Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  The crown healer straightened, both fists knuckled into his aching lower back. He blinked, as if overstressed vision could be made to explain the mischievous old man waiting patiently at his left hand. ‘You’re here to help? That’s a gift and a miracle.’ Disbelief yielded to practical authority that would grasp and secure even chance-met opportunity before it slipped through the back postern. ‘We have women to manage the washing and towels, but the boys will be needed for the litters.’

  ‘They’re still busy stuffing the cracked boards with rags,’ the strange elder replied in his whiskey-grained baritone. Spry as a cat, his diminutive frame was doused in a shapeless old coat, cut from what seemed a ragpicker’s leavings, and mismatched swatches of worn blankets. Crimped white hair spilled into the riot of beard he contained in the grip of sensitive fingers. ‘I can manage one end of a litter well enough.’

  The healer’s dubious glance met a pixie’s bright grin and turquoise eyes folded with laugh lines. ‘Did I not haul your water and roll in the washtubs?’ Then, in afterthought delivered with irreverent distaste, ‘Your magnanimous ruler might have provided something better than vats bought used from the dyer’s.’

  ‘They often have terrible splinters, I know,’ the healer apologized. ‘We’re pinched to the bone for expenses.’ Too honestly overworked to dismiss his good fortune, he tucked the blankets over the prone hulk of the captain and gestured toward the ramshackle shelving erected against the far wall. ‘Litters are stored over there. Our work’s laid out. A council delegation’s due here this afternoon, and the Prince of the Light won’t like their report if his former crack veterans are shabby with a week’s stubble.’

  The old man retrieved the lantern in mild deference. ‘We’re trying to impress someone?’

  ‘You didn’t catch wind of last month’s proclamation?’ The crown’s master healer snorted his disgust. Granted the boon of unburdened hands, he stowed his loose remedies, hiked up his scuffed satchel, and threaded his way through the rat’s maze of invalids installed on their mismatched cots. ‘Avenor’s recruiting its own talent, these days. You know that snake-tongued Hanshire captain who’s been given the post of Lord Commander? Well, he’s pushed through a change in policy.’

  A pause through a stop to adjust a slipped pillow, then a laugh that stabbed for its sarcasm. ‘Sulfin Evend’s said, for straight tactics, we need to sign mageborn into Alliance service. Use talent to divide and conquer the ranks, then make the ban against sorcery stick when all disloyal spellcraft’s eradicated. Now, every mageborn offender hauled in is offered a blandishment to practice for the Light. The one who can lift these Etarrans from ensorcelment will be awarded a paid crown appointment.’

  The healer’s lips thinned to harried distaste. ‘The trials are held here. Stay and witness the farce, if you’ve got a fancy for uproarious entertainment.’

  ‘You don’t sound appreciative,’ the old man observed, his interest engaging, and his dreamer’s gaze grown astute.

  ‘I don’t like dead men. Or broken bones. Or amputations, or holes carved by arrows, not for any misbegotten cause made in the interest of crown politics.’ The healer secured the strap of his satchel and hoisted the pole handles of a litter, still talking. ‘Seen too much cautery and too many splints in this campaign to throw down the clanborn.’

  The old man secured the lamp in a niche and stooped to bear up his share of the burden. ‘You don’t fear shadows?’

  ‘I should.’ The healer gave back a gruff, barking laugh. ‘Maybe I will, if I see any. You ask me, what we have is a crisis in trade that began with the bold-as-brass theft of crown ships by a scoundrel. I don’t see any Spinner of Darkness storming the kingdom by sorcery. His clan allies are left as convenient scapegoats, dragged in to vindicate the old hatreds.’

  ‘Strong words,’ the elder murmured in peppery provocation.

  ‘Men don’t burn in Avenor for opinions. Not yet, anyway.’ Arrived at the end of the near row of cots, the healer lapsed in his tirade. His scrutiny turned critical until he observed that the oldster knew how to raise and move a helpless man without causing careless injury. ‘Whoever trained you, you’re good with your hands.’ Then, the ultimate compliment, ‘Can I call you by name?’

