The Element of Fire

by Martha Wells

  The torch struck the brandy-soaked fur on the Arlequin's chest, which caught fire as if it had been dipped in pitch. The Arlequin wailed and battered at the air around it, fighting an invisible wall. There was something containing it, a hardening of the air that the heat of the flames shivered against.

  The Arlequin dissolved into a cloud of thick black smoke. Its wails ceased and it curled up like a roll of paper kindling. Thomas saw Dubell arriving through the arched doorway leading from the long hall, and realized the fight had lasted only a short time.

  Actors and guests who had scattered around the room behind columns or furniture began to emerge from hiding.

  The guards were beginning to look around for wounded and dead. Thomas walked slowly over to where the Columbine actress still sat in a pile of scrap wood. She was watching the monster burn with a grin of undisguised triumph.

  He already knew who she must be, but it still took him what seemed moments to put together the direct gray eyes and the long straight nose with a forgotten portrait in an upstairs hall, and with the wildness of the magic she had just performed.

  Kade looked up at him, met his gaze, then winked.

  Chapter Five

  THOMAS SAID, "MAY I congratulate you on a spectacular entrance?"

  The sorceress looked up at him from the floor. After a moment, her lips twisted ruefully. "It was one of my best."

  Dubell moved to Thomas's side. He looked at what was left of the Arlequin, at the destruction in the gallery, and down at Kade. "Was this your doing?" His voice was incredulous.

  For a moment her expression was that of a small boy caught stealing an apple. "No." As she got to her feet, Thomas saw there were wood chips in her hair from the broken column the Arlequin had thrown at her. She looked defensive. "It followed me here."

  Thomas moved a few paces away from them. The Cisternans and his own men were scattered, collecting the wounded and the dead. There were still courtiers milling around toward the end of the room. Now would be a terrible time for a pitched battle.

  Dubell met Kade's eyes a long moment, then he said thoughtfully, "Did it really?"

  "Well, in a way it did." She began to pull the splinters out of her hair. "But it joined the troupe before I did, and I think it killed one of the clowns to get a place. I would have stopped it sooner but I'd touched some iron, and it took a bit to wear off."

  Renier and a group of Albon knights burst in through the archway and started toward them. The hide and sackcloth coats they wore over the lace and velvets of court finery made them look like ancient barbarians arriving to loot a city. Thomas went forward quickly to stop Renier. "Let Dubell handle her," he said in a low voice.

  Renier signaled his knights to halt. "Who is she?"

  "Kade Carrion."

  Renier stared. "My God, we've got to..."

  "No," Thomas said pointedly. "If he can get us out of this without a bloodbath, we've got to let him try."

  The big knight considered a moment, then nodded tensely. "Very well." He signaled the other knights to move back.

  Thomas nodded, thankful that while Renier wasn't a particularly brilliant statesman, he wasn't a bloodthirsty idiot either.

  "Did she cause all this?" Renier asked, looking around at the chaos in the gallery.

  Thomas glanced back at Kade and Galen Dubell. She was watching them, wary and a little angry. Her brows were darker than the pale blond of her hair, so the effect was that when she was looking at you, you knew it. He thought about her leaping to push the other actress out of danger and said slowly, "I don't think so."

  Then Kade's eyes focused past them and her expression changed. Thomas followed her gaze and swore. Roland stood in the archway the knights had come through. Thomas said, "Renier..."

  "What?" The knight looked around and gasped, "Damn that boy." He sheathed his sword and strode toward Roland, deliberately placing himself between the King and the sorceress.

  Thomas looked back toward Kade, aware that the other guards in the room had held off on his order. He would have to decide what he minded more, dying or behaving this stupidly.

  Galen Dubell was watching Kade thoughtfully. With gentle firmness he said, "Kade, don't."

  She looked up at the older man, her eyes losing some of their intensity. "I didn't come here to kill anyone--even him."

