by Jude Fisher
‘It’s one of mine.’ Katla’s chin came up defiantly. It gave her a certain pleasure to look this southern fanatic square in the eye and declare her trade to his face. ‘I made it: the forging of fine weaponry is a certain skill of mine.’
Someone called out, ‘Aye – and no mistake: she’s a craftsman of the finest order, and that’s the truth.’
‘Best blades in Eyra,’ another called gruffly.
Katla narrowed her eyes: this last seemed to come from the direction of a shrouded southern beldame, which seemed surreal, to say the least.
‘However,’ she went on, ‘it was one of many that I have . . . sold during the course of this Fair.’ (It was almost true, she reasoned: ’twas a barter, after all – payment for Saro’s saving blow.) ‘Someone had discarded it amongst the tents and I picked it up.’
‘A likely tale,’ Lord Prionan scoffed. ‘And that you should have this very blade back in your possession if such was the case seems to me too great a coincidence to overlook.’ He beamed around at the crowd, as if revelling in the powers of his logic.
‘And what were you doing, to be running away from the scene?’ King Ravn asked.
Katla felt her father’s regard upon her. There was nothing for it.
‘I was running away – indeed – when I came upon the dagger, and thought it a waste to see it cast aside so. But I was running away not from the scene of a crime, but from my imminent betrothal,’ she said. ‘Which is why I am dressed like this.’ She indicated her stained and battered jerkin. ‘I did not wish to marry the man my father had chosen for me, and had determined to escape such a fate.’ She searched out her father’s anxious face and held his gaze. His eyes showed nothing but anguish: no rage, no accusation. Katla smiled. Her voice softened and dropped to barely more than a whisper. ‘But I still won’t marry Finn Larson, Father—’
‘Finn Larson?’ echoed the King. He brought to mind the shipmaker: a barrel of a man well into his fifties: no fair match for this fiery girl. Better dressed and unshorn, she’d be worth a tumble, he thought, but Aran Aranson’s harsh voice broke in on this pleasant reverie.
‘Katla, I had not realised you would take it so ill that you would run away from here, from your clan, from me,’ he pleaded from the ground. ‘I will cancel the betrothal plans, I swear I will.’
People started to murmur, curious now, rather than appalled. ‘Who’s she marrying?’ someone from the back cried.
‘Finn Larson,’ returned a leathery-looking Eyran matron.
‘Finn Larson is an old goat!’ someone else shouted and there was laughter
‘Let the girl go,’ someone cried in Eyran, and the cry was taken up.
Ravn Asharson called for quiet. ‘You have blood on you,’ he pointed out to Katla.
‘I wiped the knife off,’ Katla said truthfully. ‘But only to examine it the better.’
‘You lie!’ It was a feeble cry, but compelling nevertheless.
Heads turned as one. From the back of the grand pavilion a litter was being borne through the crowd. Upon it lay Tanto Vingo, wrapped in a cloak donated by one of the guards, his head shrouded in its folds so that he peered out, ashen, like one risen from the dead.
‘It was you and your Eyran friends who killed the slave and took the Lord of Cantara’s daughter!’ he spat. ‘You who attacked me when I threw myself between your murdering blade and the Lady Selen.’
Tanto’s face was white from blood-loss. Beneath the cloak, someone had bandaged him roughly about the hips, but already blood as dark as wine was starting to seep through the thick, unbleached linen. He pointed a trembling finger at the bound figure on the dais.
‘That’s the man: the very one who stabbed me!’ He stared around at the assembled faces, saw their greed for the drama, their avid eyes.
Katla stared in disbelief. This was a scene from a nightmare, a hag-ride from the seventh hell. The world had taken on surreal perspectives, an unfathomable new system of rules. ‘I did not! This is utmost madness!’
‘Madness indeed: to steal away a woman so; and a noble Istrian woman at that.’ Tanto propped himself laboriously on an elbow, eyes blazing. Such fortune, he had thought when the guards who carried him told him the news: that a foreigner had been so propitiously apprehended – red-handed with the dagger and all, and that another man had been seen running away with a woman who sounded suspiciously like Selen Issian. The Goddess was surely smiling on him. He had known his union with Selen was blessed. Even the wound he had taken did not seem so bad now, though he was beginning to feel a little chill about the waist . . .
