The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  And let that be another lesson to you, chided his voice in her head.

  “Oh, leave me alone,” she muttered.

  “Captal? Anything wrong?”

  “Nothing, Lusira.”

  5

  They’d fixed the drain cover.

  After his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Collan strode to the middle of the cell and crouched down to pry up the two-foot circle of iron latticework in the floor. His memory of previous hospitality in Renig Jail was a trifle faulty; he’d been pretty drunk at the time and didn’t recall which cell he’d been thrown into. He knew how he’d gotten out, though.

  Maybe they’d put him in the wrong cell.

  “Why are you here?” demanded a familiar, annoyed voice in the dark.

  He wedged his fingertips into the spaces between the bars and yanked hard enough to wrench his shoulders. The drain cover gave not an inch.

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  He tried again, then felt around the grille’s edge. It used to be screwed to the iron frame of the vertical drainpipe. Now it was cemented into slots cut into the flagstone around it.

  “I could’ve told you it won’t budge.”

  Definitely they’d put him in the wrong cell.

  “Now that we’ve established that, perhaps you’ll tell me what stupidity landed you in here when you should be out there.”

  Saints knew he was trying, but she was a difficult woman to ignore. Just his luck to be stuck in a cell with Almighty First Daughter Lady Sarra.

  “I thought you knew how to get out of Renig Jail. Evidently you’re better at getting in.”

  A feeble breath of night air touched his cheek. Prior experience told him that what passed for a window was a narrow slit twelve feet up the outer wall. Hopeless.

  “Damn you, talk to me!”

  “I’m trying to think! Will you shut the hell up?”

  She subsided for all of five minutes—long enough for him to ascertain with the tooth of his belt buckle that the cement was pick-proof. Then she said, “Don’t you ever speak to me that way again.”

  Rolling his eyes, he straightened up and by poking around with his boot found a mess of more or less clean straw in the far corner. He stretched out on it. “Command understood. Get some sleep.” At least that would shut her up.

  To his astonishment, her cloak landed on his bare chest. The fine wool was warm, and smelled of her.

  “Put that over you, you’ll freeze.”

  As he sat up to wrap the cloak around him, he suggested, “We could share.”

  Her silence eloquently expressed her preference: she’d rather freeze.

  “Thanks, First Daughter,” he said wryly.

  “What happened to your clothes, anyway?”

  For an instant he tensed. But though the lamplight in the hall was faint, in this pitch blackness she’d shied away from it as the cell door opened. And surely if she’d seen the mark on his shoulder she would have said something. He said easily, “Lost ’em in a fight.”

  “Is that why you’re in here?”

  “More or less.” He lay back and shut his eyes. The world circled gently, like the slow arcs of a hunting hawk riding the wind in search of prey. “Might as well go to sleep, First Daughter.”

  “Shouldn’t we stay awake? Won’t they be coming for us soon?”

  “Believe me, we’ll know when they do.”

  She was quiet for a moment. Then: “Who’d you have the fight with?”

  He couldn’t answer because he didn’t quite remember. But it had felt good.

  “Collan, will you please tell me—”

  “Why don’t you tell me something?” he interrupted. “Why do you want to hold this revolution, anyway?”

  The nearby straw rustled. “You make it sound like a Saint’s Day Ball.”

  “Both need advance planning,” he observed. “How’re you going to do it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘how’?”

  “Just that. March on the Council and Assembly?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Capture strategic towns, set up your own government, and work on the rest of the world when you’ve got a power base?”

  There was a pause, as if Sarra was thinking this over. Collan repressed a sigh; she really didn’t have a clue.

  “No,” she said at length.

  “Then how?”

  “First a public identification of the enemy, so that people know what the threat is. The Malerrisi, Anniyas—”

  “And Feiran, father and daughter. All of ’em with magic to burn and then some. What’ve you got but a collection of Mages and a bunch of non-Mageborns and absolutely no idea how to use ’em?”

