The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (86 page)

As if she had guessed my unspoken thought, Ursula added, "Of course, the priests are to blame in the first place for ever allowing something like that to happen. When the gods gave us their law, they left it up to men to decide how it was used. Ceremonies like demon-stoning destroyed the whole purpose of the law. When you have seen the gods' law used properly, you can't doubt that it's a great gift."
I looked curiously at John's wife, who was swinging around a pole in order to turn a corner between the stalls. "
Have
you seen the gods' law used? Aren't you too young to have seen it before it was outlawed?"
Ursula turned quickly toward a nut-seller's stall she had just sighted. "Oh, well . . . you know, even rites that the Emorians outlawed still take place. Not demon-stonings, of course, but good rites that shouldn't have been outlawed, like trial by the gods' law. Anyone who has seen the god in judgment isn't willing to accept the Emorian view on such matters."
She spoke as though she had witnessed the god himself pronounce judgment, but I knew what she meant. I had witnessed the gods' law in use only once, when John had been unjustly accused of stealing money from the priests and had asked me to be his witness at the trial. The "trial" – as an Emorian, I no longer regarded it as such – consisted of John and me and John's accuser meeting with his tutor, Lovell, and answering whatever questions the priest asked about John, whether they were connected with the theft or not. I could not initially understand the point of many of the questions, though I was interested in what they revealed about John. I heard not only of his virtues, which I knew, but also of his weaknesses, such as allowing the younger boys under his care to go unpunished for their misdeeds and covering up the wrongdoing of others in order to help them escape punishment. This latter fault was how he had come to be accused of taking part in the crime. I would gladly have adopted such vices, since they were more noble than many of my own virtues, but I was concerned by the strained look on John's face when it came time for Lovell to pronounce in the gods' name what sacrifice the god wished John to make for what he had done. John knew that the gods, being wiser to the consequences of evil than men, could require anything of him up to his death.
In the end, the punishment had been quite small, but I remembered Lovell telling John, "Though the gods' ways may seem mysterious to us, the life of Koretia depends on us obeying the gods' commands."
The memory echoed in my mind – surely I had heard those words at some more recent time – but a shout of voices roused my attention. I looked over at Ursula. We were standing now in the avenue, and she was waiting for me to speak, so I said, "I have seen the gods' law in use, and it is a wonderful tool in the right hands, but I think that if I had a choice between facing trial under a mediocre Koretian priest or facing it under a mediocre Emorian judge, I would prefer the judge. The gods' law is too easy to manipulate."
Ursula's gaze drifted away from me. Fearing that I was being too critical of her land, I changed the subject and said, "Does John know that you go to these unlawful trials, or do you—"
"Look out!" Ursula cried suddenly, pointing behind me.
I whirled, and had just time enough to thrust Ursula to the side of the road. There she fell into the arms of a black-bearded Koretian who, like everyone else, had darted out of the way of the approaching soldiers. Then the horses were upon me, squealing as they rose into the air above my head. The soldiers had stopped them just short of running over me.
For a moment, my vision went dark with fear. I heard shouts and footsteps, and someone grabbed my arms, pinning them behind me. My vision returned, and I discovered that I was surrounded by a half dozen soldiers, all holding swords unsheathed. Beyond them and the horses was a carriage, with a round-faced, clean-shaven man staring angrily out the window at us.
A lieutenant came up to him and said, "I'm sorry, Lord Alan. It's a Koretian blocking the way – probably one of the Jackal's thieves, trying to cause mischief."
"Well, you've played right into his hands, haven't you?" the governor said sharply. "How many times must I tell you? If anyone gets in the way, ride over him. I'm not going to make myself a target for assassins just in order to keep from offending your sensitivities. Now, get this man out of the way, arrest him, and carry on."
The soldier who was holding me dragged me aside as the other soldiers remounted. For a moment I could not speak because I was coughing from the dust flung up by the horses. Then, as the horses and carriage drew away and the lieutenant came forward, I said icily in my best Emorian, "Let me go. I'm no thief; I am free-servant to Peter, Lord through the Chara's honor, who has just arrived at the governor's palace."
