Above His Proper Station

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Anrel had avoided any contact with the Quandishman before, but his situation then had not been so perilous.

  There was no reason beyond simple humanity for Lord Blackfield to help Anrel, but that might be enough; after all, his self-proclaimed mission in Walasia was to put an end to black magic, and that implied a certain reluctance to countenance cruelty.

  And it wasn’t as if Anrel had a great many other choices open to him. He turned his steps toward Dezar House.

  By the time he arrived on the broad steps leading up to the grand front porch it was full night, though the orange glow of the burning Pensioners’ Quarter lit the sky a ghastly color and the smoke hid the stars. Flakes of ash drifted down occasionally, like pale gray snow.

  There could be little point in stopping the demons now; the Pensioners’ Quarter was obviously beyond saving. Anrel tried to ignore that as he lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall. After all, he still needed somewhere to stay, someone to tell him what had happened. He struggled to compose himself, to appear calm, to look as if he belonged in this expensive neighborhood. Once upon a time he would have been at home here, as a sorcerer’s son and a burgrave’s nephew, but that was a good many adventures ago; now he felt thoroughly out of place.

  A footman opened the door and peered out at him; Anrel essayed a small bow and tipped his hat. “Good evening, my good man,” he said. “I understand Lord Blackfield is in residence?”

  “Yes,” the footman acknowledged warily; he did not seem impressed by Anrel’s appearance, despite the good new clothes.

  “I would very much like to speak to him.”

  “Who shall I tell him is calling?”

  Anrel hesitated. He had been using various aliases for half a year now, most often Dyssan Adirane, but Lord Blackfield had been introduced to him by his real name, and would not know the others. He might recognize “Adirane” as the family name of Lord Dorias, indicating sorcerous ancestry, but he would have no reason to welcome any Dyssan Adirane.

  “Anrel Murau,” Anrel said. “We spoke in Alzur last year.”

  “Very good, sir. If you could wait on the porch, please?”

  Anrel frowned; he had hoped to at least be permitted into the front parlor. Perhaps his new clothes were less stylish than he had thought, or perhaps the smoke stains and other damage from the day’s events were worse than he had realized. “As you say,” he replied.

  There were two chairs and a bench on the porch, so at least he would not be forced to stand; he settled into the nearest chair and waited, gazing out into the street.

  Even here, in this expensive area of the city, the lamps were not lit tonight. No carriages were out of their coach houses, no ladies promenading. Light spilled from a hundred windows, though; at least the shutters were not all closed, as they had been in Catseye.

  Finally, though, just as Anrel was beginning to wonder whether Lord Blackfield might have sent a messenger running out the back to fetch a watchman, the door opened again and a tall old man, his snow-white hair pulled back in a long braid, leaned out. He wore unfamiliar livery in black and blue, with gold buttons.

  “Master Murau?” he said. He spoke with just the slightest trace of a Quandish accent.

  “Yes,” Anrel said, rising.

  “Lord Blackfield will see you now.”

  “Thank you.”

  Anrel followed as the Quandishman led him through a lavish entry hall, past fine marble statuary, across a magnificent Ermetian carpet, and up a broad staircase to the second floor, where he was ushered into a luxurious sitting room.

  Anrel felt an odd tingle as he stepped through the door from the stairwell into the sitting room, and realized he was passing through a set of wards—powerful ones, from the feel of them, but not directed against him.

  Once inside he found that the room smelled pleasantly of some faint perfume. The walls were papered in white and gold; the several chairs were upholstered in gold and green, and the various small tables were trimmed with gilt.

  Lord Blackfield was standing in the center of the room, a decanter of red wine in his hand; he was impeccably dressed in a green silken coat with exquisite Lithrayn lace at throat and cuffs, over a perfectly pressed white linen shirt and fawn-colored suede breeches. A heavy signet ring gleamed on the third finger of his right hand. His blond hair was elegantly styled, not a strand out of place. He made Anrel very aware of his own smoke-stained, rumpled appearance.

