by Martha Wells
"That makes me sound like a complete fool." He found the remnants of his cabman outfit, which had the merit of being dry, at least, and began to strip.
Madeline didn’t disagree with that statement. She eyed him narrowly, then said, "Halle asked me today if he and Ronsarde could trust you."
"Halle asked you that?" Nicholas paused with his shirt half off.
"Yes."
"Ungrateful bastard."
"You’re jealous," she said.
"On your account, I assume?" As soon as he said it he knew it was a mistake, but it was too late to snatch the words back. Idiot, he snarled at himself.
But Madeline only gestured in annoyance. "No, I’m not that much of a fool. On Ronsarde’s account. Halle’s worked with him all these years, been involved in the investigations of all these fascinating crimes, been his confidant and his partner. That’s what you would have wanted."
"That’s ridiculous," he snapped, slinging things out of the way as he searched for his boots in the bottom of the closet. He wasn’t sure which charge was more demeaning: the accusation of professional jealousy or her obvious belief that that was the only kind of jealousy he could possibly fall prey to.
"Is it? That’s why you won’t tell anyone what you’ve been doing. You want to impress everyone."
Nicholas finished dressing in suppressed fury. Finally he slung his battered black coat over his shoulders and pulled on the torn fingerless gloves. He grabbed his hat from the dressing table and went to pull back the curtains and shove the window open. He turned back and saw, from Madeline’s expression, that she might regret what she had said, but it was far too late for that. He said, "I don’t know what’s worse, your inaccuracy or your patronizing attitude," and stepped out the window onto the ledge.
The decorative stonework let him boost himself up onto the roof where he could make his way down the outside stairs into the back courtyard.
It was too early for the appointment Nicholas had to keep, so he found himself in the theater district just off the Saints Procession Boulevard. He passed the facades of the Tragedian, the Elegante, and the Arcadella, with their well-proportioned columns and statues of the Graces and the patron saints of drama and the arts. The promenades were crowded with well-dressed patrons and the vendors and flower-sellers overflowed out into the street, impeding traffic. The carriage circle of the opera was almost choked with coaches with noble crests emblazoned on their doors and the ornamental lamps around the fountains in the center crowned the confusion with a blaze of light and moving water.
Nicholas kept moving, skirting the busy promenades and the constables who patrolled them, ducking into the street where he had to dodge between the lumbering coaches and the faster-moving cabriolets and curricles. The crowding became even worse when he came into sight of the less expensive theaters and the music halls, an area that flirted dangerously with the edges of the Gabardin and Riverside. He paused outside the High Follies, a theater that specialized in grandiose epics with shipwrecks on fayre islands, exploding steamers in stormy seas, and volcanic explosions. As a boy he would have given, or stolen, anything for the coins to attend a show here. As an adult with freedom and money in his pocket he would have thought the tawdry magic of the place would have palled, but it was amazing how tempting the doorway, framed by an enormous pair of gold-painted palm trees hung with giant snakes, still was. He reminded himself that the shows went for hours and he didn’t have that much time to waste. You can take the boy out of Riverside, Nicholas thought ruefully, but it’s always in his blood. Which showed you what fools the people were who believed heredity and bloodlines meant everything. His blood was of the pure aristocracy of Ile-Rien which the Alsenes were still members of, even if their disgrace kept them from participating in it. This would have been a comforting thought if he hadn’t had the suspicion that his infamous ancestor, Denzil Alsene, would have got along rather well in any place of violence and cutthroat competition.
Nicholas walked on until the theaters became little hole-in-the-wall affairs and the music halls, as well as the prostitutes, became progressively smaller and dingier, and he was in Riverside proper.
There he found entertainment of a somewhat more active nature. He talked or traded insults with a wide variety of people, some of whom were old acquaintances, most of whom knew him by different names. He watched the robbery of a brandy house and ducked into an alley as the constables and the shouting owner ran past. He walked and thought and ended up sitting on what was left of the grand staircase of a ruined Great House with a street urchin, sharing a handful of hot chestnuts when he heard the nearest clocktower ring the hour.
