Avin led us across and the domo opened the doors for us. The weather outside had brightened, and we stepped into the sunshine. The priests and bailiffs beyond fell back from us as we emerged. One man dropped his spear and fled. A trio of priests gathered up the Shadow like a mess of filthy blankets and got ready to bleat out a song.
“Afternoon, Your Grace,” Avin said to the senior priest amongst them and handed him the warrant. “I am in your care. Can you please see us to the court?”
The man trembled as he took the sheets. He nodded and hurried to get us moving east. The bailiffs had a caged wagon on hand. I eyed the men who stood around it. One of them wisely called up a set of horses for us.
Avin jumped aloft and saved the priests the trouble of deciding how next to move by starting east at a slow trot without them. They all hurried to follow, but none of them had the courage to ride in front of us.
We rode along between the river and the palace, and out onto the wide boulevard of the Grand Mhedhil. Every shop, stall, and alley of the market was deserted. Troops of bluecoats stood at each intersection. I laughed. Bessradi was terrified, and the city was right to be. With so many princes and arilas at the capital, something terrible was bound to happen.
We followed the slow curve of the river boulevard, crossed the grand bridge, and started up toward the dark spire. A crowd had gathered beneath it. Red hat priests and church functionaries by the thousands—all making eyes like they wished to pull my words from my head with hot irons. A trio of pyres waited in the gardens. They’d hoped to cheer as our broken bodies were dragged in and to revel as Bayen’s flames consumed our heresy.
They did not like my waving.
Avin said, “Geart, stop it.”
I laughed, snatched the magic of the Shadow away from the crowd, and slapped them all with a song.
blood silver yew
They stumbled about, most knowing I’d used nouns—useful and powerful nouns—but none of them seemed to have heard. Ryat was right. There was little talent left in Bessradi.
“Sing it again,” one man pleaded.
What sheep.
“Enhedu’s College of Healers is accepting applications this autumn in Urnedi for those who wish to learn,” I said loudly to the man. I turned to the woman next to him. “The sermod are also welcome to apply.”
“Geart,” Avin hissed. “What are you doing?”
“Quieting a mob and winning a war,” I told him. “Are you ready to do your bit? This is the fight you wanted, isn’t it?”
The crowd whispered and watched. They’d forgotten their anger, and Avin did his best to set his aside, too. Ryat stayed quiet.
The pikemen bumbled about but managed to get out of our way. Avin led us through the grand nave, turned north past the entrance of an ancient chapel, and descended a wide stairway. The tall doors below were closed, but the priests and pikemen there hurried them open and were only too happy to close them again once we were through.
The small circle of barren wood beyond was at the bottom of a great egg-shaped amphitheater ringed with tiers of tables, brass lantern boxes, and thick pillars of Enhedu stone. There was no opening at the top of the dome and no lights hung from above. It was dark and stank of rapeseed oil and old men’s robes. The low ring of tables closest in was occupied by officials of the court—each surrounded by stacks of books and sundries. At the far end, a fat tower of dark wood was manned by three priests in the most adorned robes I’d ever seen. The arriving audience was a sea of red hats and vests, each as preened as a prized falcon.
The din bewildered me. Avin had once used the word “theater” to describe what went on in that dark room. I began to understand his confidence. The pageant of the grand prelature did not inspire fear. The sheepish grin upon my teacher’s face straightened my spine.
“Has Parsatayn moved?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “He’s not far off to the north but has made no move. We are still between him and Barok.”
The senior judge atop the towering bench hammered a monstrous gavel upon a hollow block. The angry sound ordered the audience into their seats, leaving only the three of us in the circle of the dark well of wood below.
Avin whispered to us, “Do not speak another word. Not one word through the rest of this from either of you. Let me speak for you. Do not use your magic unless it is worth risking all of Enhedu.” He wore the same expression he’d had when he had sentenced Swordmaster Fenol to death. We both nodded.
“Accused and guilty,” a deep voice boomed behind us. The voice drew all eyes to the entrance at a tall priest wearing a puffy white vest and a collar of red flowers whose color matched the thick red band upon his round hat. His stride was smooth. His thunderous vocalization resumed when he arrived at a worn patch of floor opposite us. “The court has considered the charges against you and will render a verdict.”
Avin’s deep tenor carried over the low applause that followed. “Emi nolumari etu touer.”
The crowd chattered feverishly, and the gavel boomed again. “Who here would step forward to represent you?” the centermost justice asked.
“Nol irue et esend eti.” Avin hammered back. “I am nolumari pretata. I will stand in our defense.”
Avin shed his dusty robe and turned a slow circle to show them all the white vest he wore. The ugly noise of recognition was deafening. They screamed and cursed. Some threw bits of food and even a small cane clattered across the floor.
The sudden crack of the gavel was painful. I grimaced at the scarlet-faced man who held it. His voice faltered. “What hubris. You vile thief and usurper. This court was told that you have been acting as lawyer and judge in Enhedu, but now we see the true depths of your crimes. Your vest was taken, sir. Remove it at once!”
