by Martha Wells
The chugging engine of the launch abruptly cut off. Nicholas turned back to the cabin and saw the captain standing, staring worriedly at the Watergate the boat was still drifting toward. Nicholas glanced at it and saw that they had drawn near enough for the lamps to reveal the official markings on the launch already tied there and the uniforms of the men waiting at the gate.
"Constables," the captain said, and spat succinctly over the side. He was an old man, featureless under several layers of ragged coats and scarves, looking more like a dustman than a smuggler. Doctor Halle and Ronsarde exchanged a look, then Halle took a step toward the man.
"It’s all right," Nicholas told the captain. "They’re expecting us."
The captain grunted thoughtfully, then disappeared back into the cabin. A moment later the engine came to life again.
Ronsarde stepped up beside Nicholas, his eyes on the house ahead. He said, "Albier has been here all day."
The boat drew up to the Watergate with a practiced ease, bumped gently against the pilings as Crack stepped over to the tiny stone dock to catch the lines. One of the constables hurried to help him tie it off and a young man in a dark coat and top hat stepped forward to greet Ronsarde. "Inspector, I’m glad you can assist us in this . . . matter." The lamps hanging on the pillars of the gate were shaped into elaborate wrought iron lilies; by their light the young man’s bland, handsome face looked ill. He said, "Lord Albier—"
"Lord Albier wishes me in Hell," Ronsarde said briskly. He gripped Nicholas’s shoulder to steady himself as he stepped off the boat. Halle was immediately beside him, handing him his cane. "So I doubt he was pleased to hear my assistance would be inflicted upon him. I only hope he and his minions haven’t destroyed too many vital traces."
"Ah . . . Yes, well." The man’s eyes widened at the number of people piling off the boat. Nicholas had followed Halle and Madeline was helping her grandmother. "These are . . .?"
Ronsarde gestured sharply. "My associates." He started for the stone steps leading up to the house and the young man hurried after him.
"That’s Viarn, Lord Albier’s secretary," Doctor Halle explained to Nicholas as they followed.
The stairs climbed a terraced garden, cloaked in twilight and shadow, a constable’s lamp illuminating small manicured hedges and stone flower urns. They passed the garden walls screening the entrance of the house from the river and found themselves on a broad court with benches and graceful statuary, lit by gas sconces framing the doorway. Nicholas looked up at the large windows on the second floor where lamps from inside the house revealed a conservatory filled with palms and hothouse flowers. Nicholas tried to think how many gardeners would have been employed to care for those tropical plants and for the gardens on the embankment. During the winter, and with the family at their country seat, surely only two or three.
The doors stood open as they probably never would had the house’s real owners still been in command. A uniformed constable stood guard there. Ronsarde stepped into the foyer beyond, stopping abruptly as he realized there were muddy bootprints on the tiles. Then he saw the muddy boots of the constable at the door, swore violently and strode into the house. Doctor Halle grimaced and hurried after him.
"This is Chaldome House," Madeline spoke in a low husky voice, part of her "young man" disguise.
In the man’s suit, greatcoat and hat she wore and with her face subtly made up she looked the role, but he hoped she would be able to maintain it once they saw what was sure to lay within. Stiffly, Nicholas said, "Are you sure you want to be here?"
Madeline looked at him, her dark eyes enigmatic, and followed Halle into the house.
Nicholas felt a tug at his coat sleeve and glanced down. Madele stood there, bundled up in several coats and shawls. She said, "Damp air is bad for my joints."
He offered her his arm. She took it, muttering to herself, and he helped her up the steps into the house.
The second floor of the entrance hall was open to the conservatory and air from the open doorway rustled in the heavy fronds and stirred the leaves, made the flames in the glass sconces flicker, brought the faint scent of the river into the house. Nicholas realized he had unconsciously braced himself for the heavy odor that had clung to Valent House. But he wasn’t here as long, he thought. There hasn‘t been time.
He heard Ronsarde’s voice and followed it through the open double doors at the end of the hall.
