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

He said, “Delighted,” and went into Ravenna’s room.

Well, I handled that brilliantly, Kade thought. A soft noise made her glance back and she saw Falaise standing in the doorway to her room. She was wearing a pale blue heavily embroidered mantua and her hair hung like a chestnut curtain. She looked like a startled fawn. “What is it?” Kade asked her, temporarily distracted.

Falaise made a noise like a strangled gasp and vanished back into her room.

Kade followed her. Inside was the tumbled splendor of a parlor attached to a small bedchamber, three ladies-in-waiting looking up at them in surprise. Falaise stopped in the middle of the room and shrieked, “Out! I want to be alone.” It wasn’t the full-throated bellow Ravenna was capable of but it worked well enough. As the gentlewomen scurried for the door, Kade stayed where she was, correctly surmising that the order had not been directed at her.

As soon as the door closed behind the last woman, Falaise seized a wine glass from the table and dashed its contents onto the polished floorboards. As Kade stared, the Queen shoved a chair away from the wall that adjoined the Dowager Queen’s quarters and crawled under a table, placing the glass to the wall and her ear on the glass.

“What are you doing?” Kade asked, baffled.

“There’s a weak board here. I can hear through to Ravenna’s room.”

“Brilliant!” Kade climbed onto the table and pressed her ear to the wall, but couldn’t hear anything but muffled voices. “What are they saying?”

“Shhh.”

Short of dragging Falaise out from under the table by the ankles and taking her place, which would cause them to miss some of the conversation, there was nothing to do but wait. Kade paced, tangled her fingers in her hair, and tried to contain herself.

Finally, as doors slammed out in the anteroom, Falaise crawled out from under the table and sat back on the floor with a sigh.

Kade bounced with excitement. “Well?”

Falaise scrubbed wine out of her ear with the sleeve of her mantua. “It was a terrific fight.”

“About what?”

“He has a plan for leaving the palace because we’re going to be attacked by the fay again. He said they’re just waiting, they have a traitor inside helping them, and that when they can come through cracks in the walls, we can’t hope to keep them out forever.”

“He’s right.”

Falaise sat back on the floor, hugging her knees, looking up at her quizzically. “Are the wards working?” The question was anxious, but not panicky.

Kade decided to tell her the truth. “They’re working up above us. But most of them aren’t touching the ground anymore. It’s only the siege doors and the gates keeping the Host out.”

“I see.” The Queen bit her lip.

“But what did they fight about?” Kade demanded.

“We’re going to be leaving in the morning. But Ravenna doesn’t like some part of the plan, and it made her very angry. She yelled and threw things, and said she didn’t intend to die alone.”

“Really?”

“Yes, and he told her she was too mean to die at all, alone or in company, and if she thought he was fool enough to fall for these mock hysterics then she should think again and she was going anyway if he had to tie her to a horse.” Falaise shook her head, an irritated kitten. “Something happened in the Albon Tower, something to do with Roland and Denzil. But she already seemed to know what it was, and they didn’t discuss any details.”

“Hell, that’s not much.” Maybe I can find out more downstairs. As Kade reached for the door Falaise said, “If you find out anything else, will you come and tell me?”

“All right.”

“Thank you.”

Leaving the room, Kade wondered if Falaise had heard her own conversation with Ravenna, and if it mattered. It might. She is full of surprises.

*

Thomas crossed the hall and went into the map room. The fire burned low behind the grate and Vivan was gone; he was unsure if that was a good sign or not. He stood for a moment contemplating a faded parchment map of the city on the table. He needed to go back up to Ravenna, but he didn’t trust his temper quite yet.

He knew she would agree to his plan. She wouldn’t let emotion get in the way of necessity for too long, and it was only his part in it that disturbed her.

And whatever she did, he didn’t intend to give in to her this time.

“Captain! Captain, look!” someone shouted from outside the room. Stepping toward the door, he saw Gideon surrounded by a noisy group of guards and conducting another man across the hall in an apparently friendly headlock.

Thomas started forward as Gideon released his captive with an affectionate shake, and felt an idiot grin spreading over his face as he saw who it was.

Lucas and a younger guard named Gerard, whom they had also given up for dead, staggered into the room under the enthusiastic greetings of their comrades.

Lucas grinned back at him. “What are you gaping at?”

“Why aren’t you dead?” Thomas caught the older man in an embrace. “And where the hell have you been?”

Lucas dropped onto a bench at the table. “I’ve been banging on a bloody gate, trying to get the idiot on the other side to let us in. Before that we were crawling through the streets on our bellies. Look, God bless that man for a saint!”

Anticipating the request, Phaistus was bringing in an armful of wine bottles and tankards.

As the wine was passed around, Lucas said, “It’s a wonderful story; do you want to hear the version where I climbed the St. Anne’s Gate in a hail of heathen arrows with my sword in my teeth and a fainting Gerard slung over one shoulder?”

“You lying bastard!” Gerard objected, slamming down the tankard that someone had just handed him, spraying everyone around him with the contents.

“We got out the Postern Gate, actually,” Lucas admitted more soberly. “It’s a ruin, no sign of anyone. We couldn’t come along the outside wall; there’s a lot of somethings-or-others congregated along it that we didn’t want too close a look at. We had to go several streets over to get around and back to the Prince’s Gate. There’s a very large hole in the park side of the Gallery Wing. I couldn’t get very close but it looked as though something erupted out of the floor in the Grand Gallery.”

Thomas knew Lucas well enough to recognize the fear in his eyes. That fear was masked by bluff, as it was in most men, and the louder the bluff the greater the fear. It was very loud in that room right now. “Out of the floor?” he asked. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. Don’t ask me what it was; I’ve no idea. If we hadn’t been in the portico and halfway outside already when it happened, we’d be dead.” Lucas turned his tankard around thoughtfully. “As it was we lost Arians, Brandon, and Lesard.” He looked up. “That I know of.”

Thomas told him. “Twenty-six altogether, not counting you two.”

“That many.” Lucas looked away.

“What’s it like in the city?” Gideon asked softly.

“It was hard to tell. We saw some houses broken into and burned out, but others locked up tight. No one’s out on the streets anymore that we could see. There was ten or so palacefolk that crept out after us, but they decided to chance it in the city. We thought we’d try to make it back here so we could die with our friends like gentlemen.” He looked around at everyone. “So? How have you lot been keeping busy?”