Anfisa Zofiyat is as shrewd as they come! (He was quick to assure me.) She has worked in Pattern since she became an adult; there is no one more qualified, no one more discreet.
(“Oh,” I said. “It’s just that Zorya Miroslavat seemed dismissive of her talents and abilities.”)
Well, she has a grudge against Anfisa Zofiyat and the Ministry of Pattern. We know she’s up to all kinds of tiny crimes, and we keep finding them and making her look bad. If we wanted, we could blacken her name at the next Justice election and put her out of a job, and she knows it.
(It was at this point that I began using Ilya’s own tactic: “Goodness,” I said, and “You don’t say,” and little meaningless questions to tweak more information out of him.)
Zorya Miroslavat’s got her favorites, you know. Everyone does. She’s given promotions to a lot of people who shouldn’t have gotten them. She’s taken a few bribes. A few times she’s told her judges what verdict they should give on a case. . . . She words it as a suggestion, and all her correspondence makes it sound like she’s just debating the merits of one hypothetical interpretation of the law or another, but that’s what she’s doing. She really ought to keep her nose out of their work. The judges need to be able to make their own decisions, but she hangs over them, as anxious and fussy as a mother watching her child learn to cut onions.
This is common knowledge if you know the right people, by the way. This isn’t a huge secret. I don’t mind telling you, because I want you to know about the good work Pattern is doing.
Oh, and Zorya got Vihra Kylliat elected as Queen of Order, too. Vihra’s also engaged in a little harmless nepotism in her time. She and Zorya are very close. It makes things difficult for us, whenever the Primes meet for anything, because—well, Vihra and Zorya double up together, and the King of Law dodders along, taking no notice of anything, because he’s nearly too old to even hold his own head up, and the Queen of Coin is equally useless. She’s definitely embezzling funds from the treasury, but we’ve got our eye on her. She hates us too.
There’s other things too, but I can’t tell you about those.
We’re not doing anything wrong, of course. We’re just trying to keep everyone in line so the Pattern stays straight and even. We’re part of the balance of things, and we have to be smart about it. A lot of folk get angry with Pattern because they don’t understand. They think things are bad, but we know that’s just how things are. When you think about it, it’s not as bad as it could be—here, we get to choose who is in charge, we get to choose people to make mistakes on our behalf. Lots of places, they don’t do that. You have to endure whatever you’re given by the fates. King goes mad? You keep him. Queen dies of a cold? I guess you’re out of luck.
When you look at it that way, we’re lucky to live here.
All in all, it was a reasonably productive conversation with Ilya.
Anfisa Zofiyat came every day for at least an hour and asked me everything I knew, and I tried my best to cooperate with her as much as possible. She said that her messenger was out looking for Ylfing, that the journey out took at least a day, and that’s assuming that he hadn’t left the town where we’d parted and traveled elsewhere.
I wrote another letter and sent that one out as well, just in case.
“I’m not a spy,” I assured her over and over again, whenever she asked for information I didn’t have—secrets, blackmail, hidden information, knowledge of the neighboring countries’ weaknesses.
Once, early on, she came to me and was . . . strange. Exceptionally strange. She stood close to me and sniffed me, checked my eyes and under my tongue as if I were a horse she was looking to buy. She watched me eat. She snapped her fingers, and there was an enormous din in the hallway, guards clattering metal on metal and banging things against the stone walls. It startled me out of my wits, and then she and I sat there staring at each other: she, expectant; I, deeply confused. She dropped a colorfully painted wooden ball in my lap, the sort a child might play with.
Another test, I know now. Double-checking whether I was a blackwitch.
I found out, through more story-trades with Ilya, that Anfisa slept in the Tower, rather than going home to her own house. She occupied a locked room in the deepest basement, four levels underground and walled with stone two feet thick. I found out that she served herself from the same food the head steward served everyone, that she washed her own dishes and kept them locked in her room when she wasn’t using them, that she drank from a water barrel that even the newest patrolman used, and that she never touched wine, tobacco, or anything else that had been made especially for her.
