The Element of Fire by Martha Wells (top novels TXT) 📕

Kade slipped past Thomas almost before the door gave way. As she ducked inside Castero jumped back and muttered, “Pardon me.”

If it’s a trap, she’s determined to spring it first. Thomas signaled Baserat and another two guards to stand watch outside and followed her, drawing his rapier.

Inside was a high-ceilinged area with a stone staircase curving up the wall to the second-floor entrance. The floor was stone paved, and a black coach with polished brass fittings stood in front of the carriage doors. Light came in through high narrow windows in the outside wall. There was stabling beneath the stairs, and Thomas nodded for one of his men to investigate it.

Kade was halfway up the steps. Thomas called to her, “Give us a moment, please.” She threw her arms up in exasperation, but stopped, tapping her foot impatiently.

The guard flushed a couple of frightened grooms out of the stalls where they had been attempting to hide. From the number of horses stabled there, Lestrac was indeed home and entertaining.

Thomas put two more men to watch the servants and to keep any fugitives from escaping behind them, then headed toward the stairs, the others following him. Kade was off again as soon as he started up. Behind him, Castero whispered, “Captain, should we let her go first? I mean, she is a woman.”

“Presumably she knows that,” Thomas told him.

At the top of the steps, just before the wooden doors, Kade stopped them with an outflung arm. After a moment of intense study of the dirty stone of the landing, she tore a scrap of cloth from her skirt hem, licked it, and stooped to rub it over some invisible spot on the flagstones. Something came away bright blue, and Kade flicked the cloth over the edge of the landing.

“A ward, but it wasn’t working anymore. It was old,” she admitted, and stepped up to push the door open.

It was the first room of a suite of salons, the dying embers in the hearth revealing landscape paintings, papered walls, heavy oak cabinets, and brocaded chairs. Sprawled around on the fine furnishings and all drunk into unconsciousness were three young men Thomas recognized as sprigs of nobility and two women whose elaborate and revealing costumes proclaimed them upper-class bawds. A bottle had broken on the floor and wine had seeped into the carpet. From the smell, they had been lacing the stuff with syrup of poppies. Some of the candles were still lit, their holders half-buried under bizarre shapes of dripped wax.

“We’ve interrupted a party,” Thomas told Castero, who grinned, and tipped one of the unconscious young men off a couch.

“A dull one,” Kade said, looking around with a puzzled expression.

Thomas considered her a moment, suddenly recalling that she was a member of the royal family and had spent some of her youth in a convent, then decided to let it go. If he had known Lestrac was going to be hosting an orgy, he would have reconsidered allowing Kade to accompany them into the upstairs rooms, but he was damned if he was going to say anything about it now.

“A livelier brood in here, Captain,” one of the guards called from ahead, and Thomas followed him into the next room.

There were five of them in a central parlor, and they had leapt up from a card table, overturning their chairs, fumbling clumsily for swords. They were all drunk, though not quite to the advanced stage of their companions in the other room. “What is this?” one of them demanded muzzily. Thomas thought he might be the second son of the Count of Belennier, though he wasn’t certain. He ignored the question and nodded to the guard who was covering them with a pistol, who immediately said, “Drop your swords, gentlemen.”

While they disarmed, Thomas quietly told Castero, “Leave a few men down here to watch this lot, and take the others on ahead to search the rest of the house. Lestrac is the one I want.”

“What about me?” Kade whispered, standing at his elbow again.

“You go with him,” Thomas snapped.

“Why?”

“You’re here to spring sorcerous traps, not to stand about and be entertained by me.”

“Oh. My mistake.” She didn’t sound particularly chastened, but she followed Castero and the others.

Turning back to the group held at bay, Thomas suddenly recognized what he had thought at first to be a completely unfamiliar face. It was the dark-haired stranger he had seen with Denzil at the disastrous court last night. There was nothing unusual about him; he had the same pale bedraggled look as the others, the early lines on his face that came from too much drinking. But there was something about his eyes… Guarding a queen of stubborn and definite opinions in the crowded courts had made Thomas preternaturally sensitive, and people who were hiding something usually betrayed it in some way, either in look or gesture or simply by the way they stood. This man was hiding something.

The object under scrutiny seemed to realize he was being watched, and swayed a little against the table. Thomas smiled to himself. He’s also not as drunk as he’s pretending. “Where’s Lestrac?” Thomas asked the group in general.

“He’s about somewhere,” answered the second son of the Count of Belennier, who seemed to have elected himself the spokesman. “You’ll pay for this, forcing your way into a gentleman’s house—”

“I’ll discuss that with the gentleman in question.”

“Well, he’s about somewhere.” The young man stared around blearily, as if expecting Lestrac to suddenly appear.

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh, all day.” Recalling he was outraged, he protested, “And you’ve no right to question us, if it’s Lestrac you’re after.”

