Nearer the Justiciary, the human traffic increased. Before its arches were milling cityfolk, horses, Blackboots, and a guard of Steel upon the steps. Above them all loomed Maldereld’s statue, her sword raised to a cloudless sky. A familiar lieutenant saw Rhillian, and broke off his conversation with a Blackboot officer from the base of Maldereld’s plinth.
“Lieutenant Raine,” Rhillian greeted him as he matched her stride. “What progress?”
“Many arrests,” said Raine, removing his helmet as they entered the building. “Someone is making lists inside, I’ve not seen the latest. I think we have half the councilmen we wanted….”
“Renine?”
“Yes, all of them. But the law states we cannot hold them if we do not charge them.”
“My, what a sophisticated city this has become.”
“Do you wish the law suspended?” Raine asked her. It took Rhillian a moment to realise he was serious. She could, it occurred to her. Captain Renard was respected, but did not have the authority of a general. Zulmaher was under arrest, and alternative generals were at the western border. In Elisse, the Steel officers had come to respect Rhillian’s command greatly, and had praised the talmaad for making the pacification of Elisse enormously more simple. That respect had spread to the men. That, and she spoke with the authority of Saalshen, perhaps even more, in the eyes of these men, than Lesthen. Until some other general was summoned back to Tracato, she was effectively in command of this rebellion. Lesthen agonised over the moral and ethical implications of what she’d helped to do. Rhillian felt entirely calm.
“No,” she replied. “The Blackboots are unhappy as things stand, and I’ll not make enemies of the justiciars entirely. The Steel cannot remain in Tracato for long, and once you’re gone, true power shall flow from this building.”
The entry stairs led into a long, wide hall, filled with activity. Justiciars in black cloaks argued, clerks hurried clutching immense rolls of parchment, Blackboots escorted hands-tied prisoners while other cityfolk protested and pleaded beneath the wary eye of local guards. Rhillian threaded her way through, with Lieutenant Raine as an escort.
She did not continue down tmorws of courts, but turned left instead, and was halfway down an adjoining hall when a page brought an old man out from a doorway ahead. Rhillian stopped before him, and bowed.
“Justice Sinidane,” she said with respect. “I regret I have not had the opportunity to call on you since my return from the war. You look well.”
Sinidane snorted. “One of the most irritating things about growing old,” he replied, “is that every acquaintance must remark to my face their mounting surprise that I’m not yet dead. What have you gone and done now, silly girl?”
Sinidane had better than eighty years, yet looked well enough for that. He walked tall and unaided, though slowly, and spoke with an eccentricity that could seem to the unacquainted like absentmindedness. There were some Rhodaanis who opined that Sinidane, rather than Premier Chiron, was the true power in Tracato. As chief justiciar, his world was the law, and even premiers, High Table seats and councilmen must bow to the law. If only, Rhillian thought sadly, Maldereld had been more successful in removing the temples from the equation entirely. Sinidane’s black robes bore the emblazoned silver of a great, Verenthane star. Rhodaani justice came from the gods, or else no citizen would respect it as true. And that, frustratingly, brought the priesthood into the equation.
“If you will accompany me downstairs, I believe I can demonstrate to you exactly what I’ve been doing, Justice Sinidane,” Rhillian replied.
“Stairs, you say? Do I look like a sprightly young man to you?”
He followed her anyway, his page at his elbow, down some dark, stone steps, then, and into the bowels of the Justiciary dungeons.
A lantern hung outside Lady Tathilde Renine’s cell, yet she blinked at the new light beyond its bars. She sat alone on a small stool…a lady of her breeding would never deign to sit on the stone floor, Rhillian judged. The lady’s eyes narrowed in suspicion to see Rhillian, then widened as the Chief Justiciar shuffled into view, and leaned a steadying hand upon the bars.
“Your Justice,” said Lady Renine. “You’ve come. I had feared this insurrection had claimed you too.”
“The law is intact,” Sinidane replied. “Merely somewhat taken aback.”
Lady Renine came smoothly to her feet. “Your Justice, I would like to protest this appalling treatment, as it is clearly beneath a lady of my station. Further, the laws of your beloved Justiciary clearly state that any so detained must be formally charged by an officer of Rhodaan, not on the whim or imperial writ of Saalshen.” This last with a sharp glare at Rhillian.
