by Martha Wells
Then Nicholas saw movement behind it. Chips of stone were falling from the gables, striking the pavement below. It’s going to destroy the Courts, Nicholas thought, unable to see the purpose of it. The quicker-witted individuals in the crowd were streaming toward the street exits of the plaza, though some pockets of fighters still seemed oblivious to what was occurring. Then something far larger than a stone chip landed on the pavement at the base of the building; the solid sound of flesh striking stone was audible even at this distance. Then it scrambled awkwardly to its feet and waddled out of the mist. It was large, gray, bent over like one of the orange apes from the jungles in the farthest parts of Parscia, but vestigial wings sprouted from its back. For an instant, Nicholas thought he was seeing a goblin, like some illustration in a book come to life. Then he realized it was one of the stone gargoyles from the building’s gables, but it was stone no longer. In a heartbeat it was joined by two more, then a dozen, then another dozen.
It was too far across the plaza for them to reach the street exit, especially with Ronsarde as injured as he was. Nicholas looked around desperately, then focused on the prison wall behind them. The small door there was closed, but the guards had been running out that way only moments before. It might have been left unlocked. "Go that way." There was no other way to go. The prison had no other entrances on this side and the Prefecture was too far away to reach in time.
"It’s obviously some sort of sorcerous attack, animating the decorative stonework," Ronsarde said calmly, as Nicholas and Reynard half-carried him toward the door. "Who do you think it is directed toward?"
Reynard muttered, "I think I can guess." He glanced back over his shoulder. "They’re coming this way—quickly."
"I didn’t really want to know that." Nicholas motioned Crack ahead toward the door. The henchman reached it and pulled on the handle, then whipped a jimmie out of his pocket and jammed it into the lock.
Nicholas cursed under his breath and looked over his shoulder. The mist and the clouds had blotted out almost all the light: it might have been twilight rather than afternoon. People were still running away up the streets, but the ungainly gray shapes in the mist were all moving this way. He gritted his teeth and resisted the impulse to tell Crack to hurry; the last thing he wanted to do at the moment was break the man’s concentration.
Finally Crack stepped back, shoving the jimmie into his pocket and drawing his pistol. He fired at the lock and on the fifth shot the door gave way with a whine of strained metal. Crack threw his weight on the handle, swung it wide open, and Nicholas and Reynard dragged the Inspector inside. The door wedged against the stone pavement when Crack tried to close it and he fought with it silently. Nicholas leapt to help him and together they tugged it closed, shutting out the approaching mist. Something outside howled angrily just as the door slammed shut and Reynard shoved the heavy locking bar into place. Nicholas stepped back from the door, reflecting that if one of the prison warders had thought to bar it he and the others would be dead now. Reynard leaned against the door, looking annoyed more than anything else, and Crack wiped sweat from his forehead with his coat sleeve.
"This is a rather tense situation," Ronsarde said, conversationally. He was supporting himself on the wall, watching them thoughtfully. "What’s our next course of action?"
Madeline walked the short distance from Coldcourt to the city gate and there got a ride on the public omnibus. She had learned from past experience that a public conveyance was always best when transporting valuable objects; even though it meant taking a more roundabout route to the warehouse, the omnibus was safer than a hire cab.
The spheres were in the carpetbag she was holding in her lap. Once at Coldcourt, she had taken time only to change from her dusty suit into a dress and jacket she thought of as Parlormaid’s Day Out and stuff her hair under a dowdy and concealing hat. If she ran into any close acquaintances who recognized her as Madeline Denare, it would be easy enough to invent a story about some romantic escapade or wager. Most of her theater acquaintances were fools, and were sure to believe any lie as long as it sounded risqu้ enough. You sound like Nicholas, she told herself. When did you become so cynical? Sometime after sorcerers started trying to kill me, she answered. Sometime after I met Nicholas. She had also brought a muff pistol with her which was now tucked under her shirtwaist.
