The Element of Fire

  There were solemn representations of other relatives, and courtiers she should have known, generals or statesmen who had walked these rooms when she was a child and had since died. But like the children she had played with until her father found reasons to send their families away, she only dimly remembered their faces and couldn't quite recall their names.

  Then she circled a pillar and found herself facing the portrait of Fulstan in his prime. Surprisingly, Kade could look at it without emotion; Greanco had painted an empty slate, a weak vessel that had not yet been subjected to the stresses that would deform it. He had faithfully depicted the handsome features, the full brown hair, and the wide-set blue eyes but had managed to give the impression that the beauty was transitory, and not something that grew out of character, that would last through age. The later portrait that revealed the older bitter man was said to hang in Ravenna's bedchamber, there only because the Dowager had reportedly said that she couldn't think of a better place for him than nailed up there on the wall, watching.

  After the Arlequin's attack, Denzil had brought up the subject of Fulstan's suspiciously quick illness and death, and Kade had felt an odd mingling of triumph and guilt. She had been almost certain for years that she had caused Fulstan's death with that same unskilled power that had smashed the cathedral's windows, that she had wished him dead all the way from the Monelite Convent. But she was a little afraid of those thoughts, too. She wanted to think her sorcery had some control, that it wasn't as wild as her fay magic. But study was the only cure for lack of control; she should be studying in the quiet peace of Knockma instead of stirring up trouble here.

  The next portrait was of Roland as a child. The better-known and inferior portrait by Avisjon hung in a more prominent location downstairs. Despite the trappings of royal tunic and mantle, the scepter and the Hand of Justice, Greanco had captured Roland's frightened eyes all too well.

  She wandered down the wall a little and unexpectedly encountered her own portrait.

  I should have known, she thought, staring. Ravenna wouldn't have let Roland burn the rags Greanco used to wipe his brushes, let alone one of his paintings.

  When it had first been painted so long ago, Kade had been upset that her awkwardness and anxiety had been so well revealed. Now she saw what had really been there. It was pain.

  So that's what it was like, she thought. It seems I might have forgotten.

  Kade now understood why Ravenna had had the portrait put away after it was complete. It was also a reproach. How it had found its way up here she couldn't imagine.

  She stepped back to where she could see both her own and Roland's portraits and thought, Did I run away? At the time it had seemed a glorious escape. What would have happened if I'd stayed? Nothing or everything. She couldn't remember being angry at Roland when she left for the convent. She felt like a contributor to that expression on Roland's young face which Greanco had captured so well, and she didn't like the feeling. I should leave, tonight, now, she thought wearily. This isn't turning out the way I imagined and I'm just in the way. Now that they've seen me again they probably won't even be afraid of me anymore.

  Kade remembered that hot Midsummer Eve's day when the power had come flowing out of her as if she were a bottle shattered from pressure within. She hadn't had any grudge against the cathedral itself; in fact, she rather regretted the destruction of those stained glass windows. She had done simple magics under Galen Dubell's tutelage, but that had been the first time the ability had risen in her with such strength, the first time she could focus it at will. It had been marvelous. But it was the first and only time. She would not reach that peak so easily again. The only road to that kind of power was the one of hard study, and she had dedicated the years since to mastering her abilities, though it had never been easy. And perhaps she had let the more painstaking magics of sorcery take second place to the easy power of fayre.

  She turned to go, but she had missed the paintings on the other side of the gallery and now one caught her eye. It was an informal portrait of a younger Ravenna with an elite group of her Queen's Guard and the officers. She sat in the center, dressed in a mantua of black velvet and flame silk, a rose of diamonds on her breast. A younger Thomas Boniface leaned on the chair at her side and slightly behind her, with the rest of the guards grouped around, all handsome and all with a pronounced air of danger.

  Kade didn't remember seeing it before. It must have been done after she had left, to commemorate the recently victorious Bisran War, when Ravenna had brought the years of fighting to an end. It was odd that it wasn't somewhere downstairs, but Kade supposed that it had been scandalous for an independent queen with a useless husband to have her portrait done with a group of young men. But then that was Ravenna down to the bone, and Greanco had conveyed that, too. During that war, Ravenna had traveled extensively around the disputed borders with her guard and one or two maidservants. Knowing Ravenna, she had probably chaperoned the maidservants more than they had chaperoned her. A few bishops had spoken out against her, but the rest of the country thought the Church poked into other people's morals too much as it was; landlaw barely took notice of adultery, and queens had traditionally taken lovers among their personal bodyguard.

  It was the tacit rules of landlaw that allowed Ravenna to keep command of the Queen's Guard when she should have passed it on to Falaise as the younger woman was crowned. Under landlaw, a personal bodyguard could not be inherited or given away without the liege's permission. If there was something Ravenna was good at, it was manipulating laws and circumstances to her own ends.

  I should learn to do that, Kade thought, bitterly amused at herself. But fayre had few laws, or at least few that made sense. Like the court, the denizens of the Kingdoms of Fay fought, plotted, and stabbed one another in the back to excess, but they were soulless creatures and their passions were short-lived and shallow. The outcomes of their games didn't really matter to them, and there was nothing like the solid trust that was reflected in this portrait...