  He turned as Anrel entered, and picked up an empty glass. “Master Murau,” he said. “Would you care to sample this vintage? It’s a pleasant little thing from a village called Pordurim, somewhere in Vaun—not terribly sophisticated, but I find it suits me.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Anrel said as the white-haired man closed the sitting-room door behind him, leaving him alone with Lord Blackfield. “I would be happy to give it a try.”

  The big Quandishman poured as he spoke. “It’s been some time since I saw you; have you been well?” He handed Anrel the glass and looked at him expectantly.

  Anrel grimaced. “I am afraid my circumstances are sadly reduced, my lord.” He took a sip of the wine.

  Warmth spread through him and a magnificent taste lingered on his tongue; startled, he stared at the glass he held.

  “This is excellent wine,” he said.

  “Oh, do you think so? I’m so glad to hear you say that! You Walasians with your refined palates intimidate me; I am a mere barbarian, of course, but I thought it quite a good tipple, and I am delighted to hear that my opinion is not utterly without foundation.”

  “Not unfounded at all,” Anrel said, taking another sip. “From Vaun, you say?”

  “Somewhere in the western portion of that province, I believe.” He set the decanter on a nearby table, and for the first time it registered on Anrel that his host was not drinking. Thoughts of drugs and poison came immediately to mind, but he dismissed them; why would the Quandishman poison him without first hearing what he had to say?

  “Now,” Lord Blackfield said, “what brings you to my door? Much as I would like to believe this a social call, I cannot quite manage it. Our previous meeting was rather brief and not under the best of circumstances, as I recall.”

  “Alas, that’s true,” Anrel said. “I am here, my lord, because I do not know where else to go. My home for the past season and more has been burned to the ground by now, and the entire city seems to have gone mad. Brief as our acquaintance was in Alzur, you struck me as an honest and honorable man, and I hoped that you might tell me what has happened to cause this chaos.”

  “Burned, you say?”

  “Yes.” Anrel hesitated before explaining further.

  Before he could continue, Lord Blackfield said, “I can’t imagine that you were living in a bakery, so I must conclude you had taken refuge in the Pensioners’ Quarter—or is there some other disaster of which I had not yet been informed?”

  “There may well be, but I have been living in the Pensioners’ Quarter, yes.” He started to ask what the Quandishman had meant about living in a bakery, but then he remembered Ozrai Lovanniel’s ruined establishment in Harbinger Court. Had that been one manifestation of some larger phenomenon? Instead he asked more generally, “What has happened?”

  The big man gazed at him thoughtfully, then gestured toward a chair. “Have a seat, Master Murau, and allow me to refill your glass. I think we may have a great deal to tell each other.”

  11

  In Which Lord Blackfield Presents a Theory

  Regarding the Cost of Black Magic

  Despite Anrel’s impatience Lord Blackfield diverted or ignored every question, insisting that he must first hear Anrel’s own account of the day’s events, as seen by an inhabitant of the Pensioners’ Quarter. He sat across a small table from his guest, the wine decanter between them, and kept two glasses filled—though Anrel noticed that he filled his own far less often than he filled Anrel’s.

  The decanter was almost empty when Anrel finished his account
to his host’s satisfaction, and demanded, a little more bluntly than he intended, “Now answer my questions.”

  “Of course!” Lord Blackfield spread his hands. “Allow me one final query, and then I will do my best to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “A query, my lord?”

  “In your travels, or in Lume, have you by any chance encountered a man by the name of Revard Saruis? I believe he is a few years older than myself, and until perhaps two years ago he dwelt in a village called Darmolir, in Kerdery.”

  The name Darmolir was vaguely familiar, but Revard Saruis was not. Anrel shook his head. “I am afraid the name means nothing to me, my lord. But then, I have met many men who have not chosen to give me their names of late. Why are you seeking him?”

  Lord Blackfield waved a hand in dismissal. “A personal matter, nothing more. Now, ask what you will, and I will do my best to answer—and to save you the necessity of questions you might find awkward, let me first say that I hope you will be my guest tonight, and that you are welcome to remain under my roof for as long as I remain in Lume.”