His goal was only a few streets up, back toward the boulevard, but the area was very different. The streetlights illuminated few passersby and most of the tall brownstone buildings were offices, closed for the night and dark. There was only one building with lit windows, a much more elaborate affair with columns and a polished stone facade. It was the office that housed the Prefect of Public Works.
Nicholas went round the back, threading his way through the alleys, until he found himself in the quiet carriage court behind it. He knocked on the door there and in a few moments the man who answered passed him a tightly folded bundle of documents and Nicholas handed him an envelope of currency notes.
He went further up toward the Boulevard then, finding an open cafe whose lamps threw enough light onto a nearby bench and he sat there to study his prize. He stayed there long enough that the waiter decided he was an eccentric and began to include him in his circuit, so Nicholas was able to order coffee without having to disturb the arrangement of the documents.
He had been there some time when a voice behind him said, "You’re not easy to find."
Nicholas glanced up. Madeline stood leaning on the back of the bench, dressed as a young man, wearing a ridiculously emphatic blue and gold waistcoat and with her hat tilted at a rakish angle. He said, dryly, "That assumes I want to be found."
Madeline sat on the bench next to him. "Oh, I think you wanted to be found, just a little. You did leave a trail through Riverside, though I did have quite a time until I picked up on it." She frowned at the papers in his lap. "What’s that?"
"Sewer maps from the Public Works office. I bribed a clerk to steal copies for me. Ronsarde could have got them just by asking, of course, but then it would be in the penny sheets by tomorrow. The clerks there are eminently bribable." The dregs of the argument still lay between them but at this time of night it seemed pointless to pursue and Nicholas was disinclined to continue it.
"Hmm." Madeline looked like she badly wanted to ask what the maps were for, but managed, maddeningly, to restrain herself. She said, "Well, I actually had a reason for following you,"
"Oh, good. I’d hate to be deluded into the thought that you were mildly fond of me."
Madeline’s mouth twisted wryly. "A second reason. Reynard sent a telegram to the apartment; he wants you to meet him tonight. He has something important to tell you, I gather, unless there’s something you haven’t been telling me?"
"Madeline, you can’t be jealous of Reynard; it’s pass้," Nicholas said, but he was already folding up the maps.
The first glow of dawn was lightening the sky to the east by the time they reached the Cafe Baudy. It was in the Deval Forest, a pleasure garden with wandering paths, streams, and picturesque waterfalls and grottos, always crowded in the warmer months. The cafe was built on two large firmly-anchored barges in a small lake and reached by footbridges. In the summer the water would have been cluttered with boaters and bathers, the rounded islands thick with flowers, but now it was still and dark, the banks shadowed by willows and poplars. Only the cafe was bright, colored lanterns lighting the balcony and the raucous diners crowding it, music drifting over the still black water. Nicholas noted the resemblance to a scene out of one of Vanteil’s Visions of Fayre oils.
Nicholas and Madeline made their way over one of the narrow bridges to the terrace of the cafe. Reyn
ard had chosen the spot well; their unconventional dress, which would have kept them out of any of the better hotels and restaurants, was here not even acknowledged. As the waiter led them among the tables Nicholas saw that Madeline was by no means the only woman dressed as a, man, or vice versa, in the crowd.
Reynard was seated at a table with its white linen littered with wine glasses and crumbs and the remains of a light meal. By the number of glasses Nicholas suspected he had had to fend off numerous friends and acquaintances while waiting for them. This impression was confirmed when he greeted them with "Where the hell have you been?"
"We were detained," Nicholas explained unhelpfully and Madeline assumed an expression of innocence. While the waiter fussed with fresh glasses and poured more wine, she poked at the remnants of the food, finding enough pate to spread on one of the leftover rounds of toast. As soon as the man was gone, Reynard said, "You were right. It was Montesq got Ronsarde arrested."
Nicholas leaned forward. "Money?"
"How else? I suspected he had Lord Diero in his pocket—"
"Diero, not Albier?" Madeline interrupted, pate-smeared bread forgotten in her hand.
