The King of Law, Casimir Vanyos, sat in the center of the curve, midway between Anfisa and her opponents. He was a very elderly man, slow moving, and he had two young clerks with him who each held a stack of books and files. Casimir Vanyos himself wore ceremonial robes of dusty sky blue trimmed with bands of gold braid, which would have been very imposing on anyone else. On his gaunt, hunched frame, the fabric hung like a potato sack on a scarecrow and made him look small and, frankly, ridiculous.
Finally, separated from all the rest and seated on the far left, was the last Queen, Taishineya Tarmos, bedecked from head to toe in vivid purples and sparkling gems, a display of wealth that struck me as entirely alien in this country—hell, her finery would have been remarkable even in the noble courts of the Araşti merchant-princes or the guildhalls of Edness. Her sleek black hair was curled upon her shoulders (artificially, I presumed, for the Nuryevens tend towards silky, straight dark hair), and jewels hung glittering at her ears, around her throat and wrists, and across her forehead, and glimmered from hidden folds of her gown, which was embroidered all over with a quatrefoil pattern and tiny seed pearls. She was the only one looking at me, and she was looking with undisguised curiosity.
It took a few moments for the court to get settled—Casimir Vanyos needed a table for the files in front of him, and Consanza saw to it that both she and I got a chair apiece and a table to share for ourselves. In all this last-minute shuffling, the Queen of Coin, Taishineya Tarmos, rose from her seat and floated over to us. She moved as if she were as light as air, though I imagine, considering the amount of heavy fabric and rocks hanging on her, that the weight she carried was substantial.
She was quite young—younger than I had expected for a Prime, compared to the others; even Anfisa Zofiyat, the next youngest, was on the ambiguous side of early middle age. Taishineya Tarmos had a deliberate, affected tilt to her head and the arrangement of her hands, and there was the distinct air that she was mimicking something stylish. “Good morning, Master Chant,” she said to me. “What a pleasure to meet you. I must say, I’ve already heard all about you.”
“At your service, madam,” I said, with a short bow—as much as I could manage with my cold-cramped joints, my brain rattled out of my skull by the movements of the wagon on the cobblestones when it transported me, and my stomach half turned inside out. “I hope that my name will be cleared so I can get out of your hair forever.”
“Oh, not at all! Even if we do clear you, you mustn’t go running off right away, never to be seen again! No, no—everyone is terribly fascinated with you right now, you know,” she said with a secretive, impish grin, as if letting me in on some scandalous secret. “We just can’t stop talking about you.”
“I profess myself flattered, madam.”
The Queen of Order rapped her walking stick on the floor, once, and the sound rang out through the room like a firework blast. “Taishineya, are you quite finished chatting with the accused?”
Taishineya Tarmos smiled sweetly at her. “I suppose you all want to get along with your silly old trial. Dear me, I seem to have gotten in the way again.” She retreated to her chair, her silk brocade skirts swishing along the floor. Her clothes were flavored in the Echareese style, and I fancied that perhaps she had an Echareese tailor with opinions on how to cut the Nuryeven fashions with a little more style and flair.
The King of Law held a page at arm’s length and peered at it, then at me. Consanza ushered me to the chair next to her, and as I sat, she rose. She cleared her throat and smiled sweetly at the panel of the Primes.
“Your Excellencies, it is my honor to appear before you as the advocate for the accused, Master Chant of Kaskinen. Before we get started, I just wanted to take a moment to say what a great privilege it is that I should be here today. You see, ever since I was a little girl . . .”
I could feel already that it was going to be a very long day.
The next day Consanza swept up to my cell in a billow of robes and gestured sharply for me to pay attention. “I’ve had an idea,” she announced as I extricated myself from my nest of blankets and put down the book I was reading—Vasili’s latest gift for the services and information I provided him.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you so soon,” I muttered.
“What’s all this?” Consanza waved at the blankets, the brazier, the book.
“You haven’t done anything to make my life any easier, so I . . .” I stretched, luxuriating in the heat from the fire. “I took some initiative.”
“Huh. Well done. How?”
“Vanya the Smith.”
“You found you had something of value?”
“I found I could create things of value,” I corrected. “Please, have a seat. Would you like a blanket?”
“No, thank you. I’ve had an idea.”
“Is that right?” I asked flatly. “Regale me.”
“Have you met Taishineya Tarmos yet? Besides yesterday, I mean. She hasn’t come to visit you, has she?”
“No, she hasn’t. Neither have those other two—Casimir Vanyos and Vihra Kylliat.”
“We can change that,” she muttered.
“Change? Are you trying to get Taishineya Tarmos to come see me?” I shook my head, laughing. “Ladies like her don’t come to prisons.”
“Ladies like her get their hands dirty if there’s a good reason to, and we’re going to come up with a good reason for her to.”
“And that’s going to help send a letter to my apprentice?”
Consanza huffed. “I wish you’d look at the big picture. Anfisa Zofiyat likes you, right? That’s what it sounded like.”
