Chandeliers and Knives

Kaelen saw the chandelier move before he understood what he was seeing.

It was a trick of the eye at first, a slow swell in the light as though the whole vault had inhaled. Then the chain above the dais groaned, and a sound ran through the Hall like a sigh, and two hundred painted faces tilted up together to watch a ring of gilded iron the size of a farm cart begin its long descent toward the floor.

"Sweet Saints," said someone. "It's falling."

"It's not falling," said Kaelen.

He said it aloud, without thinking, and a dozen heads turned. It was true. It was not falling. The chain paid out evenly, hand over hand, with the measured creak of a well-oiled winch; the great wheel of candles swayed a little as it dropped, and a rain of wax-drips pattered down on the dancers beneath. Somewhere in the gallery a mechanism was turning. Someone was lowering it on purpose.

The candles, Lyra.

She had told him of the note in the chapel, a quarter-hour before the Feast. He had not understood it. He understood it now, with a lurch of cold certainty, as he saw her across the floor with her hand locked on the Duke's sleeve and her gray eyes enormous, mouthing a single word.

Breathe.

No. Don't breathe.

He started to run.

…

The Hall broke like a dropped plate.

It took perhaps three heartbeats. The music stopped in the middle of a bar, a flute going off with a squeak. A woman screamed. Then the whole dancing floor was a churning sea of silk and satin, two hundred people all trying to leave by the same four doors, and the Sun Guard along the walls were shouting and shoving and no one could hear a word.

"Halt!" Kaelen bellowed. "In the King's name, halt!"

Nobody halted.

He cut through the crowd like a ship through brash ice. Elbows hit his ribs. A lady's fan scored his cheek. He saw the Duke of Marrowmere, white-faced, shielding Lyra with his body, and Lyra shoving him off and climbing on a chair. She was shouting something. He caught only scraps over the roar.

"—the candles! The wax—it's Void! Put them out! Put out the—"

Nobody heard her.

Kaelen reached the foot of the dais, and found the King standing on the throne.

Tobias Everard had climbed up onto the cushion in his white satin and his stiff gold collar, and he stood there with his arms spread wide and his circlet knocked over one ear. He looked about twelve. He looked, thought Kaelen with a distracted flash of admiration, exactly like a boy who has just remembered that he is the king.

"SILENCE!" cried Tobias.

His voice cracked on the second syllable and rang off the vault like a bell.

Silence fell.

It fell in a ripple, from the dais outward, two hundred mouths closing. The King stood for a moment with his chest heaving and his blue eyes blazing, and then, in a very different voice, thin, clear, and extraordinarily composed, he said:

"Thank you. Now. Someone in this Hall has information that all of us need. It's the lady on the chair." He pointed. "Lady Lyra. Say it again. Slowly."

Lyra, white to the lips, drew breath.

"Every candle in this room is laced with Void-wax," she said. "It looks like beeswax. It burns like beeswax. But each flame gives off a vapor that dissolves magic and, in enough quantity, the lungs of whoever breathes it. It's slow. It's meant to be slow. It's been burning for four hours." She swallowed. "Do not run. Running makes you breathe harder. Walk. Cover your mouths with wet cloth. Go to the windows. And don't touch the flames."

A babble of voices broke out.

"Who's to say she's not—"

"A Symbol-Breaker, she'd say anything—"

"The Captain's pet witch—"

"Silence," said Tobias again, more quietly. He had not raised his voice. "I'll have the next man who speaks out of turn put in the cellars with the wine." A brief, appalled hush. "That's a promise. I'm told I'm very bad at keeping the other kind." He turned to the nearest steward, a plump terrified man in the livery of the Palace, and said, "Open every window. Every one. Now. And get me the snuffers."

"S-snuffers, sire?"

"The long brass candle-snuffers, man! The ones on poles! You must have a hundred!"

"In the pantry, Your Majesty—"

"Then fetch them. And bring every footman in the Palace. If there's a flame in this room in the next ten minutes that isn't out, I shall be extremely cross."

The steward ran.

Kaelen realized he was staring. He closed his mouth.

"Don't look so surprised, Captain," said the King, from the throne. "I've been reading about fire safety. There's nothing else to do in that tower."