  A wave of relief washed over Anrel. He would not be cast out into the street on this strange and hostile night. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “And if I may anticipate your next question, I assume you want to know what catastrophe has struck this city. I am afraid it is the price of Lord Allutar’s folly—or rather, not his alone, but of all the empire’s proud sorcerers.”

  Anrel frowned. “What do you mean, sir—my lord?” He wondered if perhaps he should have drunk less of that Vaunish vintage; since reaching Lume he had rarely been able to afford decent wine, and he feared he had lost his head for it.

  “You have much of it already, sir; you have simply not put the pieces together. You know that bread has been in short supply throughout much of the empire of late; you alluded to it yourself.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And you know that yesterday morning, not two days ago, the first bargeloads of fresh grain from Aulix arrived in the city, rushed here by the direct order of the emperor.”

  “I knew the grain arrived; I hadn’t known the emperor ordered it.”

  “Oh, yes. He fears that famine may inspire unrest, perhaps even open revolt, in the provinces, but the thought of unrest here in the capital does not merely frighten him, it terrifies him. In particular, he dreads what the Grand Council might do, should the populace rise against him. If the council were to side with the rebels, his position—his personal position—would become utterly untenable.”

  Anrel blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

  Indeed, he had taken for granted that no matter what happened, no matter what the Grand Council might do, no matter what follies or crimes the emperor might commit, the empire would in time return to the form it had taken for centuries, with the sorcerous nobility administering it and a nonsorcerous emperor ruling. He had simply not seen any alternative. The Grand Council might theoretically have the authority to change everything, but they did not have the actual power; the nobility, the armies, and the Emperor’s Watch could hardly be expected to meekly obey the council, certainly not to the point of overthrowing the emperor.

  But if the council put itself at the head of a starving, outraged mob …

  “Rest assured, His Imperial Majesty Lurias the Twelfth had thought of it. He will do anything he can to prevent a sustained revolt, and feeding the hungry mouths of Lume would do a great deal to calm the situation. He ordered that grain to be shipped with all haste, and let it be known that the barges were coming.”

  “How do you know this?” Anrel asked, suddenly suspicious. “Are you in the emperor’s confidence?”

  Lord Blackfield smiled. “Oh, no. While I am a Quandish magician, a landowner of some significance, and a hereditary Gatherman, I have nothing unique to offer His Imperial Majesty, nor have I made an effort to ingratiate myself at his court. If I had an interest in taking an active role in any government, I would surely have stayed in Ondine and taken part in my own, rather than coming here, would I not? However, there are those in the emperor’s palace, and no part of the court, who don’t mind talking to a harmless and amusing foreigner.”

  Anrel, tired and tipsy as he was, needed a few seconds to interpret this, but eventually asked, “You have spies among his servants?”

  “I prefer to say that I have made the acquaintance of members of the imperial household staff, and I take pleasure in their conversation.”

  “You’re spying for Quand!” Anrel burst out.

  Blackfield grimaced, and waved dismissively. “Oh, come now, Master Murau. I make no secret of my loyalties; did I not just say I am a Gatherman? Can you truly consider it spying when I am so open about it?”

  Anrel frowned. “A Gatherman?” He had learned Quandish during his four years in the court schools, and had read a great deal about Quandish history, but it took him a few seconds to make the connection.

  Quand had originally been the name applied to all lands outside the Old Empire; it was simply the Old Imperial word for “outside,” or “beyond the borders.” Only after that empire’s fall and the rise of the Walasian Empire in its place had the name come to be applied specifically to the peninsula and islands to the north and west, and then only because the many tribes and peoples in those lands had formed the Gathering—a body that consisted of a gathering of representatives from every town, tribe, and region. It had begun as a means to settle disputes among tribes without resorting to open war, but in time had taken on more and more responsibility, eventually becoming a national government. Only those places and peoples represented in the Gathering were considered Quandish; the other outlands, still far from united, were no longer distinguished from those eastern portions of the Old Empire that had rejected Walasian rule, and both the eastern outlands and the rebellious provinces were collectively known as the Cousins.

