Elemental (29 page)

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Authors: Steven Savile

BOOK: Elemental
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She looked at me quickly, her blue eyes utterly serious. “I have always
loved Sir Havan,” she said. “He is a good man and he has done many good things. But I cannot bear to see him suffer so much, day after day, dependent on another's hand to feed him and bathe him and tend him. You don't understand—you never knew him—he was so alive, so active, so sure of himself. To see him like this …
I
would not want to live in such a way. I would not condemn anyone to such a life.”
“And why should Aesara be the one to murder him?” Sam asked bluntly. “If you have dozens of halani already at your fortress—”
“It is a terrible thing to ask another human being to take a life,” she said quietly. “And it is, as you say, murder. If one of the resident halani were to commit such an act, and be discovered, he or she would be put to death as well. I cannot ask them to do it.”
“And Aesara? What if someone discovered
she
had poured the poison into the lord's drink?” Sam asked. “You've asked it of
her
.”
“No one knows her at Kessing,” Leonora replied quickly.
“One person has already recognized her,” he pointed out.
“But Aesara could come in disguise. No one would ever know she had been the one to kill him.”
I smiled at Sam again. He was such an innocent. All the years of intrigue that I had witnessed at Verallis would stand me in good stead now. “No, and no one would ever be certain if he had been murdered or if he had merely died at last,” I told Sam. “That is the other reason the lady would like to hire my services.”
Sam looked from me to Leonora and back at me. “I don't understand.”
I kept my eyes on Leonora and my voice casual. “It has been eleven years, but surely you remember the scandal that attended King Raever's death?” I asked. “He had been unwell for a few days—everyone knew this, for there are no secrets at Verallis—and I had mixed him a batch of potions to restore him to good health. Shortly after taking one of them, one night, he died. Did I kill him? Was he much sicker than anyone had supposed? Did some prince or courtier, knowing I might be blamed, mix a deadly philter and administer it in place of mine? No one was ever
completely certain—which is why, Samuel, my friend, I sit here with you today in Salla City instead of drifting over the scattered lands of Sorretis as smoke and ashes, having been burned at the stake for treason.”
There was a short silence. Leonora did not say baldly that she was sure I had killed my king, although clearly she believed it. Sam offered no comment at all.
“I'm interested in knowing,” I said, “what the lord's wife and son think about this idea of yours.”
The blue eyes were utterly guileless; she met my gaze openly. “It was Bella's idea,” she said softly. “She is the one who recognized you here a few months back.”
My eyes narrowed. That could very well be the truth. I had seen the traveling coach bowl through Salla City and recognized the heraldry on the door, for all of Raever's vassals were known to me, at least by reputation. I had not gone to the trouble of ducking behind a doorway as the horses slowed and passed. I had not expected to be identified.
“And your husband?” I asked.
“He is not convinced. But he has said to me in private that it would be a blessing for his father if he should die.”
“And who rules Kessing when Sir Havan is gone?”
“Errol. And if Errol should die without heirs, his sister.”
“And what does she think of this scheme to dispatch her father?”
“She has not been informed.”
I picked up my glass of wine, which, like Leonora's, was almost untouched. Even Sam had only taken one or two swallows. I sipped the sweet, heavy liquid meditatively and thought it over. Well, clearly this angelically fair woman would profit if the murder were carried out, but as the case was presented, it was hard to tell if that was her motive. Giving all the participants the benefit of the doubt, it could be that they truly planned a mercy killing for which the corpse itself would thank me. For which all of Kessing would thank me, no doubt. I knew how uneasy subjects and vassals could become when their leader fell ill or grew uncertain. But to coolly and with calculated forethought kill a man …
“When is the next public audience?” I asked her.
She tried to smother her hopeful look. “A week from today, halana,” she said. “Will you come?”
I nodded slowly. “I think so. I want to see Sir Havan for myself. At that point I will decide whether I will help you or not.”
“And if you decide to help me?”
“I will give you a potion to give to your lord.”
 
