The Element of Fire

  A log rolled to the edge of the hearth, and he stood, somewhat awkwardly, supporting himself on the arm of the chair, to push it back in with the poker.

  Kade winced. "I'm sorry about that."

  He dropped back into the chair. "About saving my life? There's a cheery sentiment."

  She refused to be diverted. "What if it never heals?"

  She was just as well aware as he was about what it would do to his speed in a fight. "Well, I'm getting old for a duelist. It probably won't make any difference in the long run."

  "Don't say that; I have enough to worry about." Kade slumped further down in her chair. "How are we going to get rid of Denzil?"

  Thomas wondered how she could sit like that without breaking her back. He answered, "I'm going to kill him, if I ever get the chance. But I'd like to do it without dooming Falaise, myself, or anyone else."

  "I could do it. Roland hates me anyway, and he can't come after me where I live."

  He snorted. "I'm hardly likely to ask you to do a thing like that."

  "It's nothing I haven't done before."

  The somewhat airy way she said this caused him to doubt that she was as indifferent as she pretended, but he answered, "I don't care if you go about murdering people every afternoon. You'd make me look a fool or a worse scoundrel than Denzil, and I'd think of some horrific way to retaliate."

  She shrugged and rubbed the arm of the chair distractedly. "It shouldn't matter, even if I am related to him. I wished my father dead."

  Thomas frowned. "What makes you say that?"

  Her eyes on the fire, Kade said slowly, "I wished it, very hard, with everything I had, which I was beginning to realize might be quite a bit. And he died."

  "He didn't just fall over dead."

  "Yes, he did." She looked stubborn.

  "No, he did not. Were you there?"

  "No, of course not, but I know what happened because I caused it."

  "I don't know why I bother to listen to you argue in circles."

  Kade made an exasperated gesture. "Because you can't come up with anything better than 'No, he did not.' How do you know? My magic was wild then, I didn't know what I was doing, I could have caused any amount of harm."

  He was silent for a long moment. He said finally, "Does it matter, as long as he's dead?"

  "No, I suppose not." She sank further in her chair and stared at the fire.

  Thomas glanced back at the two servants. Berham was deep into a story of one of the last battles of the Bisran War, and Phaistus was so engrossed in it he was getting hot lead all over the table. He turned back to the fire. "Fulstan was poisoned."

  Her expression went blank. It was hard to tell if she was astonished or not. He said, "Ravenna did it. I got the poison for her. It was foxglove, as I recall."

  Kade stood up and walked around the room in a circle. After a few moments she wandered back to the fire and sat down again as if she had just arrived.

  Thomas added, "Believe it or not, Ravenna never quite realized what Fulstan was doing to you or to Roland. She's very single-minded. He knew he should be wary of her, but she couldn't touch him under court- or landlaw, and I suppose he thought his position was safe. After your little outburst in the cathedral, she began to wonder why you'd become such a terror. I discovered some of the details for her so she sent you out of the city to the convent. You'd been gone a week when Roland botched his attempt to bleed to death, and when she heard about that she made the decision." He shrugged. It all seemed a very long time ago. "There wasn't any dancing in the streets, but most of the mourning was insincere."

  She was silent for a long time, and Thomas listened to the fire crackle and Bertram's voice in the background. Finally Kade said quietly, "I never thought anybody wanted to kill him but me. Even Roland thought it was something he did, like not riding well enough or playing games badly."

  Thomas leaned forward and added another log to the fire. "Well, it was time you knew."

  * * *

  It was much later and most of the house was asleep when Kade made her way up to the highest attic and eased up the sash of a window there, mindful of the nails in it. It was cold, bitterly cold, with a patina of frost glittering over every surface and clouds hiding the stars. It was very dark and the moon was in its waning; in the Old Faith, it was the dark time, the death of white magic. The reigning time of the Host. The gray-black rooftops spread around her like an angular un-moving sea. She could just see the palace from here as an odd collection of shapes, some recognizable as towers, another as the dome of the Summer Residence. The faint glow of witch-light flickered over the walls.

