The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (42 page)

Wystan walked out of sight. When he returned, he was holding a sealed document in his hand.
"You are to take this to Lieutenant Sewell, who will arrange for the appropriate entries in your records, and then you will surrender to him your swords and return to me for the final part of your punishment. Carry out your orders, sublieutenant, soldier." Wystan handed Carle the document, then turned away and began busying himself with the work on his desk.
At Carle's lead, I drew my sword and saluted Wystan's back; then I followed Carle outside. We were halfway to Sewell's tent before I found the strength to comment, "He didn't say whether it was with dishonor or with high dishonor."
"He didn't have to, did he?" Carle gave a humorless smile. "Well, at least the lieutenant won't have to perform the ceremony. Now the only nightmare left for me is imagining what my father will say when he finds out."
Carle was staring straight ahead, not looking my way, and I wondered whether he would notice if I disappeared from his side. I swallowed the aching lump in my throat. It wasn't Wystan's words that pained me, as much as my new worry about how I would endure being parted from Carle. Carle, I supposed, would go home and ask his father's forgiveness, and Verne, having seen Carle sufficiently humiliated, would help his son. I wondered whether I would be allowed to see Carle again, or whether I would be exiled from Carle's company forever because I had caused him all this trouble.
I was staring at the ground as I thought all this; I looked up as I felt an arm curl round my shoulders. Carle had a faint though genuine smile on his face. "Don't worry," he said. "I know men who are so desperate for labor that they would be willing to hire dishonorable men such as ourselves. Even the most menial worker in this land serves the Chara in his own way. We'll find some sort of work to do together."
I had no time to express my thoughts at this speech, for we had reached Sewell's tent. Carle stopped, drew in a deep breath, and marched rigidly into the tent, handing Sewell the document without a word. For Carle's sake, I checked to make sure that the tent flap was secure behind us before I came forward. As I reached Carle's side, Sewell was breaking the seal. He read the document without changing his expression in any way, then looked up at us, standing with our hands on our sheaths, ready to hand over our swords.
"Congratulations, lieutenant, sublieutenant." Sewell's gaze went from Carle to me. "This means an elevation in pay as well, you realize."
For a moment, Carle and I remained frozen in our poses; then Carle snatched the document from Sewell's unresisting hands. His gaze darted across the page as the blood drained from his face.
"Heart of Mercy!" he gasped. "The captain hasn't dismissed us – he has transferred us into the espionage division."
"What?"
Both of us were incoherent for the next few moments, until we looked over and saw Wystan standing at the tent entrance, leaning against a post with his arms folded, and grinning as he watched us.
"May the high doom fall upon you and your sense of humor, captain," said Carle weakly. "You are fortunate that Adrian and I failed to fall on our swords between your tent and here."
"And you are fortunate that the Chara has a sense of humor as well," replied Wystan, pulling the tent flap closed again. "When I told him that the Emorian army had been placed on high alert because two patrol guards had decided to breach the border as a prank, I had to wait quite a while before he could stop laughing. The Chara told me that I could act as I wished in this matter, but that he would hate to see such fine spying talents go to waste. . . . I am sure that he will also be pleased to receive the information you gave me this morning – not about the cause of the civil war, which of course the Chara has already ascertained, but about the exact nature of Mountside's feud with Cold Run."
"But our punishment . . ." Carle protested.
"Well, you are removed from the patrol, which is the worst punishment I can think of that you deserve. Moreover, as I hinted, your public records will differ from the Chara's private records, at least until you leave the Emorian army. Anyone who is curious – such as those busybody captains who tried to teach me my job – will be told that you both received a Dismissal of High Dishonor. However, the army is in need of manual laborers at the moment – to clean latrines and the like – and in an act of mercy that neither of you in any way deserve, I will be hiring you for such work. I will even allow you to live in the army headquarters – solely to keep my eye on you, of course."
Chewing on the end of his pen, Sewell said, "I am so shocked by your appalling behavior that I will be assigning you to backbreaking projects in the countryside. You will probably be away for weeks at a time."
