Bookworm (20 page)

Dread’s words brought her out of her trance. “Once the Duke was confirmed dead,” he said coldly, “what did you do?”

“I ordered the druids and clerics out of the room and sealed it with a binding ward,” Trebuchet said. “I put out the fire and worked a standard preserving charm over the body, and then ran through the basic tests for poison, dark enchantments and other issues that might have shortened his life. As I wrote in my report” – he shot Dread a defiant look – “I found nothing that might have suggested that the Duke was...encouraged to meet an early end. I took samples of his blood, urine and shit, which I sent to the Golden City along with my report.”

“And I’m sure that the Grand Sorcerer was pleased to receive a crate of shit,” Dread muttered.

“The druids found nothing, I am sure,” Trebuchet said, nastily. “I would have heard if they
had
found something to alarm us...”

“They said nothing to me about it,” Dread said. Elaine wondered if that was another half-truth, something said to distract attention from a greater truth. There was no reason that the druids
had
to report to Dread. “What did you do after you had checked for poison and curses?”

“I called the King back in, along with his chief druid, and formally pronounced the Duke dead,” Trebuchet said. He sounded as if he were on surer ground now. “The King took his signet ring and placed it in the castle vault for the next second son, once the Prince has a couple of children of his own, and then prayed over the body. Bells were rung to signify the departure of the Duke’s soul, after which we attended a big service where we commended his soul to the mountains. I had the body transferred to the vault” – he pretended not to see Elaine’s flinch – “and then wrote my first report to the Grand Sorcerer. It was sent down to the iron dragon, taken to Pendle and then teleported to the Golden City.”

“You appear to have followed procedure,” Dread observed, calmly. “What happened to the Duke’s possessions?”

“I had certified that the Duke had died of natural causes – or at least as natural as one can get when a person seemed intent on eating himself to death,” Trebuchet said. “That meant that his will could be read and the first bequests distributed in line with the provisions in the document. The Prince received most of his uncle’s possessions, although some thousand crowns were put aside for the Duke’s illegitimate son. I’m afraid that his wife was barren.”

“You mean her husband’s brother saw to it that she could never have children,” Dread said. Elaine looked at him sharply. Why would
anyone
refuse to allow their sister-in-law to have children? But from an aristocratic point of view, it limited the number of potential heirs or ambitious relatives who might have tried to claim the throne. The last thing a kingdom as small as Ida needed was a civil war. “What happened to his bastard son?”

“Oh, the Duke was most generous to him,” Trebuchet assured the Inquisitor. “He played with the King’s son and daughter, became one of their knights...there was no reason to think that his lowly birth stood in his way to becoming a great man in his own right...

“...but then he left.”

Dread’s eyes narrowed. “Left? Left where?”

“He just left Ida and vanished into the surrounding countryside,” Trebuchet admitted. “There was no reason for it as far as anyone could see. The Duke treated him as a natural son, he wouldn’t have inherited the kingdom even if he
had
been a natural son...the gods know what happened to him.”

Elaine leaned forward. “Did his father know where he had gone?”

“I don’t think so,” Trebuchet said, after a moment. “I did offer to try and use sorcery to track him down, but the Duke refused. I liked to think that he’d decided that his son would be better off joining the Imperial Army or maybe even sailing out to the islands and setting up a life far from home. The gods know that bastards aren’t always popular as they grow up into strapping young men.”

“Yes, they do,” Dread mused. He shrugged. “You were the one who performed the first examination of the Duke’s private library. Did you notice anything special about the books...?”

The change was remarkable. Trebuchet opened his mouth, and then froze horribly. His entire body started to shake, blood dripping from his mouth and nose. Dread jumped forward, casting a countering charm that Elaine had never learned in the Peerless School, but it was already too late. Trebuchet’s body exploded, scattering blood and guts everywhere. Elaine swore out loud as blood drenched her hair and clothes. Dread seemed just as shocked.

“What...” she managed to say. “What was that?”

