The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (39 page)

Edward yawned and shrugged. “Truth? I don’t know. This is Arlen’s game, and Arlen plays his cards close to his chest. If he hasn’t called you off, it’s my guess you’re still on.”

This was Galing’s guess, too, but it was comforting to have his friend’s confirmation. It was so comforting that Nicholas turned down Edward’s half-hearted offer of more wine and left the poor man to his bed and whatever joy he might get of his pregnant wife and went home. There he spent the rest of the night composing a careful letter to Lord Arlen, hinting that he had something to report concerning a highly placed member of the nobility, and would like to wait upon his lordship at his lordship’s earliest convenience. It was time to flush the Serpent from his lair.

THE TIME FOLLOWING MIDWINTER IS THE DREARIEST of the year. Days are short, nights are long, and both are cold and wet with no immediate prospect of relief. Winter’s Tail is what the old wives call it, dragging filth at winter’s ass. It is a good time to sit by a roaring fire in company or with work at hand. It was a bad time to be poor and alone.

Which was why Justis Blake took it on himself to shame the softer-hearted members of the St Cloud coterie into calling upon Anthony Lindley with food and fuel and good cheer until he was able to fend for himself. His ten days in the Chop had left him very ill indeed, ill enough to need a physician to bleed him and prescribe no fewer than two noxious and expensive medicines. Henry Fremont, whose father must have had a very good year indeed, bore the greatest part of the expense, and furthermore gave up his new muffler to the sufferer. Since he and Lindley had hardly been close friends, he came in for a certain amount of teasing, particularly from Vandeleur, who pretended to scent a helpless love in Fremont’s generosity. Fremont finally lost his temper and gained a black eye trying to box the notion out of Vandeleur’s head. Which didn’t, as Godwin pointed out, really prove anything one way or the other.

It was two weeks after the challenge, and Justis Blake’s turn to play nursemaid. When he came into the Nest, Benedict Vandeleur greeted him with, “How’s our little king-maker today?” and shoved down the bench to give his friend room to sit.

“Is that turnip stew? Can I have some?” Without waiting for an answer, Blake picked up Vandeleur’s spoon and dug in, accepting with a nod the hunk of bread Vandeleur handed him across the table.

“You’d think the Chop would have given him a distaste for all that Northern flap,” Godwin remarked.

“Or at least taught him the sense of keeping quiet about it,” Vandeleur added.

Blake tried to say something around a mouthful of stew and bread, choked, coughed, and was thumped upon the back until he protested he was fine.

“Good,” said Henry Fremont. “But if you were going to tell us that you can’t expect a man half out of his mind with fever to display sense or discretion, you’ll wish you had choked.”

Blake grinned across at his irritating friend. “Shut up, Henry. I wasn’t going to say anything of the kind. He’s better today. He said he needn’t trouble us any more, that he can take care of himself now. He’s grateful but embarrassed, is what I think.”

“Fair enough,” said Vandeleur. “I can’t say I’m sorry. I like Lindley, but it’s damnably inconvenient. Odette complains.”

“Oh, does she now?” Henry sneered. “Is that because you make her visit him in your place?”

Vandeleur ignored him. “Lindley’s changed. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but he’s not as soft as he was.”

“He’s got new friends, too,” Godwin put in. “I met them on the steps last time I went to see him. A couple of weedy Northerners, looking like they’d been eating gooseberries— you know what they’re like. After that scene in the Nest, I couldn’t imagine what they’d been doing there, but Lindley seemed cheerful enough. He’d better watch himself, though, consorting with Northerners. It doesn’t look good.”

“Maybe they had news of Finn,” Blake said. “Anyone heard anything?”

No one had. The general opinion was that he was still in the Chop, and what were things coming to, when a man couldn’t raise a little riot and rumpus on Last Night without the Council getting in a twist over it? “He has only himself to blame, spouting off about kings and deer all over the place,” Godwin said, a noble to the bone.

“Perhaps we should go and tell someone he didn’t mean anything by it,” said Blake.

“Should we?” asked Vandeleur. “I expect he’s told them that and they don’t believe it. We’ll only make things worse.”

