The shock of night, p.4
The Shock of Night, page 4
I turned a corner in the road and hit the edge of the crowd. The Servants’ crier was on my left, the Vanguard’s on my right. The edict of tolerance had forbidden fighting amongst the orders, but that didn’t keep their adherents from going at it by proxy.
“The purpose of man is to serve others, placing them above himself,” the Servants’ crier proclaimed, his brown robe ruffling in the breeze. “If every man looks to use his gift in his own interest, we will descend into selfish barbarity.” His clear tenor carried above the crowd. Many in the loose assembly that filled the large square framed by the cathedrals nodded their heads in agreement.
“I must take issue with my brother,” a brazen-throated woman in white declaimed. “While service is a noble goal, there will always be evil in this world. Unless we are bold in confronting the enemy’s malice, servanthood will only provide fuel for its excesses.” Tall, her auburn hair floated in the breeze, wreathing her head in a flaming halo atop her spotless white robe. “The gifts of Aer are given so that we might eradicate evil from the world.”
I dismounted and led Dest through the crowd on foot, grinding my teeth at the delay. Yet it would be quicker than having to apologize to some merchant if my horse stepped on his toes. The criers for the Absold and the Merum loomed ahead. I looked around at the throng. I’d been through Criers’ Square any number of times. Most of the faces never changed, but even in their newfound strangeness, I noted the presence of new adherents.
The Absold’s crier—they were almost always attractive blue-clad women—had the largest portion of the crowd. Many of the men gazed at her with something other than religious fervor. I moved to my left to get by.
“While I can sympathize with the desire to serve and to fight evil, as my brother and sister so eloquently express, I must disagree. Our principle purpose here is not dependent on what we do, but on what we are. We are all fallen. Only by extending forgiveness freely to each other, in imitation of Aer’s forgiveness for us, can we free ourselves from those internal chains that make us less than we are. Then you will see your gift shine forth.”
The Merum priest, dressed in red, waited for her to finish. The crowd in front of his stand, a simple stack of granite slabs at odds with the massive cathedral behind it, was smaller than the other three, and most of them waited passively, their faces neither pained nor expectant. “The strictures are these,” the priest intoned, reciting the daily office. “You must not delve the deep places of the earth, you must not covet another’s gift, and above all you must honor Aer, Iosa, and Gaoithe in all.” He stopped. The Merum never debated. They quoted the office in pieces between the proclamations of the other three. Most people, even those who didn’t adhere to their division, had heard it so many times, they could recite it themselves.
Before the Servant could speak again, a rough voice hurled itself at the crowd from just ahead of me.
“Look at you!” A red-faced man standing atop a collection of crates just beyond the criers’ area stood, his finger pointing at the crowd. “How many of you actually have a gift?” He pointed at a man, bearded, broad and heavy across the shoulders. “You! Do you have a gift?” When the man shook his head, the speaker laughed. “And how many of you have waited on your knees with your prayers turning to ashes in your mouth, hoping that somehow your talent and work might be enough?” His derisive laughter could have tanned a hide. “Or that you might become one of the gifted?”
“What of it?” the bearded man asked. “Sometimes gifts come to those who wait.”
The man on the crates shook with dismissive glee, his thick dark hair waving with the motion. “Sometimes?” He stabbed his finger in the air, picking out people in the crowd. “Is that what you’re hoping for? That someone will die unexpectedly or without an heir and somehow a gift will come to you?”
He pointed down from his crates at the bearded man. “I speak for the Clast, and I’m here to ask you this: What right does some rich man’s family have to hoard their gifts from generation to generation and keep you poor?”
A few of the people in the crowd nodded their heads, and a few more shifted to move closer. Some of the faces in the crowd turned ugly. I knew that emotion. I’d owned it often enough myself, but I didn’t trust where it would lead. I led Dest around to one side until I stood next to the speaker’s makeshift platform.
