Elemental

by Steven Savile

  “Indeed. This card means many things, most of them ominous. It stands for the shadowed future, the as-yet-to-be-revealed. Sometimes it is an intimation of death. At other times, it is a warning of a change to come.” I gave Sam a twisted smile. “I told you I do not much care for the readings I do.”

  “You do not have to go on, then,” he said seriously.

  “No, now I am curious.”

  I indicated the four cards in the second row. “Fortune, home, heart, career,” I recited. “The pictures of my past.”

  I turned over the cards in order. Fortune: the open box, everything the soul could desire. Home: the lord’s castle, with its white stone walls and graceful gables. Heart … but here my own heart nearly stopped beating. The black king, reversed.

  “What does it mean when a card is upside down?” Sam wanted to know.

  “It means the opposite of whatever the card usually means,” I said through a constricted throat. “Or that something has gone wrong with—that person or that thing—”

  The last card in this row was scarcely any more comfort. Career: the spilled wine. Promise gone awry …

  “None of this makes any sense to me,” Sam said.

  Perhaps it would not seem so terrible said aloud. “The cards say that at one time I lived a grand life, in a grand house, and my every wish was indulged,” I said. “I cared for a dark-haired man but he—something happened to him. And my career from that point on became something of a waste.”

  He lifted his eyes to my face, his eyebrows raised, but he did not ask me if any of this was true. “And what about your future?”

  I was more cautious this time, and turned the cards over one at a time. “Fortune,” I murmured. “The double-edged sword. What I have is equally likely to be used for good or for evil. Home.” I smiled. “The roadside tavern. Any place of well-being or cheer.”

  Sam was pleased. “My bar is in your cards?”

  “It looks that way.” I turned over the third card: the battling twins. “Interesting.”

  “What? What does that mean?”

  “My heart is in conflict. My dreads and my desires pull me in two.”

  He was watching me again, as if trying to assess the truth of that. “I suppose you know whether or not any of this has any relevance to you,” he remarked.

  I laughed shortly. “I suppose I do.” I turned over the last card. “Career,” I named it. “The white queen. It seems a fair-haired woman, or a very good woman, is going to become my patron.”

  Now Sam was smiling. “That does not seem too likely, at least,” he said.

  “No,” I replied.

  Just then the front door opened, and a phalanx of uniformed guards strode in, their feet making a rhythmic tattoo on the wooden floor. It was late spring, and cold, and they wore fur-edged cloaks over their blue-and-gold livery. Behind them, her silk-white hair haloed by the low afternoon sun, entered a small blond woman with an unmistakably noble face. Everyone in the bar stared at her during the few minutes it took her eyes to adjust to the dimness inside. After my first quick look, I turned my eyes back to the table and pushed all my cards together. I knew even before I heard her hesitant footsteps crossing the floor that she had come to Salla City looking for me.

  She wanted to speak to me privately, but I insisted that Sam stay to hear our conference. “Whatever you tell me, I will repeat to him,” I said listlessly. “He may as well hear everything as you say it.”

  So Sam moved to my side of the table, and the stranger seated herself across from us, and her five guards arranged themselves as a screen between us and the rest of the tavern. Groyce brought a fresh bottle and a third glass, and Sam poured for us all.

  She just touched her lips to the amber liquid and laid the glass aside. “I know who you are,” she said.

  I felt Sam physically restrain himself from looking at me. He thought I would ask him to leave now, but why should I? He had not betrayed me in the five years he had known me. No matter what was revealed now, it seemed unlikely he would repeat it to anyone.

  “How did you find me?” I wanted to know.

  She was not ready to drop the discussion of my identity. “Aesara Vega,” she said, as if it was a challenge. “Halana rex.”

  The king’s halana. I closed my eyes briefly. “Former halana rex,” I corrected, looking at her again. She was very beautiful. She had pale skin over delicate bones; her eyes were a flawless blue. On every finger of her left hand she wore a ring that looked impossibly expensive. On her right hand she wore only two rings, but neither of them looked cheap, either. “How did you find me?” I asked again.