  Renier, as Preceptor of the Albon Knights and the only man in Ile-Rien allowed to touch the King without his permission, seized Roland's arm and hustled him out of sight. Dubell watched as they disappeared, then turned a worried eye on Kade. "Then why did you come here?"

  She smiled. "For an audience with my dear brother, of course."

  And that, Thomas thought, is not going to help matters at all.

  * * *

  The gallery smelled of ash and sour wine. Many of the chandeliers and lamps had gone out, throwing the upper half of the huge chamber into shadow. The court had been dispersed, and Ravenna, Roland, and Falaise had retired to a nearby solar with watchful guards. A breeze, created by an open door or window somewhere up one of the long galleries, swept gently through the huge chamber, lifting the heat and the stench for a moment.

  "How long had he been with the troupe?" Thomas asked Baraselli.

  The Aderassi actor-manager moaned and would have sunk to his knees again but for the two Queen's guards who were struggling to hold him up. The Master of Revels hovered worriedly nearby; it was on his responsibility the troupe had passed the final check at the gate.

  "No one's done anything to you, and no one will, if you just answer the question." Thomas kept his voice mild, despite his growing irritation. It was easier to question recalcitrant anarchists under torture than someone who was so busy collapsing that he could hardly stay coherent enough to speak.

  "Only a month. Only a month. I didn't know."

  Dubell had moved quietly up behind the actor-manager. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment, then he looked up at Thomas and nodded. Baraselli was telling the truth.

  "Who recommended him?" Thomas nodded to the guards, who cautiously released their hold of the man and stepped back.

  Baraselli swayed on his feet, but stayed upright. "It was his first mask, he told me. He'd learned it from an old actor he lived near. He did it well, and he came to us just after Derani died..."

  "Who was Derani?"

  "He played the Arlequin until he died of fever."

  Dubell asked, "What were the symptoms?"

  Baraselli whipped around, staring up at the tall sorcerer in fear, but something in Dubell's expression and mild demeanor calmed him and he said, "He... His skin was hot to the touch, and his wife said he couldn't keep anything down, not even water, and he had blood in his, pardon, piss, and... We paid to have the apothecary in to him, but he just died."

  There was something familiar about that. And convenient, for the Arlequin. Thomas asked, "When was this?"

  "Last month. Well, a month and a fortnight ago."

  Thomas shook his head, pressing his lips together. There was a pattern here, a deadly one. He looked up at Dubell. "About a month and a fortnight ago Dr. Surete's assistant Milam fell down a stairway in the North Bastion and broke his neck. A week after that Surete himself died of pleurisy. It came on suddenly, and by the time anyone realized how serious it was, he was dead."

  Dubell's brows drew together as he considered it. He said, "It's the easiest of dark magics to bring sickness, and the hardest to detect. It's simplicity itself to send a bookish and uncoordinated young scholar down a staircase. If one has the stomach for that sort of thing, of course." He nodded at Baraselli. "He's telling the truth, and I doubt he can reasonably be held responsible for Kade's actions. What will be done with him?"

  Even without the confirmation of Dubell's truth spell, Thomas was inclined to believe Baraselli. He had observed enough people under stress to read the sincerity in those hysterics. He told the Master of Revels, "Give him his money and tell him to take the others and go away."

  Baraselli sobbe
d and tried to fall to his knees in thanks. The Master of Revels gestured sharply to the Cisternans waiting nearby, who intercepted the actor-manager in mid-grovel and hauled him away.

  "It's either a hell of a coincidence, or a hell of a plot," Thomas said quietly to Dubell. He knew which he favored.

  The old sorcerer sighed. "There are no coincidences."

  Thomas watched him thoughtfully. "I would have thought it difficult for a wizard to hex another wizard, especially someone like Dr. Surete. He was the Court Sorcerer for two decades."

  "If a sorcerer is in fear for his life, he might test every object he is about to touch with a sprinkle of gascoign powder or some other preparation that reveals the presence of magic." Dubell made an absent gesture. "But Surete and Milam were not in fear for their lives. The spell could have come to them on anything--a forged letter purporting to be from a friend, an apple sold to them by a street vendor..."