  You are getting sentimental, you idiot.

  The next portrait was of Thomas Boniface, also in informal dress. Even for a Greanco it was dark and elusive. Though Thomas was more than ten years the elder, he and Denzil had much the same presence in person: arrogant and sensual and well aware of their own worth, both wolves in lapdogs' clothing. The portrait suggested that in the Captain's case the arrogance might be tempered by irony.

  Tradition dictated that the Captain of the Queen's Guard as well as the Preceptor of the Albonate Knights renounce all familial connections so their whole loyalty would be to the crown. Nepotism and interfering relations could be permitted with other nobles who served in the palace, but these positions were seen as too important. Renier had been Duke of something, Kade remembered, when he handed the whole thing over to a younger brother and took his post for Roland. Thomas had been Viscount Boniface.

  Both court offices came with a huge amount of wealth and some land, but gave up the right to leave that wealth to any heir other than the next man appointed to the position. If the Albonate Preceptors lived to retire they were usually created a duke and awarded estates and income. It was assumed the same thing would be done for the Captains of the Queen's Guard, but in recent history all of them had died at duty.

  Kade realized abruptly that Thomas Boniface probably expected the same to happen to him. If he outlived Ravenna his position at court would not be a good one. Roland and Denzil were both against him, and Falaise seemed helpless to protect anyone including herself. That was what the portrait conveyed, Kade knew suddenly. It was the face of a man who took service with the crown accepting the possibility of eventual betrayal and a violent death, but not one who enjoyed having to kill people whose main crime seemed to be stupidity.

  Kade turned away and started resolutely for the stairs, telling herself, I don't know why I care; I don't even like him anymore anyway.

  Then the nagging restlessness that had plagued her coalesced into dread, and she sto
pped in the doorway. Her heart was fluttering. She took a deep breath, her hand pressed to her chest, and tried to think what it could be.

  Something's gone wrong; something's happening. She forced herself to move forward, to start down the stairs. I've got to get to Galen.

  * * *

  "What kind of a man is Grandier?" Thomas asked.

  Kneeling on the floor beside the wall niche, Galen Dubell paused to give the question serious consideration. "He is driven," he said finally, looking up at Thomas seriously. "And in pain. The worst sort of opponent to face."

  They were in one of the deep cellars of the Old Palace, the rough stone walls glistening faintly in the flickering light of the candlelamp. Stone pillars as wide as draft carts stretched up into darkness to meet the arched ceiling somewhere overhead. The dirty straw-dusted floor was littered with broken or empty barrels, boxes, and odd pieces of ironwork. Battered and forgotten siege engines, lowered through traps in the ceiling sometime in the dim past, looked like the metal skeletons of beached sea monsters in the half-light. Wandering at the edges of the light were the three Queen's guards Thomas had assigned to watch Dubell when the old man's work took him into deserted corners of the palace. They were fighting both boredom and nerves and trying to look unaffected.

  In an effort to discover what was wrong with the wards, Dubell was examining the warding stones buried in various locations around the palace. He was also planning on moving the keystone. He could remove it with Thomas and the guards present, but he would have to convey it to its new resting place alone. Thomas wasn't happy about Dubell moving about the undercellars of the palace unguarded, but the keystone was kept safe by being hidden away among the hundreds of other warding stones. Dubell was the only one who would know its exact location.

  After carefully examining the dull-colored egg-shaped warding stone, Dubell replaced it in its wall niche and sealed it up with clay, handing the bucket back to the unwilling servant boy who had been drafted for the task.

  "Driven by what?" Thomas asked, though he wasn't sure why he was pursuing the subject. Though if it provided no insight into Grandier, it might reveal something about the way Dubell thought.

  "By his convictions." Dubell climbed to his feet awkwardly and they started toward the pillars in the center of the cavernous room, the boy trailing behind.

  The cellar was damp, but the air was neither too hot nor too cold, and not at all stale, as if the airshafts within the thick walls of the Old Palace overhead might have openings somewhere in the cellar's ceiling.

  Thomas had followed Dubell down here to ask him what he had found out about Gambin's death, but Dubell hadn't been able to discover what the spy had been killed with or how it had been done. Now that Thomas was down here, he might as well wait until Dubell was finished; the old sorcerer might be helpful during Dontane's questioning. Thomas said, "I don't understand why his convictions would lead him against us. This isn't Bisra. If a sorcerer steals or kills his neighbor, he's hanged just like anyone else, but not for practicing magic."

  Dubell gestured with his trowel. "That, of course, is the difficult point. Why is he here at all? In Lodun we believe he has never been across our borders before, even though his father was from Ile-Rien. He has certainly never been accused of a crime, justly or unjustly, by our crown. Which leads me unfortunately to believe that his grudge against this land or this city is ideological, in which case there is little that can be done to deter him."

  Thomas shook his head. "I can't agree with that. There's a member of the city Philosophers' Academy who has invented some kind of clockwork that can add figures when he turns the knobs on the outside. The Inquisitors General in Bisra heard about it and have declared him a devil's servant, and if he ever crosses their border they'll kill him. If Grandier considers himself such a scholar, why isn't he still over the border giving hell to the Bisran crown?"