“Excuse me, friend,” I said as I tapped his leg. “You might want to ease up on the rhetoric.”
He looked at me as if I’d given him a gift. “Is this not Criers’ Square?” He pitched his voice to reach the next kingdom, and I winced.
“Aye,” I said.
“Then what is your problem with me?”
I looked at the people around the speaker. A couple of the men, including the bearded fellow, had edged closer to me, their hands not quite in view. Hoping for subtlety, I moved to put my horse between them and me. I’d seen plants before—people who appeared to be just random parts of the crowd but weren’t.
I held up my reeve’s badge. Anyone from the city of Bunard or anywhere else in the kingdom of Collum would know what it was. The bearded fellow stopped edging toward me, and I allowed myself to relax. The badge didn’t always work.
“I’ve got no problem with you, neighbor,” I said. “Unless you mean to do something more than just air your views peaceably.”
The speaker laughed, sweeping his eyes over the crowd. “How like the gifted, to desire peace right up until war breaks out.” He stabbed a finger at me. “Then it’s the ungifted who fight, dying for the kings of Collum, Owmead, Caisel, and Moorclair while you stay behind with your gift.”
This brought an angry mutter from the crowd. The man’s words were true, and everyone in the square knew it. No one with a verified gift went to war anymore. Too many times the gift had passed to the enemy, diluting a kingdom’s resources once the war ended.
I couldn’t refute him on his main point, but he’d made a mistake. I mounted Dest so the people in the crowd could see me better. “I am Willet Dura. You know me, and you know that I fought in the war. It’s true the gifted stay behind. They stay because the kingdom—”
“You heard him!” The speaker raised his arms. “If you are ungifted, Dura, you belong with us. I speak for the Icon, leader of the Clast. There is a place for the ungifted within our order, a place where you will be the equal of any other man or woman.”
He turned away from me and leveled a finger at the crowd. “And for those of you within reach of my voice who are gifted, I say this: Come join us. Renounce the gift that sets you unfairly higher than your fellow man and become one of the Clast. Rely on the talent and temperament that is given to any man.”
The criers for the four looked on in horror. I pitied them. Trained and instructed to give the daily homily in cooperation with each other, they froze beneath the verbal onslaught the man brought upon them—puppies facing a wolf. I spurred Dest away from the square and flagged down the first man of the city watch I saw, a young long-limbed fellow named Ahden. Why did I remember him being taller?
“Lord Dura?”
I pointed behind me. “Keep an eye on Criers’ Square this morning. There’s a new guy there.”
He sighted along my arm, squinting for an instant, and nodded. “You mean that fellow from the Clast?”
“He’s been there before?”
Ahden spat in disgust. “Every morning for the last two weeks. Always railing about how the gifted are keeping the rest of us beneath their heel.” His eyes narrowed. “He doesn’t come right out and say it, but he’s hinted at forcing those with gifts to let them go free or split them among the entire city.”
I hadn’t heard of any disturbances, but the uneasy feeling in my gut didn’t go away. “Any trouble?”
Ahden shook his head. “No. So far he’s been pretty careful to limit himself to words, but every day a few more follow him from the square with the look of men and women who have a score to settle.”
I nodded. “Ahden, I’m changing your assignment. From this point on I want you in the square.” At his look of protest, I raised a hand. “I’ll clear it with Jeb, but I want you posted with the criers each morning. Don’t do anything, but keep your badge out and make sure this fellow with the Clast can see you.”
He bowed from the neck in confirmation of the order, and I turned Dest toward the base of the tor and Laidir’s keep.
Chapter 5
I turned right and traced my way along the circular wall of dark granite that formed the outer defense of Bunard’s stronghold. Twenty paces high and six wide at the top, in the entire history of the continent the wall had never been breached. Guards patrolled the height with the relaxed, loose-limbed strides of soldiers during peacetime.
