by Martha Wells
"He wouldn't let me call them."
Kade snorted. "Do it anyway."
"It's easy for you to say." Falaise gestured helplessly, the puffed sleeves of her gown almost hiding the movement.
Kade watched her a moment, then sat on the fountain rim beside her. "Not always."
But Falaise opened the book on her lap and turned the pages distractedly. By craning her neck Kade could see it was written instead of printed, and by a hand not as fine as a professional clerk's. Poetry, she guessed, and it would hardly be from Roland. Falaise slammed the book closed and said abruptly, "What do I call you, Katherine or Kade?"
"Kade."
"Kade. Did you ever turn yourself into a bird?" Her expression was wistful.
Kade lifted her brows. "I thought about it, but I decided I wanted to live." It came to her that Falaise wasn't really much of a coward. Denzil must have browbeaten her thoroughly. Possibly most men in authority over her had browbeaten her thoroughly. "Human sorcerers can't shape-change, not if they ever want to turn back into themselves. Most fay can, but I never had to badly enough to make the experiment. "
"That's a shame." Falaise fingered the book again. "It would be wonderful to just turn into something and fly away."
They sat in the quiet a moment, with not even birds to interrupt the fountain's bubbling. Then Kade remembered something and asked her, "What did you mean when you said Denzil wasn't making that sort of--"
A man came running around one of the yew hedges toward them. He threw himself at Falaise s feet so enthusiastically Kade had to scramble out of the way to avoid being tumbled into the fountain.
More graceful than the sorceress, Falaise kept her balance and said in exasperation, "Aristofan, please--"
The young man kneeling at her feet was handsome with russet hair and eager brown eyes. He was dressed for court in blue and gray and had lost his feathered hat in his run across the lawn. "It was him, wasn't it? That was why you didn't want me to come to you today. You must tell me what he wants from you."
Kade looked down at herself to make sure she hadn't inadvertently faded from sight.
"No, I can't, I told you." Falaise spoke firmly, but then she stroked his hair. "Really, it's all right."
"Don't mind me," Kade said. "I'll just stand over here, shall I?"
Aristofan clasped the Queen's hand ardently. "Don't you trust me? I'd do anything for you."
Falaise smiled fondly. "Sometimes I almost think you would."
One of the men following Kade appeared at the top of the wall, spotted her, and waved back to his companions. "Well," Kade said, "I have to leave before they decide I'm holding you prisoner and roll in a couple of cannon."
"Please." Falaise looked up at her. "You won't say anything?"
"I don't know anything." Kade started away, then stopped and looked back at the other woman. "If you're going to tell someone, tell Ravenna."
Falaise looked down at Aristofan's head, her expression drawn and troubled.
To avoid Falaise's guards, Kade left the garden by going over the wall behind the battlement hedge. She was still not quite ready to be followed again, and she rejoined the path that led away from the Queen's garden only when she was out of sight of the garden gates. The path wandered past walled herb gardens then abruptly opened out to the paved area below the terraces of the Gallery Wing. The smooth stone of the Gallery Wing's walls was butter colored and would glow like gold in the full sunlight. She climbed the steps and walked along the terrace, looked at the view of the rolling lawn, the trees, and the artificial temple ruins, and wondered about Galen Dubell.
I'm not going to sit like a lump while he fights this Bisran bastard Grandier single-handed. Does he honestly expect me to do that? No, he couldn't, she decided. It was incredible. If she were going to behave in that ridiculous fashion to one of the few friends she had, then she might as well have stayed in the convent and saved years of trouble. Galen isn't an idiot. Grandier trapped him once; he might do it again. He knows he needs help; he just can't ask for it.
She stopped, drew a toe meditatively over a pattern in the paving stone. She was tired of being followed.
Kade closed her eyes and pulled glamour out of the damp air and the dew on the grass, wove it with the afternoon sunlight filtered through the clouds, and drew it over herself like a concealing blanket. If anyone saw her she would appear as another courtier, a servant, whatever they expected to see.
