The Spy Princess

by Sherwood Smith

  “Well, if he tries to get his rabble to torch the city a second time, that’s the last thing they’ll do before eternity. Orders are to shoot anyone who busts a window or picks up a rock.”

  “Not a good day for thieves,” Timeos remarked dryly. They all laughed.

  Below, a double line of armed guards marched in. “Hoo. There’s Captain Leonos,” said the oldest. “That’s the signal.”

  As the guards moved out in a ring before the dais, I heard behind me the scrape of swords drawn from scabbards, and the creak and hum of bows being strung and tested.

  People began to enter in small groups. Guild members and merchants and countless others shuffled forward, some gaping at the huge banners, others giving fearful glances at the armed warriors in the alcoves. More guards took up position along the lower walls. Soon the huge room was entirely full.

  On another invisible signal, the jury entered through the archway behind the dais. First were three military men, all carrying commanders’ helms. Then came six courtiers in dark mourning dress, followed by three guild leaders. Finally, three figures in black and white, their faces masked—judiciaries, supplied by the heralds. No one would know who they were.

  Except for my uncle.

  And then he, too, mounted the dais. From my vantage I could see his face clearly. Timeos had gotten himself stationed here to have the perfect shot.

  Uncle Darian moved to the old carven throne and sat down.

  The people in the front bowed, as did those behind them, and those behind them. It was as though a wind swept through the crowd. The whispers faded.

  The jury settled into their chairs, their manner nervous—even the nobles.

  There were no flourishes or fanfares. The Grand Herald stepped forward, struck his staff on the marble floor three times, and announced in a sonorous voice, “Bring forth the accused.”

  A surge of movement in the next alcove, and Derek and Peitar stood side by side at the railing, guards hemming them in, their drawn swords held points skyward.

  The herald addressed them: “Lord Peitar Selenna and Derek Diamagan. You have been indicted for acts of sedition—conspiring against the government and the law with individuals of all degrees. And for acts of treason—the fostering of armed rebellion. Your response?”

  “I admit guilt,” Peitar said in a clear, steady voice. A moment later Derek echoed him, sounding angry.

  The herald looked briefly at the military commanders, then again at Peitar and Derek. “The civilians who have requested their right to face you with their accusations will speak first. Because of your admission of guilt, the military has waived the right to enumerate the acts that your followers have perpetrated in your names. You will then be permitted to speak in your own defense.”

  Derek said, in a loud, derisive voice, “No one to speak for us, I notice.”

  A swift murmur rose from the crowd. Behind me, one of the guards muttered, “Not at a treason trial when you already admitted guilt, you ignorant peasant.”

  The herald raised his voice. “Cease! You will speak only at the time appointed.” He motioned, and a vaguely familiar courtly woman about my father’s age walked forward and bowed before my uncle.

  Then she turned sharply, so her skirt of mourning gray belled out, and glared up at where my brother stood. “I hold you to blame, Lord Peitar Selenna,” she said in a hard voice, “for the deaths of two of my children, and their families. I blame you for the destruction of Corente, my home, my land. . . .”

  She bowed her head. Her shoulders shook, but then she straightened and went on, telling how many people had been killed and what houses and lands had been put to the torch.

  After she finished, she turned her back and walked proudly through the archway. She was followed by a man who said much the same. Peitar watched, his profile tense and closed. Derek fidgeted as though he wished to speak, or to be pacing.

  Five or six more nobles came out, accusing either Peitar or Derek, sometimes both. Most gave them angry stares. Some spoke quickly, gazing straight ahead, and a few seemed uneasy.

  The palace bell tolled, echoed in the distance by the city bell.

  One of the guards behind me stirred. “Blast and blister, it’s only noon. This’ll take an eternity. Send the boy for something wet and cold.”

  Timeos nudged me, and I ran. Black spots danced before my eyes, and I remembered that I had not eaten any breakfast.

  At the bottom of the stairs, a bored guard asked where I was going, and motioned me through one of the archways into a dusty courtyard.

  More guards were gathered round a table of pitchers, goblets, glasses, mugs, and trays, with a few barrels underneath. “How many?” asked one of the kitchen pages, yawning. “And what?”

  “Four. Whatever’s coldest.”

  “That’ll be the ale,” she said. “Just brought up from the cellar.”

  As she filled goblets, one of the adults addressed me. “How’s it sounding?”

  “Nobles. Destruction of land,” I croaked.

  “That’s going to take all day, maybe all night, too,” someone else said.

  “Days!” a lounging footman exclaimed. “They haven’t even gotten to Master Gasbag of the Guild. You watch. If he gets up there, he’ll drone on for four bells, all on his own.”

  I picked up the loaded tray and walked carefully to the inner hall, paused, and had a quick sip of ale to kill my thirst before I started up.

  The guards took the goblets, and once again I crouched down. A pretty young woman came out, her golden hair done in the latest court style. She began in a high, hard voice. “I accuse you traitors of the deaths of my dear cousins—”

  “You lie.” Derek’s voice echoed off the opposite walls. “That’s a lie, Lady Farleon! You and your slithering lover—”

  “Cease!” the herald roared above the sudden hisses of the crowd. “If you speak again before your turn, you forfeit the right to defense!”