  The request raised a mumble drowned out by the scraping scuffle of footsteps as the litterborne man was conveyed toward the tiny, partitioned room that had formerly served as the warehouse factor’s day office. Sudden light knifed the gloom as a woman in a farmwife’s loomed skirts threw open the door to admit them.

  Steam billowed out, spiked by a ghost taint of apricot brandy, and a drift of female chatter. ‘Bring the dearie in here. Aesha’s got balsam to sweeten his bath, and Ennlie’s cousin’s new babe needs a wee syrup for the croup. Could you mix her the dose? We’ll see to your work with the razor.’

  ‘Have I ever refused you, love?’ said the healer, absorbed as he maneuvered the burdened litter through the constraint of the doorjambs, careful not to scrape the chapped skin off his knuckles. He added in snatched explanation, ‘These are widows of the men lost on campaign back in Vastmark. They’re all volunteers, and we would be paralyzed without them.’

  ‘I can prepare cough syrup,’ the old man offered. His quick smile reassured the redheaded Ennlie; the healer was given his calm list of the herbs in proper proportion for the recipe. ‘If you haven’t any cailcallow, fresh wintergreen will do.’

  ‘Ath,’ said the healer, amazed. He braced the litter on a tabletop, planted his stance, then eased the heavyset occupant into a waiting tub brimmed with suds. ‘Wherever you came from, we could use six others just like you.’

  ‘Petition the crown to stop burning herb witches?’ the old man quipped.

  The healer’s solemnity gave way to the first belly laugh he had enjoyed in long weeks. ‘Now, that might see me arraigned for collaboration with evil.’

  ‘Surely not,’ the old man argued. ‘Avenor’s palace pages could scarcely fill your shoes as replacement.’

  ‘Well then, definitely don’t brag on your skills while you’re here. I’d rather be sure this court gets no leeway to decide my sharp tongue’s a crown nuisance.’ Smiling, the healer offered his satchel and the freely made gift of his trust. ‘Everything you’ll need for that remedy is inside. Just rummage away. Oh, and shout if you can’t read my labels.’

  The morning streamed past in camaraderie and hard work, with the harried master healer relying more and more on the old man’s competent assistance. If the fellow seemed given to peculiar silences, his lapses of woolgathering seemed not to affect the compassionate skill of his hands. Nor was his remark about arcane connections entirely the lighthearted artifice of humor. He had a gift, or else an empathic touch that wrought an uncanny string of small miracles. Those victims whose vitality had faltered through their prolonged and unnatural sleep seemed to stabilize under his influence. When yet again the royal healer felt a man’s fluttery pulse rebound and steady for no reason, he glanced up.

  The oldster was only washing the unconscious man’s hair, his hands wrist deep in dripping lather, and his expression vague as a daft poet’s. Except that no mind could decipher his reticent secrets, nor read into eyes that held the innocence of a spring sky.

  The healer stared over the rim of the washtub, a swift chill of gooseflesh marring the skin of the fingers still clasped to the guardsman’s limp wrist. His attentiveness this time demanded the courtesy of a straight answer as he said softly, ‘Who are you?’

  The old man in his whimsical coat of sewn rags turned his head. He smiled, disarming, then tipped his chin toward the closed door, a half beat ahead of a disturbance arisen outside of the warehouse. ‘You’re going to know very shortly.’ As the commotion resolved into the scouring rumble of cart wheels, and the clatter of a sumptuous company of outriders, his seamed features kindled into beguiling delight. ‘We have company? Your party of councilmen has arrived two and a half hours early.’

  ‘Dharkaron’s Black Spear!’ The cro
wn’s master healer rammed to his feet in flustered annoyance. He pressed through the busy women in the factor’s office, cracked the door, and yelled to his youthful assistants, ‘Get busy lighting the sconces and candles! Now! Jump on it! His Grace’s high officers have no liking at all for musty dim corners and shadows that remind them of darkness.’

  Abandoned in the wake of last-minute preparations, the old man retrieved the dropped pitcher. He rinsed the soapy head under his fingers, and without visible hurry, toweled the comatose soldier’s streaming hair. Then he left his charge in the care of the women.

  ‘Don’t scream if he stirs,’ he admonished on parting, his amusement damped back to a madcap twinkle in the artless depths of his eyes.