She would help Dubell, and she had an inkling of how to go about it.
* * *
"Well, that's been a waste of time," Thomas told Lucas.
They had just finished questioning the last of Dr. Braun's apprentices and servants and had elicited nothing but a tearful confession from the sixty-year-old chamberlain about a few pennies' worth of misappropriated household funds.
During the questioning, Lucas had been entertaining himself by flipping a small boot dagger from hand to hand, and now he sent it into the table with a thud. "So, who killed the poor bastard? The chamberlain?"
The room was damp and too warm, despite the open window. Thomas stood up from the table piled with papers and moved restlessly to the room's little balcony, unbuttoning the top of his doublet. From here he could look down onto the hall where servants wandered, off-duty guards gathered, and the main life of the Queen's Guard House was concentrated. He leaned against the rough pillar in the corner of the balcony and said, "He's too short. Braun was sitting at a clerk's writing desk and the stool was a foot or so taller than an ordinary chair. Whoever cut the good doctor's throat was at least my height. The way that old man's back is bent he'd never have been able to reach him."
On the stone-paved floor of the hall below, some of the men had discarded their doublets to practice swordplay on wooden targets and one another. Constant work was required to keep in top form for the real duels, which usually lasted no more than a few moments, depending on the relative skill of the opponents, and often ended with a death or a crippling. All used their regular dueling swords rather than the blunt-tipped weapons often employed for practice, and it was only due to the skill of the combatants that so little blood was being shed. There were not as many men off-duty as usual; all the guardposts and duty shifts had been doubled since last night.
All this morning Thomas had noted a tension on the wind that hadn't been there yesterday. Everyone knew the danger of dark and deserted places, but the palace had always been safe ground from any but human opponents. Two Cisternan guards had been sent back to their families in boxes today, the first casualties in a new and uncertain war. The rest of the court had also finally bothered to notice the danger, and today there were complaints, mild hysteria, and loud questions about why someone wasn't doing something.
"If you're going to be clever about it, we won't be able to arrest anyone," Lucas pointed out.
The pillar Thomas leaned against still bore the nine-year-old bullet hole that had signaled the end of his predecessor's career. He picked at the splintered area thoughtfully and said, "We're looking for a throat-slitter who takes an unprepared man from behind but who still scruples at robbery." Braun had been wearing a respectable amount of court jewelry, including a diamond-studded presentation medal from Lodun and several gemstones given to him by past wealthy patrons. All had been left on the body. "That eliminates most of the servants but certainly throws suspicion on every member of the nobility in the palace. And Grandier."
Lucas tipped his chair back against the yellowed plaster wall. "Always Grandier. What did Braun have that Grandier would want to kill him for?"
"Information." And thinking of information, Thomas wished the clerks would hurry with the translation of the documents chronicling Grandier's trial in Bisra. They knew so little about the man, and he wanted to take advantage of every resource, no matter how sparse it might be.
Lucas nodded. "You think Braun saw something someone preferred he didn't..."
"Or remembered something. He tried to talk to me last night but w
e were interrupted by Denzil."
"Coincidence?" Lucas lifted his brows in speculation.
Thomas glanced back at him. "Which coincidence? Braun wanting to tell me something or Denzil interrupting at the opportune moment?"
"We're not going to get anywhere if you keep inventing new questions." Lucas glanced briefly toward the window, which opened onto the narrow alley between the house and the stone wall of the old armory. "Half the palace is saying that it was the sorceress."
"Not a bad suggestion, except she was already in the gallery performing bad Commedia in front of everyone who matters in the city when I saw Braun alive. The body was long cold by the time she left." Thomas shook his head. She was also too short. "Today she lost her guards in the Queen's garden. One of them reported it an hour ago."
"What was she doing there?"
"Talking to the Queen, apparently."
"Odd." Lucas frowned, looking puzzled at the idea that anyone might want to talk to Falaise. Possibly because they were all so used to discounting her influence, it was hard to remember that she had any power in her own right at all. "What's going to come of that, do you think?"