The omnibus was a long open-sided carriage with bench seats accommodating about twenty persons if they were willing to become over familiar with one another. It was about half full now, and Madeline had managed to secure a seat not far behind the driver’s box. She was staring abstractly at the people passing on the street, thinking of their current problem, when she noticed the sky. When did it turn so dark! She fumbled for the watch pinned to her plain bodice. It was still early afternoon. Those clouds came in quickly; it’ll rain in a moment.
There was something happening in the street up ahead, people were running, shouting. Madeline sat up straighter, trying to see, and finally resorted to standing up and leaning out to see around the box. Other carriages, slowed by the sudden increase in foot traffic, blocked the way and the omnibus driver reined in.
Madeline frowned, tightening her hold on her carpetbag. The other passengers shifted and complained and one impatient man in a top hat got off to continue on foot. The driver was shouting for the other carriages to get out of his way or tell him what the devil was wrong.
"There’s riot in Prefecture plaza!" one of the other drivers shouted. "Go around!"
"Not riot, sorcery!" A bedraggled man, his coat torn and his face bloodied, staggered out of the confusion of coaches and addressed the passengers of the omnibus and the other halted conveyances as though he was preaching to a packed hall. "Sorcery, ruin! Demons overrun the halls of justice. We are doomed! Flee the demons in the Courts Plaza!"
The omnibus driver watched this performance in silence, then took a piece of fruit from the bag at his feet, stood and shied it at the speaker’s head. Missiles from the other coaches and a few of Madeline’s fellow passengers followed and the man ran away. The driver took his seat again, cursing, and began to try to turn the wagon. Madeline stepped off before this awkward operation could get underway and hurried across the crowded street to the promenade.
Demons weren’t difficult to imagine after the Sending. And the ghouls. She supposed there were other people in Vienne who might currently be drawing that sort of sorcerous attention but that they would also be visiting the Courts Plaza this afternoon was a bit too much for coincidence. No, it had to be Octave’s pet sorcerer.
Madeline hesitated for only a moment. The warehouse was a mile or two away and the plaza was barely two streets over.
She cut through alleys until she reached Pettlewand Street, which paralleled the plaza. She passed enough people fleeing the other way and heard enough confused reports of mayhem to confirm that there was riot, at least. She reached the avenue that would take her past the Prefecture building and the southern entrance of the plaza. It was ominously deserted, bare and colorless under the gray sky. She passed a darkened shop window and caught flashes of her own reflection out of the corner of her eye. She adjusted the strap of her carpetbag on her shoulder and kept walking. She could see the fanciful designs on the cornices of the Prefecture and the flight of steps flanked by two gas lamps in ornamental iron sconces. The sudden silence was so disconcerting it was almost a reassuring sight. Madeline told herself they were sure to know what had happened there, whether it was riot or sorcery, and if by some chance Nicholas and the others had been arrested. . . . Well, it was the best place to find that out, too.
Madeline stopped abruptly as shouts sounded from up ahead. A group of men, uniformed constables and what appeared to be a mixed bag of court clerks, shopkeepers, and street layabouts tumbled around the corner of the Prefecture. Madeline stepped back against the wall of a shop, flattening herself against the dirty bricks as one of the constables pointed a pistol at someone just out of her line of sight and fired. She wince
d as the loud report echoed off the stone. If the riot moved into this street the Prefecture was likely to become a fortress under siege; she couldn’t afford to be trapped there. She edged back toward the nearest alley.
The constable fired again and his target lurched into view.
Madeline swore, loud enough that one of the men glanced her way. The thing moving toward them was like a cross between a goblin and an ape, with a rictus grin and vestigial wings, its skin gray and pitted as weathered stone. It lurched forward again, moving with unexpected speed, and the constable who had fired at it dodged back out of its reach. Well, my dear, it’s definitely sorcery, Madeline thought grimly, fumbling for her muff pistol. Having the little pistol in her hand made her feel better but she suspected the sense of security was only illusory. Something of a higher caliber would be more comforting. Through the heavy material of the carpetbag she felt one of the spheres start to hum and tremble, as it had when the ghoul had approached the attic window at Coldcourt. She clutched the bag to her chest, willing it to be quiet. Not now. The creature, goblin, whatever it was was a bare twenty paces away and she didn’t want to attract its attention. It darted at one of the unarmed men and she raised her pistol, though she couldn’t tell if bullets had any effect or if the constables who were already firing at it were just poor marksmen.
