by Karen Myers
“Four days ago,” she said, “a delegation of all the invited foreign wizards, from Kigali’s allies of sarq-Zannib and Ndant, and from Ellech and Rasesdad, attended an assembly of tekenga lupjuwen to encourage them to join with the other Kigali lupjuwen. We were attacked by a rabble of lupjuwen, hired by the Tsek clan out of Chalen Tep.”
“That is a lie,” the amber-robed woman hissed.
The emperor raised his hand again, and she subsided.
If they’re going to dispute my every sentence, this could take a while. She clamped her teeth on the black humor that threatened to show on her face.
“Many were killed, including three of my colleagues, and several were captured. They were held captive for two days, their wounds untended, in one of the Tsek buildings here, in Juhim Tep, where they were shackled to the wall and supervised by a lupju jailer, shielded from searches by a group of tekenwen.”
She’d been pitching her voice to carry, and she could hear a sort of echo in the distance, her own words being relayed to those too far back in the crowd to hear her directly.
“Two days ago, the captives were visited by a tekenga lupju who chose one of their number, Ijumo of Ndant, and led him away. That evening, the captives managed to escape.”
She took a breath to steady herself. “I also had come in search of them, having discovered the concentration of lupjuwen and tekenwen in the Tsek compound. As it happens, I was in the crowd during the Festival of Lights, and I witnessed the foul murder of the bound Ijumo by a teken working for Tsek Anbu, wearing clothing meant to suggest me.
“I claim justice for my colleagues, Kigali’s foreign allies. I claim it for the Kigaliwen who were wantonly slain in these attacks. I claim it for my own name and honor. Most of all, I claim the right to make the emperor acquainted with the mischief and treason plotted by one of his subject clans that wishes to divide lupjuwen from the righteous control of their guild and encourage them in criminal activities.”
She waited for the relay echo to finish.
“This I swear to be true!” She bowed again and remained kneeling, until the emperor gestured with his hand for her to rise. His expression was impossible to read.
From behind Penrys, an urbane voice spoke. “My clan is accused, and I claim the right to respond.”
She turned around and confronted a plump and prosperous Kigalino, middle-aged and confident. This would be Tsek Anbu, the samkatju of his clan, she thought. That woman in amber robes on the platform was, what, his cousin?
He walked up to her as if he had no fear of her whatever, as if she were unimportant. “Where are the proofs?” he asked, reasonably. “Are we to take the word of an uninvited and unsupported foreigner, one who is sought for treasonous murder? What are the oaths of foreigners, or their notions of honor?”
Penrys, under her shield, took a moment to verify that this man was indeed a wizard, as were the two in amber robes behind the emperor. She didn’t dare distract herself looking for the three chained ones that had to be nearby, perhaps in the public audience outside the wall.
The emperor asked her, “And where are the other lupjuwen you say were captive? Would they not come with you?”
Straight to the weakness of my claim. Now what?
“They were to have joined me here and have been prevented. I am sure that this man could tell you more about that.” She gestured at Tsek Anbu.
“You see how it is,” Tsek Anbu said. “These good allies of ours didn’t wish to support this nonsense and are probably unaware of her actions.”
Penrys remembered the documents she’d been studying all day, and Tun Jeju’s insistence on a public solution. “Challenge!” she cried. “I call challenge upon him, for impugning the truth of my statements.”
That gave him pause. Then he bowed to the emperor again. “Gladly will I accept challenge, but this is a tekenga lupju, as all can see. I will need a champion.”
He approached the viewing wall and raised his voice. “Is there, by chance, anyone who will champion the Tsek clan to refute these falsehoods?”
By chance! A well-prepared backup, more like it. She watched a soberly dressed Kigaliwen couple standing an unnatural distance apart from each other approach the walls. The man unfastened the top of his tunic to reveal a chain. “We are here to witness this joyous occasion that adds another heir to support our emperor. I would be honored to do my best to support you and the emperor.”
Tsek Uchang spoke to his father. “In a sword challenge, all may judge of the actions of the contenders, whether they are honorable or not. In a challenge like this, how will we be able to tell that there has been no impropriety, no… falseness?”
The emperor inclined his head to listen. “And what do you suggest, my son?”
The young man called out to the crowd. “Is there one who can serve as overseer of this challenge?”
Without surprise, Penrys watched another woman make herself known in the audience. “I am so qualified,” she said, never taking her eyes from Penrys while she bared her neck to reveal the chain. A tight, satisfied smile played on her lips.
Penrys declared, “These are the three tekenga lupjuwen employed by the Tsek clan. This last woman is the one who impersonated me on the stage at the Festival of Lights.”
“So you say, foreigner,” said Tsek Uchang. “I think this is just a way of trying to evade the charges of murder against you. If you survive the challenge, you will find justice, indeed, of a rather different kind.”
He assumed a bored expression. “Let’s get this over with and return to the ceremony.”
Two guardsmen were dispatched to an outer gate to bring the three chained wizards in. The instant they had revealed themselves as tekenwen, open space had opened around them, but they feigned not to notice and let themselves be led around into the courtyard where they all three spaced themselves apart by a few feet and bowed to the emperor.
