The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (14 page)

THE AIR GREW CRISP, THE LEAVES IN THE HILL GARDENS colored, and ripe nuts fell from the chestnut trees. Basil St Cloud found that regular physical satisfaction sharpened his mind. He was getting more work done in less time, the patterns of fact and opinion lurking in the documents he read leaping to his eye as they’d never done before. Chastity was bad for you—he’d always suspected it. He was contemplating writing up a paper about it for the natural scientists.

He was walking home from the University Archives, his head full of Theron and the problem of Article Twenty-four in the Treaty of Union. His feet were pretty much looking out for themselves, and he’d surely have come to grief if the students weren’t so accustomed to avoiding the erratic path of a man lost in thought. He was just considering the significance of the Wizard Mezentian’s stipulation that King Alcuin could take as many mistresses as he pleased, provided that none of his bastards could inherit the throne, when he became aware that someone was tugging on his sleeve. Basil swore and turned around to face something like a tall pile of rags crowned with a shock of iron-gray hair.

“Foster Rag-and-Bone,” he said, stifling his irritation. “It’s been a long time. Do you have anything for me?”

The shock of hair split to reveal three brown teeth. “Something,” Foster Rag-and-Bone said. “Looky here and see.”

“Here” was the wooden handcart that served as Foster’s shop. Just now, it contained a bundle of rags that looked to be someone’s worn-out bed curtains, some tarnished brass lamps, and a small and battered wooden chest, bound and clasped in pitted metal. Not iron, it wasn’t rusty—bronze, maybe. Old, at any rate. Very old.

“What’s in it?” Basil asked.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Foster sneezed juicily and wiped his nose with the heel of his hand. “Don’t have the key, do I? Might be valuable, might be shit. It’ll cost you twenty silver to find out.”

“Twenty silver?” Basil laughed. “For a moldy chest full of someone’s ancient linen? Do you think I’m soft in the head?”

“ ’S not linen,” Foster insisted. “Heavy; shifty. Like papers or books or boxes. I know.”

“Linen.” Basil was enjoying himself. “Ancient handkerchiefs and stockings, all packed up neatly for storage.”

“Too heavy. Books. Papers. Letters. I should know the sound by now, I’ve been looking that long for you.”

“Old bills, then. Shopping lists. The odd love letter, if I’m lucky, from someone history has forgotten to someone history remembers. A book on cheese making. I’ll give you one hundred coppers.”

“Fifteen silver. History remembers these papers. There’s a crest on the lock, see?”

Basil peered at the lock. The metal was severely corroded, but there was definitely something there: A deer? A tree? Nothing he recognized in either case, but interesting, definitely interesting. The chest itself reminded Basil of some of the older document boxes he’d seen in the Archives. His heart began to race. This could hold something very important indeed. How much money did he have? Not fifteen silver, at any rate. And Foster Rag-and-Bone did not believe in extending credit.

“It does look a little like a crest,” he said to Foster at last. “But it’s not one of the great families, or I’d recognize it. Five silver, and if you think you can get more for it from someone else, you’re welcome to try. Remember, though, that someone else might actually care how you came by such an ancient and valuable item.”

Foster Rag-and-Bone grumbled and Foster Rag-and-Bone whined, but in the end he nodded his verminous head and spat on the pavement to seal the bargain. He followed Basil to Minchin Street with his handcart and waited in the entrance, exchanging amiable insults with the scruffy boy while Basil ransacked his rooms for the strongbox in which he kept his students’ fees. It contained precisely fourteen silver coins and a handful of coppers.

“There’s another copper in it for you if you carry it up to the landing,” he told Foster when he’d counted out the silver coins into his hand.

The scruffy boy interfered. “Not a step further—it’ll take me all day to get the smell out as it is. I’ll carry the box for you, Doctor St Cloud.”