  “We have Cailet.”

  “A Captal who doesn’t know how to be a Captal. Lady, pardon my bluntness, but are you crazy?”

  “Things have to change.”

  “Who says people want things changed?”

  With supreme confidence: “They will when they understand the danger.”

  Collan sighed. “So explain it to me.”

  Another shifting of straw, as if she’d turned to face him. He imagined her lying on her side, propped on one elbow, blonde hair straying into black eyes.

  “The Lords of Malerris will run everyone’s lives. We’ll all be little cogwheels in a great big clock—”

  He snorted. “You think that’s not true now?”

  “People have a choice!” she replied heatedly. “What if somebody told you that you couldn’t be a Minstrel, you had to be a miner?”

  “Nobody’d tell me any such thing. I’m far too good a Minstrel.”

  “And modest with it, too.”

  “No point in lying. Keep on about how awful things would be. Convince me, First Daughter.”

  “You live your life as you please. Maybe you can’t understand what it is to be forced into something you don’t want to do.”

  “Is that how your life has been? Seems to me you’ve had it pretty much your own way so far. Rich, powerful—”

  “—and with a bounty on my head!” she exclaimed.

  “Mai Alvassy’s head,” he corrected. “And why shouldn’t they want you captured and killed? The government sees you as the enemy. You want the power they now hold. What makes you think you’ve any more right to it than they?”

  “The lawfully elected Assembly and Council don’t run the government. Anniyas does, and the Lords of Malerris.”

  He very nearly laughed. “Elected? Lawful? There’s not one of ’em didn’t buy her seat one way or another.”

  “Something else that will change,” she stated.

  “What makes you think you’ve got the right to change things? No, don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re right, the Malerrisi’re wrong, and there’s an end to it. Just answer the original question: why would people want change? What would be better?”

  “Marriage, for a start. Present custom is obscene. Like a slave auction.”

  He repressed a wince even though she couldn’t see him. “Go on.”

  “Women should give their property to their sons if they please, instead of everything going to the First Daughter. Men should own property in their own names even after marriage, and dispose of it as they see fit.” She paused, and her voice grew curiously sad. “Divorced husbands and unmarried fathers should see their children.”

  Of all his intimate conversations with women in the middle of the night, this was inarguably the strangest. That he was enjoying it gave him a momentary qualm about his sanity.

  “Those are changes in society, not the way government works. I’ll concede you’ve got some good ideas. But they’ve nothing to do with me. And most of Lenfell will say the same thing.”

  “They have everything to do with you. If you got married, who’d take possession of the money you’ve earned and do with it exactly as she plea
sed?”

  “Married?” Collan laughed. “Not me, Lady!”

  “But it’s not just social change, it’s philosophical change. The right to choose what to do with your life. The Malerrisi would decide for you. We are right, Collan, and they are wrong. Once the people see that and understand—”

  “What do you know about the people?” he demanded, more harshly than intended. “You’re an innocent and a fool, First Daughter. You want to know what the people care about? Keeping children fed and clothed. Keeping wind and rain out in winter. Keeping what they have. They grumble at taxes, but they’ll put up with any government that doesn’t change what they know.”

  After a long silence, she murmured, “I see. They put up with the destruction of Ambrai. They put up with the loss of Mage Guardians. But I tell you they won’t put up with the Malerrisi telling them how to live.”

  “Won’t they?”

  “Don’t you understand? If we don’t do something now—”

  “Sarra, listen!” He sat up and damned near shouted across the cell toward her voice. “Nobody cares about Ambrai except those who used to live there! Whatever Mages used to do, teachers and doctors and hired swords do it now! You Mageborns keep forgetting what happened the last time you fought it out! You and your kind made The Waste! Why the hell should anybody join your Rising if it means that kind of war again and that kind of misery?”

  “Because my life is mine, not theirs!”

