The Element of Fire

by Martha Wells

  "No, I am not," Dontane said, looking away in disgust.

  Had he hesitated, deciding how to answer? "Is he a sorcerer?" Thomas asked Kade.

  She dug a moment in the pocket of her smock, and when she drew her hand out her fingers were covered with a dark powdery substance. She touched her forefinger carefully to the corner of each eye, then looked up at Dontane.

  He smiled, scornfully. "Well, witch?"

  She held his eyes a moment, then said, "I think he knew what I was doing."

  Dontane snorted derision and looked away. Watching him carefully, Thomas asked, "And what was that?"

  "Putting gascoign powder in my eyes. If he had been using a spell, or if there had been a spell on him, I would see it. It doesn't prove he isn't a sorcerer."

  Dontane smiled. "Alchemical powders are hardly a secret."

  "Maybe," Thomas agreed. He had heard of gascoign powder as well, but that explanation for Kade's actions hadn't immediately leapt to mind. If Dontane wasn't trained in the craft of sorcery, he had at least been much around those who were. "Where's Grandier keeping himself these days?"

  "Who? I don't know the name." It was said admirably, with just the right amount of confusion.

  Thomas smiled. "Then you must have been under a bushel. Everyone else knows it" After Dr. Braun's murder, rumor had spread out of control in court circles and Urbain Grandier's name had been prominent, though without any real detail.

  Dontane's expression froze and for a moment he looked dangerous, and not at all like the drunken puppies that Castero had herded out.

  Dangerous, Thomas thought, but weak, like Lestrac, Someone's useful tool. He said, "You will be glad to know that I am extending the hospitality of the palace to you."

  "You'll regret this." Dontane had gathered up the remains of his faade, and spoke with drunken arrogance.

  "I'm sure one of us will," Thomas agreed.

  * * *

  It was evening by the time they returned to the palace. The rain had stopped but the clouds still obscured the stars and the waning moon. Thomas had seen the prisoners settled in the Cisternan Barracks, with Dontane in one of the cells specially warded against the use of sorcery. Then he set off through the corridor within the outer wall toward the King's Bastion. He wanted to find Lucas and hear what they had found at Gambin's house, though he suspected it wouldn't be much. The answers he needed would have to be pried out of Dontane. It was pure luck they had managed to catch him at all.

  Pure luck, and Kade, who had disappeared again after they passed through the Prince's Gate, taking her confused motives with her. She couldn't be here simply to cause trouble. Thomas might have realized Lestrac's hidden room was there without her help, but he would never have gotten into it in time to question the dying noble.

  He climbed the rough-cut stone staircase that angled up into the King's Bastion. The tapestry-concealed entrance on the third floor gave onto a long central mirror-lined gallery, which was unusually crowded and noisy for this time of night.

  Thomas made his way past a group of loudly talking courtiers and saw the cause of the excitement.

  Denzil was dueling with Aristofan, Queen Falaise's poet-companion. They had stripped to their shirts and were stalking each other up and down the length of the candlelit room. The young poet was intent but breathing hard, and was obviously having the more difficult time. Denzil, his blond hair tied back, was moving with easy grace and confidence. It was the social event of the night, the women watching from behind fluttering fans, the men commenting on the performance and quietly placing wagers.

  Thomas joined Lucas, who was watching from the sidelines with the old Count of Duncanny and a few other bystanders. "How did it start?" Thomas asked him.

  Lucas shrugged. "The boy accused Denzil of insulting the Queen in some way and Denzil challenged him. It's all very mysterious. Neither will say exactly what the insult was."

  Arms folded and eyes critical, the old count said, "I don't think they know."

  Most duels were sparked by boredom. Courtiers and city-dwelling nobles with little to do except drink, gamble, and argue fought over everything from their wives' honor to the score of card games. This one had a certain impromptu look; there were no seconds and they were fighting in the flickering inadequate light of the long gallery.