“Captains of the Steel do qualify, Lady Renine,” Sinidane said mildly.
“The Steel swore an oath before the gods to uphold the office of the Council, not to arrest them!” said Lady Renine. “I have seen many dear family friends and elected councilmen marched past these bars, men the Steel swore to serve and protect with their lives.”
“You seem to confuse the nobility with the Council, Lady Renine,” Rhillian observed. “They are not the same thing, whatever the nobility’s attempts to purchase so many Council seats that it may appear so.”
“I’ll not stand here and be dictated to on matters of Rhodaani governance by a serrin! Just the other day, I was lunching with the serrin ambassador Lesthen, and he assured me that the days of Saalshen’s interference in the affairs of Rhodaan were over. And now we see it happening all over again.”
“Again?” Rhillian asked. “To my memory, we’ve never done this before. Unless you mean Maldereld. Do you mean Maldereld, Lady Renine?”
Lady Renine’s jaw trembled. Sinidane watched her. It was a curious question for the leader of Rhodaan’s feudalists to be asked, before such a man as Sinidane. Feudalists who decried the loss of old human ways, yet professed not to hate the new Council, the new Justiciary, the new laws, the divisions of human power, that had made Rhodaan everything that it was today. To regret the coming of Maldereld would be to regret all those things. To regret, indeed, that a man like Sinidane, practising the things he practised, should even exist.
“I wish to see my son,” Lady Renine replied, her voice low and cold.
“He is in the Mahl’rhen,” said Rhillian. “We do not lock up children, Lady Renine. He is well fed and looked after.”
“Bring him to me!” Lady Renine shouted. Rhillian did not blink, the lady’s furious stare struggled to hold her own, then flicked away.
“We have your correspondence with the Larosans,” Rhillian continued. “The letters. The offers of conciliation, of marriage and alliance.”
“Forgeries,” said Lady Renine, recovering some of her imperious calm. “I was warned the serrin would try something like this. Do not believe them, Justice Sinidane, they are sly and full of tricks.”
“I can prove otherwise. You would have offered the Larosans alliance, would you not? They already wed Sofy Lenayin. You would perhaps wed Alythia Lenayin to one of your allied nobles…perhaps even to your son Alfriedo? Or perhaps one of your new allies in Elisse? King Torvaal of Lenayin’s honour would not then allow him to attack Rhodaan, but only if you could demonstrate true rulership over Rhodaan. To gain it, you could offer the people of Rhodaan peace, against the armies that threaten them.
“But that peace would come with terms, would it not? The Larosans have invoked a holy war to free Bacosh lands of ungodly serrin. If the Larosans cannot demonstrate Rhodaan to be free of serrin, then they cannot claim victory, and the priesthood that pays for much of their war shall be displeased. What would be your intent then, Lady Renine? To rouse a pogrom against all serrin and part-serrin in Rhodaan? To cleanse us from this place?”
“You speak in paranoid riddles!” Lady Renine laughed contemptuously. “We could not do such a thing if we tried. The Steel would not allow it, nor the Nasi-Keth. Saalshen has so many powerful friends in Rhodaan, yet the serrin claim fear of persecution to
justify this new tyranny!”
“Or would you seek to use the support for the nobility that does exist within the Steel,” Rhillian continued, “to undermine them? Already we have reports of desertions from amongst their ranks, and protests from some of General Zulmaher’s friends at his arrest. Would you undermine them to the extent that you should encourage them to lose? If the Army of Larosa and their allies should march into Tracato and hand the Lordship of Rhodaan to young Alfriedo, that would solve all of your problems at once, would it not?”
“You fool,” Lady Renine replied, “with your actions here, you make that all the more likely. You undermine the Steel, not us. Its soldiers desert because of your actions, not mine. You would leave us defenceless before the greatest army humanity has ever seen, and now you seek to lay the blame at my feet. Justice Sinidane, you cannot take these outrageous slurs seriously.”
“I assure you, Lady Renine,” said the old man, “I shall take no outrageous slurs seriously, should they be proven to be so. But quantified, proven accusations, I should take very seriously indeed. We shall see, in due course, which these are.”
