Living With Ghosts Part 29

"Then help me."

There was a long silence. Gracielis looked away, toward the window and the mist. He wanted no part of this. He was inadequate. He had lost her already, sky-eyed Quenfrida. His death was written. He had no need to court another.

If he refused, it would be graceless. If he accepted . . . Quenfrida could only kill him once. He was not safe, whatever he did. There was no sanctuary deep enough to guard him from waterborne death and Valdarrien.

He glanced at Iareth. She sat motionless, watching the floor. The long line of her, curved through head and spine, bespoke serenity. Merafi was no more her city than it was his.

He would not let himself think about that. He would permit himself nothing regarding her, for she was no part of him.

Dead Valdarrien had come back. To warn or to take or to try again to possess Iareth Yscoithi. If Gracielis refused, he would place no obstacles in the path Valdarrien sought importunately through his own dreams and flaws. Yet, if he helped Thiercelin . . . There were no guarantees. He doubted there was anyone within a thousand miles with the power to force Quenfrida to give up what she had gained.

He twisted his lovelock round a finger, and said, "I'll do what you want. I'll help you. But it won't work. I lack the strengths you need."

"We'll see," said Thiercelin.

Dusk was falling as Thiercelin and Gracielis made their way back to the Phoenix Inn, where Thiercelin had taken rooms for them both. It was raining again, and cold. Thiercelin at first tried to keep up a conversation, but he received only monosyllabic replies. Gracielis had withdrawn, swathed in a cloak. He walked quickly. To his surprise, Thiercelin had to lengthen his stride to keep up. When they reached the inn, Gracielis excused himself and vanished into his own rooms. His presence p.r.i.c.kled at the edges of Thiercelin's awareness, like the first hint of a storm. Thiercelin changed for dinner and snapped at his unfortunate valet. He had hoped, despite himself, for some word, some sign that Yvelliane missed him. There was nothing. Well, he would prove himself to her anyway. He would face this nightmare that Gracielis saw and fight it and show her that he was not Valdarrien. He would help her even if she did not seek it of him. Perhaps he would never be able to make her love him, but at least she might see him as he was and not as simply her brother's shadow.

He had to send a message in to remind Gracielis to come and eat. On his arrival, Gracielis looked absently at the meal laid out in Thiercelin's private parlor and said, "I don't think I . . ."

"Sit down," Thiercelin said. Gracielis obeyed. "When did you last eat?"

"Yesterday. But . . ."

"But nothing. I don't want you fading out on me." Gracielis pulled a small face, then inclined his head in graceful resignation. He raised a hand to push his hair back. The bandage on his arm looked bulky. Thiercelin studied him, then said, "Won't work. I don't have time to feel sympathetic."

"Or cause, I think."

"Quite." Thiercelin began to serve himself. "Moreover, I've as much reason to feel sorry for myself as you, and I'm not indulging in self-starvation."

"No." Gracielis picked up a piece of bread and looked at it. "I'll eat. To please you." He spoke softly. His outrageous eyes held Thiercelin's. It was a deadly beauty. Thiercelin looked away and added unnecessary beans to his plate.

They ate in silence, Gracielis sparingly. Thiercelin caught himself watching the movements of the bandaged hands and had to force his attention away. He was married to Yvelliane, however little she might want him. This was a foolishness only, a product of loneliness and confusion and the artifice of painted eyes.

He had asked and been refused. Better to remember the wisdom in that refusal and think of something else. How Valdarrien would laugh. Would have laughed, callous as ever before another's difficulty.

He could hear the rain pounding down outside. Gracielis' fair skin was golden in the candlelight. He would taste of honey. Think of Yvelliane, think only of Yvelliane...In four days he would see her again. Thiercelin poured himself wine and drank it off in one draught. This was folly. Gracielis reached for the wine, and his perfume enveloped Thiercelin like a veil. His eyes met Thiercelin's. He arrested the motion.

Despite the wine, Thiercelin's mouth was dry. He said, "Well?"

Gracielis said, gently, "Thank you. You were right to make me eat."

"And drink?" Thiercelin gestured at the wine. "I thought you didn't."

"I don't. Usually." Deliberately, Gracielis poured himself a half gla.s.s, and raised it. "Shall I toast your health?"

"If you want to."

"So. Your fortune, monseigneur." Gracielis drank. Then he put the gla.s.s down and said, "You know what I am. My profession."

"Meaning what?"

"This." Gracielis lowered his beautiful eyes, and looked sidelong. "It's a part of it. Those who would be undarios are trained in seduction."

Gigolo and spy. And something more. Practiced, tried and tested; designed to please. Thiercelin said, "Is that supposed to help? I don't know what to do."

"It's supposed," said Gracielis, "to explain." Thiercelin said, "I love Yviane. I don't need complications. My marriage is shaky enough already." Gracielis watched him, and his eyes were kind. Thiercelin sighed. "You're not helping."

"No." Gracielis rose. "I'll go." His half-finished drink stood on the table between them. "I regret the inconvenience."

"Do you?" There was no reply. Thiercelin hesitated, then said, "Am I being unfair?"

