by Martha Wells
Madeline had taken a seat in the armchair, her legs curled up under her dressing gown. The other servants had gone to check the grounds for more intruders and to prepare a pyre for the carpet and their late visitor. Only Crack had stayed behind, watching worriedly.
"It didn’t come in a coach, did it?" Madeline asked suddenly. "How did it follow us?"
"It didn’t, apparently." Nicholas nodded to Crack, who shifted uneasily and explained, "Devis saw it walk up the road to the drive when he was coming back from the stables."
"So someone dropped it off earlier and it waited until it saw us arrive," she said thoughtfully. "I wonder, was that Octave at the ball tonight or was it this thing? No, that can’t be right. The ward would have detected it, or the familiar above the doorway. It has the invitation, but the real Octave must have given the creature his outer clothes, and forgotten to take the invitation away."
"True." Nicholas was taking a sample of the gray powder, scooping it carefully into a glass vial. Crack came over to help secure the stopper with a bit of wire. "We’ll take this when we visit Arisilde tomorrow and see what he makes of it."
"If he’s of any help." Madeline rubbed her face tiredly. "There’s no telling what state he’s in."
Nicholas rested his arms on his knees. His back was aching and it had been a long night. "He’s got to be of some help. Someone is taking an alarming sort of interest in us." He took the vial of powder back from Crack and set it on the table. It caught the candlelight as if it were more diamond dust than sand, but the reflection it gave off was the blue of Octave’s spell light. "A very alarming sort of interest, indeed."
Nicholas gave Madeline his arm as she stepped down from their coach. She smothered an unladylike yawn, glanced around the street, and winced. Nicholas couldn’t agree more. The Philosopher’s Cross was not a pleasant prospect so early in the morning. Under the cold dawn light, with its customarily colorful inhabitants still abed, the place resembled nothing so much as a theater after a long night’s performance: empty of magic, with all the tawdry underpinnings of the stage exposed, and the hall cluttered with trash left behind by the audience.
It was called the Philosopher’s Cross because two great thoroughfares met here: the Street of Flowers and the Saints Procession Boulevard. The Street of Flowers ran all the way up to the Palace wall and down to the river, to intersect with Riverside Way, and the Boulevard connected the Carina Gate and the Old City Gate, at opposite ends of Vienne’s sprawl. It had once been the only street that bisected the city, uninterrupted by canals or masses of decaying slums, failing to suddenly dead end into a tiny alley, but the building projects of the last century had added a new bridge across the river and cut six new streets through crumbling neighborhoods.
Nicholas signaled their coachman to wait and Crack climbed down from the box to accompany them. It was barely after sunrise and the few people who were stirring were well-bundled against the early morning cold and hurrying to their destinations. The remains of stone stalls under the promenades revealed there had once been a great market here, but the area had long since given way to cabarets, coffeehouses, mazes of small alleys and decaying buildings. Some were ancient structures with a certain fallen grandeur, solidly built with chipped and weathered statuary along their gables. Others were new slapdash affairs of cheap brick, leaning slightly as if they meant to topple at any moment. All were darkened with soot and smoke. When the sun was well up, the streets would be crowded not only with old women hawking everything from herbals to hats, but with the beggars, musicians, lunatics, poor sorcerers, witches, artists, and gypsies that the area was famous for.
Crack went a short distance down the filthy alley and opened the door there. Nicholas and Madeline followed more slowly, picking their way carefully through the muck. There was no one watching the tenement’s entrance; the stool in the tiny cupboard where the concierge would normally sit was empty, though the litter of apple cores and crumpled penny sheets around it showed the abandonment was only temporary. The cramped and dirty stairs were lit only by a shattered skylight, visible as a dim circle of light several stories up.
Madeline’s mouth twisted wryly. "Poor Arisilde. But I suppose most of the time he doesn’t notice."
