Sitting on the steps of the gate, he was still eye level with most of the Ruad and Bolg out on the street. Since he wasn’t towering over them, they could finally ignore him. Of course, if he pushed his way into the court, he would just be tall. But, sitting at the gatepost, he was mostly out of the noise, mostly out of the press of the crowd, and mostly left to himself, which was what he wanted.
There was something to being the grandson of a legend, the nephew of a legend, the great-grandson of kings and such. People never wanted you to be you but expected a legend in progress. Such friends he had known had mostly waited for him to display a battle aura, to gather an army and go to war, or otherwise to come out as something miraculous. It just didn’t seem like anybody wanted anything from him that he wanted to do.
That line of thinking led Keynan to consider Waylaid, the one man in Ard bigger than him. And Waylaid, like me, is bound to be from a noble Fomor bloodline. He had to be the son of a Count or the King himself, nobody else was near that big. Still, the monster understood the Good Father, really understood him. Keynan’s mother had tried to make him a priest of the Good Father. Yet another job I couldn’t do.
He leaned back against the gatepost and rested his eyes. His head wasn’t aching as badly anymore, and he felt a bit of peace. He hadn’t seen the Ruad herald pass, but he heard him speak. It didn’t take long to realize that Auntie would be going up the hill to see the Ruad King.
He checked his sword to make certain he had brought it. That would have been an embarrassing mistake. He looked down the road toward the Library, wondering if he should run for his armor or at least grab a shield. He considered it a moment and then he looked the other direction, up the road to the palace. His shield was a “defender,” and it weighed as much as a small child. It was great in a chariot, but he didn’t really want to drag it up that hill. Maybe he should get an armlet or one of Auntie’s bull hide rounds. They weren’t light, either, but lighter than his.
Keynan again considered running to the Library, but decided to sit in the sun a few more minutes, resting his eyes. He’d conserve his strength for later.
Court broke up in a prayer and a series of sharp commands in the Judge’s war-commander voice. People were moving off through the other sides of the grove, as most of them lived fairly near the East Gate. Keynan slid his sword across his lap and hung his cup on his belt. It wouldn’t be long now.
Samu Halfdan started to sprint past him. The kid didn’t much understand his job yet. Keynan grabbed his sleeve, spun him around, and sat him next to him. Samu stared up at him with uncomprehending eyes. Keynan lifted a finger.
“Wait.”
Judge Brea rested her hand on his shoulder.
“Good Morning, Keynan, we have a murderer to catch.”
Keynan grinned. This was a job he could do.
Brea’s hand itched for the feel of the iron. Oren walked behind her but she didn’t have time to indulge herself in asking for Answerer. The Blessed Mother moved her. It was rare enough that she felt the hand of her Goddess, she wouldn’t balk now.
Brea found Keynan where she expected him, waiting on the edge of the courtyard, sitting quietly with his sword across his lap. Technically he was guarding the Northern Pillar, but at least he was keeping the gateposts from falling over with the steady pressure of his back.
“Auntie, you going up?” he asked. He pushed his long sun-paled hair back from his soulful green eyes and rolled easily to his feet.
“I need a messenger…”
Keynan lifted the boy seated beside him. He was wearing a cloak made of eight different cloths of eight different colors, sewn together. As long as it didn’t include red, the eight-piece cloak was a symbol of the court of the Blessed Folk. This boy’s choices were mostly versions of green and brown, which was much the style of cloak that Oren’s wife made.
Brea looked closely at the child, but he didn’t look particularly like any of Oren and Amah’s children. Blessed Mother knows she wouldn’t remember any of their names, but she thought she could remember what they looked like. No, this wasn’t a child she had seen before, but it looked like a well-used cloak. In any case, Oren must have held him as a messenger.
“Boy,” she addressed him, and he straightened under her gaze. “Will you take a message to Master Waylaid?”
The boy was painfully small; he couldn’t have reached his tenth year. Frankly, a tiny boy with that curly black hair, you might expect that he had blood of a Bolg in him. Still, despite his lack of size, he looked smart and quick.
“Yes, Judge Brea,” the boy nodded, “I know where he spends his mornings.”
“Tell the Master, ‘She wills it that you come,’ and ask him to bring his apprentice.”
She started walking, heading to the road. She thought hurriedly while walking. “I’m not sure where the trouble is, but have him meet us outside the Hall of Thrones on the East side of the plaza. I think we will walk there. He can have the guards bring a chariot if his knee is acting up again.” She looked at the sky and it looked clear, but you could tell if a storm was coming in by the twinges in Waylaid’s knee.
“Did you get that?” she asked.
“Yes, Mistress,” he replied.
“Tell him that Master Keynan, Oren, and I are on the way up there to meet with King Cail, but I don’t think the Bolg,” she gave a dry laugh, “or Fomor would be welcome. Tell them I said they should bring a guard.”
They probably didn’t need a guard, she thought, but it never hurt to be prepared for a riot when there were politics and murder on the same scroll. Waylaid and Piju were likely to be a focal point for any disturbance. While there was some general discontent about their presence―no, she admitted to herself, “fear”―no one had threatened Waylaid since their first day, at the end of last summer.