“A lethal curse,” Dread said. The Inquisitor had remained calm, somehow. “Someone didn’t want him talking about those books.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Are you all right, Milady?”

Elaine shook her head. It was rare for her to have time to enjoy a proper bath; the apartment she shared with Daria didn’t have more than a washbasin and she was too shy to visit the public baths, even the ones reserved for women alone. But Ida’s King had been willing to have the Inquisitor and his ‘assistant’ move into his castle and get cleaned up properly. The three maids assigned to Elaine had helped her to undress, climb into the bath and wash all the blood away from her body. Her clothes, they’d warned, would have to be thrown out. They were just too stained to be washed and reused.

Her mind kept returning to the horrible moment when she’d seen Trebuchet explode. She’d never seen anything like it before; she’d never seen
anyone
die in front of her in her entire life. Even the sickliest of the orphanage children had been taken away before their illnesses had killed them, although she’d known that they would never be returning. But she had never been too close to anyone at the orphanage. They were either adopted and taken away, or eventually sold to slave traders and taken away. Elaine had been unusual in that she’d been left in the orphanage until she was old enough to make her own way in the world.

The knowledge at the back of her head had identified the curse that had killed the Court Wizard. According to the text of a book on banned curses crafted for use in warfare, the curse was intended to prevent someone from revealing secrets; it bonded with the victim’s magical field, rendering it almost undetectable, until it sensed that they were on the verge of confessing to their interrogators. And then it struck, inflicting so much damage that the victim’s body literally shattered in front of the watchers. It was almost impossible to make someone who had been cursed in such a manner talk. They couldn’t talk freely, even if they didn’t know that the curse was there, while truth spells and torture would simply trigger the curse once the interrogation reached the right spot. It was a chilling thought and she felt a moment of sympathy for the Inquisition. Who knew how many others, perhaps unknowingly, were walking through the Golden City with such powerful curses attached to their soul?

She closed her eyes as the maids came up behind her and pushed her head down lightly into the water. Warm water lapped around her body, washing away the dirt and blood, before they helped her out and started to dry her with a white towel. Elaine would normally have pushed them away – she didn’t have a maid in the apartment; the very thought was laughable and somewhat creepy – but she didn’t resist as they dried her off and produced a green dress for her to wear. It didn’t match her eyes, yet at least she could wear it. The thought of having to send someone to the inn to pick up her spare outfit was humiliating.

“You don’t need to worry about my hair,” she said, quickly, as one of the maids started to brush it carefully. It looked as if she intended to spend longer than Daria had making Elaine look pretty, which wasn’t necessary. If royal princesses were treated in this manner every day, unable to even wash themselves without help, it was a miracle that more of them weren’t completely spoilt brats. But then, they were also breeding cows for their families. There was definitely something to be said for not being born into the aristocracy. “Just brush it and then let it hang free.”

“But Milady, you have such nice hair,” the maid said, insistently. She wore a collar that Elaine found depressingly familiar. “I was ordered to ensure that you were suitable for your presentation to the King.”

Elaine blinked. “My presentation to the King?”

“The King wishes to see you and your master at High Table,” the maid said. She would have been ordered to prepare Elaine for the meeting even if Elaine argued against it. “You have to be properly prepared for him.”

Elaine rolled her eyes and settled back onto the table as her hair was washed again, brushed, and then braided into two ponytails that reminded her of her childhood. The orphanage had been severe about how its children should look, providing uniforms and insisting that all the girls had the same hairstyle. Elaine had been glad to leave and grow her hair out a little once she’d gone to the Peerless School; she’d certainly never been allowed to experiment with perfumes until she’d left the orphanage. And then she’d never really used them until Daria had started pushing her into going on a date with Bee.

But the maids didn’t seem to care. Elaine felt frankly useless as they poked and prodded at her, applying light makeup and dabs of ointment until she felt like an ornament, rather than a living person. Daria had given her makeup that had felt naturally part of her face. The maids had given her makeup that felt like a facemask, one that might crinkle away from her if she tried to smile. How could
anyone
endure living as a human doll? Perhaps they were influenced from birth to believe that that was their due. There were tribes on the Western Islands that bound their women’s feet to make them small and dainty, even though it caused them great pain. One of their gods had ordered it as an act of worship, apparently. Elaine suspected that he had been a demon in disguise.