Nicholas didn’t comment. She was probably right and the reason why had been a nagging worry for some time. Arisilde Damal was undoubtedly the most powerful sorcerer for hire in Ile-Rien and he had the added distinction of often failing to remember what he had been hired for, so if he was caught and questioned his evidence would be next to useless. But Arisilde had been on a one-way journey for some years now and Nicholas knew it was only a matter of time before he arrived at his destination. With Crack going ahead to scout the way, they climbed the stairs.
They reached the narrow landing at the top floor and Crack knocked on the door for the garret apartment. The fact that the door was so readily available was a good sign and indicated that Arisilde was receiving callers. If he had been indisposed the portal would have been far more elusive.
There was the sound of what might be furniture being shifted within, then the door was opened by the sorcerer’s ancient Parscian servant. The man was wearing faded tribal robes and a convincingly evil leer. When he recognized Crack, he dropped the leer and waved them in. Crack stepped aside to wait for them on the landing; he trusted Arisilde, as Nicholas did, but after last night extra caution was called for.
They went down a dingy low-ceilinged little hall and into a long room. The far wall was covered with windows, some draped with patchy patterned velvets and others bare to the dreary sky. In the yellowed ceiling were two small iron-rimmed domes, each a multipaned skylight. Faded carpets covered the floor and there were piles of books and stray papers, jugs, glass vials, bags and little ceramic containers crowding every available surface. There were plants too, herbs growing out of various bottles and jars and more exotic vines that climbed the walls and twined up into the skylights. The room was warm and the air thick with the smell of must and foliage.
The most powerful sorcerer in the city, perhaps in all Ile-Rien, was seated in an armchair with stuffing leaking out of the cushions, gazing up at them with vaguely benevolent eyes. His hair was entirely white and tied back from a face that revealed his youth. Nicholas said, "Hello, Arisilde."
The Parscian was clearing a chair for Madeline by shifting the papers stacked on it to the floor. Arisilde smiled dreamily and said, "How very good to see you both. I hope your father is well, Nicholas?"
"Very well, Arisilde. He sends you his regards." As a talented student at Lodun, Arisilde had been part of the cadre of intellectuals who had surrounded Edouard Viller, and had collaborated with him on some of his greatest work. He had also been present at Edouard’s execution, but Arisilde’s hold on present reality had never been too firm and his dissipations over the past years had weakened it greatly.
"And the lovely Madeline. How is your grandmother, my dear?"
Madeline looked taken aback. Nicholas was surprised himself, though he didn’t allow it to show. Madeline was nothing if not reticent about her family and her past; he hadn’t known she had a grandmother still living. If, considering who was asking the question, the woman was still living. An odd expression on her face, Madeline managed to reply, "She’s, quite well, thank you, Arisilde."
The sorcerer smiled up at Nicholas again. His eyes were violet and had once held a lively intelligence. Now their only expression was one of vague contentment and the pupils were so small they resembled pinpricks. He said, "I hope you didn’t come for anything important."
Nicholas had to close his eyes briefly, summoning patience and controlling the desire to swear violently. Arisilde must have forgotten about the Duchess’s ball last night and their plan for her Bisran gold, even though he had been the one to investigate the house’s sorcerous defenses and discover how to circumvent its ward. Nevertheless, Nicholas stepped forward, drawing out a swatch cut from the coat that had taken the brunt of the ghoul’s attack and
a glass vial containing a portion of the golem’s remains. "This first. I wanted you to look at these and tell me what you thought." Among the clutter on the little table at the sorcerer’s elbow were two opium pipes, an old fashioned tinderbox, a thin iron bodkin fixed in a handle, and a small brass lamp. There was also a bowl of strawberries so soaked with ether that the stink of it in the air burned Nicholas’s throat. They had been lucky to find Arisilde even this coherent.
"Ahh." Arisilde’s long white fingers touched the fabric gently. "How very strange." He took the vial and held it up to catch the candlelight. "Someone’s made a golem. A nasty one, too."
"It came to my home and behaved rather mysteriously," Nicholas said, hoping to engage the sorcerer’s curiosity.
But the light in Arisilde’s eyes was already fading. He lowered the vial slowly, setting it aside. "I’ll get to it soon, I promise."