  “Someone who had been in Verallis passed through here several months ago,” the woman said. “She recognized you.”

  It had been eleven years since I had lived at the king’s palace in Verallis, and I had changed since then. Whoever had recognized me must have had very sharp eyesight. “I can only suppose,” I said quite dryly, “that you have come to me because you need a favor.”

  “It is a terrible favor to ask,” she said. Her voice was low and sweet, and she pitched it most persuasively. The blue eyes looked dense with sadness. I braced myself for what she was going to say, because I knew what it would be, and I was right.

  “I want you to kill a man,” she said.

  I heard Sam inhale sharply. I glanced over at him and smiled. He was trying hard to keep his face under control, but her words had undoubtedly shocked him. “She asks me this,” I explained kindly, “because it is believed that I once killed a man in Verallis.”

  “The king,” she said.

  Her name, she told us, was Leonora Kessington. Her husband was Sir Errol Kessington, son of Sir Havan of Kessing, a wealthy territory not far from Salla City.

  “Six months ago, Sir Havan was in a terrible hunting accident,” she said. She could scarcely look at us while she told the story; instead, her eyes were fixed on her interlaced fingers. “Something frightened his horse, and the animal bolted. Sir Havan was thrown from the saddle, but his—his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged along the ground …” When she resumed speaking her voice was even softer than before. “When they found him, his leg was broken, and his collar was broken, and his neck—was broken—”

  Samuel gave her one of the linen napkins. She pressed it to her eyes and it came away damp. She still did not look at us.

  “They did not think he would live,” she continued. “But he did. His leg healed and all the cuts and bruises healed—but something else had broken, something in his neck. He cannot feel anything anywhere in his body—or, at least, they do not think he can. He does not react when his body is touched. But he cannot speak and tell us what he feels and what he does not feel—”

  “He can’t speak?” Samuel asked her. “Can he hear you? Can he think and see?”

  “His eyes are open, and sometimes he moves them to follow activity. He can grunt and make noises, but they cannot be understood. We can’t ever be sure he understands us, but Bella believes he can.”

  “Bella?”

  “His wife. My husband’s mother. She tends him night and day, she dribbles food down his throat and cleans him—” Leonora shuddered delicately. I took that to mean that caring for the invalid was no easy task. “She is devoted to him,” she whispered.

  “Who is looking after the affairs of Kessing?” Samuel wanted to know. It was a fair question. Kessing was a good-sized territory and its lord was absolute law for several thousand souls.

  “Lady Bella and my husband divide much of the work between them,” Leonora said. Once she had finished the harrowing tale of Sir Havan’s accident, Leonora felt capable of facing us again. She lifted her drowned blue eyes and fixed them on Samuel. I wondered what sort of effect their limpid sweetness would have on him. “But at Kessing, we maintain the fiction that Sir Havan still rules.”

  “How is that done?” I asked.

  She looked at me. “Sir Havan has always held a public audience twice a month at
which any vassal or tenant could air a grievance or sue for a favor,” she said. “He still holds these open meetings—we carry him out and set him upon a chair, and people recite their petitions. Bella and Errol actually decide the cases, but if they make a ruling with which he disagrees, he grunts and moans and twists in his chair. So they call back the petitioner and revise their original judgment.”

  “So he is able to communicate,” Sam said thoughtfully.

  “In a way.”

  “And he is able to understand what goes on around him.”

  “He seems to be.”

  “And yet his condition has not improved for six months?”

  “It has not improved, it has not deteriorated. It has not changed at all.”

  “And what do your halani say? I assume you have consulted one or two.”

  A smile touched her sad lips. “Dozens. They have fed him no end of potions and chanted hundreds of spells over his head. Nothing has availed. His body remains broken and his spirit remains trapped.”

