by Martha Wells
Nicholas shook his head. If I had been there. . . . "Go on."
"I had to go to the warehouse to find a boy to send, but by that time Verack— he was watchin‘ here last night—come for me, to tell me what had happened."
"They’re dead?" Reynard asked.
Cusard shook his head and gestured in frustration. "They wouldn’t let nobody in. And I didn’t want to give notice to the constables—but they ain’t carried nobody out."
"They let Madeline in." Reynard looked at Nicholas.
"Her grandmother was in there." Nicholas caught Reynard’s arm when he would have pushed on toward the building. "No, stay out here."
The constables tried to stop him but he told them that he was Madeline’s husband and they let him pass. There were frightened tenants on the stairwell, crying children and people in various states of undress, and constables trying unsuccessfully to get them out of the building or at least out of the way. Nicholas wove his way past them until he reached the landing that was just below Arisilde’s apartment. The skylight over the stairs had been shattered and part of the ceiling had come down. The concierge was standing on the landing, resisting all attempts to move him. He was arguing with a constable and an official-looking person in a frock coat.
"No," the concierge was saying stubbornly, his Aderassi accent thickening in his distress. "Do I look drunk nor mad? There was more than that—" He saw Nicholas and winced. "Ah, sir. The old woman, they got her in there."
Nicholas turned to the indicated doorway. It was the apartment below Arisilde’s. The door had been knocked off the hinges and stood to one side and the floor in the hall and front parlor was littered with plaster dust and pieces of molding. A frowsy-haired woman wrapped in a dressing gown appeared and gestured him through a pile of broken crockery to a back room.
A single lamp revealed a bedroom in tumbled disorder, with old furniture and blue flowered damask. Madele had been laid out on the bed, her hands folded neatly, and Madeline sat next to her. Nicholas’s first reaction was relief. Even though he knew there hadn’t been time, he had been irrationally afraid that her body would have been used for necromancy. There wasn’t a mark on her and except for the dust in her clothes and hair, she might have died in her sleep.
Madeline’s face was utterly still.
The concierge stepped into the doorway behind Nicholas and touched his sleeve. He whispered, "Tell the lady we found her all curled up at the top of the stairs, like she was asleep. It took her so quick, whatever it was, that she didn’t feel a thing. I don’t want to say it to her now, but later, when she wants to hear it."
"Yes, thank you." Nicholas nodded. It would have had to take her quickly, a battle would have drawn too much attention. And there were other sorcerers who lived in the Philosopher’s Cross, though not powerful ones. If she had had a chance to fight, they might have come to help her. "Did you see it?"
"I heard it. An explosion, like a bomb, very loud, very sharp." The man glanced warily over his shoulder. "They think it was a gas explosion, but it was nothing like one and they don’t know the wizard lives here. Wizards got enemies, everybody knows that."
The constable and the official in the frock coat were making their way through the shattered apartment toward them. "They were all killed?" Nicholas asked the concierge, speaking in Aderassi.
"That’s just it!" The man switched to his native language automatically. "We found the old Parscian man alive, but not a sign of the others, and these bastards don’t believe—"
The official interrupted, "Excuse me, what connection do you have to this affair?" If he knew he had just been called a bastard in Aderassi he gave no sign of it.
"My wife’s grandmother was killed and I’m a friend of the tenant in that apartment," Nicholas answered, stepping back out of the bedroom so the man would focus on him and leave Madeline alone. To the concierge he said urgently, "Where’s Isham?"
The man turned back down the hall and led him to another small, disordered room, the official and the constable still trailing them. Isham lay on the bed there, blood in his hair and on his face from multiple cuts on his forehead. The woman in the dressing gown was trying to bathe the cuts but the old man was moaning, barely conscious, and trying to push her hand away. Nicholas forgot about their audience and went hastily to his side.
"Isham, it’s Nicholas," he said. The old man’s face was badly bruised, there were other cuts and scrapes, and the colors of his Parscian robes were muted by plaster dust. "Can you hear me?"