As they bore him closer to the dais, he took in the man who would go to the fires in his stead. He was a ruffian, clearly, in that appalling tunic, all stained and filthy; and that vile shag of hair. But there was something about the man – something about the eyes, the long nose, the scathing expression—
His eyes flickered from the northern king to Lord Rui Finco, and then to the blade the guard captain held in his hands. His dagger – or at least the one he had removed from beneath Saro’s pillow. Something stirred deep in his skull, like an itch, or the small buzz of an insect . . .
‘May I see the weapon, sir?’ he asked the guard.
The crowd parted silently to allow the litter through and the guard captain placed the dagger carefully into Tanto’s outstretched hands.
It was as if the blade were communicating with him. Something about the way it weighed in his hand, how the dragon’s head fit the curve of his palm— Sensation triggered a memory, jolted into a searing connection. He stared at the prisoner’s face again: took in this time the fine bones, the lips, the slight swell of the tunic as it passed to the narrow, belted waist. And then recollection flooded back: he remembered the knife stall, the feisty woman showing the weapons – this weapon – his brother, for no reason, punching him cold . . .
Not for no reason; no. What was it Saro had said? I saw you up on the Rock . . .
And he remembered the reward.
Sacrilege. The word snaked smoothly through his mind.
He laughed.
‘My lords, I think you are going to owe me a debt of thanks, as well as two thousand cantari . . . This person you have arrested is . . . a woman!’
He waited for indrawn breaths, but there were none. He stared about him, then shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and continued: ‘She is the very same woman you have been seeking throughout this Fair. She is the one who climbed our sacred Rock!’
The Istrians in the crowd gasped.
Rui Finco frowned. Forgetting in the heat of this moment that the trial had been put into the hands of the Eyran King, he addressed the captive direct. ‘Did you climb Falla’s Rock?’
‘She did, she did!’ Greving Dystra was almost beside himself with emotion. He pulled at his brother’s sleeve. ‘We saw her, didn’t we, brother?’
Hesto peered myopically at the prisoner. ‘The one we saw had long red hair,’ he said doubtfully.
One of the guard troop stepped forward. ‘May I speak, lord?’ he asked Rui Finco. The Lord of Forent inclined his head. ‘While I was making my rounds with Nuno Gastin here—’ he indicated another guard ‘—we went into the Rockfall clan booth on routine questioning,’ he said. ‘They seemed inordinately anxious to be rid of us, and I noticed then that the daughter of the family had had her hair shorn most barbarously. She said it was for the hot summer in Eyra—’ He coloured. ‘But I have been assured since then that the northern isles do not tend to enjoy such weather. I thought, my lord, that she might have been jesting with me; but now I see my error.’
‘It is not red, though,’ persisted old Hesto Dystra. ‘My eyes may be bad, but I’m not colour-blind—’
Ignoring the protests of the northern king, the Lord of Forent stepped up to the dais. ‘Lower your head,’ he said roughly to Katla.
In response, she glared at him. She would not submit to this. Instead, she thrust her head up and stared defiantly into the crowd. ‘I climbed
the Rock,’ she said. She focused on the elderly Dystras. ‘It was me you saw,’ she added, almost kindly. ‘The first time.’
‘The first time?’ Rui Finco stared at her in amazement.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Katla. ‘I climbed it again just now.’
The din started with muttering, then with electrified discussion. People started to talk loudly to one another over the noise. Some began to shout. Amid the clamour an Eyran voice yelled, ‘That’s no sacrilege – it’s Sur’s own Rock!’ while an Istrian shrieked: ‘She has defiled the name of our Goddess. She must burn!’
This last voice came from close to Tanto, and it sounded familiar to him. He stared around, and found himself but feet away from Lord Tycho Issian. The southern lord’s eyes were bulging with fervour, his hand jabbing the air. Beside him stood the tall, thin, pale man Tanto had seen earlier. Unlike the Lord of Cantara, his face showed no trace of emotion.
Rui Finco turned to Ravn Asharson. ‘It seems, my lord king,’ he said smoothly, ‘that this matter is now out of your hands. While it concerned common criminal matters on neutral territory, we could submit the case to Eyran judgement; but I fear this desecration of Falla’s Rock is another matter entirely.’
