The Element of Fire Read online

  She turned back to the troupe's frantic clamor as Garin hopped through the curtained stage doorway. He was immediately attacked by three other actors and their helpers, who began to tear off his Pantalone costume and wrestle him into the Brighella outfit. Kade picked the wig and cap off the floor and handed it to them, trying not to get her fingers torn off by their frantic grasping.

  Baraselli peered through a gap in the backdrop. "Terrible," he moaned. "It isn't going well at all."

  "Damn it, man, I've done my best," Garin snapped, his voice muffled because Uoshe was forcing a new shirt over his head. "If it isn't good enough, then you get out there."

  Unlike other theatricals, Commedia had no playbook for the actors to learn. The plot was determined by the characters, and the actors learned only the standard lines for one role and supplemented them by whatever jokes or local gossip came to mind. Garin was doing the unfamiliar Brighella role more ad lib than usual and using the standard lines only when he could remember them; it was confusing everyone else terribly.

  Garin had taken the extra role because the worst had happened. The Master of Revels and the Cisternan guards who examined entertainers for the court had refused to allow the clown who played Brighella entrance into the palace. The clown had a cousin who was on a list of participants in an ill-fated Aderassi independence revolt. The officials had been terrifyingly polite about the whole thing, and Baraselli, suspecting them all to be magicians of the blackest kind for knowing about it in the first place, had not dared to speak even a word of protest.

  In the prisonlike barrenness of the questioning rooms of the St. Anne's Gate Guard House, the troupe had been kept waiting for hours. Partly, Kade knew, to give those who had reason to be nervous a chance to betray themselves, but mostly to allow the clerks to look through the rolls of "undesirable" names that the King's Watch endlessly compiled.

  "And what's your name, darling?" the Cisternan guard had asked Kade when it came her turn.

  Kade knew the robed academician in the corner of the whitewashed questioning room was a sorcerer, using spells to search out hostile magic. As the guard asked her the question, Kade felt the sorcerer's spell settle over her like a cold mist, invisible and intangible to anyone not trained in magic. It met the masking spell she had prepared and set around herself hours earlier, then slid across and away without friction. The sorcerer's second and third spells did the same. He stopped there, just as her masking spell was beginning to fray on the edges. He might have cast five or six spells and caught her out; Kade, being Kade, had taken that risk. If the sorcerer had detected either her magic or that she was fay, she would have thought of something else.

  In answer to the guard's question, she had said, "Katherine of Merewatch. They call me Kade, short for Katherine." Merewatch was a hamlet near the place she made her home much of the time, and so it was factual enough not to set off the truth spell that blanketed the whole room. It was a complex spell, older than she was, as intricate and detailed as the inside of a Portier clockwork toy. It had the combination of ruthless logic and artistry about it that marked it as old Dr. Surete's work. Despite great temptation, she decided not to tamper with it.

  The guard stared at her a moment. She had a minor qualm, wondering if they had really burned the only portrait of her, as Roland had claimed they had so long ago. But the man only said, "You ought to change that, you know. Could make trouble for you."

  "But it's what my mum calls me."

  "Your lookout then. And how's your mum's family called?"

  "She didn't have one that I knew of. In Merewatch they called her Maira." Also true; the deep northern brogue of the Merewatch inhabitants rendered Moire as Maira. Kade sensed a faint tremor in Surete's truth spell, but her statement was on that very narrow line of truth and falsehood, and it didn't betray her.

  Neither questions nor spells had shown anything odd about the actor who played Arlequin, and that puzzled Kade.

  She had suspected him of something, of what she wasn't completely sure, but she knew the palace's protections to be good ones. She had gotten through them with a substantial helping of fayre luck and the willingness to take a risk, and she knew that having been born inside the wards had let her pass them and any other traps Surete might have laid. It didn't seem possible that an ordinary human sorcerer could accomplish it.

  Perhaps he's just an ass, she thought, watching the Arlequin now in the backstage confusion. He was sitting on a props box, watching the others with a grin, cool and unaffected by the frantic activity.