  ‘Ye’re moonstruck,’ the grandmother among them replied, laughing, and shooed him back into the warehouse.

  There, he might as well have been invisible for all the notice anyone paid him. The frenzied scurry of preparations flowed right and left, banked candles and lanterns set burning at profligate expense. If the Prince of the Light went nowhere without ceremony, his high council officers emulated court style. The old man chose an unobtrusive stance against the sagged boards of old shelving. His ancient, patched coat flapped against his booted ankles as the large double doors that fronted the dockside were unlatched and dragged open.

  Two pages entered, their deep blue crown livery adorned with sunwheel sashes. Next followed a herald, his tabard roped with gold, the glittering white silk smirched with a dusting of snowflakes. While the chill swirled and flowed to the farthest-flung crannies, and candleflames streamed with the draft, he bawled out his formal announcement of the imminent presence of crown officers.

  Two magistrates stepped in as the echoes died away. They wore their formal robes of judgment and collars of gleaming links. With them came the Lord Crown Examiner, robed in ermine and white silk, and a second figure of impressive presence and seal-colored beard and hair. Diamond studs shot scintillant fire, warmed by a linked chain of dragons masterfully wrought in tooled gold. The inclement weather had not ruffled his fine clothes, which meant that somewhere outside, a stoic pack of servants had borne a closed litter or palanquin.

  The argumentative clutch of clerks trailing the first pair did not merit such nicety. They wore snow in their hat brims, and discommoded expressions of forbearance. Last came the lean and predatory form of the Alliance Lord Commander at Arms. That one strode in like a hungry hawk, his black-hilted weapons and alert carriage in sharp contrast to the disdainful court secretary who waddled, self-important as a citybred pigeon. Six sunwheel guardsmen escorted the retinue, their glittering trappings and ceremonial helms buffed to a dazzling polish. These ushered in their turn a trio of curiosities: a tall woman trailing a sequined train and a shoulder yoke of pheasant wings and peacock eyes. Next came a skinny, bald man robed in sable and purple velvet; then a wizened creature of indeterminate sex, with one gouged-out eye socket and a blackthorn walking stick capped with a crow skull and fringed with rattling bone beads. Four liveried footmen brought up the rear, loaded chin high with oddments and bizarre paraphernalia.

  The array was eclectic. From his unobtrusive vantage outside the hub of activity, the old man picked out several portable bronze braziers, clay vessels stamped with runes, and two amphorae of ruby glass. Less wholesome than these, stained with the aura of dark usage, was a goblet made from a cranial bone rimmed in tarnished silver. A trailing tangle of embroidery identified the filched mantle from a ransacked hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood. Two matched onyx candlesticks wafted a perfume of heavy incense, even through the rampaging wind that rushed in, rank with the salt rime razed off the harbor.

  Through a sifting swirl of snow, the rattle of bone beads, and the sonorous flourish of the herald, the page boys wrestled the heavy doors shut. There panoply paused. The crown’s master healer hastened forward and bowed under the gimlet regard of the Lord Commander. The high councilmen looked bored, and the clerks stood resigned, while the countrywomen whispered from the inner doorway of the factor’s office, their capable hands pink from wash suds.

  Their interest was matched by the old man in the rag coat, tucked in his corner with the pert fascination of a house wren. ‘You know that’s a necromancer’s stick?’ he commented to no one in particular. ‘Very rare. Dangerous, too. I wonder whose unpleasant little sigil lends it power?’

  Across the warehouse, the official with the resplendent dress exchanged smooth talk with the healer. His seamless, court bearing set each gesture apart, while the more heavyset Lord Examiner shifted from foot to foot in resentment, and the servants divested their burdens with thinly concealed distaste. The guardsmen and the robed magistrates looked on like cranes, overseeing disposition of the eccentrics, who were named as prisoners under arraignment for the practice of unlawful sorceries.

  Their condemned status notwithstanding, they argued. The discord swelled into an arm-waving clamor concerning who held right of precedence. The magistrates deadlocked over whose authority should silence them, while the herald, resigned, waded in and settled their shouting with a peasant’s practice of drawing straws. In decorous language, the clerk of the court then assigned each mismatched contestant to a cot with an unconscious occupant.