Isham’s hand came up, grabbed his coat with surprising strength. Nicholas leaned down, his ear close to the injured man’s lips. His voice a weak rasp, Isham whispered, "Madele freed Arisilde. It was a corpse ring, hidden by a spell. I thought . . . there might be danger— But she removed it and nothing happened so I sent for you. But he must have known when the spell failed and he came . . . He came for Arisilde. . . ."
Isham tried to manage more but he started to cough, a racking, pain-filled sound, and Nicholas said, "That’s enough, you’ve told me all I need to know." That was anything but true but he didn’t want the man to kill himself with the effort. He probed at one of the cuts gently, trying to determine the extent of the injury.
"Careful, there’s glass," the woman cautioned him.
She was right. Doctor Brile’s surgery wasn’t far from here. He would have to make arrangements to have Isham moved there immediately. And he would have to claim Madele’s body so it wouldn’t be sent to the city morgue.
"Sir," an impatient voice behind him said. Nicholas twisted around and the official took a step backward, startled and wary. Nicholas made an effort to school his features into an expression less threatening. He realized the man had been trying to get his attention for some moments. He said, "Yes?"
The official regained his composure and said, "This person," he indicated the concierge, "Has said there were three others in the apartment but we can find no sign of them. Can you confirm this?"
No sign of them. "Yes," Nicholas said. "This man and the woman were caring for the tenant, who was an invalid. Two of our friends were coming here early this morning." He looked at the concierge, who was standing at the foot of the bed, his arms folded, frustrated and highly affronted at having his veracity questioned. "Did they arrive before . . . ?"
"Yes, the two men, gray-haired, one with a doctor bag, one with a cane? Doctors come all the time lately, I hardly notice."
"How long before?" Nicholas asked sharply, interrupting whatever pronouncement the official had been trying to make.
"Not long." The concierge narrowed his eyes, lips pursed in thought, anticipating the demand for a more specific answer. "I heard them go up the stairs, a door open and close. Then Cesar, from the market, came to argue about rent, but that was only for a moment and boom! It knocked us both down from fear. Things fell, dust came down the stairs in a great cloud. I thought the whole place would come down on our heads."
It was a trap, then. If Nicholas had correctly understood Isham, then the removal of whatever spell had imprisoned Arisilde had alerted their opponent, but instead of acting immediately he had waited to see who would come to Arisilde’s side. But if Arisilde was waking, why hadn’t he tried to defend himself? I have to get into that apartment.
"And what relation was the tenant to you?" the official asked.
Nicholas was glad he hadn’t brought a pistol with him; he would’ve been tempted to shoot the man. But before he could answer, Madeline shouldered the bulky constable out of the doorway and shoved into the room. She stood, breathing hard, looking down at Isham. Nicholas saw the official look askance at her coat and trousers and he told the man, in a cold voice, "She’s on the stage."
"Ahh." The official pretended to understand that statement and persisted, "I understand the shock of the situation but—"
Madeline lifted her gaze to Nicholas. "How is he?" she demanded.
Her eyes glittered and not from unshed tears. It was a dangerous light, uncertain and wi
th an edge to it. Nicholas answered, "Not good. He needs to go to Doctor Brile immediately."
The concierge abruptly remembered his duty and said, "I get you a carriage," and pushed his way out past the constable.
Nicholas hesitated for a heartbeat, then put his faith in Madeline’s quick wits. He stood and caught her hand, saying urgently, "You look faint!"
Her expression didn’t change but she blinked and raised a suddenly trembling hand to her brow. Then she fell backwards, boneless and apparently completely unconscious, right into the arms of the surprised official. He staggered under her sudden and unexpected weight and the constable leapt forward to help support her. The woman who had been tending Isham yelped in sympathy and scrambled around the bed to help.
Nicholas shouted something about going for help and slipped past them and out the door. He reached the landing again, saw the other tenants still milling below, and hurried up the stairs.
