by Grace Draven
A plain door to the side of the room opened, and three men walked in. They were richly robed in crimson silk with gold thread woven through in dizzying designs that made the eyes hurt. Two were masked in white, blank faces that were ominous in their plainness, and the third wore a black mask with a delicate golden vine etched into it.
Martis, with the long practiced eye of a merchant pricing a purchase, thought that the mask was gold, painted black, and not a black mask with designs painted on it, and worth a small fortune.
It was also clearly the Master of the City.
Martis swallowed hard. This was all looking ominous.
The masked men settled on their chairs, the Master taking the central chair. The guard that had brought them shuffled forward and offered a scroll to the left hand judge. He opened it, scanned it cursorily, then flicked a lazy hand summoning the first criminal forward.
He rose, looking like a man already condemned to death, and moved slowly forward to stand before the judges, looking small and crumpled in on himself.
The judge on the left leaned forward. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”
“I just cry mercy.” The man didn’t sound very hopeful.
The Master turned to each judge in turn, bending his head to hear their murmured verdict.
Apparently there was to be no mercy. There was another hand gesture from the judge on the left, and the man was escorted out wedged between two brutes, silently weeping all the while.
“Is that it?” Martis asked his neighbour. “Just asking if there’s anything to say—no lawyers, no evidence, no discussion?”
Martis had a lot of respect for lawyers, and their ability to tie up facts and promises in words. They were like magicians themselves, weaving the past into a new present, and tying even the most powerful creatures down, and he dearly wanted one now.
“You get that at your first hearing, for all the difference it makes. Not much point arguing when the Master can see into your heart.” His neighbour shuddered. “He can tell if you’re guilty.”
Martis thought that if someone was going to be rummaging around in his head he wanted a whole fleet of lawyers. It would be so very easy for someone to say, ah, Martis, you’re guilty, I see your heart and it is black as night; you should hang for it. Whose heart did not hold some darkness?
The next hearing offered him some hope. The man was brought forward but said nothing whilst the guard was briskly questioned as to the nature of the charges, a bond was set for his good behaviour, and he was released to his family, who gathered round him to pat him on the back before they slipped away through a door to the rear of the court. That way was freedom, then.
So far, so good. There seemed nothing magical about the Court, but the masked judges were disconcerting, hard to read with their blank faces and their almost complete silence. There was a pattern, if you looked closely enough—the left hand judge gave the guilty verdicts and the right hand judge offered freedom. The Master looked like nothing more than a statue, rarely moving, never talking, and watching everything.
When his turn came, he was pulled to his feet by a guard and then shoved into the centre of the marble floor in front of the judges.
“What is the charge?” the left hand judge asked.
“Brawling,” the guard replied.
“Hardly the business of this court,” the right hand judge said.
“Brawling and unlawful blood feud,” the Guard continued.
“Does that mean there’s lawful blood feud?” Martis blurted out. “Also, I admit the brawling, if you mean defending yourself against someone offering to take out your kidneys for spilling their pint but not the bit about blood feud.”
The Master tilted his head, inspecting Martis like a hawk watching a blade of grass shifting in the breeze, wondering whether that was a meal or not.
“What is the basis for the claim of blood feud?” the Master asked, his voice strong and cold, sounding out like a bell across the noise of a city.
The Court stilled for a moment.
“Er, my lord?” the guard replied.
“The basis of the claim,” Martis said helpfully. “You know, evidence and the like. Meeting with conspirators, hiring assassins, buying poison, hanging around in dark alleys wearing cloaks and looking shifty. Swearing vengeance on the life of a man and all his family down to the third degree. That sort of thing. All the things that I’ve not been doing.”
There was a gentle cough from the seats behind. “If I might…”
Martis turned to find a man, well dressed in grey robes with black trimmings, standing about half way back. His mask was grey, with darker stripes crossing the cheeks.
“I believe the young man is a scion of the Greenfall family,” he continued. “A family that has made vile calumnies against my name in the past.”
Martis looked forward. His shoulder blades prickled with the strain of turning his back on an enemy but staring at Dovestone was going to do no one any good. “You can’t lock people up for slandering someone’s good name or the prisons would be full.”
The Master raised his hand, obviously irritated at the suggestion he couldn’t lock anyone up for anything he damned well pleased.
“What my cousin means to say is that he assumes the Court would not wish to be bothered by anything as trivial as matters of reputation whilst recognising its absolute right to do so.”
Martis didn’t turn round. He didn’t need to—the smooth tones of his cousin were recognisable anywhere and well overdue.
“That was indeed what I was trying to say,” Martis said, with a low bow. A snort came from the direction of the judges, but it was impossible to tell which one of them had made the noise.
“Nor can it be said that the Greenfall family has uttered calumnies…” Alair continued.
“My lord, they have constantly alleged that I was behind young Calford’s death. An allegation which grieves me,” Dovestone said.
“Not constantly,” Alair replied. “Not after my lord’s own guards found nothing to prove the charge—unless Dovestone is suggesting that such an investigation was a calumny itself, and that he is above the law? We certainly make no such claim and have abided by the decision.”
