“Is he drunk?”
Tannyr had an office in the town hall. Then Anton Vile had turned the ground floor into a Post Office, and Tannyr had been driven out by a stream of packages, people, and business that meant nothing to him. He also had an office on the top floor of the house, stacked with important-looking knickknacks on his important-looking desk, but he only went there for privacy and to smoke his pipe. The kitchen was the centre of the farm. It had been since he was a boy, sitting at this self-same table getting his hands smacked with a ruler for not finishing his homework. Whenever he had anything important to do, he always ended up here. He pulled the papers back in front of him. The columns of numbers swam between the lines. He had no idea where he was expected to write his name.
“Your mother hasn’t cleaned properly,” he said to Dale, shuffling the papers. They might make more sense if read in a different order. “There are bits of you on the table.”
Dale gulped at the air, but no words of objection escaped. Tannyr tried to remember if he had been such a servile little puke when he was 17 years old. No. His own father, Vaddon Brek, beat that nonsense out of his sons.
“Is she out there?” Tannyr said.
Just as he thought, Ifanna hovered in the corridor out of sight. She slipped past her son and through the door; no mean feat given this was a woman who might more easily roll than walk. Tannyr picked up the quill and scraped it on the corner of the paper. The only mark it left was the scratch. Haf hadn’t let herself go after she’d had children. Haf still looked like she was thirty.
“You write this for me,” Tannyr said, and tossed the quill at Ifanna. His elbow caught the ink pot and it spilled. Black fluid flooded the bloodstains. “Clean up the table while you’re at it.”
He left her to sweep the papers away from the ink and went to the door. Dale had bruises on his hands. Tannyr didn’t begrudge the boy his initiative. Gods knew he wanted to land a few punches on Derec Garn himself. However, if Dale had held his temper, then Nathaniel Vile and the Magistrate might have stayed the night and be here to speak this morning. The mistreatment of Derec Garn had embarrassed Nathaniel and annoyed the Magistrate. Another problem to fix.
“Right then,” he bellowed, and pushed past Dale. When his voice echoed back, it came with a memory, his father Vaddon’s fists, and his father’s voice, “Stop whimpering, you servile little puke.” Tannyr, 15, maybe 16 years old, on his knees in this very hallway. The Battle of Demon’s Pass had killed Vaddon Brek, but how long did someone have to be dead before they stopped living in their house? Servile little puke. That’s where I got the words from. That’s the sort of thing Vaddon said. He tried to think what he might have wanted to hear, from his own father, all those years ago.
“How’s your side, boy?”
Dale froze, then poked his finger to the place where his mother had stitched up the sword gash last night.
“It’s fine, Da. Healing.”
That could hardly be true. The boy had been stabbed. He should probably be in his bed. Still, at the same age, Tannyr would have been out here, trying to impress his father, to do the right thing. Tannyr couldn’t pin down the name of the emotion he was feeling.
“Good,” Tannyr said. He tried to think of something else to say. “Is Uwen still on the porch?”
“He’s talking to Eira.”
“Come on then,” Tannyr said. He put his hand on Dale’s shoulder, tried not to pay attention when Dale flinched. Why had this son turned out this way? Because he was too much like his own father, or too little? “I want you next to me. It’s time to start.”
◆◆◆
Tannyr paused on the porch, a general surveying the field of battle. Eira stopped chatting with her brother Uwen and fled, a frightened field mouse, back to whatever duty she was neglecting. Uwen breathed out through his moustache and got to his feet. Maybe the boy was a little taller than Tannyr. It had been ten years since he last saw Uwen bleed, longer since he’d seen him cry. This son was his first and best gift to Shadowgate. He wanted to tell Uwen that, wanted to smile at him and say he knew his family’s future was safe in Uwen’s hands. But why waste breath telling Uwen something he must surely already know?
So he said, “Is your Gwen pregnant yet?” and Uwen shook his head.
