by Martha Wells
Ronsarde stepped forward and caught her hand, turning her away before she could get another look into the room. Nicholas quickly slid the doors closed and the secretary Viarn hastened to lock them.
"He didn’t . . . he didn’t. . ." the woman was still trying to say.
"I believe you," Ronsarde said to the hysterical woman, his voice firm. "Go to your home, mourn him and the others, and know that the accusations against him are vile lies, and in time he will be proved blameless."
The woman stared at him, as if she couldn’t quite comprehend what he was saying, but her breathing calmed and her eyes were less wild. When the other doctor came to lead her away, she went without protest, only craning her neck to look back at the closed doors.
Halle had followed the woman in and now stepped close to Ronsarde and said in a low voice, "She was the housekeeper here and the boy, the young sorcerer, was her son. When they discovered he had the talent for magic Lord Chaldome paid for his education and sent him to Lodun. He was being paid well for his services here, enough so that his mother had no need to work. It sounds as if he had absolutely no motive to feel anger toward the family or the servants."
Nicholas cleared his throat and said, "His father . . . ?"
"I thought of that," Halle said impatiently. "His father was a barman at a local wineshop, who died only a few years ago. The possibility that he was a bastard of Lord Chaldome—"
"Is not worth considering," Ronsarde finished. He looked around the ballroom again, his expression dark. "I greatly fear that this. . . charade has been designed to throw off pursuit long enough for our culprit to move to another city and begin his work again."
Nicholas said nothing. He wasn’t so sure that was the case. To throw off pursuit, yes, but not to cover an escape. He saw Lord Albier coming back toward them and murmured, "Watch out, gentlemen."
Lord Albier advanced on Ronsarde, saying, "Calming the woman’s hysterics with platitudes does her no good. Facing the facts—"
"I gave her the facts," Ronsarde said coldly. "You are the one who is deluding yourself. If you would be the only one to suffer from it, I would be happy to let you have your delusion. But the killing will continue, if not here, then somewhere else."
Nicholas moved away, leaving Ronsarde and Halle to argue with Albier. Madeline, he realized, had also disappeared, probably to pursue the search through the rest of the house. He felt fairly confident that she would find nothing.
Doing his best to stay unobtrusive, Nicholas made his own brief examination of the bodies of the unfortunate servants. The wounds on two of them were like those on the corpses found at Valent House, with the tattered, hideously stained clothing torn aside to reveal disembowelments, eyes gouged, rope marks on wrists and ankles. He chose one man and one woman, Nicholas noted. Impartial bastard. The others had been simply slaughtered, their throats cut. Only one large man, who by his coat and mud-stained trousers might have been one of the gardeners, had been killed by repeated blows to the head which had finally crushed his skull. The man must have fought or tried to escape. So he used two for necromancy, and the others had to be killed because. . . . Because they might have been able to swear to Merith Kahen’s occupation with some harmless pursuit during the time when he was supposed to be killing people in the Gabardin or planning magical attacks on the Courts Plaza.
Nicholas dropped the sheet on the last corpse. He didn’t know why he was doing this; he wasn’t discovering anything Halle wouldn’t be able to tell him.
"What are you doing?"
Nicholas turned on his heel, but the words weren’t to him. Rahene Fallier stood over Madele who was kneeling on the floor and lifting a sheet to peer at one of the bodies. Nicholas stood slowly, his back stiffening. He hadn’t known Fallier was here but he supposed it was inevitable. Despite his fall from grace in the palace, Fallier would still be working with the Prefecture. Nicholas started to move toward them.
Madele looked up at Fallier, her bright eyes wary, then she smiled, or at least showed her teeth. She said, "Think again."
Fallier stared down at her for a long moment then, though Madele had done nothing, or nothing obvious, he took a deliberate step back. Dressed in an impeccable dark suit and towering over the ragged old woman, he looked totally in command and it seemed an uneven contest. But Madele was the kind of woman who would fight like a feral animal when cornered and that wasn’t taking her power into account. The sorcerer adjusted his gloves, his expression revealing nothing, and said, "Who are you?"