 
It was nearly full dark by the time Leonora left. Sam escorted her out; when he returned to my table, he was carrying a fresh bottle of wine. We had drunk very little of the sweet, fruity stuff he had brought for his visitor, but this was a dry red wine Sam usually chose for his serious drinking. He had finished two glasses before either of us said a word.
“Why don't you go ahead and ask me?” I said finally. I had elected to stay with the sweeter vintage, and I was sipping it much more slowly.
He poured himself another glass. “Why did you agree to go to Kessing and look this lord over?”
I was surprised into a laugh. “That's not the question,” I said.
“It's the question I'm interested in the answer to.”
I raised my own glass and inhaled the heavy, honeyed aroma. I said, “The real question is: Did you kill King Raever, or did you not?”
“That's not something I would ask you,” Sam said quietly.
“I have always wanted to know,” I said, “if you recognized my name when I arrived here five years ago.”
“I recognized it.”
“And so you must have known the scandal that followed me across Sorretis?”
“I had heard it.”
“And yet you never wondered whether or not you harbored a murderer in your establishment?”
“I did not care,” he said deliberately. I had erased pain from his wife's body, and so he did not care what I had done to others. He added, “Then.”
I pounced on the word. “Then? And now?”
He raised his eyes and regarded me steadily. It was a familiar look; he often studied me this way. I was never sure what he hoped to learn. “I have always thought that you probably know how to kill a man.”
I swallowed some of my wine. “I do.”
“And that you have probably, in fact, killed one or two in your life.” I took another swallow. “I have.”
“And it has seemed to me that whatever reasons you would have had for such actions would satisfy me. So I didn't worry about it.”
That easily. I had won a man's trust merely by keeping silence for five years. I leaned back against the bench and closed my eyes. “When I was first named halana rex,” I said, “I was known more for healing than for killing. For I had quite extraordinary abilities. Some halani are born healers—they need only to lay their fingers upon a man to cure his disease or to knit together the severed fibers of his bones. I had such skills, in those days. I radiated power—my hands seemed to glow at night when I watched them in the dark.”
I had consumed more of the wine than I had thought, for my head was beginning to ache and behind my closed eyes I felt the bar rock gently around me. “Five summers after I joined Raever's court,” I said, “there was an epidemic. A plague. It swept through the villages on the roads leading to Verallis—it rampaged through the royal household—it laid low guards and servants and noble ladies and faithful vassals and visiting dignitaries. No one was safe. No one was spared.
“Except me. So strong were my healing powers that I never succumbed to illness. Naturally, I ran through the castle, wherever the sickness took root, laying my hands upon the afflicted ones and exorcising the plague. I went to the guardhouses and the guesthouses and the nearby inns and villas, to find felled bodies writhing on the beds and on the floors. On each hot cheek I laid my cool hands, and the disease was routed. I rode like a madwoman through the night to the nearest villages, and stretched my arms out so that twenty people at a time could crowd around me and scratch at my flesh and be healed just by touching
me. So exhausted was I, after three days of riding, that I collapsed in the square of one of these villages, unconscious and unmoving. And still they brought the ill and the helpless to my side, and still they reached out to touch me, and still they were cured.”
I was silent for a long moment. I had not noticed Sam finishing his last glass of wine, but now I heard him pour another one. “Yet it is not healing for which I am remembered,” I said finally. “But for killing.”
“You never answered my question,” he said.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. The wine or the memories or the dim lighting of the bar made him look softer and younger than usual. “What question was that?”
“Why did you agree to go to Kessing and see the lord? You have not raised a hand to help a soul since the night you gave peace to my Mari.”
I closed my eyes again. “Because Leonora was wrong,” I said. “I did know Sir Havan of Kessing. Eleven years ago, when I lived at Verallis.”
 
 
I had expected the public audience at Kessing to be gruesome, and it was. Like most of the major fortress holdings of Sorretis, Kessing was built of a heavy gray stone that even on sunny days seemed to enclose a gloomy chill. Inside was a huge chamber where all the supplicants gathered twice a month to make their requests of their lord. Such public audiences were often loud and boisterous affairs; but at Kessing, where the petitioners spoke to a pitiful shell of a man, the mood was sober and deeply depressing.
Sam had casually offered to accompany me on the journey, and I had casually accepted, but inwardly I had been extremely grateful for his escort. I was doubly grateful for his presence now, a solid bulk in this sea of strangers. We stood at the back of the enormous room, gazing over perhaps two hundred bodies, staring toward the dais at the far end where Sir Havan of Kessing had been installed.
Everything Leonora had said of him was true. His head lolled back on his unsupportive neck; his arms and legs hung uselessly down. He
had been tied to a large, cushioned chair so that he seemed, at least, to be sitting up and facing us. But his slack mouth and unfocused eyes gave little evidence that his mind was engaged.
Beside him, Lady Bella knelt on an embroidered stool. Leonora stood behind him, gazing down at the inexpressive face. Sir Errol stood at the head of the stage, a herald beside him to call out names, and he gravely listened to each petition. It was not a cheery or inspiring scene.
“What do you think of the lord's wife?” I whispered in Sam's ear, as we watched the slow procession.
“She seems to genuinely love the man,” he whispered back. “It's a hard thing to counterfeit under such conditions.”
I nodded. “And his son?”
“He seems capable enough, but not a happy man.”
“Does he want his father dead?”
“Wouldn't you,” Sam said slowly, “if your father lived like this?”
“And the son's wife?”
Only once had Leonora lifted her head and surveyed the crowd. Within minutes, she had spotted us. I could see the color of her eyes even across the wide stone floor. She had not smiled or nodded, but merely dropped her gaze again to her father-in-law's face.
“She's ambitious, I think,” Sam said slowly. “But she does not look cruel.”
“Tell me,” I said. “What would you choose, if you were Sir Havan of Kessing? Would you want to continue to live, imprisoned in such a wreck of a body? Or would you want some kind soul to mete out the poison that would let you die, quietly and in peace?”
“I would drink the poison, and gladly,” Sam said.
“So would I.”
For a few moments longer, I watched Sir Havana across the room. As I had told Sam, I had known Havan and Lady Bella, but not well, and that had been eleven years ago. He had been a laughing, virile, confrontational man who had had as many friends as enemies at Verallis. Raever had trusted him, though they had disagreed often enough, and
spectacularly enough, to be considered wary allies. I had not dealt much with court politics, but of course I had met most of the personalities of the day, and Havan had been one of the brightest.
He had not been at Verallis when Raever died. He had not been one of those who accused me or defended me. I wondered what opinion he had, in fact, held of me—not that the knowledge would influence me one way or the other now.
We had been there maybe an hour when a strange commotion erupted on the dais. Sir Errol had just pronounced some sentence on a cowed-looking yokel, when the mangled body of Sir Havan made a violent reaction. Even from this distance, we could hear the formless grunts and whines. We could see the head shake and the shoulders twitch against the sides of the chair. Leonora's hands flew to her cheeks. Bella's fingers wrapped themselves around her husband's wrist. Errol crossed to his father's side and bent over the shivering body as if to try and understand the indecipherable sounds. He turned back to the man he had just dismissed.

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