Trial of Intentions (94 page)

“Lian, it's your duty to be honest. You have my pardon for anything you say.” The king put a hand on the man's shoulder.

At Relothian's touch, the footman slumped a little, as if already bearing a great weight. But he then seemed to gird himself up, and stood straighter, always looking into the king's face.

“Sire, eight days ago at dawn we came to the Gallem Valley. Low clouds there. Silent as a grave.” Lian stopped, appearing to consider what to say next. “We went in at the narrow end, sire, where the hills are steep on both sides.

“There was no sign of Nallan, but the men didn't want to travel by way of the narrow end of Gallem, sire. We'd be too spread out, too open if you take my meaning.”

She guessed they all knew where this story led. But like nightmares in which you know you are dreaming and can only wait and watch as the horror finds you, the account of the attack began to unfold.

A voice interrupted the story. “My king, must we have recounted the losses of war when we should be celebrating the living who return to us in honor.”

Mira shot a look to her right and found the king's sister, Thalia, stepping closer.

“I think we can forgive the Far. She doesn't understand our traditions. No doubt she's moved by the sight of such valor. We all are. But let us not make these men relive such atrocities.”

Mira didn't wait for the king to reply. “My lady, you're right. I am moved at the sight of these men. But not for valor's sake. I will have Lian's story.”

The king looked at his sister, whose brow knitted in disapproval—and concern, Mira thought. Then Relothian turned hard eyes on Mira again. “You've no more allowances from me, Far. We will have Lian's words here and now. You will hope what he says doesn't condemn you.”

The man then looked at Mira for the first time, his eyes lit with a spark of hope. “You're a Far,” he whispered.

Mira took the man's hand in the welcome grip of friendship. “Spare nothing,” she said in a quiet voice.

Then Lian's head snapped back around to face the king. His jaw flexed as he prepared to speak. “Sire, the men didn't want to enter the narrow valley. Men loyal to the throne advised the captains, and were lashed for it. We went in. Marched quietly for several hours. Watched the steep hills on both sides. Soon, the low clouds made it impossible to see.”

He paused, taking a long, slow breath. “Deep inside the pass, the hills came alive. Out of the fogs, every kind of weapon: arrows, spears, knives, rocks. The crash of drums filled the air. It was hard to think or hear. By the time we got ourselves to cover, Nallan men pounded out of the hills on every side. Up the trail behind us. Down the path ahead of us. It's a miracle we lost only one in three, sire. We owe that to the iron will of Ir-Caul men, and nothing else. But my king…”

“Don't hold back,” Relothian urged.

“We should never've gone that way. 'Twas foolish. If I didn't know better, I would say—”

“You were led like lambs to slaughter,” the king finished. “This is poor leadership. You have my apologies, Lian. I won't let this pass.”

Mira gathered Relothian's attention. “It's not poor leadership. It's contagion in your court.”

“Watch your tongue!” The king took a menacing step toward her.

Mira didn't yield, but instead met the king halfway, looking up into his glowering eyes. “More than this,” she said. “It's contagion in your
house
.”

Relothian seized Mira by the shirt, nearly lifting her from the ground. Weeks ago, she never would have allowed it. But she hadn't been able to react in time to stop him. She still managed to draw one sword as he pulled her face a finger's breadth from his own.

“Take back your words,” he demanded icily. The king's closest guards drew their weapons and surrounded them.

Mira waited to retaliate. She didn't wish to harm the king. She also wasn't sure she could do much before his men cut her down.

“You must listen,” she demanded, maintaining her composure. Softly, she added, “Please.”

The simple plea changed the look on Relothian's face.

Far back against the mezzanine wall she saw the soldier she'd paid to keep an egg-gatherer company until she beckoned them. Those men were now being ushered away, and Mira knew Thalia had intercepted Mira's ploy to expose her plots.

“Stop them.” She pointed at the soldiers and her informant.

“You there! Hold!” the king shouted. The soldiers abruptly stopped. Then he looked into Mira's face, and spoke just above a whisper. “Tell me what this is about.”