Nicholas sighed inwardly and said only, "Thank you, Arisilde." There was no point in arguing; Arisilde would either do it or not and that was that. Nicholas had held back other samples to take to practitioners whose talents were lesser but more reliable, but he had hoped to get Arisilde’s opinion. He hesitated now, wondering whether he should broach the topic of the gold at all. This was for Edouard, Ari. You could have remembered it. He was a father to you as well. He said, "Do you remember what we were going to discuss today, Ari? I’ve got the gold stamped with the Bisran Imperial seal, and the forged documents are finally ready. Do you remember you were going to help me place them in Count Montesq’s Great House?"
"Montesq." Arisilde’s violet eyes darkened. In an entirely different voice, he said, "I remember Montesq."
Nicholas watched him intently. If destroying Count Montesq, the man who had destroyed Edouard Viller, would help bring Ari out of his daze, then it was doubly worth the risk. He said, "Yes, Montesq. Do you remember the plan we discussed?"
"That, yes, I’ve been working on that. Very powerful protective wards on that Great House. Found that out when I tried to burn it down, years ago, didn’t I? Must be careful, mustn’t leave a trace, going in or coming out. That’s it, isn’t it? We put the Bisran gold and the papers there, then tell the Prefecture, and Montesq is executed for treason." Arisilde looked pleased. The dangerous light had faded and he sounded more like himself. Nicholas didn’t find it an improvement.
"That’s vaguely it." Nicholas turned to Madeline for assistance, but Arisilde said, frowning, "While I’m thinking of it, you are looking into these goings-on, aren’t you?"
"What goings-on?"
"Oh, you know, everyone is talking about it." The sorcerer waved a languid hand unhelpfully. Fortunately the servant understood the gesture and fetched a folded paper from one of the piles of debris and brought it to Nicholas. "Yes, he’s right, it’s in the front page of that," Arisilde explained.
It was the Review of the Day, the only one of the penny sheet dailies, other than the Court Record or the Lodun Literary Comment, that was occasionally anything more than rabble-rousing nonsense. The title of the piece taking up most of the front page was "Strange Occurrence in Octagon Court."
It described a young girl called Jeal Meule, who had apparently disappeared as she walked home from her work at a dressmaker’s. The strangest part of the "strange occurrence" seemed to be that the girl had vanished twice. She hadn’t returned home from work and her mother had canvassed the neighbors searching for her, in greater and greater anxiety as the evening wore on. Yet some children and old people who inhabited Octagon Court during the day had reported speaking to Jeal the next afternoon. They said the girl had seemed to be in a state of terror and that no one could persuade her to go home. Some had seen Jeal speak to an old woman of vague description and after that the girl had vanished for good. The dress she had been wearing had been found in the stretch of park land between the western expanse of the old city wall and the gas factory. And everyone knows what that means, Nicholas thought grimly. The family’s only hope was that the body would be caught in the water gates and discovered before it washed out of the city.
The penny sheet writer had tried to link the unfortunate event to the disappearance of three children from Seise Street, a poorer neighborhood on the far side of the city from Octagon Court. The children had been seen speaking to an old woman of roughly the same vague description before they had vanished without a trace.
Madeline had come to look and was reading over Nicholas’s shoulder. She said, "It’s terrible, but it’s fairly common, Arisilde. If the man stays in the city, they’ll hunt him down soon enough."
"The man?" Arisilde’s brows rose.
"The person who lured the children away," she explained. "It’s a man dressed as an old woman, obviously."
"Ahh. I see. Are you looking into it then, Madeline?"
Nicholas folded the paper. The date indicated it was several days old. "The Prefecture is looking into it, Arisilde. People who do that sort of thing are usually mad as well as clumsy. He’ll make a mistake and they’ll catch him easily."
"Oh, well, then. But. . . ." Arisilde frowned, his violet eyes fixed on some faraway point.
"Yes?" Nicholas asked, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice. It was possible Arisilde had seen something in the smeared print that he and Madeline had missed.