  She climbed out onto the slate-shingled roof of the gable just below and sat in front of the window, to keep anything from trying to enter the house behind her back. She shivered and hugged her knees, though she had augmented her clothing with a man's shirt Berham had found for her and Thomas's battered buff coat.

  I did not kill my father. Her emotions were as tangled as a jumbled collection of beaded necklaces. She wished she could untangle the strands and run them through her fingers one by one. Disappointment, that she could understand. It was not an odd emotion for someone who had believed a lie was the truth, particularly as it was a lie she had told herself. Confusion, anger, remembered fear, all these were explicable, if hopelessly intertwined. It was the strange sensation of release, the sense of freedom that she couldn't understand, that made her face hot and her hands numb with the strength of it. As if something tightly coiled inside her chest had relaxed a trifle. It seemed to make other things possible as well. It seemed to imply that it might be possible to forget, eventually. Time to stop dreaming like a child, she told herself with an irritated toss of her head. Time to think and plan.

  She closed her eyes and whispered, "Boliver, come here now; I need to talk to you." A gust of wind carried the words away.

  Nothing happened. I hate it when he makes me do this. "As Queen of Air and Darkness, and on my sovereignty of Knockma, I call Boliver Fay."

  For a long breathless moment there was no answer, then out of the cloud-covered sky a star fell. It plunged toward her and landed lightly at her feet, then resolved with a flash of light into Boliver, who said, "It's not bloody easy getting here, you know." He was about Kade's height, wizened and red bearded, and his vivid blue eyes were worried. He wore a high peaked hat and a somewhat tattered velvet doublet.

  "No, I don't know. That's why I called you. How is Knockma?"

  "Not so good. There are members of the Host drawn up on the border to Fayre, though not a sign of them on the mortal side, so far. They didn't like you much to begin with, and now with you taking the human part in this war--"

  "Is everyone all right?" Kade had worried about her household. Some of them were human, and none terribly good at defending themselves.

  Boliver was offended. "You know I wouldn't let anything happen to them. But why are you doin' this? Have you gone witless? You didn't make up with your brother by chance?"

  "No, of course not." Kade doubted she ever would. Roland wouldn't welcome such an overture, and she wasn't certain she wanted to make it anymore. There was too much history between them, and they might only remind one another of things better forgotten. The news that he had tried to take his own life had been an unpleasant surprise, and her thoughts shied away from it. She looked out over the dark dead city again. "I've got a reason for it."

  "'A reason,' she says. Oh, joy." Boliver rolled his eyes.

  She rubbed her forehead. "I'll hold Knockma for us, don't worry."

  "I'm not worried." He let his knees knock and his teeth chatter convincingly. "I'm petrified. I've no wish to vanish down Evadne's gullet. Or watch me bosom companions do likewise."

  "Neither do I." She shifted impatiently. "I need your help."

  He snorted. "As if I had a choice."

  "Well you don't, so be quiet and listen. I need you to fly over the palace and tell me what you can see."

  "Fly over the palace? What hav
e I done to deserve it? With all those boglie-woglies everywhere?"

  "Yes. I'd do it if I could, but I can't, and that's all there is to it!" Boliver was her oldest friend in Fayre, and she didn't want to risk him, but there was no other way to learn what she needed to know. If there was one thing Kade regretted, it was her lack of the fay ability to shape-change and to fly.

  "Yes, yes. I know. You've got your head set on defeating the Unseelie Court and their minions one-handed, I suppose, and there's no dissuading you. Well, wish me luck."

  She stood as he vanished into starlight and streaked away toward the shadowy bulk of the palace towers. "Luck," she whispered.

  Chapter Twelve

  THOMAS WOKE BEFORE dawn, the wound in his leg stiff and sore. Despite the fire, the room was frosty and he sat on the bed and struggled into his doublet. He stood and limped around until he could walk without obviously hobbling, then tried to do a fencer's full extension. He got halfway down and needed the help of the bedpost to get back up.