“Sure, I suppose she might. She thinks I could be useful, anyway. And now so does—”
But she interrupted. “And Taishineya Tarmos came to talk to you at the hearing—she was interested in you. She thinks you’re fashionable.” Consanza crossed her arms and paced back and forth in front of my cell. “I thought it was strange. I’ve been asking around—everyone knows about your trial, of course. But Tarmos’s circle is agog. They love drama and scandals, and you’re . . . hah! You’re an infinite well of those, aren’t you?”
I did not dignify this with a response.
“I have an idea,” Consanza said. “But it’s not a very good one. It involves you being charming and cooperative, so obviously I feel like it’s a long shot, but . . . I think you could do that if you saw that it was in your best interest, don’t you?”
I did not respond to this, either. I primly smoothed my blanket over my legs and folded my hands in my lap and waited for Consanza to reveal her great plan, or not, as it suited her. I didn’t want her to know that I cared even a whit.
I could lie to her, but I can’t lie to you: I cared very much.
“Have you found out anything about Taishineya Tarmos yet?” she asked casually.
“No. Why?”
Consanza nodded and sat herself down on the chair. She packed and lit her pipe and puffed a few times to get the embers going. The silence stretched and stretched.
At last she sat back, lowered her pipe. Smoke trickled out of her mouth as she spoke and a fragrant, spicy scent, different from before, filled the space. “Taishineya Tarmos Elyat Chechetni. Born to Tarmo Yuliat and Elya Borisos, the former a merchant, the latter an actress in her youth and, later, a particularly shrewd investor. Taishineya grew up surrounded by luxury and the cream of society. She ran for the office of Coin during the last election on, I am told, a dare from a friend. I am not sure if this is true—no one knows which friend it was. There don’t seem to be any primary sources. So that’s probably apocryphal. Regardless, she doesn’t take the office seriously—she thinks it’s an excuse to throw fancy parties and wear pretty dresses and have people kissing her ass and telling her how important she is. Which, mind you, isn’t irregular for a Prime of Coin. It’s practically required, at this point.” She sighed heavily and paused for another puff. “And,” she continued darkly, “we all see the results, come tax season.”
“Not surprised. Earrings like those don’t pay for themselves.”
Consanza pointed her pipe at me. “Exactly.” She gave me a rather funny look then. “You like knowing things about places, and why they are the way they are.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of Nuryevet so far?” she asked conversationally, as if I were some visitor on a jaunt through for my own amusement.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
She shrugged, blew smoke. “Yes and no.”
“Let’s put it this way. Out of all the places I’ve ever been, I’d rather go back to the day that I was dying of thirst, wandering in the dunes of the Sea of Sun, than spend another day here. I’d rather camp for a month in the Ebbshore swamp. I’d rather—”
“I get it,” she said.
“—be obliged to accept a dinner invitation to the Mouse and Millstone Tavern in Llanrwsteg—”
“I get it.”
“—even though I swore I’d cut off my own hand if I ever again came within a mile of it. In short, it’s a miserable wretch of a place, and I can’t believe anyone actually likes living here.”
“It takes money to leave,” Consanza said, and I remembered that her grandparents had done just that, had left Arjuneh. “And it’s not so bad. As long as you work with the system, you can use it to your advantage.”
“Until tax season,” I said. “When they scrape a bit here and a bit there until they’ve scraped every bit of meat off your bones. And you’re implying that’s why Nuryevet is this way? With this sulking desolation as far as the eye can see?” I wasn’t unconvinced, but she wasn’t going out of her way to persuade me one way or another. I suppose that was too much like advocacy. Too much like real work, and I’ve told you before how much Consanza abhorred that.
“Everything, all of it—it’s all tangled up together. A few generations ago, having many spouses wasn’t so common—people would have one or two, occasionally three. But taxes kept going up, and it makes more sense to bring in a fourth source of income, or a fifth, to share the burden. But people are poor even so. Taishineya Tarmos’s sort never stop making pretty promises and offering beautiful misty dreams, so they keep getting elected. And every election cycle, everybody sinks a little deeper into the mire.” She blew a long stream of smoke. “Do you know how many lawyers there are per capita in Nuryevet? One in twenty. Five percent of the population. Because we have this—this fear. In our bones, we have fear. Fear of not having quite enough to get by, fear of having that little bit taken from us. By the tax collectors, by the raiders who come over the mountains every spring, by the Enca and the Cormerrans. And when people are afraid . . .”
“They want to protect themselves,” I said, and a glimmer of understanding began to dawn. “So—courts, and lawyers.” And laws against witchcraft, and a wild suspicion of foreigners.
“Mm.”
I studied her. “Do you think you’re lucky to live here?”
“I beg your fucking pardon?”
“Do you?” That steward in Pattern had thought so.
She shrugged. “At least we get to choose.” That’s what he had said too. “I don’t know if that’s luck. We all complain, and every tax season there’s always a bit of fuss, always a few people who decide they can’t stand it anymore. Keeps me and my colleagues busy for a month or two.”
