The officer, of junior rank, plainly enjoyed the chance to be seen talking in public to these important-looking people who were on their way to the palace. He provided what information he could on the situation regarding the scaffold. During the night just past some of those persistent rural protesters had tried to burn the platform down. When rain prevented that, they had mounted the wooden structure with axes and hammers and tried to knock it all apart. The Watch had finally come on the scene and driven them off, but not until the devils had managed to do quite a bit of damage. Never fear, though, the instrument of execution would be ready in time, and this time would be kept under careful guard—there would be a live hanging, drawing, and quartering to begin the Festival tomorrow morning.
Kasimir, who had no intention of attending that kind of a curtain raiser, muttered something about the hopelessness of people who protested by trying to burn a scaffold. Wen Chang was scowling—it was hard to tell just what his reaction was. But as the Magistrate signed that he was ready to ride on again, his eyes twinkled for just a moment.
Their pause in the square had been brief, and only moments later Wen Chang and his associate were being escorted through a rear gate and into a narrow yard behind the palace itself. There all dismounted, leaving their riding-beasts in the care of grooms.
Inside the palace the Hetman was awaiting them in an audience chamber of moderate size, two floors above the ground. A number of other people were also already present, including Captain Almagro, who looked grim and bone-weary.
But most of the small gathering turned actively hostile gazes toward Wen Chang as he entered. The High Priests of both Red and Blue Temples, each accompanied by his own small retinue of advisers, stopped talking and glared at the newcomers on their arrival.
Kasimir was surprised to see that Robert de Borron was also present. Last night Kasimir had reported to Wen Chang that the artist was probably dead following his tumble down the elevator shaft. And indeed, de Borron was in bad shape, with one leg and one arm splinted, and bruises evident on his face.
The silence of the Red Temple’s High Priest was only momentary. As soon as that official had recognized Wen Chang and his associate, he immediately accused them in a loud voice of not only taking part in the raid on his establishment the previous night, but of organizing the attack as well.
And of carrying off Stonecutter. “The Sword of Siege is ours by rights, and I demand that you return it to us at once!”
For once the glowering artist gave every evidence of being in complete agreement with what the High Priest said.
That official went on: “I shall make the charges more formal and specific.” He grabbed a scroll from an aide and began to read from it. The Magistrate and his associate were accused of conducting a raid last night upon the Temple of Aphrodite and Eros, particularly the House of Flesh, and there conniving in the attempted murder of the sculptor Robert de Borron, and also conspiring with person or persons unknown to steal and sell a treasure of incalculable value.
Wen Chang, who still had not responded, waited calmly until the string of accusations should be finished; this took some time, as the Blue Temple people, unwilling to wait, were trying to get in their own accusations and arguments at the same time.
Meanwhile the Hetman had been sitting silently in his place at the head of the table, evidently willing to let the uproar run its course for a time, in the hope that some facts constituting useful information might emerge. Presently it was evident that nothing of the kind was likely to happen, and he drew his dagger and pounded on the table with the pommel. Almost instantly he was granted the boon of silence.
Kasimir had never heard any personal name for the current ruler of Eylau, and he had gathered that lack was a usage established by tradition as long as the person was in office. The Director of Security at the Blue Temple was operating under a similar rule or tradition.
The present Hetman, whatever his name, was a short, stout man, dressed in an elaborate style that Kasimir considered as bordering on the effeminate. There were rings on almost all his pudgy fingers and his coloring was muddy and unhealthy looking. About forty years of age, he looked as if he might at one time have been very strong physically, but had let himself go to seed. As Kasimir observed him throughout the meeting, the impression he gave was one of fading moral strength as well as physical, of an overriding, undermining insecurity.
Kasimir like all other thinking observers knew that the position of the city-state governed by this man was insecure as well. Eylau was chronically beset and buffeted by the larger powers surrounding it, and sometimes also by international entities like the great and well-nigh universal temples.
The silence obtained by the Hetman’s dagger-pounding was of brief duration. He allowed the silence he had won to stretch on a little too long, and the Blue Temple people took advantage of this leniency to burst into verbal action.
What they wanted, they said, was protection against robbers. This danger, they said, had escalated almost infinitely, now that a tool like Stonecutter was in the city, in unknown criminal hands.
“No one’s property anywhere will be safe, as long as that Sword is in the hands of irresponsible people!”
Before the Hetman had decided how to respond to that—or Wen Chang could formulate a reply—the Red Temple had seized the floor again, its leaders protesting that they were the ones who had actually been robbed, and had a real grievance to present.
The Hetman, exasperated at last, gave up all effort at a dramatic pause, all pretense at judicial calm, and shouted hoarsely for order. His voice, or something in the way he used it, was even more effective than his earlier dagger-pounding, and he was granted his wish immediately.
This time the silence lasted somewhat longer. As it endured, Kasimir found it possible to hear, faintly, the continual hammering from out in the square where the reconstruction of the scaffold was still in progress.
“Now,” said the ruler of the city, looking around the room. He had a bold, commanding voice when he wanted to make it so; but despite the tone and the determined look Kasimir had the definite impression that the Hetman was uncertain of just what ideas he ought to present to the orderly attention of his audience, now that it had been granted him.