  Phaistus was sleeping in front of the doorway, rolled up in a rug and snoring. He hadn't stirred when Thomas was bumping around the room and didn't wake when he stepped over him and opened the door.

  The anteroom was lit only by two candles on the mantel, their soft light making the blue wallpaper dissolve into shadow and hiding the disarray of the fine furnishings. Kade was sitting on the floor with the contents of an ebony trinket cabinet spread out around her. It was probably the silver-gilt curiosities and mother-of-pearl boxes that had attracted her attention, but it was the seashells, the baby's skull, and the ostrich egg that had undoubtedly kept it.

  She looked up at him. "Are you going back to the palace today?"

  It was too early for this. He dropped into an armchair. "Wouldn't that be an extraordinarily foolish thing to do?"

  "I don't know. I don't think about things that way." She held up a seashell with her bandaged hand, passed the other hand in front of it, and the shell disappeared. "I suppose it would depend on why you were going. And who went with you." She pulled the shell out of her right ear. "Do you want to find the keystone?"

  Thomas watched her for a moment. She was giving the shell the sort of concentration usually reserved for a deep philosophical problem. He was certain Denzil had returned to the palace yesterday, and he meant to discover why. He had thought the keystone was a lost cause. "Would that do any good?"

  "The wards themselves are still there, drifting over the older parts of the palace, and the other wardstones are still in place. If we replace the keystone, it will pull the wards back down into their original courses, and the Host will have to leave or be trapped inside."

  Thomas knew Grandier must have taken the stone, probably soon after he had arrived at the palace, but that still didn't leave them a clue of where to look for it. "He could have hidden the keystone anywhere inside the palace. Or more likely, he handed it to Dontane, that night at court when he was there, to hide somewhere in the city. It would be like looking for one certain rock in a quarry."

  "But it's a very special sort of rock. If I could get to one of the plain wardstones, and take a chip from it," Kade said slowly, "I might be able to use it in a spell, to find the keystone."

  Thomas frowned. "How?"

  "Years and years ago when all the stones were placed in the warding spell, they became one. Even when the keystone has been removed, and the matrix isn't there anymore, the stones remember. It's like using a lock of hair to find a person." She stared at the shell in her hand, vexed. "I should have thought of this before we left the palace yesterday."

  "There aren't warding stones in the Old Courts. It would have been just as dangerous to go into the other part of the palace then as it is now," he said. And you had other things to think about. "If you came with me, you could do this spell while we were in the palace, and discover if the keystone is still there?"

  Kade considered this a moment, her eyes moving through the collection of curiosities on the floor. "No. Am I a fool for being honest?"

  "No. Am I a fool for expecting you to be honest?" Even as he said it he realized it was true. He had been prepared to believe her answer, even if it had served her purpose.

  Kade didn't look up at him, staring instead at the shell lying on her bandaged palm. "So, whatever are we going to do?" She closed her hand, and opened it again. The shell had vanished.

  "Don't play coy; it ill becomes you."

  She pulled the shell out of her ear again and for the first time looked at him directly. "All right, will you say I can come with you or do we have to have a loud fight about it and attract the attention and speculation of the entire house?"

  Thomas sighed and looked at the ceiling. "I don't know, I could do with a loud fight. Gets the blood moving." He had seriously considered asking her to come already. She could escape any danger far more readily than he could and with her help his chances of accomplishing something increased to the point of the almost possible.

  Kade made the shell vanish again, stood to lean on his chair arm, and apparently found it in his ear.

  This time he saw it come out of her sleeve. "Get away from me," he told her cordially.

  Kade smiled. "I'm going with you, am I not?"

  He said, "Yes. We'll both be fools together."

  * * *

  Falaise did not complain when told she had another long ride ahead of her. She seemed just as anxious to go as they were to send her on her way.

