The Wise Man's Fear Part 58

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO.

Crisis THE NEXT MORNING I made my way to Severen-Low before the sun was up. I ate a hot breakfast of eggs and potatoes while I waited for an apothecary to open. When I was finished, I bought two more pints of cod liver oil and a few other oddments I hadn't thought of the day before.

Then I walked the entire length of Tinnery Street, hoping to stumble onto Denna despite the fact that it was far too early in the morning for her to be up and about. Wagons and farmers' carts vied for s.p.a.ce on the cobbled streets. Ambitious beggars were laying claim to the busiest corners while shopkeepers hung out their s.h.i.+ngles and threw wide their shutters.

I counted twenty-three inns and boarding houses on Tinnery Street. After making note of the ones Denna would probably find appealing, I forced myself back to the Maer's estates. This time I took the freight lifts, partly to confuse anyone following me, but also because the purse the Maer had given me was nearly empty.

Since I needed to keep a normal face on things, I remained in my rooms, waiting for the Maer to send for me. I sent my card and ring to Bredon, and soon he was sitting across from me, thras.h.i.+ng me at tak and telling stories.

"... so the Maer had him hung in a gibbet. Right alongside the eastern gate. Hung here for days, howling and cursing. Saying he was innocent. Saying it wasn't right and how he wanted a trial."

I couldn't quite bring myself to believe it. "A gibbet?"

Bredon nodded seriously. "An actual iron gibbet. Who knows where he managed to find one in this day and age. It was like something out of a play."

I searched for something relatively noncommittal to say. While it did sound grotesque, I also knew better than to openly criticize the Maer. "Well," I said, "banditry is is a terrible thing." a terrible thing."

Bredon began to place a stone on the board, then reconsidered. "Quite a few folks thought the whole thing was in rather ..." He cleared his throat. "Bad taste. But n.o.body said so very loudly, if you catch my meaning. It was a grisly thing. But it got the point across."

He finally chose the placement of his stone, and we played quietly for a time.

"It's a strange thing," I said. "I ran into someone the other day who didn't know where Caudicus would rank in the overall scheme of things."

"That's not terribly surprising," Bredon gestured to the board. "The giving and receiving of rings is a lot like tak. On the face of it, the rules are simple. In execution they become quite complicated." He clicked down a stone, his dark eyes crinkling with amus.e.m.e.nt. "In fact, the other day I was explaining the intricacies of the custom to a foreigner not familiar with such things."

"That was kind of you," I said.

Bredon gave a gracious nod. "It seems simple at first glance," he said. "A baron ranks above a baronet. But sometimes young money is worth more than old blood. Sometimes control of a river is more important than how many soldiers you can put to field. Sometimes a person is actually more than one person, technically speaking. The Earl of Svanis is, by strange inheritance, also the Viscount of Tevn. One man, but two different political ent.i.ties."

I smiled. "My mother once told me she knew a man who owed fealty to himself," I said. "Owed himself a share of his own taxes every year, and if he were ever threatened, there were treaties in place demanding he provide himself with prompt and loyal military support."

Bredon nodded. "It happens more often than folk realize," he said. "Especially with the older families. Stapes, for example, exists in several separate capacities."

"Stapes?" I asked. "But he's just a manservant, isn't he?"

"Well," Bredon said slowly. "He is that. But he's hardly just just a manservant. His family is quite old, but he has no t.i.tle of his own. Technically, he ranks no higher than a cook. But he owns substantial lands. He has money. And he is the a manservant. His family is quite old, but he has no t.i.tle of his own. Technically, he ranks no higher than a cook. But he owns substantial lands. He has money. And he is the Maer's Maer's manservant. They've known each other since they were boys. Everyone knows he has Alveron's ear." manservant. They've known each other since they were boys. Everyone knows he has Alveron's ear."

Bredon's dark eyes peered at me. "Who would dare insult such a man with an iron ring? Go to his room and you will see the truth: there is nothing in his bowl but gold."

Bredon excused himself shortly after our game, claiming a prior engagement. Luckily, I now had my lute to occupy my time. I set about retuning it, checking the frets, and fussing over the tuning peg that was constantly coming loose. We had been away from each other for a long while, and it takes time to get reacquainted.