  As Dubell stood lost in thought, Thomas watched the sorceress. Kade Carrion was pacing around the remains of the stage which the servants were dismantling. As she walked around the painted panels scattered on the floor and the stacks of singed planks, he had two distinct impressions of her. The first was that she was only a young girl with a tangled mop of hair and a tattered red dress, not oblivious to the consternation she was causing but not particularly worried by it, either. The other was that here was a creature ephemeral yet solid and real, who walked with the night and the wild hunt. Dubell is the only one who really knows her, Thomas thought. And even he isn't certain what her game is now.

  If she hated her brother and the rest of the royal family as much as she claimed, she wasn't without motive. Their father Fulstan hadn't been much use as a king: he had neither Ravenna's head for finance and diplomacy nor the ability to listen intelligently to advisors who did. The fayre queen Moire had drained him of what vitality and strength of character he possessed, leaving him bitter and old before his time. He had taken out his anger at Moire's abrupt departure on anyone in his reach, especially on Moire's daughter. No one directly in his power had mourned his death.

  Urbain Grandier, however, had no motive, at least not one that Thomas knew.

  Kade might be in league with the Bisran sorcerer, but discovering what she knew wasn't going to be easy.

  Dubell was looking toward the center of the stage platform, where what was left of the Arlequin had burned down into a heap of some foul-smelling dark powder. "Be careful not to step in that black powder," he called to the servants who were warily clearing away the debris. Then the old sorcerer turned and saw Kade, whose curiosity had already led her ankle-deep into the black powder. She lifted her head, surreptitiously rubbed a stained bare foot against her calf and looked the other way. Dubell shook his head irritably.

  The Albon knights had by now arrived in force. There were about forty of them in the gallery now, guarding the arched doorways and the terrace windows, pacing the musicians' balconies, and watching the sorceress. The rest of their number were patrolling the palace with most of Thomas's men and the Cisternans.

  Behind the dais, Renier emerged from the wide oak door inset with panels of stained glass. It was the gallery entrance to the solar where the royal family had retired to fight things out. He walked up to Thomas and said softly, "Roland wanted to put her under arrest, but Ravenna has talked him out of it. Apparently she's in favor of giving the sorceress the audience she wants, and trying to settle it quietly."

  Thomas thought wearily, Yes, Renier, tell me all about how the anointed King still can't win an argument with his mother. He said, "Really."

  Renier either did not recognize the sarcasm or ignored it out of habit. "My guess is they'll give her the audience."

  Thomas eyed him. "Very likely. I suppose, in the long run, it is better than going to war with her in the middle of the palace, killing everyone who stumbles into the way."

  As Galen Dubell turned back to them, Renier asked, "Dr. Dubell, could you tell what that creature was?"

  The old sorcerer nodded, gesturing back toward the ruin of the stage. "It wasn't fay. It was a construction of wood and animal bone, animated by a very powerful spell, called a golem. I'm not sure, but I imagine it was designed to resist anything the weight and size of a pistol ball. It's a relatively new technique which I believe will come in quite handy on the battlefield once it's perfected. Doesn't help at all for cannonballs, though. The combination of the weight and size..." Dubell recollected himself and shook his head. "But that is neither here nor there."

  "How did it get past the wards?" Thomas asked, looking at the heap of black powder.

  Dubell met his eyes frankly. "I've done some work with the wards, nothing that should weaken them. They shouldn't have let this creature pass through. I believe something has affected the ward structure, making the gaps their continual movement creates larger, making those gaps appear in locations predictable to someone. It would take an intimate knowledge of the construction of the wards, at least as great a knowledge as Dr. Surete had, but it would be possible. And, perhaps more disturbing, the spell that caused the golem to shape-change from the appearance of a man to that of the creature we saw here would have to be actuated by someone close at hand."

  Slowly, Thomas said, "You mean the sorcerer was here, in the gallery."

