The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (69 page)

“The first thing I thought of was his books and papers,” he explained to the four friends. “Sooner or later, the Governors or someone would have come and taken them away and probably burned them, and I couldn’t bear for that to happen. It would have been like killing him twice.”

He stopped and blinked away the tears that had been surprising him at intervals all night. He’d found himself weeping in a back alley where he’d hidden to avoid the Guard, and again standing in St Cloud’s room, seeing the inkwell still half-full, the hairs still in the comb, the notes on the pages left on the table:
Look up? Compare R’s version?
It was not so much embarrassing as inconvenient, distracting him from the task at hand. Which, just now, was to persuade four skeptical and grief-stricken men that, despite appearances, he was really on their side.

“As if you cared two pins about St Cloud,” Henry Fremont sneered. “You haven’t been around for weeks—couldn’t even be bothered to come with us yesterday morning, or stand with us, or—”

“Yes, I know,” Justis interrupted impatiently. “I was confused. But it’s not important now. What’s important is that it all not be for nothing—Doctor St Cloud’s work and the debate and all. Now, I have all his books and his papers . . .”

They all exclaimed at that, incredulous, jealous that they hadn’t thought of it themselves, excited at the possibilities, nervous of the consequences. Vandeleur wanted to hear how he’d done it; Godwin wanted to know where he’d stashed them; Fremont hoped the girl hadn’t had anything to do with it: women could never keep secrets. Lindley swept the room with a suspicious eye and said they’d better not talk of it in such a public place.

“No,” Justis said. “A public place is just where we must speak of it. There have been enough secrets and mysteries. The more people who know about all this, the better. This is the Blackbird’s Nest, man. It’s full of historians and metaphysicians. It’s in their interest to support us, not turn us in.”

“Us,” said Henry. “Who is us? I thought you were sick of scholars and University and anything that didn’t put food on the table.”

“I thought I was, too,” Justis said. “I was wrong. I’m going to take my degree in history, using St Cloud’s methods, and I’m going to become a Fellow and then a Doctor, and I’m going to teach ancient history the way Doctor St Cloud taught it, without lies.”

There was a stunned silence. “Right,” Godwin said. “And I’m going to be Dragon Chancellor.”

“No,” Lindley said slowly, “he could do it. With the sources he’d found and his notes—you did get all the notes, didn’t you?—and if Godwin here can persuade his father to talk some of the Governors around . . .”

“We still need a sponsor,” Fremont pointed out.

Vandeleur and Godwin answered as one: “Rugg.”

“He’s always held that History and Metaphysics were closely allied,” Vandeleur explained.

“And he called on us for revenge,” Godwin said. “You remember, Vandeleur, on the steps, when, when . . .”

They did, indeed, remember, although they had temporarily lost sight of it in the excitement of Justis Blake’s revelations. The horror of Basil St Cloud’s death fell on them afresh at Godwin’s words, and they sat in silence, fighting or surrendering to their grief according to their several natures. Justis knew he had not loved St Cloud as the rest had. In his eight months as a historian, he had been dazzled, charmed, inspired, and deeply disappointed by the young magister’s romantic devotion to the past. But the flame St Cloud had carried was a true flame, and its light should not pass from the world.

Justis wiped his eyes and beckoned to the potboy. “I know you’ve got good wine here,” he said. “You keep it for the magisters. You’d give it to Doctor St Cloud, if he asked for it. We’d like a bottle to drink to his memory.”

The boy looked doubtful. “Can you pay for it?”

Justis reached for his purse to check, but Godwin said thickly, “Yes. Just get it. The best you have.”

When the boy was gone, Henry said, “What about the papers? Did you take them to your rooms?”

“No. I didn’t think Vandeleur would let me in, and I didn’t feel like arguing.”

Vandeleur slugged him on the arm. “Clodpole,” he said affectionately. “I’d have killed you first, and argued later.”

“Just so, hot-head. And I wanted them out of University, in case there was a search.”

“The Book,” Lindley asked eagerly, “the spellbook—it wasn’t there, was it?”

