The Censor's Hand: Book One of the Thrice~Crossed Swords Trilogy

by A. M. Steiner

  “The villains searched his body, took his sword and fled by the highway. They attempted to slow any pursuit by setting fire to the covered bridge.”

  “Why haven’t you gone after them?”

  Daniel readied himself.

  “That’s not the…”

  As Corbin answered, Daniel jumped forwards and feinted a jab at his hands. The prosecutor parried it easily, sidestepped the remise and drove the point of his longsword hard towards Daniel’s chest. He jerked back to avoid the hit and stumbled. Corbin chuckled.

  “It happened at dead of night and the men wore concealments. I spied only their eyes, which were as black as dried shit. I was lucky to divine as much as I did. The fire at the bridge was their mistake; it illuminated their passage.”

  “Horse thieves?” Daniel suggested. “Smugglers from Ravenglass?”

  “No animals were stolen from the stables and I found no contraband abandoned.”

  Daniel lashed his waster at Corbin’s head. The prosecutor blocked the blow above his shoulder, and replied with a horizontal swing that Daniel was barely able to duck.

  “They might have panicked.”

  Corbin advanced behind a flurry of interweaving blows that drove Daniel dancing backwards from foot to foot.

  “Fled-when-they-saw-whom-they-had-killed.”

  Corbin’s attack finally ended and they drew apart again.

  “It’s possible. I suggest you return to Lang with your conclusions and help him track down the felons, assuming they are still in the North.”

  Daniel’s chest heaved. He circled Corbin warily and considered how to get the bastard to take him seriously. “The attackers’ motive,” he ventured. “That’s not the real mystery.”

  “Go on.”

  “What was Adelmus doing at the stables in the middle of the night?”

  Corbin leapt sideways, wrong-footing Daniel, and swung a cut upwards into his body. The blow was too strong to deflect, too fast to dodge. Daniel grabbed the tip of his waster in his free hand and held it in front of him like a bar. He heard the wood crack as it caught the force of the blow.

  “That’s the one.”

  The two men strained against each other, weapons locked.

  “If I can answer that, the rest will become clear.” Corbin reversed his grip and twisted the pommel of his sword into Daniel’s face. Dan tried to jump backwards, felt a jarring pain in his knee, and found he couldn’t move. Corbin was treading on his foot. The bastard tapped him gently on the tip of the nose with his pommel.

  “Lesson over. We can’t have you going back to Lang with your handsome face all bashed up, can we?”

  It was a dirty move, but effective. Daniel committed it to memory.

  The fencing court echoed with the sound of applause. Daniel and Corbin spun to face it, weapons ready. A distinguished-looking black man in white robes appeared from behind the pillar of Ramesses and Lud. He seemed both old and young. He walked with a stick and the eyebrows that dominated his speckled brow were thick and white, but his eyes sparkled like those of a youth.

  “Chairman Gleame. I didn’t know we had an audience.” Corbin’s disapproval was unconcealed, and Daniel was surprised to hear the prosecutor speak to the grandmaster so brusquely.

  “No matter,” Gleame said, waving his sparkling cane in the air, “I found the sport and the conversation most entertaining. It seems to me that Lang has provided you with a valuable asset.”

  Corbin glanced incredulously at Daniel, as if he were a horse with three legs.

  “Why are you here?” Corbin asked, still unsmiling.

  Gleame turned to Daniel. “I wanted to see Mister Sutton for myself. If there are dark forces in our midst, they must be rooted out. Furthermore…”

  Corbin cut in loudly, “Grandmaster, I share your desire for justice, and will do everything within my power to solve this mystery. Nobody is above suspicion.”

  “Of course, Prosecutor, please continue. Your reputation precedes you.”

  Gleame left the hall by way of the armoury.

  “I told you to lock the door,” Corbin said.

  “I did, sir.”

  Corbin sighed like a scullery maid after a banquet.

  “How did he just appear like that?” Daniel said. “Was it cunning?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Oh.”