"Nothing." The dreamy look was back. "Would you like to stay for coffee? It’s a delicacy in Parscia, you know, and Isham is wonderful with it."
As they went down the stairs later, Madeline said, "Sometimes I think Arisilde believes you work for the Prefecture, like Ronsarde."
"He might," Nicholas admitted. "He knew that as a boy I admired Ronsarde. If he thinks Edouard’s alive, then he might think anything."
The coach took them next to a street near the southern river docks, where all the various river cargo lines had their offices and tall warehouses with steeply-pitched barrel roofs clustered behind the smaller buildings.
They had speculated about Octave’s motives and possible accomplices or employers on the drive from the Philosopher’s Cross, but it hadn’t done them much good. We need facts to speculate, Nicholas thought, and facts are something we’re woefully short of. "I want to find Octave again before he finds us," he was saying as the coach drew up at the end of the street. "I sent a message to Reynard this morning asking him to try to get some word of the man. If Octave really is a spiritualist." He opened the coach door and stepped down. The street was moderately busy with mid-morning traffic: horse-drawn vans and lighter passenger coaches trundled past and men of business and shoremen crossed by along the promenade. The breeze carried the smell of the river, alternately fresh and foul, and brought to mind again the missing girl Jeal Meule, and her probable fate.
"And the Duchess accepted him as such," Madeline pointed out as she stepped down from the coach and took his arm, "or he wouldn’t have been invited last night, and he certainly wouldn’t have been able to speak privately to her."
Nicholas signalled the coach to continue. Devis and Crack would take it to its customary spot in the stables around the corner and then Crack would join them in the warehouse. He said, "Granted, but if he is talking to dead relatives for the aristocracy, his name should at least be mentioned in some of the circles Reynard still has entrance to. We haven’t been much in society lately; that’s probably why we hadn’t heard something of him before." Nicholas had decided long ago not to risk entertaining at Coldcourt and he had no desire to maintain another house merely for partygiving. Fortunately, among the few members of fashionable society that he maintained contact with, this reticence was ascribed to his sensitivity about Edouard Viller’s death. Keeping a low profile also helped him maintain the Donatien persona, which was essential to his plans for Montesq.
"We should go to the theater tonight, then," Madeline said. "We can make more inquiries there. And besides, Valeria Dacine is performing Arantha and it should be marvelous."
They turned into the alley that led past the importers and cargo lines and down to the
back entrance of a warehouse that was owned by Nicholas under the name of Ringard Alscen. Nicholas unlocked the deceptively strong door and they passed inside.
He had other strongholds, because he didn’t believe in putting everything in one place, but this was by far the largest. The others were spread throughout the city and Madeline was the only one besides himself who knew the location of them all.
The door opened into an office where shelves stuffed with ledgers lined the walls and two men were playing cards on a battered trunk under the light of a hanging oil lamp, just like the offices of all the other warehouses along the street. But one of these men was Lamane and the other was one of Cusard’s sons. They both stood at Madeline’s presence.
Nicholas asked, "Is Cusard here?"
"Oh, aye," Lamane replied. "He hasn’t stirred. He says it makes him nervous, and he just has to sit there, looking at it."
"Does he?" Nicholas smiled. "In a while he will be spending it, or at least part of it. I think he’ll like that better."
They chuckled and Nicholas and Madeline went on through the inner door into the main part of the warehouse.
This was a massive chamber, several stories in height, with a vaulted ceiling that had been augmented by iron girders at some later date. Daylight entered through narrow windows high up in the walls and lanterns made pools of brighter light at intervals.
They crossed the stone-flagged floor between rows of trunks, crates, and barrels. The warehouse did real business for at least two of the smaller cargo lines along the river. Some of the things stored here were for businesses Nicholas owned under other names, though he was careful to keep Valiarde Imports from having any connection with this place. There were men working at the far end, loading a wagon that had pulled up to one of the large panel doors, and Nicholas spotted Crack among them, still keeping watch.