The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (15 page)

“I’m not impressed,” said Felicity, unmollified. “As far as I know, twice nothing is still and always nothing.”

“You must confess she has you there,” said Nicholas.

Tielman shrugged. “I never went in for mathematics. Very well, my love. You may never gossip, but I am starved for it. What news on the Hill, Galing? I want to hear everything.”

Nicholas launched into a lively description of Lady Nevilleson’s last ball, with all changes of partner, both apparent and speculative, fully noted. Felicity exclaimed in pretended shock and rang for cold meat and wine. The conversation wandered inevitably onto politics. The Corn Bill came in for a particularly thorough examination, in which Felicity bore an enthusiastic part until she chanced to catch sight of the pretty gilt clock on the mantelpiece.

“It’s past midnight,” she announced. “It’s no wonder you’re making no sense—you’re tired. I’m going to bed. You may stay up and talk nonsense as long as you like. I’ll have Fedders make up a bed for Lord Nicholas.”

“No,” said that gentleman, rising politely. “I’ve a word of business to drop in Ned’s ear, and then I’m off to my own bed.”

Tielman laughed. “Why is it,” he inquired, “that one may easily stay up until dawn in company, but is yawning at midnight in the bosom of one’s family? We’ll finish the bottle, Galing, and then, if you don’t care to sleep here, Fedders will find you a chaise.”

“Do,” said Felicity cordially. “I have a novel to finish; it’s due at the library tomorrow. You’ll be doing me a favor by keeping Edward for at least an hour longer.”

Nicholas thanked her, kissed her cheek in a brotherly manner, and settled down into his chair again. Despite the rum punch and wine, he felt his mind to be as clear and sharp as a winter’s night. It was time to broach Arlen’s matter to Edward. He took breath to speak.

“Dear girl,” said Tielman, resuming his chair. “She’s in the family way, you know.”

“Is she, by Heaven! Congratulations, Tielman. You must be very pleased.”

“Yes.”

A silence fell between them.

“Strange business last Sessions,” said Tielman thoughtfully. “No telling whether there’s anything in it beyond a madman and moonshine. Still, it never hurts to be sure. I’m entirely at your disposal.”

Nicholas stared at him, a prey to complicated feelings. At last he said, as temperately as he could, “I understood it was a secret.”

“Oh, it is,” Tielman assured him. “Not even the Crescent knows that Arlen is putting his oar in. Officially, it’s a tempest in a teapot, something for the old farts to shake their heads over after dinner. He doesn’t want a fuss made. That’s why he’s put it in the hands of such politically small fish as the two of us.”

“Small fish,” murmured Nicholas. “I see.”

“Small,” said Tielman, “but daily growing. And we could be very big fish indeed if we scotch the plot in, er, the bud.”

“If there is one,” said Nicholas dryly. “You were never any good at rhetoric, you know.”

“Nor was I. I am, however, pretty good at organizing things, which is a lot more useful.”

“And I, it seems, am good at being told what to do.”

Tielman looked at him sharply; the unsteady firelight cast a stranger’s mask over his plump, good-natured face. “Nose out of joint?” he asked sympathetically. “It needn’t be. You know he hates telling anyone anything straight out. There always has to be something held back.”

“Everything’s a test,” said Nicholas bitterly. “I just wish I knew what he thinks he’s testing.”

“Don’t think about it, Nick—don’t think about him, or what he’s testing, or you’ll come to grief.”

As he leaned forward earnestly, Nicholas found himself responding to Tielman’s presence as he hadn’t since they’d first been lovers. Being the Crescent’s secretary had changed the steward’s son in ways Nicholas hadn’t seen until now. The Crescent’s secretary was at the center of power, with access to the Crescent’s ear and, through him, to the whole Inner Council. Edward—kind Edward, simple, hard-working Edward—was getting to be a powerful man.

Nicholas blinked and sat back. “Of course,” he said. “Silly of me. Now. About those royalists.”

There was a lot to talk about. Edward was an excellent interlocutor, asking pointed questions, offering theories, analyzing data. He was of the opinion that the Middle City would collectively drown itself in the river before it would countenance the least hint of royalist sentiment.

“Romantics don’t become bankers and shopkeepers,” he said. “What my colleagues know about the kings is that they were much more interested in the country than the city and favored farmers and woodsmen over merchants and manufacturers. You won’t find any royalists in the Middle City. The University, though. That’s another kettle of stew.”

“Stew indeed.” Nicholas sighed. “I wish I knew how to tell what was gristle and what was meat.”

“You need a scholar.” Tielman drank off the last of his wine. “University folk don’t like strangers asking questions. A parochial bunch. Still, I think I can drum up a scholar to spy for you. I won’t even have to tell him why, if I make it mysterious enough. Students, unlike bankers, are romantics to a man. And these days, with all the fuss over the Horn Chair, it’s easy to tell where everyone stands on the subject of the ancient kings.”

“Ah,” said Nicholas. “The Horn Chair. I’ve heard bits and pieces here and there, but I confess the importance of the whole escapes me.”

“Felicity will have finished her book twice by now. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Felicity is probably fast asleep.” Nicholas smiled a slow, catlike smile he’d been told was irresistibly charming. “Tell me about the Horn Chair.”

Tielman yawned. “The old Horn Chair of Ancient History will probably be asked to step down: ill-health, age— incompetence, really. At his last lecture, I hear he came this close to announcing that the wizards’ magic was genuine, if you can believe that.” He yawned again, painfully. “Damn it, Nick. This can wait.”

“But I can’t.” Nicholas leaned forward to touch the back of Edward’s hand and left his own hand lightly covering it.

Tielman lifted their linked hands and kissed his friend’s fingers before removing his own from their grasp. “This is going to be complicated enough, Nick,” he said gently.