Martis was struck by a sudden overwhelming affection for his cousin and resolved to say something nice about his poetry, perhaps the really dull one about chrysanthemums that went on for forty verses.
There was a pause whilst Dovestone thought about his next move. Martis almost felt sorry for him—he’d never won an argument with his cousin in twenty years, there was no reason to suppose that anyone outside the family ever would.
“Then why was this man wearing his brother’s mask?” Dovestone asked eventually.
“Because I’m too cheap to buy another one,” Martis said cheerfully. “I wanted to go out to meet a young lady of my acquaintance, I hadn’t got time to have a mask made, and it seemed a waste not to use my brother’s things. It was what he would have wanted.”
He probably would have done. Care for the pennies was ingrained in all the Greenfalls. It wasn’t meanness; it was thrift.
The right hand judge spoke. “The allegation is not found. Nevertheless, there will be a good behaviour bond of an amount to be decided.”
“And a fine for the brawling?” Dovestone asked.
“Until the man attacked presents himself to the court in the next ten days, there is no complaint to be found—unless you are claiming the right to complain on behalf of a man of yours?” the left hand judge said.
“Ah, no,” said Dovestone. “He was no man of mine.”
Martis did not smirk, but it was a close run thing.
The right hand judge waved his hand, dismissing Martis along with the charges, and he took the hint offered and headed towards his cousin, grinning at Dovestone as he went.
Dovestone stared back, and Martis wished he could see through the mask to see the expression underneath, see if this reverse had annoyed him. Dovestone muttered someth
ing to the man at his side and the pair of them scurried out of the court, leaving the cousins to watch their departure with satisfaction.
“I felt like a bone being fought over by two dogs,” Martis said.
“Be grateful the right dog won.”
“Oh I am, I am.” He paused. “It’s just… did you wait so you could make a dramatic entrance.”
Alair grinned.
Martis sighed. “You know that thing you wrote about chrysanthemums in autumn, with the droopy leaves and sad flowers.”
Alair tilted his head in expectation.
“It was… quite good.”
“You’re welcome,” Alair replied.
The dawn was some way away as they left the Court—the street outside was lit with torches, casting a warm glow across the square, which was reflected onto the water that ran through the canal skirting the pavement. They said nothing as they travelled back to their home by boat, aware that anyone in the City could be a pair of ears for Dovestone, for the Master, for the Lady Vanth, or for any other player in the game that they were not yet aware of.
A servant was waiting by the water gate ready to open it at a moment’s notice, and they slipped inside the house like shadows, hoping to pass unremarked but expecting the news to reach all the interested parties within minutes of their arrival.
Martis yawned, belatedly covering his mouth with his hand in a show of manners. “I’m tired.”
“Carousing all night will do that for you,” Alair replied, shrugging out of his cloak and draping it over the ornate table in the centre of the hall.
“I only caroused for part of the night. The rest of the night was spent in the cells, which doesn’t count.”
“I thought all carousing was supposed to end in a lock up or it wasn’t a good night out?”
“Not once you’re past thirty,” Martis replied. “Then the attractions of your own bed appeal rather more. Or someone else’s.”
“Those attractions are to be postponed. We need to talk before you get to sleep,” Alair said. “We may as well have breakfast before bed.” He gave orders for tea to be brought to them in the study, and led the way into the book-lined room, rich with the smell of leather and parchment.
“How did you find out where I was?” Martis asked.
“A little friend told me?”
“Hartest?”
Alair shrugged. “A message, brought by a runner who had no idea who had sent her but expected a shilling for her trouble. It seems likely it was Hartest—I can’t think of anyone else in this place that would try to help for nothing, or, at least, only the price of a shilling.”
“What about the Lady Vanth? She could be having us watched?”
“Unlikely. She doesn’t need to, not with…” Whatever Alair was going to say was cut off by the arrival of the servants with their breakfast. One carried a tray with eggs prepared four ways, roast pigeon, herbed goat’s cheese, bread rolls and the Greenfall morning blend of tea which made the world a better place just on its own. Another carried the rest of the tea things—a large tea pot, a silver ewer of hot water, a caddy of tea and a small jug of milk. “House blend?”
Martis nodded. “A little stronger than usual, if you please. I feel the need for something bracing.”
Alair added an extra spoon of Greenfall tea to the pot, poured the hot water over the leaves, and swirled the pot in a circular motion to spread the flavour. He settled the cups into their saucers, and then poured the tea. He added a touch of milk and passed it to his cousin.
Martis sucked the cup dry in seconds, and mutely held out his cup for a second, which was swiftly poured for him.
“The message I received said that you had been attacked by someone in the tavern,” Alair said.
“More accurately, someone squared up to me and I didn’t like the look of him—he was a big lad, so I hit him first and hardest to make sure he wouldn’t get back up.”
Alair grunted. “No suggestion that he was connected to anyone?”
“You mean something helpful like a house sigil on his tunic, or him announcing that he was in the pay of Dovestone before he tried to pick a fight?” Martis cocked an eyebrow quizzically. “No, nothing that helpful.”