“My vestments were returned, Your Grace,” Avin said and extended a document toward the bench. “I filed for reinstatement in person here last year. The application was signed, stamped, and properly filed by prelate Filyin Losruc. You may call upon him as witness, if you wish. He is there.”
The crowd followed Avin’s pointing finger to the man. I recalled the black dirk of his beard. It sank low onto his chest as he tried to shrink from view. The judiciary glared holes in the man.
The audience swayed, and the noise surged as some began to run from one place to another. One man, so urgent in his movement, lost his feet and fell over a railing onto those below. The bedlam was so energetic and undirected that for a long moment it seemed as harmless and beautiful as the crash of a waterfall or the fluttering of a busy colony of sparrows.
The harsh gavel beat the crowd back into silence. A dozen priests gathered behind the judges, and their whispers were shrill and chaotic.
One of them said down, “Prove it. You must prove your standing.”
Avin waved the document he held at them. A bent little man scurried forward and delivered Avin’s document up to the judiciary.
Avin spoke over their chattering, “No objection to my application was raised nor did this court exercise its right to challenge my status before convening this court. That right is now forfeit. My nolumari touer has been proclaimed. You shall recognize me, and these proceeding shall begin.”
The chief justice looked from Avin to the document and back again. The crowd leaned forward as the moments of quiet stretched on.
“Very well,” the chief justice said. “I call these proceedings to order. The court’s accuser will read the charges.”
The man standing with us in the well needed to be handed the list. He could not manage the same savage tone as before as he read from the sheet. The list of charges was impressive, though: the murder of priests in the Oreol and Heneur, the unsanctioned practice of healing magic, the unauthorized founding of a church and college of healers, failure to deliver Enhedu’s tithe, and several dozen other ramblings of law that made no sense to me whatsoever.
When the accuser was finished, Avin and the rest of the amphitheater looked to the accuser. Even I knew what was s
upposed to happen next, but the accuser did nothing—called no witnesses, produced no documents, nothing. He looked back blankly, as though he did not understand a case needed to be made.
Avin started slowly toward him. The tall man made a small sound and looked around wildly for something to stop Avin’s approach. If there were any words that could have stopped Avin, the man did not find them in time. He stepped back, and Avin took his place.
It seemed a minor happening, until the chief justice began to speak and Avin spun on him. “The floor has been surrendered to me. You are out of order, sir. You will desist.”
A tingle coursed through me. Avin must be one of the few who knew the rules of the process and cared about its practice. I could almost feel memories of him moving through that chamber, bringing cases rather than joining the masquerade of summary judgments. The emptiness of Zoviya became more profound by a measure of the Mother Yew’s long life. Its institutions were as empty and thin as cracked and dusty eggshells.
Avin bowed to the chief justice and to the accuser before his voice rose to fill the auditorium. “A vigorously presented accusation, Your Grace. I thank the court for the care it took in assembling it. I reserve the right to examine its presentation, but wanted first to address some of the charges individually.”
The audience murmured and leaned forward once again. How many of them had ever even seen a case properly presented and argued? I felt I knew more about the practice of law than they did. I was even able to guess Avin’s first argument.
“Your Grace, legal inquiry. Given that I was lawfully reinstated, was it within the Arilas of Enhedu’s authority to appoint me the Chief Prelate of Enhedu?”
The trio did not like being questioned. They huddled, and the chief justice replied, “Yes.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. Legal inquiry, Your Grace. Have the Laws of the Conservancy been struck down?”
The man glared down. Some of the charges against us were violations of Conservancy Laws. I very nearly clapped.
“Yes,” he replied.
“I move that the charges of sedition for the founding of the Enhedu College of Healers and the practice of healing magic be dismissed. No standing law forbids these actions.”
“Struck,” the judge said and preempted the excitable crowd with a mean crack of his gavel. “Those charges only.”
“As you will, Your Grace. I thank you. A further legal inquiry, Your Grace. Can an arilas, upon the authority of treaty or as terms of a surrender, extend the jurisdiction of his prelature over his lesser neighbors?”
The crowd chatted franticly and flipped through the pages of their books of laws. The trio huddled again with their cohorts. I wondered if it was a settled question. Avin seemed to be taking a dangerous chance.
The chief justice turned back to us, fierce now and awake. “Yes, the Law of Sedition provides for the takeover of prelatures by superior bodies.”
Ahh! Avin, be careful, man. They’ll strip you of your title and abolish your prelature.
“A wise ruling, Your Grace,” Avin said, and charged on. “Legal inquiry, Your Grace, and it will be my last, and I do thank the court for its patience educating me today. Do crimes of murder committed in the provinces fall under the jurisdiction of the provincial prelatures?”
“Yes,” the chief justice said reluctantly.
Avin pounced. “I move that the charge of murder be taken down and referred to the Prelature of Enhedu for adjudication.”
“So ordered,” the chief justice said with icy slowness, as though he was drawing a sword.
Avin seemed to relax. He unclasped his hands and turned a slow circle with a happy smile.
“I call for an immediate dismissal of all the remaining charges,” he said.
“On what grounds?” the left-most justice sputtered.
“Failure of application. The warrant delivered to this court was filed incorrectly and, therefore, stands void.”