It was with a subtle appearance of relief that the Hetman’s gaze at last came to rest upon Wen Chang. The voice of practiced boldness asked: “And you are the famed Magistrate?”
“I am, Excellency,” replied the lean man, bowing. There was no pretense of any particular modesty in the answer, and the bow was the movement of an experienced diplomat.
“Good.” The direction of the Hetman’s attention shifted slightly. “And I suppose you are Kasimir the physician?”
“Yes sir, I am.” Kasimir bowed in turn.
The stout man sitting in the elevated chair drew in a deep breath. “As you have just heard, it is charged against you both, among other things, that you have conspired to steal a piece of property belonging to the Red Temple. Very valuable property, too, I might add. What have you to say to this accusation?”
Wen Chang replied smoothly. “Only two things, Excellency. In the first place we have stolen nothing, and we do not have the Sword. And in the second place, the property in question—I assume the Sword of Siege, one of the Twelve Swords of the gods, is meant—does not belong to the Red Temple. It never has.” Raising his voice, Wen Chang overrode protests from that direction. “Not only are we innocent of the theft of Stonecutter, but we are engaged on behalf of the rightful owner to recover his property for him. The Red Temple has no more legitimate interest in that Sword than does the Blue, or than the people who have it now.”
The protests emanating from the Red Temple delegation only increased in violence and noise.
Wen Chang needed help from the Hetman, in the form of more dagger-pounding on the table, before he could regain the floor.
When a semblance of order had been re-established, and the Magistrate granted silence in which to procee
d, he said: “It is true that Doctor Kasimir, acting as my agent, was inside the Red Temple last night. He entered legitimately, as a paying customer. He was not trying to kill or injure anyone, or to steal anything. His only purpose—in which, regrettably, he failed—was to recover the Sword for its rightful owner.”
“Ah,” said the Hetman. “You keep coming to that point. Who is this rightful owner?”
Wen Chang continued smoothly. “My immediate client, Excellency, is Prince al-Farabi of the Firozpur tribe.” That created a stir of surprise in the room. The Magistrate went on: “Not many days ago, the Sword we seek was stolen from the Prince’s camp in the desert, some three days’ journey from Eylau.
“But the Sword of Siege, as Prince al-Farabi will be first to admit, was only his on loan—a matter, I am told, of Stonecutter’s powers being needed to root out some bandits from a particularly inaccessible desert stronghold. The true and rightful owner of the blade is Prince Mark of Tasavalta, with whom I am sure Your Excellency is well acquainted, if only by reputation.”
“Of course,” said the Hetman after a brief pause. He acknowledged some kind of acquaintance with the well-known Prince almost absently, as if his mind were running on ahead already, assessing what the implications of this claim were likely to be if it was true. Tasavalta was not a next-door neighbor, but rather many kilometers to the north of his domain. Nor was it a particularly large country. But the Tasavaltans were said to be formidable in war; the reputation of their ruler had spread farther across the continent than this.
Now there came an interruption. Robert de Borron, refusing to be kept silent by the Red Temple people with him, struggled out of his chair despite his injuries, and came pushing his way forward, leaning on the central table, demanding to be heard.
The burden of his impassioned plea was that a greater matter than treasure or even human lives was here at stake—and that was Art. Now that he had held the Sword in his hands and had begun to discover how much it could do, what marvels a sculptor like himself would be able to accomplish with such an instrument—well, all this talk about property rights and money value was really beside the point.
The sculptor looked across the table at the Blue Temple people almost as if he really expected them to agree with him. They gazed back. In the face of such heresy their countenances were set like stone beyond the power of any blade to carve.
Meanwhile the Hetman—perhaps from shrewdness, perhaps from chronic indecision—listened to the artist’s outburst tolerantly. De Borron grew angry at being tolerated. He had tried to speak respectfully, he said, but perhaps that had been a mistake. Nothing, certainly nothing and no one here in this room, should take second place to Art.
He was silenced at last only by a serious threat from the Hetman to have him removed from the conference chamber and, if even that failed to keep him quiet, locked in a cell.
Next someone in the Blue Temple camp brought up the suggestion that de Borron himself might have arranged to have the Sword stolen and spirited away.
Once more a minor outbreak of noise had to be put down.
“Captain Almagro.” The ruler’s voice was no louder nor bolder than before, but still the Captain blanched. “You are a senior officer in the city Watch. I want you now to tell me in plain words just what did happen inside the Red Temple last night; include everything that your investigations have discovered since the event.”
Almagro, who had perhaps been expecting to hear worse from his master, spoke up confidently enough. To begin with, there was no doubt at all that the Sword had been there in the temple, and that it was now missing. But in the Captain’s official opinion, there was also no reason to doubt any of the information that had just been provided by the famous Magistrate.
The Hetman nodded, as if he had known that all along. “My own magicians inform me that it is common knowledge, among those in a position to know, that the Prince of Tasavalta has had Stonecutter in his arsenal for some years.”