I found out, too, that her predecessors, six of them over the course of not quite eighty years, had all been assassinated. Seven rulers before her, one King of Pattern had managed to die of natural causes (or what seemed to be natural causes, at least). Three more rulers before him had been assassinated too.
It didn’t seem to be a very cushy job, to say the least.
Then, one day, after I had been in the Tower for nearly a week, I was looking out my little window and I saw a small squad of red-uniformed guards approaching the Tower door. Order had sent her emissaries.
To fetch me, it turned out. Anfisa had used up her allotted time to question me. She wouldn’t allow the Order guards inside the Tower, of course, but she came up to see me, tense and pale, and she spoke quickly to me, entreating me to remember her kindness, promising that she would send one of her most trusted aides to continue speaking to me, that she might in fact come herself if the situation demanded. Then Captain Ostakolin brought me downstairs and signed me over into the tender mercies of Order.
The days were getting shorter, and though it was already midmorning, the sun was just then beginning to rise.
On the upside, the new cell I was given was not so deep underground. There was, I think, a window somewhere down the hall, because there was a faint glow of natural light from around a corner. I was put in the cell and left to myself.
Consanza arrived within the hour, wrapped up in thick wool now that the weather had begun to turn. She pulled off her gloves—fine leather, I noticed—and stuck her pipe in her mouth before she even said hello.
“So you had a vacation at the Tower of Pattern, eh?” she mumbled from around the stem as she lit her pipe-leaf. “Apparently Anfisa Zofiyat is saying you’re not a blackwitch; I don’t know how you convinced her of that, but let me be the first to offer my most hearty congratulations. Did you know she submitted a memo that suggests the witchcraft charge might be a waste of time? So you have that, at least. Well done. I think we can put that out of our minds for now; no one’s going to pursue that unless they get really desperate. From start to finish, this Pattern business has been an interesting development.”
“Has it?” I asked. I was overcome with despair, regardless of Consanza’s news—back to a cold, cramped cell, back to a hard bench to sleep on and a ratty blanket, back to stale bread and slop for my meals. I was already missing the Tower. As Anfisa had asked, I remembered her fondly, though the news that she officially didn’t believe I was a witch only frustrated me—how enraging it is when people announce something obvious as if it were a breakthrough! “I met the Queen of Justice before the Pattern Guard arrived to take me.”
Consanza crossed her arms and blew out a stream of smoke. “Did you? A social call, was it?”
I shook my head. “She and the Duchess of Justice came. I was taken to a room, they asked me questions, I refused to answer without you—”
“Good.”
“—they refused to send for you. I asked to send a letter. They said no. Anfisa Zofiyat let me, though.”
“So you met her in person, then? Hmm.”
“She came to talk to me every day.” I curled up on my bench and tried to cover up my ankles and my shoulders at the same time.
“And here I assumed she would delegate that task to someone she wanted to punish,” Consanza said dryly. “What did you talk about?”
“Can’t come tomorrow, I have a hearing—with one of my paying clients, you know. You were only supposed to be a tedious little witchcraft trial, and now this. And just so you know? Anfisa saying that you’re not a blackwitch doesn’t mean that you’re out of danger with that espionage charge, so don’t get your hopes up.”
She left.
I thought fondly of the Tower of Pattern.
I asked the guard who brought me my next meal if I could send a letter and was, as I expected, conclusively shut down.
Consanza came again two days later, with a bundle stuffed under her arm. “Here. I asked around about secondhand stores and went all the way up to Bent Street to get this. Smelly, but it should do you.” She unfurled the bundle as she spoke and flung it between the bars. It was an old horse blanket, and it was smelly—stale horse sweat and stale hay—but it wasn’t any worse than the cell itself, so I wrapped it around my shoulders and was grateful for it. “You ready to talk today?”
I nodded silently.
