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

Lucas said, “I’m off to a well-deserved rest. Oh, there’s that entertainment at court tonight. Will you need me?”

“No, Gideon and I will take it. I’ve doubled the duty list for it, what with all our other little troubles.” The acting troupes brought to court by the Master of Revels didn’t ordinarily present much of a problem. Before they reached the palace they were examined for foreign spies or suspected anarchists, and the actors seldom turned mad and attacked anyone. “What sort of play is it?”

“An Aderassi Commedia.”

Thomas winced. “Well, it could’ve been a pastoral.” He drained the tankard.

“Oh, there’s this. I’d forgotten.” Lucas picked up a leather dispatch case from a pile along the wall and tossed it onto the table. It was stuffed with papers.

Thomas looked at it without enthusiasm. “What’s that?”

“The King’s Watch sent it over. It’s some writings and copies of documents from Grandier’s heresy trial in Bisra.”

“You’re joking,” Sitting up, Thomas pulled out the papers and thumbed through the pages of faded script. “How did they get it?”

“A Viscondin monk who was traveling in Bisra attended the trial. He asked one of the officiating priests if he could copy the documents, and they allowed it. None of it was considered secret, or important, apparently. The King’s Watch said it wouldn’t be of any use, but they know how you are about these things so they sent it along.”

As Lucas left, Thomas spread out the papers. The Viscondin Order was one of the few brotherhoods that could still cross the border to Bisra freely. The Church of Ile-Rien and the Church of Bisra had declared ecclesiastical war on each other when the bishops of Ile-Rien decided against purging the countryside of the pagan Old Faith. The Bisran Inquisition had started its persecution of sorcerers at about the same time, and the Church of Ile-Rien’s objections to it had caused Bisra to outlaw most of the independent religious orders.

The Viscondin monk had copied the court documents in the original Bisran. Thomas could read Low Bisran, but not the elaborate High Script used for their official documents. He doubted the monk had been able to either, and the King’s Watch had probably not bothered. He sorted the unreadable documents aside to send to the palace clerks for translation.

It was clear even from the monk’s crabbed notes on the evidence that Grandier had been a victim. The nuns’ testimony had been confused and contradictory, and the details of how Grandier had enchanted them were vague at best; if they had brought such charges in Ile-Rien a magistrate would have had them all hauled off to gaol for false witness and wasting the time of a law court. According to the monk, one nun had even tried to recant her testimony but the judges had refused to hear her.

Grandier had been tortured with fire, the choking-pear, and the other devices the Inquisition used to obtain confessions of heresy. Despite this the sorcerer had refused to confess, and had been sentenced to the question ordinary and extraordinary. He had been subjected to both strappado, having been hoisted by his bound arms and dropped to a stone floor, and squassation, during which the executioner had attached heavy weights to the victim’s feet, then hoisted and dropped him to within a few inches of the floor until limbs had been dislocated. The scars would be visible on his face, his hands. Even if he’s healed himself, he can’t conceal that kind of injury. It would be a miracle if he could straighten his back or walk without limping, Thomas thought.

Grandier disappeared from his cell a few weeks after his torture. A month later the priest who had brought the original complaint died insane. Within another month the bishop who headed the Inquisitorial Committee followed him. The witch-pricker, who had probably falsified the demon marks he had reported finding on Grandier’s body during torture, died later in “terrible delirium,” as the monk described it. The account ended there, before the plague and the other horrific disasters now attributed to the outlaw sorcerer.

If he wasn’t working dark magic before the trial, Thomas thought, he is now.

*

The afternoon at the Mummer’s Mask passed slowly as the tavernkeepers recovered from the night before and the acting troupe prepared for the night to come. Baraselli and his assistants sat at a big round table on the tavern’s main floor arguing over which characters they would use tonight, while the actors lounged nearby feigning disinterest. Shafts of sunlight from the cracked windows glittered off the dust in the air and the various paraphernalia of the stage that had been hauled out for inspection.

Silvetta, the actress who played one of the heroines, said, “What did you say your name was?”

There was a moment of hesitation before the woman who had been hired for the Columbine mask answered, “It’s Kade.” She was sitting on top of one of the wine-stained tables, her legs folded beneath her skirt in a position that most women of better breeding would have found difficult if not impossible. The playing cards she shuffled were a tattered pack belonging to the tavern.

“Really? Don’t tell Baraselli.” Silvetta shuddered, rolling her eyes in a gesture better suited for the stage. “Bad luck, ill omens, that’s all he talks about. But they don’t give children that name here anymore, do they? Except in the country. Are you from the country?”

“Yes.”

“When did you learn Commedia?”

“I traveled around with one for a while and learned the Columbine mask. That was after I got out of the convent,” Kade told her.

Silvetta leaned forward. “Why were you in a convent?”

“My wicked stepmother sent me there.”

“Oh, you’re telling me a tale.” Personal questions out of the way, she said, “Do my fortune again.”

Kade’s brows quirked. “I doubt it’s changed any in the past hour.”

