The Element of Fire (14 page)

"Very likely," Kade agreed, idly twisting a lock of her pale hair.

Thomas knelt beside Ravenna's chair so he could see her face. "Don't do it."

Ravenna looked at him, then regarded Kade for a long moment. Her opaque blue eyes betrayed no emotion. She said, "I accept your proposition, dear."

"No," Roland said, his voice unsteady. "I forbid it."

Ravenna turned a basilisk gaze on her son. He trembled, whether from anger or fear it was difficult to tell, but said, "I won't have her here."

For a long moment the outcome was in doubt. Thomas realized he was holding his breath. The room was silent in suspense, as if they observed someone poised on the brink of a chasm. Even Denzil had lost his expression of detached amusement and watched the struggle in fascination.

Then Roland's nerve broke. He pounded his fist on the chair arm and shouted, "I don't want her here! Damn you, can't you listen to me?"

It was a retreat. A shadow crossed Denzil's face that might almost have been disappointment. Ravenna started to speak but Kade interrupted her. "Oh, come now, Roland." The sorceress smiled. "You have more to worry about than my presence here."

He looked at her uncertainly. "What do you mean?"

She said, "The palace wards are still in place. I felt them when I came in." She frowned thoughtfully and laid a hand flat on the marble veneer of the fireplace. She curled her fingers, drawing something out of the stone that was gray and wriggled.

It came out with a shower of stone chips, but without leaving a hole in the mantel. Kade held it between thumb and forefinger like a boy with a rat, a spidery, boneless thing that struggled frantically. It was hard for the eyes to fix on it. "This is a frid. It's harmless. It lives in stone and eats crumbs spilled on the floor. But it shouldn't be here."

She dropped it. It hit the hardwood floor with a splat, hopped once to reach the hearthstone, and disappeared beneath the pitted gray rock like a duck diving under water.

"I'd say the wards aren't proof against the fay anymore. You have a problem, stepmother." Kade bowed to the room in general and was out the door before anyone could react.

Roland leapt up and moved to stand over Ravenna's chair. "You have overreached yourself this time, mother," he said. The protest convinced no one. His face was red with thwarted anger, but he had lost his chance to defy her.

"Have I? What would you have done, Roland?" she asked, as if not terribly concerned with his answer.

"Arrested her!"

"And if she didn't want to go with the guards? Power is relative, my lord." Ravenna let heat creep into her voice. "I thought I'd taught you that if nothing else. Tell me you understand."

She looked up at him, waiting, while Roland stared at her.

Lounging back in his chair, Denzil said, smiling, "Really, cousin, it's beneath your notice."

Roland looked back at him. After a moment he nodded. "Perhaps you're right." He turned back to Ravenna, lips twisted with contempt. "Do what you like, mother; it doesn't concern me."

Then Roland turned and stalked toward the door, his page scrambling to open it for him and his knights smoothly surrounding him.

Denzil stood and bowed to Ravenna with an ironic smile. "Congratulations, my lady. Very well played."

Ravenna looked up at him, her eyes opaque. "How old are you, Denzil?"

"I am twenty-six, my lady."

"And do you intend to be twenty-seven?"

Denzil's smile widened. "I depend upon it, my lady." He bowed again and followed Roland's departing retainers.

"What a good idea," Ravenna said to the room at large. "Why doesn't everyone go?"

When Ravenna phrased an order as a question it was a good indication that her temper had reached the boiling point. Falaise started to speak, reconsidered, and stood up to let Gideon conduct her out. Ravenna's guards and attendants all moved hurriedly to wait for her outside.

Thomas had started for the door when Ravenna said, "Stay here, Captain."

Unwillingly he stopped, his back to her, waiting until the others had filed out before turning around.

Ravenna had shoved her sewing aside and was resting her face in her hands. The flicker of light from the hearth played about the red highlights in her hair and the metallic threads in the embroidery of her gown. Without moving, she said, "Don't look at me like that."