Nicholas shrugged, reached for the poker, and stirred the dying fire into a brief blaze. Edward collected the boots from the edge of the hearth and felt the leather.

“Still damp, I’m afraid. But drier than they were, if you insist upon leaving. It’s not too late to change your mind about the bed, you know.”

Suddenly Nicholas was very tired and rather grateful that Tielman hadn’t accepted his offer. “No, Ned. It’s kind of you, but no. I’ll take a chaise, if Fedders can roust one out at this hour.”

While Nicholas pulled on his boots—which were, indeed, damp and somewhat stiff—and exchanged the borrowed dressing-gown for his dry jacket, Tielman rang for Fedders and instructed him to summon a chaise.

“He won’t be long,” he told Nicholas when the man had gone. “As for the University problem, I’ll see to it myself. There’s not much I can do before Harvest—the Corn Bill, you know—and it’s important to find the right man. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, you need to arrange a drop-off for his reports. You won’t want him to send them to Lord Nicholas Galing, of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Nicholas, who hadn’t given it a thought until that very moment. “He can direct them to, let’s see, Green’s chocolate-house on Lower Hill Street, to the attention of Mr. Black.”

“Very colorful,” said Tielman doubtfully. “Very memorable.”

Nicholas controlled his temper with an effort. “Tell him to address them to Nicholas, then—it’s a common enough name. I’ll have someone collect them every few days.”

Fedders appeared at the door, red-nosed and damp, announcing his lordship’s chaise. Tielman accompanied Galing to the door and insisted upon helping him into his cloak. “It’s been like old times, staying up too late with you, Nick,” he said. “We must do this again, soon.”

“Soon. Yes,” said Nicholas, and stepped outside. His breath plumed out of his mouth—it had grown much colder. He’d been a fool to let desire overcome his judgment like that—he blamed the hot rum punch. No more rum punch and no more desire, he resolved, not unless it furthered his purposes. But he had the chaise-driver take him to Glinley’s establishment in Riverside, and spent the remainder of the night in the embrace of a beautiful and expensive man with white hair and pale, amused eyes.

chapter
IX

EVERY NIGHT, BASIL DREAMED: YOUNG MEN WITH LITHE bodies and long, braided hair raced and wrestled on a great field while he looked on, weighing them against each other in his mind. When Theron lay under him twisting in his passion like a fish hooked on a line, Basil sometimes seemed to enter the dreams in a waking state. The bright flashes of his pleasure seemed to be the flashes of sun on the young men’s shields, his cries the ringing of the tiny bronze bells braided into their hair. And his arms holding Theron became the strong arms of an animal.

One night Basil woke alone with his heart shaking his chest, his lungs laboring, his mind muzzily certain that his dream sprang from something in the box under his bed. He found a lucifer and a candle, pulled on his shirt and gown, stirred up the fire, and unearthed the document box.

Not the packet of edicts and proclamations: they were as dry as week-old bread. Not Arioso’s notebooks—he hadn’t read them through, but what he had read suggested nothing like young men wrestling in green fields. That left the book with the leaf stamped on its cover.

Basil unwrapped it briskly, ignoring his reluctance. It was just a book, after all. An old book. He’d read old books before. It was his profession to read old books, the older the better.

The brown-black leather lay between his hands, swallowing the light from fire and candle, save for the sparks of gilding that lingered in the lobes of the oak leaf.

He knew it, then. Even before he opened it, he knew what it was. In it lay his dreams, and the dreams of many before him. Ancient as the Northern mountains, heavy as death, shrouded in linen, what else could it be? He opened it with fear, with awe, with trembling hands carefully wiped dry on his gown.

The pages were supple—some kind of skin, scraped fine as glove leather. They were covered from edge to edge with writing: a central block of text with notes swarming around its margins like gnats.

The text was no language he knew or had heard of: a lost language, a secret language marching across the fragile parchment pages in a square, bold hand. Some later hand had written headings in a comprehensible if archaic script:
For the
Forcynge of the Trutthe, when Suspected of Treason; To Lend
Glamore and Hony-tonge; For Callying upp the Wilde Beaste in
a Man, Eche According to Hys Nature. For the Calmyng of
Maydens at Progresse-tyme.

Basil scanned the blocks of text, first eagerly, then with a sickening frustration. The letters were recognizable, but they seemed to have been strung together at random into nonsense syllables. Hollis and Vespas had been right. The book was unreadable. The wizards had been charlatans. Or else they hadn’t. It was impossible to tell.

Tears of pure frustration blurred Basil’s sight. The words danced mockingly in the firelight. One of them winked from the margin: “Guidry.” Basil wiped his eyes and squinted: “To uncover such a coverynge,” he read aloud, “would take the wit of Ca . . .
no,
Cephalus and the cunning of Guidry.”

Guidry. He’d seen the name before. In Hollis? There was a place to start, anyway. And Cephalus—another wizard name, it had that slightly exotic flavor. He could send his students into the Archives, have them look up the lists of wizards, research some of the other names he now saw, scattered like candles around the darkly impenetrable central text. The hands were various, and their arguments obscure. “I did walk with it seven times, but waked only the seventh,” one ran. And another, tantalizing, “This displeased His Maj., but when he has killed the deer he will think differently.”

When he finally raised his eyes from the book, the window over his bed glowed with the pale blue-gray of dawn. Basil stood up and stretched. He was stiff and cold, and in a state of mental exaltation that surpassed delivering his first lecture, accepting his Doctorate, discovering the original Treaty of Union in the Archives. He had found the one book that would make it possible to revise not only the history of the City, but how it should be studied. In his two hands, Basil St Cloud held the lost Book of the King’s Wizard.