The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (48 page)

But what could he do? He was no nobleman, to command Theron’s obedience. He was no dockside bully, to beat the truth out of him. He was powerless, he had nothing—

Basil stared at the mess of papers spread out on the desk before him. He felt as if the words were laughing at him, giggling like schoolchildren as they hid and revealed themselves amongst the crumpled pages of notes and transcriptions.
Truth,
they read, and
wizards
and
spell
and
If Ye wold
and
If Ye
Dare
. . . .

He went to the bed and dug out the battered document box, and lifted out the wizards’ book. He turned to
A Spelle
for the Un-covring of Hidden Trothe
. He mouthed the strange words through, and then began again at the beginning, aloud.

Having begun, he could not stop, though the mysterious syllables clashed and slid in his mouth like rough pebbles. His voice rang strangely in his ears, and the meaning of what he read crouched half-seen at the edges of his understanding. When he came to an end, he was dizzy, and his pulse thundered in his ears. The countryman in him half expected to see his candle burning black, and shapeless shadows seething in the corner behind the fire. But his room looked as it always had: homely, cluttered, shabby, prosaic. Basil rubbed shaking hands over his face, then wiped them dry on his robe before touching the Book again. He’d done it wrong, that was all. Perhaps he should try again.

The door opened behind him. “I’ve been having the most excruciating evening,” Theron announced. “I’ve been conversing with debutantes, flattering dowagers, and listening to politically minded nobles discourse upon taxes. Comfort me, my dear, before I explode from an excess of respectability.”

He wore full ball-dress. His hair was oiled and pulled back into a glossy club held by a jeweled clip. Rings weighed down his hands and a pearl hung from the lobe of one ear. He was flushed and a little unsteady. He held out a hand to Basil, who ignored it.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?” Theron asked plaintively.

Basil laid the book on the table. “I did not expect you tonight. I was working. You interrupted me.”

“You’ve never minded being interrupted before.” Theron closed the door and stepped into the room, stripping off his cloak and tossing it into a corner. “And you won’t mind it this time, either.” He came up behind Basil and put his arms around his chest. He smelled sweet and complicated, of perfumed oil and wine and desire. He leaned over Basil’s shoulder and rubbed his face like a great cat. The pearl in his ear brushed Basil’s cheek, smooth and hard as glass.

The pearl seared Basil’s flesh like a torch, ice and fire at once. Basil shook Theron off. “That earring is a woman’s jewel,” he said, knowing as he spoke that it was true. “She gave it to you tonight, from her own ear as you begged it.”

The flushed face turned pale. “Nonsense, Basil.”

“Nonsense, indeed. Do you think I don’t know you?”

“No.” Theron stared back at him with glittering eyes. “You don’t. You don’t know me at all.”

Basil breathed in deeply. It seemed to him that he could smell Theron’s every emotion as clearly as he could smell the woman he’d been with. “It does not become you, my lord, to lie. Not to me.”

Now two spots of color, like red bites, stained his lover’s cheeks. “Because I am a lord? Or because you are so fond of truth?”

“Both,” said Basil calmly. “And more besides. You, with the blood of kings, and I with—what I have. Now, come here.” He held out his hand as if coaxing an animal from the woods. “Come here and tell me about your latest conquest.”

Theron started back violently, the pearl swinging against his cheek. “No! Dammit, no! You have no right—”

“Theron, I have every right,” Basil said in the same sweet, reasoning voice. “You are mine. You have said so a hundred times. Did you think it was just a bed-game?”

The young nobleman drew himself up proudly. “You presume on my love.”

“Yes,” Basil answered. “I do. Oaths have been made, and pledges spoken. Seed has been spilt. What’s done cannot be undone.”

Theron was staring at him with a kind of horror. “You speak as though you really think you own me.”

“You are mine, Theron. And you have betrayed me. I know that, too.” Basil laughed ruefully. “You told me once you wanted to make a study of me. But you are no scholar, remember? It is I, my dear, who’ve made a study of you. And I know what I know.”

“What do you know?” Theron hissed, his fists clenched. “You understand nothing of the world beyond these walls. All you know of love is what I taught you! Study me?” he sneered. “How could you do that—when all you see when you look at me is the mask of one of your dead kings?

“You never wanted me at all—you wanted Anselm the Wise, or Francis the Brave, or Alexander Ravenhair—but they’ve moldered to dust in a wood somewhere, so you had to make do with what turned up and reminded you of them. You don’t see
me
at all, do you?” He was shouting, but his arms were wrapped tightly around himself. “You don’t see me, you don’t know me, you don’t know who I really am! I tried to tell you, over and over, but you ignored everything that didn’t fit your history books! Whatever you loved, Basil, it wasn’t me—and I was a fool to love you.”

Basil listened in silence. The words should have cut deep, but they did not. He heard instead how Theron’s misery was a form of love, how it was he who was breaking the young man’s heart. The knowledge of his power worked in him like desire, potent and delicious. He had never known a joy quite like this, fierce and dark with the knowledge of just where he might inflict the most pain. He had not known Theron could be hurt like this.

“I do love you,” Basil said with steady truth. “I love you and I know you. The land will have what that land will have, Theron. ‘A man proud and willful and arrogant. And loving and passionate, with the gift to make men love him, and women, too.’ Yes, it’s Hollis on King Alexander—and it is you to the life. And always will be. Ask anyone.”

Theron’s hand was on the latch.