‘But it is our Rock,’ King Ravn declared. ‘And all she did was climb upon it.’
‘It is Sur’s Castle,’ confirmed the Earl of Southeye from the floor. ‘It has been so for all time.’
The Lord of Forent laughed. He turned to stare down at the Eyran lord. ‘Old man,’ he said, and his eyes were like obsidian, ‘times change. The Moonfell Plain we may share equally with you; but Falla’s Rock was ceded to us by your old king – King Ashar Stenson, the Night Wolf, the Shadow Lord; father to King Ravn here – in return for – how shall I put this? – a favour. Or perhaps I should say, our silence on a certain embarrassing matter.’ He stared back coolly at the present king, who held his gaze unblinking. ‘They say blood will out, my lord,’ he said to Ravn so softly that no other save Katla could hear his words.
Ravn’s eyes narrowed. His chin thrust out mulishly. ‘I do not know what you are talking about, southern lord,’ he hissed. ‘But I mislike your tone.’
Rui Finco shrugged. ‘As you will. Perhaps you and I will discuss these matters later, somewhere a little more . . . private.’ He raised his voice. ‘In the meantime, I think you must concede the girl to Istrian law. She has admitted to sacrilege, and you can see the wound she has given this brave young man. Surely this is enough for you? We do not wish for further violence here tonight.’ There was silky menace in his tone.
Ravn Asharson wavered. He turned to look back at where the Rosa Eldi still stood like a statue. Their eyes met, and again he felt that extraordinary wave of heat shock through him; heat, and something else. He turned back. ‘I am not yet convinced of the degree of her guilt,’ he said slowly. ‘And until I am, I insist at least upon a shared ruling: Eyran justice to match Istrian justice.’
Rui Finco cocked his head, then turned back to the crowd. ‘What say you, my lords of the Council; will you allow the woman a shared judgement?’
‘I have no objection,’ declared Prionan.
The Dystra brothers conferred briefly. ‘In the spirit of goodwill on this Gathering night, we agree with Prionan.’
‘No!’
A scandalised cry. Tycho Issian, Lord of Cantara, had pulled away from the tale nomad and was clawing his way towards the dais.
‘You cannot do this!’ he howled. He heaved himself up onto the dais and addressed his fellow Istrian lord. ‘My lord of Forent – Rui – it is my daughter who has been taken; my soon-to-be-son by law who has been so cruelly struck down in her defence; my slave who has been evilly slaughtered. Do you not think I should have a say in this case?’
Rui Finco inclined his head. ‘Have your say, Tycho, and then we shall make our ruling.’
Tycho turned to face the crowd. Breathing deeply, he felt time slow. Now was his chance and he must seize it with both hands. Oh, Falla, Merciful One, he prayed silently, Falla, Lady of Fire, I implore you to aid your abject worshipper. Help me to gain my goal and I will sacrifice to you for all the days of my life. Just let me secure the star of my heavens, the love of my loins, the Rose of the World and you shall have blood aplenty before this day is through.
His only chance of taking the Rosa Eldi away from the northern king would be in the midst of confusion. Violence and confusion. He must play the situation he had been handed like a gift with the utmost skill. So what if his daughter was missing? If he could bring the Istrian crowd to a sufficient pitch of righteous fury, he’d have no need for a bride-price anyway: for who knew who might fall to their death in the heat of battle? His eyes snaked once from Ravn Asharson, sitting there like the stuffed and useless king he was, to the tall, pale map-seller, his face upturned to the figures on the dais as a flower turns its head to the sun. He felt nothing but contempt for them all. Play the personal card first, his inner voice told him; win the crowd to your side, and then press home your argument.
His voice breaking as if under the strain of his shock, Tycho Issian began:
‘My daughter,’ he croaked in Istrian, ‘my beloved Selen. A more beautiful, loving, pious girl you could never wish to find. She came here with me to the Allfair, that most wondrous of events, with hope in her heart. She hoped for a wedding, my friends; to dedicate herself to Falla in the service of a husband. Like any pure maid, this was her dream. She was to have been married tomorrow, to the man I chose to wed her to, a young man from a fine and upright family. I have never seen her so happy, my lords, my ladies—’ he gestured to the crowd ‘—as when she opened the parcel I had brought her and found her wedding gown within.’