A few days later, Lindley duly returned to Basil St Cloud’s lectures, looking pale and painfully thin. When St Cloud tried to speak to him, he turned away the magister’s sympathy.

“It was the making of me,” he told St Cloud earnestly. “I had nothing to do for ten days but think about it, and I realized for the first time how important it is that everyone know the truth about the kings and the wizards. Truth is the greatest thing, greater than love or friendship. Love betrays you; so do friends. Truth is the only thing that never changes. Truth and the Land. That is why your debate is so important. Doctor Crabbe is the enemy of truth. He must be vanquished.”

He was very serious, as only a young zealot can be serious, and Basil was touched. “I intend to do my best, Lindley.”

The young man’s eyes glittered eagerly. “Will you let me serve you, magister? I’ll search the Archives, take notes, carry your water and fetch your wood, if that would ease your labors. It is not right that you should work unattended.”

“Thank you, Lindley,” Basil said briskly. “I was just about to bring that up.” He raised his voice. “Blake, Vandeleur, Fremont, Godwin. Don’t leave. I need you.”

When his students had gathered, he said, “You may think spring’s a long way off, but you’re wrong. There’s hardly time for me to find the material on the wizards I’ll need to convince the Governors that I’m not a dangerous lunatic. I’ll need your help. I’ll need you to go into the University Archives.”

The students exchanged stupefied looks. “But, sir,” Vandeleur objected, “there’s nothing to find about magic in the Archives. They burned all the wizards’ books. It says so— not only in the usual texts; it’s even in the ballads and the poems.”

“Ballads and poems tend to take the most dramatic view of things.
They
were nobles, Vandeleur, not academics. They only burned everything they found,” St Cloud said. “They could not have found everything.”

Justis Blake’s heart had begun pounding as though he’d been running. This was scholarship with a vengeance, scholarship with teeth. This was the most important thing that had ever happened to him. “What are we to look for, sir?” he asked.

“Anything that might conceivably have to do with wizards. Look through lists, letters, books. Look for wizard-like names in the University Rolls and references to unusual weather or plagues or good harvests. I know there was a School of Arts Magical at University once: see if you can find out what the subjects of the lectures were. Universities hate to get rid of documents. There’s bound to be something.”

He studied their faces. Lindley was glowing. Fremont and Vandeleur seemed stunned—no doubt by the amount of work involved. Blake looked almost as happy as Lindley at the prospect of hours in the Archives, sifting through dusty papers. But young Peter Godwin looked deeply distressed. Basil, who had temporarily forgotten the boy was a noble, said, “Never mind, Godwin. I shouldn’t have asked you. You’re too young for divided allegiances. It’s enough that you remain my student.”

Godwin’s voice was tight. “If I’m to remain your student, sir, then I must work with the others.”

“Thank you, Godwin. But I’d be a poor magister, to set you against your family’s interests.”

The boy looked at him sternly, and in his set face Basil saw the man he would become. “I’m not a child, sir, and I’m not a . . . a reactionary. I want you to win. Not just for our own honor, or yours, but for truth. My family will understand.”

Basil pressed his shoulder. “Let’s hope so. The rest of you, do you agree to help me?”

“We do,” they said gravely, feeling the solemnity of the moment and the undertaking. Then they grinned, and he slapped their shoulders and told them he’d meet them tomorrow, with their letters of introduction to the Master Librarian. And then they left, all except Lindley.

The redhead unpinned the brooch on his hatband and thrust it into his magister’s hand. “Take this, for luck. And remember that in your service, the service of truth, I would dare anything.” Then he darted off after the others, leaving Basil holding a carved oak leaf.

WHEN LORD ARLEN CAME TO CALL AT TREMONTAINE House, the duchess was sparring with her arms-master in the Long Gallery. The butler announced the Serpent Chancellor in a stentorian voice that might have been a mouse-squeak for all the attention Lady Katherine paid it. She continued to dance the arms-master across the hall, forcing him back with a series of neat, quick thrusts. His foot struck one of the chairs pushed against the wall and he went on the offensive. Katherine began to give way; there was a little flurry of action, too fast to follow, and the armsmaster’s sword spun into the air and fell clattering to the parquet.