Hours pa.s.sed. I discovered myself absentmindedly playing "Deadnettle's Lament" and forced myself to stop. Noon came and went. Lunch was delivered and cleared away. I retuned my lute and ran some scales. Before I knew it I found myself playing "Leave the Town, Tinker." Only then did I realize what my hands were trying to tell me. If the Maer was still alive, he would have called for me by now.

I let the lute fall silent and began to think very quickly. I needed to leave. Now. Stapes had seen me bring medicine to the Maer. I could even be accused of tampering with the vial I had brought from Caudicus' rooms.

Slow fear began to knot my gut as I realized the helplessness of my situation. I didn't know the Maer's estates well enough to attempt a clever escape. On my way to Severen-Low this morning, I'd gotten turned around and had to stop to ask directions.

The knock on the door was louder than usual, more forceful than that of the errand boy who normally came to deliver the Maer's invitation. Guards. I froze in my seat. Would it be best to answer the door and tell the truth? Or duck out the window into the garden and somehow try to make a run for it?

The knock came again, louder. "Sir? Sir?"

The voice was m.u.f.fled by the door, but it was not a guard's voice. I opened the door and saw a young boy carrying a tray with the Maer's iron ring and card.

I picked them up. The card had a single word written in a shaky hand: Immediately Immediately.

Stapes looked uncharacteristically ragged around the edges and greeted me with an icy stare. Yesterday he'd looked as if he wanted me dead and buried. Today his look implied that simply buried would be good enough.

The Maer's bedroom was generously decorated with selas flowers. Their delicate smell was almost enough to cover the odors they'd been brought in to conceal. Combined with Stapes' appearance, I knew my predictions of the night's unpleasantness had been close to the truth.

Alveron was propped into a sitting position in his bed. He looked as well as could be expected, which is to say exhausted, but no longer sweating and racked with pain. As a matter of fact, he looked almost angelic. A rectangle of sunlight washed over him, lending his skin a frail translucency and making his disarrayed hair s.h.i.+ne like a silver crown around his head.

As I stepped closer he opened his eyes, breaking the beatific illusion. No angel ever had eyes as clever as Alveron's.

"I trust I find your grace well?" I asked politely.

"Pa.s.sing fair," he responded. But it was mere social noise, telling me nothing.

"How do you feel? feel?" I asked in a more serious tone.

He gave me a long look that let me know he did not approve of my addressing him so casually, then said. "Old. I feel old and weak." He took a deep breath. "But for all that, I feel better than I have in several days. A little pain, and I am mightily tired. But I feel ... clean. I think I've pa.s.sed the crisis."

I did not ask about last night. "Would you like me to mix you another pot of tea?"

"Please." His tone was measured and polite. Unable to guess his mood, I hurried through the preparations and handed him his cup.

He looked up at me after sampling it. "This tastes different."

"There is less laudanum in it," I explained. "Too much would be harmful to your grace. Your body would begin to depend on it as surely as it craved the ophalum."

He nodded. "You'll note my birds are doing well," he said in an overly casual tone.

I looked through the doorway and saw the sipquicks darting about in their gilded cage, lively as ever. I felt a chill at the implication of his comment. He still didn't believe Caudicus was poisoning him.

I was too stunned to make a quick reply, but after a breath or two I managed to say, "Their health does not concern me nearly so much as your own. You do do feel better, don't you, your grace?" feel better, don't you, your grace?"

"That is the nature of my illness. It comes and goes." The Maer set down his cup of tea, still three-quarters full. "Eventually it fades entirely, and Caudicus is free to go off gallivanting for months at a time, gathering ingredients for his charms and potives. Speaking of," he said, folding his hands in his lap. "Would you do me the favor of fetching my medicine from Caudicus?"

"Certainly, your grace." I stretched a smile over my face, trying to ignore the unease settling in my chest. I cleaned up the clutter I had created while fixing his tea, tucking packages and bundles of herbs back into the pockets of my burgundy cloak.

