by Anne Perry
They passed a broad-bellied cargo ship lumbering out on the evening tide, mariners heaving on the yards to catch every breath of wind. Fishing skiffs plied back and forth, dark nets trailing. A trimaran swept past them, oars dripping three tiers of liquid gold in the setting sun.
Ishrafeli was busy hauling down the sail and reefing it to the boom. She would have helped, but she had no idea how. She knew horses and the desert, something of law and judgment, certainly of political wisdom, but nothing of the sea.
When the skiff was made fast, he stepped ashore, offering her his hand, and she followed him along the quay past merchants and fishermen into the busy streets. The city was as beautiful as it had seemed from afar. There was a grace in it unlike anything she had seen before, a simplicity of proportion that gave every aspect a unique value. Private and public buildings seemed to have been created with equal care. In open squares and colonnaded streets there were places for people to gather at ease, with fountains for the thirsty to drink from. One or two seemed in need of repair, worn by long use. Here and there with sudden sadness she saw cracks and missing stones.
Through archways she glimpsed gardens of such loveliness she longed to stop and go into them. Only fear that Ishrafeli might leave her behind prevented her. Flowers of golds and pinks spilled over walls and trailed in pale profusion from carved urns of exquisite grace. Their perfume drifted out into the street, waylaying the passer-by. In the shadow, ancient stones were covered with jewellike moss. Vines spiraled over arches and fell in scarlet blossom.
She had to hurry to keep up with Ishrafeli as he strode up the street. It was crowded at the corners, not with men trading or women gossiping, but with small knots of people in anxious conversation, their faces pinched, eyes wary. She saw to the left the wide circle of a theater, but it had an empty air, as if no performances had been held there for months. The frieze of dancing figures above the entrance, a static moment of joy, was chipped at the edges and no one had repaired it.
As they drew level with a group of young men, without warning a quarrel became violent, and in a moment they were caught in the fighting. Ishrafeli clasped Tathea and pulled her away from them, shielding her with his body. But he was unarmed and the struggle was ugly, no trivial difference. The youths were shouting at each other as they fought, their blows sending each other sprawling. Blood stained their white tunics.
There was a shout of command and an instant’s hesitation. One young man scrambled to his feet, but his assailant seized the opportunity to renew his attack.
The man who had spoken was tall and broad-chested. The last of the sun caught his high cheekbones and the fair brown of his hair. He wore a breastplate and greaves over his white tunic, as if he were a soldier.
“Come!” he said quickly to Ishrafeli and Tathea. “It is not safe to be abroad in the streets unarmed. Are you strangers here?”
“Yes,” Ishrafeli acknowledged. “We just landed. My name is Ishrafeli.” He touched Tathea gently. “This is Tathea.”
“Phraxus,” the man responded. “Have you friends in Parfyrion?” He increased his pace and they were obliged to hasten to keep up with him. He was moving with urgency, his body bent forward. “If you haven’t, you are welcome in my home. The city is full—for the trial tomorrow. The unrest you see will become worse.” All around them were signs of disquiet. Groups of soldiers moved aimlessly, hands close to their swords. Civilians hurried about their business. There were hardly any women to be seen and no children at all.
“Who is to be tried?” Ishrafeli asked as Phraxus started across an open square, guiding them between groups of youths and half a dozen elderly men who were arguing heatedly.
They had climbed a wide, shallow flight of steps and emerged into the golden light of the evening with a dazzling view of the harbor below them when Phraxus finally answered. He did so as he led them into the rose-colored stone tower of his own house.
“Cassiodorus,” he replied when they were inside. A sadness crossed his face, and unconsciously he straightened his wide shoulders, turning away. “He was our leader against our age-old enemy in the last war.”
They were inside the first hallway. Tathea stared around her at the walls painted in warm earth and sunset shades. Ahead of them lay another room opening onto a courtyard, and to the left stairs curved upward to a room which must overlook the sea.
“When did the war end?” Ishrafeli asked.
Phraxus glanced at him quickly. “Ten days ago. Cassiodorus signed the treaty. That is why he is to be tried.” He watched Ishrafeli, attempting to read his face.
Tathea listened with interest. She understood diplomacy. Long wars between nations that had hated each other for decades, even centuries, did not come to an end without compromise. But all too often the different factions would not bend. She had seen enmity become a pattern of life, the justification for a multitude of otherwise inexcusable acts, the love of war an end in itself. There was a kind of hero who could not survive without it.
Ishrafeli’s eyes widened. “He is being tried for ending war?” he asked. “Did he surrender?”
A flash of bitter humor tugged at Phraxus’s mouth. “No! It was an honorable peace.” He went up the curved stairs and they followed him to the upper room, off which were several doors, but Tathea had eyes only for the panorama of the twilit city. The stone roofs were bathed in rose and shadowed in violet. Beyond the harbor wall, the sea was green as far as the eye could see.
Phraxus bade them sit and offered them wine and bread and a sharp, savory butter flavored with herbs. On the table was a bowl of golden fruit, some blushed with a tawny ripeness, and green and purple grapes. Another bowl held almonds and crystallized peel.