"Not Albier," Reynard confirmed. "My sources of information—and I’ll admit, most of them are prostitutes, either professionals or amateurs—all believe Diero to be heavily in debt to Montesq. Last week Diero was visited by Batherat, that solicitor you heard about last year—"
"Yes, the new one." Nicholas had been witness to a meeting between Montesq and Batherat via Arisilde’s portrait at Coldcourt.
"And the next day, Diero gave a very private order to have Ronsarde’s movements checked."
"How did you discover that?" Madeline demanded. "You have a source in the upper levels of the Prefecture?"
"One of Diero’s subordinates is a friend of a friend. It’s surprising how many people come to the same places for their entertainment. This rather vital piece of information was confided to me over a late supper at the Loggia, as though it meant nothing, and of course to the person who told me it did mean nothing. But if you know the rest. . . ." He gestured eloquently.
"So Montesq is in league with our sorcerer," Madeline said. "But how did that happen? We watched him so closely. How—"
Nicholas’s thoughts were going along the same path, but Reynard cleared his throat and said, "No, I don’t think he is in league with our madman. I think he was after Ronsarde for an entirely different reason."
"What reason?" Nicholas had never forgotten that Ronsarde had advanced some suspicions of Montesq. He had wanted to follow up that tantalizing hint but had been afraid of exposing more about his own activities than Ronsarde could comfortably ignore. And there hadn’t been time.
"Ronsarde apparently never dropped the case concerning Edouard Viller." Reynard advanced the topic cautiously, but Nicholas gestured at him to continue. As a victim of scandal himself, Reynard wasn’t one to talk of rope in the house of the hanged, either literally or figuratively, and wouldn’t mention it unless it was important. Reynard said, "This same person, Diero’s subordinate, told me that Ronsarde had finally asked formal permission of Diero to reopen the court documents and interview witnesses officially, in front of a magistrate. Your name, Nic, was on the list of persons to be questioned in court."
The waiter arrived to pour more wine, appearing just in time to hear Madeline utter an oath that disturbed a normally impenetrable demeanor to the point that the man actually cocked an eyebrow in reaction. They waited until he had moved on, then Reynard continued, "And that of course means nothing unless you know that Montesq arranged the evidence against Edouard Viller."
Nicholas smoothed the tablecloth, to keep his hands from knotting into fists. "Ronsarde said nothing about it."
"He wouldn’t." Madeline was strangling her napkin in repressed excitement. Her voice shook with it. "He never knew who arranged his arrest. Halle tried to find out but he couldn’t discover anything. Ronsarde doesn’t know Diero is connected to Montesq. If he had he would have gone over his head, to Albier or Captain Giarde or the Queen herself, he could easily do it."
"That’s not all," Reynard said impatiently. "Montesq didn’t only move against Ronsarde. Batherat met with someone else last week as well, in a cabaret. The man evidently believes the lower class prostitutes that inhabit the place can’t see or hear and won’t recognize men they must see every night at the theaters, getting out of crested carriages. He met with Fallier, Nicholas, Rahene Fallier."
"Ah." Nicholas leaned back in his chair, and the too-warm, noisy room seemed to fade. "Of course he did."
"I don’t know what he has on Fallier," Reynard added. "Montesq has been in the business of blackmail so long, it could be anything. Debts, youthful indiscretions—"
"Necromancy, past or present," Madeline added.
"Exactly."
"Your informant didn’t know what Batherat and Fallier discussed," Nicholas said, thoughtfully.
"No," Reynard admitted. "But I think it must have been you."
"Yes." Nicholas nodded. "It would explain Fallier’s sudden interest in me."
"What do you mean?" Madeline demanded.
"Fallier may or may not have recognized my resemblance to Denzil Alsene from a Greanco portrait. In fact, I think he must have; he did know me when we came face to face in the street. But he already knew who I was and not from past researches to uncover possible usurpers to the Crown. He knew because Montesq had Batherat tell him." Montesq could have sought information on the Valiarde family easily enough. Nicholas’s mother’s family denied her existence now but there would be old servants or far-flung relations who would readily admit that Sylvaine Valiarde had lived, married a disgraced Alsene, left her husband’s family after his death and dropped out of sight in Vienne.