"Weeks that we'll spend in Koretia," I said with sudden understanding.
"Once you have been trained for the work," Wystan replied. "There is no such thing, you know, as being officially assigned to the espionage division. In the eyes of the world, you are two ignominious lawbreakers, and your future connection with the Chara's armies will be a minor one."
"Sir," said Carle in a helpless splutter, "we do not deserve such mercy—"
Wystan turned a cold eye upon him. "Are you trying to teach me my job as well, lieutenant?"
"But you
elevated
us, sir!"
"I fear there is no way around that," said Wystan with an apologetic smile. "All of the Chara's spies automatically receive the rank of lieutenant. The best I can do is make Adrian your student, so that he does not receive a double elevation. I would prefer to have the two of you working together in any case; you make a good team. But for love of the Chara, men, do not let me down again! I am likely to be lynched by my fellow captains if you break the law a second time – not to mention what the Chara would do to me."
So now we are the Chara's spies. Wystan was right that leaving the patrol would be punishment enough for us; I had to bite back tears when it came time for me to strip off my patrol uniform. But Carle and I will be able to continue in the Chara's service, and we'll be able to work together. And though I'll be spending much time in Koretia for the next few years, I will always be able to return to my real home. I feel as though I've been given a series of unexpected birthday gifts.
 
 
Law Links
5
GOD OF JUDGMENT
 
CHAPTER TWENTY
The ninth day of September in the 941st year a.g.l.
A whole week has passed since Carle and I became spies for the Chara, and we haven't yet begun our training, though we have memorized the Law of Disclosure, and Wystan has spent several hours each day explaining our duties to us. I had thought that we would be trained by one of the other spies, but Wystan says that we cannot be allowed to come into contact with any other of the Chara's spies from this time on.
"The trouble with you two," he said, "is that you know too much. Generally, the spies I send out know nothing beyond what I have told them myself and what they have learned from their own investigations. That way, if a spy is caught and questioned, he can reveal little to our enemies. But you two have been patrol guards. That means you know the identities of every Emorian spy who works in Koretia, and you have spoken to many of them about their work."
"I thought that we were allowed to do that, sir," I said.
Wystan nodded. We were standing in his tent – he had not offered us seats because we were supposed to be mere laborers, but out of courtesy he had remained standing himself. "I have always allowed the Chara's spies to exchange information with the patrol, because the more that the patrol knows about what is going on in Koretia, the better it can do its job. You were right to question the spies about their work – when you were guards. But that creates a cursed dilemma for me now. If either of you is captured and speaks under questioning, every Emorian spy in Koretia may be arrested."
Carle began to speak, then stopped himself. Like me, he was dressed in a peasant-brown tunic that was covered with mud, since we had spent the morning struggling to raise and secure a badly-made army tent that was consonant with our status as the bottom-ranked men in the headquarters. Not long afterwards, we had passed Neville, and he had carefully slid his gaze away from us, pretending that we weren't there. To my relief, Carle had seemed almost satisfied by this. "Our highly dishonorable dismissals wouldn't make a difference to someone who held us in real friendship," he told me. "As a result of this experience, we'll be able to tell who our true friends are."
Now Wystan said, "I am taking a great risk in sending you to Koretia, but I think the information you are likely to obtain will be worth the risk. This means, though, that you will need to be doubly on your guard against capture, and you will need to be prepared for the consequences if that happens."
So then he told us what would be done to us if we were captured, and afterwards he sent us to the city prison to watch a suspected murderer being interrogated, since our torturers use the same methods as do the Koretian torturers. Then we returned to Wystan and he asked us whether we were sure that we wanted to take on this duty, and we both said yes, though I was feeling quite sick by that point.
I told Carle afterwards that I wasn't sure I could hold out against such methods. He replied, "The man who requested an extra twenty lashes? The man who broke his left wrist on patrol and didn't tell anyone about it for four hours?"
"We were hunting a tricky breacher that day," I murmured.