“The Queen of Pattern spoke with you every day, you said?”
“Yes. Wanted to know . . . everything I knew about anything. Intelligence. I didn’t have much. I’m not a Weaver.”
“Did you answer her questions?”
“Well, yes.”
Consanza sighed heavily. “Did you ask to see me?”
“Obviously. I’m not stupid. She wouldn’t let you in. Too much of a security risk—funny, ’cause all I saw of their security at the Tower was a wooden door and a lot of stairs.”
“Mm, yes. All you saw of their security. All you saw.” Consanza waved that away. “But you cooperated with her and ran your mouth—again—without my counsel? I’d be dubious about keeping you on, at this point, but . . . Well, finish telling me about what happened.”
I told her about the comfortable room, the hot meals, the warm bed, the brazier in the hall.
“And in exchange for your cooperation, she sent your letters out with her messengers?”
“But it’s been days—more than a week—and I don’t know where he is now, or if they even found him to give him the letters—”
Consanza snorted. “You’re pretty naive when it comes to that kid, aren’t you?”
“I could be your grandfather, woman! Don’t you disrespect me! I just want to—hmph! I just want him to know where I am, that’s all.”
“She probably didn’t even send the messages out.”
I scowled at her as fiercely as I could manage, bundled up on the bench in a smelly horse blanket. “She liked me,” I said. “She said she’d help me if I helped her, and I did my best, so why wouldn’t she do the same?”
She rolled her eyes massively—it wasn’t a good look for her. “Oh, I don’t know, because she’s a Queen of spies, one of the most cunning women in the country, with dirt on everyone and no qualms about using it, and in the year or so since she was elected has become a famous paranoid who barely leaves the Tower except under heavy guard by her most trusted Weavers and stewards? She probably kept those damn letters and has someone tearing them apart to find a code. You didn’t write anything in code, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t! What have I to say in code? I have nothing to hide! I said, ‘Ylfing, I have been charged with crimes I have not committed, and I am being kept in prison in Vsila until my trials are over. Be very careful of how you talk to people; they’re a very suspicious bunch, and terribly rude to strangers.’ ”
“And that’s all?”
“I think so. They were short letters.”
“None of them even left the Tower. I would bet money on it, and you know I don’t gamble on the long odds. Your apprentice is still wholly ignorant of your fate. But back to your case. This is getting a little bit interesting for me.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Interesting? How so?”
“The Queens seem to be having a bit of a spat over who gets to sink her claws into you.” Consanza tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. “I did some digging and found out what was happening with them during your time in the Tower. First Anfisa Zofiyat pulled that stunt with her Nineteenth Modification right to question traitors and spies—suspected traitors and spies,” she corrected herself, seeing me about to object. “Then the Queen of Justice, Zorya Miroslavat, basically threw a giant fit—that’s the legal term for it, don’t you know—anyway, she threw a fit about Anfisa Zofiyat getting to keep you locked up in the Tower where no one could get to you, and she filed what I think we can technically refer to as an epic fuckload of injunctions and objections and, well, all the legal paperwork tantrums she and her clerks could think of. But the law is the law, and Casimir Vanyos—that’s the King of Law—said that there wasn’t any way to get around it, but then Vihra Kylliat came in on Zorya Miroslavat’s side, obviously, because Order and Justice have always been like this”—she crossed two fingers to show me—“no matter who the Primes are, and Vihra Kylliat and Zorya Miroslavat have been even more like that. They’re like mother and daughter, practically.” This all lined up with what Ilya had told me, and my head spun just imagining the mental acrobatics I would have had to do to follow all this without his explanations. “Anyway, once Vihra Kylliat got involved, Casimir Vanyos had to take it to a formal vote among the Primes, and since Taishineya Tarmos abstains most of the time because she doesn’t give a shit, and the Prime of Law is required to always abstain except in the case of a tie, it was just Pattern against Justice and Order, and Anfisa Zofiyat couldn’t provide enough evidence to show that her questioning of you was turning up information crucial to the safety and prosperity of the nation, so she had to give you up. And that’s that, and here you are.”
