Halls of Law

by V. M. Escalada

  “Alone? Aren’t you coming with me?”

  The plain question silenced her, and sat her down on her heels. She had to carry the word. Matriarch hadn’t believed what the soldiers had told her—and Ker silently cursed the officer who’d refused to let the old woman Flash him, even though part of her understood why. But, as Matriarch had said, Halls had been destroyed before, Talents killed by accident. Now that was all changed. Ker herself had been a witness to what had happened at Questin Hall. She would be believed.

  There were things about the Halls she didn’t like, ideas she didn’t believe in. But there had been good people. Cana. Barid. Devin. Even Matriarch, in her way. She’d had a future there, even if it hadn’t been the one she’d expected. And whatever else might be wrong with the Halls of Law, Ker thought, they didn’t go around slaughtering people.

  She realized she hadn’t thought beyond getting away, but now that she had, where was she going?

  “Temlin Hall’s just on the other side of the Serpents Teeth,” she said finally. “I’ve got to let them know what happened to us. On foot, we can reach the pass in two, maybe three days.”

  Tel sipped at his cup and made a face. “You figure they’ll believe you where your Matriarch didn’t believe us?”

  Ker nodded. “I’m a Talent, like it or not,” she said, and heard the echo of Matriarch’s words. “They’re my people, and I need to warn them.”

  “I can see you safely as far as Temlin, but after that I’ve got to rejoin my Wing.”

  Ker thought about pointing out that he wouldn’t be joining anyone if it weren’t for her help, but managed to keep the words unsaid. She hadn’t helped Tel Cursar in order to put him in her debt, and it was wrong to think that way.

  But oh, so tempting.

  “So where will you go?”

  “My Faro’s at Oste Camp, along with the Opal Cohort she kept to garrison the place, and that’s where any—where anyone who escaped will go.”

  The word “survivors” hung in the air between them, silencing them both. That’s where Ester will be heading, too. Ker wondered if there was anyone Tel was particularly worried about. Strangely, she was feeling better than she had a few minutes before. If soldiers like Tel Cursar and his group had gotten away, maybe she wasn’t the only Talent to escape. There would have been some on the road, and if so, they might be heading for Temlin Hall as well, now that the Peninsula was death to them. She wouldn’t be alone for much longer.

  “So are you rested enough, or should you eat something first?”

  “Huh?”

  “The ax? The helmet? You were waiting until this morning to Flash them?” Tel drained his cup and set it to one side. “I have to admit I’m curious about how you do it. Except for the Talent examinations, I’ve never actually seen one of you at work, not from up close anyway.”

  “There’s not that much to see,” Ker admitted.

  “What? No trance? No eye rolling?” Tel grinned. “I always thought there’d be at least some magical words.”

  “Well, not exactly.” Ker wondered how much to explain. “You remember I told you yesterday how my first reading shocked me so badly? I put up a natural block somehow, without knowing that was what I was doing?” Tel nodded. “Well, that turns out to be what Candidates get taught first, how to block the Talent, and leave the block always in place.”

  “Otherwise you’d go crazy from Flashing everything all the time.” He held up his hands, palms toward her. “I understood it when you told me yesterday.”

  Ker took a sip of her own kaff, far more slowly than the watery beverage deserved, and swallowed. “All right. What we do, then, when we want to Flash something, is temporarily remove the block, using a trigger word to release it, and then another one to recall it again.”

  “What if someone said your trigger word by accident?”

  Kerida set down her cup and crossed her arms, tucking cold fingers into her armpits. “It’s more complicated than just the word.”

  Tel nodded, frowning. He must have picked up on her reluctance. “You said you were far enough along in your training to manage this.”

  “It’s not that.” Ker scrubbed her hands on her trousers. “I can do it.” She was very good with objects, better than many of the more advanced students. I just don’t want to. “How much do you know about the first person you killed?”