"Not much." Thomas smiled. "They can't banish Falaise."
Lucas was silent a moment, watching Thomas. "Your great friend High Minister Aviler is implying it was a Queen's guard."
Thomas's lips twisted in annoyance. "What a helpful suggestion. How in hell did he come up with it?"
Lucas shrugged uneasily. "The usual way. There was some loud muttering about Braun, some of the men blaming him for his incompetence when you were trying to get Galen Dubell out of Grandier's house. Braun was never half the help old Dr. Surete was."
"So one of them takes it on himself to remove the irritant? It's unlikely." But Gideon had said something about Braun last night. And Lucas clearly believed it was a possibility, though he wouldn't say it outright.
Thomas was struck by an unpleasant image. Braun, unable to find Thomas in the crowded gallery, stopping a faceless Queen's guard on a deserted stair. Asking him to take a message to his captain, stepping into a quiet parlor to use the writing desk... But Thomas had always seen Braun as a pitiable figure, and the young sorcerer had been coldly eliminated in a way that didn't agree with the theory of a guard murdering him in sudden anger. Then again, Braun was a sorcerer and would surely have had some means of defending himself; he would almost have to be taken from behind...
The door creaked as a servant opened it to usher in Ephraim, the ragged ballad-seller and professional spy.
"Good news?" Thomas asked as the old man grinned and bowed to both of them.
Ephraim pulled off his cloth cap and began to knead it conversationally. "In a manner of speaking, Sir. It's quite a tale. The Gambin lad's dead, you see."
If he had his throat slit around the same time as Braun did, I'm going to retire, Thomas thought, and kept the surprise off his face. "What happened?"
"From the beginning it was that a couple of my own boys followed Gambin to see if he would lead us to the fellow who hired him, and he led them a merry way, Sir, but he ended up back at the palace quarter and entered Lord Lestrac's house." Ephraim hesitated. Not from trepidation, but more as if he were still trying to sort things out in his own mind. "After a bit he came out, and the boys followed Gambin on a wandering way back to his home ground, and waited outside his house, as they hadn't any instructions to do otherwise. Before dawn this morning a young woman arrives, and she goes in and starts to scream. The boys figured they should go in and see what the matter was, and as Gambin didn't know either of them they could say they were passersby. Well, they didn't have to say much at all, because Gambin was dead, you see, without a mark on him.
"When I got there I sent for a lady who lives down in the Philosopher's Cross and knows a bit about these things, and in her opinion it had the look of a wicked sending about it, though I never heard of Gambin to trouble with sorcerers before. She said it was most likely in something he was given, some token, that was enspelled to murder the lad whenever the master was finished and didn't want the likes of anyone asking questions. It cost extra for her to search for the token, and I thought you'd want your own people to do that, so I locked up the house and came on here."
"You've done your best," Thomas told him, preoccupied. This was another piece in the puzzle. And it was a damn good thing he had set Ephraim on this job; without him, it might have been days before news of Gambin's death reached Thomas, and the evidence of sorcery in the killing might have been gone by then. "Tell them to get you a drink, and the Paymaster has your fee."
Ephraim's bow was unpolished but sincere. "Oh, that's very good of you, Captain."
When the spy had left, Lucas grimaced. "Well, well. Lord Lestrac is our nameless letter-forger, and Gambin is silenced the same way you think Dr. Surete and Milam were. Another connection to Grandier?"
"Maybe." The attempt with the letters was the sort of unsubtle ineffective trick Denzil's friends were famous for in their attempts to please him, and of which the Duke unconcernedly let them suffer the consequences. "It almost seems as if there are two different men, or factions, at work. Grandier with his sorcery, and then someone else plaguing us with little distractions. Gambin was hired by the second man, and when he was compromised, Grandier killed him."
"If they're working together. They might not be." Lucas worked his dagger out of the table, frowning at it. "There's no way to tell."
Thomas bit his lip thoughtfully, considering his options. He said, "I want you to send men to search Gambin's house and pick up the body; I'll want an opinion on it from Dubell."
