The Spirit Lens (43 page)

“I understand, sire.”

I had resigned myself to the role of Portier the Sycophant, the overeager kinsman who aspired above his place, when I first took it on. Though my notions of destiny had never involved public humiliations, I should have been relieved that playacting was the worst penalty I reaped. Yet Philippe’s scarcely concealed contempt pained me, even as I came to understand it. The king viewed sorcery as lies, trickery, and subterfuge, and the belief had fueled his disdain for the mystic art. Now lies and subterfuge—the province of spies—had entangled his heart and limbs, as well. And we were not done yet. Not by half.

“Before you go, you will question this Mage Orviene.” Philippe’s lips thinned and hardened. “I give you leave to extend that questioning beyond my lady’s bounds, even to the woman mage if you judge it needful. Some sorcerer or other is a part of these works you describe. Michel has no connection to a blood family. Over twenty years, I’ve seen no hint of magical talent.”

“I’ll certainly question Orviene,” I said, mulling the tangles ahead. “But I don’t think . . . It’s not yet time to wring out the mages. Dante is yet in play to observe them. Perhaps—” How far would his tolerance extend? “You have already acknowledged to Her Majesty that sorcery is involved in this case. Perhaps you could confess you need her help. You could suggest that the overreaching Portier, a failed sorcerer, is clearly incompetent to judge the signs of nefarious sorcery. As you employ no sorcerers of your own, she might provide one to . . . supervise me on the journey to Vernase.”

Philippe’s knuckles glared white against the dark wood of his chair as he considered this. His gaze fixed on the cold hearth across the room.

“My wife is ever eager to impress her belief in magic on me,” he said after a few moments. “But she might choose any of the three. Which would you want—this Dante or one you suspect?”

“If she chooses Orviene or Gaetana, I’ll have a chance to observe that one closer,” I said. “A fool is easily discounted, as we well know.”

His darting glance at me, as quickly returned to the hearth, removed all doubt that he was privy to Ilario’s long deception.

“But I could use Dante better,” I said. “Sire, would your lady not respond to your suggestion that selecting the mage who was
not
in her employ on the day of the attempted assassination might lead you to a more objective view of her servants? Might she not think such a partnership could lead even you to appreciate magical talents?”

He pressed his fingers to his forehead that could not possibly be throbbing more wretchedly than my own. The shredded remnants of dignity that I’d preserved so carefully these past years lay scattered from his court to the rubble of Eltevire. Perhaps it was that which impelled me to bait a powerful man as he wrestled the maddening truth that he could not trust either of the people he loved most; or perhaps it was only my tired, foolish attempt to raise his better humor.

“Indeed, cousin,” I said, “one might argue that your views shifted on the day you summoned a ‘kinsman sorcerer’ from Seravain. Surely, admitting faulty judgment in a marital dispute could not be received amiss.”

In a move so swift as to blur my vision, the king sprang from his seat, hefted his chair, and smashed it onto the writing desk, splintering the delicate furnishings in a storm of falling cushions, breaking glass, and splattering ink.

“Get out,” he yelled, reaching for the broken chair, as if to ready it for a new target. “Do your vile business and crawl back into your hole.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

4 CINQ 21 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

“
W
ill that be all, lord sir?”

Heurot shut the clothes chest after storing my clean If linen. It was the first he’d spoken that evening, which was entirely unlike the chatty young manservant. Before I’d gone to Eltevire, he’d habitually come to attend me in the evenings only after his other gentlemen were satisfied, lingering in my chamber to speak of such matters as his brothers and sisters in service, his latest reading from the chapbooks he picked up in the markets, and the progress of the giant pendulum the king was having constructed in the palace Rotunda. Perhaps he’d sensed my dismal mood.

“Not quite.” I handed him a sealed note and sixty kivrae. “Deliver this message to Secretary de Sain in the steward’s office right away. And I’d be most grateful if you’d have my new boots picked up from Tick the Cob bler before morning. I’ll be leaving Merona tomorrow early, and these bought on my last journey would better fit a twelve-year-old maiden with square feet.”