  “What? Nothing. Nothing personal, anyway.” Tel’s eyes widened. “Oh. I see.” He nodded. “Maybe there is something harder than running away.”

  Ker blew out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. He understood. Somehow, that made what she had to do much easier.

  She took another deep breath and closed her eyes. In her mind, she pictured a sturdy wooden door, studded with decorative nailheads. She put her hand on the latch and as the door swung open, she said Paraste. Her skin felt flushed with heat, though she knew her color wouldn’t have changed. She opened her eyes.

  “It will snow tonight,” she said. She kept her hands raised, careful to touch nothing.

  “By the gods.”

  “Very funny. You know perfectly well any experienced farmer in the Polity can do exactly the same without Flashing the air. Move the helm here in front of me,” she directed. “I’ll try it first.” At least it wasn’t a weapon.

  “The thing closest to his head might give us more of what he was thinking, eh?” Tel said as he placed the object on the rock floor in front of her.

  Ker raised her eyebrows.

  “Doesn’t work that way, huh? So maybe I’ll keep quiet now.”

  Ker took several deep relaxing breaths, and released her lower lip from between her teeth, before picking the helmet up in both hands. As usual, it took a few moments to sort out the jumble of information as she slowly turned it over in her fingers.

  “It was made by Sveren in the city—” She shook her head. “No name, just ‘the city.’ He was an armorer who sold it to a trader. Bvorak bought it from the trader just before setting out on board. Bvorak lost it in a dice game to Dvenik. Good.” It wasn’t Bvorak she’d killed. “Bvorak has a wife he loves very much and two young children. I wouldn’t have wanted to kill their father.” Ker stopped speaking with a grimace. She’d rather have kept that last observation to herself. “Dvenik cheats at dice and his Tekla can’t do anything about it because Dvenik knows what his Tekla did to the sister of—oh!” Kerida let the helm fall to the ground. She looked at Tel and then quickly away, scrubbing her hands once again on her trousers. “Mother and Daughter help us, that’s awful.”

  “Did he kill her?”

  “No, but I think she might have preferred that.” Ker swallowed. “He caught her in a garden one afternoon and forced her.”

  Tel’s mouth dropped open. “But how did he get away with it? Any Talent could have backed her story.”

  “She didn’t tell anyone, I’m not really sure why. It seems incredible that she wouldn’t, but—” Ker waved her hands in the air, as if to clean them. “That part’s all confused, as if there was no one for her to appeal to. And yet, he would have been in trouble—” Why would people let a rape go unpunished? And why wouldn’t the girl have fought her attacker? Or at least accused him? The man seemed to take it for granted she would hide it.

  “They don’t allow women in the military.” She knew suddenly.

  “No, but they’ll use a piece of filth like that—” Tel broke off. “Is there such a surplus of men?”

  “That I can’t tell. This Dvenik was low ranking, and they don’t use the same words for ranks as we do. Tekla seems to be the equivalent of our Company Commander, but this one—” She tapped the helmet with her forefinger. “He was something like a Barrack Leader.”

  “Even our new recruits know who the officers are, and who outranks them,” Tel protested.

  Ker nodded. “They seem to divide everything into twelves
, instead of tens like we do. I don’t know what that means, though, or how useful it might be.”

  “Wiser heads than ours will have to figure that one out. Is there nothing else? What about the ax?”

  Ker looked down at the weapon and made a face. She really didn’t want to touch it. But it had to be done. They couldn’t risk passing up a chance at useful information. She took hold of the haft with her left hand, and laid the fingertips of her right on the blade. “This has always been Dvenik’s weapon. At least . . .” She frowned and lifted her hands away, turning to Tel. “It’s as though the weapon was owned by two different people, one after the other, but they were both Dvenik.”

  “Father and son maybe? That’s not unusual.”

  Ker curled her lip. “I can tell the difference between two owners, thank you very much, even if they are father and son and have the same name. No.” She drummed her fingers on the haft of the ax. “This is more like he was changed somehow, like there’s a mist or a shadow over him.” She frowned. The change had something to do with colors, but that didn’t make any sense.

