Dave Duncan - When the Saints

“Thank you. Last night you listed your duties for me, but you did not mention blocking assassination attempts.”

Surely nobody else could shrug so seductively. “I don’t have to. Even supposing anyone wanted to kill the dolt, who would try it here in the palace? He’s always with a group of other boys, and usually some of them are armed. He eats out of the same pots, drinks from the same bottles. Even if someone tried, I would hear of it and reverse it, unless it was a very fast death.”

“He isn’t in the palace now, he’s out hunting, and that’s exactly where most assassinations are tried. There are weapons, and lots of cover. Why don’t you go with him on the hunts?”

She shuddered, another very widespread movement. “Don’t be stupid. Any riding I do is done right here, in bed. Fending off assassination attempts is not included in my list of duties.”

“Has that always been the case, or has the list recently been changed?”

She fluttered eyelashes at him again. “Whatever do you mean?”

He could not threaten her; she was a Speaker and would simply disappear. “When you came to collect me last night, who put you up to it? It wasn’t Crown Prince Konrad who sent you, as you said. Who was it?”

Darina slid off the bed and walked straight at him. He stepped aside hastily and she continued on to a closet to find a wrap. Golden hair flowed down her back to her hips.

She said over her shoulder, “Two nights after your brother slaughtered the hunt at Chestnut Hill, he was pointed out to me at a ball. Next day I heard Cabbage Head screaming that the Magnus madman had been made a count, so I Looked in on him. He was obviously already in Castle Gallant, ten days’ ride away. He has no nimbus. It didn’t take me long to find you.” She headed for the fireplace.

“Who’s planning to kill him, Darina?”

Smiling mockingly at him, she took hold of the bell rope and tugged. “That’s not my problem.”

“Then your cadger forbade you to defend him?”

She smiled and said, “Can’t say,” offhandedly. “I just thought the famous Magnus loyalty might be interested.”

“So that was why you came and fetched me from Gallant last night?”

Shrug. “Can’t say.”

“You’re on the prince’s side, then?”

She seemed surprised by the question. “I suppose I am. He’s a moron, but not usually malicious. He’s bored crazy, because Zdenek won’t let him do anything.”

“Why does he pretend to be such a pervert if he isn’t?” Wulf realized that he was desperate to hear that there was something there worth saving.

Darina turned to stare at him appraisingly. “You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you? I don’t know, because he was doing it when I was assigned to him. He was barely shaving then.”

“Guess for me. You know him.”

“He may have started it to get back at his grandfather for ignoring him. He got the whole court seething with scandal. Now everyone’s surfeited and lost interest, but he can’t stop.”

“What will he do when he becomes king?”

That was easier. “Whatever it is will be a disaster.”

“The Bavarian war really was his idea, then?”

“Before my time,” Darina said. “I haven’t been here quite two years yet, but that’s what I was told: he talked his grandfather into it. The old man was senile already, but he could still speak then, after a fashion. It was Cabbage Head’s war, though.”

Wulf’s worst fears were confirmed. He knew now what he was going to have to do, and the wraiths of a dozen generations of Magnuses moaned in the shadows.

“I am very grateful for your help,” he said. “I hope I can return the favor sometime. Meanwhile, I don’t know my way around the palace yet. Could you put me where I could get in to see Cardinal Zdenek?”

Darina cocked an eyebrow at him. “If he feels like it, he’ll make you wait a week.”

“I haven’t got a week.” Less than an hour.

Knuckles tapped on the door.

“That’s my maid,” she said, “to help me get ready for a gentleman visitor. I’ll show you Zdenek’s exit door. Petitioners go in through the anteroom and out this way. The moment he’s alone, barge in, if you have the courage.”

It wasn’t hard to smile at such a lovely face. “No courage, just desperation. Thank you for your help.”

The marquessa opened a gate for him.

Wulf found himself standing on a small landing at the top of a long staircase. A single door presumably led into the cardinal’s office. No, there was no handle on this side, so it only led out. There was nowhereb, to sit except the steps themselves, but the window offered a fine view over the rooftops of the capital-where he had once spent three weeks, about a hundred years ago.

He had a problem, the sort of problem workadays had all the time but a Speaker should be able to overcome. He needed to know what Zdenek was doing, but could not Look through his eyes because he had never met him. A couple of hours ago he would have been baffled, but now he tried what d’Estouteville had suggested: he simply wished that he could see through that particular door. The massive enameled and gilded oak became like smoky glass for him.

The Scarlet Spider was seated on a chair as grand as a throne, scowling down at a pudgy, rubicund man of middle years, seriously overdressed, like a burgomaster anxious to display his wealth. He had been left on his knees to plead his case, which could not be doing his fancy silken hose much good. His complaints about too much tax being collected in his city seemed to be falling on deaf ears.

Wulf leaned back against the wall and thought about tweaking. When he had first learned of it, he had been disgusted. It was forbidden by the second commandment, but its use must be impossible to prove unless another Speaker was present to witness it happening. Wulf had seen Marek tweak a guard and Alojz Zauber tweak the bishops, and in each case there had been a flash visible to other Speakers. Even if he were to tweak some workaday when there was no other Speaker present, he could never be certain that one was not Looking from afar. Yet now it seemed that duty, personal survival, and his hopes of marrying Madlenka were all going to require him to use tweaking. Father Czcibor had taught him that the devil could always show people how to justify their sins.

Wulf had not been joking when he told Otto he was between the clashing rocks. Both cardinals employed Speakers to defend themselves against tweaking, so he could not manipulate either of them that way. But unless he could change Zdenek’s mind about the Louis-Laima betrothal, d’Estouteville would let Brother Luigi have him. Which brought him back to the Inquisition and a full realization of how terrified he was. Terror was the inquisitors’ business. Whole families could vanish into the darkness. Acquittal in the secret trials was almost unknown, and anyone who did emerge into daylight again was scarred, impoverished, and universally shunned.

Dark as a thundercloud, and escorted by a Franciscan friar with a nimbus, the burgomaster came stumping over to the door. Wulf caught it as it swung open. The fat man jumped in alarm, but Wulf just smiled and begged his pardon. Then he stepped into Zdenek’s office.

The friar spun around in a swirl of robe and his nimbus flamed bright. Wulf ran into a perfectly transparent wall that felt hard as steel. He thought, I wish this wasn’t here, and the wall disappeared. The friar was tall, with reddish hair and an eye patch. He was quite young, but when Wulf made no offensive move, he did not retaliate; just stood there, watching him warily.

“Wulfgang Magnus, Your Eminence. You want to see me, I understand?”