“You’re running away, now,” Basil said. “That, too, is who you are. But you will not run forever. Sooner or later you will stand and face your trial.” It was all coming together; all the little hints and clues contained in his papers and books, pieces of a pattern as inevitable as it was compelling. “Be careful to know yourself when the time comes,” he warned the Little King. “The man who fails the test will run for the rest of his life, with the beast still in his heart.”

Theron said nothing. He flung open the door, and slammed it behind him. Basil heard his feet clattering down the stairs.

He had left his cloak in the corner of the room. Basil picked it up and inhaled the scent of him. Power was sweet, as sweet as knowledge. Together, they were mastery and achievement. Doctor Basil St Cloud lifted the Book of the King’s Wizard from the table where it had lain all the while, and carefully folded the cloak around it, until it was wrapped in layer after layer of his lover’s rich garment. He put them both under his pillow, and lay down to dream.

chapter
VIII

BY THE TIME LORD ARLEN FINALLY SENT FOR HIM, Galing had reached a state of high frustration. His servants had caught the brunt of his temper, to the extent that his manservant would have given notice, if he hadn’t been sure that Lord Nicholas would get over it eventually, just as he always did.

Galing’s irascibility was not to be wondered at. In his own mind, he was absolutely sure that the Tremontaine heir was involved in some plot. Henry’s reports, Ysaud’s paintings, his own conversations with Campion, all pointed toward a man of unusual arrogance and romantic ideas, a man who could easily be flattered into accepting a crown. All Nicholas needed was the weight of the Serpent’s authority behind him, and he’d soon know who was planning to win that crown for him. He had written to tell Arlen that he had something important to report; he’d even sent a note to Edward. And Arlen had left him hanging for weeks. It was all he could do, when the summons came, not to fling it back in the messenger’s face.

Accustomed by now to Arlen’s ways, Galing endured the opening pleasantries of the interview, answering inquiries about his mother’s health and which swordsman he intended to back at the exhibition fights with what grace he could muster. Arlen never came straight to the point. Very well, Galing wouldn’t either; but as the discussion of swordsmen dragged on, he grew increasingly impatient. Perhaps Arlen was leaving the opening move up to him. In any case, he could wait no longer. “I’ve been seeing something of Theron Campion,” he said slyly. “An original young man.”

“Is he?” Arlen drawled. “I find him quite conventionally ill-behaved. Unsuitable lovers, low interests, carousing: what’s so original about that?”

It was now, Galing thought, or not at all. “I was thinking more of treason.”

“Were you?”

The fire crackled. Lord Arlen sipped his wine and gazed into the flames, offering Galing ample opportunity to study his hawk’s profile. Nicholas felt put-upon. Did Arlen want a report or not? Everything’s a test, Edward had reminded him last autumn when all this started. A test of what? Patience? Persistence? The ability to have two conversations at once?

“I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “I thought you summoned me to discuss a possible royalist plot in the city. If you prefer to gossip about swordsmen and waistcoats, I am, of course, at your disposal.”

“Treason is a serious charge, Galing,” said Arlen. “I presume you have some solid reason for making it?”

Nicholas unpacked his notes and laid what he knew and what he’d guessed before the Serpent Chancellor. Arlen listened gravely, looked at the papers Galing handed him, asked a question or two, and when he was done, said, “I must congratulate you, Galing. You have the makings of an excellent intelligencer, can you but curb your impulse to reason in advance of your data. All this”—he tapped the sheaf of papers lying on his knee—“is very interesting, very useful. Thank you. You need do no more.”

Galing was too good a card-player to show surprise, but his temper took a moment to subdue. When he thought he could trust himself not to say anything that might jeopardize his future career, he ventured, “It is good to hear that the matter of the Northern rebellion has been resolved so quickly.”

“Not resolved, precisely; simply confined to the North. My agents are investigating the activities of the society calling itself, rather incautiously, the Companions of the King. Thanks to you, the leaders of the University branch—Masters Greenleaf and Smith—are safely out of harm’s way. As to the Northern branch—well, my agent currently describes it as an association of young men, young and unmarried, who gather in the woods from time to time to celebrate elaborate rituals that draw equally from local folklore and a youthful taste for mysticism and indiscriminate copulation. We’re watching them closely.”

“And the trouble up North?”

Arlen shrugged. “As I think I said this autumn, the Northern farmers are always unhappy. They are unhappier than usual just now, but steps are being taken to cheer them. You are not to trouble your head over them.”

“What about Campion?” Voices are harder to control than expressions. Nicholas heard a pleading note creep into his tone and clenched his hand in vexation.

Arlen didn’t seem to notice. “Campion is to wed Lord Randall’s daughter in the fall, and will take his bride to the Kyrillian Archipelago on a diplomatic embassy to the Parliaments.”

“But Ysaud’s paintings . . .”

“Mean nothing. Madam Ysaud is a well-known eccentric, with no more interest in politics than my cat. My dear Galing, you haven’t got a case. Outside of the Last Night incident, there is no connection between Theron Campion and the Companions of the King or indeed any other faction, political or otherwise. What that leaves us with is a cause without a focus and a focus without a cause—in short, with nothing.” He nodded kindly at Galing, who was dumb with fury. “Your concern does you credit, Galing, but I assure you, there’s nothing in it.”

“I don’t believe that,” Galing said.

Lord Arlen’s lids descended in a slow blink: he was getting annoyed. “The matter is closed,” he said. “There is no evidence.”

“There’s lots of evidence,” Galing insisted. “There’s the Hunt, and the fact that Campion led it to the oak grove; there’s his relationship with St Cloud, who seems hell-bent on proving the wizards weren’t frauds.”