The doorframe in Arisilde’s apartment was cracked and splintered and the door hung on its hinges, revealing the familiar hall choked with rubble and debris. He stepped through it carefully, making his way into the long parlor at the back of the apartment. The hole was between the two windows that had looked down into the alley, the edges ragged with broken stone and shattered wood. The floor was buried under plaster from the ceiling and broken glass from the windows and the skylights and the remnants of the curtains were stirring gently in the cool breeze. Nicholas moved around the room, noting the familiar objects strewn about, the furniture broken or overturned, the scattered books and smashed plant pots.
A gas explosion, Nicholas thought in contempt. Whoever came to that conclusion was delusional. From the look of it all, it was immediately obvious that whatever had burst through the wall had done it from the outside coming in.
He left the wreck of the parlor and searched the rest of the apartment swiftly. The other rooms were not as badly disturbed, except for objects knocked off the walls and the cracks in the plaster. There was no sign of Ronsarde or Halle, no sign that anyone had been here.
Arisilde’s bedroom was oddly undisturbed, as if it had been at the still center of a violent and destructive storm. The coverlet on the bed was thrown back and the impression in the soft mattress where Arisilde had lain was still visible.
He heard voices from below and knew he had run out of time. He moved quickly toward the door but a glint of white wedged into the bottom of the splintered doorframe caught his eye. He knelt and worked it free.
It was a piece of ivory, carved into the shape of a Parscian hunting cat’s head. It was the ornament from atop the ebony cane Reynard had loaned to Inspector Ronsarde.
The concierge had found a carriage to take Isham to Doctor Brile’s surgery and Nicholas used that confusion to get down the stairs to the lower landing without anyone noticing. In the ensuing effort to get the injured man down the stairs without hurting him further, Nicholas managed to give some coins to the woman who had let her rooms be used as hospital and morgue and to ask the concierge to send for an undertaker to take charge of Madele’s body. He escaped into the street without further interrogation by constables or anyone else.
As he gave the coachman instructions and a note for Doctor Brile, he saw Madeline waiting across the street with Reynard and Cusard. He checked that Isham was settled as comfortably as possible, then sent the coach off and joined the others.
"Are you all right?" he asked Madeline.
"Of course," she snapped.
"Do we know anything of what happened?" Reynard asked, as if he didn’t have much hope of an answer.
Nicholas shook his head. "From what Isham was able to tell me, Madele discovered what was wrong with Arisilde. It was a spell, not drugs or illness. But when she removed it, it somehow alerted the sorcerer. He waited long enough to draw a few of us into the trap." He stopped, compressing his lips‘, then looked at Madeline. "Why didn’t she tell me she had discovered what was wrong with Arisilde?"
"She never told anyone anything. She probably didn’t want to get your hopes up if she was wrong." Madeline knotted her fists and paced angrily. "Damn stupid old woman."
Reynard was looking up at the ruin of the tenement’s top floor. He said softly, "Now what?"
That wasn’t a question Nicholas wanted to answer at the moment, even though he knew exactly what he had to do now. He looked around, struck by the sudden notion that he was missing something important. "Wait. Where’s Crack?"
Reynard turned back and Madeline looked up. Cusard blanched and said, "He was with Ronsarde and Halle when I left . . . ."
Nicholas cursed and started back down the alley toward their coach. He would check the apartment but he knew he would find no one there. He had told Crack to "watch the others" and Crack would not have let Ronsarde and Halle leave the apartment alone.
Nicholas read the telegram one more time in disbelief, then crumpled it into a tight little ball. The struggle to control rage took all his concentration for a moment, but then he was able to turn to Reynard and say tightly, "I’m informed that any messages I send will not be delivered to Captain Giarde."
Reynard stared in disbelief. "Fallier?"