The sound led him to a ballroom, high-ceilinged, with a row of marble columns dividing it from another conservatory, this one a glass-walled oval extending out from the side of the house. The torcheres along the walls and the chandeliers were meant to hold candles, so the room was lit only by the kerosene lamps of the constables. Most of it was in shadow but Nicholas could tell the walls were covered with paintings of tropical islands, with plants, birds, exotic animals picked out in fine detail. Nicholas remembered that the current Lord Chaldome was a naturalist of some renown, a member of the Philosophers’ Academy.
Uniformed men were searching, pulling the dustcovers off the furniture in the salons that gave onto the ballroom, even unrolling the rugs which were stacked along the far wall. There were eight tarp-covered forms stretched out on the floor in a line. Lord Albier stood near them, with his secretary and another man in a frock coat and top hat, arguing with restrained, bitter violence with Inspector Ronsarde. Halle was looking around at the shapes on the floor, shaking his head, Madeline standing near him.
Nicholas swore under his breath. "They moved the bodies. They destroyed the scene." He had dragged poor Madele and her bad joints here for nothing. He supposed it would do no good to explain to Albier that if they hadn’t seen the murder room in Valent House as it was, they would never have realized it was necromancy, or known about the tie to Constant Macob.
Madele slipped her arm free of Nicholas’s and moved away, studying the large chamber thoughtfully.
Madeline turned away from Halle and Ronsarde and Nicholas went forward to meet her. "We may have come here for nothing," she said, low-voiced. "Albier is a complete fool."
"Is he?" Nicholas said. Albier was now pointing at them and gesturing to Ronsarde, obviously objecting to their presence. "Or did someone tell him to do this."
"That’s the question." Madeline glanced around. "Where is grandmother?"
Nicholas turned, looking around the room. Madele was nowhere to be seen. He let out his breath in annoyance. "We’ll find her when she wants to be found. Try to see as much as you can before we’re thrown out." Before boarding the steam launch, Nicholas had told Madeline their primary goal was to search for the sphere Octave had made. He hadn’t mentioned this to Ronsarde and Halle.
Madeline nodded and moved away. An agitated party of people were being conducted into the room through the doors in the far wall. Several men in business dress, one older woman who might be a housekeeper or upper servant. She saw the still forms lined up under the sheets and cried out in shock. Albier saw the newcomers, gave Ronsarde one last parting glare, then hurried across the room toward them.
Halle moved immediately toward the bodies and the other doctors who were conferring near them, taking advantage of Albier’s distraction. Nicholas approached Ronsarde. "Well?"
The Inspector was leaning on his cane, an expression of thwarted fury on his face. His eyes still on the occupied Albier, he said, "The family is still in the country, but there was a small staff to maintain the house in their absence, including a housekeeper, maids, a footman, and two gardeners to keep up the grounds and conservatories. This morning a dairyman tried to make his usual delivery at the kitchen door. He was well-acquainted with the house and when he realized it appeared to be locked and empty, he brought it to the attention of the local constable. That the servants were all found here, dead, is all I have been able to ascertain, and from the state of the place that is all I will ever be able to ascertain."
"Did he discover when any of them were last seen alive?"
"The dairyman made a delivery
three days ago and found them all quite alive and healthy. There are constables speaking with the other merchants in the area and the servants in the houses to either side, hoping to obtain confirmation of that."
Nicholas stared around in irritation. "They were killed here?" The ballroom floor was marked only by the dirt and mud from Prefecture boots.
Ronsarde slanted a look at him. "So Albier says."
"Then where’s the blood?" His recent research told him that there were some of Constant Macob’s necromantic magics that could be performed by strangling or suffocating the victim, but that wasn’t enough for the powerful spells their sorcerer seemed to favor.
"A good question." Ronsarde looked at him, his eyes serious. "Albier claims that there is no need for haste or further investigation. He says he has the solution."