…

It took eleven minutes to put out two thousand candles.

Kaelen counted them, because it was something to count. The windows banged open, one after another, and a thin cold wind from the river swept through the Hall, guttering the flames and thinning the air. The footmen came in a flood from the pantry, forty or fifty of them, each with a brass snuffer on a pole, and under the Scholar's quiet, ceaseless direction they moved down the Hall in rows like harvesters, putting out light after light after light. The great chandeliers came down on their chains, one by one, until they hung in the middle of the floor like enormous dead flowers, and the Hall grew gradually dim.

By the time the last taper died, there were no more than a dozen lanterns left, and the nobles stood in huddles by the open windows, coughing, wrapped in damp napkins, staring up at the black ceiling.

"Fascinating," said Cassian, at Kaelen's elbow.

"What?"

"The way no one has asked who lowered the chandeliers."

Kaelen turned.

The Duke had lost his cloak. His hair stood up in wild tufts. There was a smear of wax across one cheek, and the careless glint had gone out of his green eyes, leaving them sharp and hard as a hawk's.

"Because the answer," said Cassian, softly, "is a man who wants us alive."

"Yes."

"Which means he is not the man who lit them."

"No."

"Do you know who it is?"

"I have an idea." Kaelen kept his voice even. "Not one I can say aloud."

"Then say it later." Cassian's gaze slid past his shoulder. "Because I have another, and I should like you to look at it now. Behind you. At the third pillar from the door."

Kaelen did not turn at once. He thought of nothing. He took a slow breath through his nose, lifted his goblet from a passing tray, and pivoted on his heel, as if to speak to someone, with an expression of vague unconcern.

There were three of them.

They stood near the third pillar, close together, in the brown livery of the Palace footmen. They had snuffers in their hands. Their faces were unremarkable. Their boots were not. They were good boots, heavy-soled, soldier's boots, and they stood with the weight on the balls of the feet.

All three were watching the Duke of Marrowmere.

"They've been circling," said Cassian. "Since the candles went out. I thought it was the dark." He smiled his charming, brittle smile. "I think now that it was a cue."

"Stay by the King."

"I'd prefer to be somewhere less obvious."

"There's nowhere less obvious than the King," said Kaelen, "in a room full of lamps."

He set down his goblet.

…

It began without a sound.

One moment the three footmen stood at the pillar. The next they were moving, fast and quiet, snuffers dropping, hands emerging from sleeves with a flash of steel. Short blades. Straight, narrow, unadorned. The knives of men who had killed before and did not intend to be remembered.

Kaelen had no time to draw. He did the only thing he could. He lunged sideways, caught the Duke by the collar, and hurled him bodily behind the dais. The first knife passed through the space where Cassian's heart had been. The second took Kaelen across the forearm. He felt it open, hot and thin, and the third went into the throne where Tobias had been sitting a moment before.

The King was no longer there.

"Down!" shouted Tobias.

He had thrown himself off the throne and onto the first assassin's back, with the single-minded fury of a cat. They went down in a tangle of satin and brown wool. The man cursed. The King, a boy of eighteen who had never so much as drawn a practice sword, sank his teeth into the assassin's ear.

"Sire!"

"I'm fine!" cried Tobias, through a mouthful of ear. "I'm perfectly... ow!"

The Sun Guard came pouring in a moment later, Dain at their head, shouting, and the Hall became a roar of steel and boots. Kaelen cut down the second assassin with one stroke, caught the third's wrist as it came down, and drove his knee into the man's belly. The knife clattered away. There was a crack as the man's head struck the pillar, and he slid to the floor with a long, slow sigh.

It was over in less than a minute.

Kaelen stood panting, blood dripping from his sleeve, and counted. One dead. One dying. One, the biter's victim, groaning under the King. And the King himself, sprawled across the man's chest with his circlet gone and his collar askew and a smear of someone else's blood on his chin.

"Sire," said Kaelen, hoarsely.

"Captain." Tobias spat. "I've decided I don't like the taste of human ear."

"I'd have thought not."

"It's rather gamey."

Kaelen bent, hauled him to his feet, and found, to his surprise, that he was laughing. It hurt his ribs. It was a short helpless bark, and when the King looked up at him with an expression of pure outraged delight, the laugh broke into a wheeze.

