The Element of Fire

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The Element of Fire
by Martha Wells

Introduction
The Element of Fire was my first novel, written around 1990, when I was 26. It was published in hardcover in 1993 and paperback in 1994, by Tor Books. It was published in Italy in 1995, Russia in 1997, Poland in 1998, in France, by l'Atalante, in 2002, and will be published in Spanish by Bibliopolis. It was a finalist for the 1993 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award and a runner-up for the 1994 Crawford Award. And it's almost impossible to find in the US, so I'm posting it here.
It was the first Ile-Rien book, before I knew there were going to be any other Ile-Rien books. Since then Vienne, altered by time, war, and general rough usage, has been a setting for The Death of the Necromancer (nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998 and also becoming impossible to find in the US) and The Wizard Hunters, The Ships of Air, and The Gate of Gods, available in paperback from HarperCollins. Kade Carrion also appears in the short story "The Potter's Daughter" in the anthology Elemental, edited by Steve Savile and Alethea Kontis, published in 2006 by Tor Books.
The text posted here does not match the original US edition; I've edited it to make the prose a little smoother and more in line with my current style, but haven't made any substantial changes to plot, storyline, characterization, or anything else.

The Element of Fire
by Martha Wells
And New Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to looke for it.
-John Donne
"An Anatomie of the World"
Chapter One
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 of Thomas 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 failed 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 divine 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 better done if I hadn't been saddled with a sorcerer who has obviously 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