The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (68 page)

“The knife was clean,” Jessica said again. “What else would Galing use it for? Opening letters? He was no swordsman. Anyway, I have it. With his crest. He’ll hang. Katherine, you’ll see to that, I hope?”

“I don’t know.” The duchess was barely aware of what she said; she was watching the boy on the bed. “I’ll need to know more. Arlen will find out.”

Theron was so pale—so different, Sophia thought, from the color he’d been born, all fiercely red and blue. She took his hand and sang a song about a little boy and a goat on a sunny hillside. While he still breathed, it would not make her weep.

“Kyros,” Jessica said, hearing her voice. “I remember. I visited my father and Richard there, and the cook sang me that song.” She knelt by the bed. “Sophia. Shall I take you home?”

Sophia shook her head, kept singing. His eyes behind the thin lids were moving. “Come back,” she sang, the song of the boy to his goats. “Come back and we’ll have honey cakes.” Come back, my son, from the land that has possessed you, the land that drank your blood. Come back from whatever you are looking for, whatever you are running from. Come back to those who truly love you, and we will kiss you and let you go where you will.

“He should go to Kyros,” Katherine said.

Sophia shook her head again. “I want him to lie by his father.”

“Not yet,” said the duchess; “it isn’t time for that yet. I mean when he is better. When Jessica leaves. You go with her. I’ll take care of things here.”

Jessica chuckled. “Lovely. A ship full of mythic paintings, plus the genuine article.”

“Kyros.” Sophia trilled the “r” like a bird. “We begot him there, on a festival night. My husband didn’t want a child, but I called him forth because I knew it was time.”

“He should go back,” Katherine said again. “Not forever, but for a little while. I hear the climate’s nice.” She smiled. “And people will forget, here.”

“Will they?” asked Sophia, doubtful. “Perhaps we go into exile, as his father did after the disgrace.”

Katherine came behind and leaned her cheek on Sophia’s hair. “I was a girl then,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve learned a few things since then. Take him and heal him if you can, and let me do the rest.”

“Kyros,” Sophia trilled softly and in her own tongue she said, “Theron. Come home with me.”

Jessica had been pacing the room; it was hard for her to be still in the fog of pain and love. She went out into the hall, nodding her head for Katherine to follow her.

“Well?” said the duchess. “I know it may not be on your way . . .”

“Ask me.” Jessica stood still, but she twisted her fingers together. “Just ask me.”

Katherine drew a deep breath. “Is Kyros on your way?”

“Not really.”

“Will you take them there?”

“Maybe.”

“Jessica.”

“This once, just ask me for something I can actually give you.”

“Will you take them both? Please.”

“Yes.” Jessica turned away to hide the fact that she was weeping. “Good God,” she said brightly, and cleared her throat. “What’s this?”

It was a package, tall and square, wrapped in cloth and twine. All too familiar.

“It came this morning,” the duchess said. “I forgot all about it. Someone’s left it here in the hall. They shouldn’t have. I’ll have it cleared away—”

“The devil,” Jessica muttered, and cut the twine with her knife and pulled away the wrappings.

Theron looked out from the canvas, splendid in peacock blue. He was sitting at a table piled with fruit and books; one hand rested on an open page, the other touched his throat, where a jewel gleamed among the folds of white under his beautifully articulated fingers. Behind him, an open window showed the lawns of Tremontaine House.

“Damn her cheek.” Katherine stared. “It’s the portrait I commissioned.”

“Well,” said Jessica. “I hope you didn’t pay her in advance.”

ONCE AGAIN LORD NICHOLAS GALING FOUND HIMSELF IN Arlen House in the salon overlooking the river in which he had waited for Lord Arlen more than once since autumn. This time, he was accompanied by a pair of City Guards, and his hands were bound behind him. Nobody had very much to say, least of all Galing himself. He was half-sick on the dregs of violent action and the knowledge that he had gambled everything on a single, daring cast and could not tell how the dice had fallen.

The same soft-footed servant who had waited on Galing in palmier days slid into the room and said, “Lord Arlen will see Lord Nicholas now. No need for you gentlemen to wait. Lord Arlen’s men can see to him from here.”