He folded his arms. "I am not looking at you in any particular way."

"The hell you're not." She lifted her head and rubbed her temples. "If she had been my daughter I'd have married her off to the God-King of Parscia. Civil war would have been the least of his worries."

Thomas gave up pretense and let her see how angry he was. He leaned on one of the flimsy rosewood tables that looked so out of place next to the blood-splashed hunting scenes that dominated the room and said, "Civil war may be the least of your worries now that you've let her in here. Before this she was taking out her revenge in small pieces, which was a damn sight better than what she could've chosen to do. Now she wants something more."

Ravenna sat back and looked up at him. "She may well get it, whatever it is," she said seriously. "Did you see the way she dealt with me? And I think there was a moment when Roland actually forgot Denzil was in the room. She makes a fine enemy."

"She could be a deadly enemy. She's grown now and she doesn't want a child's revenge anymore," Thomas told her. Ravenna was single-minded and ruthless in a way that would have been devastating had it not been for the lack of any sadism. She had been born to be an absolute ruler as some men were born to paint or write music. She wanted to bring Kade back into the fold, to direct the sorceress's powers and talents to her own ends. He didn't think Ravenna would understand the bitterness of wounds that had never healed.

"A child's revenge," Ravenna said, looking into the fire. "I wish I had a child's revenge. Fulstan wore away at them, both of them. When I discovered all he had done... And I didn't realize it until he'd made my son a coward."

Fulstan's treatment of Roland and Kade had been at its worst when Kade was fourteen and Roland twelve, at the time when Ravenna was away on the borders during the last Bisran War. Thomas had been a lieutenant then, traveling with Ravenna and the rest of the Guard. There had been no one at the palace with the courage to inform the Queen that while she was managing supply lines and browbeating her generals into cooperation, Fulstan was destroying Ile-Rien's future through its heir. Thomas had long wondered if Fulstan hadn't known exactly what he was doing. If he wasn't striking back at Ravenna in the only way open to him. God knew she had been indifferent to anything else he'd ever done.

At this time it had also been an open secret that Thomas was Ravenna's lover. Most of his conversations with the late king had been limited to details of the execution Fulstan had planned for Thomas the day Ravenna died, or grew tired of him.
He did have a gift for words. Perhaps he would have been happier as a poet than a king.

Ravenna was saying, "Had my children been bastards I think all of us would be the happier for it."

Thomas let his breath out, suddenly weary. "Very eloquent. Now what are you going to do about it?"

She stood up and flung her sewing to the floor. "Sixteen years ago when I approved your appointment into my guard, I knew I was making a mistake," she shouted.

"Probably," Thomas agreed. "And I suppose that bit of misdirection, while admirable, though not quite up to your usual standards, is the only answer I'm going to get."

She stared at him a moment, then shook her head, her expression turning wry. "If I had an answer, I wouldn't need misdirection." After a moment of thought, she asked, "Can we trust Galen Dubell?"

And that was that, even if he stood there and argued until he fell down dead of old age. Thomas rubbed the bridge of his nose. It wasn't the first time Ravenna had given him a headache. He said, "I think so."

"Really?"

"I don't think he knew she was coming here." Thomas shrugged. "But he's genuinely fond of the girl, and there are people who are going to mistake that for collusion. It would be against your best interests to be one of them."

"Yes, we need him. Braun and his little apprentices are no good for serious work like this. The sorcerers we sent for from the Granges and Lodun haven't even reached the city yet. That's suspicious in itself. I'll tell Renier to send more messengers." Ravenna paused, her back to him, her slender form silhouetted against the light of the fire. "I want you to watch her, Thomas."

"I gathered that," he said dryly. "I've already arranged for it."

There was a discreet tap on the door, and Ravenna irritably called, "Enter."

It was the steward who had made his escape from the solar earlier. He said nervously, "My lord High Minister Aviler is requesting an audience, my lady."