The entrance to the guardhouse and the prison cells beneath the tor loomed on my left, and I passed into darkness beneath archer slits in the heavy rock above. Torches licked the darkness with yellow-tongued fire that cast dancing shadows around me.
Sevin manned the open archway that framed the entrance. I liked him. He didn’t bother to show any deference to my title, small as it was, but he didn’t respect anyone else’s either. “Is Gareth within?”
Sevin nodded, his mouth pulling to one side to speak around the scar that puckered the length of his left jawline. “Aye, he’s with a merchant.” He paused to spit his opinion across the floor. “The goat’s get says one of his servants is a thief.” Sevin’s scorn pulled his damaged face into a leer. He barked a laugh as he let his eyes roam the bruises on my face and the knots on my head. “The next time you go brawling, take me with you. I’m getting out of practice.”
As I moved past him, I sighed with relief. One of the other reeves could handle the merchant, maybe even Jeb, if the man refused to be put off.
I passed into the sprawling guardroom, the light from a dozen lamps lost in the height of the dome overhead. I dismounted and gave the reins of my horse to a stableboy, and Dest shook his head, looking relieved to be free of my weight for a while.
Weary, I put out my bare hand against the rough granite walls. Desperation and gloom leeched into me, as if the collected misery of accused and accuser had etched itself into the stones. I swallowed bile and tottered to the nearest table, where a guardsman scratched pen against parchment, and reached out to steady myself.
“Lord Dura?”
The voice sounded distant, and I squinted to bring the room back into focus. Gareth beckoned from the far end, flanked by a raven-haired young woman hardly more than a girl and a man dressed in gaudy reds and yellows of merchant’s dress.
I gave my head a shake and focused on the steps I needed to take to reach him. The room refused to still, but I reached the table set aside for Gareth’s use and managed not to spill his inkpot when I grabbed the smooth wood to keep myself from reeling.
Gareth stood and inclined his head toward the merchant, a paunchy, sweating man who looked as though he cherished every insult ever laid to him. “Lord Dura, this is Master Merchant Andler.” He sighed and gestured toward the comely young woman with delicate features and a thick wealth of dark hair. “And this is Branna, one of his servants. Master Andler insists that she has thieved against his interests.” Even Gareth’s raspy voice couldn’t make the charge sound less ridiculous. He gave Andler a stony-faced look that did nothing to hide his contempt. “Naturally, Branna denies the charge.”
I retreated a step to distance myself from their dispute. Even with my tilted vision I could guess the real source of their conflict. “Let Jeb handle it. I have to report to the king.”
Andler’s chins wobbled with his indignation. “I will not be put off. I demand this woman be released into my custody to return my property, or else I shall petition the king directly.”
I did my best to ignore him and his complaint. “Gareth, were there any other witnesses this morning?”
He looked at me for a moment before his vision cleared in comprehension. “No, Lord Dura, just the seamstress. And her story keeps growing.”
The merchant’s words finally penetrated the fog in my brain, and I shook my head. “Why is Master Andler asking for her release? Didn’t he bring her in?”
Gareth shook his head. “No. The girl came here asking for protection.”
I shook my head. “Protection from what?”
My lieutenant’s beefy hand indicated the merchant. “Him, Lord Dura.”
Andler, his face florid, reached for me, grabbing my arm below the elbow. “I care nothing for your trumped-up title! I want that thieving girl released into my custody so that I can reclaim my property. You will listen to—”
I grabbed his hand, twisting it at the wrist so that he buckled. I’d never cared for people touching me without permission. His face floated in front of me, twisted with malice, like the heads of fiends carved into the towers of the old churches to keep evil spirits at bay. Obsidian clouds in my head roiled with the desire to see Branna dead. The muscles in my legs turned to water, and I staggered away, my vision spinning. Gareth, his face wavering and shifting as if seen through the heat of an oven, pulled, grabbed me, and threw an arm around my shoulders.
“Willet, what’s wrong?”