“Never mind,” Tannyr said. “You did well yesterday.”
Uwen nodded. Dale didn’t ask.
“Is this everyone?”
“Not all the Keenans. Their boy Blair will speak for them,” Uwen said.
“We need everyone who can hold a weapon. When Gwyion moves, we have to be ready.”
“What makes you think Gwyion will do anything?”
“Because if he doesn’t, we will.”
◆◆◆
The volume of chatter dimmed, but the quantity intensified. This should be a workday, with the first frost breaking and planting season begun. Instead, more than a hundred men, women, and children were here, eating his food, drinking his wine, come to hear what he had to say. These people were Shadowgate, its life and its breath, the blood in its veins. His father had died to protect this way of life. Tannyr climbed up onto the box crate that Uwen placed out for him and breathed in deep of the expectation.
“My friends,” he said.
Just as the crowd went quiet, a child knocked a flagon from a table. His mother, scandalised, took his arm and pulled him away, slapping his wrist. On a better day, there would have been laughter. Tannyr smiled at the mother, but she scurried off to the barn to hide the bairn’s screams.
“Thank you for coming, especially now, when we need to tend to our lands and our crops. You all know Hodri,” Tannyr said, gesturing to the man sidling up alongside him. Uwen planted Hodri back in his chair. “Today is the third day since his daughter, Seren Brek, went missing. We searched the land from here to the castle. There has been no sign. Nathaniel Vile tells me someone has been sent to check with Seren’s mother in Durançon.”
Not just someone: Corporal Edern, a friend of the Garns. Maybe it was better that Edern was away. Even so, Tannyr felt the snub. Shadowgate Castle had once again chosen town over mountain.
“By now we must assume the worst.”
“The Black Dog!” someone shouted. Was it the Keenan boy? No, Blair was sitting with his arms crossed at the back.
“The Black Dog,” Tannyr confirmed. “I spoke with a Magistrate sent from the capital, here on the farm, just last night. Not only did she fight the Black Dog on the road to Shadowgate Castle, but she says she wounded it. And she swore to root out the other evils that fester in our home.”
“Where was she when it took Fianna?” Blair Keenan was on his feet, his chair fallen behind him.
“I pray that the Magistrate will find and kill the Black Dog. But you’re right. That will not help Fianna, or Seren, or Sara Tafal, taken two weeks ago.” He glanced across at Brigid Tafal, who bounced a toddler on her lap as she wiped her face with a handkerchief. “Or any of our other daughters, lost to evil. Blair, I know our families have had their differences. I know your father has money in the mines. Magistrate Paine has assured me she will do everything in her power to find out what happened to your sister.”
“That’s not enough!”
“No. It’s not enough. And we must ask why. Why has the Black Dog returned? Why are our daughters no longer safe on their own at night?” He pointed, towards town, beyond town, far enough away that nobody could see where he pointed but everyone knew at what. “The answer is right there. What good are new jobs if they go to outsiders and drifters? What good is the mine if the wealth flows straight into a gutter of gambling and sin? Why was Seren out on her own at night, when she should have been at home with her family? Or with a husband?”
Hodri sobbed, hard, then fell out of his chair. Nobody moved to help him.
“Gwyion Garn is a cancer. He soils our community, sells our way of life for capital gold, and violates the chastity of our daughters. We earned this land. Our fathers and our grandfathers earned
this land. But our children are no longer safe upon it.”
Nobody talked now. Even the little ones stopped chattering, their round faces daisies in a field ready to be mowed.
“Yesterday morning three mercenaries in the hire of the Garn’s attacked and injured my youngest boy, Dale. He was lucky to escape with his life. These were southern mercenaries. Island mercenaries. And there will be more of them.”
Right on schedule, the muttering began. The people of Shadowgate might not have travelled much, but that merely re-enforced their belief that they knew the character of outsiders.
