The Element of Fire, page 181 by Martha Wells
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t's far too late. It may already be too late.
The old sorcerer said, "Perhaps the time for the masquerade is over anyway. But I think I've been found out."
"It's a priest's report of Grandier's...of your confession during your trial." Thomas slid the document across the table, but the sorcerer didn't take the bait and reach for it. Thomas kept expecting the mask to drop but it didn't. It was still Dubell's face, Dubell's eyes. Dubell's look of regret.
"Indeed," Urbain Grandier said softly. "I didn't expect to have anyone take it seriously. Not in Bisra, at least. They all believed I was hand in glove with the Prince of Hell, you know. As to how the incriminating document followed me here, I suppose I can credit the Church's league of brotherly spies."
The fire popped loudly in the silence. Thomas felt the extreme danger that lay in carrying on this conversation but was unable to stop. Knowing and believing were two different things. If a weapon had been in reach, there was a good chance he would have hesitated with it, and that would have been fatal. And he looked up at me over Trevile's dead body and said, "I'm sorry." He said, "Did you do it when you kidnapped him from Lodun?"
Grandier looked mildly surprised. "Oh, no. It was long before that. I kidnapped myself, you see."
It would have had to be that way. Dr. Surete's death, and Milam's. It was simplicity itself, he told us, if one had the stomach for it. Grandier watched him with a dead man's eyes. Thomas said, "Why haven't you let the Host in yet? That's part of your bargain, isn't it? Your payment to them."
"The Unseelie Court did me a great service," Grandier agreed. "I owe them much. The first shape I took was that of the man who served as the secular judge at that farce the Inquisition deemed my trial. He was so cold, so forbidding even to his own family that aping his manner presented no challenge. He was powerful, and I took my revenge as I liked. I lived as him for nearly half a y