Sinidane warned Rhillian later, as they made their way slowly up the steps from the dungeon, “Do not think that you have convinced me of the woman’s guilt, Lady Rhillian.” The old man’s grip was firm upon her offered arm, and she climbed slowly. “Nor that of her companions. I do agree to a likelihood, and in all my years I have never known serrin to produce false evidence, but the exact truth of such matters lies only in the laps of the gods. We mortals have only the law, and the law requires proof.”
“If such exists, I shall present it to you.”
“Furthermore, I do not like to see the Council suspended,” said the old man. “The gods shall think it ill. I would ask that you allow it to sit in session as soon as possible.”
“How is that possible, with half its members either arrested or under suspicion?”
“Lady Rhillian, I care not for your difficulties. This city’s institutions have been all that holds us above the barbarian fray for two centuries now. I tell you, I will not see them suspended indefinitely. Instruct one of your people to look into finding replacements for those arrested, I will investigate the legality at this end. You may consider that my order.”
“As you say,” Rhillian agreed. She was not prepared to challenge the man’s authority. They reached the top of the stairs, and Sinidane stopped, turning to face her.
“Is it you who commands?” he asked her, searching her face.
“By default, it appears so,” Rhillian said carefully. “Until General Lucia is returned from the border. It was not of my choosing, but the captains insisted.”
Sinidane sighed, and patted her arm. “I love this city,” he conceded to her. “I love this land of Rhodaan, and Enora. Ilduur too, in my weaker moments.”
“I too,” said Rhillian. “I hope to save them from capitulation to the darkest forces humanity has known.”
“I do not mean love in some woolly headed parochial sense, please understand. I mean that I love them for what they are. For the hope they represent, for all humanity. In fact, parochialism is my enemy. I fight it daily, and today, I see it running loose in my city. Beware the parochials, Lady Rhillian, for they believe in the conceit that Rhodaan’s greatness stems purely from the greatness of the Rhodaani character. And I am well aware that it does not.
“It stems from institutions, such as my own. Institutions that work in opposition to the native Rhodaani character. To the native human character, if you will. People are cruel, Lady Rhillian. Humans, anyhow. We fight and we bicker, and if not for the firm hand of a higher authority, we would do each other such harm as could not be imagined by the cool minds of serrin. Beware what you have unleashed, dear girl. Do not trust it. I am glad, in truth, to see a serrin leading such an effort, however wary of the effort itself I may be. But you should never, ever trust the native instincts of the power-lusting mobs beneath you.”
Rhillian nodded. “I understand.”
“Do you?” Sinidane looked pained. “Sometimes I wonder if serrin truly do understand what they have done, here in the so-called Saalshen Bacosh. When Maldereld came to us, and brought with her the enlightenment of thousands of years of serrin wisdom, we were but savages, in truth. We believed in lies, we had eyes but could not see, we had minds but could not think, we murdered on a whim and felt naught for the consequences. Such savages threaten us today, from across the Steel border, and we look across that border and we are pleased to be so much more enlightened than them.
“But in truth, I do not think we are. This…this civilisation, that the serrin have helped us to construct, and the thinking that attends it…this is not the natural state of humankind. Or not, at least, from where we have just recently come. Left to our own devices, perhaps we could have achieved this sophistication in…oh, I would guess a thousand years?” Sinidane’s fingers dug into her arm, with an almost painful grip from one so old. “Do you see what serrin have done here? You have accelerated us. You have taken a tribe of barbarians and dressed us up in pretty clothes, and taught us table manners and polite behaviour. And we are such good actors that when it works, it seems wonderful. Yet underneath, the barbarian still lurks…never doubt it! In some ways we have truly changed, yet in our hearts, we are not so advanced as serrin would like to have made us. We are children in adults’ clothing, grown up before our time.”
Rhillian took the old man’s hand, gently. “I understand. This was our experiment, in human lands. But we have achieved it together, human and serrin, and now we must defend it together. Have no fear of my naivety, Chief Justiciar. I have seen Petrodor, and the War of the King. I trust no one.” She smiled. “Not even you.”