“Here I am,” I said, dazed. “Who was the last one you mentioned, the one who abstains by choice?”
“Ah—Taishineya Tarmos Elyat Chechetni.” It took a moment for me to wrap my brain around how all those names could belong to one person. The Nuryevens love bureaucracy, you see, and they’re not terribly creative, so every person’s name goes by the exact same formula—a use name, a patronymic, a matronymic, and a family name. Makes it easier for the advocates to alphabetize their filing cabinets or something, probably. “The Queen of Commerce—you’ll more commonly hear her called Queen of Coin, though. Or the Queen of Gold, Penny Queen, Dragon Queen, Trader Queen. The Thief Queen, too, during tax season. Better than what they call Zorya Miroslavat, worse than what they call Casimir Vanyos.”
“Dare I ask?”
“Casimir’s the Loophole King,” she said, with a slight wry smile. “Or the King of Convenient Precedent. And Zorya is the Rope Queen or Gallows Queen.”
I felt a little sick. “Why does Taishineya Tarmos abstain?”
“Personal preference. Likes to keep her options of allies open, I suppose. Prefers smiling over talking, prefers no one to know where she stands on any given subject. I don’t think you’d like her.”
“How would you know who I’d like?”
“Just a hunch.”
“And all this is interesting to you?”
“Oh, fascinating,” Consanza said calmly. “Imagine the opportunity to argue a case in front of a panel of all five of them. And if the fighting between Pattern and Justice keeps going on like this, and if Order keeps supporting Justice, then it’ll have to go to a panel. There won’t be any choice.” Consanza leaned back in the chair and folded her hands across her stomach. “At this point, it’s looking like I could lose this case horrifically and still walk away covered in roses.”
“I wish you’d be more serious about this,” I snarled. “It’s my life on the line. My freedom, at the very le
ast. I have a religious duty to attend to.”
“So attend to it in prison. Everyone has stories, right?”
She was right. I didn’t care to admit it. “So you’re going to stick around because it’ll be good for your career.”
“Oh, sorry; I was perhaps unclear. No. Your case itself is going to be shit for my career, in all probability. But having a few months of being in the same room as the Primes of the realm, having a few months to kiss ass like I’ve never kissed ass before—if I play my cards right, I could end up with some nice cushy administrative position in Law or Justice and spend the rest of my days peacefully raking in the cash. Probably wouldn’t go for Order; Vihra Kylliat’s a known hard-ass. Coin’s risky—the term of office for the Prime is only five years, so there’s a lot of jumbling up every time someone new comes in. And Pattern’s creepy and impossible to get into, and the Pattern Primes always end up going crazy or getting killed, so their so-called life term is really more like eight years or so, maximum, if they’re lucky. Too much excitement, not enough cush. It’ll be Law or Justice for me—good long terms of office for those Primes: twenty and fifteen, respectively. Nice and sedate. Stable. Not immediately, though—I’ve got another seven or ten years of trial court dramatics in me, but I’m not as young as I used to be, and I’m getting sick of these fucking students following me everywhere, wanting to be mentored or something.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of integrity? In some places, it’s thought to be honorable to advance yourself through your skills and personal honor, rather than this . . . kissing ass, as you so eloquently put it.”
“I’m not interested in doing things the hard way. I’ve never had to do it that way before, and I’m not about to start now.” Lucky for her that she ever had a choice about doing things the hard way or not. “Look on the bright side. I’m probably not going to heave you overboard at this point. Probably—as long as the Primes are this interested in you.” She tapped a finger against her cheek, deep in thought. “Casimir Vanyos is going to stay interested—he has to—as long as those three are at each other’s throats, but Taishineya Tarmos . . . I wonder if we could get her to come down on our side. Are you sure you don’t have anything to bribe her with, if it came to that?”
A Conspiracy of Truths Page 7