Something grabbed her arm and yanked her into the alley. She knew instantly it wasn’t human, even in the semi-darkness of the narrow, cave-like alleyway. The grip was cold, hard as rock, inescapable. Instinctively she tried to throw her weight away from it, a move that would have sent a human attacker staggering, but the thing only gripped her arm more tightly. Her pistol went off as her fingers contracted at the pain. The little gun only held two shots; she gasped and barely managed to bring the lever back so she could try to fire again. Her throat was closed from fear and shock; she couldn’t even scream when the creature squeezed her arm again and sent her to her knees.
Her eyes watering, she looked up at a creature almost identical to the one that menaced the men in the street. The body was the same but this one had horns sprouting from its broad forehead. It lifted its free hand in a fist; one blow would crush her skull. Madeline forced her numb hand to move, twisting the pistol down despite the bone-crushing pain and triggering it. The sound deafened her and a shard of rock struck her cheek, making her think she had missed and fired into the alley wall, but the creature roared in pain. It released her arm and she collapsed.
Do something, run, fight, get up. Her right arm was numb to the shoulder and she managed only to roll away. She came up against something soft and lumpy that buzzed as if it contained a beehive. Her carpetbag. The spheres. She awkwardly ripped open the bag with her one good hand and snatched out the topmost sphere.
The creature was looming above her and she thrust the sphere up at it.
The world went briefly white, as if overwhelmed by light. Time seemed to hang suspended. She could hear a great roaring and something seemed to tell her that she was seeing sound and hearing color. Then she blinked and time washed back over the alley.
The creature was still standing over her but it was motionless, as if frozen into a block of ice. Cautiously she reached up and touched the rough surface of its chest. Not ice, stone. Madeline lowered the still humming sphere to her lap. Now that she had leisure to study the creature she could see it was a gargoyle. An ordinary roof gargoyle like the ones that guarded most of the private and public buildings in Vienne. She had an urge to push this one over and break it on the cobblestones. Oh, for a hammer. She started to stand and gritted her teeth at the pain in her right arm.
There was an explosion out in the street, followed by a peculiar thump, of something heavy striking the pavement. Madeline groped at the alley wall and managed to get to her feet, moving forward enough to peer cautiously out.
There were three gargoyles in the street now but one had been turned back to stone and lay in pieces across the walk. As she watched, another one suddenly halted in the act of seizing a constable and toppled over to shatter with a dull crash. In another moment she spotted the sorcerer.
The doors into the Prefecture building stood open and a spectacled young man in a frock coat was leaning on the stair railing, staring at the last remaining gargoyle and muttering to himself. As he said his spell, the still restive sphere Madeline was holding shook violently.
She didn’t wait to see the creature destroyed, but turned back to gather the other two spheres and tuck them hastily into the carpetbag. She had to get them away. If she could sense the power in them with her small talent, the Prefecture’s sorcerer was sure to. She slung the bag awkwardly over her shoulder, still nursing her right arm. That was all she needed, to spend hours in a cell while court sorcerers determined that the spheres had had nothing to do with the sorcery in the plaza, while Nicholas and the others were God knows where doing God knows what.
She stumbled out into the street only to be swept up in another wave of refugees, heading for the Prefecture. Madeline tried to push her way free, but someone jostled her bad arm and she couldn’t suppress a cry at the pain.
"This lady is injured!" someone called out. Madeline glanced around in confusion and realized he meant her. She was suddenly boxed in by a young constable and an elderly man, both staring aghast at her. Her sleeve was torn, revealing the discolored flesh of her forearm.