  Her cry from the heart wrung something inside him, squeezing blood from a rock of fear in his guts. It was why he’d killed Scraller, this fear; it was, in the end, why he hadn’t seized the first chance to escape these crazy people who would challenge Anniyas and the Malerrisi.

  His life belonged to him.

  And his Wards? To whom did they belong?

  He could have been rid of them. Cailet had offered. But he’d chosen to keep them. They were his, part of him.

  And this knowledge sprang from places the Wards didn’t even touch. There were levels in his mind and awareness now, like stacked song folios on a shelf containing memories from childhood and adulthood, aspects of his personality and character, things he knew and things he was. That his Wards were of his own choosing was at the very bottom of the piled volumes. He knew they were his.

  And the Malerrisi would take them away to find out who he was without them.

  “All right, Sarra. For what it’s worth, I’m with you.”

  “At least until you’re out of Renig Jail,” she said cynically.

  For a time he simply couldn’t speak. Then he lunged toward her, snagging one of her shoulders and an elbow in the dimness. “I could’ve left you a hundred times by now!” he hissed into her unseen face. “If I say I’m with you, then I’m with you, First Daughter!”

  “Let go of me!” There was real panic in her voice, the fear of a woman who has never dreamed any man would dare to lay rough hands on her.

  He released her and drew breath to apologize. Then he saw the faint golden glint of her hair.

  He turned to the tiny window high in the wall and squinted. Light. The palest, most elusive hint of dawn. . . .

  Cailet should have been here hours ago.

  6

  “I can’t! It won’t move!”

  Cailet heard the echo of her own words again and again, each repetition stinging her cheeks anew with shame. Collan had described his exit route from Renig Jail and she’d been positive it would be the simplest thing in the world to reverse the process. Find the sewer grate, pry it loose, crawl down the shaft, turn left, turn right, push the flagstone up in the cell—

  She couldn’t get the grate open. She’d put her magic to it, and failed. The men had put their strength to it, and failed. Application of magic plus brute force yielded nothing but a headache for her and sore muscles for them. The grate was cemented into its iron frame. Why hadn’t she anticipated this, planned for it, figured out a way around it—

  Because I’m arrogant and unsubtle, and I think I know everything about everything. Gorsha made me Captal, but he couldn’t make me smart.

  She couldn’t loosen the grate from the cement, she couldn’t melt the iron to a puddle of molten metal, she couldn’t chip away the stone, she couldn’t do a damned thing. They’d all been so kind about it. Not her fault, couldn’t have known, must be another way. She nearly choked on their generosity.

  And now, with the dawn, other words began to repeat inside her head: “Try him at Seventh, convict him by Eighth, execute him at Ninth.” Only it wouldn’t be just Collan. It would be Sarra and Elin and Falundir, and all the other Mages and adherents of the Rising held in Renig Jail.

  Taig spent the long hours before daybreak plotting with Keler. Cailet listened to them explain things to the others and felt worse than useless. All her new magic and knowledge and power, and she could only listen. Only follow them to the Council House. Only stand silent guard while the prisoners were brought into the courtroom.

  Falundir alone was serene. Somehow his calmly confident half-smile wounded Cailet more than the worry or fear or betrayal in the eyes of the others.

  Lusira strode to Justice Inara Lunne’s chambers to lodge another protest. She returned almost immediately, grim-lipped. A moment before the Justice entered the courtroom, a thin little woman who reminded Cailet of nothing so much as a nervous galazhi hurried in. Her red tunic and gold Hollow Circle badge marked her as an Advocate; the Spoked Wheel within the Circle further identified her as an Annison. Justice Lunne frowned down from the carved desk on a raised dais that served as the bench.

  “Agva, what are you doing here? I thought your sister’s First Daughter was about to deliver.”