"I could cite a dozen other examples. No, if anyone breaks under questioning, it will be me. The only thing I can think of to do if I'm captured is to keep reciting to myself the Justification of the Law of Vengeance. If I hold in mind all of the burdens that the Chara undergoes for this land, it may help me to bear my own better."
Incidentally, Wystan said he would have sent us to visit the palace dungeon for our lesson about torture, if our dishonorable dismissals had not prevented that. Carle and I have talked about how much fun it would be to sneak into the palace, but with no serious intent. We've been in enough trouble recently as it is.
The eleventh day of September in the 941st year a.g.l.
We finally have a tutor: Hylas, one of the royal messengers.
I'd known, of course, that the royal messengers are members of the Division of Disclosure, since they carry both official and unofficial messages throughout the Three Lands. I didn't realize, though, that they carry, not only messages from high army officials and council lords, but also reports from spies who want to send information back to Wystan quickly. Nor did I realize that most of the royal messengers are former spies and that they are occasionally called upon to resume their old duties.
"It is the best of two worlds," said Hylas, as he checked over our tent to assure himself that we kept nothing there that would reveal our true rank. "Royal messengers receive the privilege of meeting noblemen and high officials, but we also have occasional fun tracking the enemy. And our work is vitally important to the empire: we bring the first news of anything that happens in the Three Lands, whether it be of war or peace, plague or celebration. —What in the name of the dead Charas are you keeping this here for?" Hylas held up my copper honor brooch, which he had removed from under my sleeping pallet. I received the brooch last spring for an episode not worth recording here; any patrol guard would have done the same, and I was embarrassed at the way Carle kept thanking me for days afterwards.
"I didn't know where else to put it," I said.
"Give it to a friend to keep or toss it in a well – do you want to lose your life over a piece of metal? Koretian spies swarm these headquarters during the daytime. They have little luck overhearing conversations through the thick tent-cloth – guards will move them on if they linger too long in one spot – but they do succeed in taking note of movements, and they'll occasionally rifle through tents when the owners are absent. One of their jobs is to discover if any man visiting Wystan regularly is what he claims to be."
He tossed the brooch to me, and Carle took it from me with a grin. He had already handed his own belongings over to Sewell and had suggested that I do the same, but I hadn't understood the reason for his suggestion until now.
"How does one become a royal messenger?" I asked to cover my embarrassment.
"We must pass a strenuous test – riding speed is most important, next to an ability to keep our mouths shut. We generally know what the letters we carry contain, so only the most trustworthy men in the empire can become messengers. If you are really ambitious, you could try for the highest-ranked post in the espionage division: private messenger to the Chara.
That
is an honor worth working for. You'd carry only messages from the Chara, and their replies, and you'd report only to him. . . . You're keeping your sword?" This last remark was addressed to Carle, for Hylas was now inspecting our outfits.
Carle nodded. "I have no great skill with a dagger, I fear."
"You shouldn't have to use your sword either. Spies don't fight – remember that. Only if you're on the point of capture should you defend yourself, and then I would suggest using your thigh-dagger. Spies can't afford to be honorable in their methods of killing." Hylas twirled Carle unceremoniously around to look at his back. "Hmm. Straight, formal posture. If you're carrying a sword, we might disguise you as a nobleman."
"A
nobleman
?" said Carle in consternation.
And so, despite Carle's protests, Carle is now the heir to a Koretian village baron, and I am his blood brother who travels with him wherever he goes. I thought that Carle would simply nick himself with a dagger to create the vow mark, but he said that he had better know how such a ceremony is performed, so we underwent the mixing of blood, except that we made our vows to the Chara rather than to a god. I know that this blood vow makes no difference to us – we were bound from the moment that he offered me his wine – but still it pleases me that we have been linked by the customs of both our native lands, as though creating a double chain-link of friendship.
The twelfth day of September in the 941st year a.g.l.
Last night, Carle and I discussed what Hylas had said about becoming a royal messenger. I had thought that Carle would be excited at the idea of being able to work with council lords and perhaps even the Chara, but he said, "Tell me, have you heard Hylas speak a single word about the law?"