The Element of Fire by Martha Wells (shoe dog free ebook .txt) 📖

immediate vicinity of everyone except himself, Lucas, and the Count of Duncanny, who was a staunch supporter of Ravenna’s faction, and Thomas didn’t see any real reason not to answer her question. “If they are, it isn’t because of any affection or desire on Denzil’s part, at least.” He had always seen Roland and Denzil’s attachment as a strange sort of parasitic relationship on both sides, and he found himself searching for a way to explain it. “And I don’t think it matters. Denzil’s real control over Roland is the friendship they had when they were boys. If Roland had other favorites, or even if he managed to notice Falaise’s existence for once, it would mean taking his attention away from Denzil, which Denzil can’t allow. Roland must know how easy it is for a king to attract admirers; Denzil doesn’t want him to discover how easy it would be to use a rival against him.”

Denzil was apparently finding the fight as it was boring. He stepped back, tossing away his main gauche and drawing a second one from his sash. The hilt on the long dagger was overelaborate and the blade looked oddly heavy.

A moment later this was explained as Denzil pressed a hidden catch on the weapon’s hilt. Two metal rods popped out of the central blade and snapped into positions at acute angles to it. Their movement revealed that the center blade had a serrated edge.

The Count of Duncanny shook his head in disgust and walked away.

Kade squinted, frowning. “What is that?”

“It’s for breaking blades,” Thomas explained.

“I thought that’s what quillions were for.”

Thomas said dryly, “Obviously we were all mistaken.”

Aristofan shifted his stance and adjusted his grip on his rapier. The weapon was obviously heavier than what he was used to, but it still wouldn’t hold up against the main gauche’s serrated edge. Aristofan and Denzil circled each other.

“You’re about to lose a blade,” Thomas told Lucas.

“I’ve been doing this twenty years and I never needed anything like that,” Lucas said, exasperated. “This isn’t a duel; it’s a murder. That young idiot ought to give over.”

“It would look bad. People would talk.” Thomas’s voice was heavy with irony.

Lucas made an impatient gesture. “He’d be alive to hear them. He’s only a poet; why should he care what people say?”

“Everyone does,” Kade said.

Thomas looked down at her and saw the tension in the way she was standing, the intent look in her gray eyes, and realized what she was about to do. He decided to let her.

Aristofan attempted a desperate parry and Denzil trapped the boy’s sword in his elaborate main gauche and snapped the blade. The Duke’s first slash opened a long cut on Aristofan’s cheek; his second never landed.

Kade slammed into Denzil from the side. He staggered and twisted away from her, landing heavily. Before she could leap on him, Thomas caught up with her from behind and pulled her out of the way. Denzil leapt to his feet, threw down his sword, and started toward her.

Thomas shoved him backward and said, “Temper, my lord. Take them one at a time.”

They were treated to a good view of Denzil with the veneer of civility stripped away. “How dare that bitch interfere with me?” he shouted.

Aristofan had fallen to the floor and was pressing his arm to his face, trying to staunch the blood flow. A couple of watching servants ran forward to help him.

“I’ll do more than interfere with you, posturing monkey,” Kade sneered at the infuriated Denzil. “Why don’t you take on someone with a chance against you?”

“There’s a thought,” Thomas remarked pleasantly.

Denzil focused on him and his expression changed. He smiled and gestured back toward the fallen poet. “Is that the problem, Captain? Am I usurping your duty?”

They regarded each other for a moment, long enough to realize the entire chamber had fallen silent. Thomas turned and saw Roland standing in the doorway at the far end of the room, his attendants grouped around him. After a moment of angry contemplation, the King strode forward and shouted, “What is this?”

“What do you think it is?” Kade asked him with withering contempt.

Roland turned a slightly darker shade of red, embarrassment added to anger, and said, “You will all stop this immediately.”

There was some shuffling among the spectators as they tried to look as if they were obeying. The main figures in the drama simply stood there and stared at him.

Roland looked at Denzil and started to speak, then abruptly wheeled and stormed out of the room. Denzil recovered his sword and went after him without even a glare for anyone else.