  The bald man jabbed his splayed fingers and demanded that everyone stand back.

  ‘What, for you?’ the woman retorted, skirling in spangles to face him. ‘Why should we give way one inch for a showman who couldn’t draw spells to drop fresh dung from a pig?’

  The altercation flared, while the withered oldster caught in between remained single-mindedly oblivious.

  ‘Good people!’ the herald called in vexation. ‘There will be no specialized treatment between you. The Lord Examiner and Avenor’s crown magistrates will judge merit upon equal standing!’

  A strained truce prevailed, while the master healer looked irritated, and the contestants who had rudely invaded his domain reclaimed their sundry paraphernalia. Under the frosty regard of the Lord Examiner and the unnamed, dapper high officer, they began setting up with businesslike self-importance. The heavyset secretary broke out his lap desk and uncorked his inkwell, while his chilblained apprentice sharpened his quills, and the robed clerks readied the sunwheel seal and gold wax, and snipped lengths from a spool of white ribbon. The magistrates shook melting snow off drooped hats. They peered down long noses to render judgment as the woman unclipped the clasp at her throat, shed her train amid an electrical jitter of reflections, and undertook the first trial.

  She began by spreading her sequin train over her assigned victim. She lit tapers. The ancient, carved sconces streamed cloying smoke as she waved long-nailed hands to a chiming descant of silver bracelets. For an interval, the officials coughed and dabbed runny eyes, while she circled the cot and muttered a singsong incantation.

  ‘A farce, indeed,’ muttered the old man in the shadows. His eyes became piercing, narrowed to slits as the flashy train was whisked off to unveil the man underneath. His pale face was still, the comatose limbs no more responsive than before.

  The magistrates straightened from their whispered consultation. The elder one rapped out his verdict. ‘The accused is proved guilty of fraud.’

  ‘Another charlatan!’ the Crown Examiner concurred. He pronounced the lighter sentence. ‘The objects used for this act of chicanery shall be burned without recompense. The offender will be fined ten silvers and set free with a warning not to repeat her offense.’

  ‘No more have I coin, since your constables ransacked my lodgings!’ the woman yelled in defiance.

  The magistrates lent her outburst no credence. ‘If she has no relations to dun for her fine, give her penury and hard labor with the city’s slop crews.’

  The secretary scribbled the added amendment, and the woman resorted to curses. Her shouts turned shrill as two burly guardsmen ushered her, struggling, through the door and remanded her into the custody of the garrison men-at-arms posted in the snowfall outside.

 
; Due process ground on, as ribbons and seal were proffered by the clerks, under candles that flagged in the draft as the outer doors were shoved closed. The healer masked his face in weary hands, and the raggedy character with the crow skull stick flashed a triumphant smile celebrating a rival’s departure.

  ‘Next defendant,’ droned the magistrate. ‘Make your case for the court.’

  The man in gaudy velvet strode forward. Chin held high, each gesture theatrical, he unwrapped a set of shell rattles, then lit something in his brazier that gave off a reek like singed wool and cat piss. His display opened with patterns chalked in a circle around a row of candles, moved on through a muttered consultation with a smoky quartz scrying ball, then broke into rattling, witha swaying ululation over a brush tied from a hanged man’s hair. The act ended in daubing a sticky decoction over the face and the feet of his still unconscious subject.

  The fine for his failure was double the woman’s.

  ‘Well, at least they recognize a fake when they see one,’ the old man said, bemused from the sidelines. His expression now shaded toward genuine concern, as though he perceived something more than straightforward trial and judgment.

  Last came the shapeless oldster. The shed hood revealed female gender and a filthy bristle of white hair. She wore a necklace of pig’s teeth. The necromancer’s stick pinched within her twig fingers seemed to glare blue for an instant as she bent and ignited the twisted black rootstock she had shredded in her brazier.

  ‘No!’ The old man flipped up his cowled collar and strode out of the shadows, no longer deferent, but charged to a startling, sharp air of command. ‘You will not light that here, madam!’ Nor was his authority less than absolute as he entered the circle of candlelight. ‘The herb you’ve chosen will cause harm in this case, and that stick is an unclean implement with which to recall a man’s blameless, strayed spirit.’