“You can’t tell; it might have.”

“You can tell,” Kade said, but began to lay out the cards for the fortune anyway.

Corrine, the other heroine, appeared out of one of the back rooms carrying two dresses visible only as tumbled confections of sparkled fabric and lace. “What do you think, this blue or that blue?”

Both women paused to give the matter serious consideration. “That one,” Silvetta said finally.

“I think so,” Kade agreed.

“What are you wearing?” Corrine asked her.

Kade suspected she was anxious to make sure she wasn’t going to be outshone by the woman playing her maid. With a shrug of one shoulder, Kade indicated the loose red gown she wore over the low-necked smock. “This.”

“You can’t wear that,” Silvetta objected.

“I’m playing a maid.” She laughed. “What else should I wear?”

The free fortune-telling had won Silvetta over completely. She said, “At least let me curl your hair.”

Kade ran a hand through fine limp hair that the dusty sunlight was temporarily transforming into spun gold. Ordinarily she considered it the color of wheat suffering from rotting blight. “With an iron?”

“Of course, you goose, what else?”

“I hate that.”

Corrine draped the gowns over a chair and said, “The thing to do is to attract attention to yourself. There’s plenty of men there, gentlemen, lords, wealthy men, on the lookout for mistresses. Of course, it’s not often you can get something permanent, you understand, but it’s worth a go.”

“Really?” Kade asked, her tone a shade too ingenuous, but not so much so that the other two women suspected subtle mockery.

“Much better than an actor,” Silvetta said, and jerked her head in the direction of the tavern entrance. The actor who played the Arlequin stood there talking to one of the tavernkeeps, having just come in from the street. He was darkly handsome, clean-shaven after the current fashion in Adera, and didn’t look at all like the other actors who played clowns.

After a moment, Kade said, “How well do you know him?”

Silvetta answered, “He’s new. Baraselli hired him last month when the other Arlequin died.”

Kade glanced at her. “Was he an old man?”

“Oh, no, all our clowns are young. He died of a fever. It was very bad luck.”

The Arlequin had looked in their direction, and seemed to be staring at Kade. Corrine, who apparently had only one thought in her head, grinned and said, “He likes you.”

But Kade, who could read wolfish contempt in those dark eyes, snorted. “Hardly,” she said, and by sleight of hand managed to insinuate the card for future wealth into Silvetta’s fortune.

*

Thomas had spent the afternoon checking on the progress of the inquiries he had set in motion last night, but the King’s Watch had made little headway so far. He had wanted to sound out Galen Dubell on the subject of his one time student Kade Carrion, but last night hadn’t seemed the right moment after the sorcerer’s rescue from three harrowing days as Urbain Grandier’s prisoner.

Galen Dubell had moved into the late Dr. Surete’s old rooms, and Thomas found him there when the afternoon sun was glowing through the windows and filling the high-ceilinged room with light. The old Court Sorcerer had needed this room when his eyes had started to fail; the multipaned windows in the west wall took full advantage of the daylight. Gold-trimmed bookshelves covered the other walls and a globe still shielded by its protective leather cover stood in the corner. The rest of the furniture was buried under piles of more books and a fine layer of dust.

When the servant led Thomas into the room, Dubell looked up from his writing desk and smiled. “Captain.” He was wearing a battered pair of gold-rimmed reading spectacles and open books were spread out on one side of the partners desk Dr. Surete had once shared with his assistant Milan.

Thomas said, “I wanted to thank you for what you did for my man last night. He would have died if you hadn’t healed him.”

Dubell smiled. “You are welcome, but I don’t think that is the only thing you came to speak about. Please be direct.”

Well, well. Thomas leaned on a bookshelf and tipped his plumed hat back, finding himself more amused than discomfited. Directness was not something one encountered often at court. “We’ve had a message from an old acquaintance of yours. His Majesty Roland’s half sister Kade.”

“So that is it.” Dubell took off his spectacles and tapped them thoughtfully against the carved arm of his chair. For the first time he looked like a young man who had gradually grown old rather than the model of an aged wizard-scholar who had sprung fully formed out of the fertile ground at Lodun University. “Indeed, I know Kade.”

“She was your apprentice.”

“Not quite. I was the first to show her the uses for the talent she already had. A mistake I have already paid for. Ten years is a long time to be banished from the city of one’s birth.” He shook his head, dismissing the thought. “But you have had a message from her?”

“Yes. It seems to suggest she’s about to pay a visit.”

“In person? That is odd. She usually sends tricks disguised as gifts, doesn’t she?”

“If you can call them that.” Kade’s tricks ranged from the dangerous to the ridiculous. The goblet that no adulterer could drink from had provided some embarrassing and humorous moments for the entire court. A gift of a necklet that, once clasped, contracted and cut the wearer’s head off had been considerably less entertaining. The ancient knight who had arrived last midwinter with his beheading game had been one of the most frightening but the least substantive. Of course, Renier had fallen for it like a sack of