apparently because it took up little of her attention, allowing her to devote her resources to finding a way out of whatever dilemma she was in. It drove Nicholas insane when she did it to him. He said, "Take your time. I do have all the time in the world, you know."
The look she gave him was dark, almost tormented. "I should let the dead past lay buried. It’s a mistake to trouble still waters but—"
"That’s from the second act of Arantha," he snapped, "and if you’re going to behave in this nonsensical way and expect me not to notice you could at least do me the courtesy of not employing the dialogue from your favorite play."
"Oh, all right." Madeline cast her arms up in capitulation. "Her name is Madele, she lives a few miles out of town, and if anyone can help us, she can."
"You’re certain?"