“The Magistrate has arrested Derec Garn and taken him to the castle. He will face Lord Vile’s justice. But does anyone think Gwyion Garn will respect the law? Does anyone believe Garn will stop until he has sent every one of us to work down his mine or in his brothel? What do we do about the menace, right here on our doorstep?”
He rammed his hand into his fist.
“Son to father, servant to Lord, Lord to the Gods, the Gods to their sons…and to their daughters. My friends, I will tell you what we do when they threaten our family. We fight.”
Chapter 33
Elianor put her boots on the table and flipped through the pages of one of Nathaniel’s books. This deep underground, it was impossible to tell that outside there was daylight. The chamber looked as it had the last time she was here, books scattered across the table where she had tossed her broken sword. She dropped the history book and slipped her book of law from her satchel, turning to an axiom she knew by heart, one on the Kindred threat. You shall not suffer a demon to live.
“You can’t mean to let them execute Derec Garn.”
Nathaniel didn’t even have the decency to look surprised to see her here. She kept her boots on his desk. He shut the door behind him, although the steady movement couldn’t hide the constant motion that burned inside him.
“There are discrepancies,” Elianor said. She picked up his history book and threw it past her broken sword. “In your story about how Sir Dalard died at the battle of Demon’s Pass.”
“Welcome to the study of history. Take three eyewitnesses, get three different stories. Now, what will you do about Derec?”
“Has Gwyion Garn arrived yet?”
“He’s outside the door. I thought I’d try to speak to you first.”
“Good. I have questions.”
Nathaniel stopped unbuckling his sword.
“What questions?”
“Why did you leave the Magistry? It’s not easy to do.”
“I was ashamed of my part in the student uprising.”
Elianor took her boots off the table and got to her feet. Her broken sword lay between them.
“Why do you insist on lying? To me, of all people?”
“It isn’t a lie.”
“Sophistry. You didn’t leave the Magistry because you were ashamed of the student uprising. You already told me you were more concerned for inefficiency than human life.”
“Why is it relevant?” He jutted his finger upwards, towards the surface. “They will execute Derec in the morning, unless you stop it from happening.”
“I can’t help anyone if I don’t have the truth.”
Nathaniel threw his hands in the air, a frustrated teacher with an impossible student.
“The truth isn’t that simple.”
“So, explain. You may not be a Combat Magistrate, but you still trained at the Academy. That means you are the strongest fighter here. But then you hide behind your brother and sister claiming, I don’t know what, political revolution? A philosophical change of heart? People who need you are dying, Nathaniel!”
“You haven’t seen Persephone fight.”
“That’s another evasion.”
He reached his left hand to her broken sword and turned the point until it faced her.
“You don’t understand.”
“Help me understand. You stayed in the capital after the Crown quashed the student rebellion. The Magistry investigated you but levelled no charges, and you won a prestigious pupillage in the cabinet of Daniau Chastain.”
“So?”
“So, you didn’t quit the Magistry until two years after the uprisings. Not only were you forgiven for your involvement in the riots, you maintained your upward trajectory within the Bar. What changed?”
“Lord Chastain did not employ me for the right reasons.”
The truth, when it struck her, was so obvious, so banal, that she laughed.
“You had an affair with your pupil master. You’re embarrassed.”
He banged his hand on the table. The broken sword swung away from her.
“I’m not embarrassed.”
“Chastain has been sleeping with his pupils since before either of us was born. Nobody cares.”
He took the broken sword and turned it towards himself.
“When Lord Chastain chose me, I thought it meant I had been forgiven. That I was special. Then…”
Elianor slumped back into her chair.
“An older man broke your heart, so you came to hide in your father’s cellar?”
“Fuck you.”
But he still wasn’t moving. She pushed again.
“That might be the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“What makes you think you can walk in here and judge me?”
“Judging people is what Magistrates do.”
He folded his arms across his chest and stared at the grill of the boiler. The orange glow deepened the shadow around his face.
“I wasn’t a very good Magistrate.”