  “And so you want me to kill him,” I said evenly.

  She looked at me quickly, her blue eyes utterly serious. “I have always loved Sir Havan,” she said. “He is a good man and he has done many good things. But I cannot bear to see him suffer so much, day after day, dependent on another’s hand to feed him and bathe him and tend him. You don’t understand—you never knew him—he was so alive, so active, so sure of himself. To see him like this … I would not want to live in such a way. I would not condemn anyone to such a life.”

  “And why should Aesara be the one to murder him?” Sam asked bluntly. “If you have dozens of halani already at your fortress—”

  “It is a terrible thing to ask another human being to take a life,” she said quietly. “And it is, as you say, murder. If one of the resident halani were to commit such an act, and be discovered, he or she would be put to death as well. I cannot ask them to do it.”

  “And Aesara? What if someone discovered she had poured the poison into the lord’s drink?” Sam asked. “You’ve asked it of her.”

  “No one knows her at Kessing,” Leonora replied quickly.

  “One person has already recognized her,” he pointed out.

  “But Aesara could come in disguise. No one would ever know she had been the one to kill him.”

  I smiled at Sam again. He was such an innocent. All the years of intrigue that I had witnessed at Verallis would stand me in good stead now. “No, and no one would ever be certain if he had been murdered or if he had merely died at last,” I told Sam. “That is the other reason the lady would like to hire my services.”

  Sam looked from me to Leonora and back at me. “I don’t understand.”

  I kept my eyes on Leonora and my voice casual. “It has been eleven years, but surely you remember the scandal that attended King Raever’s death?” I asked. “He had been unwell for a few days—everyone knew this, for there are no secrets at Verallis—and I had mixed him a batch of potions to restore him to good health. Shortly after taking one of them, one night, he died. Did I kill him? Was he much sicker than anyone had supposed? Did some prince or courtier, knowing I might be blamed, mix a deadly philter and administer it in place of mine? No one was ever completely certain—which is why, Samuel, my friend, I sit here with you today in Salla City instead of drifting over the scattered lands of Sorretis as smoke and ashes, having been burned at the stake for treason.”

  There was a short silence. Leonora did not say baldly that she was sure I had killed my king, although clearly she believed it. Sam offered no comment at all.

  “I’m interested in knowing,” I said, “what the lord’s wife and son think about this idea of yours.”

  The blue eyes were utterly guileless; she met my gaze openly. “It was Bella’s idea,” she said softly. “She is the one who recognized you here a few months back.”

  My eyes narrowed. That could very well be the truth. I had seen the traveling coach bowl through Salla City and recognized the heraldry on the door, for all of Raever’s vassals were known to me, at least by reputation. I had not gone to the trouble of ducking behind a doorway as the horses slowed and passed. I had not expected to be identified.

  “And your husband?” I asked.

  “He is not convinced. But he has said to me in private that it would be a blessing for his father if he should die.”

  “And who rules Kessing when Sir Havan is gone?”

  “Errol. And if Errol should die without heirs, his sister.”

  “And what does she think of this scheme to dispatch her father?”

  “She has not been informed.”

  I picked up my glass of wine, which, like Leonora’s, was almost untouched. Even Sam had only taken one or two swallows. I sipped the sweet, heavy liquid meditatively and thought it over. Well, clearly this angelically fair woman would profit if the murder were carried out, but as the case was presented, it was hard to tell if that was her motive. Giving all the participants the benefit of the doubt, it could be that they truly planned a mercy killing for which the corpse itself would thank me. For which all of Kessing would thank me, no doubt. I knew how uneasy subjects and vassals could become when their leader fell ill or grew uncertain. But to coolly and with calculated forethought kill a man …

  “When is the next public audience?” I asked her.

  She tried to smother her hopeful look. “A week from today, halana,” she said. “Will you come?”

  I nodded slowly. “I think so. I want to see Sir Havan for myself. At that point I will decide whether I will help you or not.”