Mira nodded toward the two men who'd almost been escorted from the parade yard. “Have them brought to you.”

“Those men,” he said to the nearest guard. “Bring them here. Now.”

“This is outrageous, Jaales,” Thalia protested. “They breed lies. I won't stand for it!”

A moment later, the soldiers returned, escorting a simple farmhand Mira had met lately in the company of chickens. She gave the old man a firm look and said, “Tell him.”

As the man shared countless stories of secrets and private meetings held in his chicken coop, Mira realized the military parade had stopped. Men with blood-soaked bandages, a few with missing limbs, and others with grit on their faces so heavy that they looked like pageant wagon players, all had begun to gather around on the immense parade yard. No one spoke as the old man offered in his wizened voice the secrets of scandal.

The man finished by repeating what he'd said to Mira. “Don't let them get away with it.”

Mira told what she had heard that day, as well.

Relothian's face fell slack and pale, even in the warm tones of sunset. She imagined him thinking of the countless men who had died, the many processions he'd watched here under westering suns that came with many gaps where men should have marched. When Mira finished recounting what she'd overheard in the chicken coop, a horrible silence fell across a place reserved for honor and pride.

Into the stillness, she heard a soft word of disbelief from the king. “No.”

She turned her head and watched as Relothian went to his sister. General Marston came up beside them.

“Your Majesty, your wisdom is sharp to see through this plot.” The general narrowed a hawkish look at Mira. “How else do you explain a Far arriving with these fantastic lies? Or a boy pretending to be Sedagin, come to curry favor on the strength of an old bond between us and the Right Arm? They're spies or inveiglers, sire. Let me execute them for suggesting such disgrace in your own house.”

Relothian's expression slowly changed, as though he was becoming confident that he had escaped some coup. The touch of his sister's hand seemed to reaffirm his sense of purpose and direction. “Remove them,” he said with an uncertain tone.

Two guards seized Mira. And a small squad began to take her and the chicken farmer from the parade yard, as the sun dipped fully beneath the western rim. A moment later, another voice pierced the twilight. “Let them go!”

Into their midst rushed Sutter, with a finely dressed woman and a boy in tow.

Seeing his other sister with Sutter, Relothian raised an arm and his men stopped. Sutter flashed Mira a look both reassuring and grievous. Then the rootdigger looked around him, assessing the situation.

After a moment, he took the young boy by the hand and approached Relothian. “I told you I'm not Sedagin,” he began. “What I didn't tell you is my true bloodline.” Sutter looked down at the boy with him. “I was born to parents who had no use of me. Pageant wagon folk. A farmer saved me from them and took me in. He gave me a bed and family, and taught me to appreciate soil—”

Relothian interrupted sharply, “The only thing I want to know about you is your relationship to my sister.” The king pointed to Yenola. “If you've shamed her, your death will not be quick.”

Sutter never looked away from the youth at his side, as if his courage and resolve rested in the child. “Your fields yield no crop,” Sutter said. “The soil has a bitter taste. Roots won't take to it. You must have a healthy trade with distant farmlands to feed your men.”

“Yenola,” Relothian said, with rising anger, “tell me what this is about. Now. I won't suffer fools or liars a moment longer.”

The lovely young girl returned the king's cross stare with a look of faint defiance and resignation. It made Mira think of the way a woman looks when she's reconsidering her loyalties. Instead of responding to Relothian, she came to stand at Sutter's side, opposite the child.

The smith king's jaw fell. Only a notch, but visibly for that.

Sutter hadn't looked away from the boy, a steadfast intensity in his face. Mira had never seen such determination in the young Hollows man. And yet, she noted some compassion there, too, like the look of a protective parent.

“King Relothian, do you know what robs your soil of the richness it needs to yield its fruits? No, you don't,” Sutter said immediately, disallowing a reply and breaching every form of etiquette. “It's the very war you fight. It's the smelting ore you use to fire your steel, that fills the sky with smoke from a hundred forges.”

It was then that Sutter looked up at the king, his countenance hard. The revelation brought surprised looks to the faces of many, including the king.