  Face shining with exertion, Aristofan was quick to take advantage of the openings in Denzil's guard, but his blade never seemed to connect. After a few moments, Thomas recognized Denzil's technique, which was one he had often used himself for training inexperienced swordsmen. Denzil was completely controlling the fight by maintaining a constant distance between himself and the young poet. Denzil was the taller man, and with his longer reach and better control, Aristofan hadn't even a chance of wounding him.

  The Duke of Alsene was using a special dueling sword with a black metal cup hilt that matched his main gauche. Thomas noticed Aristofan was using a businesslike dueling rapier. "Where did he get that sword?" He looked at Lucas.

  Lucas shifted uncomfortably. "You should have seen the one I took away from him. The boy was going to try to defend himself with a piece of jewelry."

  Thomas snorted. "Getting sentimental in our old age, are we?"

  "Won't help," the count said quietly.

  Thomas sensed movement near him and looked down to find Kade Carrion at his elbow again, watching the fight with a faint look of contempt. He was beginning to wonder if the woman was intentionally following him. As if aware her presence had been noted, she asked, "What's this about?"

  Several nearby watchers looked around at the shabby figure of the sorceress in surprise, having not realized she was there until that moment. Thomas said, "Possibly the Queen's honor, possibly nothing. Public opinion is divided at the moment."

  She glanced up at him suspiciously. "Oh."

  Denzil was continuing to play with Aristofan, turning the duel into a cat-and-mouse game Thomas began to find repellent. He should end it. Bastard.

  Kade asked suddenly, "Are the rumors about Denzil and Roland true?"

  Thomas automatically glanced around to see if any of Denzil's tale-bearing friends were within earshot. Roland had a morbid fear of idle talk, and what the gossips would make of Kade's innocent question would reach his ears in no time. Her presence had cleared the immediate vicinity of everyone except himself, Lucas, and the Count of Duncanny, who was a staunch supporter of Ravenna's faction, and Thomas didn't see any real reason not to answer her question. "If they are, it isn't because of any affection or desire on Denzil's part, at least." He had always seen Roland and Denzil's attachment as a strange sort of parasitic relationship on both sides, and he found himself searching for a way to explain it. "And I don't think it matters. Denzil's real control over Roland is the friendship they had when they were boys. If Roland had other favorites, or even if he managed to notice Falaise's existence for once, it would mean taking his attention away from Denzil, which Denzil can't allow. Roland must know how easy it is for a king to attract admirers; Denzil doesn't want him to discover how easy it would be to use a rival against him."

  Denzil was apparently finding the fight as it was boring. He stepped back, tossing away his main gauche and drawing a second one from his sash. The hilt on the long dagger was overelaborate and the blade looked oddly heavy.

  A moment later this was explained as Denzil pressed a hidden catch on the weapon's hilt. Two metal rods popped out of the central blade and snapped into positions at acute angles to it. Their movement revealed that the center blade had a serrated edge.

  The Count of Duncanny shook his head in disgust and walked away.

  Kade squinted, frowning. "What is that?"

  "It's for breaking blades," Thomas explained.

  "I thought that's what quillions were for."

  Thomas said dryly, "Obviously we were all mistaken."

  Aristofan shifted his stance and adjusted his grip on his rapier. The weapon was obviously heavier than what he was used to, but it still woul
dn't hold up against the main gauche's serrated edge. Aristofan and Denzil circled each other.

  "You're about to lose a blade," Thomas told Lucas.

  "I've been doing this twenty years and I never needed anything like that," Lucas said, exasperated. "This isn't a duel; it's a murder. That young idiot ought to give over."

  "It would look bad. People would talk." Thomas's voice was heavy with irony.

  Lucas made an impatient gesture. "He'd be alive to hear them. He's only a poet; why should he care what people say?"

  "Everyone does," Kade said.

  Thomas looked down at her and saw the tension in the way she was standing, the intent look in her gray eyes, and realized what she was about to do. He decided to let her.

  Aristofan attempted a desperate parry and Denzil trapped the boy's sword in his elaborate main gauche and snapped the blade. The Duke's first slash opened a long cut on Aristofan's cheek; his second never landed.

