The Spirit Lens (41 page)

“Chevalier,” I said, “what does Michel de Vernase look like?”

Ilario frowned and blotted his sun-scalded forehead with a filthy kerchief. “He’s a big man. Near tall as I, but built for a fight. Muscled like a bull, head as well as body. Darker complected than Philippe, gold-brown hair starting to gray. Rough as a battlefield, but ladies fall all over him, which I’ve never understood.”

“Knightly,” I said. “Horseman, swordsman, all that. No grandiose reports hiding poor truth?”

Ilario rolled his eyes. “No false reports. Whatever a man can do, Michel de Vernase can do better. Rides like the Arothi. Fights like the warrior angel. Drinks like a sailor. Carries himself like a Linguan stallion.”

I persisted, seeking to escape my logic. “But common, you said. Who are his people? Vernase village is the seat of the Ruggiere demesne. Was he born there? Educated?”

Dante looked up from relacing his dusty boots, his face sharp with curiosity.

Ilario draped the filthy kerchief over his forehead. “No family. I’ve heard he was a basket child, found and raised by an unlanded knight at a military outpost in . . . Grenville, I think it was. No doubt he’s clever, and supposedly he’s remedied the lack of education since Philippe raised him up. His wife gentled him enough to come to court. Mayhap she set him to his books, as well. Madeleine’s worth a hundred of him. Old family . . .” He paused, his hands still for a moment. Then he peered over his kerchief. “What does all this matter?” Eyes widening, he caught his breath. “Was he the Aspirant’s prisoner?”

“I thought so,” I said, “but now . . . Listen to me. Michel de Vernase was raised up to First Counselor, the highest post in Sabria, short of her sovereign. He was granted a demesne that had ever been reserved for the nobility. How many resentments has he faced on those accounts, as well as for his bullish manner? Yours, Chevalier, and others, I’m sure. He owns Philippe’s implicit trust, yet knows he will forever be seen as a product of Philippe’s favor. A second part: When the infant prince died, Philippe named a new heir, a secret no one in this kingdom shares—save perhaps Michel, the friend of his youth, closer than a brother, closer even than the estranged wife Philippe loves so dearly. As you put it, lord, Philippe and Michel have always covered each other’s sins and drunk each other’s wine. One month after the new heir’s name was scribed in stone, Philippe’s horse went mad and threw him.”

Ilario scowled and shook his head, but I hushed him with a gesture. Perhaps he sensed where I was headed.

“Michel publicly scorns magic, as does his friend and liege. The spyglass implicated sorcerers, as did Gruchin’s body, mutilated by transference. Yet Michel had Philippe’s horse and saddle burned, and he neglected to have a mage examine the arrow. He bullied the Camarilla and the mages at Seravain. Ham-handed we called him, yet Philippe considers him a skilled, successful diplomat. And Michel instantly accused, not a sorcerer, but Calvino de Santo.”

As I reconstructed my chain of reasoning, a certain fury took fire within me, from embers left smoldering since witnessing Calvino de Santo’s testimony. Michel de Vernase had brutalized the guard captain, making him a public scapegoat when Queen Eugenie, the one witness who could aid him, had stubbornly refused to testify. Yet Michel had never extracted Gruchin’s name from de Santo—which could have led the investigation back to Gaetana. And Michel had used two young girls, persuading—coercing?—one to return to terrible danger to discover the name of Eltevire. At the least his actions had killed Ophelie and left her young friend at equal risk. But there were other ways to interpret his course.

“What if Michel de Vernase had his own motive for prying the name of Eltevire from the mage who bled Ophelie? All along we’ve seen clues thrown in for confusion’s sake, the trail of evidence obscured almost as quickly as it was laid. What if he wanted to make Eltevire his own?”

“But his name was scribed on the crypt wall,” Ilario insisted. “Ophelie spoke it as she died.
Michel . . . captive . . .
”

The more I voiced my theory, the more I was convinced—possessed—of it. “Perhaps she didn’t mean that Michel
was
captive, but that Michel had
taken
her captive. The
good man
she hoped to save from the fire could have been someone else altogether. Someone whose name she didn’t know, but who possessed magic enough to break her manacles. Perhaps your charm maker, Adept Fedrigo. I don’t know that anyone has seen him since Ophelie’s escape. Perhaps Fedrigo scratched the Ruggiere symbol on the crypt wall because Michel was there, not as a prisoner, but as captor.”

