by Tim Stead
Mordo didn’t bother to reply. Instead he counted the seconds in his head. One, two, three, four…
Boragis clutched at his throat. Mordo reached past him and closed the box. He put it back on his shelf as the mage fell to his knees. The poison was working perfectly. It took five seconds to be felt and twenty to kill, but it had to be inhaled within moments of being released or it burned away in the air, and Mordo was quite safe now that he had rinsed his mouth.
Boragis was still twitching when he closed and locked the vault door, and there was nobody to see him leave, just as there had been nobody to see Boragis arrive. He walked back up the stairs to his office, sat at his desk and looked out of the window. Night was falling. He had earned his extra day.
*
Dawn found Mordo in the side chamber of the great hall, waiting. He had not slept that night, but was well satisfied with his work. A shattered tile lay on the ground beside him, broken so thoroughly it could have been smashed with a hammer, its fine workmanship torn apart. Mordo had been forced to throw it three times to get the desired effect – a tile well beyond repair.
He waited patiently, rehearsing the words in his mind. He had not written the words down because you could not write tone or expression on paper, and they were crucial, they must be perfect.
He heard steps hurrying across the floor of the great hall and went out to meet her.
Callista was surprised to see him at so early an hour, but she was polite enough to pause and nod to him.
“Good day to you, Mordo,” she said.
Mordo clasped his hands together. “Eran Callista, may I beg a favour?”
“I am on my way to see Pascha,” she said. An excuse, but easily overwhelmed.
“It would not take more than a moment, Eran, and I am afraid to trouble Eran Pascha. There has been an accident.”
She looked concerned. “Is anybody hurt?”
“No, no,” Mordo said. “Nothing so dire. If I could just show you?”
She nodded, and Mordo knew that he had won. He led her into the side chamber and waved a hand at the shattered tile.
“There were meant to be two,” he said. “Two identical tiles – so hard to make, but one of them has been dropped.” He hung his head. “I dropped it, and now there is only one.” He allowed his hand to caress the other tile as though it were unbearably precious, as indeed it was.
“What do you want me to do?” Callista asked.
Mordo paused, almost as though he was thinking, but of course he had thought of this moment a hundred times in the last few hours, rehearsed the words, practised the look, the tone of his voice. It was all perfect.
“Can you copy the tile?”
It was a challenge as well as a plea, perfectly pitched, but the look on Callista’s face was uncertain, and Mordo could see his plan collapse about him. What if she was incapable? He had seen the light from Pelion’s crown when she had worn it – brighter than he had ever seen it before. She had the talent, but did she have the knowledge? He knew that Pascha could do such a thing, but Callista was not Pascha. She touched the tile herself, and Mordo felt another lurch. What if she could tell? If she discovered his ruse it would be immediately fatal for one of them. His fingers found the small knife that he habitually carried, as he waited, his body inclined anxiously, as she made up her mind.
“I will try,” she said.
“If it’s not too much trouble, Eran,” Mordo said. “I fear I was too bold to ask such a thing.”
Callista smiled at him. “You are so patient with us all, Mordo. It is the least I can do.” She touched the tile again, laying her left hand on the centre of it, and stretching out her right hand to imitate the gesture, as though there was a tile beneath that as well.
And there was.
It was a ghost of a tile, a thing not quite there, a doubt somehow placed in his eyes. Yet as he watched it became more solid, its presence flowing from Callista’s fingers like dye into water. Mordo had never seen magic done in this way, and it impressed him. Could such a thing be done with gold and silver? With diamonds? Perhaps for the first time he had an inkling of the range of Pascha’s power, and it made it seem even more impossible that she did not use it.
The new tile became whole, solid, and identical to the old. Callista didn’t move, didn’t lift her hand away, and with the spell broken Mordo could hear that her breathing was laboured.
“Eran?”
She staggered, and he caught her before she could fall, seizing her by the shoulders and helping her to a chair. She was hardly any weight at all, like a child or a hollow boned bird. But this was a worry, too. If she died or was incapacitated by this piece of magic then that, too, would be a disaster. Pascha was expecting her, and any problem would put Col Boran in an uproar.
“Eran, are you all right?”
She opened her eyes, and the homely brown irises had grown dark. She no longer looked like the small Afaeli girl he had always taken her to be, but something far more dangerous. A tide of weakness swept through him, and she blinked, becoming again the girl he had seen so many times around Col Boran.
“I’m sorry, Mordo,” she said. “I didn’t think it would be so demanding.”
“But you’re all right?” he asked.
“Just give me a moment.”
She closed her eyes again, and sat still for a while. Mordo could see the colour coming back into her face, hear her breathing slow. After a few minutes she opened her eyes again, and smiled.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Eran,” Mordo said. “I did not know it would be so taxing. I would not have asked…”
“It’s all right, Mordo. It was my choice.”
That was good, but not quite enough.
“I must beg another favour of you, Eran,” he said.
“Another?” She raised an eyebrow.