The lieutenant looked doubtfully at my face – dark but beardless – and then at my Emorian tunic before nodding to the soldier holding me. As I pulled my numb arms back into place, he said, "Watch your step in the future, Koretian – Emorian – whatever you are. The governor doesn't take kindly to having his path blocked."
I made no reply as the soldiers mounted their horses and hurried to catch up with the others. My gaze was on the bystanders, who had not heard my words, but had witnessed the soldiers' quick release of me. No doubt if I had been some innocent Koretian, I would now be on my way to the governor's dungeon.
I felt a familiar sickness in my mouth as I turned away. This sort of episode was all too familiar to me. For the Chara's sake, I had sometimes returned to his palace slave-quarters to try to help settle disputes that had arisen between the Chara and his slaves. There, for a brief while, I had acted as though I were any other slave-servant again – until evening, when the slaves were locked in for the night, and I returned to my comfortable chamber in the Chara's quarters. The looks I had received then were the same as I received now.
I roused myself from my self-pity only when I realized that Ursula was nowhere to be seen. I could guess where she had gone; she had undoubtedly run back to her house to tell John what had happened. I began to make my way back toward the house.
I learned the error of my assumption when I heard Ursula scream.
Fortunately, she was not far away – I say "fortunately" because she was on the point of being dragged into a house near the market where she would no doubt have been gagged to keep her from screaming any further as the black-bearded Koretian took his pleasure. Not that anyone seemed ready to come to her rescue in any case. A few people glanced uneasily over at the half-Emorian woman struggling in the grasp of the Koretian man, but no one seemed ready to fight the man in her defense.
I skidded to a halt just a few paces from the Koretian, and his look of frustration – Ursula was biting his hand to keep it away from her mouth – changed to one of high delight.
"So, the apostate comes to claim the whore's bastard," he said. "You two are certainly well suited for each other."
"Then give her to me," I said. My palms were tingling, but I kept my hand well away from my dagger. His was already unsheathed; he had used it to persuade Ursula to come this far.
The Koretian smiled and thrust Ursula behind him into the open doorway. "Come take her."
A curious crowd had gathered around us. They were watching me closely. Behind the Koretian, Ursula tried to squeeze her way out of the house, but he pushed her back carelessly with his arm. I heard her cry as she fell to the floor. Slowly, feeling my blood throb in a manner it had not done for a year's time, I pulled out the blade and took a step forward.
A quiet voice next to me said, "Thank you, Andrew. You may give that back to me now."
I was ill-trained in these matters; I made the mistake of looking over to the side. The Koretian was not ill-trained; he chose that moment to attack me. He never reached me, though. The next I knew, John, unarmed, had him on the ground and was wrestling with him for possession of his dagger.
I would have joined the fight at once, but I found myself being held back by Ursula. She had fled from the house and had evidently decided that it was her duty to keep at least one of her protectors alive. Before I could push her aside, the fight was over: the Koretian, panting, had scrambled to his feet and was looking warily at his opponent. John had a cut on his cheek but was otherwise serene in expression as he held the Koretian back with the man's own dagger.
"Andrew," he said softly, "please take Ursula back to the house."
I looked uncertainly at John, raised in the priests' house, who to my knowledge had no more skill with a dagger than that which I had taught him as a child. But Ursula was tugging at my tunic, and I realized that John would have even less skill if he were distracted by worries about his wife's safety. So I took Ursula's hand, and we fled the marketplace together, running for the safety of the house.
The street window was already shuttered and bolted when we arrived. I waited until I had bolted the door as well before I flung John's dagger onto the table and leaned back against the door, trying to catch my breath. Ursula, who seemed well endowed with stamina and nerve, was already unpacking the basket she had quick-wittedly rescued on our way back. As she pulled out the nuts she had bought, I said, "Would you be safe if I left you here?"
Ursula looked up and gave me a rueful smile. I saw that her hands were shaking and realized she was not as calm as she appeared. "You needn't worry about John," she said. "This has happened before, and he knows what to do."
"God of Mercy," I said, lapsing back into a Koretian oath. "I had forgotten what Koretia is like. We have dangers in the Chara's palace, but they do not include rescuing women from dagger-wielding abductors."