Nicholas considered it, then shook his head. The Court Sorcerer couldn’t affect the delivery of private messages to the palace. No, that was the Prefecture’s realm. "Albier. He thinks I’m trying to undermine him on Ronsarde’s behalf. He has probably given orders to block messages from Ronsarde and Halle, as well." No one in the Prefecture knew that the two men had been in the shattered apartment in the Philosopher’s Cross. Nicholas had sent his message from the telegraph office on the Boulevard of Flowers and then returned with the others to the Panzan apartment to find the place chill and empty, the fires gone out from lack of tending. As he had feared, Crack was nowhere to be found. Nicholas had sent Lamane over to check the warehouse, hoping against hope, but he knew Crack must have followed Ronsarde and Halle to Arisilde’s apartment.
He threw the telegram into the hearth. Madeline was sitting on the divan near the window with her knees drawn up. She lifted her head and regarded him with a dark unflinching gaze, but said nothing. Cusard was pacing anxiously.
"But Albier’s honest, or enough so for this purpose," Reynard said, looking thoughtful. "We could go to him and explain, ask for help."
Nicholas grimaced at the thought but as much as he disliked the idea of an appeal to Albier, it was the quickest way to get Captain Giarde’s assistance. "Madeline will go to Albier." He hesitated, not wanting to drag Reynard into this. He had lost enough people to this sorcerer. But I can’t do it alone. "You and I will go after the others."
Reynard stared hard at him. "You know where they’ve been taken?"
"It’s only speculation." Nicholas found the folder of maps he had tossed into a chair and dug out the one he needed. He spread it on the table. "This is the key. The Monde Street sewer."
"He’s hiding in a sewer?" Cusard said, coming over to look, his doubt evident.
"For the past few days the Monde Street sewer syphon has been subject to blockages, caused by bone. Human bone," Nicholas explained. At their expressions he said, "No, it’s not what you’re thinking. These bones were years old, that was apparent from even a cursory examination. That was why the sewermen were not alarmed."
"Better start from the beginning," Reynard said, exchanging a dubious look with Cusard.
"From experience I know how difficult it is to find a reliable, safe hiding place in this city," Nicholas said patiently. "Considering that our sorcerer chose Valent House the first time, I found it unlikely that he would have tried to purchase or acquire property, and the Prefecture would be investigating any deserted buildings that were possibilities. So before extending the search outside the city walls, I wanted to see if he had gone underground."
"The Sending. Isham said it could have been the remains of a long dead fay, buried somewhere, didn’t he?" Reynard tapped the map thoughtfully. "A catacomb?"
"Exactly. Afte
r speaking to the sewermen and looking over the maps from the Public Works office, it became apparent that a catacomb was being cleared, the bones dumped into the sewer somewhere above Monde where they were flowing down into the syphon."
"But what if there’s been a collapse somewhere, and the bones washed out of a catacomb naturally?"
"The sewer level would have dropped since there hasn’t been rain for days." Nicholas hesitated. It was all a tissue of suppositions, but he still thought his reasoning was sound. "It’s only a theory. But I’ve thought hard about it and it’s the most likely option."
Reynard eyed him thoughtfully. "How long have you known this?"
Nicholas glanced at Madeline, but though she was watching alertly she still betrayed no reaction. "Since I looked at the maps I received from a clerk at the Prefect of Public Works office last night, before we went to meet you. I wanted to be sure it was possible for a catacomb to exist in the location it would have to occupy for this to work. There’s been so much building in the past few decades and none of the original catacombs that are still accessible are very deep."
Reynard was nodding. There were catacombs that were still in use under the cathedral and others in the older parts of Vienne that were opened occasionally for tours. "But this was a catacomb only our sorcerer knew about? The same way he knew about everything else, I suppose."
Nicholas nodded, distractedly. "Once we know for certain that this is the sorcerer’s hiding place, we can return and direct Fallier and Giarde and his men to the exact location." He glanced at Cusard. "I’ll need some things from the warehouse."
Cusard nodded and let out his breath in resignation. "Sewers. Ghouls. I’m glad I’m old."
"Let me be clear on one point," Reynard said. "The idea is to locate the sorcerer so he can be dealt with by Fallier and the other resources the palace can command, not take care of him ourselves."