  “I reckon he used a secret passage. I daresay the secret passages in this place outnumber the known ones.” Corbin rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Shite.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Too late for that. Sutton, bring me the package.”

  Daniel brought Lang’s travelling case. Corbin placed his hand on its lid and its complex seals split open with a crack.

  “What have we here? Some important-looking papers. A wheel-lock puffer. A bandolier of powder and shot. And a fistful of gold coins.”

  “I thought wheel locks were prohibited throughout the Unity.”

  Corbin placed the miniature pistol back into the case. “A good thing too. The weapon’s only fit for an assassin – I want nothing to do with it. Lang only sent it to rile me. It’s yours for now; keep it safe.”

  “What are the papers?”

  “Dispensations from the Wise Council. Lang really has gone to town. Unlocked the top shelf, you might say. This one’s for you.” He dropped a sheet back into the case. “It bestows the right to bear a pistol in exception to the law. Don’t lose it or I’ll have to arrest you.”

  Daniel wasn’t sure if he was joking. Corbin pulled out another scroll. “This one bestows upon the bearer the right to perform an inquisition and trial at the Convergence. I’ll keep that.” He rolled it tightly and slid it into one of the leather tubes on the bandolier in which he kept his laws. “And this last one… permits a censor to communicate with a godsworn for the duration of the investigation. I’m not even sure the Wise Council has the power to grant such a right. That’s something to look into when all of this is over. I wouldn’t do it anyway, dispensation or none.”

  Corbin stood to leave.

  “My orders are to stay and assist. What do you want me to do?” Daniel asked.

  “I don’t need your help. Lang only sent you here to keep an eye on me. That wretched man can’t stand the idea of not knowing.” Corbin waited for a response, so Daniel gave none. “If watching is what he reckons you’re good at, let’s put his judgement to the test. Keep your eyes and ears open and pointed away from me. Observe the demi-masters and let me know if anything comes up.”

  “Prosecutor, the demi-masters arrived after Adelmus was killed. It would be a waste of time.”

  “Luckily your time is less valuable than mine,” Corbin grinned. He hoisted the wooden two-hander over his shoulder and headed for the armoury. “I’ll send for you when I require your assistance. Scratch a code on your door.”

  Daniel imagined the expression on Lang’s face souring as Daniel reported nothing after nothing back to Bromwich. His last chance for ordination turning to vapour.

  “I can help you,” he pleaded.

  Corbin said nothing. The acid of exercise pooled under Daniel’s tongue. He wanted to spit it at the old man’s back. The grey bastard had no idea of what he was capable. He swallowed his pride and saluted, hand across neck.

  “Justice Advances.”

  “One funeral at a time,” Corbin replied.

  Induction

  “Stop blocking the corridor!” Albertus shouted, and slammed the ornate door in their faces. The new arrivals formed a disorderly queue outside the demonstration hall and began to chatter in cliques like conspiring tradesmen.

  They buzzed with confidence and ambition, as if they had known each other for months. Miranda waited in the background, alone, feeling sick with nerves and underprepared. Academia had always been easy for he
r yet the books of cunning from the library had left her feeling nothing but a dull confusion. After three days of cross-referencing, she’d discovered not one paragraph of good sense. They had forced her to consider the possibility that she was not quite as clever as she supposed.

  An endless traffic of scribes, butlers, illuminators and serving maids flowed past, punctuated by the occasional master. The crowd hushed in their presence, out of curiosity as much as respect. The first master strode past dressed like a king, in a glorious violet turban crowned with jewels. The next wore grey rags and stumbled under a pannier full of rocks, his back bowed double like an old woman’s. The last was transported by a stately chair with pseudopodal legs that moved with a languid, alien beauty. It was like an extraordinary costume party whose theme was a mystery, even to the guests.

  Not one of masters so much as glanced in the new recruits’ direction.

  The doors to the demonstration room were unbarred, and an ungainly wave of young manhood poured through them. Miranda drifted in its wake. She had no appetite for the childish, sharp-elbowed scramble that securing a seat at the front would require. Those who fought for one were pathetic, more concerned with prominence than education – or so she told herself.

