The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (38 page)

Theron sat on the edge of the bed. “Because you love me. You love me so much you don’t bother to tell me anything important. Wonderful.”

“You always object when I try to tell you about history.”

“This isn’t history, this is
real
.” He caught himself. “I don’t mean history isn’t real, but—don’t you see there’s a huge difference between telling me about dead kings and wizards, and telling me something you have decided you will do?”

“They are both real to me,” Basil said quietly.

“I know. I know they are.” Theron came and put his hands on Basil’s shoulders, and nuzzled his hair—a peace offering. “What are you studying? It looks like a laundry list.”

“It’s clothing, actually. The paper was used as the lining for a cookery book, but I think it’s an inventory of clothing for the royal compound, and I’m hoping—wondering, really, if it might not be—well, something about wizards.”

“Wizards? In a cookery book?” Theron kissed the top of his head. “Basil, you are wonderful. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

He paused a moment, and Basil said, “No, don’t go. It’s not important, just interesting. Look: ‘Ten robes of brown wool, with cloaks of fur, according to their natures.’ And this: ‘Bear Dress—Master WG.’ That
could
mean Master Wizard G. . . . Don’t go, Theron.”

“I have to go,” Theron said mournfully.

“Why?”

“Because I’ll never get all these buttons undone and done up again!”

Basil said huskily, “I’ll do that. Lie down, my love, and I’ll do it all.”

WHEN THERON RETURNED TO RIVERSIDE THE NEXT DAY, Lady Sophia showed him an envelope. “Who are these Randall people?” she asked him. “The Lady Randall invites us to a musical evening together to their house. You know I detest musical evenings. Are these people I know, Theron? Must I go?”

Her son bit into an apple. “I don’t think you know them; they’re newly come to town, to marry off the daughter, probably. There’s a son my age, who’s in the Perry crowd. I don’t see why you can’t decline.”

“Ah. Is it the daughter who plays the viol? The Lady Genevieve, it says?”

Theron looked over her shoulder. “Why, yes.” He imagined Genevieve with a viol tucked between her knees. “I’ll tell you what; I’ll go, and give your regrets in person. I’ll tell them you had to perform a sudden triple amputation, or lance a large boil.”

Sophia laughed. “Come here, my darling, your buttons are crooked.”

chapter
III

NICHOLAS GALING WAS FEELING DISCOURAGED AND frustrated. Henry Fremont hadn’t sent him word in days and Theron Campion was proving annoyingly elusive. He was never with the other young nobles of his age group, and Nicholas had no mind to go chasing him at University. Galing was full of suspicions and instincts and empty of hard facts and tired to death of the whole subject of wizards and kings. So he took himself, as he sometimes did, to a public bathhouse. There was nothing like a good sweat to clear the mind.

He was lying in the steam room on a scratchy piece of toweling, sweaty, sodden, and blissfully empty-minded, when two young men came in and established themselves on the marble benches. Their voices boomed and rattled off the tiles, the words running together almost incomprehensibly. Nicholas caught a word—“magic”—then a name—“St Cloud”—then a laugh. He came to attention, and was rewarded by a whole sentence: “I’ll give him this: he has balls, does Doctor St Cloud, to unseal that wasp’s nest after so many years.”

“He’s right, of course,” said the second man. “He must be. There’d be no point forbidding all mention of magic if it wasn’t a real threat. I wonder how he’ll prove it?”

“Make lightning flash out of a blue sky?” the first man suggested. “Grow corn on the Great Hall steps?”

“Make all the Governors’ robes disappear—that’s what I’d do.”

“That’s because you haven’t the imagination of a ten-copper nail,” the first man said, disgusted, and the conversation degenerated into bickering.

Assuming that his informants thought themselves alone, Nicholas lay still until they’d sweated their fill. Feeling weak and wobbly from the heat, he ignored the blandishments of the bath-boys and the massage-men, and had a cold plunge before drying himself and scrambling into his clothes. It was late—nearly midnight—when he emerged, clean, neat, and blazingly furious at the world in general and Henry Fremont in particular. Still, he needed information more than he needed to wring young Master Fremont’s scraggy neck. So he procured a chaise and directed it to take him to Edward Tielman’s house on Fulsom Street.

Late as it was, Felicity herself received him in the library. He was startled to see her heavily pregnant—he hadn’t thought it so long since their last meeting. Her belly was like a cauldron among the folds of her gown, but her face was thin and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“Ned’s very occupied,” she told Galing after the first pleasantries were over. “He’s seldom home before midnight and leaves first thing in the morning. I’m thinking of having his portrait painted so the baby will know what its father looks like, except he’d never find time to sit for it.”

Galing accorded this sally a sympathetic smile. “I’ll look for him at the Council Hall, then, if you’ll excuse me. It’s rather urgent I speak to him.”

“Of course,” said Felicity, rather sadly. “But do come by again for a late supper or something. Ned and I miss you, and I, for one, am not getting about much these days.”

Nicholas bowed and murmured politely and was on his way out the door when voices in the hall heralded Edward’s timely return from the Council Hall. Felicity heaved herself out of her chair. “I’ll tell him you’re here and send him straight in. Don’t keep him up too late, will you, Nick?”

The minutes ticked by, and Nicholas waited for Edward with mounting impatience. He imagined Felicity reproaching her husband for coming home so late and extracting a promise to get rid of his untimely visitor as soon as possible. It was odd, how childbearing could metamorphose a perfectly nice, tolerant woman into a domestic tyrant. Nicholas knew a moment of gratitude that he was not an eldest son, to shackle himself to a woman for the sake of the family.