"Oh, he is? Well, I'm in the mood for him, as a matter of fact. Tell him he may enter, and don't think I didn't notice when you disappeared earlier, Saisan. Let's not make a habit of that, hmm?"

The steward bowed. "No, my lady."

As the servant withdrew, Thomas said, "Fond as I am of Aviler, I have some things to attend to."

"Thomas?" she said quietly.

"Yes?" He stopped halfway to the door.

"You're the only man I know who doesn't hate, dislike, or fear me, and it is a blessed relief simply to speak to you; did you know that?"

Because the High Minister was already coming through the door behind him, Thomas swept off his hat in his best formal court bow and said, "My lady, it is my very great pleasure."

* * *
 

On his way back to the Guard House, Thomas took the immense circular stairwell that led up from what had been the main hall of the Old Palace two centuries earlier and now linked the wing that held the Grand Gallery with the older defensive bastions. The gray age-old stone of the banisters and the central supporting column were carved into flowing ribbons and bands that ended in the heads of gryphons, lions, and unrecognizable animals from the artisan's imagination. The lamplit twilight of the stairwell was cool, and echoed faintly with the humming activity of the rest of the palace.

Thomas wondered what Kade Carrion the fay sorceress was doing now.

The first time Kade had used her power against the court had been on a Saints' Day ten years ago. It was held on Midsummer Eve because combining the Church's holy days with the Old Faith's festivals made it easier for the priests to get a respectable turnout for the services, especially in the country where most of the population still considered themselves pagan. Outside, the city streets had been packed with costumed entertainers, traveling merchants, and celebrating crowds, while in the High Cathedral the bishop was saying the Saints' Day Mass before the royal court. At the culmination of the service, pandemonium had erupted. Objects levitated and smashed into walls. Candlelamps, altar vessels, and stained glass windows shattered. It had been a display of raw uncontrolled sorcerous power.

Dr. Surete had been Court Sorcerer then, and he had immediately sensed the cause of the disturbance. It was Kade.

Galen Dubell, who had been at court working with Surete, admitted that for most of the past two years he had been secretly teaching Kade the rudiments of sorcery. This in itself was not much of a crime. But Kade was the illegitimate daughter of the king. She was older than Roland and courtlaw gave her a claim on the throne. She was also half fay, and elements at court and in the Ministry had been advising Ravenna that Kade was dangerous almost since the girl's birth. The next day Ravenna had banished Dubell to Lodun and sent Kade out of the city to the Monelite Convent, perhaps knowing she would not long remain there. Many had wondered at the time why Ravenna had shown the daughter of her husband's mistress that much mercy, when no one in Ile-Rien except the disgraced Galen Dubell would have objected to Kade's execution. But they knew that Ravenna did everything for her own reasons, and asking for an explanation when none was offered was useless.

In the solar, Ravenna had unintentionally said "my children" and Thomas didn't think she was including the two stillborn girls buried in the High Cathedral's crypt. Ravenna had wanted Kade to be the canny beautiful daughter she had never had, and in some ways she still wanted that. But that was exactly what that brave, daft, strange-eyed sorceress would never be.

There was a clatter as Martin appeared on the landing above and called, "Captain?"

"What is it?" Martin had been sent with the other Queen's guards to see that the palace was secure after the Arlequin's disturbance. Thomas suspected the expression of relief on the young man's face indicated that he was about to pass a thorny problem on to someone else.

"Trouble, Sir," Martin said as Thomas reached him. The young guard led the way off the landing to a short pillared hall. "We just found him. It's Dr. Braun."

On one side of the hall an oaken door stood open. Thomas followed Martin into a small room furnished as a salon which had been used as a waiting room for foreign ambassadors when the Old Hall had been an audience chamber.

Braun lay crumpled on an eastern carpet whose rich color was distorted by his blood. He lay as if he had been sitting on the stool at the high writing desk when he had slumped to the side and fallen to the floor.