It was indeed heavy, too heavy for the boy alone, and the contents did indeed slide and thunk against the sides as books would slide. And it was locked fast. After some thought, Basil sent the boy down to his nest for some oil and a feather and a wooden wedge and a hammer, with which he forced the lock as gently as he could manage. When he was done, it would never lock again, but the crest wasn’t much more damaged than it had been. The hasps were all but frozen shut, but he released them at last and the trunk opened reluctantly, with a screech of hinges. Inside were bundles of yellowed paper tied with tape: letters, folded and sealed with colored wax. Swan, Tower, Phoenix, Raven— that might be interesting. Basil smoothed the brittle page on his desk and peered at the spidery writing.
Whearas
. . .
Nort
Countree
. . .
Wizards their exemption
. . . that next word had to be
taxes,
or maybe the one after. Not very interesting after all. He’d found their like before. Still, he’d have to comb through them carefully, later, just in case. A good job for one of his students, that.

Next was a pair of finely bound notebooks that announced themselves as the daybooks of the Wizard Arioso. It seemed to contain notes on the daily life of a court wizard of some three hundred years back, judging by the language. Interesting indeed, possibly exciting in a slightly distasteful way, and likely to shed some light on whether or not the wizards believed in their own lies. At least Arioso wrote a fairly clear hand and used expensive ink that had not faded. Basil scanned a page eagerly for the name of the ruling king. Oh, there it was: “A plague of rattes in Treymontayne—King Rufus, hys eye being to the Duke his datter, did commaund of mee thatt I ridde the playce of them.” Too bad. Rufus was one of the boring ones.

Another packet of papers crumbled when Basil touched it—a pity, but such things had happened before, and there was no use mourning over them. That left a square package wrapped in yellowed linen.

Basil picked it out of the box—it was remarkably heavy for its size—and laying it on his lap, eased aside the folds of cloth like petals. A book, quarto size, its brown leather binding sueded with age and damp. Stamped on the cover was an oak leaf, its gilding all worn away save for a few bright flakes. Basil stroked the spine with one finger. The leather suddenly reminded him of Theron’s skin, cool and a little sticky with drying sweat. He sat for a moment, lost in erotic reverie, his hands idly caressing the book. When he came to, he wasn’t so much shocked at what was going through his mind—it had often enough, since he’d met Theron—as at the strange vividness of it, as if he had the boy there and naked before him.

Hurriedly, he wrapped up the book without looking at it, packed it in the document box with the rest of the papers, and slid the whole under his bed. Wizards’ journals, indeed! He might as well have bought a box of pornographic sketches. The contents of the document box were intensely interesting, even historically useful in a perverse sort of way, but not at all respectable. Worth five silvers, though, no doubt about it. Basil smiled. It wasn’t often he got the better of one of Foster Rag-and-Bone’s bargains.

SOME WEEKS AFTER HIS INTERVIEW WITH LORD ARLEN, Nicholas Galing found himself on his way to the Middle City. His attempts to penetrate University society had yielded very little save frustration. All that his frequenting of taverns had taught him was that Northerners drink cider, not ale, and, like nicely-brought-up children, refuse to speak to strangers. Even the Southern scholars had not been welcoming. University people, he thought, were like virgins at a ball: there was no getting near them without an introduction. Nicholas didn’t want to get near them. They bored him glassy-eyed, with their long hair and their long words and their impractical ideals. Yet his instincts told him that Arlen was right. Something was going on—he could feel it running under the most innocuous conversations like a hidden current. What he needed was help, and the only man he trusted to ask for it was his old playmate and lover, Edward Tielman.

Somewhat to Nicholas’s surprise, Edward Tielman had done very well for himself after University. He had impressed Julian, Lord Horn, with his Fellowship in Metaphysics and his calm common sense, rising from general dogsbody to private secretary in an indecently short span of time for a man who was neither well-born nor beautiful to look at. And Lord Horn had risen at the same time; Edward’s employer had recently been elected Crescent Chancellor of the Council of Lords. On his patron’s elevation, Edward had bought a little house off Tilney Market between the Council buildings and the Hill. It was a part of the city Nicholas seldom frequented, so he hired a linkboy to lead him.

It was raining like arrows in a siege, a vile night for walking. The linkboy squinted at the fine gentleman in his dandified caped coat and his fancy boots and asked hopefully, “D’ye want me to fetch you a chaise, sir? It’s cruel mucky underfoot.”

