The Death of the Necromancer

  Light flared behind Nicholas and he glanced over his shoulder to see more Guards with lamps moving to block the only other way out.

  "Stop where you are, please."

  Nicholas stopped. From a doorway a man was pointing a pistol at them. He was a little older than Nicholas, dark-haired, bearded, wearing evening dress. Nicholas thought at first it was one of the off-duty Guards, but then he saw the men behind him were in cavalry uniforms. No, not cavalry uniforms; the sashes were different. Queen’s Guard, Nicholas thought, recognizing the style suddenly.

  "Put the weapon on the floor."

  Nicholas hesitated, but only for a heartbeat. The man’s eyes told him that he would shoot without compunction. Keeping his movements slow and deliberate, he lowered the pistol to the floor.

  "Very good," the man said. He stepped further into the room, the gun never wavering from its aim. Nicholas watched him grimly. The Queen’s Guard had traditionally been the personal bodyguard of the Queens of Ile-Rien and since the current Queen ruled in her own right this made them the first armed troop in the palace and more politically powerful than the Royal Guard. If this man was their Captain he would not be as easy to escape as the hapless lieutenants they had outwitted.

  Ronsarde said, "Captain Giarde, how very good to see you."

  The man stopped, stared hard at the Inspector, then glanced uncertainly at Nicholas. "I don’t think I know—"

  Ronsarde straightened up and deliberately began removing the extra hairpieces from his beard, mustaches and eyebrows. "Flattering of you not to recognize me," he said in his normal voice. "I threw this together in something of a hurry."

  "Ronsarde?" Giarde’s lips thinned in annoyance. "Good God, man, how dare you come here like this?" He looked again at Nicholas. "That’s not Doctor Halle, is it?"

  "No, this is my prot้g้, Nicholas Valiarde."

  Nicholas stared at Ronsarde in fury, barely managing the self-control not to voice an outraged denial. Prot้g้?

  "How did you find us, if you don’t mind my asking?" Ronsarde continued easily. "You know I am always seeking to improve my technique."

  "I’ve been following Fallier’s movements, actually, and was curious to see who it was he brought here in such secret." Giarde’s gaze went to Nicholas speculatively. "Your prot้g้?"

  "Our situation has become . . . complicated," Ronsarde admitted.

  Giarde motioned them to back away, then moved forward to collect Nicholas’s stolen pistol. As if aware this would not be over quickly, he leaned against the nearest pillar and said, "You know you’re being hunted all across the city by your own men, of course, even if the charges do sound ridiculous. Why did you escape when you must have realized the Queen would intervene as soon as the Magistrates Court ruled? And what the hell are you doing here now?"

  "I did not intend to escape from the Magistrates Court," Ronsarde said, as if it should be obvious to anyone. "I was seized, by men hired to insure my silence, and was about to be murdered when I was rescued by some friends and associates. We then spent the next several hours fleeing for our lives. That is the short version."

  Giarde did not appear pleased. "I hope the long one is more illuminating."

  Ronsarde cleared his throat. "Then, as we continued our investigations, Valiarde here was detained without cause and I came to retrieve him."

  "Wait." Giarde held up a hand. He motioned one of the Guards over, spoke a moment, and sent the man away.

  Nicholas stared at Ronsarde in mixed disgust and disbelief. "That’s to be our story, is it? I was doing better as the illegitimate son of the Court Sorcerer," he said, keeping his voice low.

  "Don’t be alarmed," Ronsarde said, maddeningly. "The situation is well in hand."

  Nicholas wished he had taken his chances with the pistol.

  Giarde turned his attention back to them. He said, "It’s odd that you claim this man is working for you, because my sources informed me the prisoner brought in by the Royal Guard Gate troop was involved in an anarchist attack on Lady Bianci’s coach." He looked at Nicholas. "Is that why Fallier had you brought here?"