Sinidane smiled back, and patted her hand with a sigh. “Well enough. But, dear girl, know this. I would give my life for Saalshen. Coming from one so near the grave as I, that is perhaps no great offer, yet even so, I would throw myself upon the spears of Saalshen’s enemies should it serve the purposes of Saalshen’s survival. Everything that is good about Rhodaan, you have given us. You are humanity’s greatest hope, and I despair that so many are ungrateful. I fear that we do not deserve you.”
Rhillian recalled Master Deani, of Palopy House in Petrodor. He had said to her much the same, in those final, desperate moments of siege and fire. Palopy was now a ruin, and Deani was dead, with so many others. Only she and Kiel had survived. She would not see such a fate befall Sinidane and his beloved Justiciary. She understood human power so much better now, for the lessons she’d learned in Petrodor.
Rhillian kissed the old man’s hand. “I am your servant, Chief Justiciar. Never doubt it.”
She escorted Sinidane out to the Justiciary grand hall once more. His page walked with him back to chambers, while Rhillian cornered Lieutenant Raine.
“I need evidence of the feudalists’ plot,” she told him in a low voice. “The Chief Justice is well disposed to us in that he is ill disposed toward the feudalists, but he is a man of principle and will not deviate from the law. We need proof.”
Raine ran a hand through his wavy blond hair. In the war in Elisse, he had proven to be one of the Steel’s best. “I have all available men on the task, yet our powers to gather evidence are limited. I cannot trust the Blackboots, half are paid men of the feudalists, and the other half are scared of those who are. My men are soldiers, good at killing the enemy and little more. What you ask is Blackboot work, law and evidence. It may be beyond them.”
“What of the city guard?”
“Hired soldiers, ordinary folk with ordinary values, neither good nor bad. Most are country folk though, so little sympathy for the feudalists there.”
Rhillian nodded. “Use them more, to free up the Steel. Pay them more, if necessary. Find those sympathetic to our cause to help gather evidence. Make a list of the most troublesome Blackboots.”
“I’d suggest we expand that list to red-coats and administrators, too. Feudalist money has
bought powerful friends all through Tracato. I’d suggest a purge.”
Rhillian did not like the way that sounded. And yet, she recalled what she’d only now insisted to Sinidane, of the lessons she’d learned in Petrodor, and the hardening of her heart. “Yes,” she agreed. “Find me names first, and we’ll move from there.”
“What of the priesthood?”
“What of them?”
“Who do you think has been paying for all their holy trinkets and Saint Ciala’s Day festivities?”
“Noble gold. I’m not at all certain I can purge the priesthood, Lieutenant. But some nasty gossip could work as well, I’m certainly not above blackmail.”
“No shortage of that,” said Raine, with an evil smile. “I used to be an altar boy.”
“I’m sure you were charming. I’ll also want to meet Kessligh Cronenverdt at the earliest.” That nearly stuck in her throat, but she plunged on regardless. “I imagine he’ll be speaking for the Tol’rhen, in time of crisis, and the Nasi-Keth will be looking to him on military matters.”
“I would,” Raine admitted. “But I doubt he’ll speak for all the Tol’rhen Ulenshaals. Keeping that lot united is like herding cats.”
“Well I’m quite sure I can’t purge the Tol’rhen,” Rhillian said firmly. “The priesthood at least can be embarrassed, but Ulenshaals have no shame. And I cannot make enemies of the Nasi-Keth. If we lose them, we lose the city.”
“Agreed,” said the lieutenant. He ticked off his fingiv “Justiciars, administrators, city guard, Blackboots, priesthood, Nasi-Keth…who did we miss?”
From back up the hall, there were shouts and cries. Both turned to look, and saw a gathering crowd of cityfolk, some waving colourful banners.
“The factions,” Rhillian answered Raine’s question. “Go to your duties, Lieutenant, I’ll deal with these.”
She walked up the hall to where the intruders were causing the commotion. Justiciary guards stood warily close, hand to their swords. Civid Sein, Rhillian read the Rhodaani scrawl upon their blue banners…such a love of banners through the Rhodaani factions, a colour for every ideology. And there at their front was an ageing, fat Ulenshaal in black robes, in animated discussion with a justiciar.
Tracato: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 3 Page 21