"How lovely for him," Lucas said dryly, getting to his feet. "You know, if I'm not mistaken, Lestrac is also a friend of Denzil's. I think the good Duke of Alsene maintains that house for him."
"He does. And it was searched by the King's Watch about two days ago. They didn't discover anything." Lestrac's house was one of a group of manses for royal dependents that were built up against the outside of the palace's west wall. Lestrac was a landless dissipated young nobleman, useful occasionally as a tool for Denzil but not much else. He had never been implicated in one of Denzil's plots deeply enough to send him to the traitors' graves outside the city, but he assisted Roland's cousin in the spreading of rumors and lies. Thinking it over, Thomas shook his head. "Even if we did connect a friend of Denzil's to Grandier, it won't prove anything to Roland. To convince him we'd have to catch Denzil standing over the royal bed with a drawn sword, and even then I'm not sure he'd believe it."
"Lestrac was supposed to have dabbled in black magic in his wilder days, and bargained with demons, like Grandier. The letters might have been his own idea, and he could have killed Gambin himself," Lucas pointed out.
Thomas wasn't convinced. "I heard he dabbled, but I never heard he dabbled all that successfully. Finding the token should settle it. Have them be especially careful of anything valuable on Gambin's body. If I were Grandier, I would have put the spell on the payment that was given him." He paused. "I'll see Lestrac myself."
Lucas frowned. "Will you take Dubell with you?"
Thomas shook his head. "He's still a target for Grandier and I'm not sure I want to risk him. He may be the only protection the palace has."
Lucas eyed him, not happily. "So you go to Lestrac's house where Grandier is hiding and he kills you because Galen Dubell is safe back here. Does that make sense?"
Thomas had to concede the point. "It's not a perfect plan, I'll admit. I'll take one of Braun's apprentices. They aren't completely useless."
"Or take me."
Kade Carrion was sitting in the window, perfectly composed, the ragged hem of her dress tucked under her feet. How she had gotten there without either one of them hearing her was incredible; from her attitude she might have been there for the past hour.
"What are you doing here?" Lucas asked, so startled he dropped a hand to his sword.
Her look said she suspected his sanity. "Listening. Next you'll as
k me how much I heard, to which I'll very likely reply 'enough.' Can't we dispense with all that?"
Lucas looked at his captain and raised an eyebrow inquiringly. Thomas shook his head minutely, and asked Kade, "Take you where?"
She made an impatient gesture. "To what's-his-name's house where you think Grandier is."
Thomas leaned back against the pillar and folded his arms. "Why do you want to go?"
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "I'm offering to help."
"And in such a touching and spontaneous way. If I refuse your help?"
She appeared to seriously consider the question. "I might follow anyway. I'm good at that. Or not. I might do a lot of things; the day is young."
This was ominous. "And I'm expected to trust you?"
Apparently outraged, she sat up straight against the window casement and said, "I gave my word."
"No, you did not." Thomas was fairly certain he would have recalled that.
"I did."
"When?"
He saw her hesitate, then she gave in and grinned. She said, "So I didn't. Come on, you know you want me to go. I'm lucky."
"Lucky for whom?" Lucas muttered.
"This isn't a game," Thomas said, wary. She had her own brand of charm, that was certain. And Thomas realized that even against his will he was tempted by that charm. Because she's different, or because she's dangerous? he asked himself, irritated. Stop being ridiculous and concentrate. "You've said you want to help, but you haven't told me why. And you haven't been terribly helpful in the past."
"The past is the past." Kade tilted her head to one side, watching him with those very direct eyes. "Grandier would have killed Galen Dubell, who is my oldest friend." She finished lightly, "I can't have that, can I?"
Trusting her was a decided risk, but if Grandier was in that house, or had been there and left more traps, Kade would be their best hope. And so far Thomas had come across nothing to suggest that she was the Bisran sorcerer's ally. And this is certainly one way to find her out if she is. He said, "Very well."