  Kade lifted her leather Columbine mask and wiped the sweat off her face. She knew she should be going onstage again soon, but with all the Brighella confusion, she couldn't tell if they were getting close to her part or not. Possibly overwhelmed with relief at sighting the end of the play, the others might skip her last entrance entirely.

  Kade moved to where she could glimpse the front of the Grand Gallery through a gap where the curtain met the stage's edge. There was a good view of the dais from here.

  If seeing the palace again affected her, it was even more of a shock to see its inhabitants. Roland has changed--for the worse, she thought. Worse still, Ravenna hasn't changed at all. Despite the new gray in her red hair, the Dowager Queen was still delicate, still lovely, and still ruthlessly self-assured. And every woman at court was still hiding behind a fan while following Thomas Boniface with her eyes. That Kade had joined in this pastime enthusiastically as a child somehow did not make it any better. She had to admit, at least in the privacy of her own thoughts, that while he was a touchy and arrogant bastard, he was still well worth looking at.

  She remembered deep-set dark eyes, and a remarkably ironic smile. He had long been known as one of the jewels of the court, even when blond gallants were more often in fashion. She watched him leave the dais and cross the crowded gallery until he was out of her view. He must be nearing forty now, but the years hadn't changed him much and there was only a little gray in that dark hair. Don't be an even bigger fool than you already are, Kade told herself. He and Ravenna had been made for each other.

  Baraselli had given off moaning and was now racing around like a madman trying to collect the props for the finish. He rushed up to Kade and thrust a gold candelabrum at her. "Quick, hold this."

  An instant later she realized it was gold paint over iron and dropped the thing with a curse. It clanged on the tiled floor.

  "What is it?" Baraselli cried out, with the same hysterical urgency he would've shown if she had fallen to the floor in a dead faint.

  "I sprained a finger," she growled at him, tucking her smarting hands under her armpits.

  "A sprain? Oh god, it could've been your foot!" He grabbed up the candelabrum and fled toward the stage with it.

  Fayre luck, hell, Kade thought. She could hear Silvetta shouting at one of the heroes and vaguely remembered she should be onstage for that.

  She headed for the curtain. If she hadn't stood there like a dolt and held the thing... The intensity of her magic could be affected for a short time.

  * * *

  When Queen Falaise entered with Aristofan, or Semuel Porter, on her arm, and Lieutenant Gideon and the rest of her escort trailing her, Thomas had decided it would be more politic at the moment to leave the dais and take a turn through the crowd. He also wanted to find Dr. Dubell, and caught up with him as the sorcerer was leaving the gallery.

  They stood in one of the gracefully arched doorways at the opposite end of the room, just far enough away from the milling groups of guests to be able to hear each other.

  "You may have made an enemy," Thomas told him.

  "Possibly, but I certainly didn't intend to provoke all that." Dubell looked back toward the dais, frowning a little.

  Thomas leaned back against the curve of the archway and regarded him thoughtfully. "What did you say to Roland?"

  "Well, he asked me what I taught at Lodun besides sorcery, and I told him it was debate and logic, and we spoke a bit about how orators us
e it. Then Lord Denzil started his speech. Finally I couldn't contain myself. I said, 'It's an invalid argument.' His Majesty said, 'What is?' and I said, 'He seems to be claiming that he needs the fortress to protect you, but under landlaw of course you're his protector.' The King quite liked that idea, I think." Dubell shook his head, ruefully amused. "It's almost the right phase of the moon to start the crucial work on the palace wards, and I'd hate to be distracted. At Lodun we're all very experienced in how to give each other the cold shoulder at dinner, but I've been away from court so long I'm out of practice dealing with quarrels of this kind."

  "The thing to do would be to bring it to my attention, at least in your case," Thomas said.

  "Would it?" Dubell met his eyes seriously.

  "It would."

  "Then I will remember to do that." Dubell inclined his head. "Goodnight, Captain."

  Dubell left, and Thomas turned back into the gallery. He had never offered either support or protection to anyone at court lightly, and he wasn't really certain what had prompted him to do it for Galen Dubell. Except perhaps that the old sorcerer had survived decades of court intrigues and still seemed to have retained both his optimism and his honesty, and Thomas didn't want to see that change. He looked back toward the dais where Denzil now sat at Roland's feet, making his King laugh at something, all ill feeling apparently forgotten.