“Certainly, sir lord.” The youth accepted my missive for Henri, finalizing arrangements for the journey to Vernase, and slipped the coins into his tunic’s voluminous pocket. Then he bowed, as he’d never found necessary before, and backed awkwardly toward the door. But he bumped into the clothes chest, then stumbled over the horrid boots Ilario had bought me in Mattefriese to replace those lost at Eltevire. “I can fetch your new boots right now. Tick works late. Divine grace shine upon you, sir, sonjeur.”

“Divine grace, Heurot. Are you quite all right?” His behavior was altogether odd.

“Aye, lord sir. Definitely. Thank you for asking, lord . . . Sonjeur de Duplais.” After another jerky bow, he backed out of the door into the passage.

Amused and puzzled, I returned attention to my journal. Dipped my pen.

The door slammed shut, but tight breathing raised my eyes again.

“Will ye be back this time, sir, lord sir, sonjeur?” Heurot pressed his back to the closed door.

“Barring misfortune. Why? Are you sure you’re all right, lad? Speak up. And
sir
or
sonjeur
is quite enough.”

He stared down at the ugly Arabascan boots. “It’s just, I’ve heard . . . this disgrace . . . that the king’s so angry with ye, and dullard me didn’t even know ye were his kin, and I’ve been so free, joking and not acting properly respectful all these days. But I wanted to say, if I wasn’t to see ye again, that ye’ve been kind to me and ye don’t seem a lackwit or craven or mercenary at all. Only I didn’t know whether it was proper to speak of such.”

I suppressed a smile and a sigh of regret. Rumor progressed rapidly, as the king had foretold. More so after his destructive outburst of the morning. Yet rumor served.

“Ah, Heurot, my blood is so remotely related to His Majesty that his wolfhounds are more familiar to him, and more valued. Indeed, my efforts to remedy our distance have put him in a foul temper, and he’s sent me off on a wild errand, subordinate to the worst possible taskmaster.” I grimaced and shuddered.

Few would understand my early-evening pleasure at hearing that Dante would accompany me to Vernase. Where had I learned how to move a king to bend his neck to his wife’s whims? Sometimes I felt far older than two-and-thirty years.

“Yet I am at little personal risk, and ever hopeful to serve the crown honorably to forward my father’s Veil journey. Though it were well”—I beckoned the lad close and whispered—“if perhaps you did not proclaim my better qualities aloud. I’d not have you tainted should I fail to satisfy the royal pleasure.”

The lad tossed his yellow hair out of his widened eyes. “Aye, I see what ye mean. I’ll pray the holy saints to serve your honor and your . . . satisfyin’.”

“I could ask no more.”

Smiling, I returned to recording the results of my interview with Mage Orviene. I’d questioned him shortly after leaving the king’s study. The mage had offered me little new. Evidently, Adept Fedrigo was perpetually short of money, a matter Orviene did not wish to overemphasize, but feared might have sent the young man to the docks to gamble on the day of his purported murder. And no, the mage could not recall who had told him the story of the ill-fated tavern brawl. One of the palace servants, he thought. He would inquire and let me know. The city magistrate’s written report had portrayed the brawl as no different from any other in the history of Riverside taverns.

As before, Orviene impressed me as sincerely grieved about his assistant’s fate. He had not himself seen Fedrigo since shortly after I had first arrived at Castelle Escalon. When I mentioned our earlier encounter, and the suspicions he had voiced with regard to the
Swan
fire, he reiterated that he had no evidence of improprieties. But his eyes pointedly told me that his beliefs had not wavered. And that was that.

I hoped writing the details of the interview would grant me some marvelous insight, but not long after the palace bells rang eighth hour of evening watch, a footman delivered me a note, sealed without any device. Unsigned, its blockish characters set down ungracefully one by one, it comprised but one line:
Friend, I await you in the heart of Escalon. Please.

“Hold!” I caught the messenger before he could disappear down the passage. “Who sent this?”

“Don’t know, sir. A lamp boy caught me as I was coming from supper. Said he was given it to be delivered to Sonjeur de Duplais. The donkey hadn’t asked on whose authority.”

I sent the fellow on his way and scoured the message as if the sparse words hid something I could not see. For a blood-marked man to venture out in answer to so enigmatic a request in these dangerous times was idiocy. Yet the sender could be Ilario, returned early from the country, or Dante, whom I had not seen since we parted ways on the road from Eltevire. Our meetings must be conducted with redoubled caution now I was so exposed. I had to go.