*

As Thomas expected, Lucas and the others had found nothing incriminating at Gambia’s house that had any bearing on Urbain Grandier. They had brought the body and its effects back to the palace and Galen Dubell had promised to examine them.

Thomas had gone out to the portico that extended off the third floor to take a shortcut across to the main part of the building when Kade caught up with him.

She asked loudly, “Why did you stop me?”

He turned to face her. The threatened afternoon storm had never produced more than a light rain, but the evening breeze was damp and strong, rocking the lamps hanging from the columns and tearing at her hair. He asked, “Why did you let me?”

He watched her mentally back up to begin again. She demanded, “What did Denzil mean by ‘usurping your duty’?”

She could hear it from anyone, and was perfectly capable of badgering him about it for hours. He said, “Queen Falaise had a lover, a young stupid man like Aristofan, nearly helpless with a sword. He became too arrogant, she sent him away, and he insulted her in front of important witnesses. I killed him.”

Kade turned that over for a moment. Her eyes narrowed. “You wanted to stop the duel.”

“Yes.” In spite of everything, he was surprised. For someone who leapt to conclusions as often as she did, her leaps were fairly accurate.

She stared at him. “You bastard, if you want to kill Denzil, have the guts to do it yourself; don’t use me for it.”

It was foolish to be angry with her, but Thomas found himself saying tightly, “If you don’t want to be used, then don’t open yourself to it by behaving stupidly and leaving other people to pick up the pieces. You can’t play the spoiled witless child all your life.”

“Well it’s better than what you’re playing at, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know, having never been so lacking in initiative that I had to act like a raving idiot to get what I wanted.”

As Kade was drawing breath to answer, there was a crash beneath their feet as a glass-paned door was flung violently open on the balcony of the floor below. Both of them flinched.

“My lord—” Denzil’s voice said.

“Don’t call me that, not while we’re alone.” It was Roland.

Thomas remembered that this terrace was directly above the balcony of one of Roland’s private solars. He and Kade regarded each other in silence. They could hardly object to each other’s eavesdropping, Thomas supposed, having just come to the mutual conclusion that they were both too despicable to live in polite company anyway.

Denzil asked, “Are you all right?”

“You ask me that?”

The voices below had grown softer. Thomas took a silent step forward to the railing to hear more clearly. After a moment Kade joined him.

“What? Were you worried?” Denzil’s voice had a laugh in it. “That was barely worth the effort.”

“You take too many chances. But you should have left that boy alone. He’s nothing.” Roland was oblivious to the fact that Aristofan was perhaps a year or two older than himself.

“He insulted me. And you should thank me for ridding you of him. He’s your wife’s lover.”

“He’s nothing. All the married women in the city have lovers. My mother has lovers. God knows my father had worse habits—”

“Don’t. If your honor means nothing to you, it means something to me.”

And how is Roland’s honor affected by an insult to Denzil, Thomas wondered. Where was Dr. Dubell to ask the pertinent question?

“Sometimes I think you’re the only one.”

Denzil did not dispute this. “I’m sorry I upset you. That bitch of a sorceress—”

“Is my sister.”

At his side Thomas sensed Kade stiffen.

“And where was she when you needed her?”

“She ran away. I loved her and she left me behind without a second thought.”

Kade shivered once, a slight movement with all the intensity of a restrained convulsion. Thomas found himself unwillingly sympathetic. Roland had been the Crown Prince; his exiled sister could hardly have taken him with her, as if they were farm children escaping a harsh master. And the choice to stay with him in the city had been taken from her by Ravenna’s command.

Kade drew back as if to leave. Impulsively, Thomas put a hand on top of hers on the railing and she froze. At that moment an army probably couldn’t have kept her on that balcony by force, but that gentle touch seemed enough to hold her there.

“Who stayed with you?” Denzil asked.

“You did. I’d have died without someone.”

“Then it’s a good thing she wasn’t all you had.” There was silence, then a creak as one of the men below opened the door.

Thomas released Kade’s hand, and she vanished back through the archway.