  Nicholas would have wagered anything that Giarde already knew why Fallier had brought him here, or at least that he had guessed most of the truth. "I was a witness to the attack. The driver and the footmen can verify that," he said. "I was not arrested by the troop." Nicholas hesitated, reluctant to say it aloud, but there was no help for it. And the sooner Giarde was distracted from the coach incident the better. Nicholas said, "I’m an indirect descendent of Denzil Alsene. Fallier was extremely interested in me."

  Disgusted, Ronsarde said, "Was that all?" but the Captain’s face was impassive. Giarde said, "You told him who you were."

  Nicholas smiled. "No. Fallier told me."

  Giarde was silent a moment more, considering. "How exactly did this come about?"

  "I haven’t been to Alsene since I was a child," Nicholas said. "I don’t use the name and I have no desire to. I was about to leave the scene of the coach accident so I could report to the Inspector." He couldn’t help throwing a dark look at Ronsarde but the Inspector didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. "Fallier said he recognized me from the Greanco portrait of Denzil Alsene. I have no idea if he was telling the truth or not." He suspected it was true but there was no harm in muddying the water a little. "He had me brought here quite against my will."

  "I see."

  "All this aside," Ronsarde interrupted testily, "the city is being menaced by a mad sorcerer and if I—" He paused and corrected himself graciously, "If we are to do anything about it, I must have a pardon and some assistance, thank you."

  "What are you talking about?" Giarde demanded.

  Ronsarde waved his arms in frustration, causing the watching Guards to stir nervously. "The person who caused the disturbance in the Courts Plaza, the deaths in Vienne Prison and Valent House. He is most certainly a sorcerer, he is most assuredly mad, and I would have apprehended him by now without all this deliberate interference."

  "You know who he is?"

  Ronsarde glanced at Nicholas. "Not yet, but we have our suspicions. I need a pardon, Captain. The situation is urgent."

  Giarde’s expression was difficult to read. He put his pistol into his coat pocket and said, "It’s very late."

  "She will be awake."

  He can’t mean who I think he means, Nicholas thought, shifting uneasily. This experience was surreal enough already.

  Giarde hesitated. "You’re not exaggerating this?"

  Ronsarde’s expression was grim. "I only wish I was."

  "All right." Giarde tossed the pistol Nicholas had stolen to one of the Guards. "Follow me."

  Ronsarde nodded as if pleased. Nicholas took a deep breath to calm his pounding heart.

  Giarde led them through dark halls, further into the tower. With the lamps of the Guardsmen sending shadows chasing up old stone walls that bore marks of fire and at least one round impact that looked as if it could have come from a cannonball, they might have been passing back through time. Nicholas would not have been terribly surprised if they were leading him to one of the dungeons below these ancient floors. He thought about bolting down one of the cross corridors they passed but knew that would be useless; he didn’t know the place and would probably be rounded up within minutes.

  It was known there were areas in the lower levels of the palace still sealed off from when the Unseelie Court had occupied it for that short time over a hundred years ago. Corridors, storerooms, stairwells, huge echoing cellars, blocked off by falling walls and collapsed roofs, that had been left as they were with no effort expended to reclaim them from the earth.

  But the double doors they eventually came to opened into an old if not ancient stairway, lit prosaically by gaslights. The gas pipes were mounted on the walls, since the plaster and wood panelling must be only a thin veneer over solid stone. Nicholas knew they had left the tower; this must be the King’s Bastion.

  They went up the stairs and through a
few echoing halls with abrupt turns and occasional dead ends, until Nicholas realized he was thoroughly lost. He could tell they were approaching the more well-used portions of the palace when the floor underfoot turned from polished wood to white marble.

  They passed several of the semi-public areas, seeing no one but a few quiet servants, then entered a reception room. Giarde said, "Wait here," and continued on, leaving the other Queen’s Guards with them.

  Nicholas folded his arms, resisting the urge to pace. The room was small, chill, with a marble floor and mantels and a set of delicate giltwood chairs that looked as if they would burst apart if sat on. He knew he looked an odd figure here, dressed all in tattered black and with an expression of dark outrage. It was perhaps an appropriate appearance for the first Alsene to visit the palace of Ile-Rien in so many years.