They finally helped her to her feet and pointed her at the mirror. Her face was pale, patted with white makeup that made her look like the doll one of the kinder matrons had given her, years ago. The green dress seemed to offset her pale face naturally, while a golden necklace called attention towards the shape of her breasts. She felt herself flushing and then sighed as one of the maids hastily reapplied makeup to hide the flush. They seemed intent on turning her into a doll. Spells danced through her mind to drive the maids away, or break the collars that ensured that they would always be loyal and obedient to their monarch, but she ignored them as best she could. The gods alone knew what the King wanted with them.

Outside the warm room, Castle Adamant was cold, illuminated by torchlight rather than magic or the gas lights used in some parts of the world. The small army of servants seemed accustomed to the cold, wearing furs to keep themselves warm or simply ignoring it with the dedication of the magically enslaved; the handful of guards wore suits of armour that probably included spells that kept them warm and alert. Battle spells she’d never learned at the Peerless School – she hadn’t had the talent to go into combat magic – shimmered through her mind. A handful of carefully-charmed garments could make their wearers invincible, as long as they didn’t encounter an enemy with stronger magic.

Castle Adamant didn’t seem to be partly built into a pocket dimension, unlike most of the houses belonging to the wealthy in the Golden City. Elaine suspected that it made sense, from their point of view; Ida had never had a strong magical tradition and they’d probably worried about the danger of a cunning enemy collapsing the pocket dimension and crushing the interior of the castle. What would be a nuisance in the Crypt would be a disaster in the living breathing heart of the kingdom. The Crypt...

A thought struck her. It was a mad thought, one that would have been dangerous even without an Inquisitor nearby, but it refused to fade from her mind. Death broke all enchantments, everyone agreed; even the darkest of enslavement charms would be shattered if the victim were bound to only one person, who happened to die before the charm was passed on to a younger master. And Trebuchet was very definitely dead. Even a necromancer would have had problems raising his corpse and sending it out to prey on the living.

She caught one of the maid’s hands and halted her. “I want you to have my clothes, the ones that were splattered with blood, brought to my rooms,” she ordered. She had a feeling that the King would have organised rooms for her and Dread, if only to ensure that they were where he could see them. No King would be happy with an Inquisitor sniffing around, perhaps digging up secrets that should remain buried. “Have them bagged and left for my inspection.”

“Yes, Milady,” the maid said, with a bow. Elaine allowed herself a moment of relief – and regret. It had been quite possible that the maid would have been forced to check with her master before she did anything he hadn’t already cleared her to do. Enslavement charms were rarely subtle, but then they didn’t need to be subtle to do their job. It was a chilling reminder of what could have happened to her if she’d been sold to the slave traders from the orphanage.

The King’s Great Hall was enormous, larger than Elaine had expected. It was also cold, warmed only by a massive fire at one end of the room. A dozen heavy wooden tables – Elaine remembered what Dread had said about wood being expensive in Ida – were lined up along the hall, with a single raised table at the far end. Inquisitor Dread stood at one end of the high table, speaking with one of the King’s servants. He turned and nodded to Elaine as the maids brought her up to the table. Elaine was oddly piqued that he didn’t show any sign of noticing her outfit, although she didn’t want an Inquisitor lusting after her. Some of the knowledge in her head suggested that Inquisitors were sworn to lives of chastity. Daria would have made a joke about that explaining why they were always in such foul moods.

“They insisted on giving us the royal treatment,” Dread said. Elaine looked at him sharply. He didn’t seem to have changed at all, merely swapped his black robes for another set of identical black robes. Or maybe his robes had been charmed to prevent blood from sticking to them and becoming impossible to remove. Inquisitors were meant to walk into danger on a daily basis. “The King wants us to join him for dinner before we continue our investigation.”