“Well reasoned, student,” said Dante softly, his chin propped on his staff. “Very well reasoned.”

“Michel de Vernase is this Aspirant? The leader of this conspiracy?” Ilario’s shocked face had paled under his sunburn. “True, I never liked him, but many do. And Philippe . . . He’ll never accept it. How could you possibly come to this?”

“Boots,” I said. “The Aspirant’s boots belonged to a knight, not a mage. They belonged to someone who guessed my identity easily and assumed Philippe had sent me. My cousin said he has been gathering reports of me for years. Who else but Michel would have been assigned such a delicate family task for his king? Who else might guess what
agente confide
Philippe might tap should his good friend vanish? Perhaps, before he went away, Michel himself suggested my name.” Perhaps he suggested Portier de Duplais should head an investigation which a dull, failed student of magic could not possibly unravel.

“It would explain why he didn’t worry about leaving that Cazar girl at Seravain,” Ilario mumbled, wilted by distress. “She’s likely in no danger at all. You see, I finally remember about the name. Michel’s wife is Madeleine de
Cazar
y Vernase-Ruggiere.”

And so did another link snap into place. Lianelle ney Cazar was Michel de Vernase’s daughter. As I had done, she had dropped a father’s name that would see her scorned or snubbed among a society of mages. I did not believe the child herself involved in transference and murder. When I had accused Michel of callous disregard of Ophelie’s safety, Lianelle’s distress had been unfeigned. But the father . . .

I could not deny my lust at the prospect of justice for crimes of such magnitude. And amid my sympathy for those like Lianelle, cruelly used by a father’s ambition, lay hope for Maura. If the queen herself was innocent, then surely Maura’s involvement was but another diversion.

Reasons, motives, the sorcerers who most assuredly had abetted the traitor, the methods to be used to create a kingdom of chaos—the precise construction of this plot could align in a thousand different ways. More than ever we needed Dante to pursue the magic. But the most difficult part would be to convince the king of the danger—that Philippe de Savin-Journia’s worst nightmare was not his wife, but his beloved friend.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

4 CINQ 21 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

“
H
is Majesty will see you now.” The satin-garbed undersecre tary’s lips squeezed to a fleshy knot as he called me from the waiting chamber. Whether his disapproval addressed my cheap, ill-fitting garb, the massed green and purple of my healing bruises, or the king’s overgenerosity in granting a coveted private audience to an embarrassment of a fifteenth cousin, I did not care. Too much else weighed on my mind on the first morning of my return to Castelle Escalon.

The undersecretary led me down a soft-lit passageway, his velvet slippers whispering on the cool travertine. Others glided by—a footman bearing a tray of sliced fruit, a perfumed woman herding a swaggering youth of an age to be squired, a lesser temple reader juggling a box. As my escort gestured toward an unpresuming door at the end of the hall, I bowed and exposed my hand to the portly, bearded man who had just come out of it. Baldwin de Germile, a man whose expansive girth and genial manner often saw his intellect underestimated, had yielded his position as First Counselor to Michel de Vernase gracefully, only to reclaim it after the Conte Ruggiere’s disappearance. He flicked forefinger to temple in a cheery greeting, though he clearly did not recognize me.

Angels defend, what would such honorable men as Baldwin make of my tale? Every night of the return journey from Eltevire, I had labored over my journal, recording every detail of our experience in Arabasca, every connection I had drawn to events already described, every assumption, every unanswered question. On the previous night, newly arrived, I had foraged the palace library for historical details that might give background to the story. More and more I believed that Michel de Vernase had conspired with an unknown sorcerer not to murder, but to destroy his king.

Michel’s personal history with my cousin must surely outweigh any single bit of evidence I brought in, no matter how damning. Philippe, no blind simpleton, had named Michel his infant son’s goodfather. Even those Sabrians who maintained a casual distance from temples and tessilae would entrust guardianship of their children’s education, estate, and marriage, and the welfare of those children’s soul beyond death,
only
to a person of proven honor. Someone closer than blood kin. Which meant the chain of my story must be unbreakable, each link, in its turn, able to withstand hostile scrutiny.

The door swung open. “Your Majesty, Portier de Savin-Duplais.”