I swallowed bile and panic in equal measures, staring at Andler’s bare hands. The clouds in my mind receded and my vision crept into focus, bringing a semblance of balance back with it. “I’m all right,” I said to Gareth and stepped away from him to prove it. My guts churned. If I released Branna to the merchant, she wouldn’t survive the day, but I needed a reason to keep her.
That’s when I noticed Branna’s clothes, not quite those of a noble, but too fine for a servant. The dress clung to her, and the bodice hinted at too much to be considered proper. Her boots were fashioned of soft leather and were turned down to allow more than a hint of her calves to show. The scent of orange and rose petals, expensive and uncommon perfume, wafted from her skin. She had her chin set the way people do when they’ve made up their mind not to cry. A tremor in it showed she might lose the battle.
I pointed at her and tried to force my voice steady. “What’s her defense?”
Gareth’s head shifted back and forth. “She’s offered none except to say she hasn’t stolen anything.”
I moved away from the table and beckoned to the girl. The question I had to pose would be shameful to her or any woman. It would be better to keep others from hearing it. She followed me, her eyes fastened to the floor. Tremors worked their way up and down her arms, matching the ones in my legs. I pitched my voice so it would reach her ears alone. “How many times has the merchant offered you to others?”
The dam of her resolution broke, and she clutched at me, shaking her head and scattering tears across the stones of the floor. Somewhere deep in my chest, rage, hot like a blacksmith’s furnace, began to build. My imagination conjured images of her family held in debt to the merchant and Branna’s body taken and bartered as recompense.
Perhaps this time she’d refused. But I had no proof, and the king would flay me himself if I brought charges or violence against the merchant without it. I didn’t have time to sort the truth, and I no longer wanted to leave this to Jeb.
“Trust me,” I whispered to the girl.
Turning to Gareth, I did the only thing I could. “Branna has offered no defense. Have her imprisoned until I can verify the truth of the merchant’s charge.” I tried to ignore the startled weeping behind me.
“My lord?” Gareth’s voice held more than questioning.
I turned from his disbelief. “Does this satisfy you, Master Andler?”
From the look on his face, I could see it did not, and that was enough to salve my conscience at having the girl thrown into prison. With a stiff nod and as much dignity as his soft posture could conjure, Andler departed. I pulled Gareth out of their hearing. “See to it that she is kept alone with whatever she requires.” Gareth’s confusion knotted his gruff soldier’s face, so I continued. “The merchant means to kill her. To release her before we can prove he’s bartering her means her death.”
Gareth gave me a slow, dubious nod. “I can see it might be possible, but how do you know?”
I fought a sudden discomfort. Away from the merchant and the girl, the room had resumed its accustomed solidity, but I didn’t want to give credence to the intuition that had driven me. “The dress and the boots. Branna could never afford that kind of finery on a servant girl’s wages. And every time I looked at her calves she squirmed, trying to hide the skin that someone else had obviously wanted her to show.”
I took Gareth’s nod as agreement and left. The king would expect me to report, and Gael would be waiting for me at court. Branna’s predicament should prove easy enough to unravel. It could wait while I tackled the far more difficult problem of Elwin and Robin’s murders.
Chapter 6
I exited the guardroom on the north side, came out onto the broad arced plaza that circled the base of the tor, and set my feet on the wide street that spiraled upward toward the stronghold. Offices and living quarters passed by me as I ascended, each a bit larger than the last. Wary of a fear I couldn’t name, I kept my bare hands in the folds of my cloak.
The sun, weak behind a tenacious fog, indicated noon, and a small knot of worry blossomed in my stomach. King Laidir was a fair man but tended toward bursts of impatience, and nothing shortened his temper more than murder in his domain. I had no illusions about my position or the influence that my title carried. I was the least of the king’s nobility, a lord without land, hardly more than a servant, and while the means of my elevation had earned the gratitude of the king, it had also garnered me the enmity of the other nobles.
