"Wells,.Martha.-.Ile-Rien.1.-.The.Element.of.Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

THE ELEMENT OF FIRE Copyright й 1993 by Martha Wells
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Cover art by Eric Peterson
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. IOOIO
Torо is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
ISBN: 0-812-52097-1
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-17046
First edition: July 1993
First mass market edition: July 1994


THE GRAPPLING HOOK skittered
across the rain-slick stone of the ledge before dropping to catch in the grillwork below the third-story window.
Berham leaned back on the rope to test it. "That's it, Captain Sir. Tight as may be," the servant whispered.
"Well done," Thomas Boniface told him. He stepped back from the wall and looked down the alley. "Now where in hell is Dr. Braun?"
"He's coming," Gideon Townsend, Thomas's lieutenant, said as he made his way toward them out of the heavy shadows. Reaching them he glanced up at the full moon, stark white against the backdrop of wind-driven rain clouds, and muttered, "Not the best night for this work." The three men stood in the muddy alley, the dark brocades and soft wools of their doublets and breeches blending into the grimy stones and shadow, moonlight catching only the pale lace at the wrists or shirt collars ofThomas and his lieutenant, the glint of an earring, or the cold metal sheen on rapiers and wheellock pistol barrels. It was a cool night and they were surrounded by foiled counting houses and the crumbling elegance of the decaying, once-wealthy homes of the River Quarter.
Thomas personally couldn't think of a good time to forcibly invade a foreign sorcerer's house. "The point of it is to go and be killed where you're told," he said. "Is everyone in position?"
"Martin and Castero are up on the tannery roof, watching the street and the other alley. I put Gaspard and two others at
the back of the house and left the servants to watch the horses. The rest are across the street, waiting for the signal," Gideon answered, his blue eyes deceptively guileless. "We're all quite ready to go and be killed where we're told."
"Good," Thomas said. He knew Gideon was still young enough to see this as a challenge, to care nothing for the political reality that sent them on a mission as deadly as this with so little support. Glancing down the alley again, he saw Dr. Braun was finally coming, creeping along the wall and uncomfortably holding his velvet-trimmed scholar's robes out of the stinking mud. "Well?" Thomas asked as the sorcerer came within earshot. "What have you done?"
"I've countered the wards on the doors and windows, but the inside ... This person Grandier is either very strong or very subtle. I can't understand what protections he's used." The young sorcerer looked up at him, his watery eyes blinking fitfully. His long sandy hair and drooping mustache made him look like a sad-faced spaniel.
"You can't give us any hint of what we're to find in there?" Thomas said, thinking, This would have been belter done iftve hadn't been saddled with a sorcerer who has obviousfy escaped from a market-day farce.
Braun's expression was both distressed and obstinate. "He is too strong, or ... He might have the help of some creature of the Fay."
"God protect us," Berham muttered, and uneasily studied the cloudy darkness above. The others ignored him. Berham was short, rotund, and had been wounded three times manning barricades in the last Bisran War. He claimed that the only reason he had left the army was that servants' wages were better. Despite the little man's vocal quavering, Thomas was not worried about his courage.
"What are you saying?" Gideon asked the sorcerer. "You mean we could fall down dead or burst into flame the moment we cross the threshold?"
"The uninitiated so often have ill-conceived ideas about these matters, like the fools who believe sorcerers change
their shapes or fly like the fay. It would be exceedingly dangerous to create heat or cold out of nothing ..."
"So you say, but. . ."
"That's enough," Thomas interrupted. He took the rope and tested it again with his own weight. The first floor of the house would be given over to stables, storage for coaches or wagons, and servants' quarters. The second would hold salons and other rooms for entertaining guests, and the third and fourth would be the owner's private quarters. That would be where the sorcerer would keep his laboratory, and very likely his prisoner. Thomas only hoped die information from the King's Watch was correct and that the Bisran bastard Grandier wasn't here. He told Gideon, "You follow me. Unless, of course, you'd Uke to go first?"
The lieutenant swept off his feathered hat and bowed extravagantly. "Oh, not at all, Sir, after you."
"So kind, Sir."
The brickwork was rough and Thomas found footholds easily. He reached the window and pulled himself up on the rusted grating, balancing cautiously. He felt the rope jerk and tighten as Gideon started to climb.
The window was set with small panes of leaded glass and divided into four tall panels. Thomas drew a thin dagger from the sheath in his left boot and slipped the point between the wooden frames of the lower half. Working the dagger gendy, he eased the inside catch up. The panels opened inward with only a faint creak. Moonlight touched the polished surface of a table set directly in front of the window, but the darkness of the deeper interior of the room was impenetrable. It was silent, but it was a peculiar waiting silence that he disliked.
Then the window ledge cracked loudly under his boots and he took a hasty step forward onto the table, thinking, Now we'll know, at any rate. Dust rose from the heavy draperies as he brushed against them, but the room remained quiet.
"Was that wise?" Gideon asked softly from below the win-dowsill.
"Possibly not. Don't come up yet." Thomas slipped the
20
MARTHA WELLS
dagger back into his boot sheath and drew his rapier. If something came at him out of that darkness, he preferred to keep it at as great a distance as possible. "Tell Berham to hand up a light."
There was some soft cursing below as a dark lantern, its front covered by a metal slide to keep the light dimmed, was lit and passed upward. Thomas waited impatiently, feeling the darkness press in on him like a solid wall. He would have preferred the presence of another sorcerer besides Braun, the rest of the Queen's Guard, and a conscripted city troop to quell any possibility of riot when the restive River Quarter neighborhood discovered it had a mad foreign sorcerer in its midst. But orders were orders, and if Queen's guards or their captain were killed while entering Grandier"s house secretly, then at least civil unrest was prevented. An inspired intrigue, Thomas had to admit, even if he was the one it was meant to eliminate.
As he reached down to take the shuttered lamp from Gideon, something moved in the comer of his eye. Thomas dropped the lamp onto the table and studied the darkness, trying to decide if the hesitant motion was actually there or in his imagination.
The flicker of light escaping from the edges of the lamp's iron cover touched the room with moving shadows. With the toe of his boot Thomas knocked the lantern slide up.
The wan candlelight was reflected from a dozen points around the unoccupied room, from lacquered cabinets, the gilt leather of a chair, the metallic threads in brocaded satin hangings.
Then the wooden cherub supporting die right-hand corner of the table Thomas was standing on turned its head.
He took an involuntary step backward.
"Captain, what is it?" Gideon's whisper was harsh.
Thomas didn't answer. He was looking around the room as the faces in the floral carving over the chimneypiece shifted their blank white eyes, their tiny mouths working silently. The