“No,” said Nicholas. “I prefer to walk.”

The linkboy shrugged his opinion of men who ruined their boots and gave themselves chills slogging through the wet when they could perfectly well afford to ride, thus robbing poor boys of their cut from the chaise-drivers. “Where to, sir?” he asked.

“Fulsom Street,” said Nicholas.

The linkboy hoisted his torch and trudged off stoically. The follies of the rich were no business of his and he was already wet through. Nicholas, on the other hand, was soon uncomfortably chilled and damp. Pride kept him walking, however, and before long his guide had led him from the wide streets of the Hill to the Middle City, where houses and shops stood side by side and the linkboys gathered on street corners, ready to carry bundles for housewives out shopping or light their husbands home for dinner.

As they passed Dupree’s chocolate-house the door opened, releasing two gentlemen in earnest conversation and a blast of cinnamon-flavored air. Nicholas hesitated. He’d been there once with Edward, and it did smell so warm and enticing. Alerted by the sixth sense common to his profession, the linkboy appeared at Nicholas’s side. “That’ll be three coppers,” he said, “if you ain’t going no further.”

Nicholas made his decision, gave the boy his coppers, and pushed into the noisy, fragrant room. He was immediately rewarded by a familiar voice hailing him: “Lord Nicholas! What good wind blew you here? Come and sit down.”

It was Edward Tielman, in the midst of a convivial group of clerkly men. Nicholas nodded courteously, but made no move to join them. “I was just on my way to your house,” he told Tielman. “Got a craving for a quiet evening by another man’s fire, watching his wife darn socks. Came in here to warm my feet.” He stamped to demonstrate how cold they were. “Lucky thing, eh? I’d have had to walk home again if I hadn’t.”

“Can’t imagine why you walked in the first place.” Tielman slipped his cloak around his shoulders, threw some coins on the table, and held out his bowl of chocolate. “Take this for the road, Galing—it’s still quite hot—and we’ll be off. Felicity
will
be pleased.”

“To see you, you dog,” said Nicholas, and drank off the chocolate. It was typical chocolate-house stuff—too sweet and not strong enough—but it was hot. He realized just how wet and cold he really was.

Tielman’s house wasn’t far from Dupree’s, and soon enough Nicholas found himself seated by the fire in Tielman’s bright parlor, a pair of borrowed slippers on his cold feet, a borrowed dressing-gown around his shoulders. Everything in the room was very cozy and comfortable, even the pretty brown-haired young woman in a loose gown, who was adjusting Galing’s coat over a chair back and making sure his boots were the proper distance from the fire.

“We don’t want them to scorch, do we?” she asked rhetorically. “Really, we should just let them dry by themselves— any degree of heat whatsoever is
fatal
to good leather, but it takes forever!”

Nicholas liked Felicity Tielman. She was the daughter of the richest wool-merchant in the city, a man who kept a house in the country that he was too busy to visit. She was as well brought up as any daughter of the nobility, and much better educated than most. He bore her no ill-will for taking Edward from him—she hadn’t. When Nicholas had come to the city and the noble who was then Raven Chancellor had taken a fancy to him, he had discovered that he preferred a man of power in his bed. These being somewhat hard to come by, he’d made do since with men from the docks and the services offered by discreet establishments catering to specialized tastes. Edward was welcome to his Felicity. She was the perfect wife for a rising politician.

“There,” she said, resuming her chair and picking up her tapestry-work. “Soon Fedders will be here with the soup, and then you will be perfectly comfortable.”

“I am already perfectly comfortable,” said Nicholas, sipping at a tumbler of hot rum punch.

“Wonderful!” said Tielman. “Then you can tell me all the gossip. Horn keeps my nose so tight to that infernal Corn Bill, I’ve no chance to think of anything else.”

Felicity set a stitch with an impatient little jerk. “Men! All they talk is scandal, which
they
call politics, and then they have the effrontery to call women gossips!”

“I’m sure I never called you a gossip, my dear,” Tielman protested. “I’ve always maintained that you were as disinterested as the Court of Honor and at least twice as discreet.”