“Maybe. But your responsibility doesn’t stop just because the world isn’t the way you want to be.”
“Is that how you justify working for Lord Carada?”
“I never slept with Théophile Carada.” Elianor shrugged, trying to look casual about it. “But, if you mean adapting to make the best of circumstances, essentially, yes.”
He watched her through narrowed eyes.
“What does your Truthsense tell you, Nathaniel? Are we done lying to each other?”
“I told you before, my Truthsense doesn’t work right anymore. But okay. No more lies.”
“Why was Derec Garn sent to collect me from Durançon?”
“That’s inexperience talking.” Nathaniel sneered. “You’re looking for conspiracy where there’s only incompetence. What did Derec say, when you asked him?”
“I haven’t spoken to him. Yet.”
“Don’t you think you should?”
“I want my rifle returned.”
“So, you put him under threat of death? For expediency?”
“For the law. You remember the law, don’t you?”
Nathaniel snorted and shook his head. “And if the rifle is returned?”
“Then Derec’s fate is for Lord Vile to decide.”
She had called him Lord Vile, not Senator Vile. A slip of the tongue, she decided, nothing more.
“Do you know what will happen to Shadowgate if you let my father kill Garn’s son?”
“I saw something, on the Black Dog. When I fought it.”
“What?”
“A number. Tattooed on its chest.”
It could have been the dim light from the stove, but Nathaniel seemed to pale.
There was a knock on the door.
“Excuse me, but I couldn’t wait any longer,” Gwyion said as he closed the door behind him. “Lord Vile won’t speak to me. My son is running out of time. Will you hear what I have to say, my lady?”
“Your honour,” Nathaniel corrected. He got to his feet and stood at Gwyion’s shoulder, an encouraging teacher at a child’s morality play, as if the marks of his conversation with Elianor didn’t still flush his face. Gwyion took his cap in his hands.
“Forgive me, your honour.”
When Vile had taken a hard line on the Garn boy, Elianor had expected him to wait a while and then hear an appeal for clemency. With the rifle returned, Derec Garn might be given some le
sser punishment and everyone would save face. So why wouldn’t Lord Vile hear Gwyion’s plea?
“You may speak,” she said.
“Derec is my only son. He’s a good, bright boy. He knows the mines; he is loved in the community. Without him, our whole business would collapse.”
“Your business? What does your business have to do with the law?”
Nathaniel laughed, and angry words he had tried to swallow belched out of him. “Do you know anything about the law at all? Or is all Combat Magistrates learn press-ups and preaching?”
Good, Elianor thought. Anger might make him useful. But there was a question she should have asked, and it was slipping away from her.
“Where is my rifle, Citizen Garn?” Elianor said.
“Derec says it was still in the cart when he got to the tavern. Somebody else must have taken it. I can only beg forgiveness.”
“I have no interest in begging,” Elianor said. She looked into the low flame of the stove. “It bores me.”
“He genuinely believed if you continued on the road to Shadowgate, you would die. I have seen your injuries, your honour, and heard tell of your battle with the Black Dog. Can you tell me that belief was a lie?”
“The misappropriation of a Magistrate’s badges of office is a strict liability offence, Citizen Garn. That means I couldn’t care less about your son’s intention. You may go.”
“But I…”
“You may go, Citizen Garn. Do so quickly.”
She shifted her weight to the balls of her feet as the door opened and closed behind her but kept her eyes on the fire. Nathaniel waited until the footsteps faded. Then he came at her, swiftly, his anger transformed into intent. He gripped her arm at the biceps.
“Will you at least look the boy in the eyes before you have him killed?”
She rotated on her heels and trapped his elbow. He shifted and lunged with his other arm. She palmed it away. There was a loud smack of flesh on muscle. She tried to sweep his leg, but he slipped aside, dodging back around the table. He blocked when she caught his wrist, his elbow twisted downward in a sharp blow. They broke apart and both raised their fists.
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