Free The Spirit Lens by Carol Berg

puppet.”
    “A certain distance might work to your advantage, Master.” I dropped my eyes that he might not think me staring at his ropelike scars. “And with your permission, of course, we can teach you whatever you need to know of court life, can we not, Chevalier?”
    Ilario hunched his shoulders without even a sidewise glance at Dante. “I’ll loan my tailor and my barber, but . . . some tasks are impossible.”
    Dante hoisted himself up with his stick and strode back toward the path and the house. Before I could decide whether to chase him down, he halted, spun in place, and jabbed a finger toward Ilario. “Dress me like this strutting cock, and I still could not get near them. Do I walk up to the gate and apply for the position of queen’s assassin?”
    “I made you an offer three days ago,” said Ilario, dabbing at his nose with a lace kerchief. “You scoffed.”
    “And in which layer of lies was this offer couched?”
    “Please, Master. Please, Chevalier!” How was I to harness these two most irritating men, both of whom outranked me? “We are charged with our kingdom’s safety. Philippe has reason to believe another attempt at murder will be made on the twenty-fifth day of Cinq—the anniversary of last year’s attempt, which happens also to be the seventh anniversary of his infant son’s death—which happens to be one-and-sixty days from this. Each of you has a unique gift to bring to the task.”
    “Give me the demonish glass, and I’ll divine its use,” said Dante, “perhaps even something of its maker. Give me the coin and the arrow. Such mysteries intrigue me. But do not expect me to pretend I care for an aristo’s domestic troubles. I’m as like to spit on him and be done with the matter. And it’s sure I’ll end up prisoned myself anyway, when the Camarilla gets wind of my heretical opinions. Find another plan.”
    I reached for patience. “Lord Ilario . . . graces . . . society throughout Castelle Escalon and the royal city. As he mentioned at our first meeting, his half sister has set herself the charge to support magical scholarship in rivalry to the king’s support of the new sciences. It would be only natural for the chevalier to bring her a new talent he has encountered. He can secure you a position—”
    “Pursuing magics that ‘many people might consider unsavory’? Those were your words, were they not, Chevalier?” snapped the mage. “So tell me, what are these unsavory wishes your mistress might ask me to indulge? Transference, perhaps? Enough to set me up as scapegoat for this crime?”
    “Certainly not,” I said. “Lord, you must explain.”
    No matter his pique, no matter his care for the queen’s reputation, Ilario could not hide this last piece of our puzzle. Neither could he pass it off with his usual foolery. “My lady has suffered an overburden of griefs in her life: our beloved parents lost to fire not a year after her too-early marriage; an adored husband, the late king, fallen in battle; her own child dead before his first birthday, a daughter stillborn, and two more miscarried. She seeks . . . solace.”
    “Surely these two jackleg mages can concoct a sleeping draught. Or is it illusions she wants?”
    Dante’s brutal frankness drove Ilario to his feet and into the night beyond the pool of lamplight. “Portier, this is most unseemly. I’ll not discuss a gracious lady with a damnable rogue.”
    “Mage Dante is our partner in this endeavor, lord chevalier, and has sworn to keep private all he hears. If you don’t tell him all, then I must, else we’ll never lift this cloud of suspicion from your royal sister. Better this come from one who can tell us her true mind . . . gently.”
    Evidently, Michel de Vernase had disdained Ilario, never bothering to interview him. And until Philippe himself had spoken to the chevalier, he did not comprehend the nature and intensity of his wife’s unhealthy yearnings.
    “They’ve tried illusions with varying