This time the interruption came from the Red Temple representatives. After a hasty consultation among themselves, they put forward a spokesman who protested that, with all due respect to His Excellency’s wizards, it was also common knowledge that the Swords, like other pieces of property, changed hands from time to time.
“We maintain, sir, that we were acting in good faith when we, as we thought, recently acquired certain rights to the Sword of Siege.”
Wen Chang broke in sharply. “Exactly what rights were those, and from whom did you think you were obtaining them?”
The Red Temple people were still considering what their answer to this ought to be when the meeting was interrupted from outside by the entrance of one of the Hetman’s aides. This was a middle-aged woman, who went straight to the ruler’s side and imparted some information to him in a very soft whisper.
The Hetman heard the message with no change of expression. Then he nodded, dismissed the messenger with a few quiet words, and turned back to face the assembly at the table.
“Prince al-Farabi himself is now here in the palace,” he announced, looking sharply round to gauge his audience’s reactions. “And he is coming at once to join our meeting.”
A stir ran through the gathering, but Kasimir saw nothing he considered helpful in anyone’s reaction. Only Wen Chang, as usual, remained imperturbable.
Within two minutes, amid a flourish of formal announcement at the door, al-Farabi indeed entered the audience chamber. The Prince was wearing what looked like the desert riding costume in which Kasimir had seen him last, and Kasimir noted that his clothing was actually still dusty with traces of the desert.
The two rulers, using one of the short forms of ceremony, exchanged the proper formalities of greeting. As Kasimir watched he was thinking that according to strict protocol the Prince would somewhat outrank or would at least take precedence over the Hetman, though both were heads of state. It seemed unlikely, though, that exact rank was going to be of any practical importance.
After his official welcome by the Hetman, the Prince exchanged brief greetings with all the members of the meeting, taking them generally in order of rank as prescribed by protocol. When he came to Wen Chang, who was well down on the list, Kasimir thought that Prince and Magistrate exchanged significant looks, though he could not tell what the expressions were meant to convey.
As soon as the formal salutations had all been completed, al-Farabi resumed at some length his lamentations for his lost Sword.
Eventually mastering his feelings with an evident effort, he faced the Magistrate again. “I understand that Stonecutter was seen here in the city last night, but that it was impossible to recover it then?”
“That is true, sir.”
“Ah, woe is me! My burden of sorrow is great indeed!”
Standing informally now with the two investigators as if they were old friends, the Prince related how, for the past several days, he and several dozen of his tribesmen had been out in the desert, trying in vain to pick up the trail of the villain or villains who had stolen Stonecutter from his camp. But, al-Farabi lamented, he and his trackers had had no success at all—which he supposed was scarcely to be wondered at, considering the nature of the ground and the ferocity of the windstorms that had lashed the area over the past several days.
Wen Chang broke in here to ask if any of the winged messengers dispatched by Lieutenant Komi had managed to reach the Prince.
“Regrettably none of them did.” Al-Farabi looked freshly worried. “Is there news I ought to know? On entering the city today I came directly to the palace, feeling that I must consult with my brother the Hetman, and so I have not seen Komi. I have heard nothing.”
“There is no news, sir, that is of vital importance for you to learn at this moment—only a few matters relating to the personal affairs of your troops.”
With that settled, the Hetman called upon Kasimir to relate his version of events on the night the Sword was stolen from the tent. The ruler listened to the relation with a loo
k of intense concentration. Then he wanted to know Kasimir’s version of the events in the Red Temple during the night just passed.
Again Kasimir obliged. From the expression on al-Farabi’s face as the Prince listened, Kasimir could tell that he had been expecting to hear nothing like this. As to what he had been expecting to hear, Kasimir could only wonder.
Called upon for comment again when Kasimir had finished, the Magistrate took three or four sentences to say in effect that the situation was indeed most interesting.
The Hetman snorted. “I rejoice to hear that you find it interesting! But is that all that you can find to tell us? We were hoping for something of more substance from the great Wen Chang.”
The Magistrate bowed lightly. “I might of course add that the situation is very serious. But I believe it is far from hopeless.”
“I am glad to hear that you think so.” The ruler looked round at others in the room as if to sample their reactions. “You see, then, some prospect of eventually being able to recover the Sword?”
Before answering, Wen Chang turned to face the people from the Red Temple. He said: “I must return to an earlier question, one that was never answered. You say you thought you had honestly bought certain rights to Stonecutter, or to its use—with whom did you bargain? Whom did you pay?”
The Red Temple spokesman looked at him haughtily. “As it seems now that we were bargaining in error, I don’t see how knowing that is going to help.”
“It may be of considerable help in recovering the Sword. Come, who was it? Certain disreputable people of the city, was it not?”
“I fail to understand why—”
“Did you not in fact know that you were dealing with a well-organized criminal gang?”
“Well, and if we were? We had hopes of being able to return the Sword, which we assumed might have been stolen somewhere, to a legitimate use in society.”
Robert de Borron was unable to keep himself from bursting forth again, once more putting forth his claim that the demands of Art could justify any such dealings.
Stonecutter's Story Page 17