The same shadowy halls, the same paneled library, softly awash in the clear light of a perfect spring afternoon. The servant piloted Galing to a chair and helped him sit, conscious of a bound man’s difficulty keeping his balance. He did not offer to remove Galing’s bonds, nor did he offer refreshment. Galing found his heart pounding with the beginnings of panic.

“Lord Nicholas,” a familiar voice purred. “How nice to see you. Montjoy, you may leave us. Is my swordsman at the door? Good. I’ll call if I need him.”

Lord Arlen came around his desk and stood in front of the chair Galing sat in, so close that Nicholas was forced to tilt his head uncomfortably to meet those amused gray eyes.

“I understand you’ve given me a gift, Lord Nicholas: Basil St Cloud’s heart on a platter.”

It was hard to see his face from this angle, harder to read his drawling voice. The words were ironic, but then Arlen was always ironic. Everything was a test. Nicholas felt very tired.

“I did it for you,” he said flatly. “It was the answer to the question you asked me.”

“Ah,” said Arlen. “I see. You unmasked the last wizard, and you killed him. And you did it for me. I’m flattered.”

The smooth voice had deepened, grown rougher. Warmth? Anger? Galing couldn’t tell. Arlen reached out a well-tended hand and brushed at his cheek. “There’s blood on your face, did you know? On the whole, you’ve done very well. You didn’t allow predjudice to stand in the way of the facts, and you recognized the truth when you saw it.”

“Thank you,” said Nicholas stiffly. “Are you going to untie me?”

“Dear Montjoy. Such a cautious man.” Arlen collected a knife from his desk—a slender, jeweled toy—and bent over the young noble to cut his ropes. Galing felt his breath warm on the nape of his neck and his fingers cool against his wrists, and then Arlen was across the room, pouring out a glass of wine while Galing rubbed at his bruises and got his breathing under control.

“Drink this,” Arlen said, “and tell me what happened. I’ve only got the most garbled accounts.”

So Nicholas delivered his report and sipped at his wine, and began to entertain hopes that the dice had fallen well after all. When he’d made an end, he felt in his pocket and drew out a heavy golden chain.

“St Cloud dropped it when I stabbed him, and I caught it without thinking. You should have it.” Belatedly, he noticed that its links were dark and sticky with blood. “It’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.”

“Disgusting,” Arlen agreed, but his expression was not disgusted. He looked up from the chain dangling from Galing’s stained hand and his eyes were heavy and approving. “Why don’t we go clean it up, and I can thank you properly.”

LORD ARLEN’S THANKS WERE ALL NICHOLAS GALING had dreamed they would be. There were moments during that long and magnificent night when Nicholas thought he might die of pleasure. When at last he lay sated, with Arlen’s corded arm thrown across his chest, he knew he’d won the throw.

“Lovely Nicholas,” Arlen said. “You will always serve me, will you not?”

“To my last breath,” Nicholas declared, meaning it absolutely.

“Good. I shall hold you to that.” Arlen sat up among the pillows and stretched. “There’s going to be some unpleasantness ahead for you, and I’d hate for you to think it was for nothing.”

The warm, heavy stupor of sexual satisfaction receded a little. Nicholas turned over to face the Serpent Chancellor. “Unpleasantness?”

“Your trial for the murder of Basil St Cloud, and possibly of Lord Theron Campion, if he succumbs to his wounds. You didn’t really think, did you, that you could get away with striking down two men in front of the entire University without anyone’s taking notice?”

Nicholas sat up in a surge of bedclothes. “The man was talking treason—hell, he was performing treason. They both were. Everyone there saw it, but no one did anything about it but me. Damn it, I’m a hero!”

“So you are, my dear. So you are. I know that and you know that. But no one else had the information to thoroughly understand what was going on. They saw a noble run amok, attacking two harmless members of an august institution without so much as the courtesy of a formal challenge. For you to be a hero, the Council of Nobles must explain why your action was heroic. You’re a clever man. You understand why we cannot do that.”

Nicholas understood perfectly.