The Maer nodded graciously, then closed his eyes and seemed to lapse back into his tranquil, sunlit nap.

"Our fledgling historian!" Caudicus said as he gestured me inside and offered me a seat. "If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'll be right back."

I sank into the padded chair and only then noticed the array of rings on the nearby table. Caudicus had gone so far as to have a rack built for them. Each was displayed with the name facing outward. There were a great many of them, silver, iron, and gold.

Both my gold ring and Alveron's iron one sat on a small tray on the table. I reclaimed them, taking note of this rather graceful way of wordlessly offering the return of a ring.

I looked around the large tower room with muted curiosity. What possible motive could he have for poisoning the Maer? Barring access to the University itself, this place was every arcanist's dream.

Curious, I got to my feet and wandered to his bookshelves. Caudicus had a respectable library, with nearly a hundred books crowding for s.p.a.ce. I recognized many of the t.i.tles. Some were chemical references. Some were alchemical. Others dealt with the natural sciences, herbology, physiology, bestiology. The vast majority seemed to be historical in nature.

A thought occurred to me. Perhaps I could get the native Vintish superst.i.tion to work to my advantage. If Caudicus was a serious scholar and even half as superst.i.tious as a native Vint, he might know something about the Chandrian. Best of all, since I was playing the dimwitted lordling, I didn't need to worry about damaging my reputation.

Caudicus came around the corner and seemed somewhat taken aback when he saw me standing by the bookshelves. But he rallied quickly and gave me a polite smile. "See anything you're interested in?"

I turned, shaking my head. "Not particularly," I said. "Do you know anything about the Chandrian?"

Caudicus looked at me blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing. "I know they're not going to come into your room at night and steal you out of your bed," he said, wiggling his fingers at me, the way you'd tease a child.

"You don't study mythology then?" I asked, fighting down a wave of disappointment at his reaction. I tried to console myself with the fact that this would firmly solidify me as a half-wit lordling in his mind.

Caudicus sniffed. "That's hardly mythology mythology," he said dismissively. "One could barely even stoop to calling it folklore. It's superst.i.tious bunk, and I don't waste my time with it. No serious scholar would."

He began to putter around the room, restoppering bottles and tucking them into cabinets, straightening up stacks of papers, and returning books to their shelves. "Speaking of serious scholars.h.i.+p, if I remember correctly, you were curious about the Lackless family?"

I simply stared at him for a moment. With everything that had happened since, I'd all but forgotten the pretense of the anecdotal genealogy I'd invented yesterday.

"If it wouldn't be any trouble," I said quickly. "As I've said, I know practically nothing of them."

Caudicus nodded seriously. "In that case you might be well-served in considering their name." He adjusted an alcohol lamp underneath a simmering gla.s.s alembic in the midst of an impressive array of copper tubing. Whatever he was distilling, I guessed it wasn't peach brandy. "You see, names can tell you a great deal about a thing."

I grinned at that, then fought to smother the expression. "You don't say?"

He turned back to face me just as I got my mouth under control. "Oh yes," he said. "You see, names are sometimes based on other, older names. The older the name, the closer it lies to the truth. Lackless Lackless is a relatively new name for the family, not much more than six hundred years old." is a relatively new name for the family, not much more than six hundred years old."

For once I didn't have to feign amazement. "Six hundred years is new?"

"The Lackless family is old old." He stopped his pacing and settled down into a threadbare armchair. "Much older than the house of Alveron. A thousand years ago the Lackless family enjoyed a power at least as great as Alveron's. Pieces of what are now Vintas, Modeg, and a large portion of the small kingdoms were all Lackless lands at one point."

"What was their name before that?" I asked.

He pulled down a thick book and flipped its pages impatiently. "Here it is. The family was called Loeclos or Loklos, or Loeloes. They all translate the same, Lockless. Spelling was rather less important in those days."

"What days were those?" I asked.

He consulted the book again. "About nine hundred years ago, but I've seen other histories that mention the Loeclos a thousand years before the fall of Atur."

I boggled at the thought of a family older than empires. "So the Lockless family became the Lackless family? What reason could a family have for changing its name?"