  Leaning on his cane, Ronsarde said conversationally, "I discovered your rather colorful antecedents when I was first investigating your foster father. I thought it of no consequence, however."

  Nicholas looked at him, eyes narrowed. "You’re not endearing yourself to me, you know."

  Giarde reappeared and motioned them to follow. As they did, Nicholas noticed the Queen’s Guards remained behind. He glanced sideways at Ronsarde but couldn’t tell if the Inspector seemed relieved or not. They went down another hall and then through an open doorway into a vast chamber.

  There was an arched arcade running all along the upper half and a floor covered with parquet and very old Parscian carpets. An enormous chimneypiece of black and white marble would have dominated the room, except for the gold-framed mirrors, the elaborate floral designs of the figured ceiling, and the faded glory of the two-hundred-year-old tapestries. The furniture was all marquetry or vermeille, all in colors of old gold or amber, until the room seem to glow with it. Ronsarde nudged Nicholas with an elbow and pointed up. Three large gold lanterns of intricate design hung from the ceiling. "From the barge of the Grand Cardinal of Bisra, looted during the battle of Aids in the last Bisran War," he whispered. "The touch of the conquering barbarian among the splendors of civilization."

  "I heard that."

  There was a woman sitting in an armchair near the massive hearth. She was small and her face was very young, a girl’s face almost, except it was too thin to be entirely childish. Her hair was red and worn piled up under a very old-fashioned lace cap, and her dark dress looked plain and almost dowdy, until the lamplight caught it and revealed it as a deep indigo velvet. She was laying out cards in a game of solitaire on the little table in front of her and she hadn’t looked up at her visitors.

  She said, "You were arrested." A quick, almost furtive glance revealed she was speaking to Ronsarde. Her voice was light and unexpectedly girlish for someone with such a serious mien.

  "I was, my lady," the Inspector said calmly.

  Nicholas felt the back of his neck prickle. Traditionally in Ile-Rien, officers of the royal court and personal servants addressed royalty as "my lady" or "my lord" instead of the more formal and cumbersome "your majesty." That Ronsarde had been granted that indulgence showed he was closer to the Crown’s confidence than Nicholas had previously suspected.

  "Can’t have that," the Queen muttered, as if to herself. She turned over a card and ran her thumb along the edge, lost in thought. "I know who you are," she said. Another quick glance showed she was speaking to Nicholas now. "It was distressing that Rahene Fallier brought you here without informing me."

  "Distressing, but not entirely unexpected," Giarde added.

  The Queen shot Giarde a dark look. She made an abrupt gesture, as if embarrassed by this admission. "Politics, you understand."

  "I avoid politics, your majesty," Nicholas said.

  She looked up at him then, for the first time, eyes narrowed as if she suspected mockery. She probably was mocked, to her face or to her back, by the more sophisticated ladies of the court and by those of her advisors who didn’t appreciate serving a woman who appeared barely out of childhood. If he remembered rightly she wasn’t older than twenty-four. Apparently satisfied that he had spoken in all seriousness, she said, "Wise of you," and looked back down at her game. She placed the card carefully in the array on the table. "There is a resemblance. I think it’s the eyes." She turned over another card and studied it. "And I suppose your mother must have been the first new blood in that family for several generations."

  She was speaking of his resemblance to the long-dead Denzil. Nicholas damned Greanco’s skill. "Circumstance has made them insular," he hesitated infinitesimally, "your majesty."

  "It was a pretty damn deliberate circumstance," the Queen corrected, her voice dry. She glanced at him furtively. "When I was a child I met your aunt Celile once, at a garden party the Valmontes gave at Gardien-on-Bannot." She shuddered, not theatrically, but apparently in real horror at the memory. "Horrible woman."

  "You should try having to face her over dinner." The words were out before Nicholas could stop them.

  The Queen hesitated, her hand on a card. Her smile was so brief it might have been imaginary. She looked at him directly then, her large eyes utterly serious, and said, "I’ve seen the house, from a distance. It was horrible, too. What was it like there?"