  Kade slammed into Denzil from the side. He staggered and twisted away from her, landing heavily. Before she could leap on him, Thomas caught up with her from behind and pulled her out of the way. Denzil leapt to his feet, threw down his sword, and started toward her.

  Thomas shoved him backward and said, "Temper, my lord. Take them one at a time."

  They were treated to a good view of Denzil with the veneer of civility stripped away. "How dare that bitch interfere with me?" he shouted.

  Aristofan had fallen to the floor and was pressing his arm to his face, trying to staunch the blood flow. A couple of watching servants ran forward to help him.

  "I'll do more than interfere with you, posturing monkey," Kade sneered at the infuriated Denzil. "Why don't you take on someone with a chance against you?"

  "There's a thought," Thomas remarked pleasantly.

  Denzil focused on him and his expression changed. He smiled and gestured back toward the fallen poet. "Is that the problem, Captain? Am I usurping your duty?"

  They regarded each other for a moment, long enough to realize the entire chamber had fallen silent. Thomas turned and saw Roland standing in the doorway at the far end of the room, his attendants grouped around him. After a moment of angry contemplation, the King strode forward and shouted, "What is this?"

  "What do you think it is?" Kade asked him with withering contempt.

  Roland turned a slightly darker shade of red, embarrassment added to anger, and said, "You will all stop this immediately."

  There was some shuffling among the spectators as they tried to look as if they were obeying. The main figures in the drama simply stood there and stared at him.

  Roland looked at Denzil and started to speak, then abruptly wheeled and stormed out of the room. Denzil recovered his sword and went after him without even a glare for anyone else.

  * * *

  As Thomas expected, Lucas and the others had found nothing incriminating at Gambia's house that had any bearing on Urbain Grandier. They had brought the body and its effects back to the palace and Galen Dubell had promised to examine them.

  Thomas had gone out to the portico that extended off the third floor to take a shortcut across to the main part of the building when Kade caught up with him.

  She asked loudly, "Why did you stop me?"

  He turned to face her. The threatened afternoon storm had never produced more than a light rain, but the evening breeze was damp and strong, rocking the lamps hanging from the columns and tearing at her hair. He asked, "Why did you let me?"

  He watched her mentally back up to begin again. She demanded, "What did Denzil mean by 'usurping your duty'?"

  She could hear it from anyone, and was perfectly capable of badgering him about it for hours. He said, "Queen Falaise had a lover, a young stupid man like Aristofan, nearly helpless with a sword. He became too arrogant, she sent him away, and he insulted her in front of important witnesses. I killed him."

  Kade turned that over for a moment. Her eyes narrowed. "You wanted to stop the duel."

  "Yes." In spite of everything, he was surprised. For someone who leapt to conclusions as often as she did, her leaps were fairly accurate.

  She stared at him. "You bastard, if you want to kill Denzil, have the guts to do it yourself; don't use me for it."

  It was foolish to be angry with her, but Thomas found himself saying tightly, "If you don't want to be used, then don't open yourself to it by behaving stupidly and leaving other people to pick up the pieces. You can't play the spoiled witless child all your life."

  "Well it's better than what you're playing at, isn't it?"

  "I wouldn't know, having never been so lacking in initiative that I had to act like a raving idiot to get what I wanted."

  As Kade was drawing breath to answer, there was a crash beneath their feet as a glass-paned door was flung violently open on the balcony of the floor below. Both of them flinched.

  "My lord--" Denzil's voice said.

  "Don't call me that, not while we're alone." It was Roland.

  Thomas remembered that this terrace was directly above the balcony of one of Roland's private solars. He and Kade regarded each other in silence. They could hardly object to each other's eavesdropping, Thomas supposed, having just come to the mutual conclusion that they were both too despicable to live in polite company anyway.

  Denzil asked, "Are you all right?"

  "You ask me that?"

  The voices below had grown softer. Thomas took a silent step forward to the railing to hear more clearly. After a moment Kade joined him.

  "What? Were you worried?" Denzil's voice had a laugh in it. "That was barely worth the effort."

  "You take too many chances. But you should have left that boy alone. He's nothing." Roland was oblivious to the fact that Aristofan was perhaps a year or two older than himself.