  The demonstration hall was functional; it was no opera house or coliseum. It could seat a few hundred souls on the steeply banked rows of seats that curved like a horseshoe around a raised platform that was more of a pier than a stage. It reminded Miranda of an operating theatre. Its one extravagance was an enormous chandelier, brass and copper verdigris, moulded like the drooping boughs of a tree and studded with an outrageous number of glow-stones gathered in bunches, like greengages.

  Albertus grabbed Miranda’s elbow.

  “If I were you I would be discreet, stay at the back, sit with a friend.” Her face darkened at the suggestion – the room was barely a third full, and she had no friends at the Verge.

  She scanned the amphitheatre for a promising pew. The centre of the hall was already crowded. The unoccupied seat next to Nathan was out of the question; she could live with his wandering eyes, but not with the prospect of an entire lecture spent warding off his hand from her thigh. Her gaze fell deeper into the room, the wings and the back, and she tried to reconcile herself to a place amongst the mediocre and antisocial.

  Sitting in the shadows at the very back of the hall was a man she did not recognise, a pale-skinned blond dressed in hopelessly provincial attire, his hair cut oddly short, like a jousting knight from the previous century. The sort of man who might wear a codpiece in public. He had his arms stretched out, resting across the tops of the empty seats to either side of him.

  No manners, little prospect of genius and no style, Miranda thought, but then again, he has neither ignored me nor insulted me, which is more than can be said for the rest of them.

  She edged her way towards him down a sparsely occupied aisle, navigating an assault course of legs and bags. Most of the boys shifted sideways in their seats to let her pass, one stood and she smiled courteously in thanks, and then scowled furiously as he pinched her bottom. The last pretended not to see her approach and stretched out his legs to block her way. She ground his toes into the floor with a crunching twist of her boot heel and pretended not to hear his yelping expletives as she parked herself nonchalantly beside the blond.

  “Nicely done,” he said, slowly withdrawing his arm from behind her back, “he’ll be limping for a week.”

  His voice was deep and self-assured, his accent hard to place. It was the first time she had been complimented by someone of her own age in a month. She granted him a sly smile as she retrieved her commonplace book and balanced it on her knees. The blond hurriedly copied her, pulling an extravagantly bound folio from his bag. It was very large and unsullied by study. Like him, she thought, and giggled.

  He looked at her quizzically. Up close the blond looked more like an athlete or a herald than the perpetually inebriated petty nobleman he undoubtedly was. He was handsome, beautiful even, with thighs like pistons and a broad chest. The sort of man her ward-sisters swooned over. In a funny way, he reminded her of the guards who stood watch outside Her Grace’s embassies.

  From beneath the stage came an unbearably shrill noise, like the slow turning of a rusted drill. The assembly fell silent as a trapdoor opened and a costumed man was lifted into the room. He wore feathered robes, all angles and edges, a brimless conical hat and a mouthless mask with a long beak, like that of an ibis. The elongated fingers of his gloves tapered to stiletto points. His costume reminded Miranda of the plague doctor from Erdinberg whose tales of the terrible sickness had intrigued her, and given her governess nightmares for weeks.

  Why do all the masters dress so oddly? she wondered.

  The strange figure inspected the audience, head bobbing and eyes wide. He had brought a gurney with him. Its wheels screeched diabolically as he pushed it to the front of the pier. Once in position, he pulled a lever at its base and the bed flipped upright to reveal a withered husk of a body strapped to its surface with leather braces and bands. Everyone leaned forward to get a better look. It looked like the corpse of the most dangerous inmate in an asylum.

  Its eyes flicked open.

  Miranda jumped in her seat. The hall filled with nervous tittering. The feathered man took ahold of the gurney and revolved it, displayed the cadaver to the entire room. It remained immobile apart from its eyes, which swivelled derangedly.

  The grating noise became louder. After a minute, an imperious voice called out from the front row.

  “I think we’ve seen enough.”