And he’s about somewhere. That would be all Thomas could get out of them until he actually produced Lestrac, but the chances were they hadn’t been here yesterday when Gambin had visited the house. At least, if Lestrac had any sense at all they wouldn’t have been here.

“Don’t let them talk to each other,” Thomas told the guard with the pistol, and moved on after the others.

They went from one well-appointed room to another and up the central staircase to the third floor, the guards spreading out to search more thoroughly as Kade flitted before them checking for magical traps.

After a short while, it became apparent that the only inhabitants were those they had already discovered and that Lord Lestrac was nowhere to be found. Thomas and Castero met back in a central parlor on the second floor.

“He must be on the run, Captain.” The young guard absently kicked a chair.

“Unfortunately.” Thomas looked around, one eyebrow lifted in an ironic appraisal of the empty room. It seemed clear. Lestrac had used Gambin in a minor plot against Thomas. When it failed to have the expected result, Lestrac had panicked, used magic to dispose of Gambin, and fled. “How very neat and tidy.” The other guests had been herded into the next salon under guard. A few had families influential enough that they would have to be released, but Thomas hated to do it before he knew where Lestrac had gone. Each one was a potential accomplice.

Kade wandered into the room from the stairwell. She looked around, apparently in a state of deep consternation. “It’s here. I don’t know what, but it’s here. And it’s not.” She moved around the room, touching things, stooping to look under the furniture.

Madwoman, Thomas thought. But the longer he was in the house the more suspicious it seemed to him. There was more here than appeared, or something out of place, and he wasn’t willing to leave until he found what it was.

Kade straightened suddenly. Her examination of the parlor had led her to the far wall. “How many rooms on this floor?”

Castero stared at her. “Nine.”

“Eleven upstairs.” Thomas saw what she was getting at, and suddenly realized what was wrong about the place. It was the position of the stairwell in relation to the second floor. He went to stand beside the sorceress and ran a hand across the paneled wall. “Look at the way the top of this meets the ceiling. It’s a false wall. There must be a moving panel or—”

Kade said, “No, not a panel.” She placed a palm on the center of the wall and leaned in, whispering to it. Thomas stepped back as the shape of a door slowly formed out of the dark wood, as if a sculptor were molding it out of clay. Grinning with triumph, Kade stepped back as it solidified.

As she was reaching for the handle, Thomas caught a handful of her tattered smock and hauled her out of the way. He stepped to one side of the door, motioning for Castero to take the other. Castero stepped hastily into position, winding his pistol. At Thomas’s elbow, Kade was silently bouncing with excitement.

Thomas twisted the handle and flung the door open.

It was a banqueting room with a long table and sideboards, lit by a dripping candelabrum and chandeliers. There was a man seated at the end of the table, slumped over forward.

Thomas advanced cautiously toward him. There was a half-empty wine bottle on the table, two more on the floor beneath it.

Thomas used a handful of the man’s unkempt blond hair to pull him upright. It was Lestrac. The lean, dissipated features were slack and sickly red. His eyes didn’t focus, and the pupils were so wide they seemed to cover most of the white. His breath was quick and panting, as if he were running for his life. It’s poison, Thomas realized. Belladonna or henbane, something that the Aderassi are always using to put each other out of the way. Holding the young lord up, he could feel his burning skin. “Who did this to you, Lestrac? Was it Grandier?”

The dying eyes seemed finally to focus. “No, no, not him…” Lestrac shuddered weakly, the effort of speaking almost too much.

“But you know him. Was he here?”

“No, he’s… He told me he’d teach…power. I should have known.”

“Where is he now?”

“It was Dontane, on Grandier’s orders,” Lestrac said suddenly, his voice growing stronger. He made a convulsive movement and caught the front of Thomas’s doublet “Captain Boniface, you’ve got to get that bastard Dontane.”

Lestrac started to slide out of the chair and Thomas caught him and shoved him back. The nobleman’s head lolled and his eyes were wide open and staring, though he still breathed. Thomas let him go and stepped back. That was it, Lestrac would stay like this, impossible to wake, until he died in a few hours. But they’ve made a mistake, perhaps their first, Thomas thought. Someone, perhaps Lestrac himself when he hired Gambin, had acted out of turn, revealing that Grandier had the help of others who could come and go inside the palace. And if Denzil Isn’t involved somehow… He told Castero, “Send someone for the men from the gate watch. We’re going to tear this place apart.”

As Castero left, Kade did a quick circuit of the room, checking the walls for more concealed doors. Watching her, Thomas knew that at least to some extent she was enjoying herself, and that she certainly didn’t give a damn for the fact that Lestrac had all but expired a few moments ago. He didn’t know why that should bother him, since he didn’t care either and knew that if even half of what he suspected was true, Lestrac would have been executed anyway. And to some extent he was also enjoying himself. Perhaps her reaction annoyed him because it was so much in tune with his own.

Kade had drifted back to the table and now took the wine bottle and emptied