The common folk were allowed fear, and she was sometimes afraid of the giant herself. Waylaid contained something dangerous and powerful. His visions were either evidence of insanity or that he had access to powers that were just disturbing to think about. She had fought some of the greatest Fomor Lords, but Waylaid would have snapped the Count of Nog across his knee. She laughed again, thinking,
And then he would have regretted it; that knee is too damn sensitive for that kind of treatment.
She hadn’t seen anyone close to his size since Count Idris of Nog, and the only Fomor bigger than Count Nog was supposed to be the king of the Fomor himself. This suggested something important to her, but she waved it away as an unnecessary distraction.
She suspected that Piju had been threatened several times, but he wasn’t prone to talking about it. The boy was nigh the opposite of Waylaid in every way. He was busy and loud in the library and quiet and competent in the woods, probably deadly with that bow. But he absolutely never threatened a soul. If the two of them kept guards with them, they should be all right.
She waved the boy away as they reached the edge of the courtyard. She didn’t glance back and neither did the boy. The boy was sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him, down the hill toward the Library. Keynan and Oren fell in behind her as she stepped out onto the road.
Brea hadn’t felt so moved in years. The last time the Blessed Mother had guided her steps had been a long time ago, before she had become a judge, but now she felt it again. The Blessed Mother’s signs were often strongest in her iron, but the plain sense of dread or urgency in a listening mind were often all the prodding the Mother gave.
A sad truth: the closer you are to the Mother’s heart, the less you sense her presence.
If the Mother thought Brea wouldn’t know what was asked of her, the signs and symbols would have been stronger.
Brea knew from the prodding in her heart that if she wasted a single day, it could cost the life of a child. She had lost hundreds in battle, but the murder of a child was simply a different scale of measurement. She would do everything in her power to find this killer as quickly as possible, and give him to The Blessed Mother’s Answer. Br
ea had lived by the whispers of Heaven and Earth all of her life, but the urgency here was as clear as a battle cry.
Brea’s sister was on the Council, and a harder fighting politician couldn’t be found. Keynan was her sister’s son, but there wasn’t an easier living man among the Blessed Folk. He was taller than anyone in Ard, outside of the obvious Fomor, and had been trained as both a soldier and a priest of the Good Father. He just wouldn’t work hard. The man never seemed to get riled up or upset, even in a fight.
The Blessed Folk hold the battle rage as holy, so he wasn’t considered particularly fit to be a warrior or a priest. He wasn’t terribly good with numbers or letters either, so had little hope of being a scribe or an accountant. Brea’s sister despaired of ever getting him a decent job or married off, despite his noble blood, but Brea took pity on her sister and had given him steady work.
Mistress Brea liked the man because he did well at guarding her back. Brea’s battle rages were literally a thing of legend. She couldn’t be expected to watch her own back during one of them, but Keynan never pushed himself that hard and could be counted on to keep his head.
Keynan’s official title was Master of Hounds for the Judge’s court, and it was the kind of job where one hundred percent loyalty and fifty percent work would keep you at the top of the game. The hounds didn’t really need all that much time, and his court work was mostly waiting for the moments when his Auntie Brea needed him. This was one of those moments.
Brea looked hard at her nephew, sizing him up for the hundredth time.
“Yes, I’m going up. I feel the hand of the Mother in this one. We are needed.” She paused and decided to say it out loud instead of expecting it as normal Daen behavior. “I need you to watch my back this time; keep your sword hand free.”
Keynan nodded, accepting her commands with his usual calm demeanor.
“Sure, I can do that. If it’s a manhunt, I can bring the dogs out.”
Bringing out the hounds and letting them hunt could mean several days without seeing his bed, but she knew he would do anything she asked. Perfect loyalty was a rare gift, and the old soldier in her appreciated it.
“Honestly, Key,” she said, “I have no idea what we will need.”
Brea let the Ruad herald lead the three Daen up the long hill of the Eastern Road. The wide road was bordered by tall houses that dug deeply into the mountain to keep their floors level. The path was steep and crowded as the populace took to the streets for whatever purpose their daily business demanded. She heard Keynan laughing to himself as they caught up to an ox, slowly pulling its cart laden with grain up the steep road.
At least he could see the humor in trying to hurry an ox. Brea found herself wanting to push.
It wasn’t a long climb, and it brought them into the heart of Ard, the White Palace. The courtyard was a broad paved circle, with the three Gate roads extending off at square angles. In the center, great white stones cut from the earth in ancient times had been stacked high to make a building many times the height of a man. The bronze roof tiles here were not brown and green, as in most of the city, but a bright color of the sun from the precious white metals added to them. The many roofs of the palace sparkled and dazzled the viewer into looking away. It was said that a man could not look upon the dwelling place of the Red King. It was an exaggeration, but an understandable one.
The young herald brought them up the stairs to the Hall of Thrones and bowed them into the entryway. The red-coated guards stepped aside and pulled open the great doors to allow Brea into the Hall of Thrones. Only the Judge, Master Keynan, and her clerk passed within the doors. Their spears cracked together, a welcome tempered with intimidation, but Brea never complained about extraneous martial display. Everyone should be proud of their soldiers, even if they were small and weak Ruad. She smiled indulgently, “not everyone could be one of the Blessed Folk.”