"Don't," said Tobias. "You'll make me do it too."

"Forgive me, Majesty."

"I forgive you. Be quiet." The boy's voice wobbled. He swayed a little, and Kaelen put out a steadying hand. "Is anyone else hurt?"

"I don't believe so."

"The Duke?"

"Alive," said Cassian, from behind the dais. He emerged slowly, adjusting his torn sleeve with a studied air. "And in your debt. Both of you. I find it extraordinarily annoying."

"You'll live."

"I certainly intend to." He knelt beside the biter's victim and turned him over. "Hm."

"What?"

"Look at his ring."

…

Kaelen looked.

It was a plain silver ring on the man's smallest finger, scratched and worn, with a signet cut in the face. He did not need to bend closer. He knew what it would be. His stomach had already gone cold and heavy as lead.

A six-petaled flower in a rhombus.

"Another," said Dain, from behind him.

"Yes."

"Sir, this is the third time today."

"I can count, Lieutenant."

"But it's... it's too many. It's like someone's leaving a calling card." Dain's freckled face was gray. "Sir, nobody's that stupid. Not even the dumbest assassin in the realm. You wouldn't wear your master's ring to a murder."

"Unless you were meant to be caught."

"Or unless someone wanted us to find it."

The words dropped into the quiet like a stone.

Kaelen turned.

Lyra was standing at the edge of the circle, still in the silver gown, with her hair coming down and a smear of soot across her cheek. She had been listening. She looked at the ring, and at him, and her pale gray eyes were very steady.

"It's the third," she said quietly. "And every time, it's shown to us as if on a tray. Why?"

"To make us suspect the Cardinal."

"Yes."

"Which means someone wants us to suspect the Cardinal."

"Or someone wants us to stop suspecting him." Her voice was very low. "Think. Each time we find it, you go to Malakor. You ask him. He tells you it was stolen, and you believe him. Every time it makes you trust him more." She drew a breath. "It's the oldest trick in the Archive. You show the suspect's hand so often that the reader stops seeing the fingers."

Kaelen opened his mouth. He found that he had nothing to say.

It was cold, and clean, and horribly plausible. He thought of the Cardinal's face in the study. Soft brown eyes. A hand on his hair. I would be astonished if she had not.

"I need to think," he said.

"Yes."

"Not now. I can't. There's the King. And the Hall." He passed a hand over his face. "Where's your friend?"

"What?"

"The girl. Wren." He looked around. "She was to be at your side tonight, wasn't she? As your maid?"

Lyra's face changed.

It was not a large change. A tightening round the eyes, a stillness. But he saw her glance round the Hall, once, and again, a quick hunting sweep that passed over every face, every corner, every open door. He saw her lips part.

"She went to fetch my satchel," said Lyra slowly. "From the sewing room. At nine. She said she'd be back by half past." She stopped. "It's half past eleven."

"Dain."

"Sir!"

"The sewing room. Now."

The lieutenant sprinted.

Nobody spoke. Kaelen watched Lyra stand there, motionless in her dead girl's gown, with her bandaged hand pressed to her mouth and the wreck of the Feast spread around her: the wilted chandeliers, the overturned tables, the blood already drying on the marble. Somewhere in the distance a clock chimed the quarter. She had gone gray as paper.

He took one stride, and put his arm round her.

She did not resist. She turned her face into his shoulder, and stood very still, and in that moment, in front of two hundred nobles, a king, a duke, and a half-circle of staring guards, the Captain of the Sun held his betrothed against his chest and thought: It is not a lie any more.

Dain's footsteps came pounding back along the corridor.

He was alone.

He held something in his outstretched hands. It was small, and wet, and made of embroidered cloth. A shawl. A ragged brown shawl with a thread of green along the hem.

"Sir," said Dain. His voice shook. "It was on the floor. By the window. The sewing room's empty. The needle's still on the table. And the satchel's gone."

Lyra made a small sound.

"There was something pinned to it," said Dain. "Look."

A square of gray paper, pinned through the wool with a needle. Three words in a hand Kaelen knew now as well as his own.

I'm sorry, Lyra.