  Apparently.

  Thomas turned away from the dais and looked around for Dr. Braun, but if the young sorcerer was here he was lost in the crowd.

  The Commedia was almost over. Thomas hadn't paid much attention to it, except to notice that it was a little better than the farces performed almost nonstop for market-day crowds. This troupe had apparently altered its performance to accommodate a more sophisticated audience. He stopped near the stage beside a group of outland nobility to watch two of the clowns performing the climactic sword duel. Instead of uncoordinated acrobatics that would have bored most of their audience, with its connoisseur's appreciation of dueling, they did it in exaggeratedly slow motion, allowing them to perform intricate moves that would otherwise have been beyond them.

  Thomas had also noticed the masked actress who was playing Columbine. She was standing within about twenty feet of him on the opposite end of the stage from the other actors and was the apparent instigator of the duel for some reason that he assumed would make sense if he had seen the entire thing. With tousled blond hair and a red dress that would have been more appropriate on a disreputable wood nymph, she was hardly as glamorous as the two demure heroines, but she had her tattered skirts kilted to the knee for the acrobatics and undoubtedly had the most attractive legs.

  Oddly, the actor playing the Arlequin was standing behind her in the shadow of a painted scenery column, not quite off the stage but not on it enough to be a part of the action. There was something in the man's stance that kept Thomas's attention. The Arlequin seemed to be focused on the actress a few feet in front of him, and not on the mock duel. His half-mask was dark and trimmed with coarse false hair, with deep scarring wrinkles around its pinhole eyes and snub nose. His brown baggy clothes were patched and torn, and there was a bedraggled rabbit tail on the top of his cap. Then the Arlequin took a half step forward and the air around his bare feet seemed to blur. The shadows near the column were pooling around him as if they were solid.

  Thomas swore, turned and brushed past the spectators, heading toward the Cisternan guard stationed at the nearest archway. He grabbed the guard's pike and said, "Get Galen Dubell; get him now."

  The guard stared. "Sir...?"

  "He should be on his way to the North Bastion. Tell him we're under attack. And give me that."

  This settled the Cisternan's hesitation at taking orders from another officer. He surrendered the pike and slipped back out of the archway.

  "What is it?" The Cisternan Commander Vivan was coming over from his post.

  Thomas said curtly, "The actor playing the Arlequin is in the process of transforming into something. Get ready to contain it or we're all going to be dead."

  Vivan looked toward the stage, startled, then headed toward the next Cisternan guardpost at a run.

  Thomas took the pike and started toward the Arlequin, ignoring the curious stares. His pistols weren't loaded and there wasn't time to do it. He came up behind the Arlequin at an angle, out of its line of vision. Through the breaks in the scenery he saw more Cisternans moving up behind the stage. A murmur of unease grew as the crowd saw the guards moving and began to sense something wrong.

  The change was so quick it was moments before the panic started. Suddenly the Arlequin's exposed flesh turned mottled and patchy and the actor's leather mask and rough costume seemed to enlarge and meld with its face and body. Then it was twice the size of the man it had been and its legs were taking on the demon-shape of a goat's hindquarters.

  A woman in the crowd screamed, and up on the stage the Columbine actress whirled and saw the Arlequin just as the creature rocked forward to leap at her. Not close enough yet to do anything else, Thomas threw the pike.

  The weapon struck the Arlequin's arm, staggering it. Wailing, it jerked the pike out and tossed it away, scattering yellowed bits of flesh.

  The crowd and the actors were scattering in panic and the Cisternans were fighting their way through the rush.

  Trying to push past the panicked spectators himself, Thomas saw the Arlequin strike one of the actors who hadn't fled quickly enough, slamming him through the wooden backdrop. It pushed a column aside, knocking another actress down, then charged the woman playing Columbine. Incredibly, she waited until the last moment, then ducked out of the way and leapt off the stage. Its own momentum carried the Arlequin to the end of the platform before it could stop itself and turn.