Madele said, "I came with Sebastion," and grinned at him.
Nicholas had no time to wonder when Madele had had the chance to get on a first name basis with Inspector Ronsarde. Fallier growled, "That hardly answers my question."
She said, "It didn’t that, did it? Go on, now."
Fallier watched her a moment longer, his lips thinning with annoyance, then he gave her an edged smile and tipped his hat to her.
Nicholas approached cautiously as Fallier moved away. He sat on his heels next to her and said, "I was racing to your rescue but since you seem perfectly capable of rescuing yourself I thought I’d let discretion rule valor."
Madele turned from her rapt contemplation of Fallier’s departing form to regard Nicholas with a raised brow. "If you were thirty years older or I was a hundred years younger—"
"I would run screaming," Nicholas assured her. "What have you found?"
Madele chuckled but she looked down at the sheeted body again and her face turned serious. She lifted the arm of the corpse. Nicholas noted it was a woman’s arm and that it was discolored and the stiffness had passed off, showing that it was at least a day or more since the death, but Halle would have already made note of all that. Madele gently lifted one of the fingers and Nicholas frowned. The corpse wore a ring, a plain dull metal band. "I don’t understand."
Instead of the sarcastic response he half-expected, Madele gently worked the ring up the finger, so he could see that the skin beneath it was blackened, burned. "What caused that?" Nicholas asked, frowning.
"A magic," she said. "Unfinished, and harmless." She tucked the arm back under the sheet, smoothing the cloth over it and giving it an absentminded pat, as if she was tucking in a child. "It makes me wonder if it was a second go."
"Can you be a trifle more obscure? I think I almost understood what you said that last time."
She shook her head impatiently. "He was making a magic, with the ring and this poor dead thing, but he didn’t let it finish. Just a thought I had—I do have them occasionally. I need to ruminate on it a bit and take a look somewhere." She held out a hand and Nicholas helped her up.
Madele wandered away, her course apparently aimless. With Fallier here Nicholas thought he might as well make himself scarce, at least for a time, and he headed for the way out of the ballroom.
Nicholas saw the secretary Viarn hovering near the outer doorway, an expression of tired resignation on his face. He greeted him with a nod and Nicholas took the opportunity to ask, "Lord Albier said the dead sorcerer was trained at Lodun. Who did he study with?"
"I believe it was Ilamires Rohan." The secretary shook his head. "After all the opportunities Lord Chaldome gave him, it’s hard to believe the young man would betray him so. But madness knows no reason."
"No," Nicholas agreed. "No, it doesn’t, does it?" He walked on.
Out on the stone court the wind was in the right direction and the night air was fresh. The lamps flickered and the constables patrolled the grounds, endlessly searching. Nicholas jammed his hands in his pockets and paced to the end of the court where he could see the river. Octave had said, "The palace . . . the palace on the river. He’s been there—" He’s been there and gone, Nicholas thought. Is that what he meant to say? Octave had known about this house. From the state of the bodies, they could have been killed that very night. If the spiritualist had lived for one more breath, one more heartbeat, would they have known about this place in time to save the occupants? He wasn’t sure wh
y that should be such a bitter thought; this was none of his business.
No, that wasn’t true. What would Edouard have thought if he had known his work had been used in aid of all this killing?
And that wasn’t true, either. Edouard’s dead, Nicholas thought. Might as well admit that as well, if honesty is everything. None of this can hurt him.
I want this sorcerer because I want him, there’s no altruism about it. He has challenged me, he has interfered with me, and I’ll see him in Hell if I have to escort him there personally.
Crack ghosted up and took a post at his elbow and Nicholas put those thoughts aside for the moment. He said, sourly, "Lord Albier’s solved our little mystery—to his satisfaction."
Crack grunted noncommittally.
"You know what that means, of course."
Crack muttered, "We’re on our own again, that’s what."
Madele burst through the door of Arisilde’s apartment, shedding scarves and shawls. She found Isham seated in an armchair in front of the parlor hearth, a book in his lap.