  In many ways the Gathering was much like the Grand Council—a representative body that was the final authority for a nation. The difference was that where the first Walasian Grand Council had established the empire and then disbanded, the Gathering had continued to meet and govern in its own name, rather than transferring its power to a caste of sorcerers and a ruling family.

  “Yes, a Gatherman,” Lord Blackfield said. “I have the honor to represent the town of Blackfield, in the district of Dragonshire, to the Gathering. I assure you, the emperor’s government is well aware of my identity, and has made no attempt to interfere with my collection of information.”

  That meant that Lord Blackfield was rather more than an ordinary sorcerer. “So you’re in Walasia representing the Quandish government?”

  “No, I am in Walasia representing the Lantern Society, of which I also have the honor to be a member.”

  “But you are in the imperial capital …”

  “As are a great many sorcerers who use black magic, up to and including the burgrave of Lume himself. I came here on behalf of the Lantern Society, not as a Gatherman. In either role, however, I find it useful to keep abreast of events, and the best method I have found for doing so is cultivating the company of servants and tradesmen—while I am sure these worthies are as capable of keeping secrets as anyone, they see no need to keep other people’s secrets, and are often all too glad to tell me what they have learned in observing their supposed betters. Sorcerers and officials who would never dare speak of certain matters to one another will happily chatter about them with their staff, or in the shops they visit.”

  “And the palace servants told you that the emperor was rushing that grain here to prevent unrest?”

  “Indeed they did.”

  That made perfect sense, and there was no reason for Anrel to argue the point further. “Very well, then,” he said. “What does that have to do with today’s events, or with black magic?”

  Lord Blackfield interlaced his fingers, and touched his index fingers to his lower lip. “Can you not guess?” he asked. “The grain arrived directly from the R
aish Valley in Aulix and was rushed to the bakers, so that they might restock their shelves with the bread that would fill the empty bellies of Lume. That was all as the emperor expected and desired. But—did you taste any of that bread your No-Nose Graun brought to the Pensioners’ Quarter?”

  “No,” Anrel said. “I didn’t taste it myself, but something was wrong with it; everyone who tasted it agreed. It was tainted somehow. That baker in Dragonclaw Street must have done something wrong, and thought he could salvage something from the ruin by selling No-Nose the spoiled bread.”

  Lord Blackfield shook his head. “The baker did nothing wrong.”

  “But the bread was foul!”

  “Because the flour from which it was made was befouled.”

  “How? Did someone poison one of the barges, perhaps? Ermetian agents, or some madman from the Cousins? Since you’re telling me this, I conclude it was not Quand’s doing …”

  “Not Quand’s, nor Ermetia’s, nor any foreign power’s—Walasia did this to itself. It was not the barges that were polluted, but the earth in which the wheat grew.”

  Despite his wine-muddled head, Anrel suddenly understood. “The Raish Valley—you said this was the result of Lord Allutar’s folly. You meant the black sorcery he performed last year, to restore the fertility of the Raish Valley.”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “The spell went wrong?” Anrel shuddered; he remembered all too well what could happen when a sorcerer’s spell went wrong. Another possibility occurred to him. “Could Urunar Kazien have done this somehow, when he was dying? An act of revenge?”

  Lord Blackfield shook his head again. “That poor boy had no idea how to affect the spell, and no power to do so. Nor, before you ask, did your friend Lord Valin have anything to do with it. This is simply a natural consequence of black magic when applied with insufficient safeguards. Do you think we of the Lantern Society want to eliminate black magic merely because we are a collection of high-minded idealists? No, we sound a warning because we see dangers that others refuse to acknowledge. Back in Alzur you heard me tell Lord Allutar there would be costs beyond Master Kazien’s life; I spoke the honest truth, though Allutar refused to recognize it.”