The red monster lifted his gavel, expecting another outburst from the crowd, but the gathered priests were as silent as so many stones.
“Prove the failure,” the justice on the left demanded.
“The burden of application is upon the court. I would see it.”
“By what rule?”
“It is a well-established precedent. I do believe it was you, chief justice, who stood as defense when this superior precedent was established. One of your first victories, though not your best—to be sure.”
“It was indeed, yes. Very well,” the judge declared with a needless rap of his gavel. “Have the application brought forward.”
The room turned its eyes on a fat man in the foremost row with white stripes on his sleeves. He was unaware of the attention paid him until an elbow was sent into his round side. Someone else whispered in his ear.
“What? Oh my. No. Which? Where is what?” the rotund man said loud enough for the rest of us to hear. The crowd’s eyes penetrated his lethargy. He began to fidget and tug at his robe.
I nearly laughed out loud. The document in question was in a bellman’s bin. They had carried the application along with the warrant when they came to arrest us, and Avin had chucked it.
The justice shook his gavel at the man. “Produce the application.”
He was hit with another elbow, and the whispering became hostile. The fat man waved over another priest—the same who had arrested us. They argued hotly while all those around them searched through the sheets in their possession.
“Where is the application?” Avin demanded.
“Ahh. It is not here,” the official sputtered.
“Why not?”
“It, ahh. We cannot find it.”
The crowd rose and roared. The gavel thundered.
“Dismiss,” Avin commanded.
The crack of the gavel stung our ears until the crowd relented to the painful sound. A breathless silence lingered.
A bell tolled. I knew the sound at once.
Vall was dead.
The sound did not register with anyone else in the auditorium as the judges teetered upon a decision. I looked at Avin. The bell struck again, and he caught the meaning of the sound.
He filled his lungs and blasted the chief justice. “You are bound to the question. Dismiss these fraudulent charges!”
The judge seemed ready to faint, and the bloodthirsty crowd leaned forward like demonic children at a puppet show. They did not care who was killed. They waited, and the judge shifted. Bells began to ring like the ping of rain upon a shield. Bits of the crowd began to murmur to itself. The junior justices gathered up their robes and fled. The chief justice looked left and then right, yelped, and stood.
“Dismissed,” he said, struck the hollow block a parting blow, and raced after his colleagues.
Pieces of the crowd cheered and growled until others began to recognize the cascade of bells. Panic washed through the crowd. They surged and clawed their way through the exits.
Avin leapt toward the row of scribes. “Which of you is to take today’s copy to the archives in Alsonelm?”
One man was betrayed by the looks of the others. Avin grabbed his forearm, read his name from something upon the table, and slammed a pile of coins upon the table. “Chas Hoff, you will succeed in this task or the priests of Enhedu will find you. Is that understood? Is that understood!”
He nodded vigorously, collected up the coins, and snapped his fingers at the man assembling the copy.
“Avin,” I said as the scribes joined the fleeing crowd. “We must be away.”
“If it is not recorded, it did not happen.”
“Well enough,” I said. “Let us get back to the Chancellery.”
Ryat grabbed my arm and pointed.
The rusty stain of the Ashmari crawled across the disappearing crowd, and the power of the Shadow was snatched away from me in all directions.
78
Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
“Geart is being arrested,” the lookout said down from his makeshift sta
tion atop one of the wharf buildings.
“Errati and now Geart?” I asked. “Are you certain?” From where I stood upon the aftcastle, all I could see to the east was the empty road that ran around the back of the Chancellery and a single leech fisherman out in the center of the river. Bessradi had shut itself in.
“Yes. Pikemen and priests are escorting him out the front door with Avin and Ryat. They are riding out of sight to the northeast.”
“They’ll be headed to the Tanayon,” I said.
I did not like our position. My grand ships were water heavy barges with poor oars and no high vantage. I fixed the map of Bessradi in my mind. We were at the corner of the east branch of the Bessradi River where it bent around the Treasury Keep. The next bridge upriver to our east was the grand bridge that led to the Tanayon. The nearest bridge south of us was on the far side of the palace near the barracks of the Hemari. There was a great deal of river between the two.
“All hands,” I called. “Make to secure and raise the Whittle’s masts.”
Boatswain Rindsfar said, “You’ll trap her in Bessradi.”
“Don’t tell me things I already know. Get moving. I want it done in half the time it took to take it down. Go!”
The crews of both ships got to work, and the company of greencoats made themselves useful as well. The cranes were built, and the lower sections of mast were up before the sail crews had canvas and line organized across the face of the wharf. The master of the wharf was not there to object. The gold he’d been paid was enough for quite a holiday.
“Anything moving?” I called up to the lookout.
“Only this one miserable fisherman.”
I went to the rail. The fisherman was too odd by half. There was only so many uses for leeches. He did not appear to be pulling any up, either. He had a single line in the water and was slowly rowing from place to place.
One of the greencoats working the ropes took notice of something. He left his place in line, was roundly sworn at, and stepped toward the rail. “That fisherman looks familiar,” he said. “Is that Dekay?”
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