  “People do change when they become soldiers.” Tel’s voice had a serious note. “Especially after the first time they kill someone.”

  Ker pressed her lips together, nodding. She wished she didn’t know exactly what he meant.

  “That could be it.” But even as she was saying it, Kerida didn’t think so. “It’s like he became more focused, but as though he knew less, if that makes any sense.”

  Terestre, she thought, restoring her block as she set the ax down.

  Tel grinned. “Like when my buddy fell in love with a girl at a dance and couldn’t remember he had the duty next day?”

  “For the gods’ sake, this is serious.”

  “All right, all right. No offense meant.” Tel shrugged, and then winced at the pain in his shoulder. “Anything else useful?”

  “He came here on a boat with twelve twelves of men. All men, no women. There were four ships carrying that number, and then another, larger. That carried twelve twelves of twelve.”

  “You mean twelve cubed? One thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight?”

  Ker stared upward, doing the sum in her head. “Yes, that’s right. Twelve cubed, though that’s not how they say it.”

  Tel was shaking his head, looking a little paler than he had been a moment before. “That’s more than three Cohorts—close to four! On one ship?”

  “They were met by trading ships.” Ker wrinkled her nose. “On the night of the new moon, near the mouth of the Juadal River. They got sorted out into other ships, waiting hidden for the trip up to Farama the Capital.” There was something else. “Tel.” She was cold despite the fire. “The ships? Some of them were ours.”

  The house looked much the same as the others in Tailors’ Alley, except Talent High Inquisitor Luca Pa’narion knew it was empty. Anyone could see the windows were shuttered over, and that no light escaped the gaps. But Luca knew the hearth was cold, and that mice had already come out to nibble at the meal drying on the table. The house was empty because Talents Pavelon Tallfeather and Q’ar Evet had left it in time, not because they’d been taken away. It was the third such house Luca had checked since the coming of the Halians, but the only one he’d found empty for good reasons.

  He managed to stifle his smile. They’d made it all the way to safe house number four. He’d find them there.

  “You have a reason to be here, sir?”

  Luca made sure to jump before turning around at the guard’s words. He’d Flashed the man’s arrival, and that of his partner, watchful and waiting in the alley around the two-story house on the corner.

  “Other than plain curiosity? Not really.” Luca smiled, even though it wasn’t a town guard standing to his left, but a middle-aged man in a green Eagle tunic.

  “Know the people in that house, do you?”

  Luca shrugged. “They’ve been customers of mine in the past. I’m a spice peddler.” He’d lost his Inquisitor’s uniform as soon as he could, and wore the good linen-wool trousers, shirt, and tunic that he’d borrowed from the first unattended laundry he’d found. As it happened, he knew the merchant family the clothing belonged to, but decided it was safer for all concerned if he didn’t ask them for it.

  “Where’s your goods?”

  “I left my pack in the Spotted Pheasant Inn.”

  The soldier looked him up and down. “We go there, we’ll find it, is that it?”

  “I think I just said that.” It was the right thing to say, even though the soldier pressed his lips together. Anything else would have been suspicious. As it was, the man was annoyed, but not with Luca. Not really. He was just bored with his assignment.

  “You’ll have to come with me, sir.”

  “Now, really, since when is it against the law to stare at a house?”

  “Since the house was reported full of Talents, and since I don’t know you.”

  “Oh, that’s what it is, eh?” Though he’d expected this answer, Luca found it hard to pretend he wasn’t shaken by it. He forced his shoulders down as if relaxed by what he’d heard, and stared at the house with his hands on his hips. “I wondered why the place was shut up.” He frowned at the soldier. “But there were no Talents here before, not among my customers anyway.”

  “You can tell your story to the commander. Come on, this way.”