Hoping to arrive while the dusky light yet held, I sped through the north wing and down the back stair to the underground labyrinth that delivered servants speedily to the principal areas of the palace. The branch under the south wing and a damp slanting tunnel delivered me to the south gardens.
The heart of Escalon
was not found within the palace proper.

Before the current residence was built, and long before the current fashion of elaborate, precisely laid-out gardens and follies, some Sabrian queen had grown the
escalon
or garden maze for which the palace was named. Instead of common boxwood or privet, she had chosen colorful plantings of the wildlands—gorse and flowering broom, brilliant yellow nestled amid the budding scarlet of hibiscus, and thick growths of purple-flowered bougainvillea—to disguise those who trod the maze paths. In the center of it all she had built a fair summerhouse of rustic floors and latticed arches, rotted and replaced a dozen times through the decades.

Scents of damp earth, sweet gorse, and freshly trimmed grass hung thick as I hurried through the narrow paths, increasingly anxious. Neither Ilario or Dante would have written
please
.

Holding quiet at the edge of the clearing, I peered through the advancing gloom. A solitary figure, mostly obscured by the latticed walls and deeper twilight inside the elliptical summerhouse, moved slowly back and forth between the peaked ends, pausing at each terminus as if to stare outward through its open arch. When I estimated the person’s stature as considerably less than my own, I perused the note again and my heart leapt.
Friend
. Maura.

She halted her pacing the moment I raced up the steps. “Portier! Thank all angels you’ve come.” Anxiety and relief twined together like the flowering vines.

I longed to answer as my own self and not the creature of conspiracy’s invention. But the risks were far too high. Maura stood too near the quaking center of this earth tremor.

“Divine grace, damoselle,” I said, bowing and exposing my hand, keeping my distance, even as heart and conscience clamored to soothe her trouble. “So secret a summons, lady?”

“I just couldn’t—But I needed to find out: All these rumors about Michel de Vernase, about you. These dreadful events: the fire on the
Swan
; Filamena, the sewing woman, found dead in her bed; Adept Fedrigo gone missing. This morning, Henri de Sain tells me you’ve been asking about shipping crates and—and corpses. This afternoon I see your awful bruises, and I hear you’ve driven the king to violence. And this evening I’m tasked to arrange transport for you and that vile mage to Vernase. Friend Portier, what is happening?” She sank onto a circular bench, as if spilling her worries had emptied her of strength. “You’re the only person I trust.”

Her quiet sob near broke my resolution. But caution shaped more lies and kept me away.

“I cannot imagine any reason for you to be afraid.” Hands clasped behind my back, I sauntered along the peripheries, underneath the gargoyles carved in the latticed arches. “Though you were wise to meet me in secret. My fool’s quest is like to get me hanged. I’ve uncovered some distinct coincidences that shine unfortunate light on the king’s friend, Conte Ruggiere, forcing His Majesty to decisions he detests. Not a path to royal favor. Forgive me for not revealing my—”

“Michel de Vernase would never betray his king.” My words had infused iron in her spine. “He is honorable, compassionate, devoted entirely to His Majesty’s service and to his family. This evidence cannot be credible. Tell me of it, Portier. Perhaps the answer’s somewhat of common knowledge that I could easily provide.”

This poorly disguised probing wormed its way beneath my skin like a glass splinter. I riposted. Lies came easy now. “A taverner at Seravain told me she posted a letter for the conte to a woman here at court. After so long, she couldn’t remember the name, but the conte had teased her that this woman ‘aided him in secret work.’ ”

Were I not listening with senses raised, I might have missed Maura’s sharp breath. The splinter speared deeper, chilling my heart.

I lowered my voice and tightened the snare. “As I came to consider that Michel might not be so much a friend to His Majesty as everyone assumed, this report turned my thoughts to Mage Gaetana, as it is well-known that sorcerers instigated last year’s assault on the king. Do you think it possible
she
is Michel’s female accomplice?”

“None of this is possible,” Maura said, in growing desperation. “How can circumstances appear so awful—so wicked—when no shred of ill intent lies back of them?”