The undersecretary stepped aside for me to pass into a map-lined study. Then he retired, closing the door soundlessly behind me.

I sank to one knee, my eyes on the jewel-hued Syan rug. Though I had caught but a glimpse of the man standing across the room, I sensed a fierce appraisal. The bruise on my temple was fairly horrible and the cuts on my lip scabbed over. My hair, never luxuriant, had been clotted with blood and singed into ragged ugliness by the Eltevire fires. Heurot’s fussing attention and skillful knife could do naught but whack it off—a convict’s shearing.

“Cousin Portier, I believed our understanding precluded any direct encounter.” Though this greeting held none of the familial warmth of our first meeting, I did not permit my resolve to waver. My cousin likely feared what I might tell him. Rightly so.

Given no leave to stand, I remained on my knee, eyes down. “Circumstances have changed, sire. I am known to your enemies, though my fellow
agentes
remain hidden in place, ready to pursue these matters until they are resolved. Both have brought exceptional courage and skill to your service.”

“And you have news for me?”

A scarlet thread in the carpet might have been an image of the story I must tell, twisting upon itself, hiding behind the lapis-hued warp threads, only to emerge somewhere altogether unexpected. “We have uncovered much that is dire and terrible, and I would give my arm not to speak the painful words I must. Will you hear me out, Majesty, all the way to the conclusion?”

I felt, more than heard, him move toward me, thus did not startle when he touched my bruised temple. “It appears you have suffered your own hurts to bring me answers. How can I refuse mere words?” His ringed hand brushed my shoulder, but did not pause for me to kiss it.

I rose and took the straight-backed seat he indicated, while he settled in a deep armchair, cushioned with maroon velvet.

“To the conclusion,” he said, propping elbows on the chair arms and his chin on tented fingers. “I shall not interrupt.”

I inclined my head. “I know you have received some intermediate reports of our investigation, courtesy of Chevalier Ilario, but I would ask you to forget all you’ve heard, imagined, or assumed about these plots. The story truly begins long before the Blood Wars, when the Mondragoni clan laid claim to an ugly little corner of Arabasca and made it their hereditary demesne. . . .”

An hour I spoke without pause, first outlining the disturbing nature of the magic the Mondragoni had worked at Eltevire. My hour in the palace library had confirmed that no other family had ever held that corner of Arabasca. Then I laid out the threads of our investigation—brave Ophelie and old Audric; Gruchin and his spyglass and an arrow that was never meant to kill; de Santo and his haunting; the fire on the
Swan
.

When I spoke of Lianelle and Ophelie, and Michel de Vernase’s visits to Seravain, Philippe closed his eyes as if he could not bear to hear more. But his stony expression did not change, and I continued without pause to tell of Ophelie’s family dead, and Gruchin’s family dead, and suicidal seamstresses and missing adepts. I explained how Gaetana’s approaches to Dante, the nature of the spyglass, the missing Mondragoni texts, and the mysteries of Eltevire hinted at sorcery so disturbing, he dared not fail to pursue and understand it.

“We cannot ignore the congruence of your enemy’s work and the Veil—the natural boundary between life and death—and this unnatural boundary created at Eltevire, where natural law, as we know it, borders on a chaotic otherness. But the most significant question to be answered is the identity of your enemy—the leader of this conspiracy. Who dares use your safety, your wife’s grief, and relentless murder to hide this exploration of death and chaos? And why?”

Dante himself could not impose such pressure of will upon me as did my cousin, sitting expressionless in his chair.

I inhaled deeply. “From the beginning, I believed one or both mages of the queen’s household stood at the center of these events. That may yet be true. I see now that in my deepest self, I also assumed your wife responsible. But an investigator must not blind himself to possibility. Dante and I have come to believe that the queen’s yearning to comfort her dead children has provided a smoke screen for those who pursue an interest in profound and unnatural mysteries. Yet it was only at Eltevire that a glimpse of a man’s boots forced me to shift my eyes. This masked man who called himself
Aspirant
never worked magic in my presence. . . .”

As I recounted my tale of beatings, bleeding, and boots, Philippe grew rigid in his chair. And when I reported the Aspirant’s claim that he was Philippe de Savin-Journia’s worst nightmare, the king shot from his seat and strode to the window.