"No, really, it’s just bruised," she managed to protest. "I must get home—"
They weren’t listening to her. "There’s a doctor inside," the constable said, urging her toward the Prefecture steps. The older man was helpfully gesturing at the others, exhorting them to look at what one of the horrible creatures had done to the poor girl.
Madeline planted her feet and started to express her wish to be let alone in no uncertain terms, then realized she was barely two paces away from the young sorcerer. She couldn’t afford to draw his attention. She bit back a curse and let herself be guided up the steps and into the Prefecture.
The Prefecture’s foyer was large but packed with shouting, pushing people. Coming into it suddenly from the daylight, Madeline was nearly blind in the gaslit dimness. One of her erstwhile rescuers took a firm hold of her good arm and guided her through the confusion. One could scarcely bludgeon someone in the foyer of the Prefecture and get away with it, crisis or not, especially when he was just trying to be helpful. Madeline decided she would just have to let the doctor tend to her arm before making her escape.
A constable threw open the door to a room where the gaslight was turned up and high windows allowed in wan daylight. Madeline had barely a chance to focus on the group of men gathered around a table talking loudly before the constable said, "Doctor Halle, there’s a lady injured here."
Oh, damn, Madeline thought weakly. Of course, Doctor Halle was in the Prefecture. Ronsarde had been about to go before the magistrates; where else would Halle be?
Doctor Halle swung around with an impatient glance that turned into a worried frown when he focused on her. He came forward to take her injured arm and Madeline found herself being ushered into a nearby chair.
One of the men standing around the table was Captain Defanse of the Prefecture. He was saying, "The attack is centered on the prison now, that’s obvious." Defanse was a stout man with thinning dark hair. He was one of Ronsarde’s chief supporters and had investigated Donatien’s activities on numerous occasions but most of the time without knowing it was Donatien he was after. If he recognized Madeline, it would be from seeing her on the stage at the Elegante.
"But the Courts—" someone protested.
"That’s where the creatures came from. They were moving toward the prison," Defanse corrected, shaking his head.
"The important question, gentlemen, is who arranged for the sorcery?" The speaker was a tall man with graying hair and handsome if harsh features. Oh, hell, Madeline thought, light-headed from repeated shocks. That’s Rahene Fallier, the Court Sorcerer. She wasn’t sure how it could get any worse. T
he Queen will be in here in a moment, I’m sure.
Madeline shoved her carpetbag under the chair and put her feet on it. She was trembling from sheer nerves but Halle would interpret that as reasonable due to her injury. She had never been this close to him before and this was his best chance to recognize her as the woman he had seen in disguise on other occasions, but his attention was torn between her injured arm and the men arguing in the other part of the room. Madeline allowed herself a small sense of relief; with luck he would never look more than cursorily at her face. "Nothing broken. . . ." he muttered to himself, carefully palpating her forearm.
"No, just badly bruised," she whispered. She didn’t want him to hear her voice. He was an avid theater-goer and she didn’t want him to recognize her as Madeline Denare, either. "I do need to be getting home—"
"One of the constables saw Ronsarde and the men who saved him from the mob go toward the prison," one of the men at the table said. He was another Prefecture captain; she couldn’t remember his name.
Halle glanced back at the speaker, his lips compressed as if in effort not to make an outburst.
Defanse gestured in exasperation. "You think they were in league with the Inspector? Impossible!"
"You think this is all coincidence? To happen just as Ronsarde was being taken into the Magistrates Court?"
"The man was attacked by rioters and almost killed, surely you can’t believe this was somehow arranged as an escape attempt? I gave strict orders for the constables to escort the Inspector across the bridge, out of reach of the mob. I would ask them who countermanded those orders but all four men are dead."
"You suspect a conspiracy? Ridiculous!"
"Ronsarde would not use sorcery to cover his escape, not against his own constables," Fallier said suddenly. "Someone planned this without his knowledge."