  "It would certainly seem more sensible of him. Unless," Dubell paused as the idea occurred to him, "he has been offered money by someone to persecute us."

  "That's been considered." In Bisra, mobs surrounded the churches where the Inquisition held court, accusing each other of witchcraft and seeing demons under every bush. If it came out that the Bisran crown had employed a man who had escaped the death sentence for black magic, there would be riots it would take them weeks to put down. Thomas kicked a pillar thoughtfully. He would have to consider ways to let the appropriate rumors slip across the border. "Grandier might do it, if they offered him something he wanted badly enough."

  Dubell shook his head, brow furrowed. "If I were him, I think my quarrel against them would run too deeply."

  "There are several possibilities as to who could have hired him." Thomas had no wish to discuss the possibilities who were nearer at hand than Bisra; not with Galen Dubell, at any rate. "And you have never heard of this man Dontane?"

  "Not in connection with Urbain Grandier. Not at all, in fact. The poison that the poor fellow Lestrac was given tends to cause hallucinations and delusions before the sleep that soon turns to death. He might have accused the man falsely."

  Thomas didn't think it had been a delusion. Lestrac had been too certain, too angry in his betrayal. "Kade seemed sure that he was the one in the room with Lestrac. She made his likeness form in a pool of wine."

  "That is not entirely a tried-and-true method. Kade is," Dubell hesitated, "quite brilliant in a peculiar way. But she also tends to let her imagination get the best of her."

  Thomas, who also thought of Dubell as brilliant in a peculiar way, didn't comment.

  Dubell stopped at one of the huge pillars and pointed to a square section near the base that had been carved out and refilled with clay. "This is where the keystone is buried. I've already prepared the new location for it, and it will only take me a short time to convey it there. Not long enough to cause any degeneration in the wards."

  Frowning, Thomas knelt to look at the clay seal more closely. "This is recent. Have you looked at it before?"

  "No." Dubell stooped anxiously, and started to pry out the clay. "Perhaps Dr. Surete... God, if it's been this all along..."

  The explosion was like a cannon going off directly over their heads. The stone pillars trembled with the shock of it, releasing a rain of dust and rock chips from above. Thomas stood, then staggered as the floor slipped suddenly under his feet. Deafened by the noise, he waited for the thousands of tons of stone to come crashing down on top of them.

  The walls shuddered back into stillness.

  For a moment Thomas and the other guards stared at each other. "What..." whispered Baserat.

  Dubell had rocked back on his heels with the concussion but he kept digging away at the clay seal. It broke under the pressure and he shoved his hand back into the niche. "It's empty," he said, and began to curse Grandier.

  Thomas hauled Dubell to his feet. "Come on," he said and led them at a run toward the stairs. It might have been the city armories, he thought. The two long stone buildings housed stores of gunpowder and stood on the opposite side of the inner wall from the Gallery Wing. But even if both had gone up at once... No, there was no accidental cause for an explosion like that; the palace was under attack, from outside or from within. He tried to remember who had been on duty in the building overhead, and where Ravenna was likely to be at this time.

  They reached the staircase at the far end of the shadowy darkness. Thomas took the lamp from the guard who had had the presence of mind to bring it and held it up. The narrow stairs spiraled upward, unblocked as far as the light reached.

  Thomas said, "Load your pistols."

  Dubell took the lamp and moved to peer uneasily up into the stairway as the guards loaded their weapons with the swiftness of long practice. By the time Thomas closed the cover over the priming pan of his second wheellock and tucked it back into his sash, he had calmed himself enough to think clearly. If the few of them were going to do any good, there could be no mistakes.

  He started up the stairs, the ot
hers following behind him. The four-story climb might have stretched to infinity.

  They had reached the second flight when there was a yell from behind and Thomas turned back. Treville was slumped on the stairs, clutching his side. The figure standing over him was nightmarish; it looked like a man, but its skin was gray and foul, its clothes in brown tatters, its hair a torn greasy mop. It seemed as though they froze there, staring at the apparition, for moments, but it must have been only half a heartbeat because the creature never had another chance to move. On the stairs below, Baserat struck upward at the same time that Martin fell on it from above, almost succeeding in impaling himself on the other guard's sword.

  Dubell flattened himself back against the wall so Thomas could get past. The two guards were standing back from the creature now, looking down in shock. Thomas had to put a hand on Martin's shoulder and move him out of the way before he could see it.

  Its narrow features twisted in death, it looked like a man who had been held prisoner in a dark place for a very long time and starved. The wound in its chest where the point of Baserat's rapier had emerged was bloody but also burned, as if the metal blade had been red-hot.

  Dubell had edged down past them and was helping Treville to sit up. Thomas picked up the weapon the creature had used. It was a bronze short sword, with a narrow blade and wickedly sharp edges. Not much protection against a steel weapon, but it did its job well enough on human flesh.

  "It was up above us, perched there, Captain," Baserat said, his voice a little unsteady.