"Not really."

"This afternoon-I pressured you. I know it can't be easy . . . to try to do what's needed to help Merafi."

Gracielis laughed. It was so unexpected Thiercelin stared at him. Gracielis paused, then said, "Forgive me. It was the understatement. 'Not easy,' in place of 'impossible.' "

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that."

"Forgive me," Gracielis repeated. He went to the door. "Good night, monseigneur."

"Thierry. Good night, Graelis."

The door shut. Thiercelin stared at it for long moments, trying to order his thoughts. He might call it spite or resentment, that he was tempted in the wake of Yvelliane's coldness. Honesty forbade him. He had not forgotten a touch, an embrace. Bred to seduction . . . The opening hung there, tantalizing as Gracielis himself, offering an excuse. Thiercelin picked up Gracielis' discarded gla.s.s and drained it. He was old enough by now to take responsibility for himself.

To choose for himself.

He did not knock on the connecting door. Gracielis met his eyes and said nothing. His fair skin was soft and flushed at a touch, although the taste of him was jasmine and not honey. His hands were gentle. Shivering under them, Thiercelin said, "Don't ask," and felt laughter run through the slight frame.

"Never, I swear it," said Gracielis.

13.

LELADRIEN HAD WARNED HIM. Joyain tried not to remember that, as he gazed around him. He had wanted this duty. He had spent the last two days in restless antic.i.p.ation of it. It could not be as bad as it looked.

It was raining. Ash and debris collected in the gutters, greasy, malodorous. The unpaved roads were treacherous underfoot: a man could easily come to grief. Looking down toward the remains of the local almshouse, he repressed a shudder. Leladrien had been right. This kind of thing was beyond him.

There was almost never any trouble in this part of Merafi. Built outside the south part of the old wall, it sprawled out onto the flood plain. It was neither prosperous nor prestigious: a quarter for lesser artisans, for respectable shop laborers, for shabby-genteel widows, and retired, impoverished clerks.

It was a smoldering mess.

Joyain had not expected this. He looked back over his shoulder at the southwest gate and caught the eye of the ensign. He said, "When did this start?"

"I don't know, sir," the ensign said. Joyain looked at him in disgust. "I was off duty last night."

"And you don't read reports?"

"I haven't had time, yet, sir. We've been busy."

"Clearly. What happened to last night's duty officer?" The ensign looked uncomfortable. Joyain said, "Well?"

"The sergeant said he didn't report in, sir. The sickness . . ." The ensign reddened under Joyain's gaze. "The watch are overstretched."

"So I keep hearing." Joyain looked back at the fires and sighed. At least there had been no wind last night. The flames had started somewhere on the west edge and spread slowly, hindered by the damp. Even so, about half the district was a blackened ruin, and an infantry patrol was picking its way through it disconsolately.

The fire had started during the night. The watch had not reported it until noon. That they were overworked was undeniable, but all the same . . . Joyain sighed again and rubbed his palm against his thigh. "Well, done is done. I'm not blaming you, Ensign. But I recommend that you start collecting some eyewitness accounts. The captain will want an explanation."

"Yes, sir."

"Get on with it, then." Joyain began to walk back toward the guardhouse. "I'll be down here all day-you can send witnesses to me as and when. And I'll want casualty figures." And after that, the gravedigging would have to start. He'd think about that later.

"Yes, sir," the ensign said.

The office at the guard post was not of the largest. Nor the tidiest, for that matter. Whatever division of the watch held it did not seem to consider the place a high priority. Joyain suspected that personnel had been quietly creamed off from here to help with the more serious problems in the shantytown and low city. And if the duty officer had taken sick . . . That, too, should have been reported immediately, but it was beginning to look as though the overnight staff had been two troopers and an elderly sergeant.

Against procedure, of course. But in the current state of affairs, understandable. Hard luck for the watch that their laxity had happened to coincide with a night on which someone had let their cooking fire get out of control.

It took him several minutes of concerted searching, but eventually he located the sergeant's report. The fire had been noticed a little before dawn, and a man was dispatched to investigate. There was no record in the report of his having returned. Joyain made a mental note to follow that up. No comment was hazarded as to the origin of the blaze. However, the sergeant had remarked on the surprisingly sluggish attempts of the local inhabitants in trying to combat it and the general reluctance to approach the area. The center of the fire was believed to have been in a small dip toward the edge of the district, which might explain why the guard post had been so slow to notice it.

The fire had begun to die after a heavy shower around dawn.

Joyain finished reading through the notes (the spelling was appalling) and leaned back in his chair. Local disinclination to help was nothing new, of course, but in this area it was a little surprising. Surprising, too, that someone would have been careless when fuel was so expensive. Drunk, perhaps, or asleep. It could not have been arson, not here. No profit for any of the gangs, and precious little incentive. No sickness down here, either, as yet; or so it seemed. No other immediately obvious reason for fire-starting . . .