I snorted. “Goodness, people upset around tax season. I’ve sure never heard that one before.”
She gestured at me with her pipe again. “See? Exactly. It’s normal.”
“And this has something to do with your brilliant idea?”
“In a way. Sometimes you need to understand a place before you can understand a person, don’t you? Before you can understand where they fit.”
I nodded. “Context. Yes.”
“Our jobs really are surprisingly similar.” Consanza sat back. “Taishineya Tarmos! She wants to be important, and so she’s probably fairly easy to lead. She already thinks you’re fashionable, so if we can get the two of you alone for a little while, you can convince her that you’re not just fashionable, you’re an investment. She wants power? Give it to her. Tell her a story. And get yourself a promise that in return she’ll support having you exonerated and released. If we can count on her and on Anfisa Zofiyat . . .” Consanza gave me a significant look over the stem of her pipe.
Then there’d be a tie. Coin and Pattern against Order and Justice.
Then it’d come down to the King of Law and his vote.
“Do you know as much about Casimir Vanyos?”
“I am an advocate,” Consanza said, smoke pluming and curling around her. “But it may interest you to know that I happened to work in the Law offices when I was a student. Reporting to the Prime and the Second—Casimir Vanyos and Rostik Palos.”
“You’ve met him—Casimir Vanyos?”
“Many times.”
“You know him?”
She shrugged artfully, but I could tell how pleased she was to reveal this by the way she hid a smile with another puff from her pipe. “He’s always seemed fond of me.”
I let out my breath. A glimmer of hope, though it was a tiny, distant glimmer, a single candle on a windowsill miles away, across a river on a cold, dark night. “I can do it,” I said.
“You think so?”
I dropped my eyes so I wouldn’t accidentally glare at her—even if it was an unlikely plan, I didn’t want to discourage her from, perhaps, coming up with other, better plans in the future. “And the letters to my apprentice?”
“Does it matter so much if I’m going to get you out?”
“Don’t jinx it!” I said sharply. So much for my efforts to be polite to her. I’m not even that superstitious, but—bah. This is what comes of being around everyone else’s superstitions for so many decades.
Consanza scowled at me. “Look, just focus on the task at hand, would you? She’s the Queen of Commerce, Chant. Do you know what commerce means?”
“Of course I do,” I snapped. “Merchants! Shops, ships, sailors. Trade.”
“Yes, yes. And the royal mint, and the post office.”
“Ah.” My building irritation was quenched, as surely as a red-hot steel swan dipped into a bucket of oil.
“And as a Prime, she can wander in and out of prisons whenever she wants without subjecting herself to needless searches.”
“Do you get searched?”
“Of course. I could be smuggling weapons to you.”
“Why can’t you just memorize a message for me and send it?”
She gave me a look, half-pitying, half-irritated. “I’m not going to be complicit in anything illegal,” she said crisply. “I’ll scheme with you about how to curry favor and win your case, but that’s my limit. Do you know what would happen if I got caught sneaking messages out for you?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “That said, they don’t mind me bringing in ink and parchment to take notes on your case,” she added, and drew the items out of her pockets. “These don’t come free.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course not. What do you want for them?”
“You’re going to do me a favor sometime. Before you leave, after I get you out.” Apparently she didn’t care about jinxes. I remember thinking that I wasn’t even sure whether she truly cared about blackwitches. “Don’t make that face. I have a good feeling.”
She was smiling now, her eyes glittering with the twinkle of her plot—it did help her. She looked much nicer now than when I had first met her, and perhaps that was because her expression was more pleasant, and perhaps it was because she wasn’t quite as contemptible as she had been. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll owe you a favor when you get me out.”
She handed the parchment and ink through the bars, and I hid them under the fold of a blanket. She gave me a metal dip pen too—they have no shortage of metal in Nuryevet. “It’s a shame, but I don’t think we have a hope of making headway with Vihra Kylliat. She’s not likely to fall for any games.”
“If you say so,” she muttered from around the stem of her pipe. “But remember what I said—don’t play games with Vihra Kylliat. She won’t take it well.” She paused. “Well, none of them would take it well, but I doubt you have anything Kylliat wants, so . . . Mind your tongue.”
“Mind your own tongue, young lady!” She snorted and left, with a final slow, appraising look at the blankets and the brazier. Vasili wasn’t on duty tonight, but the other guards had been instructed about the special considerations I was to receive, and while they didn’t bother me, neither did they bring me lumps of the hard, nutty orange cheese that Vasili seemed partial to, or handfuls of dried fruit, or an extra piece of bread with my dinner.
I scrambled out of the blankets and gestured Vasili over as soon as I saw him the next morning, and I set into motion the first grand misstep of the path that eventually brought me to you. “Is Vihra Kylliat here?” says I.
“In—in the building?” says young Vasili.
“Yes, in the building.”
“Well, this is the House of Order. . . . Her offices are in another wing, though.”
A Conspiracy of Truths Page 10