Sne dropped her last shawl, still damp from the river spray, and said, "He was making a corpse ring!"
Isham stared. "What?"
"This sorcerer. He’s killed another lot of folk, and on one’s hand I found the making of a corpse ring."
Madele’s excitement was making her country accent thicken and Isham frowned in incomprehension, but he caught the last two words. "Corpse ring?" It was one of the oldest tricks of necromancy, a ring enspelled and left on the hand of a corpse for three days. When it was removed and placed on the hand of a living person, it would simulate death, or a state close to it. Isham shut his book and slammed it down on the table. "I already told you that that was the first thing I looked for! There were no strange tokens, nothing that was not his—"
Madele shook her head impatiently. "Looked with your eyes, or looked with your hands?"
Isham hesitated, then said something vile in Parscian and struggled to his feet.
Madele followed him to Arisilde’s bedchamber, saying, "You said you went out and when you came back he seemed to sleep. Well, he must have gone to sleep, with a bit of his drug to help him along. And while he lay so it must have come in, whatever it was, and put it on him without waking him. . . ."
Still cursing his own stupidity in Parscian, Isham tore back the patched coverlet and grabbed for Arisilde’s hands. He felt carefully around the base of each finger, moving upward slowly, deliberately turning his face away so he would have only the evidence of touch to go by. An illusion strong enough to hide a ring on the finger of a man who had been examined by physicians, who had been searched many times for any evidence of magical attack, could still be powerful enough to confuse the senses even when the searcher was certain it was there. He found nothing and shook his head in frustration.
Madele snatched the coverlet off the bed entirely and took Arisilde’s right foot in one hand, feeling carefully along the toes. Isham watched, but the brief spark of hope was dying as she found nothing and moved on to the left foot.
Madele frowned, then her face went still suddenly, as her fingers reached the smallest toe.
Something else had occurred to Isham and he said urgently, "Madele—" She was already slipping the ring off Arisilde’s toe. Once it lay in her palm the illusion dissolved and she could see it as well as feel it, a small iron band, grimly stained. She met Isham’s anxious gaze, and grinned. "Isn’t it always the last place you look?"
It was late at night by the time Nicholas returned to the apartment off the Boulevard Panzan. The others had gone there directly from the docks while he had escorted Madele back to the Philosopher’s Cross. The old woman had been preoccupied about something but he hadn’t been able to pry it out of her. He had resolved to go over to Arisilde’s in the morning to see if she was more willing to talk then.
The river spray and the damp had gotten into his clothes and he climbed the stairs up to the apartment wearily, cold to the bone.
It was a despondent group that greeted him in the salon. "I don’t understand why Albier is persisting with this," Halle was saying, pacing agitatedly in front of the fire. Crack leaned against the wall near the doorway, Cusard was a dour figure huddled in a chair as far away from Ronsarde and Halle as possible, and Madeline was draped across one of the couches with her hat pulled over her face.
Ronsarde was in the chair near the window, smoking his pipe, with a serpent-like intensity in his gaze. He said, "The facts of the case are becoming known. Dozens of deaths in Riverside and the Gabardin and sorcerous attacks in the city make the Prefecture look ineffectual. He wants to produce a culprit, or at least pretend to produce one, to deflect criticism while the search for the real criminal goes on." He lifted one edge of the window curtain to look out at the dark street below. "It is nothing that has not been done before."
Nicholas paused in the doorway, feeling a twist in his gut. "We know," he said lightly, crossing into the room.
"Was Madele all right?" Madeline asked, sitting up on the couch and tossing her hat aside.
"Yes, only preoccupied."
She was trying to dig something out of her pocket and eventually produced a folded letter. "Sarasate sent a messenger with this. It came to Coldcourt this morning."
Nicholas took it from her and glanced at the address, then smiled. "Doctor Uberque." He sat down on the couch and tore the letter open immediately.
"Is that another sorcerer?" Cusard asked suspiciously.