  Again, Luca shied and cast a widened eye at the second soldier as he came out from his hiding place and fell into step behind him. It wouldn’t do to give the impression that he’d known all along the man was there.

  Luca’s confidence wavered as they approached the town’s small administration building. The town leader used one of the four rooms in the long, low building as an office. And one was set aside to house visiting officials. Luca had stayed here himself, once or twice. He widened the focus of his Flash, and breathed a little easier. The Company Commander who looked up from his paperwork when the two soldiers escorted him through the street door was a stranger.

  “What’s this?” The man cleared his throat, frowning.

  “Says he’s a spice merchant.”

  “I said I was a spice peddler. If I were a spice merchant, I’d be considerably better dressed, I assure you.”

  “We arresting peddlers now?” If anything, the Commander was more bored than his men.

  “He was watching the house in Tailors’ Alley.”

  “I was looking at the house, I wasn’t watching it.”

  “Well.” The officer got to his feet and pulled a ring of keys off his belt. “You’ll have to wait and tell your story to the Shekayrin.”

  Immediately, Luca put up a fuss, demanding that the Commander summon a superior officer, that someone be sent for his pack before the denizens of the Spotted Pheasant made off with it, but it was all for show. Like many people now living in the Peninsula, Luca had learned that once a Shekayrin was involved, there was nothing anyone else could do.

  Luca had three days to prepare for his interrogation. The holding cell was small, but not uncomfortable, with a cot, two blankets, a pillow, a chair, a table holding a wash basin and ewer of water, and a waste bucket. Luca had stayed in worse rooms at public inns, even as an Inquisitor.

  Three days was time enough for Luca to become bored Flashing everything he could learn about the room’s former occupants, the soldiers manning the outer office, and the very few people who came by with questions or concerns. Time enough, almost, for him to welcome the arrival of the Shekayrin. Apparently, the man had been circulating from town to town, much like Talents had been doing only a month ago.

  This was the first Shekayrin Luca had seen up close, and since curiosity couldn’t be suspicious under the circumstances, he took the opportunity to study the Halian mage. The man was square and thick of build, several inches shorter than Luca, with a northerner’s pale winter s
kin. His hair was completely covered by a close-fitting blue hood. A colorless but perfect rose was tattooed around his left eye in a dark red line. The same rose, in the same dark red, appeared as a crest over his heart.

  “I am Garlt Bvelter, Rose Shekayrin for this district. Answer my questions truthfully, and you have nothing to fear. Do you understand?”

  The words were polite, but the tone was one of complete indifference. The man had said them so many times they no longer had any meaning for him. Luca sat on the edge of the bed, wiping his hands on his thighs and nodding, the very picture of a man ready to do as he was asked.

  “I know you cannot be a witch yourself, but what interest did you have in a house where witches had been reported?”

  Luca didn’t bother to pretend he hadn’t heard the word “witch” already. Over the last few weeks, he’d seen, and heard, more than one of the Halians’ proclamations against Talents, and they all used that word. He also knew of the Halians’ belief that men did not have the Talent—just as he knew that male Talents had been executed merely for being with their female companions. Luca knew what the Shekayrins could do; he’d even seen one in action from the edges of the crowd in a public square. They weren’t Talented, no, but they had a Gift of some sort. The Halian would find something if he examined Luca, even if he refused to see it for what it was.

  “I’ve had customers in that house, sir,” was what he answered. “But none of them were Talents, I mean witches. Sir. We’ve got an old saying here,” he added helpfully. “‘Talents do not live in the world.’ They’d have been staying here, in this building, if there’d been any in the town.”

  “So I have been told.”

  The Shekayrin took a red jewel out of a small pocket formed by the crest on his tunic.

  “Have you seen a jewel such as this one in your travels?”

  Luca had seen these jewels twice, but never this close. They had something to do with the mages’ Gifts, a focus point perhaps. He leaned forward to take a careful look. It was about the size of a hen’s egg, flat on one side, faceted on the other.