  "Or an assistant, who carried in the charm designed to trigger the golem. I have looked for Grandier's power-signature, but the ether in this room is free of it." Dubell nodded to himself. "Yes, I believe it was only an assistant who was here tonight."

  "What a chance to take," Renier said sourly. "There was a Parscen witchman who tried to cause trouble last year. Surete said there was a disturbance in the wards, and had some of us come with him while he tracked it to the source. We found the witchman hiding in an empty house in the Philosopher's Cross, sitting on the floor and crying like a baby. Surete said he must have tried to do a sending against someone in the palace, but the wards stopped it and followed his magic back to him and took his mind away. We knew that he tried something because he had more witch-poisons and hair amulets on him than you can imagine, but it didn't help him at all."

  Dubell's attention had gone back to Kade; his expression was worried. As well it might be, Thomas thought. Had the golem been activated by a confederate of Grandier's or by Kade herself? He nodded to Kade, who was still wandering the stage. "Did she tell you why she wanted an audience with Roland?"

  "No." Dubell was silent a moment. "Her abilities here, in the mortal world, are not as great as when she is in Fayre, and it is difficult to fatally wound her with anything other than a weapon of iron, but... It appeared the creature was attacking her?"

  "Yes," Thomas admitted.

  "I hope so, for all our sakes."

  The door to the solarium opened and one of the stewards emerged, looking harried and somewhat the worse for wear. He hesitated, then approached Thomas and Renier. He said, "His Majesty will see the sorceress now."

  Thomas said, "Good. Go and tell her."

  The steward blanched visibly.

  Thomas relented. "Very well, I'll tell her."

  As Thomas approached Kade looked up, a strange creature not at all like the child he barely remembered, or the fifteen-year-old girl in the portrait. He said, "His Majesty will see you now."

  She lifted her brows. "Will he?"

  "Yes."

  "And I thought he would be so glad to see me he'd have run out into my arms long before this." There was a bitterness underneath the light irony in her voice.

  "You were mistaken."

  "I suppose." She shrugged, abandoning repartee with a disconcerting abruptness.

  Thomas turned and walked back toward the solarium's door without looking to see if she followed.

  After a moment she caught up with him. "This isn't turning out right at all," she muttered.

  He glanced down at her. "Oh? Who did you plan for the Arlequin to kill?"

  She snorted. "You don't really believe that. And I don't kn
ow who sent it so you won't find out from me." Her mouth quirked. "Oh, was I supposed to pale and let something slip at that point? I'm sorry, I was thinking of something else."

  Thomas didn't slam the door of the solar open with any more force than necessary, and bowed her in with elaborate courtesy.

  The old solar wasn't used much, and the three huge windows covering the further wall had already been shuttered by painted panels in preparation for winter. The scene on the panels was a lurid traditional hunting landscape, subtly at odds with the other paintings on the oak-sheathed walls, the hangings of brocaded satin and striped silk, and the delicately carved furniture. Thomas remembered that this room was one of those that had been redecorated after the death of Roland's father; the painted panels reflected the old king's taste, and had probably been left unaltered by mistake. He thought Ravenna might have chosen the room for that rather than its convenience to the gallery.

  Roland was slumped in his chair in a sulk, Denzil seated beside him. Falaise's face was still a little reddened under the powder, as if she had been weeping from anger rather than hysteria. She had chestnut hair and blue eyes, and her natural prettiness had been transformed by her coiffure and costume into fashionable beauty. She wore a blue gown trimmed with gold ribbons and seed pearls, and against the somber colors of the rest of the room she looked like an orchid thrown into a dirty alley. Ravenna was the only one who appeared calm. Her hands were busy on her embroidery and she didn't look up at their arrival.

  There was a stiff silence in the room and the dregs of a bitter argument lay heavy in the air.

  Thomas realized it was his duty to announce Kade, the steward having apparently seized the opportunity to escape. Sensing that calling her "the evil fay sorceress" would probably please her no end, he said, "The Princess Katherine Fontainon," then moved to take his place at Ravenna's side.