The Element of Fire

  Thomas shook his head. "I don't know if he's dead. I'm sure I hit him, but he might be only wounded."

  Kade frowned. "That would be very inconvenient."

  "To say the least." Thomas couldn't get his mind off the castle. "When you're inside, are you upside down?"

  "No, that would be silly. It's bad enough as it is, with the stairs all funny in some places. In the middle, between the castle on top and the one below, you have to climb a ladder for a bit and no one likes it."

  They stood in silence for a time, until Thomas saw something oddly like a large red dog leaping over the grass toward them. "A friend of yours?" he asked.

  Kade said with a sigh, "I suppose so. That's Boliver."

  By the time Boliver arrived he had managed to become a wizened little man about Kade's height with red hair and an odd peaked hat, and the bluest eyes Thomas had ever seen.

  When he had reached them, Kade asked, "How did you know I was back?"

  "How could I help but know? They must have heard the yelling in the next century." He jerked his head back toward the castle. "The others are watching with a spyglass from the wind tower, and it fell to me to come out and ask just what was doing." He eyed Thomas speculatively.

  Kade shaded her eyes and peered at the castle. "Don't they have anything better to do?" She shook her head in annoyance and turned back to Boliver. "Have the Host tried an attack yet?"

  He said, "No, but I been to the village and they say they've seen a hag in the pond and there's been odd things setting the dogs to barking and the sheep to running."

  Kade winced in genuine pain. "It's what I thought." She nodded to herself, resigned. "The Host will come here soon."

  Thomas hated to see her so torn and desperate. "Look, you've done enough. Send me back to Aviler's house and stay here."

  She shook her head. "No, that's what they want. If I let them chase me about, then they'll know they can make me do anything they please."

  Thomas understood that only too well. It was a damnable trap, one he had been caught in most of his life. He watched her, knowing there was nothing he could do to help her, that his own involvement had made her decision all the more difficult.

  She paced and tugged on her hair. "This place is very strong. It can hold itself against them without me for a time. The village... Damn it, the village." She stopped and told Boliver, "Go up and tell them there's going to be a battle; tell them to run."

  "Very well, I will." The fay hesitated then and, with what had to be uncanny and devastating perception, said, "So here's your reason. Well he's got my heartfelt sympathy."

  Thomas lifted a brow at Kade, though it was a struggle to keep his expression neutral. The look Kade directed at Boliver should have dissolved him into charred coal on the spot. She said quietly, "You're dead."

  Boliver shifted uneasily, as though realizing he might have overstepped himself. He said, "I'll just go and have a word with the village, shall I?"

  "Yes, why don't you do that."

  "Have to be quick, you know. Wouldn't want to be caught by the Host."

  "It wouldn't be nearly as terrible as some things I've just thought of."

  "Ah. I see. Well, I'll be going now." Boliver whirled around rapidly, becoming a ball of heatless flames. He shot toward the lake surface above like a firework.

  "Do me one favor," Thomas said.

  "What?" She was blushing furiously and attempting to ignore the fact.

  "Don't kill Boliver."

  Kade sighed, managing a rueful smile. "I wasn't going to. I just wanted to think about it for a bit." She dug in the pocket of her smock and produced the chip taken from the wardstone. "I can do this now."

  She started toward the castle, and still half-unwilling, he followed her.

  As they reached the base of the hilly garden, the castle had begun to look almost ordinary, as if it were perfectly normal to hang upside down from an island suspended in glass with its top turret brushed by a tree. If he had ever thought about it at all, Thomas would have expected a place like this to be eerily perfect, without blemish, as if it were carved out of marble, all imperfections smoothed away. This fayre castle had cracked stones where heavy climbing vines had silently invaded, moss growing around its windows, and was crumbling around the edge of its parapet.

  Below the lowermost turret, a stone stair curved up the hillside garden to meet one of the windows, and Thomas followed Kade up to the top. The garden itself was a little overgrown, as if it was only tended when someone had the time. The grass was tall, flowers hung out of their beds, and heavy rosebushes had all but taken over the low wall that circled it, but the fountain was running cheerfully.

