The Element of Fire - Martha Wells (best android ereader .txt) 📗

“You take care. When I fall, I’m taking you with me,” Thomas said, and walked away.

*

The Prince’s Gate yard, the buffer area between the smaller inner gate and the towering bulk of the outer gate, was closed in by a wall and the south side of the Gate Bastion. Queen’s guards and Albon knights manned the walls, last night’s tensions forgotten among this morning’s fears.

Thomas’s horse danced sideways in the churned mud and snow, glad to be out of the stables, and he reined her in. Fifty of the Queen’s guards, with Vivan and most of the surviving Cisternans, sat their horses with him, waiting for the lookouts on the walls to give the clear signal. Snowflakes caught like crystal in their hat brims, hair, and the fur of their cloaks. Renier waved from the top of the wall, then the main gate swung open and they rode out.

Many of the wealthy houses along the row had been caught by surprise. The doors and windows had been smashed through, revealing dark empty openings, snow blowing freely in. They would prove perfect daytime lurking places for the fay. A few houses across the way were still tightly shuttered and bore no outward sign of invasion, but nothing stirred as they rode out into the street.

There were a few bodies half-buried in the snow. Their horses, battlefield trained to ignore such things, would have walked right over the first had Thomas not guided them around. The Unseelie Court could not appear while the sun was visible, even when it was dimmed by the gray snow clouds. They would not be faced with the power that had driven them out of the Old Palace unless the clouds grew considerably darker, blocking out most of the light. But the dark fay that followed the Host were not so handicapped. There would be things that flew, that traveled beneath the snow, that would leap down at them from the rooftops and the broken windows of the houses around them. So Kade Carrion had told them.

Thomas wondered where Kade was, if she was watching or if she was back in Fayre. After Grandier’s escape they had gone into the kitchens attached to the Guard House to talk. The servants had fired the ovens and it was almost warm. It was not deserted either; men and women were packing supplies for the journey. Along the side where the stores were kept, among barrels of apples, flour, and barley and shelves stacked with rounds of yellow and white cheeses covered with wax, they had stopped. Kade sat on an apple barrel, fixed her eyes on the rubies in his cloak pin, and said, “How do you know he’s dead?”

He had brought the copy of Grandier’s confession, and handed it to her.

She read it through twice, her eyes bleak. He said quietly, “He wanted us to be completely dependent on one sorcerer, and he chose Galen Dubell. He killed Dr. Surete and Milam after Surete had convinced Ravenna to let Dubell return. He told me how himself, after the golem attacked you in the Grand Gallery. He said it would have been simplicity itself to give either the Court Sorcerer or his assistant an enspelled object, especially if it seemed to come from a friend. So they died, like Dubell himself, his servants at Lodun, that clown in your acting troupe, a spy called Gambin, and Lord Lestrac, who knew too much of their plan and was prone to dangerous mistakes. Maybe there were others. We’ll probably never know.

“I thought Denzil was Grandier’s agent in the palace. That he’d taken the keystone. But Denzil didn’t know where it was kept—only Dr. Braun and Dubell knew that. The night Braun was killed he must have thought of something or found something that he believed important, and he was afraid to tell me with Denzil so nearby. He was on his way back to the King’s Bastion. Dubell was coming along the same way toward the gallery. They met, and Braun must have decided to tell Dubell what he had meant to tell me. They went into that salon and… Braun idolized the man and had no reason to be suspicious. He would never have thought twice about turning his back on him. Neither would I, for that matter, and I don’t do that lightly. Grandier played his part very well.”

Kade turned the paper over, and studied the blank back of it.

Thomas said, “You told him you were going to get into the palace with an acting troupe, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “He said he never received the letter.”

“But he did. You were right when you said the golem was after you. All Grandier had to do was find out which troupe was likely to get the invitation to court and plant the golem among them. You were the one who knew Galen Dubell the best; you were the one most likely to expose an imposter.

“I think it was Denzil who brought him here. Lestrac and Dontane were the contacts between them, so Denzil wouldn’t know that Grandier had taken Dubell’s place. That way Grandier could talk Roland out of leaving Bel Garde its walls, and we’d think of Dubell as his own man and no friend to Denzil. Denzil’s antagonism would be real, and no one would suspect the link between them. It was the only way for him. Grandier was scarred and crippled by torture, and it would’ve been impossible to go unnoticed with his own appearance. He used this to move around undetected in Bisra and have his revenge on the priests in the Inquisition, to cause the plague and the crop failure.”