“It is not the terms which are wrong,” Phraxus explained, the fine lines around his eyes visible in the evening light. “It is the fact that Cassiodorus negotiated a settlement without deference to the city fathers. We are a democracy. For four hundred years we have made no public decisions without giving every man the right to hear and judge for himself.”
“And before that?” Tathea asked curiously. She could not imagine such a system being anything but chaotic. But she had come to learn.
Phraxus turned to her and smiled. He was a soldier like many she had known. He would be courteous. He might like her, even find her interesting or attractive, but he would never forget the difference between the physical power of men and that of women. She could see it now in his gray-blue eyes. And here she was not an empress to command obedience.
“Before that we had tyranny,” he explained to her. “At first it was wise, even benevolent. But absolute power corrupts. Care became oppression. We ceased to know how to make our own decisions. We developed a ruling class, and one that was ruled. The few governed the many.”
“Unwisely?” she asked. “Unjustly?”
His voice was patient. “Both, at times. But that was not the issue, nor is it now.” He turned a little in his chair to face her fully. Beyond him in the great window the light had almost gone over the city and the sea. They could see each other by the light of the lamps which burned on the walls. “The question is not the justice of this treaty but the assumption of the power to make it. Cassiodorus signed the treaty and then returned home to inform Parfyrion that it was accomplished. It tore the city apart.” There was pain in his voice, as if the signing of the treaty had not only divided his people but wrenched his own judgment and loyalties.
Tathea looked at Ishrafeli. A lamp shone on the wall above him and another on the table beside him. The shadows threw his features into sharp relief, the plane of his cheek, the ink-black brows, the curve and shadow of his eyes. Was he searching, as she was, or did he already know? She could read nothing in him but that he was listening.
“The young men were full of hope for a new order,” Phraxus went on ruefully. “The soldiers came home loaded with booty for everyone. There were three days and nights of celebration.”
“What kind of a new order?” Tathea aske
d.
“More liberal,” Phraxus answered with a flicker of bleak laughter. “Young men always think they can change things for the better. Perhaps we would perish if they didn’t. We need growth, invention. Without thought we die.” His wide mouth pinched at the corners. “But they also hunger for power for its own sake. They would take by force what they are denied by the common voice.”
“And the old men?” Ishrafeli asked.
“They fear the return of tyranny, the dread and the cruelty of it. And they are reluctant to let go of their own power. They feel their wisdom has earned them a place of honor. Let youth wait.”
“Then it is between age and youth,” said Tathea.
“No,” Phraxus denied it quickly. “At least, those are only two of the factions. There are also the merchants who want peace, and the women who fear for their husbands and their sons. And there are those who have already lost much in the battles of the past and cannot forgive. For them any concession is a betrayal of the dead. They have paid their price and will yield nothing. The past lies too heavily upon them; the future cannot pay that debt.”
“But what is Cassiodorus’s crime?” Tathea asked. “You said he is to be tried tomorrow?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Treason?” It seemed obvious to her. “He has usurped a power to which he had no right, even if his decision was the same one the people might have reached—surely would have reached if they had any wisdom.”
“No, not treason. No one could prove he has harmed the state.” Phraxus seemed puzzled even as he spoke. There was a furrow between his brows. “Blasphemy.”
Ishrafeli stiffened. His hand on the table was perfectly still. “Blasphemy? Against which god?”
Phraxus also sat motionless. His face was like a warrior’s mask. “We don’t know. The gods gave us our laws of moderation, justice, and liberty so long ago we no longer have any record of their nature.” He watched Ishrafeli as he spoke. “There are philosophers who say they never existed, that they were created by wise men in the beginning to lend weight to the laws to govern a simpler people. They would obey gods where they would question men.”
Ishrafeli’s lips tightened but he did not interrupt.
“Gradually, down the ages, we learned to stand on our own, to value the laws for themselves,” Phraxus continued. “We no longer needed magic or mystery to teach us to obey. To understand was better.” There was a ring of certainty, even pride in his voice now. “Wisdom and humanity, mastery of self, love of beauty are the measure of a man. In Parfyrion we have served these ends for hundreds of years, and they have repaid us with abundance beyond measure, in peace and in war. We have gained a wealth of the spirit through the creation of loveliness which has never been surpassed.” His face softened for a moment. “I would say it has never been equaled.”
“How can one blaspheme gods who do not exist?” Tathea asked.
He looked at her steadily. “It is perhaps a convention. Blasphemy is an easier word for hubris, that pride of a man who overreaches fate and aspires to tower above his fellows and grasp at the stars ... who defies that respect for the universe, that awe which the splendor of creation and a knowledge of his own frailty would forbid. It is an immodesty which offends the soul and cries a warning within the minds of those who know the destructive power of arrogance. Do you understand?”
She was uncertain. She had a troubling vision of her own reign in Shinabar. She had always taken the Isarch’s power for granted, as she had assumed every Shinabari did. But perhaps that was not so ...
Before she could struggle for an answer they were interrupted by a swift rapping on the door below and a voice calling out for Phraxus.
He excused himself to answer and a few moments later returned followed by a small, dark man with a crooked nose and eyebrows that grew close together above burning eyes.