The Hall was as high as the trees in the grove and broad enough for a hand of guards to stand against the wall on either side of the great doors. Each guard wore full armor, a bronze helmet with a wide brim and a thick leather breastplate. They stood still, like statues, their spears tilted back till their tips touched the wall high above their heads and their shafts butted into the pavement before their feet.
She walked the length of the hall, passing each of the great thrones. The first were broad and tall, large enough for Waylaid, but they were replaced by small and well carved chairs as they reached the midpoint of the hall.
She paused at the first of these, the throne of Slaine. It was rough cut and smoothed with stone. The Bolg hadn’t come to the shores of Pywer with bronze, but they had broken the Fomor. King Slaine must have been an amazing warrior. Brea did not quail when faced with a Giant’s axe, but Slaine was a Bolg and must have been even smaller than Brea. She had faced the Fomor armies while holding her brilliant little bronze blade, Avenger, or the Goddess’ blade, Answerer. Slaine had held a simple stone axe.
The Bolg had held the Fortress at Ard for seven generations until King Eochaid, who had died fighting the Blessed Folk during Nuada’s invasion. After that, Eochaid’s throne was Nuada’s. It was made of a pale wood bleached white and carved with the battles Nuada had won. The Ruad were a small tribe then, hardly worth noticing for all that their weapons were as fine as the Daen. When the Fomor had rebelled, the weakened Bolg and Daen could not hold them. The Ruad had taken Ard and held it for three kings and nigh on sixty years.
Brea smiled. She could let them pretend that they conquered the Fomor, when they only picked up the scraps of their brethren, the Bolg. The last three chairs were greater in stature, carved with the symbol of the red hen, for the Red King of Ard, who had ruled the Ruad since his grandfather’s time.
Many people stood in small groups out in the middle of the floor. There were no other chairs and none dared sit in the thrones which had held the kings of history, so only one chair held a man. King Cailagean sat in the last of the chairs, newest and as yet carved only with the symbol of the grouse. His advisers stood around him, wearing the red-striped, white robes of the king’s advisors, looking wise, thoughtful, and worried.
One of the men stepped forward, a tall, dignified man in a red-dyed tunic. His hair had gone white in the past but he was clearly a nobleman and probably an advisor. Nobles commonly did not wear bands of red on their sleeves, they were not philosophers. Their position was a more complex thing, measured in wealth and services.
Brea smiled at this amusing trap. A red dyed tunic doesn’t signify any position. He has no red hair, so he isn’t even clearly a Ruad noble. This could just as easily be a Bolg or a servant, dressed to play a part. The Judge nudged Oren in the back.
“You’re on” she whispered.
“It is good that you have come,” the adviser said, “His Majesty requests that you assist him in some business involving the death of a farmer’s child. He―”
Oren shushed him.
“Did we come here to meet advisors?” he asked.
Oren was small for one of the Blessed Folk, but still was still a hand taller than this old noble, if that is what he was. He simply loomed over him when the adviser didn’t answer, blocking his path to Brea. The advisor feigned confusion, as though he could not understand Oren’s objection.
Mistress Brea stared blankly past the advisor, as if a closed door had suddenly appeared in the middle of the room. Though the door might look like Oren’s back, surely someone would open it for her.
“Why did you, a high lord among the Ruad, not come to the court to ask her Grace yourself?” Oren asked. “Are you a philosopher? Have you studied that question?”
The advisor stepped to the right, and Oren stepped to block him; he dodged quickly to the left and attempted to address Brea directly and found himself facing Keynan.
“This is an important matter, beyond such games,” the noble said. “You have been asked to address the murder of a child, and surely this will appeal to your honor?”
Keynan sm
iled and lifted his hand in greeting. While Keynan was ranked a Master, from his manner of dress, he appeared to be of the lower classes. The noble couldn’t be expected to know that Keynan’s blood was more royal than any man standing in that room. Shaking his hand would be far from insulting, but the appearance of shaking hands with a commoner was appalling to the noble. Despite his lofty rhetoric, he quickly stepped back to avoid shaking Keynan’s hand and found that he had been maneuvered into facing Oren again.
“You know why you did not,” continued Oren, a single finger tapping his lower lip. He arched his neck and cocked his head to the side, his tone and body posture mocking a philosopher’s debate. He answered the debate as though the advisor was a willing participant. “You think that we would have denied you audience.
“Now you surmise that a full Judge of the Daen, even in a lowly city such as Ard, would take audience with an unranked advisor in a room of strangers?”
Ard was no lowly city, but the inbred rulers of the Ruad didn’t know much of the world outside its walls. Oren paused slightly, tapping his lip again, more to assure that every person in the hall of thrones, each painfully attempting to appear not to be listening in on a private conversation, heard the full sentence. Speaking to the hall, through the advisor, he spoke each word as a sentence.
“You. Are. Mad.”
Oren turned his back on him but stayed between the advisor and the Judge. Judge Brea looked past both their posturing and raised her hands in greeting to the king.
The Broken Man Page 11