“She will be angry with me if you tell her,” Mordo said. “Breaking the tile was my fault, and to have troubled you so, to put you in danger… she will be very angry.”
“No harm done,” Callista said. “If you wish it I will not tell Pascha.”
Mordo bowed – twice – a practiced gesture of relief and gratitude all the more convincing for being half honest.
“Thank you, Eran.”
She got to her feet again, a little unsteadily Mordo thought, and left him alone with the two tiles. He touched them both. In truth he could not tell them apart. He put them into a sack he had secreted behind the table and carried them out of the lesser hall, across the great hall, outside and back to his own chamber.
He walked quickly, looking neither left nor right. Time was important now, and he must leave as little trace of what he had done as possible. He reached his private quarters, closed the door and laid the sack on his bed. He opened a drawer and took out a small hammer. He tapped at the tiles in the sack, as gently as though he were cracking eggs, and from time to time he peered into the sack to see how he was doing. Each time the tiles cracked he reached inside, turned what remained unbroken, and began again.
It took ten minutes to retrieve his first prize. He drew out the slender band of Pelion’s Crown and laid it on the bed. It had taken him hours to scrape away the underside of the tile, hours to make a slot into which he could fit the crown and then cover it with clay. It had taken hours more to bake the tile in front of the fire in this very room.
He tapped again, turned the tile, tapped once more. A final crack and he reached into the bag again, withdrawing a second identical crown. It had worked perfectly. When Callista had copied the tile she had also copied the hidden treasure. Mordo had not been sure that the trick would work, but it was his last chance to get what he needed, and quickly.
He now used the hammer with abandon, smashing what was left of the tiles to dust. He would dump them on the spoil heap on his way out of Col Boran, but before that he would return one of the crowns to its vault, make sure that the two tiles originally ordered took their place in the lesser hall, an
d tidy away the broken tile.
There would be nothing left to betray him.
He knew that they would look for him when they discovered he had killed Josetin and Boragis, but they would not look so hard for a mere murderer. If they knew he had copied the books and the crown there would not be a rat hole in the kingdoms that could hide him.
But they would never know. Or at least not until it was far too late.
Mordo had what he needed – the books, the crown, and chaos across Afael and Avilian. It was perfect.
59 The Council Meets
Francis had made it his business to interfere in the choosing in almost every ward in the city. He had discouraged those who seemed to him to be outrageously foolish or violent, and it had succeeded. The greatest idiots had not been elected. But there had been a price to pay. He was now highly unpopular in some of the other wards.
He was pleased, though, that actual killing had been avoided. It seemed that his reputation had grown to such a degree that his disapproval was enough to scare most men.
The final issue to be resolved had been a meeting place, a building with a room large enough to house the thirty men and women of the Great Council of Afael in comfort. It was Keron who provided the answer.
“Falini’s place,” he said.
“The Duke’s house?”
“Aye, there’s a ballroom there that would hold a hundred men even if they brought their own beds.”
They were standing on the docks outside the tavern on an unusually balmy morning, Keron with a hot cup of something and food in his hand, there was always food in his hand, it seemed.
“Keron, how do you know this?”
“Common knowledge,” the big man said. “Since you killed the bastards the place has been deserted. It’s been looted of course, and a lot of damage done, but the house still stands. Someone will torch it for sure if you don’t take it for the council.”
“You’ve been there?”
Keron grinned. “I was one of the first,” he said. “Made a tidy sum, I can tell you. The soldiers looted when they left, but I guess there was so much stuff they couldn’t carry it all.”
It hadn’t occurred to Francis that the soldiers would loot and abandon their erstwhile master’s house, but he supposed it made sense. There was no heir. The family had been wiped out.
“We’ll have a look at it,” he said.
That afternoon they did, walking up through the city streets to the exalted neighbourhood of West Ward where Falini’s palace stood, gates gaping open like a dead thing’s mouth, bits of broken wood, torn cloth and shattered porcelain scattered across the unshaven lawns. He saw at once that there were broken windows, a door that hung unevenly from its hinges.
There were children playing on the grass where the soldiers had once patrolled, chasing after each other around the moribund fountains and broken statues, filling the air with incongruous happy sounds.
Francis and Keron were ignored as they made their way up to the house. Francis led them through the front door, but had no idea where the ballroom was.
“Do you know the way?”
Keron led him away from the great stair, down a broad corridor that bypassed the family rooms, and they quickly emerged into the largest room that Francis had ever seen. It stretched more than fifty paces in length and spanned twenty on the other axis. The ceiling, a mass of ornate, painted plasterwork, was undamaged, and the floor seemed intact, but many of the windows needed fixing and what furniture remained had been smashed beyond repair.
It was a sad remnant of what must have been a glorious life. He tried to imagine what it must have been like for the Falini family living in such spaces, knowing that they were secure here, that nobody could take it away from them.
That had been wrong, of course, though technically they had been subtracted from their lifestyle and not vice versa.