  Derek lifted a fist, not in threat, but in frustration. The guards stepped close. The woman scowled at him, put her nose in the air, and told how his people had killed everyone in her cousins’ holding, finishing quickly when the hissing started.

  After her came someone I recognized—Great-Aunt Tislah, who’d tried the hardest to force me to be my uncle’s pet so many years ago.

  Now she said in a shaking, venomous voice, “I speak in the name of my kin by marriage, the Selennas. And on behalf of Lady Lilah, who is a mere child. In her name I accuse you of causing the murder of your father. And where is your sister, I ask you, Lord Peitar Selenna? Have you done away with her, too?”

  I almost cried out. Timeos’s leg pressed against my back in warning, but I had already bitten my lip, hard. I felt my heart would break in pieces and fall smoking to the floor.

  Aunt Tislah cawed on, describing the destruction of Selenna lands, and finished by accusing Peitar of wanting to take our father’s princedom as a step toward challenging the crown.

  She was the last of the nobles. There was a pause, and then a huge man dressed in brocade and velvet, wearing a great gold chain, strutted importantly onto the dais.

  “Guild Chief,” one of the guards whispered. “That fool will keep us broiling here a week.”

  So this was Master Gasbag. He unrolled a great scroll, harrumphed, and began a slow string of compliments to Uncle Darian and the courtiers on the jury. They looked restless, and the people below rustled and whispered.

  Uncle Darian shifted in his seat, and when the man stopped for breath, he cut in. “Guild Chief. Please. Get to your accusations.”

  A subdued laugh rippled through the audience. The chief coughed as he hastily unrolled more of his scroll and began reciting the names of dead guild members. From that, he droned on and on, without pause, to damage done against guild buildings. The sun h
ad moved appreciably when he stepped down.

  Others came forward. Some said little; others read great lists. The crowd grew more restless, especially in the back, and a scuffle began. Two guards strode forward to break it up. The accusers labored on. Derek stood motionless, and Peitar leaned on the railing, tense with the effort it took to stand so long.

  Once the guilds were finished, there were two representatives for the farmers. From his tight grip on the rail, it was clear that these accusations hurt Derek the most.

  Through it all, Uncle Darian sat unmoving on the throne, almost completely in shadow.

  When the last farmer finished, the herald said, “Accused! You now have the opportunity to speak in your defense.”

  Derek sent a quick look at Peitar, then leaned forward. “People of Sarendan. I have spent years traveling the kingdom listening to the stories of cruelty and injustice perpetrated by you nobles. You accuse me of destroying your lands, but I say to you: all I did was enable your own people to visit their own form of justice for generations of bad government, unfair taxes, and neglect of rights that once were considered basic—and still are, in other kingdoms.”

  A murmur, and again the shush! like wind through trees.

  “In addition, I saw what you did to one another. I say again, Lady Farleon, that you conspired with your lover to kill your own cousins so that you could inherit Helasda—”

  “You are not permitted counteraccusations,” the herald cut in.

  “Let him talk!” came from the back of the crowd.

  “He’s telling the truth!” a woman shouted.

  The guards at the back sprang forward, and again the crowd roiled.

  Uncle Darian sat, silent and unmoving.

  One of the military commanders leaned toward the herald, who shouted, above the rising voices, “Diamagan! You will confine yourself to the charges or forfeit your right to speak!”

  “Proving that this is no trial, and there is no justice, not until you are brought down!” A guard jabbed him warningly in the shoulder, and Derek shook his head. “Never mind that. I have no defense, because though I made no such commands, neither did I halt the acts. Perhaps I was wrong to believe that free people would band together to benefit everyone. My very first command—to torch the city and destroy its rulers—was obeyed. My next command, to halt the riots and destruction, was ignored, and if one must stand the blame for the actions of many, then I am that one. I, and not Peitar Selenna.”

  The crowd murmured, then shushed each other, as Derek said again, louder, “I repeat. Peitar Selenna is not to blame. He was under arrest, in fact—closeted with the king—when I gave the command to strike.”

  He paused to clear his throat. “Further, he, unlike me, was against the use of violence from the outset—and the king knows it, for he read a letter in which Peitar warned me against exactly what happened. And when Peitar joined me, after his father was murdered by a mob, it was to try to bring the violence to a halt, not to encourage it.

  “One final thing. And this is for you, King Darian Irad.” Derek’s voice harshened. “Lady Farleon sat in her pretty parlor and swore that she’d help the commoners in her cousins’ lands if my people killed those cousins for her—and, were I on the dais, she’d be fawning on me just as she fawns on you. I advise you, when you dance with these smiling liars in celebration of our deaths, you had better watch your back.”

  He turned away.

  A roar surged up from the crowd. Some of the noble jurors whispered behind their hands, two or three looking toward the great throne.

  Uncle Darian was silent and still.

  Then came the herald’s voice. “Lord Peitar Selenna. Do you speak in your defense?”

  Peitar had been leaning against the rail, his head bowed. Now he straightened, and a profound silence fell, so intense I could feel it, despite the heat-haze and the smells of close-pressed humanity rising from below.