  The gurney was spun to face in the speaker’s direction. The feathered man stepped out to the edge of the pier, identified him with a gloved finger that quivered an inch from his forehead.

  “Out,” the corpse rasped. The young man said nothing. “Out. Now.” The corpse’s voice had a sibilant echo, as if a desert snake had made its home in the desiccated cavity of his lungs.

  “I’m terribly sorry. I presumed you were dead,” the young man quipped with the haughty confidence of one born to immeasurable wealth. He laughed insincerely and the audience laughed with him.

  “Out. Now,” the corpse hissed.

  “I beg your pardon.” The youth raised his hand in apology.

  “Not pardon. Not sorry. Out.”

  “I am the first son of Count Orison!” the youth exclaimed, his face turning rosy with indignation.

  “And your offer of employment with the Honourable Company is withdrawn. Pack your belongings and return home.”

  There were gasps and exclamations from around the hall.

  The feathered man perched on the edge of the stage and hooked his feet over its edge, ready to pounce. Suddenly he seemed more prey-bird than human. The young noble scrambled to his feet and shuffled his way towards the aisle, not averting his eyes for an instant. “I have every right to be here,” he shouted, cheeks moist with rage. “You have not heard the last of this.”

  When he reached the exit there was a porter waiting for him.

  The corpse scraped its lips with its tongue, leaving them no wetter than before. “Good. Now that I have your undivided attention, we can begin. I am Master Talon Turon. Understand that in this place you are nothing. Your presence here is tolerated only because of the very small chance that you might one day turn a profit. Some of you dream of becoming masters, one of the Twenty-Three. Know that far better men than you have tried and failed. The truth is that most of you will prove useless.”

  Miranda wondered how many times Talon had delivered that miserable introduction. It was nonsense, of course. If the recruitment of demi-masters were that fruitless, it would have ended long ago.

  Master Turon cleared his throat, a sound like paper tearing.

  “What is magic?” he said, and the room fell silent. “Come now. The question will not answer itself. Anybody. Somebody
? Anybody.”

  Men looked at each other, willing others to speak first. An uncertain hand lifted near the stage, and the silent birdman swirled the gurney to face its gangly, bespectacled owner. “Go on,” said Talon.

  “The art, um, the science of causing change in conformity with will?”

  “Everything a man does bends the world to his will to some small degree.”

  “I meant directly, just…”

  “I did not ask for a clarification,” Talon squeaked, and then belched dustily. “Your answer was incoherent and irrelevant, which is a good start, but also incorrect, which is less promising. What you are attempting to describe is cunning, the manipulation of magic by a person. That was not what I asked. What is magic? Anyone else?”

  Talon ignored those who suddenly had found the courage to raise their hands.

  “I didn’t think so. Answer. There isn’t a man, woman or child in the world who doesn’t know what magic is. Other-worldliness made manifest. That which trespasses the threshold of reality.”

  The answer made perfect sense, Miranda thought, yet was utterly uninformative. She wondered if Talon really wanted to share his secrets.

  “Question. Does magic work?”

  A chorus of affirmative noises filled the room.

  “Incorrect. No. Magic does not work. No more so than a flame or the wind or tides. In its natural state, magic serves no purpose; it is a whore without coin. It only becomes useful when it has been structured, invested. Dim the stones,” Talon commanded.

  The hall faded into half-light. The birdman flapped to the back of the stage and retrieved from behind the gurney an object the size of a hatbox, draped with a cloth. He displayed it eagerly. Even the most apathetic ceased doodling. Miranda set aside her commonplace and leaned forward in her seat, eyes riveted on the stage.

  A cube of flawless crystal was unveiled with a flourish worthy of a sideshow conjurer. Thousands of infinitesimal points of light swarmed within it like agitated insects. Rarefied lines of razor light flashed between them, like fissures opening in breaking ice, and then were gone as quickly. As Miranda’s eyes grew accustomed to the light, she began to discern a pattern to the movement. It was contained within a delicate cobweb, an arcane geometry of translucent edges.