"No, he’s a doctor of history, at Lodun. I consulted him on Constant Macob and he was going to keep looking into the subject for me." He spread the closely written pages on his knees. Ronsarde’s interest had been piqued at the name of the ancient necromancer and he came to stand at Nicholas’s elbow.
The information Nicholas wanted had apparently led Doctor Uberque on a merry chase through the libraries of Lodun. But the historian seemed to combine an enthusiasm for the hunt with a detectival instinct to rival Ronsarde’s and an encompassing knowledge of his subject. "He’s discovered what was in the chamber buried beneath Ventarin House," Nicholas reported after a moment. "That’s the room we found broken into from the Duchess of Mondollot’s cellars," he explained for Cusard and Crack’s benefit.
Cusard glanced uneasily at Ronsarde, who was frowning down intently at the letter.
Madeline drew breath to expostulate at the delay and Nicholas continued, "It was Constant Macob’s body."
"His body?" Ronsarde’s expression was almost affronted.
"His bones, more probably, after this amount of time," Halle commented reasonably. "Did your informant discover the reason the corpse was concealed?"
"He believes Gabard Ventarin had the body sealed in the chamber as a precaution. He relates it to the custom present at the time for burying murderers at crossroads in case their predilection for bloodshed stemmed from an arcane source." Nicholas folded the letter and tapped it against his chin. Ronsarde captured the document and opened it to read for himself.
"I suppose that explains it," Madeline said, though she seemed troubled. "Octave needed a relic, a lock of hair or an old possession, of the dead people he wanted to speak to. His sorcerer wanted a relic of Macob so he could speak to him. After all this time Macob’s bones must have been the best thing for it."
"After all this time," Ronsarde echoed. "Doctor Uberque explains that he obtained this information from a letter penned by Gabard Ventarin, who was then holding the post of Court Sorcerer. The letter was sent to the sorcerer who was at that time Master of Lodun and whose papers and books are stored in the university’s oldest archives. A difficult task, even for a historian familiar with the Lodun libraries." He frowned. "How did Octave and our sorcerer know of the corpse’s location?"
That question had occurred to Nicholas as well. But he remembered how Arisilde had found the book he had described to him and felt wary of constructing any theory that contradicted that incontrovertible fact. "Sorcerers," he pointed out, "can find t
hings that have been lost for years with little difficulty. Without more information, the only conclusion we can draw is that we are facing a very powerful sorcerer. Something we already knew," he added dryly.
Ronsarde did not look satisfied.
Nicholas hesitated. Now would be a good time to bring up the subject of the sewers and what he suspected an investigation of them would reveal, and he had planned to do so. But Ronsarde’s comment on the Prefecture’s methods had awakened old, and not-so-old, suspicions. He said only, "I’m going out again," and stood.
Crack stopped him in the hallway. "Me with you?" he asked.
Nicholas shook his head. "No, I want you to stay here. Watch the others."
Whether Crack had received a subtle message from that, Nicholas didn’t know. He scarcely knew whether he meant it to convey one or not. But Crack made no protest, only nodded, and stepped back into the salon.
Nicholas went through the darkened bedchamber and into the dressing room, a small chamber with a table and a few chairs, a good mirror and some inadequate lamps. It currently looked like it was being used by at least half the cast of an amateur theatrical.
Madeline had followed him back to the dressing room, as he had hoped she would. But before he could say anything she kicked the door shut behind her and said, "You’re being somewhat uncommunicative."
Her tone, honed to an edge of expression from years of training, stung more than her words. Nicholas’s patience wasn’t inexhaustible to begin with and his temper was short from long hours of work and continual frustrations. He snapped, "I haven’t anything to communicate."
"You mean nothing definite," Madeline corrected, folding her arms.
Nicholas turned away and dug through the chaos of clothing and disguises spilling out of the wardrobe and onto the floor, cursing under his breath. It’s my apartment and this was all my idea. You would think I could find my goddamned trousers. "All right, nothing definite to communicate."
"You won’t discuss it with me because you’re afraid I’ll tell Ronsarde and you don’t want your thunder stolen."