  “Send the boy for something more to drink?” one of the guards behind asked.

  I couldn’t breathe. No! Not now!

  Timeos whispered, “Hold. I think it’s nearly over.”

  And my brother said, clear and steady, “I admit freely to having committed treason.”

  nine

  “That is,” he said, “if you define treason as the attempt to overthrow the government. If you define treason as I do—the attempted overthrow of our ancient laws—then I don’t believe I’ve committed treason.”

  He looked intently at the throne.

  “I want to go back to those laws, which have been set aside in the name of military strength. That was the king’s abiding goal, and it harmed the kingdom. Many of my fellow nobles paid lip service to that goal, but they were using the tax laws to build wealth and power at the expense of those people they once swore to protect.

  “The inability to halt the riots and destruction condemns Derek’s and my skills as leaders, but the fact that civil war happened at all is telling. Had the old laws been upheld, our efforts would have been met with scorn and disbelief.” I could feel his effort to make his quiet voice heard. “People destroy everything when they feel they have nothing to lose.”

  He spoke to the crowd, and to the jury, but I knew whom he was really talking to. Uncle Darian watched with an expression so like Peitar’s that they seemed two versions of the same man—because Peitar was a man. Sometime since the day we’d escaped from the garrison cells, he had grown up. I couldn’t say how I knew, or what being adult really meant, except it had only partly to do with age.

  I blinked against the slanting afternoon light and saw the same tight control, the tension, in Peitar’s profile. He was hating this trial.

  And now I understood why my uncle hadn’t moved or spoken. It had always been this way, at social events that he saw as his duty. I’d always believed he had no feelings, but I was wrong. Uncle Darian hated the trial just as much as Peitar did. Their reasons were different, but their emotions were the same.

  Sweat rolled down my face and soaked my clothing. I gripped the carved marble rails and looked at what was left of my close family as I struggled for insight, which seemed to hover just outside my understanding, like the winged spirits of the visionaries in our ancient past.

  Peitar had never disliked our uncle. They respected one another, a respect that had made it worse when they disagreed. Then they got angry at one another because neither would budge from his principles.

  Was that why my relatives had tried to make me into a semblance of my mother? Some might have wanted a king’s pet so they could get me to ask for favors, but other people, like Tsauderei, and Lizana, had hinted that Uncle Darian’s own life might have been better if there had been a person like my mother in it. But I’d pushed him away.

  What might have changed if I’d managed to take her place in his heart?

  Pay attention!

  I’d missed some of Peitar’s words, but I recognized his tone. He was trying to provoke Uncle Darian to speech. It was the last chance for them to talk, just as Tsauderei said—just as Peitar himself had said in the Valley of Delfina.

  “. . . one of our mistakes was our belief that people ought not to need leaders, that each should govern him- or herself. I’ve learned that the idea of what’s good for all is not as easy to define as ‘what’s good for me and mine.’ We need education first.”

  Peitar drew his sleeve over his face, his voice hoarsening. “Last, my admission of guilt. I made it partly to protect those who would have felt it necessary to risk their lives to come forward and speak on my behalf.”

  Another pause. The room was soundless. The jurors seemed tense, the nobles looking at one another for clues.

  “But dissent will not be silenced. Our execution will only make resistance covert, because the true reasons for civil war remain. Despite what some of my accusers said, you y
ourself know—probably better than anyone else here—that my motivation was never ambition.”

  Uncle Darian spoke at last. “Your motivation was idealism.”

  “Yes. And so, what is truly on trial here are the ideals of justice, of basic liberties—including being able to speak one’s mind without fear of royal retribution.”

  “High-minded words,” our uncle replied. “But without meaning. The truth lies in your earlier admission of your own lack of leadership.” His voice took on that sardonic edge that used to scare me. “Had your skills been equal to your lofty goals, our positions would be reversed—and I wonder how much talk there would be about ‘speaking one’s mind’ and ‘basic liberties’ before you had me put to death.”

  Peitar replied in the very same tone. “Not so much a lack of skills as self-doubt. I couldn’t convince myself I’d be a good leader. I was still debating that when events overtook me, and I found myself in the position I am now.”

  “So you did not intend to take my place?”

  “Correct.”

  A brief outburst of comments was quickly silenced. “Then who would? Your hotheaded friend there, whose ignorance outstrips his ambitions?”

  “Derek Diamagan didn’t embark on this quest in order to make himself into a king,” Peitar replied.

  “So what you are saying is that you two high-minded revolutionaries ripped apart this realm in order to put who on the throne—his horse-coper brother? Your little sister, whose single goal in life appears to be the escape of her social duties in order to climb trees?” A murmur of laughter. My face burned. “Or did you intend to select one of the kitchen staff, or perhaps a bricklayer, as sufficiently humble to rule a kingdom?”

  More laughter, some of it derisive. The noble jurors were the loudest.

  Darian said, “Do you consider yourself to be a good prospect for a king?”

  “No.” A pause. “But I believe I would be better for the kingdom than you are. As would countless others, including some of your servants.”