Mist gathered in dips, especially beside the river. Mist thick and arcane with formless enemies, who battered and crushed. Who retreated before fire . . . The thought was insidious. Joyain resisted the urge to push it away, and frowned. All right, suppose he was correct. The attack suffered by himself and Iareth had been real enough; and the toll of bodies found in the low city suggested that the experience was not unique. Admittedly he had seen no official reports of anything like the event he had witnessed, but he had himself deliberately elected to play ignorant, as least officially. He probably wasn't unique in that, either.

So far nearly all the victims had been drunkards or vagrants. People with no walls to put between themselves and the night.

The army high command cared very little for such people. While waiting in the colonel's antechamber two days before, Joyain had overheard two of the aides-decamp expressing relief at the fortuitous "cleaning out" of shantytown.

There had been no reports of anything odd or dangerous from north of the river. No bodies in the west quarter or on the aristocrats' hill. The worst incidents had been from areas close to the southernmost of the three river channels, such as the shantytown and the new dock and this district.

No, it was ridiculous. There was always discontent in the low city. There was always sickness in the shanties and the docks. There were always street gangs.

What if he had not been the only person to discover that the mist creatures would retreat from fire? What if there was someone scared enough to fire an entire district in order to drive away night terrors?

He was out of touch, that was the problem. Stuck in the Lunedithin emba.s.sy, he had lost track of mess gossip. Once his half-troop arrived down here, he'd take a trip up to the barracks and see what he could pick up. Maybe Leladrien would have heard something. There was almost certainly a perfectly rational explanation for what had happened to him.

There was a knock at the office door. Looking up, Joyain called, "Come in."

The ensign entered. He saluted, and said, "You asked for witnesses, sir."

"Yes."

"I've found someone. He lives here, and he seems pretty respectable."

"Good. Show him in." Joyain gave a surrept.i.tious tug to his ca.s.sock and put his gloves back on. He could do nothing about the disorder in the room, but at least he could look tidy and efficient.

The man who was ushered in was elderly and looked tired. His clothes were impeccable if outmoded, and showed signs of much diligent mending. Bowing stiffly to Joyain, he said, "Good day, Lieutenant."

"Good day, Monsieur . . . ah . . ."

"Banvier."

"Monsieur Banvier. Please be seated. It's good of you to give up your time." Joyain waited for the old man to sit down before continuing. "I'm trying to find out how last night's fire got started. I understand you saw it?"

"Not the beginning. I didn't see that. But when it started to spread . . ."

"Of course. Can you tell me what time that was, approximately?" There didn't appear to be a blank piece of paper anywhere in the desk. Joyain turned over an old duty roster and looked for a pen. "It woke you up, I expect?"

"No, I wasn't asleep." Monsieur Banvier leaned forward. "I don't sleep at night now. I was at my prayers."

"I see." Joyain found a pen, albeit very battered, and dipped it in the ink. As he expected, it was scratchy and blunt. "So this would be about when . . . ?"

"I couldn't hear the bell. The wind wasn't blowing and I don't own a clock. But Handmoon was starting to set. That's when it's most dangerous."

Joyain looked up. "What do you mean?"

Banvier nodded at him. "You're not with the watch, are you?"

"I'm a staff officer in Her Majesty's household cavalry."

"I thought so. I was a stores clerk in the a.r.s.enal. I couldn't tell the watch this, you understand."

"Of course," said Joyain, who didn't. "Please go on." This a.s.signment was getting weirder by the minute. And he'd found the Lunedithin a strain. "Handmoon-set, you say?"

"That's right." Banvier looked at him. "My brother went for a priest, nigh on fifty years ago. He's dead now, but he told me a thing or two, and I've remembered. That's how I knew when to be careful." He met Joyain's eyes. "The old kind are coming back, like in the stories. Neither dead nor alive, neither man nor beast, killing and maiming because they know no better. They killed my neighbor. He'd gone outside, you see, near the river."

"Near the river?" said Joyain, who was getting confused.

"My brother told me about it. How there used to be creatures made of mist and air. But the old kings bound them and drove them out and so we've been safe. But not anymore. I saw it, you see. About a week ago, written on Mothmoon." Banvier sighed. "Death in the water. First in the shantytown and the docks, as ever, and the low city. Then here, and next . . ." He shrugged. "Who knows? Someone should tell the queen."

"Umm," said Joyain. He had stopped writing. None of this made any sense. It was worse than the things Gracieux had thought up to frighten Amalie. He said, "And the fire?"

"They run from it, those creatures. I saw them through the cracks in my shutters. I watched and I prayed and I kept my own fire lit." Banvier said. "Beautiful, in a way, but not like us. I've never seen anything like them, and I've seen some strange things. Dead things, even, and traces." Joyain suppressed a shiver. "I'm telling you the truth. You do believe me?"

Creatures of mist, inhuman, which retreat from fire. Gracielis' tales, of river-borne danger . . . Joyain said, "Well, it's unusual . . ."

"But true."

"Your brother told you about these creatures?" Joyain knew he was buying time, trying to put his thoughts into some species of order. "And he was a priest?" If this was priestly knowledge, why had there been such a silence from them? They were usually all too happy to find excuses to call attention to themselves.