  Thomas broke free of the crowd and picked up the fallen pike. The Cisternan guards were circling the stage, pikes leveled at the snarling creature. Thomas moved to join them, noting that some of his own men were coming up to help. He hoped Gideon was getting Ravenna and Falaise out of the gallery, but he couldn't spare a look over his shoulder.

  A shot went off from somewhere behind them, then another, echoing thunderously against the marble facings, but the Arlequin wasn't affected. Thomas knew there were some creatures of Fayre immune to gunfire and silently damned Galen Dubell for not being here. The Arlequin made a darting motion at one of the Cisternans, testing them. It seemed reluctant to face the pikes again. Thomas shouted, "Steady, we can hold it!"

  He glanced sideways and saw the masked Columbine actress, a little to the side and behind him, watching the Arlequin.

  Everyone else with any sense had long since fled. "Get out of here," he yelled at her.

  She glanced at him and obligingly backed up a few steps. Madwoman, Thomas thought.

  Abruptly the Arlequin rushed forward, moving with sudden and blinding speed. It slammed into two Cisternans, knocking both men aside with a force that must have broken their necks, then changed course and darted toward Thomas.

  It caught the top of his pike before he could brace the butt against the floor. He let go and dove out of the way. The Arlequin overshot and crashed into a brandywine fountain in an explosion of plaster and brass pipes. Dripping with brandywine, it struggled out of the debris and turned to come at him again as he rolled to his feet. A guard threw another pike at the creature and caught it a glancing blow as Thomas drew his rapier. The Arlequin pounced forward and was almost on top of Thomas when he shoved the sword into its chest.

  The creature's forward motion against the rapier sent Thomas falling backward, his back striking the hard floor, momentarily knocking the breath out of him. Then the Arlequin was straddling him, falling forward on top of him. Its smell was foul, like rancid milk. Desperately he twisted the hilt and pushed, the creature's own weight helping to drive the rapier through cartilage and muscle. He felt the vibration through the hilt as the blade snapped, then the Arlequin shrieked and leapt away from him.

  Thomas scrambled back and s
hoved to his feet. One of the Cisternans tossed him a sword, but the Arlequin had leapt backward onto the stage. At least the thing was slowing down--and still dripping brandywine. Thomas glanced around and spotted one of his men. "Martin, go get a torch."

  The Arlequin paced around on the creaking wood of the stage, snarling at them. As Thomas looked back he saw that the actress who had been struck down in the first attack was on her hands and knees and trying to crawl toward the edge of the stage. Before he could move to distract the Arlequin, it whirled and saw her. She screamed and the Arlequin grabbed up a section of one of the painted columns and hurled it at her.

  Suddenly Columbine was on the stage and shoving the other woman out of the way. The wooden missile hit her in the back and knocked her off the stage, sending her crashing to the floor in a heap of splintered wood.

  Damn it, Thomas thought. Damn brave madwoman. He looked around as Martin ran up with the lit torch, a makeshift affair of a chair leg, a torn piece of someone's underskirt, and lamp oil. Thomas took it and moved forward slowly. The Arlequin shifted away, wary, ready to charge again.

  Thomas's first thought was to lure it away from the wooden stage, knowing the stone and marble facings in the rest of the room would give them time to put the fire out. But he suspected the Arlequin's instinct would be to take as many people with it as possible; when it was racing around like a monstrous torch, it would have plenty of opportunity.

  In the pile of shattered wood, the Columbine actress stirred. She pushed herself up, shaking her head dizzily as her actor's mask fell away. Thomas was thinking, She must have a head as hard as a brick... Then she looked up and saw the Arlequin just as it turned and saw her.

  Instead of rushing her, it gave that wailing cry again. Thomas took the moment of distraction to run forward and hurl the torch.

  He saw the actress struggling to her knees, her hands a flurry of motion. Thinking it over later, he thought she had scraped up a handful of splinters, spat on them, and tossed them at the Arlequin. They flew further than their weight allowed, blown by some invisible wind to scatter around the creature's feet.