  The room inside the turret was round, taking up the entire top, or bottom, level. It was lined with book-filled shelves, and clay jars seemed to be crammed into every available space that wasn't occupied by the books. It smelled thickly of herbs and flowers, and sunlight from the wide window had faded the once-bright colors of the carpet and the chair covers.

  Kade hopped down onto the wide stone window seat and then to the floor. She glanced back at Thomas as he was getting his first bemused look at the room. "Not what you were expecting?" she asked.

  He stepped down from the window seat after her. "If I'd ever considered it, I wouldn't have expected to see the place and still be in any kind of condition to comment on it. You were a deadly enemy of the crown not so long ago, remember?"

  "I'd forgotten." She crossed over to the shelves on the far wall. "Well, it doesn't look like the abode of a wicked fay sorceress, but this is where it's all done, all the plots, all the nasty little tricks." Kade ran a hand along the shelves, and selected a large dusty volume.

  She flipped through the book until she found the page she wanted. He watched her as she stood on the lower shelves to take down several of the clay jars. He asked, "How did you find this place?"

  "It belonged to my mother. She had others, but she lived here most of the time. After I left the convent, I looked for her. I looked so long and so hard she eventually had to let me find her."

  Kade dumped the armful of jars on the draw table. "She wasn't a very nice person, not exactly what I was hoping for. But she was taken with the idea of having a daughter, for a while at least." She paused in dumping the herbs and powders out of their containers and smiled at some memory. "She gave me a fayre ointment to take the mortal scales off my eyes, so I could see through fayre glamour. She had more people here, fay and humans, allof them bound to her somehow." She went back to her task. "She had Boliver locked up inside a stone in the garden. He's a phooka, and he likes to change into horses and dogs and fool people, but he's mostly harmless, and he wasn't very happy inside a rock. I broke it and let him out, and Moire threw a terrible fit, but she didn't really do anything about it. That's when I realized that I didn't have to do what she said. I knew sorcery, and she was wary of it."

  While she tossed ingredients into a bowl and muttered to herself, Thomas paced the room. After a time, she stopped to glare at him and he took the hint and settled into the window seat. He looked out into the bright air of Knockma and the realization of what Grandier and the Host had done to the city struck with renewed force. If Ravenna and the others hadn't reached Bel Garde safely...

  It wasn't long before Kade said, "Now we wait until it works." She ran her hands through her hair. "If it does."

  "If it does," Thomas said. "The keystone's place was in the largest undercellar of the Old Palace, in the base of the fourth pillar from the north side on the third row." At her look of surprise, he explained, "I wasn't comfortable being the only one alive besides Urbain Grandier who knew that."

  Kade came to stand next to him at the window seat, looking out into the garden. She was blushing, and he wondered why. He said, "What happened after you released Boliver?"

  She lifted a corner of the faded gold curtain and looked at it as if she had never seen it before. "I disobeyed her frequently. She pretended not to care. Then the Unseelie Court tr
icked her and she had to go to Hell, and I inherited everything. Most of her people ran away as soon as she was gone. Boliver stayed because he's feckless and hasn't anything better to do, and a few others stayed because they haven't anywhere better to go." She was quiet for a moment, looking out at the overgrown comfortable garden.

  It was hard to believe that Boliver had ever been imprisoned out there, or that anyone but Kade had ever lived in the quiet dusty peace of this room. Thomas said, "Or maybe they liked it well enough where they were, once your mother was gone."

  Kade looked down at him, her gray eyes serious. "I think you like me a little bit, even if it would half kill you to admit it."

  "It would not half kill me to admit it." The sunlight, muted and changed by the layer of illusory water above, transformed the color of her hair to the same dusty gold as the drape. After a moment, he said, "I know what Ravenna told you, that night in the Guard House. She was oversimplifying the case. She does that when she's trying to get something she wants very badly."