  Nicholas drew a breath but was temporarily unable to speak. He knew he needed to answer her but he hadn’t expected this. If he had ever imagined this meeting, he would never in his wildest dreams have constructed it in this fashion. He thought of the decaying, faded glories of the Alsene Great House, the land meant to support it long gone, either sold off to pay debts or taken by the Crown as more punishment for Denzil’s long-ago attempt to seize the throne. Roland Fontainon’s throne, who was this woman’s great-great-grandfather. He said, "Mercifully, I don’t remember much of it." There were details, long buried beneath the surface, that insisted on springing to mind. He added only, "My father died and my mother fled with me to Vienne."

  She blinked, her expression unchanging. "Are we related?"

  "It’s a distant connection." He suspected she knew it very well; the purpose of the question had been to ascertain if he knew it.

  She sat back in her chair. "By the charters of Old Vienne and Riverside, and the Council of Margrave and the Barons of Viern, there is a proposed line of descent that gives you a claim on the throne." One eyebrow quirked, but her face was serious. "I might have to marry you."

  The shock wasn’t mild but Nicholas realized immediately that he was being tested, in ways both subtle and blunt. It explained what Fallier wanted of me, he thought, feeling a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps that was why the family seldom left the estate. His father had only left long enough to court his mother. And there were those who had never left the slowly rotting house, who had spent their whole lives living for the past. He was probably the first Alsene to come to Vienne in generations. He said, "The Council of Margrave and the Barons of Viern was invalidated by the later action of the Ministry, in their first convening in Vienne."

  "That’s true." The Queen slumped back in her chair suddenly, frowning. "I’d forgotten."

  Thank you, Doctor Uberque, for a thorough grounding in the history of court law, Nicholas thought, though he didn’t believe for a moment the Queen had forgotten that obscure fact. It was like watching Madeline play a role, only underneath it all Madeline was basically harmless and the Queen was anything but. The woman uses candor like a loaded pistol. He still thought her courtiers probably mocked her, but if they did it within her hearing, they probably didn’t do it twice. In his peripheral vision he saw Giarde wincing and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  She sat up straight again and Nicholas suspected he was about to be dealt another roundhouse blow. She said, "But you’re still the heir to the Alsene properties."

  "Like being the heir to Hell, only less glamorous," Nicholas said, keeping his voice light. But this was almost a relief. He had never expected nor wanted to inherit anything from the Alsenes and indeed he doubted they had anything worth wa
nting. He bowed, ironically. "I renounce my claim, your majesty."

  "Really? Because when you say it to me, you know, it’s official." The Queen pointed this out somewhat diffidently, as if embarrassed by it.

  He hadn’t known. He hadn’t lived at Alsene long enough to be taught all the vagaries of the landed noble’s relationship with the Crown. Nicholas said, "I want no part of the family of Alsene. I am not the heir." There was a curious sense of freedom in saying it.

  She glanced at Giarde and said, "We’ll write that into the court proceedings, remind me, please."

  Giarde sighed audibly and the Queen glared at him again. Nicholas would have given a great deal to know what their relationship was. Queens of Ile-Rien had always taken lovers among their personal guard; it was practically a tradition.

  A large ginger cat suddenly leapt up onto the table and with great deliberation, settled itself down on top of the card game. The Queen froze, card in hand, and stared at it with a grim set to her mouth. The cat returned her gaze with a challenging air and settled itself more comfortably. The Queen sighed, evidently conceding the point, and set the card aside. She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands, looking thoughtfully down at the carpet. "We were going on to that other matter. . . ."

  Giarde evidently took that as a signal to continue. He cleared his throat and glanced at Ronsarde. "I’ve sent for Lord Albier. He’s in charge of the investigation of the incident today. I thought he might benefit from this discussion."

  Ronsarde and Nicholas exchanged a look. Lord Albier was the head of the Prefecture and no one had said yet whether they were under arrest or not.

  "And I’ve asked Fallier to attend," Giarde continued. He smiled. "His reaction should be illuminating."

  The Queen glanced up at him, her mouth twisting ironically. Her expression as she looked at her Guard Captain was much the same as when she had looked at her cat, holding both affection and resigned annoyance.