  The Queen's presence had assured them the loan of some of Aviler's horses, and the servants readied them in the large roofed court that held the house's stables. The large chamber was warmed somewhat by the presence of the animals and was probably one of the more comfortable areas of the house. This did not entirely account for the number of city guardsmen who had ostensibly shown up to see them off, probably on Aviler's orders.

  Thomas was sending all the guards who had survived the flight from the palace, even the most badly wounded. Aviler would probably interpret this as the basest form of distrust, but at the moment the last thing Thomas cared about was the High Minister's opinion of him.

  He drew Lucas aside while Gideon was helping Falaise to mount and said, "I'm not going with you. I'm going back to the palace."

  He hadn't thought this would be well received and he wasn't mistaken. Lucas stared at him incredulously. "Why?"

  They keep asking me that, Thomas thought. Do I seem bored, that I have to invent these things to keep myself busy? "Why do you think? That's where Denzil went. He must realize that we'll get the Queen out of here, and with her gone he's not likely to come back."

  "What if he isn't there?"

  "If he is, it's the best chance I'm likely to have at him. If he's not, I can at least have a look at what's happening there before I go on to Bel Garde." He didn't know if Aviler had sent someone to follow Denzil or not; probably not, and he didn't want to give his own plan away by asking. It seemed unlikely that Aviler was in the plot with Denzil, but it had seemed unlikely that Galen Dubell was anything other than what he had appeared.

  Lucas said, "Send someone else, Thomas. Or I'll go."

  "No, it's a fool's mission. I'm not Roland, to send someone off to die on an idiot whim." Thomas glanced around. The argument, though low voiced, was attracting the attention of the city guards who were loitering in the stable and of Lord Aviler himself, who was watching from the narrow second-floor balcony where an arched door led into the rest of the house.

  Lucas noticed and made a concentrated effort to appear calm. "You're going alone?" he asked.

  Thomas found himself curiously reluctant, as if he were admitting to something. "No, Kade is coming with me."

  Lucas winced.

  "She's a sorceress, and she can get me back in without a fight."

  "I know, I know." Lucas hesitated. He looked toward the other men who were saddling the horses, or waiting half-nervously and half-impatiently for them to get on with it. "She could do it by herself. You don't need to go with her." r />
  Thomas shook his head. "She's not invincible, she only thinks she is."

  "So do you." Lucas looked back at him, saying deliberately, "In your condition, you'd probably slow her down."

  "Then it's no loss to anyone if I don't come back."

  Thomas had spoken with more heat than he had intended, but Lucas seemed to realize that line of argument was not going to get him anywhere. He said, "I'll wait for you here."

  "I need you to go with Falaise."

  "Gideon can do that. He's not a fool; he'll get her there."

  They were both silent a moment. Thomas didn't want to force the issue, not here, not now, and not with an audience. He said, "All right, then, but keep a couple of the men with you. And don't wait too long. If it takes more than a day, we'll have to hole up somewhere for the night, and this place may not be safe much longer. If something starts to happen, get out and ride like hell for the gates."

  Lucas nodded distractedly, then without looking at him said, "You know that girl's half in love with you."

  "Falaise will keep." Thomas looked over at the Queen, who sat her horse with a kind of delicate ease, a few ringlets escaping from her hood. "If anything, it will make things easier in the long run--"

  "I'm not talking about Falaise." He hesitated. "You didn't see her when she thought you were dying. I did."

  There was only one other "her" he could mean. Thomas said slowly, "Well, she's the excitable type."

  "It was more than just that."

  "You're mad," Thomas told him, but couldn't help thinking about a woman who chuckled wickedly to herself at odd moments and offered to kill people for him.

  "I'm only telling you to watch yourself, that's all," Lucas said, his expression serious. "She's not exactly an ordinary woman."

  "I realize that," Thomas said. Believe me, I realize that.

  "You think you do, but I've known you a long time and you've got a blind eye when it comes to this type of woman."