“But that's no crime. Soldiers and smiths wouldn't know the smoke from their forges might taint the air and soil.” Sutter reached into his pocket, pulled free two dark rocks, and held them out toward Relothian. “The ores you trade for to get your steel, and melt it down.”

The king took them from Sutter's hand and looked each over carefully, turning them with a smith's familiarity. Then he fixed his stern gaze on Sutter again. “What does this have to do with my sister?”

“Do you know where the ore comes from, sire, that makes your blade so superior to mine?” Sutter asked with some indignation, again ignoring the king's question about Yenola. “And do you know how you're paying for it?”

Mira noted worried looks on more than a few of those near the king. It was the look of men and women conceiving defensive lies to hide their guilt.

Relothian didn't answer, waiting.

Sutter nodded, not in satisfaction, but from a kind of sadness Mira hadn't seen in him before. He looked back at the boy, whose hand he still held tight. “Go ahead,” he urged gently.

The king turned his attention to the child, and knelt, looking the boy eye to eye. “What's your name, lad?”

“Mikel, sire. I'm sorry to bother you.”

A genuine smile touched the king's face.

“The child will have been instructed to tell you lies,” Thalia said. “Please, Jaales, don't let this pageant go on a moment longer. It degrades you. It degrades us all.”

“Shame,” said the young woman on Sutter's right, her voice low and angry. “It's not the child that degrades us.”

The king paid no mind to the exchange, focusing on the boy as Sutter did. “Tell me what your friend here means, Mikel.”

The lad looked up at Sutter, who gave him a reassuring nod, after which the boy returned his attention to the king and started to speak. He talked about life in the orphanage, the way the garden didn't grow, how hungry the children were all the time. He talked about how afraid the boys and girls were to go to sleep, worried each night that they might be awakened and offered a pair of shoes and taken by soldiers for a walk. And he told of how he'd overheard the men who came to take the children away whispering secrets about where the children went, who they were turned over to, and what they were used for.

Relothian's face went first pale with shock and then red with anger, though he listened patiently and silently as the lad talked about his friends. Friends who ordinarily would have been happy to have a pair of shoes, but feared the gift, since they knew it meant they would be marched at dark hour beyond the gates of Ir-Caul and sent north on a barge into the Pall. Payment for ore to fight the war with Nallan.

Mira's heart ached hearing it, knowing what it was like to believe you would die young. But unlike Mira in her own childhood, this boy had no protector. The very men who were supposed to defend him had used him, betrayed him. A child. Mira seethed, placing her hands on her blades.

Sutter raised a hand toward her, wordlessly begging her patience.

When the child had finished speaking, the king's eyes remained on him for a very long time. A kind of serenity had seemed to get into him. The boy stared back, unspeaking. Finally, Relothian asked but one question. “I need your word that this is true, Mikel. Not a story you've been asked or threatened to tell. But the truth, you understand? I will protect you no matter what. You can trust me.”

The boy's eyes became glassy with tears as he replied simply, “Help us.”

The king stared back at the lad, his face like that of a father who has disappointed his child and knows the child won't ever forget. But Relothian's expression changed quickly, and he replied in a deep voice, with a king's command, “There will be no more walks, Mikel.”

King Relothian stood, put a large roughened hand on the boy's head, and said to his nearest attendant, “A new pair of shoes for every orphan in Ir-Caul before you sleep.” He then looked around, selectively calling forward a dozen of his private guard—men, Mira guessed, that had Relothian's highest trust. “A guard will be posted, day and night, on every orphanage. Every child will be counted, their names taken. I will visit these houses myself. A missing child will go badly for the man assigned to him. Go.”

The king turned to the man holding Mira. “Release her.”

As Relothian turned, Thalia spoke. “Surely you aren't going to believe these lies about your own house? It is preposterous, Jaales. The child is distressed, and we should help him. But it's a fancy born of deprivation. A way to make sense of abandonment and disease. Think hard, my king. It doesn't make sense. Who would do this?” She paused briefly, looked at Sutter and Mira, then added, “And remember who sent these two.”