  “And if you decide to help me?”

  “I will give you a potion to give to your lord.”

  It was nearly full dark by the time Leonora left. Sam escorted her out; when he returned to my table, he was carrying a fresh bottle of wine. We had drunk very little of the sweet, fruity stuff he had brought for his visitor, but this was a dry red wine Sam usually chose for his serious drinking. He had finished two glasses before either of us said a word.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and ask me?” I said finally. I had elected to stay with the sweeter vintage, and I was sipping it much more slowly.

  He poured himself another glass. “Why did you agree to go to Kessing and look this lord over?”

  I was surprised into a laugh. “That’s not the question,” I said.

  “It’s the question I’m interested in the answer to.”

  I raised my own glass and inhaled the heavy, honeyed aroma. I said, “The real question is: Did you kill King Raever, or did you not?”

  “That’s not something I would ask you,” Sam said quietly.

  “I have always wanted to know,” I said, “if you recognized my name when I arrived here five years ago.”

  “I recognized it.”

  “And so you must have known the scandal that followed me across Sorretis?”

  “I had heard it.”

  “And yet you never wondered whether or not you harbored a murderer in your establishment?”

  “I did not care,” he said deliberately. I had erased pain from his wife’s body, and so he did not care what I had done to others. He added, “Then.”

  I pounced on the word. “Then? And now?”

  He raised his eyes and regarded me steadily. It was a familiar look; he often studied me this way. I was never sure what he hoped to learn. “I have always thought that you probably know how to kill a man.”

  I swallowed some of my wine. “I do.”

  “And that you have probably, in fact, killed one or two in your life.” I took another swallow. “I have.”

  “And it has seemed to me that whatever reasons you would have had for such actions would satisfy me. So I didn’t worry about it.”

  That easily. I had won a man’s trust merely by keeping silence for five years. I leaned back against the bench and closed my eyes. “When I was first named halana rex,” I said, “I was known more for healing than for killing. For I had quite extraordinary
abilities. Some halani are born healers—they need only to lay their fingers upon a man to cure his disease or to knit together the severed fibers of his bones. I had such skills, in those days. I radiated power—my hands seemed to glow at night when I watched them in the dark.”

  I had consumed more of the wine than I had thought, for my head was beginning to ache and behind my closed eyes I felt the bar rock gently around me. “Five summers after I joined Raever’s court,” I said, “there was an epidemic. A plague. It swept through the villages on the roads leading to Verallis—it rampaged through the royal household—it laid low guards and servants and noble ladies and faithful vassals and visiting dignitaries. No one was safe. No one was spared.

  “Except me. So strong were my healing powers that I never succumbed to illness. Naturally, I ran through the castle, wherever the sickness took root, laying my hands upon the afflicted ones and exorcising the plague. I went to the guardhouses and the guesthouses and the nearby inns and villas, to find felled bodies writhing on the beds and on the floors. On each hot cheek I laid my cool hands, and the disease was routed. I rode like a madwoman through the night to the nearest villages, and stretched my arms out so that twenty people at a time could crowd around me and scratch at my flesh and be healed just by touching me. So exhausted was I, after three days of riding, that I collapsed in the square of one of these villages, unconscious and unmoving. And still they brought the ill and the helpless to my side, and still they reached out to touch me, and still they were cured.”

  I was silent for a long moment. I had not noticed Sam finishing his last glass of wine, but now I heard him pour another one. “Yet it is not healing for which I am remembered,” I said finally. “But for killing.”

  “You never answered my question,” he said.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. The wine or the memories or the dim lighting of the bar made him look softer and younger than usual. “What question was that?”

  “Why did you agree to go to Kessing and see the lord? You have not raised a hand to help a soul since the night you gave peace to my Mari.”

  I closed my eyes again. “Because Leonora was wrong,” I said. “I did know Sir Havan of Kessing. Eleven years ago, when I lived at Verallis.”