The hands of the library clock approached one. Nicholas was reaching for the bell to summon someone to remind Tielman of his existence when his friend himself entered. He was wearing a dressing-gown over breeches and shirt. “I’m sorry, Nick; Felicity said you were in a hurry, but I insisted on seeing her to bed before I came up. She’s more delicate than she’ll let on, you know, and I worry.” He unstoppered a decanter, poured two glasses of red wine, and held one out to Nicholas. “Now, what can I do for you?”

Nicholas ignored the glass. “Did you know that Basil St Cloud has declared that he will prove that the wizards had true magic? In public forum?”

“Why, yes. I did. Didn’t you? What happened to Henry?”

“Henry is obviously more loyal to St Cloud and his bizarre notions than you thought,” Nicholas snapped. “What I want to know is why this Doctor St Cloud isn’t in the Chop, debating the reality of magic with Lord Arlen and his inquisitors.”

Edward smiled. “Is that all? I thought you’d figured it out, or I would have written you a report myself. As it is—look, I’m not going to stand here like an idiot with two glasses of wine while you glare at me. Take this and sit down and I’ll tell you everything.”

Nicholas was very close to knocking the glass from Edward’s hand and cursing him for a swollen-headed, jumped-up servant who didn’t know his place. But a good intelligencer must govern his temper, so Nicholas took the wine and sat as he’d been told, and sipped before cocking his eyebrow at his friend. “Well, Ned?”

Tielman propped his elbows on his knees and twirled the wine in his glass. “Well. The Governors came to us as soon as they heard about the challenge, wanting to know what they ought to do about it. They were in a right old state, like maiden aunts exclaiming over a housemaid who’s fallen pregnant. Should they dismiss St Cloud out of hand, should they refuse to hear the debate, they hadn’t known anything about any of this, the University held itself above such matters, and could we please make it all go away.”

“And you said?”

“Lord Horn said he would put it before the Inner Council, and let them know.”

“And the Inner Council said?”

“Well.” Tielman sat back and took a thoughtful sip of wine. “It wasn’t quite the whole Inner Council—Lord Horn saw no reason for the Dragon Chancellor or the ducal houses to be bothered over so trifling a matter.”

Galing gripped the arms of his chair. “Trifling?” he inquired as mildly as he could. “The Council of Lords didn’t think so when they declared any mention of the wizards and magic to be unlawful. And it still is, as far as I know.”

“Yes, yes, I know; which is why the Governors are in such a flap. But Lord Arlen made the point, and Lord Horn agrees, that subjects no one is allowed to discuss under threat of imprisonment are more likely to attract the wrong kind of attention than subjects anyone can talk about with impunity. You can’t have secret societies when you don’t have a secret for them to rally around. We’re indebted to St Cloud, really, for bringing it all out into the open.”

“Ah.” Nicholas sat back with an assumption of ease. He was blindingly angry, and aware that his anger might impair his judgment. “Lord Arlen said that, did he?”

“ ‘Let the man do his best to prove it was real,’ he said. ‘I don’t imagine he can do it, but if he can, I don’t imagine it will mean much outside the University. Magic has nothing to do with the way things are run today; why shouldn’t scholars talk about it?’ ”

“And those were his very words?” Nicholas couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“Close enough.”

“I take it you were there, then. At this little convocation of the cream of the Inner Council. And that despite the extreme erudition of the distinguished councilors assembled, no one thought to point out that it’s not only about wizards and magic and ancient history. Such a debate calls the Council’s own legitimacy to challenge.”

“How so?”

“Because the overthrow of the monarchy is the foundation of the Council’s authority!” Without knowing he was doing it, Nicholas drained half his wineglass. “Of
our
authority. Of the nobles’ right to rule. Because, you blockhead, if the wizards were really tied to the land with real magic, and chose the kings to rule, then the nobles had no right to depose them!”

Tielman looked at him with affection, long and hard. “What a lot of knowledge Henry’s managed to cram into your head after all. Far better than old Bracegirdle and our other tutor.” He waved his hand. “You are right, I’m sure. But whoever was in the right of it two hundred years ago, it’s a done deal now. And no amount of scholarly debate, however well-reasoned, can change that.”

Nicholas struggled with his temper and subdued it enough to say, “I presume my investigation is closed, then.”

“Has Arlen told you it is?” Edward inquired.

This was too much. “You know he hasn’t. He hasn’t told me anything. You’re his leaf-crowned boy—you tell me.”

“Oh, lord,” said Edward. “You’re really hurt, aren’t you? Don’t deny it—I knew you when your father gave your brother that horse.”

“Edward.” Galing’s voice was tight and even. “I’m not a boy. And this isn’t a matter of petty jealousy. I understood that I’d been given a job to do, a job that had some importance to the welfare of the city, perhaps of the country. To discover that it was so inconsequential that no one would even bother to call me off . . . Well, it came as a shock. I wouldn’t have thought it of Arlen.”

“No,” Tielman agreed. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

The fire popped and settled in the grate; Tielman stirred it with a poker and threw on another log. Galing thought a moment and said, “He’s playing some damned endgame, isn’t he? It’s another of his plague-rotted tests. All I have to do is figure out whether he’s really not paying attention to St Cloud’s challenge, or only officially not paying attention.”

“Sounds a bit complicated to me,” Tielman said.

“The Serpent’s a complicated man.”

“He is that.”

They sat for a moment, contemplating the fire and Lord Arlen’s complexity. Then Nicholas said, “Look. Do you want me to keep pursuing this or not?”

“This?”

Edward sounded as if he might have begun to nod off over the fire. Now that Nicholas came to look at him, he saw that his friend’s eyes were almost as shadowed as his wife’s. “The possibility of a monarchist plot in the city,” he explained.