  “Last night, Justice—but it was only a boy, so my duties are over. Your pardon for being late. I was only told half an hour ago that my name headed the list of available Advocates for the Defense.” She shuffled papers as she talked, her words as fidgety as her fingers. “In the circumstances, I would ask for a delay so I may familiarize myself with the specifics of each case, if the Justice would be so kind—”

  “Advocate Annison, there will be no delays.” Inara Lunne brought her gavel down on the desktop to make it official, and the bored clerk made a note in his ledger. “The prisoners are as guilty of crimes as the rest of us are of breathing. They’ll all be convicted without any of us even working up a sweat.”

  “I haven’t talked to any of them!” the Advocate wailed.

  “Nothing they say is worth hearing, I’m sure. The clerk will read the charge sheets. For efficiency, I’ve combined cases as the offenses warrant.”

  At school, Cailet had learned how trials were conducted, and on a field trip had seen the Courtroom at Combel. Renig’s was much grander, as befitted the capital of a Shir. All the chairs and the low fences around the witness, prisoner, and condemned boxes were carved of expensive wood. The roof was a fine stained-glass dome. Portraits of Garony the Righteous, Gorynel the Compassionate, and Venkelos the Judge were painted on the walls. Behind the Justice’s bench was a gilt-plaster medallion of the Council Eagle clutching the Arrows of the Anniyas Blood.

  Though familiar with the proceedings in principle, Cailet had never seen Lenfell’s jurisprudence at work. Its swiftness was literally breathtaking. The Mage Guardians were called forward by the clerk, who accused them of sedition. Agva Annison pled them all not guilty. Justice Lunne rattled off the facts of their arrest while attempting to flee Renig. Two officers of the Watch gave verbal evidence of magical assault (there being no physical evidence), then departed without Agva Annison’s directing a single question at them. The Mages were asked to speak in their own defense. Not one of them said a word.

  “Very well. It is the verdict of this Court that the accused are guilty as charged. The sentence is death, to be carried out at the end of these proceedings.” The gavel banged down. “Next.”

  It had taken fifteen minutes.

 
Those associated with the Rising were dealt with next. From accusation to sentencing, their trial was half the length of the Mages’. After a squint at the long-case clock by the door, Justice Lunne ordered someone to fetch her a vanilla-cinnamon (extra sugar) from the coffee bar down the street. Elomar volunteered, earning a nasty look from Lusira; fetch-and-carry was beneath the dignity of the Council Guard. Then Falundir was called to the box and accused of composing and disseminating treasonous songs. The coffee had not yet arrived before the Bard joined the ranks of the condemned.

  Only three people were left in the box holding the accused. Collan looked bored; Sarra, tense; Elin, determined.

  “Mai Alvassy.”

  Sarra stepped forward. Cailet watched in bewilderment, hearing Lusira catch her breath softly and Taig’s muttered curse, as Elin joined her.

  “I am Elin Alvassy, and this woman is not my sister.”

  The Justice set down her coffee. “Don’t try to confuse the issue, girl.”

  “I am attempting to clarify it. She is not Mai Alvassy.”

  “Clerk, bring me the accused’s identity disk.”

  Grinning, the man reached for Sarra’s shirt. She gave him a glare to ignite ice cubes and brought out the disk herself, slipping the chain over her head.

  After due examination, the Justice said, “Her identity as Mai Alvassy is confirmed.”

  “On the evidence of a stolen disk?” Elin cast a scathing glance at Sarra. “I am an Alvassy of Ambrai,” she went on, and her Blood haughtiness was such that she could have given lessons to Geria Ostin. “I refuse to allow this woman to pose as one of my ancient Name.”

  Justice Lunne took a long swallow from her cup. “Nonsense.”

  “She is no more an Alvassy than you are, and I demand that she not be tried under that Name.”

  Lunne had been a Fourth Tier Name, and nothing was more calculated to annoy a Fourth Tier than a display of Blood arrogance. Cailet poked a finger into Taig’s side and whispered, “What is she doing?”

  He shook his head, as mystified as she.

  “The charge sheet reads Mai Alvassy,” said the Justice with an awful frown. “The identity disk reads Mai Alvassy. She is Mai Alvassy. And even if she isn’t—”