He looked each of them over closely and asked their names. They disclaimed any connection with the Tsek clan while Penrys watched resentfully. He paid most attention to the woman who had nominated herself as overseer of the challenge, and then caused a seat to be brought for her, on the platform next to him, and another to the right of the space before him for the wife of Jut Sejo, the man who’d accepted the champion’s role.
When everyone had been seated, and only Penrys and Jut Sejo remained standing before the emperor’s platform, the emperor dropped his civil mask and assumed a sterner aspect. At a nod to one of his ministers, two resonant sticks were clacked together, three times.
Into the resulting silence, he spoke so that all could hear him, with all the majesty of his role. “Heaven has heard a call for justice, and insists that we respond. If there is treason in the land of Kigali, we will find it out.”
His glance went to the public audience. “This challenge will be to submission or death. There will be no interference from anyone, and most especially from any lupjuwen. Our overseer will hold herself bound to prevent that.”
“Anyone who interferes will be subject to severe penalty, not excluding death.”
Penrys muttered, bitterly, “Heaven puts its thumb on the scales, like everyone else.”
The emperor turned his head to her, but she did not apologize. She let her wings vanish—they would be a useless distraction—and faced Jut Sejo.
Her raised shield was proof against his first probe, and she pushed back immediately. There was nothing for the spectators to see, but her own attack induced him to step backward in response.
She moved forward to match him, and searched for ways to penetrate his shield—draining his own power would be the only way to truly stop him, like any wizard. It was a good, strong shield he had, not something she could just overwhelm, and she concentrated on finding a weakness in it somewhere to break the stalemate.
If I just pick at it here, I bet I can crack it. Wait, what’s that? The so-called wife? Two against one, is it? Not so easy to break my shield, eh? Yrmur! Where did that kni
fe come from?
She dodged the blade that Jut Sejo pulled once, but the pressure from the second chained wizard blinded her long enough that he managed a slash on her arm. It flashed cold, and then began to burn.
Scrambling back to create a little space, she drew the knife at her back and prepared to meet him, blade to blade. The emperor’s guards shifted to provide a shield in front of him, but otherwise did not interfere.
That’s why it was the man who was the chosen champion, not the women, who were stronger wizards. Now his height matters, and his reach.
The insight was too late and useless.
I’ve got to neutralize the second one.
She couldn’t draw on the shielded tekenwen, but there were other wizards. She reached for the ones in the crowd first, a dozen or so, leaving them enough to stay alive, and used that to blindside the seated woman. She sprawled in her seat and then rose and dropped all pretense of non-interference.
Penrys needed more wizards. Tsek Anbu’s clan—that was close enough. Their group shield wasn’t strong enough to withstand her, not without the help of the chained wizards here, and she tore it away and drained them all, trying not to kill them, but there wasn’t enough time to be delicate about it.
With that surge of power, she swatted down the second woman and broke her shield. Once inside, she drained what she could, but her own chain could only hold so much, and too much was left for safety—the woman would recover too quickly.
A cold shock radiated from her right arm. Too much focus on the woman, and he’d slashed her there a second time. Her hand couldn’t hold the knife, and it dropped before she could bring her left hand to grab it. There was no noise at all, except the sound of the knife hitting the ground, and she seemed to be moving slowly, as if the very air were thick.
Before the pain could hit, she formed all the power she now had into a bludgeon that smashed through his shield. There was no way to drain him, nowhere for it to go, and so she stopped his heart. He managed one more step toward her before he collapsed.
Penrys clamped the double wound on her forearm with her left hand to try and stop the bleeding. Her eye fell randomly on a guardsman along the wall and she puzzled over his face. His expression was shocked, but he wasn’t looking at her, at the fight. He was looking past her.
She turned to follow his gaze, and there was the emperor, still seated with dignity. The third chained wizard, the one who had murdered Ijumo, rested a knife against his throat. She was silent until she saw that she’d gotten Penrys’s attention, and then she spoke, and all the noise that had been at bay rushed in along with her words.
“You know I will do it,” she said. “You of all people.”
No one else on the platform dared to move.
It’s a device. The chain is a device. Move, bind, destroy—that’s what devices do.
That was one thought. And then… If she twitches, he dies. It’ll take too long to break her shield.
Penrys pulled power from the dead man’s chain and poured it into the woman’s body, a simple push like the sort used to propel blades on a ceiling fan, but much more powerful.
Faster than a gust of wind, she was hurtled upwards over her seated neighbors and backward off the platform into the stone wall behind it. She hit with an audible crack and slid downward, leaving blood smeared on the stone where her head had impacted.
That was… interesting.
There are other enemies still on the platform, within reach of the emperor.
She turned her attention to Tsek Uchang and his mother, and the emperor lifted his hand. “Their lives are mine.”
“They’re too dangerous,” she replied, “Let me defang them for you, for now.”
She was twitching with power, and could hold no more. By restoring the power for the wizards in the crowd that she’d started with, she made enough room that she was able to drain the two wizards. It left them impotent under the eyes of the emperor’s guard, now freed to move again with the threat of his immediate death removed.