“This is Allomir,” Phraxus announced. “He is to prosecute Cassiodorus tomorrow.”
Allomir was startled to see strangers. He bowed stiffly. His body was too tense to move with grace, and every line of his narrow face spoke his urgency.
“Tathea and Ishrafeli have just arrived here by sea. They knew nothing of our troubles,” Phraxus explained.
Allomir glanced at Tathea, then his eyes rested on Ishrafeli. He looked at him with growing intensity, as if he were certain he must know him but the memory eluded his mind. “Who is to defend?” he demanded, his voice harsh, and yet there was a timbre to it which commanded attention. “No one is prepared to step forward and commit themselves—at least no one of legal stature.” He spread his hands jerkily. “Plenty of soldiers will, and young men who espouse Cassiodorus’s cause, but without a proper advocate the trial cannot succeed.”
“Succeed?” Ishrafeli said quickly. “What would success be?”
“Ah!” Allomir let out a sharp bark of laughter. “There is no success.” He chopped his hand sideways in the air. “If he is found innocent then we have granted him the first step towards despotism. We have ratified his corruption of power and cannot then refuse him the next stride, and the next, and so on until he has the reins of government in his hands, and his admirers with him, which include the rashest and most brutish elements of our army.” He looked at Ishrafeli earnestly. “At the last call, there is nothing between the best of a man and the worst but the will to master his instincts in the face of law, in the interests of his fellows. Override the common consent, rule by strength alone, and we have thrown away all that has given us dignity and raised our souls above the beasts.”
“And if he loses?” Ishrafeli asked quietly. Darkness seemed to touch his face, a very slight tightening of the lips.
Allomir stared at him as if there were no one else in the room. The fierceness of the emotion in his angular body was almost mesmeric.
“If he loses, he will fight.” He spat out the words. “He has strong support from his own soldiers, and the young men of the city, those with no wives or children, second sons with no property to be ruined if there is war—”
“There won’t be war!” Phraxus protested. “He wouldn’t do that! He may be arrogant, impatient of the old ways and what they can cost, but he is still Parfyrian.”
Allomir swung round to him. “And we cannot breed tyrants?” he demanded with stinging anger. “We are not born good, Phraxus. We become good because we learn the law, we perceive its strengths, and I dare say its weaknesses, but we choose to obey it.” He shrugged his bony shoulders sharply. “And if we can choose to obey it, then we can also choose to disobey it. That is what we are: creatures within whom lies the measure of all things, for good and for evil. It is the law which determines.”
Tathea stared at him. Was this strange, ugly man with his narrow face saying what she had come to learn? But who determined the law?
“Do laws change?” she asked him. “Who interprets them? Are they written in pure words one can refer to? Or are they accumulated from the wisdom and experience of the past? Where I come from it is the latter. There are judges throughout the Empire, but in capital cases there is an appeal of last resort to the Isarch himself.”
He turned to her, a sudden interest flaring in his eyes. “You know much of this law, madame?”
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. She had sat beside Mon-Allat often enough when he had heard the cases that came to him.
Allomir saw the certainty in her face. “Our law too is built on the wisdom of the past. How is it you know your own law? Do women judge in your land?”
“No ...” She had not considered the possibility before, but why not? An educated woman would know as much as a man, and her power to discern would be as great. “Not legally,” she amended. “But in effect, sometimes. I counseled my husband, and the verdict he rendered often sprung from my words to him.”
Phraxus glanced at her, then back to Allomir.
Allomir was deep in thought. Behind him the window was filled with the night sky, wind-driven clouds covering the stars.
&nbs
p; “Do you really believe that if Cassiodorus loses he will seek war?” Ishrafeli asked softly, his voice troubled. “And risk destroying all this?” He moved his hand to include everything about them.
“No, of course not!” Phraxus replied.
“Yes,” Allomir contradicted with equal certainty. “He is a man who sees only his own needs. He will not believe it would be destroyed. He will think his influence and following is sufficient to bring victory without so high a cost.” His lips twisted, misery in every line of him. “He knows there are enough among us who would rather see Parfyrion in his hands than watch the beauty and the dreams of a thousand years shattered by the sword.”
“It won’t come to that!” Phraxus shook his head, his voice sharp. “He is ambitious, but he is not a fool.”
“If he loses, what will his punishment be?” Tathea asked.
“Exile,” Allomir answered.
She said nothing. She knew too well what it was to leave all you loved, everything sweet and familiar, and begin the long journey to nowhere.
He misunderstood her silence. “Exile from Parfyrion is everything,” he said abruptly. “It is his birthright, his identity. What more can a man lose and yet be condemned to live or accept death by his own hand?”
It was Ishrafeli who spoke next, gently. He had a broad mouth, strong, but now his lips were touched with sadness. “To be an exile from what you know is sometimes the beginning of finding the true measure of yourself, that part which has lain asleep because you did not require it. We seldom grow unless we are forced to.”
This was beyond Allomir. “You do not understand!” he said urgently. “Exile from Parfyrion is to leave behind you all that is beautiful of mind and spirit, all that enlarges the intellect and refines the soul. It is a kind of death, without the peace of oblivion.”