"Solution?" Nicholas looked around the ballroom again, baffled. "He’s bluffing, trying to get rid of you."
"I fear that he is not." Ronsarde moved away, leaning heavily on his cane.
Worried, Nicholas watched him go. The new arrivals were being led over to the bodies, obviously to view them to establish their identity. Nicholas started to fade out of the way, but noticed, in the far corner of the ballroom, an unobtrusive set of panel doors, made obtrusive by the presence of two constables guarding them. This piqued his curiosity greatly, but he saw no way to discover what was there until Albier saw fit to reveal it. He left the ballroom through one of the attached salons.
He walked through the empty rooms, occasionally encountering constables who took him for one of the doctors or an aide to one of the Inspectors present. The only sound was quiet talk from the ballroom, punctuated by the loud sobs of the older woman as she identified the bodies.
Albier is either a fool or a liar, Nicholas thought. If the sorcerer had been here at all, he hadn’t been here long. The house was clean, freshly swept, ready for the occupancy of its masters at any moment. Most of the furniture was still neatly covered, paintings still on the walls, silver dining services neatly arranged in unbroken glass cabinets. Nothing had been looted, nothing disturbed.
The house wasn’t very old. The design was too modern, with too many public rooms and windows on the first floor. The owners would probably wish they had bought one of the older, more fortress-like Great Houses instead of building for comfort. Still, there had to be a sorcerer hired to ward it against theft. Nicholas made his way down to the kitchens to check the pantries and found Madeline coming up from the cellars. "Did you go down there alone?" he demanded.
She gave him a withering look as she fastened the door latch again. "No, Nicholas, Lord Albier escorted me personally. The constables have already been through it and there’s nothing down there. I was looking at the cisterns."
Nicholas pinched the bridge of his nose, regained his calm, and asked, "Were they topped off?"
"Yes." She waved a hand toward the main kitchen. "The fires were banked and then let to burn out and there were beds disturbed in the servants’ quarters. They must have been attacked at night."
He nodded. "And the intruders didn’t use any water while they were here. To drink, or to clean up the blood."
Madeline gestured in exasperation. "I don’t see how those people could have been killed here." They weren’t.
"Well that clears everything up," Madeline said, annoyed.
Nicholas ignored the sarcasm and took the servants’ passage back to the public rooms. It opened into one of the reception areas off the ballroom. Nicholas looked around at a room as clean and undisturbed as all the others, with jade figures ornamenting the mantelpiece, and swore aloud. He would have taken an oath on anything that no intruders had stayed long in this house. Just long enough to abduct the servants, then to bring the bodies back.
The voices from the ballroom grew loud and agitated, then Doctor Halle appeared, supporting the older woman who had been called in to help identify the corpses. She was gasping for breath and even in the dim light Nicholas could see her face was going blue. He tore a cover off the nearest couch while Madeline shoved the ornamental tables out of the way. Halle lowered the woman to the couch as another doctor bustled in, digging in his medical bag.
Nicholas and Madeline backed away to give the physicians room and Madeline whispered, "Why did they make her look at them now? Surely they don’t always do it that way, not when the death was violent."
"No, the relatives aren’t brought in until the victims are at the morgue and have been washed and prepared by the undertaker. For some reason the Prefecture is in an unseemly hurry for identification." From the look of it, Halle would be busy here for a time. Nicholas went back into the ballroom, Madeline trailing him.
Ronsarde had cornered Albier again. As Nicholas drew near he heard him say, "I’ve been patient throughout this farce, Albier, now tell me what it is you think you have. Unless," Ronsarde added, smiling, "you are afraid it won’t stand up to my scrutiny."
Albier returned the smile with the same lack of cordiality. "Very well. I was not trying to delay you, Ronsarde, only making sure of my facts. This way."
Albier led the way to the doors Nicholas had noted earlier, the ones barred by the constables. Albier nodded to the secretary Viarn, who hurried over, drawing a key out of his pocket.