A woman sobbed.
Tycho wiped his dry eyes. He gazed into the throng. ‘It was to have been the happiest moment of my life – and of my beloved Selen’s too – to stand with her at the shrine tomorrow and join her to young Tanto Vingo; but that happiness has been cruelly snatched away, by this – creature—’ he gestured at Katla, who stared at him through narrowed eyes, understanding nothing of this foreign rant – ‘and her co-conspirators, no doubt to ravish her virgin body, to violate the Goddess’s own handmaiden! And in their attempt, they have slaughtered the girl who was dearest to her in all the world – a slavegirl she helped to raise from a babe-in-arms, rescued from a plague-stricken hill tribe—’ (an outright lie, but he could feel the crowd swaying towards his fervour) ‘—and wounded this fine, brave young man here, a man from an upstanding noble Istrian family, the Vingos – whom you all know – a young man, who, careless for his own life tried to stand in the way of their barbarism!’
Tanto raised a hand modestly to the crowd in acknowledgment of his heroism. ‘It was nothing, my lord,’ he managed with a wan smile. He was beginning to feel decidedly faint. ‘For the virtue of the Lady Selen, I would do the same and more again.’ He swung his legs from the litter and laid his feet carefully upon the floor. He would walk to the Lord of Cantara, take his hand, pledge his allegiance. When they retrieved his bride again, how could Tycho turn him away, bride-price or no bride-price? It was hard to position his feet as he wanted: they seemed like lead weights, cold and unfeeling. Bracing his hands on the litter, he levered himself upright. His legs, uncooperative as the unstringed limbs of a puppet, crumpled at once beneath him, spilling him outward in a flurry of fabrics.
‘A hero!’ cried a man in a sumptuous black costume. ‘A true Istrian hero!’
‘A hero?’ This southern word Katla knew. She also knew the man on the floor. It was the Vingo son, the Istrian woman had said. But it was not Saro Vingo. In all the panic and fury, she had forgotten his disgusting brother. She raised her voice above the clamour, and addressed the crowd in the Old Tongue: ‘Hear my tale!’ she cried, using the time-honoured story-teller’s opening: ‘This man is no hero: he is a rapist and a murderer! I found the woman of whom you speak – Selen Issian – naked and bleeding as I was making my way from the Gathering, on my own
flight for freedom. She told me she had stabbed this man – this Tanto Vingo – when he killed her maid and attacked her, and then she crawled away for help—’ By now she should be clear away, Katla thought, and Erno, too. ‘And my friend and I gave her that aid. She will be far from here now: far from the man who ravaged her; far from the father who sought to marry her against her will.’
‘Silence!’ Tycho Issian rounded on her. ‘Not satisfied with your evil deeds, now you make foul allegations against those who loved her most. Is there no end to your ill-will? Do you have no shame?’
Behind him, he could feel the mood of the crowd sway; the Eyrans calling out for the prisoner; the Istrians against her. He smiled coldly at Katla. She stared back, chilled to the bone. It was like looking into the eyes of a viper, she thought suddenly. For all the avowals of heartbreak and misery, she saw no emotion in them but a calculating, deathly will.
He turned back. ‘Can you not see?’ he appealed in High Istrian. ‘My lords of the Council, my ladies of the Empire, you who are the flower of the southern lands, representatives of all that is most precious in Falla’s hallowed country: how we are surrounded by such hatred?
‘These northerners are barbarians who even after they have carried out the foulest of deeds will deny all: will lie in the face of the Goddess herself. They have no honour. They have no faith. All they wish for is to damage and destroy us, by whatever means they can.
‘The deeds this woman and her band of reivers have carried out may seem to you to be a personal attack upon me; and indeed my losses are grave: a daughter, whom I loved with all my soul, is missing,’ he ticked the points off on the fingers of a raised hand. ‘My sweet servant, a second daughter to me, has been horribly murdered. My friend here—’ he indicated Tanto Vingo ‘—terribly wounded in her defence.
‘All these things I feel deep in my heart: but you should feel them, too: for these are attacks not just upon me and mine, but upon Istria.’