“This will do,” he said. “We’ll need tables and chairs, and something to keep out the sea breeze, and a fire.”
“I’ll see to it,” Keron said.
He was as good as his word, and when Francis returned with the Dock Ward representatives a week later he was impressed with the transformation. The room was now dominated by ten heavy oak tables set in a rough circle in the middle of the room. Each had three chairs set beside it. The windows were whole again, the floors polished and swept of debris and a great fire burned at either end of the cavernous space.
Each table bore the name of a ward, and Francis and his friends sat behind a sign proclaiming them to be Dock Ward. They were among the first to arrive, and sat quietly while others filed in, most of them seeing the place for the first time.
One or two nodded to him, but for the most part he was pointedly ignored. He told himself that it didn’t bother him, that it was a price he was willing to pay for avoiding the insanity that would otherwise have prevailed, but in truth it gnawed at him. Without Francis this council would never have convened, and most of its members would probably be dead. They owed him more than this.
Even so, he had made the decision long ago that he would not try to control them. He would put forward his point of view on whatever matters they discussed, and reason would decide.
Once seated, there was a pause. This was unknown ground for all of them. No protocol existed for who was to speak first, who had the right to speak, or how order was to be kept.
An old man on the far side of the circle seized the initiative. He stood, and the act of standing quieted the others. They waited for him to speak.
“I am Goran Tilano,” the man said. “Chosen by West Ward to speak here on their behalf.” He paused, and Francis thought he was enjoying his moment. “I am a guild man, and we have councils in the guilds, and so I propose that we adopt two basic rules. First, that everything we say is recorded by a penman, and secondly that only two people on the council are permitted to speak – the holder of the stone and the arbiter.”
“I don’t know guild councils,” another man said. “Who is the holder of the stone, and what does an arbiter do?”
“The arbiter decides whose turn it is to speak, and the stone is given to that person, who then has the right to hold forth.”
“We cannot have one arbiter, then,” another man objected. “If he is from West Ward he will always give the stone to West Warders.”
“Then perhaps we must say that we cannot vote until everyone has spoken,” Francis offered. “Then each has his turn and every opinion is heard.” He saw nods around the table.
“What about questions?” Another asked. “If one man speaks may he not be questioned?”
And so it went on. Francis was surprised, and perhaps a little pleased. They were creating the rules by which this council could function for a thousand years, and that was good. He had expected a heated discussion of the war, concern with problems outside the city, but none of that materialised in their morning session.
It did in the afternoon.
The rules, in rudimentary form at least, were set. They had a talking stone – an old piece of marble statuary that had once graced the duke’s mantle – and they had elected an arbiter – the old man who had proposed the position. They had also decided that the arbiter must change in every session, and adopted Francis’s suggestion that each member of the council should be given a chance to speak on every issue. They had even brought in a penman to record their words.
They were in open session when it began – discussing what they should discuss, and it was North Ward that started it. Francis had been active in North Ward since he’d encountered Chaini’s men, and it was not beyond the realms of possibility that Chaini was behind everything that happened there.
“We must raise taxes,” the lead North Ward delegate said.
“Why?” Francis had a trump card to play here, thanks to the general.
“There has been much damage in the city, and to the walls. We must rebuild, and the rich can pay for it.” There were nods around the room again. It was a popular sentimen
t.
“We have secured the king’s treasury,” Francis told them.
“The treasury?” Heads turned. “How much?”
“Aye, the treasury, and as to its contents – well, we have also secured the treasurer. He will speak to us tomorrow, but now that we have no king to pay for we can afford to build anything you like.”
“But we must vote on it,” another voice.
“Aye, a vote,” Tilano said.
It went on in that vein for some time, but Francis noted that the men from North Ward sat back and watched, much as he did, and his suspicions of a connection with Chaini grew stronger. He had disarmed one attack, but expected another. He had no idea what they, or Chaini, were trying to achieve.
An hour passed, and he had almost forgotten his earlier misgivings when the North Ward man stood again.
“We must discuss the punishment of criminals,” he said.
“Criminals?”
Francis leaned back. He was interested in this, another popular theme from the North Ward, but he would not be the first to speak.
“Aye,” the North Warder said. “The criminals who oppressed us, who taxed us and stole from us, who killed us in the streets.”
“The King is dead,” another man said.
“He is, and a good thing too. But there are others. The king was but a figurehead, and there’s Falini’s men, and others.”
The man wanted a witch hunt. It would be popular, too, for a while, until folk began to see that it was not only the guilty who were taken, but men and women who had done their best to be fair, and their friends, and relatives. There was hardly a man or woman in Afael who would not be touched by this.
“Is it not better to forget the past?” Francis asked. “We are starting anew here. Let us not be dragged back into darkness, but go forward to a bright future for all the citizens of Afael.”
“It is a question of justice,” the North Ward man said. There were nods around the table – probably enough to pass the idea if it came to a vote. “I can see how you might not want justice to be so vigorously pursued,” the man went on, pointedly looking at Francis.