“How do you imagine it would have gotten there, dolt?” asked Henry. “Magic?”

There was an uncomfortable silence while everyone remembered that magic was no longer a joke, and then Justis said, “There were some notebooks, a lot of loose papers— nothing like the book Henry and I saw him with a couple of weeks ago.”

Godwin looked indignant. “You went to see him? When he’d specifically asked us to leave him alone? Without telling us? Why?”

Justis caught Henry’s darting glance and held it steadily. “I’d overheard something I thought he should know. It doesn’t matter now.” He turned deliberately to Godwin. “He had a book in his hands—fat and dark, the same book he read from on the steps.”

“It’s probably ashes by now,” Henry said. “And good riddance to it.”

“So,” persisted Godwin, “where’d you take them?”

Justis glanced around the tavern, growing noisy now as conversations began to wander from the debate onto other subjects. No one was paying Historians’ Corner the least bit of attention. He leaned forward. “Marianne’s hiding them in her shop, at the bottom of a box of ribbons.”

The students were speechless. Finally, Vandeleur found his voice. “You hid Doctor St Cloud’s papers and notes in a box of
ribbons?
”

“The ribbons are of unfashionable colors,” Justis reassured them. “No one’s likely to disturb them, and they’ll be safe until the dust has settled.”

He glared at Henry, daring him to say something about women or milliners, but Henry, mindful of the wisdom of being civil, said, “I’m sure Mistress Marianne will guard them well. What does she think, by the way, of this plan of yours to take the scholarly world by storm?”

“She’s for it,” Justis said. “We talked about it last night. We’re going to get married and set her up in a shop of her own with my wedding portion and she can support us until I start getting students.”

“How nice for her,” Henry said, rather sourly. The congratulations of the others weren’t much more effusive. It was all too much to take in and respond to. It would take weeks and months before they could think of St Cloud, or even of Ancient History, without being dogged by a shadow of horror and grief.

Max himself arrived with a bottle of wine and six glasses on a tray. It was a Deerfield red, very fine indeed. As Godwin fumbled at his purse strings, Max said, “It’s on the house. The Doctor brought in good custom and always paid his tab. He’ll be missed.”

When Max had poured the wine, with a glass for himself, the five Ancient Historians lifted their glasses, self-conscious, sad, aware that this moment marked a change in their lives whose repercussions they could not imagine. Expectant, they looked at Vandeleur.

“Blake,” Vandeleur said. “Will you offer the toast?”

Justis allowed himself a moment of astonished dismay at his sudden change of status. This is what it was going to be like from now on, and he’d brought it on himself. He stood and raised his glass to the table and his voice to be heard over the tavern noise. “Gentlemen,” he said, and paused while the conversations around him ebbed. “Doctor Basil St Cloud was great of mind and great of heart, an adventurer in the forest of Truth. He perished on the journey, but left a path for us to follow—not historians alone, but all of us, humane scientists, natural scientists, every scholar and fellow of this University. Our most fitting memorial to him is to walk the path he blazed. Gentlemen, I give you Basil St Cloud, first Doctor of Empirical Studies.”

He lifted the scarlet liquid to his lips and took a respectful swallow—even a country boy knows that you don’t toss back a Deerfield red like water—and the rest of the room followed suit. They all sat for a moment with their heads bowed over their glasses, cups, and tankards.

As Justis sat down, he thought he heard Lindley add, low-voiced, “. . . and last Wizard of the Land.”

THE KING AWOKE WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT SOMETHING terrible had happened. Over and over he had dreamed it, that his heart was being pulled out of his body, the muscle stretched like a cord that must ultimately break. He cried out and woke—this time, not to more dreams of grief with men in long robes performing sad rituals in a strange tongue, but to a bright, clean room that smelt of salt and beeswax.

His body ached all over, with sharper pangs in his arms and at his ribs. He was terribly thirsty and the taste of something sweet was in his mouth. The ceiling flickered with a restless, rippling pattern of light, like the river reflections in a Riverside tavern. The room was rocking gently. Was he on a barge?