The surviving chained wizard, half-drained, sat unmoving and unshielded, also under guard. A look of shock was still on her face.
“I summon Tsek Anbu.” The emperor was unruffled, as if nothing had happened.
Penrys watched the samkatju approach. Give him his due, he’s man enough to face his ruin.
She looked a question at the emperor, and he nodded. Again she drained another wizard. Tsek Anbu seemed to barely notice.
He has other things to worry about. Penrys smiled to herself.
“Heaven has demanded justice, and justice has been served. The murderer of our Ndant guest has been found guilty, and treason has indeed been revealed.”
A wave of his hand sent more guards to surround Noi Shibu, whose reaction was one of stoic resignation. A fresh column of guardsmen filed in and placed themselves in front of the borrowed Imperial Security guards that lined the solid stone extending to either side of the viewing wall with its rapt crowd standing beyond.
One of the newly-entered guards approached the emperor and whispered something in his ear. He raised his hand for silence again.
“Some of our invited guests for this ceremony were detained and have only just arrived.”
Penrys turned to face the bustle of activity that was sorted out by the guard captain at the entry.
Tun Jeju trod in with Gen Jongto in his train. Behind him came another file of Imperial Security guards that joined the emperor’s, along the walls, burying the suspect contingent two-deep. He reserved a group of four that accompanied him to the emperor’s platform, where he bowed deeply, and then took Noi Shibu into his own custody and removed him from the platform.
The foreign wizards entered next in formal attire and walked in silence, to stop short at the trampled space where Penrys stood. They bowed to the emperor as a body, and withdrew to one side, behind Penrys, all except Najud. He busied himself with picking her knife off the ground and using it to cut off the remains of her sleeve which he wrapped tightly around her bleeding arm before taking a position behind her.
The last group in was comprised of wizards. There were some, like Wok Tori, who were properly dressed for the ceremony, and several who were in their ordinary clothing, as if they’d been swept impromptu into this confrontation. Wok Tori with Char Nojuk and Char Dazu in support, and Rin Tsugo with Kit Hachi joined Tun Jeju across from Penrys, surrounding the chair where the surviving chained wizard sat, joining the guard there.
With relief, Penrys felt Rin Tsugo taking charge of the woman who, despite her apparently submissive demeanor, still held more power than she was comfortable seeing so close to the emperor. She wasn’t sure Rin Tsugo could control her, but Kit Hachi was there and she’d noticed other chained wizards in the party. It was probably safe enough.
All this time Tsek Anbu had been standing at attention before the emperor, with his dead champion to his left, and Penrys and the other foreign wizards to his right.
The emperor waited until all the commotion had ceased.
He singled out the obvious Ndant delegate and spoke to her. “This man,” he said, indicating Tsek Anbu, “set in motion a plot, one consequence of which was the death of your colleague, by that woman’s hand, and the attacks that were made on you and your companions.” His hand indicated the barely visible crumpled remains of the chained wizard on the ground beyond the platform.
“We will speak with you later, all of you, to provide you with the details. We of Kigali are shamed that our invited guests should meet with harm and we offer our deepest apologies.”
He waved Tsek Anbu into the custody of his guards who drew him to the side where Rin Tsugo and Wok Tori stood. Tsek Uchang and his mother were escorted there as well.
“Tun Jeju,” the emperor said, “my guests are usually more prompt in their attendance. Could you explain?”
Tun Jeju presented himself again and bowed. “This posum proffers our collective apologies, liju. I see that Penrys-chi must have made her own e
ntrance, but we were compelled to use the nanglik chok at the cliff of Tegong Him and discovered that we were anticipated. It took some little time, and assistance, before we were able to… proceed.”
“I look forward to hearing the story in more detail later. Meanwhile, we have prisoners to detain, and I do not believe we are competent to do so.”
Wok Tori bowed from his position on the side. He walked out to join Tun Jeju and bowed deeply again. “The guild is eager to take up its responsibilities in suppressing criminal activities. We have brought many with us, enough to control these prisoners of yours.”
Penrys cleared her throat, and the emperor turned his eyes to her. “You have something to say, tekenga lupju?”
She bowed. “I just wanted to mention that there are a few dozen wizards in the Tsek clan buildings that need looking at. I, um, stripped them of power to defend myself. Might not all be alive.” She waved her left hand over her shoulder. “In that direction, over there.”
Wok Tori buried a smile. “We will take them in, as well.”
“You may house those as you see fit, Wok Tori-chi—we will expect reports. For these my one-time relations, however, we expect your representatives to attend us here, to assist with the interrogations and imprisonment.”
Wok Tori bowed once again and returned to his place.
Penrys was still standing, as she had been since the challenge, and longing for this audience to be over, but the emperor turned his attention to her again.
“If heaven’s thumb was on the scales, teken-chi, it was necessary. They needed to be exposed, publicly. It was not intended that you assume the risk alone, but that was not my doing. The more honor to you.”
She bowed deeply to him. “I apologize for my presumption. I was just not…”
“Overeager to die?” he suggested.
She smiled wanly and staggered a bit. Najud stepped forward to give her an arm.