"It isn't because I'm a woman." Ursula bent over the nuts, which she was wrapping in a cloth. "It's because I'm half Emorian."
I watched silently as she pulled up a trap door and placed the nuts into a cool cellar box. When she had raised her head again, she was smiling. She said, "You must be hungry. Would you like something to eat?"
"To witness the truth, my appetite has fled me."
Ursula laughed. "Well, John may be hungry. I'm going to go into the back to pull some vegetables."
I went over to the rear window. A tall wall guarded the garden, and its gate was bolted. "If anyone tries to come into the garden, call for me. I will then repeat my performance of pretending to know blade-play."
Ursula's rippling laughter remained ringing in my ears after she had been in the garden for several minutes. I watched her from the window as she urged a shrunken parsley plant with gestures to grow taller, and then paused to chat with a butterfly that had landed nearby.
A loud knock on the door cut into my thoughts. I was quiet for a moment, waiting to see whether John's voice would follow, but nobody said anything, so I stepped lightly to the table and picked up the dagger. I could remain silent, but the person at the door might be Brendon or one of John's other friends. "Who is it?" I asked in my deepest voice.
"An Emorian soldier, come to pillage your house and rape your women."
I fumbled in getting the bolt slid back and the latch lifted. By the time I opened the door, he was leaning against the doorpost with his arms folded, greeting me with a smile which had a touch of darkness to it that looked vaguely familiar. I said, "I'm sorry. I was just threatened by a Koretian who'd decided that traitors like me don't deserve to live."
Peter's smile disappeared, and he stepped into the house at my gesture of invitation. "Yes, I saw that," he said. "I wasn't worried about you, though; you looked quite dangerous yourself. I could have sworn that you'd been taking secret lessons from Lord Carle in blade-play and intimidation."
"What are you doing here?" I asked, glancing through the slats in the shutters of the window before sitting down on one of the benches. Only a light guard stood outside: two men, armed with daggers rather than swords. I was not particularly surprised. Peter, the Great Chara of Emor, had never liked having guards around him, saying that living in the Chara's palace was imprisonment enough. I had helped him slip away from his father's guards at regular intervals when we were boys.
"I got tired of waiting for the governor," replied Peter as he took the bench opposite. "All of his officials were fawning over me – I think they learned their manner from Lord Alan. Finally I decided that my time would be better spent seeing how a common Koretian lives, so I slipped out of the palace when Lord Dean's back was turned."
"Don't tell me that you actually managed to escape the palace without Lord Carle catching you," I said. "I'm acquainted with a number of slave-servants who would love to know your secret."
Peter gave a small smile. He was dressed in a dark blue linen tunic with the gold edging appropriate for a high nobleman, several steps up from the peasant-brown tunic he usually wore at the palace when not at official functions. At his side was the bone-hilted dagger. The tunic's neck-flap was clasped with a copper brooch he had borrowed from me – officially, I remained a less free-man, with no significant rank, but Peter had insisted during the past year that I wear the same copper brooches as the lesser noblemen who were often made palace officials, for otherwise my true status in the palace might be misunderstood. It was typical of Peter to mix rank-markers on his own clothing, but I could see near the copper brooch the faint outline of the emblem brooch that was pinned to his undertunic.
"Your blood brother seems to be well known in this city," he said. "The Koretians I met were eager to tell me where he lived – once, that is, that I had assured them of my peaceful intentions and listened to their long descriptions of the kind favors he had done for their families. If the people here are to be believed, your blood brother is a man of godly mercy, always generous with advice and help, dealing fairly with Koretians and Emorians alike. Since the Koretians I spoke with feared I was coming to arrest him, they particularly emphasized that he is always unarmed and opposed to violence. The Emorians have nothing to fear from John the trader, I was told."
I was puzzled by the tone of Peter's voice, which was dry. "So you found the house. Did John tell you that his wife and I were at the market?"
Peter shook his head, his gaze travelling around the room until it rested upon the Jackal's mask over the mantelpiece. "I saw him leaving the house and followed him at a distance. I was just in time to witness your confrontation, and I stayed to see the aftermath."