"There are historians who would cut off their own right hands to answer that," Caudicus said. "It's generally accepted that there was some sort of falling out that splintered the family. Each piece took on a separate name. In Atur they became the Lack-key family. They were numerous, but fell on hard times. That's where the word 'lackey' comes from, you know. All those paupered n.o.bility forced to sc.r.a.pe and bow to make ends meet.

"In the south they became the Lac.l.i.ths, who slowly spiraled into obscurity. The same with the Kaepcaen in Modeg. The largest piece of the family was here in Vintas, except Vintas didn't exist back then." He closed the book and held it out to me. "You can borrow this if you'd like."

"Thank you." I took the book. "You're too kind."

There was the distant sound of a belling tower. "I'm too long-winded," he said. "I've talked away our time and haven't given you anything of use."

"Just the history makes a great difference," I said gratefully.

"Are you sure I can't interest you in a few stories from other families?" he asked, walking over to a worktable. "I wintered with the Jakis family not long ago. The baron is a widower you know. Quite wealthy and somewhat eccentric." He raised both eyebrows at me, his eyes wide with implied scandal. "I'm sure I could remember a few interesting things if I were a.s.sured of my anonymity."

I was tempted to break character for that, but instead I shook my head. "Perhaps when I'm done working on the Lackless section," I said with all the self-importance of someone devoted to a truly useless project. "My research is quite delicate. I don't want to get tangled up in my head."

Caudicus frowned a bit, then shrugged it away as he rolled up his sleeves and began to make the Maer's medicine.

I watched him go through his preparations again. It wasn't alchemy. I knew that from watching Simmon work. This was barely even chemistry. Mixing a medicine like this was closer to following a recipe than anything. But what were the ingredients?

I watched him move through it step by step. The dried leaf was probably bitefew. The liquid from the stoppered jar was no doubt muratum or aqua fortis, some sort of acid at any rate. When it bubbled and steamed in the lead bowl it dissolved a small amount of lead, maybe only a quarter-scruple. The white powder was probably the ophalum.

He added a pinch of the final ingredient. I couldn't even guess what that was. It looked like salt, but then again, most everything looks like salt.

As he went through the motions, Caudicus nattered on about court gossip. DeFerre's eldest son had broken his leg jumping out a brothel window. Lady Hesua's most recent lover was Yllish and didn't speak a word of Aturan. There was a rumor of highwaymen on the king's road to the north, but there are always rumors of bandits, so that was nothing new.

I don't care one whit for gossip, but I can fake interest when I must. All the while I watched Caudicus for some telltale sign. Some whisper of nervousness, a bead of sweat, a moment's hesitation. But there was nothing. Not the slightest indication he was preparing a poison for the Maer. He was perfectly comfortable, utterly at ease.

Was it possible he was poisoning the Maer by accident? Impossible. Any arcanist worth his guilder knew enough chemistry to ...

Then it dawned on me. Maybe Caudicus wasn't an arcanist at all. Maybe he was simply a man in a dark robe who didn't know the difference between an alligator and a crocodile. Maybe he was just a clever pretender who happened to be poisoning the Maer out of simple ignorance.

Maybe that was was peach brandy in his distillery. peach brandy in his distillery.

He tamped the cork into the vial of amber liquid and handed it to me. "There you are," he said. "Make sure you take it to him straightaway. It'll be best if he gets it while it's still warm."

The temperature of a medicine doesn't make one whit of difference. Any physicker knows that.

I took the vial and pointed to his chest as if I'd just noticed something. "My word, is that an amulet?"

He seemed confused at first, then and drew out the leather cord from underneath his robes. "Of sorts," he said with a tolerant smile. At a casual glance, the piece of lead he wore around his neck looked very much like an Arcanum guilder.

"Does it protect you from spirits?" I asked in a hushed voice.

"Oh yes," he said flippantly. "All sorts."

I swallowed nervously. "May I touch it?"

He shrugged and leaned forward, holding it out to me.

I took it timidly with my thumb and forefinger, then jumped back a step. "It bit me!" I said, pitching my voice somewhere between indignation and anxiety as I wrung my hand.