  "He insulted me. And you should thank me for ridding you of him. He's your wife's lover."

  "He's nothing. All the married women in the city have lovers. My mother has lovers. God knows my father had worse habits--"

  "Don't. If your honor means nothing to you, it means something to me."

  And how is Roland's honor affected by an insult to Denzil, Thomas wondered. Where was Dr. Dubell to ask the pertinent question?

  "Sometimes I think you're the only one."

  Denzil did not dispute this. "I'm sorry I upset you. That bitch of a sorceress--"

  "Is my sister."

  At his side Thomas sensed Kade stiffen.

  "And where was she when you needed her?"

  "She ran away. I loved her and she left me behind without a second thought."

  Kade shivered once, a slight movement with all the intensity of a restrained convulsion. Thomas found himself unwillingly sympathetic. Roland had been the Crown Prince; his exiled sister could hardly have taken him with her, as if they were farm children escaping a harsh master. And the choice to stay with him in the city had been taken from her by Ravenna's command.

  Kade drew back as if to leave. Impulsively, Thomas put a hand on top of hers on the railing and she froze. At that moment an army probably couldn't have kept her on that balcony by force, but that gentle touch seemed enough to hold her there.

  "Who stayed with you?" Denzil asked.

  "You did. I'd have died without someone."

  "Then it's a good thing she wasn't all you had." There was silence, then a creak as one of the men below opened the door.

  Thomas released Kade's hand, and she vanished back through the archway.

  Chapter Eight

  KADE FOUND HERSELF in need of company. Falaise was the only person she could think of who might possibly be willing to put up with her, and Kade was in such a mood that she was willing to put up with moping, which was probably what Falaise was doing at the moment.

  The Queen's apartments were on the fifth level of the King's Bastion, but when Kade came up the stairs to where she could see the doorway of the first antechamber, it looked like a disturbed anthill. Gentlewomen and maidservants were running in an
d out, and Queen's guards were stalking around outside the door. That doesn't look promising, Kade thought. She didn't particularly want to start another sensation, so she crept back down the stairs and out of sight.

  The next stairwell gave onto the cathedral-like entrance of an old gallery, and she stopped in front of the oaken doors carved with willows and birds of paradise. This was the hall where the royal portraits were kept, "where the family was interred," as some long-ago courtier had referred to it.

  After a moment, Kade went inside.

  It was cold with the chill of marble, fine wood laid over stone, and gilded frames, and it felt barren as rooms that have never been lived in feel. The hall lanterns illuminated ancestors, distant relations, and the notables of this or other ages, which Kade passed by without more than a cursory glance. There was only one set of portraits here anyone ever came to see. They were the Greancos, the portraits of the royal family.

  Other painters had done royal portraits which were scattered about the palace or presented to favored nobles, but Greanco had been a seventh son of a seventh son, with half his mind in the Otherworld. Having a portrait done by him was to take a chance at having one's soul revealed. Fortunately for Greanco, this held a fascination for Ravenna and her family that had kept him at court longer than anyone else would have put up with him.

  Knowing the effect and having felt it before didn't help; shivers ran up Kade's back as she stood beneath those canvas eyes. She had to fight the conviction that there were people watching her who disappeared when she turned to face them.

  She stopped before the portraits of the old kings: Ravenna's father and grandfather. Their hard eyes stared down at her. Both men had been beleaguered warrior kings, and the primary impressions the portraits gave were those of guile and strength. Undoubtedly they would have found Ravenna a proper daughter; her strong features were echoed in theirs. But what would they think of Roland, Kade wondered. Or herself, for that matter? Probably not much, she decided. Why Ravenna's father had chosen to settle the ruling right on Fulstan and not on her was a mystery. Perhaps he had not entirely trusted her, or perhaps he mistook independence for willfulness. Kade had heard that Fulstan had always put on a good show for his father-in-law. It hadn't mattered in the end, and Ravenna had had the kingdom in reality, if not in name. We all make mistakes, she told the portrait silently, as she moved on. But some of us have to live with them.