THE DAY AFTER THE HISTORIANS’ DEBATE, THE TATTERED remnants of St Cloud’s class came slinking one by one into the Blackbird’s Nest. There were more of them than one might have expected, gathered around their usual tables, talking quietly. They toasted the magister’s memory in ale, and stole respectful glances at Historians’ Corner, where the inner circle, or what was left of it, sat in grim contemplation of their shattered lives.

“Where’s Justis?” Peter Godwin asked for the tenth time. “Justis ought to be here.”

“It’s that damned girl,” Henry began fretfully, but Vandeleur stopped him.

“Screw the girl,” he said. “Screw Justis. He made his choice when he scuttled off without even staying to see whether the magister was alive or dead. He didn’t come home last night, and I hope he has the sense to stay as far away as possible for as long as possible, because I swear if I see him, I’ll break his clod-hopper’s neck for him.”

“I’ll help you,” Henry offered, but his heart wasn’t in it.

They subsided into a depressed silence, broken by Godwin. “What are we going to do now?”

“The magister’s scarcely cold,” Vandeleur said brutally. “I don’t much feel like doing anything.”

“I don’t either, but that’s not the point,” Godwin said. “He was right, don’t you see? Even before what happened happened, everybody knew he was right. But now he’s dead, they’ll try to hush it up and lie about it, like Duke David and Condell. We can’t just sit here drinking and moaning and let that happen.”

“Well said, Godwin,” someone agreed; the three friends jumped, then frowned when they saw that the newcomer was Anthony Lindley. He still wore his hair in Northern braids, but he’d lost the strained, glittering intensity that had made him so difficult these past weeks.

“Get stuffed, Lindley,” said Henry, who was not of a forgiving nature.

Lindley was unmoved. “I understand you’re angry with me. I don’t blame you. But we have to stay together. The truth is important—Doctor St Cloud taught us that—and it’s going to take all of us to see to it that it doesn’t disappear.”

Vandeleur eyed him with small favor. “Does this mean you’re giving up your Northern friends? No more oak leaves? No more hunts in the wood?”

“No, Vandeleur, it doesn’t. The Northerners are my friends. Furthermore, I believe, as they do, in the divinity of the Land. You have no right to ask me to abandon them, any more than they have a right to ask me to abandon you. I don’t see why being a Companion of the King should keep me from being a historian. Quite the contrary.”

There was a pregnant pause while everyone thought about this, and then Godwin moved over on the bench and Lindley sat down beside him. Vandeleur called for another tankard, and the conversation resumed, with more spirit than before.

“I suppose we’re going to have to try and reproduce his scholarship,” Vandeleur said doubtfully.

“We can’t,” Henry objected. “You have to have permission to get into the Archives, and you can be sure after yesterday, the Governors are going to start making all sorts of rules the point of which is to keep out any historians whose politics are not guaranteed to be respectable. Which isn’t any of us.”

“There’s plenty we can find without ever going in the Archives,” Godwin said.

“But we can’t teach unless we’re Doctors,” Henry went on, “and we can’t become Doctors without a sponsor, and who’s going to sponsor us? Crabbe?”

Vandeleur ground his teeth audibly. “Why don’t you go ask him, Fremont? Then he’ll hand you over to the authorities and we won’t have to put up with your whining anymore.”

“I’m just trying to inject a note of common sense into the discussion,” Henry protested.

“You’re just trying to make us feel worse than we do already,” said Godwin. “Why don’t you go away, if you think it’s all so hopeless?”

Henry looked around him at the stern faces of his three closest friends and his throat closed with grief, or perhaps it was fury, so that he must weep or beat the disgust from their faces. He had half risen from his seat, undecided whether to launch himself at Vandeleur, who was nearest, or make a dignified exit, when a large and familiar hand took him by the shoulder and a deep and familiar voice said, “Shut up, Henry, and sit down. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

JUSTIS BLAKE HAD HAD A DIFFICULT TWENTY-FOUR hours. He had not slept since St Cloud was killed, and he looked as though he’d been climbing walls and hiding in cellars, which was, in fact, exactly what he’d been doing.