  Kade clapped a hand over her eyes, reeled around, and half fell into one of the wooden chairs. "Do you know everything?" she demanded.

  "No. If I knew everything, we wouldn't be in this situation." He smiled. "But I suppose I should be flattered that she considers my presence an inducement. I'm old enough to be your father."

  "But you're not." She slanted a deliberate look at him. "You're not?"

  "No, I wasn't at court then. And I do keep careful track of those things, in the event they become important later." Thomas realized he could hardly be doing a worse job of putting her off if he had actually set out to seduce her.

  Kade shifted uncomfortably. "I told her I didn't want the blasted throne."

  "I know. If you'd accepted, it would have been a rare disaster. Exciting, but a disaster all the same."

  "Well, that's what I thought." She hesitated a long moment, drawing a design with the toe of her boot on the floor. "Do you trust me?"

  Tell her no, he thought, and whatever it is that's happening between us will end. But he didn't want it to end. He wanted to see what would happen next, to follow it to its conclusion. He wanted it more than anything else he had wanted in a long time. He said, "Yes, oddly enough, I do."

  She bolted back across the room, stood for a moment in front of the shelves, then took down a white-and-blue banded jar. She wandered back, and not looking up at him, she said, "This is the fayre ointment my mother gave me. It will let you see through glamour. Not all the time, because fay can use glamour to fool each other, but if they don't know you're there, or that you can see them, they won't know to hide from you. I mean, if you want it."

  There's more to this than just that, Thomas thought. It will make some kind of tie between us, and then what will happen? Anything or nothing. He pulled off his glove and held out his hand.

  * * *

  The room was cold and still, windowless, a single candle sparking color from the blood red fabric of the walls, leaving all else to fade into the gray-black of shadow. Urbain Grandier sat at the table, the polished wood chill under his hands, his face turned toward a framed parchment map of Ile-Rien. The southern border with Bisra was marked in red, Umberwald and Adera to the north and east in blue, and the compass rose and the faces of the four winds were rendered in precise and loving detail. Grandier could not possibly decipher the ornate script that described towns, rivers, and borders in the wan flicker of the single candle, but his eyes were as intent as if he treasured every faded brown scratch of the artist's pen.

  There was noise outside, voices, then an alarmed shout. The door banged open, revealing Dontane and an Alsene trooper, half carrying, half supporting the young Duke of Alsene between them. Denzil's shoulder and left arm were soaked with blood, his doublet and buff coat torn aside to reveal lacerated flesh. There were more troopers out in the brightly lit anteroom, and one of the young lords of Alsene who had arrived with the duchy's troop that day was shouting at them. Grandier rubbed his eyes under Galen Dubell's gold spectacles and said mildly, "Put him on the daybed. And for heaven's sake, shut the door."

  Grandier stood and winced. He still felt the old pain; his mind tracing the path of injuries that this body had never known. He lit the other candles in the room as the two men took Denzil to the couch and gently let him down on it. The Duke's face was bleached white, fierce with pain. One of his young pages had followed them in and now knelt anxiously beside the couch. "How did it happen?" Grandier asked, watching them.

  "The Gallery Wing," Dontane replied. He stepped back from the couch, breathing hard from exertion, sweat gleaming on his forehead. "Someone was there, and fired at us from cover. It woke the fay sleeping in the walls, and they overran the place so quickly we didn't have a chance to pursue him."

  Grandier tut-tutted under his breath, taking his leather-covered apothecary box out of a cabinet. "To be expected."

  Dontane stared. "Expected...?"

  "Of course. It would be a very great mistake to think our opponents are fools. They were bound to investigate at some time."

  "Then they know the Alsene troop is here." Dontane's sharp features were fearful.

  "I would imagine so, yes."

  Dontane strode for the door, gesturing for the Alsene trooper to follow him. Denzil watched him go, perhaps knowing as Grandier did that Dontane would take this opportunity to order the Alsene troops and officers, using the Duke's authority. Denzil was in no position to object; his blond hair was soaked with sweat, and he was biting his lips until blood came from the effort to not cry out.