For the first time Kade met his eyes. “Why did he let the wards close again? He could have held them apart and let the Host down on us. He could have done that at any time.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why the man does anything,” Thomas confessed. He remembered the burning house in the River Quarter, and how the magical fire had considerately failed to spread to the other buildings on the crowded street. He had noted it at the time, the equal portions of viciousness and restraint, and he understood it no more now than he had then. “Why he would help Denzil of all people… I don’t think it was malice against Galen Dubell. It was just that he was perfect for Grandier’s purposes. He was trusted, well-known, but he’d been a recluse for ten years. He was living alone at Lodun, without family…”

She interrupted, “He stopped taking students last year. He said he was working on a treatise on…” She stopped, and buried her face in her hands.

He stepped close and pulled her hands away from her face. She wasn’t crying. He might have expected grief and rage, but this wounded silence was pain itself. “I’m going to need your help.”

Kade seemed to realize he was holding her hands and pulled free. Standing up, she moved away a few steps. Not turning to look at him, she said, “I’m leaving. That’s what I was going to tell Galen when I heard you call him Grandier.”

“Why?”

She looked back at him. This time there were tears streaking her face, but her expression was that familiar one of exasperation. “There is nothing for me here, especially now.”

But he had still told her what the plan was, how he had intended for Dubell to cover the escape to Bel Garde, the closest defensible position that could be reached before nightfall. She had listened without comment. Before leaving he had said, “There’s a difference between running away from your fears and walking away from your past. For your own sake, make sure you know which is which.”

And that was a damn pompous thing to say to her, he thought now.

The first of the six wagons carrying the wounded who had survived the night left the shelter of the gate and trundled down the frozen mud of the street. They were guarded by about half the surviving Cisternans and a large party of servants and retainers—men, women, and children. Thomas would rather have kept the Cisternans together, but he knew they would obey his orders whereas there was no guarantee of that with Albon knights. Vivan and the other few remaining Cisternans would come with his group.

It was a relief to be outside, to be moving. Inside the walls, it seemed everything was held together by threads which were beginning to unravel.

Thomas looked back at his men grouped around the gate. Baserat was checking the set of his pistols in the holsters on the saddlebow. Thomas also had two long wheellock pistols in saddle holsters and was wearing a rapier with a wide cavalry blade. A dueling rapier was slung over his shoulder.

One large armed party, mounted with only one wagon for supplies, left the gate and headed down the street in the opposite direction. It was the Count of Duncanny, who had chosen to lead away his family, retainers, and some of the other nobility who could not be counted on to keep up in a hard ride. They had some Albons with them, and Thomas could only guess what their chances might be.

The count did not turn around as they rode away, but he lifted one hand to them in farewell.

Thomas noted the similarity to a funeral procession.

The men on the palace wall had vanished. He hoped the fay, and Grandier, didn’t guess the significance of that for another few moments at least.

The last wagon passed out of the shadow of the Prince’s Gate and Thomas nodded a signal to one of the guards waiting there.

Thomas spurred his horse and they were off. The crash of two coaches barreling through the gate signaled the eruption of the quiet street into pandemonium.

Surrounding the coaches were Lucas and about twenty Queen’s guards, the other Cisternans, and a few volunteer Albon knights. Behind them rode the rest of the Queen’s Guard and the Albon troop.

Grandier would anticipate their escape. He knew they would have to move now, before the snow choked the streets. Thomas hoped he hadn’t anticipated any further.

The promenades and tall houses of the palace quarter flashed by. Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas saw a horse stumble and go down. He couldn’t tell who its rider was.

The attack came. A large dark-winged creature struck the top of the first coach, leaping away immediately as its claws encountered the iron nails embedded in the roof. But the coach swayed under the weight and fell sideways, two of its wheels crushed beneath it. The driver tumbled free and the horses screamed, staggering and fighting their harness. The second coach shuddered to a halt beyond it as more fay leapt off rooftops and sprang up out of the mud and snow in the street.

Thomas wheeled his horse, leading the escort group of Queen’s guards and Cisternans to surround the two coaches. They fetched up against the dressed stone wall of a fortified town house.

Thomas looked back toward the second company. If Renier didn’t follow his instructions… No, the Albon troop and the rest of his men had split off with the wagons as the fay had attacked the coaches. They were heading up the Avenue of Flowers, riding pell-mell for the gate out of the city. But even as he saw them go, an illusion of a confused roiling mass of horsemen settled in their place.

She’s here, she’s done it. A moment later he saw Kade leap off the back of the coach that Berham had driven and disappear into the illusion she had created. He had intended for Dubell to cover the retreat of the second