Viarn unlocked the sliding panels, then pushed them open. The room within was dark, illuminated only by narrow windows high in the outside wall. Another gesture from Albier and one of the solemn constables brought a lamp.
Obviously as impatient with the theatrics as Nicholas, Ronsarde took the lamp away from the constable and held it high, lighting the room.
Nicholas caught sight of another body on the floor, this one left in situ as the others had not been. He pushed forward, elbowing Viarn out of the way.
The body was that of a man, young, with a lanky build and dirty blond hair, sprawled on the parquet floor amid markings of ash and black dust or soot. What many of the marks had represented was permanently obscured by blood, most of it pooled around the man’s body. His throat had been cut and the lamplight glinted off a knife still clutched in one discolored hand.
"There is your sorcerer," Albier said.
Nicholas looked at Ronsarde, whose expression of stunned incredulity said everything, then back at Lord Albier, who was complacently straightening his gloves. Since Ronsarde was apparently still speechless with rage, Nicholas cleared his throat and asked, "He killed everyone in the house, cleaned up after it, then cut his own throat, I suppose?"
Albier lifted his brows at this presumption, then noticed that everyone within earshot, constables, inspectors, their assistants, the doctors, was staring, waiting for the answer. He said sharply, "He was a sorcerer, called Merith Kahen, trained at Lodun and hired by Lord Chaldome to ward this house and the family estates in the provinces against theft and intrusions. I have been informed the remaining symbols on the floor of that room indicate the practice of necromancy. The conclusions are obvious."
"Are they?" Ronsarde’s voice was admirably cool, the edge of sarcasm as sharp as a blade.
Albier’s mouth tightened. "He was practicing necromancy at the house in the Gabardin and he became frightened when you discovered the place. He tried to eliminate you with the attack on the Courts Plaza. In the meantime, one of the unfortunate servants here also discovered some evidence of Kahen’s activities, and perhaps confronted him. In his madness Kahen killed everyone in the house then—"
"Conveniently killed himself in remorse," Nicholas finished. "How very . . . tidy of him."
For a moment Albier’s eyes were dangerous, then he turned away with a muttered curse.
Nicholas smiled tightly to himself. Viarn and the constables posted nearby were all pretending not to have noticed the altercation. Ronsarde had been too caught up in his study of the dead man to notice and now he handed Nicholas the lamp without looking at him and leaned down, studying the floor intently. Picking his spot with care, he took one step forward, then one more, so he could kneel awkwar
dly beside the body. Nicholas took his place in the doorway, holding the lamp so Ronsarde could see. He leaned in as far as he could, to examine the walls of the room. There was none of the melting that he had observed in the cellar chamber in Valent House where the necromancy had taken place. He would have been greatly surprised if there had been.
Ronsarde had carefully lifted the dead hand that was still clasped around the knife. Now he lowered it gently, and said, "Unfortunate young man."
"Did he cut his own throat?" Nicholas asked. "Not that it matters."
"He did. Not that it matters." In a tone of bitter disgust, Ronsarde added, "Magic."
Nicholas looked around the dark little room again. Albier wasn’t a fool; if they could find any evidence that this scene was as stage-managed as a play at the Elegante, Albier would believe it, if reluctantly. But there would be no evidence. The young sorcerer had been enspelled to kill himself. From the traces of black dust on his hands, he had also been enspelled to draw the circle. But was that simple expediency, or attention to detail? Nicholas wondered. There was even a bucket of soot standing in the corner. When they search his rooms, if they haven’t already, will they find texts and notes on necromancy? Their opponent was learning.
Ronsarde had come to the same conclusion. He said, "There is nothing of use here." He planted his cane and used it to lever himself to his feet, turning back toward the door. Nicholas stepped out of his way and handed the lantern off to the nearest constable.
There was an outcry from across the ballroom and the old woman that Halle and the other doctor had been tending came running toward them. Her face was red and streaked with tears, and she was gasping, "He wouldn’t do it, he wouldn’t do a thing like this, I swear it! You’ve got to believe—"