Madeline nodded. "Montesq knows you hate him, knows you believe he destroyed Edouard. Maybe he even knows you’ve been sticking your nose in his illegitimate dealings."
"But he doesn’t know much, or he would have moved against you before now," Reynard added. "He wanted to get Ronsarde out of the way so he had these charges trumped up, then stirred up a riot so he’d have done with him permanently. He also wanted to discredit you, so he told Fallier about your past history."
"But I’d left Coldcourt and Fallier couldn’t find me until he was called to the contretemps outside Fontainon House." Nicholas’s eyes narrowed as he followed that line of logic. "And our sorcerer knew Montesq’s movements and took advantage of his machinations for his own purposes." And why had Montesq acted against Ronsarde and himself now, after all this time? Obviously he’s afraid Ronsarde has new information. Or that I have new information.
"So he is in league with Montesq?" Madeline said, with the air of being determined to settle at least one point.
"No." Nicholas was thinking of the enspelled mirror Arisilde had found in Octave’s hotel room. "Our mad sorcerer has too many ways of finding things out. He is a necromancer, after all. But I would like to know how he knew where to look." He let out his breath. He hadn’t wanted to discuss this with anyone, except perhaps Arisilde, who was too distanced from reality himself to find any theory far-fetched, no matter how outrageous it sounded. "I’m almost afraid that the reason he did know all this—"
A sudden shout from the doorway drew their attention. A raggedly dressed boy was at the entrance, gesturing urgently to a skeptical maitre’d. Nicholas recognized one of Cusard’s messengers and nodded to Reynard, who signalled their waiter over and said, "I believe the boy has a message for me; have them let him in, will you?"
In another moment the boy stood panting at their table, much to the consternation and amusement of the other diners. "Captain Morane!" The boy held out a smudged square of folded notepaper. "This’s for you."
Reynard handed the note to Nicholas and dismissed the boy with some coins and a couple of pastries from the table. Nicholas scanned Cusard’s hasty and almost illegible handwriting quickly, swore, and got to his feet. "There’s trouble. We ha
ve to get there immediately."
The cab let them off in the Philosopher’s Cross, one street over from Arisilde’s building. Without knowing what had happened, Nicholas wanted to be able to approach the place cautiously and on foot; Cusard’s note had said only that there had been a "disaster" and that they must come to Arisilde’s apartment at once.
The early morning light was gray and heavy, the air cold and damp. Nicholas was first down the alley and first to come within sight of the tenement.
He halted on the dirty paving stones of the promenade without quite knowing he had. Cusard had not exaggerated.
There was a hole in the upper stories of the old building, just where Arisilde’s apartment was. It was a ragged, gaping cavity as if from a bomb blast and had torn a section out of the mansard roof. But there was no mark of fire and no smoke hung in the damp air, though broken stone and shingles littered the pavement.
Behind him he heard Reynard curse, then Madeline made a strangled noise and pushed past him, running across the street. Nicholas bolted after her.
There were people in the alley, pointing up and discussing it in hushed tones, milling around. There were constables and men from the fire brigade going in and out of the entrance.
Madeline pushed through a pair of constables and plunged up the stairs. Nicholas would have been right behind her but someone stepped into his way. It was Cusard, having materialized out of the crowd of spectators like a wraith. He said, "Something you got to know."
Nicholas paused and Reynard fetched up behind them. "What?"
Cusard’s shoulders were stooped and he looked very old in the gray morning light. He said, "Ronsarde and Halle was in there too."
Reynard said, "No," and looked up at the rent in the building, his face aghast. Another brick fell, sending the front edge of the crowd scattering.
Nicholas’s throat was tight. "How?"
"The Parscian sent a telegram for you, saying for you to come at once, that Arisilde was going to wake up. The Inspector told me to look for you and he and the doctor went off to here." Cusard hesitated, his face guilty. "I should’ve stopped em."