  And bleeding like a slaughtered pig on good furniture, Grandier thought. After the poverty of his early life in Bisra, the abundance of first Lodun and then Vienne and the palace had astonished him. Ile-Rien had little understanding of its own wealth, of how valuable was the flow of goods from the foreign vessels flocking to its trading ports, of the surfeit of arable land that allowed any peasant with enough coins in his pocket to own it. Of how this wealth would affect those who did not possess it. His voice dry, he told the kneeling page, "You may go. This won't take long, and he can do without the necessity of adoration for a short while."

  The boy was too afraid of Grandier to argue. He left without protest but with several longing backward glances. Denzil took a breath, brow furrowed with exertion, and whispered, "Jealous, sorcerer?"

  It did not surprise Grandier that the Duke would make the effort to say something vicious despite his agony. Grandier examined the large wound in Denzil's shoulder where the pistol ball had penetrated and frowned at the visible bone splinters. "Oh, yes, terribly," he answered. "It affects my judgment, you see." He turned back to the apothecary box to select the necessary powders. Dontane had been the messenger in the forging of the alliance between Grandier and the Duke of Alsene in Ile-Rien, and that alliance had never been anything but uneasy. And Grandier did not like the accord he saw at times now between Dontane and Denzil.

  "Your affectation of superiority is amusing." Denzil gasped, closed his eyes briefly, then continued, "I hardly think you can take the high moral ground in this situation."

  "I, at least, am not a traitor. My homeland turned against me long before I returned the sentiment." Grandier came back to Denzil's side. On the panel supporting the daybed's canopy was a painted scene of nymphs, satyrs, and human shepherds enjoying each other's company in several ways that would have been displeasing to the Bisran Church. The casual displays of sensuality and the acceptance of it in Ile-Rien had also been a surprise. Like the acceptance of sorcery. Grandier had heard about it, about the university at Lodun, but he had not really credited the rumors until he had seen the reality. I wish I had come here as a young man, he thought. So much might have been different.

  "And what excuse do you make for your betrayal?"

  "Attempting to excuse the inexcusable is always a mistake," Grandier said. "Why not simply admit that greed overwhelms loyalty, affection, and common sense."

  "I have no affection or loyalty for
Roland," Denzil said, voice grating with pain. "He serves my purpose."

  "I wasn't speaking about you," Grandier said. Denzil might have grown to hate the young King because of the power Roland held over him, even though as Denzil's friend and patron Roland had never exercised that power. Grandier understood this all too well. He knew the danger of allowing any individual, any state, any force of whatever kind, to hold one in its power, to control one's actions. "This is going to hurt, but I can't think why you should mind. You seem to enjoy the pain of others."

  Denzil's chuckle was weak, but it held real amusement. "You mean that as a taunt, but even you would be shocked at how accurate your assessment is."

  For an instant, Grandier hesitated. He knew Denzil to be a smiling killer, as excellent an actor as the hags who lured children to their deaths with their own mothers' voices. No, that was not quite the analogy he was searching for. He is not a monster, Grandier thought, but forces beyond his control have warped him past reason. Even as they have me. "Perhaps I would," he said, actually enjoying Denzil's presence for the first time in their short acquaintance. "We are both in good company."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "ROLAND, I WANT you to come with me." Ravenna stood in the doorway, her look of determination as grim as the faces of the Queen's guards accompanying her.

  Her son looked up at her nervously. He sat in an armchair holding a small lapdesk, though the paper on it was still blank. The room would have been light and airy in the summer, but now the wooden winter shutters covered the large windows and the fire in the hearth could not dispel the cold. There was no one with him but his personal servants; Ravenna had made sure she would not have to do this under the eyes of any courtiers or hangers-on.

  Roland turned the pen over in his hands and got ink on his fingers. "Why?"

  She said, "I have something to show you."