When he struggled upright, he discovered how weak he was—his muscles like water, his head swimming dizzily with each movement. But his heart was pulling him to the window, the pain of his desire more poignant than his bandaged wounds. Grimly, he pushed back the coverlet, swung his feet to the floor, and hauled himself, sweating, two steps to the tiny window and looked out.

They heard his cry up on the main deck.

The Land! The Land was nowhere in sight.

He was shouting now, holding on to the window like a prisoner in a cell. Sophia appeared and pulled him away from it, held him to her on the cabin floor while he wept and ground his knuckles into the wool of her skirt. “Theron, hush, it’s all right. It will be all right. . . .”

“I’m bound to the Land,” he cried. “You’re killing me; take me back!”

She had wanted him to wake and to be strong, but this was closer to the madness of fever. “Theron, please, my darling, my child . . . look at me. Please. You are hurting yourself, my love, you must stop. . . .”

It was her voice that soothed him, more than her words. He breathed deeply, as she told him to, and the pain receded to where he could bear it. He let her feed him a syrup that sent him back to sleep. When he woke again, he was less frightened, but sadder. His mother gave him honey to eat. “We are going back to Kyros,” she smiled, “where you will find the honey is even sweeter than this. You will be well there, my son.”

The ship sang in its ropes and sails the song the wind taught it. He heard men’s voices, and women’s, too, shouting orders and cursing and telling jokes and singing. His sister Jessica came in, sunbrowned and trousered. He clutched her callused hand. “Take me back, Jess. I need to go back.”

“No, you don’t,” she said curtly. “Be still and listen, and I’ll tell you why.”

“You don’t know—”

“I know more than you think. Much more, in fact. You told me things in the Folly, and you’ve said things when you’re asleep. And I’ve been doing a little reading. So listen to me.”

He lay back in the pillows. She sat on a stool beside the bunk and fixed him with her bright eyes.

“You need to be away,” she told him. “You need to be washed clean. Some of what has happened to you will stay with you, and that’s the good part, the true part, the part that should stay. Some of it will not stay: you’ll forget, and it’s just as well; that part’s no good to you. You gave up a lot of your blood. You left it behind on the steps of the University; it’s gone into the Land. What is new in you, you make yourself. That new blood is yours, to do what you want with, for now and always.”

Her words quieted the panicked clamoring in his head. He had forgotten that his sister was famous for having sold ice to the frozen kingdom of Arkenvelt. But that was her gift.

“There are some things you need to think about,” she went on. “Sophia will take care of you as long as you need her to. But if I were you, I’d try to be useful. I’d try to gain strength and mastery. Take your time,” she went on in a steady, soothing tone. “In a day or two, I’ll have you carried up on deck. Can you still tie a half-hitch knot? I’ll teach you others. And I’ll teach you to navigate by the stars, and when you’re feeling stronger, we’ll make a sailor of you.”

He was very nearly asleep, lulled by the promise of something new to learn. He did like knowing new things.

Softly, Jessica closed the cabin door. She took a small brown leather book out of her pocket, grinned at it, tucked it under her arm. Its gold leaf bore a bloody thumbprint, and it wasn’t the first.

Dear Katherine,
Jessica wrote that evening.
The voyage is
well begun.

NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE EVENTS OF THIS NOVEL TAKE PLACE SOME SIXTY YEARS after those of Ellen’s first novel,
Swordspoint
. Some of the intervening years are touched on in her short stories “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death” and “The Death of the Duke” (in Datlow & Windling’s
The Year’s Best Fantasy
and Horror
for 1991 and 1998).

Ellen can’t thank Delia enough for agreeing to play in her sandbox, and for increasing the population and breadth of the city. Delia’s story of the love of King Alexander for Fair Rosamund, “The Tragedy of King Alexander the Stag,” was published in Colleen Doran’s
A Distant Soil
#29 (Image Comics). Ellen is planning another novel set fifteen years after
Swordspoint
.