“And enough witnesses to the encounter that lying is out of the question?” There was a half question in Alair’s voice.
“Too many witnesses to bribe,” Martis replied. “It seems likely there was a connection, seeing that Dovestone turned up in Court so quickly.”
“I agree, but there’s no certainty—he could simply have been spying on you, or slipped the clerk of the Court some money to report if you came in on charge, or any other ways of knowing you would be in court and him being there, ready to take whatever advantage he can.”
“Does it matter?”
Alair sipped at his tea, turning the question over in his mind. “Not especially. We knew he would move against us—whether it was a deep laid plot or merely taking advantage of a moment, he failed. It would be helpful to know whether he was a careful planner or had made a rash move, but either way, he would have to change his approach with his next move.”
“Aye, that’s what I thought.” Martis raised his tea in mock salute. “All we need to know is that we won this round and then think about how we win the next round.”
“Your approach is refreshingly direct.”
“Thank you,” said Martis.
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Martis shrugged. “It is, if I say it is.”
The tea had wrought miracles on Alair’s mood, and Martis was surprised but relieved to find himself escaping any criticism of his actions. Obviously his cousin would reserve the right to bring the matter up whenever they next disagreed, but that was in the future.
Their pleasant reverie was disturbed by a gentle cough. “There’s a young lady to see you, sir,” Barnardis said.
“Me?” said Martis, hoping that Hartest had come to see how he was doing.
“No sir. Begging your pardon, masters. The Lady Vanth would like to see you,” Barnardis replied, sounding like a man with a knife to his throat. He was moved bodily to one side, and the Lady Vanth pushed past him into the Study followed by Aishen.
“Do show her in,” Alair said smoothly. “We would be delighted to see her.”
Aishen winced.
“I told you before, boy, that impertinence did not amuse me,” Lady Vanth said, her voice soft and threatening from behind the glittering sun mask.
“Other than your own. Do sit down. Our house is your house, evidently,” Alair replied, then turned to the servant. “Fetch another cup for our guests.”
“I do not drink tea,” Lady Vanth snapped.
“But perhaps Aishen would like a cup,” Martis said. “It would be rude of us not to offer our hospitality to a guest.”
“No, thank you,” Aishen replied.
Alair shook his head at the servant who scurried off as quickly as he could, relieved he would not have to return to the room.
“Rude? Rude?” Lady Vanth drew a deep breath and let it out in a long hissing sigh. “I want to know what this fool was doing wearing his brother’s mask to a shabby tavern three doors away from Dovestone’s warehouse.”
“I wanted ale and a pie,” Martis said. “Nothing more.”
Lady Vanth finally sat down on the chair opposite Alair, prepared to finally listen. “It was a coincidence?”
Martis nodded. “I picked the first mask to hand and went to the only ale house I knew of to meet the only girl I know in the City.”
Lady Vanth surveyed him in silence for a long moment, and Martis wore his best bland negotiating face. She turned to Alair, dismissing Martis of unworthy of her attention. “Was she bait?”
Alair shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“She didn’t know I was going to be there,” Martis added, keen to head off any potential reprisals towards a woman he owed nothing but thanks. Lady Vanth was not a woman with an even temper.
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��Very well.” Lady Vanth leaned back in her chair, allowing the room to fill with a tense silence. She broke first. “So what is your next move?”
“Bed and sleep,” Alair said blandly.
“Nice breakfast,” Martis added, thinking wistfully of how they had played this game before to irritate his father at the breakfast table. He would listen to them pretending to be complete featherwits until he snapped and would throw a bread roll at them and order them out of the house to do something useful.
“I thought we were allies in this.” Lady Vanth leaned forward, her mask catching the light. Her hands pressed against her thighs, crumpling her satin gown, the only sign of any emotion.
“We want the same thing,” Alair replied eventually. “But I doubt you have the same care for our skins as we do.”
Lady Vanth expelled a sharp gust of breath, and then stood, her movements unnervingly fast. Inhumanly fast. Martis saw his cousin’s hands flex, as if he was reaching for a knife, then forcibly relax.
“Let me know when you do decide something,” she said.
Alair smiled blandly.
“Aishen, come—we will leave this pair to their rest and their nice breakfast, and be about our business.” Lady Vanth shook out her skirts in a susurration of silk and satin and moved to the door with her eerie gliding walk, Aishen dutifully following behind.
“Aishen, next time I do hope you can try the Greenfall tea—it is famous across three continents and five seas. It is only right that we should return your Mistress’ hospitality in the spirit that was offered,” Alair said, and something in that made her twitch and pale.
Lady Vanth had reached the door when Alair added, “I understand the Master holds a gathering in a week—we would like to attend.”
“I shall see what I can do,” Lady Vanth replied. “Though you should consider that the Master enjoys impertinence even less than I do, and his manners are notoriously….sharp.”
“That is what I am relying upon,” Alair said.
“Very well—the day is nearly upon us and I must leave. Aishen, perhaps you can stay a while to try this tea, and discuss etiquette with these two. Whatever they have planned, it would be best if the Master did not take offence because they used the wrong form of address.”