“I wish you’d teach me that disarm, m’lady,” said the swordsman, rubbing his stinging hand.

Katherine retrieved his sword and offered it to him, hiltfirst. “If I taught you that disarm, Morris, I’d never have a chance of beating you, and well you know it. Thank you. It was a good bout.”

Morris bowed and disappeared. Katherine picked up a loose scarlet gown, wrapped it around her shoulders, and turned to the two figures standing at the gallery’s far end. “I’m not fit for company,” she called to them. “Will you wait in the study while I change, Lord Arlen? It won’t take long.”

Arlen smiled. “No need to change on my account, dear lady. I do not intend to detain you for long.”

“I see.” Katherine came down the room and handed her sword to the butler. “See to this, if you please, and tell Molly to prepare a bath. I’ll ring if we need anything.”

They walked companionably through the beautifully appointed halls of Tremontaine House toward Katherine’s study, as odd a pair as might be met anywhere on the Hill. Lord Arlen was tall and well made, his black coat tight across his shoulders, his hair burnished silver, his nose uncompromising, his face seamed like a mountainside. Beside him, the Duchess Tremontaine trotted like a stocky boy, her graying hair escaping from a tarnished buckle, her round cheeks patchily flushed with exercise.

“A handsome apartment,” Arlen observed as she shut the door behind them.

Katherine snorted impatiently. “You did not sally forth from your private fortress to talk about my study,” she said. “This is about Theron, isn’t it?” Lord Arlen raised his brows meaningfully in the direction of the chairs flanking the fire. “Oh, sit down and stop playing off that air of mystery,” she said irritably. “The boy means no harm. He’s a young fool, and his mother spoils him.”

Arlen sat and stretched his long legs to the fire. “Dear Katherine. I can always count on you to cut straight to the heart of the matter. I agree that Lord Theron is a fool. I only seek enlightenment about what sort of fool he is.”

“Fair enough.” Katherine took the other chair, drawing her gown closer around her. “He’s given to enthusiasms,” she said thoughtfully. “Mostly over people, some of them highly unsuitable.”

“Politically?” Lord Arlen sounded bored, but Katherine knew the question was far from idle. They were old sparring partners, she and Arlen, battling amiably over the course of the city’s development while Crescents came and went. Arlen distrusted change; Katherine welcomed it. Both loved the city and the country that sustained it.

Katherine mentally reviewed what she knew of Theron’s friendships. “No,” she said. “Not really. Not on purpose, anyway. I think politics bore him.”

“Do they?”

“He always makes an excuse to leave the table when Marcus and I get going, and he’s made it clear he’d rather do almost anything than sit in Council.”

“A pity,” said Arlen, “given the position he’ll hold someday. But not, perhaps, surprising.”

Katherine suddenly looked older. “I’d hoped he would prove to be more his mother’s son than his father’s; she raised him, after all, and she has a fearsome sense of responsibility.”

Arlen smiled. “Fearsome, indeed. And I’d argue that his father did, too, in his way. But we digress. These . . . enthusiasms: does Lord Theron cherish them for unsuitable causes, too?”

“No,” said Katherine decidedly. “Ideas, yes. Causes, no. And don’t try to tell me that having ideas leads to treasonous impulses, because that horse won’t run. He’s casting around for a center to his life, but I don’t for a moment believe this king business is it. Whatever kind of fool Theron may be, he’s not dangerous, not in that way.”

Arlen considered this, his chin resting on his steepled fingers. “Very well. I trust your judgment. But if he’s not dangerous, he would be well advised to stop behaving as if he were. Since MidWinter, I seem to stumble over him wherever I turn.”

It was the gentlest of playful thrusts. Katherine parried smoothly. “I’ll just have to keep him out from under your feet, won’t I?”

“That,” said Arlen, “would be very nice.” He rose. “The Tremontaine duchesses have been so much more satisfactory than the dukes.”

“How thoughtful of me not to marry,” Katherine snapped, out of patience. “Go away, Arlen. You’ve had your say, and I want my bath. All that ails Theron is too much freedom and too little discipline. He’s a good boy at heart.”