Manx

by Greg Curtis

  The Chief Magistrate naturally enough was seated at his bench at the far end of the chamber, elevated above the rest of the courtroom. More tables were set out on front of him for the advocates to sit at while they presented their cases. And then there was the accused's cage to one side. A place from which he could sit and watch his trial. On the other side were the seats for the peers of the realm. The seats where he himself would sit had he named himself properly and chosen to attend a trial. And of course at this end were the seats for the audience, and at least a couple of hundred people could have attended. It was an impressive chamber. But them Winstone was a large city even if it wasn't the capitol of the realm, and there were standards to be met.

  But as he was led more slowly down the aisle to the front of the courtroom, he realised that this wasn't a trial. At least not a normal one. Because while every seat was full, the advocates weren't the ones holding the floor. Instead the woman in the silver armour from the previous day was – and she did not look like any advocate he'd ever seen.

  She was still wearing her silver armour. The breastplate and helm at least. That was how he recognised her. And her silver sword was strapped to her side. Oddly a silver pistol was strapped to her other side. He hadn't noticed that before. Or what a strikingly beautiful young woman she was. He hadn't noticed her eyes before either. But now he did. They were eyes so perfectly pale blue that they looked like an ice laden ocean. A beautiful one. But a cold one. Bitterly cold. She was a beautiful woman with ice blue eyes, but not one he would ever want to be with.

  So who was she? How could she ride around the city on a unicorn and flash a magic sword about? How had she arrived to chase away the hell beasts just as they'd appeared? And where had she got the unicorn from? He didn't understand any of that. This was a city of technology. A land of science. And why was she standing in the centre of the floor, apparently addressing the court? And why was he here? He had so many questions – and no answers. Manx guessed he'd find out soon enough when he saw the way her eyes fixed on him as he walked down the aisle.

  And then there was the priest of Atan standing duty to one side of the room. He looked almost regal in his black robes with their gold trim, as befitted one who spoke for the Father of the Gods. But the fact that he was here did not fill Manx with confidence. It suggested that this was a serious matter – one which might result in the ending of a life – his. This might not be a normal trial, and he might not have been put in the cage – yet – but it was still a trial. He gulped nervously.

  “Maxwell Smythe of Clairmont?” The woman in silver addressed him even as he walked through the gate in the half height wall that separated the commoners in the back from the court itself.

  “Yes Lady.” He nodded politely to her, not knowing who she was, but very worried. “However, mostly I go by Manx,” he replied as he stepped out on to the floor in front of her. “Manx the librarian.”

  “A librarian?” Her eyes widened a little. “A strange trade for one of the nobility.”

  Manx didn't reply. He didn't know how to. He really wasn't a noble. Maybe he should have been if his family's titles had been of the blood and not bought. But most of anything he had ever had had gone when he had been hurt. People didn't address you as Sir when they were trying desperately not to look at you. So instead he just stood there trying to look calm, and waited.

  “You are of the nobility?” The woman pressed the matter clearly unhappy with his silence.

  “No Lady,” he replied, surprising her.

  “Never-the-less you are the son of the Duke of Clairmont?” She continued when it became clear he wasn't going to answer her the way she expected.

  “The fifth son of Duke Wainthorpe, Lady. But the title does not pass down the lineage.” He restrained himself from mentioning that the Duke's title was one that was bought and paid for. It came with the land the family owned. It hadn't been conferred on anyone. So it wasn't really a true title and as such if someone addressed him as Sir, it was as much a courtesy as anything else. But she could work that out for herself.

  “Then you can still tell us of his plans?”

  “No, Lady.” Manx corrected her, wondering who she was that she should be the one questioning him. Why was the Chief Magistrate allowing her to? And what plans did his father have that she should care?

  “You refuse to speak to the Court?!”

  “No. Of course not Lady. I simply state that I cannot tell you of my father's plans since I don't know his plans.” He concentrated on remaining calm as he noticed how everyone's eyes were on him. But it wasn't easy. This might not be a normal trial. But he was sure it was a trial regardless. And he had no idea what he was accused of.

  “You don't know your own father's plans?” she asked incredulously.

  “I haven't seen my father, nor spoken with him nor communicated with him even in writing for twenty four years.”

  The woman's eyes widened at that. Clearly she hadn't expected the answer. And for a moment she seemed taken aback. But then suspicion returned.

  “That would seem unlikely! What son does not know his father's doings?!” Her tone became harder. “Or do you try to deceive this Court?!”

  “Of course not Lady!” A large wave of ice water ran down his back as he realised she was accusing him of something. Something so serious that a priest of the Father had to be here to witness it. “Kindly allow me to clarify my words.” Manx took a deep breath and reached for his hat. He didn't want to, but this was life and death – his. Whatever she thought he or his father had done, she had to understand that they weren't together.

  “I haven't seen nor heard from my father since I was a child of five, when in a drunken wager with another member of the nobility, he had my ankles tied together with a rope and then dangled me like a piece of meat over the lion pit.” And if she didn't understand what he was saying, she surely understood what she was seeing when he removed his hat and then started unwrapping his scarf. Something that was obvious when she took half a step back in shock.

  “After that,” he continued, trying to ignore the look of horror in her eyes and the gasps from the audience, “there were the long months in the infirmary, when I never saw him. Then the many years which I spent in a boarding academy, never allowed to leave it or return home. In fact from the day I entered the academy I never saw any of my family and never returned to the estate.” He started undoing the buttons to his coat. “My mother sent me a few letters during that time – but not since.”

  “Now every three months a messenger arrives at my door with some coin for my expenses. And occasionally I read a little about my family in the papers. But since then the closest thing I have had to contact with any of my family, have been the occasional assassins sent after me. I clubbed one the other night. I don't even know who sent him.”

  “As I say. I have no knowledge of any of my father's doings. Nor do I want any.” He stopped then, his explanation given, and tried not to flinch as he saw the horrified expression still clinging to her face.

  “Would you like me to continue?” Manx finally asked when the silence dragged. He dropped his coat on the gate behind him and reached for the top button of his shirt. “I assure you it's truly horrific. And probably the reason I can never return. My father does not want to look upon the face of his sins.”

  “No!” The ice cold woman's voice cracked a little. “That will be quite enough thank you.”

  Obviously she hadn't been prepared for the shock of seeing him as he was. No one had told her. And perhaps that changed her plans for him, because she didn't look happy. He just had to hope that was a good thing for him.

  “You clubbed a man the other night?” The Chief Magistrate abruptly asked from his bench.

  “Yes Sir. A tall man with close cropped hair and a deep scowl permanently etched on his face. He came at me two nights ago, a long knife drawn. Appearing like a ghost out of the fog. He struck at me and I defended myself with a cudgel. He fell to the ground, and I went to se
ek the guards after that. But I got turned around in the fog.”

  “Has such a man been brought in?” The Chief Magistrate turned to one of the guards.

  “Yes Sir. He was saying some strange things yesterday, before everything happened. But we kept him locked up because he had a poisoned blade so we knew he was some sort of brigand.”

  “He needs to be questioned and tried then.”

  “Can't Sir,” the guard informed him. “At some point yesterday while we were fighting the hell beasts, he died. It looked like he was given some sort of poison.”

  Somehow that didn't surprise Manx. It probably didn't surprise anyone. They'd all heard the stories about assassins that killed themselves when they were caught. But he would have liked to have known who the man was, and more importantly, who had sent him. It could be his father finally getting rid of the evidence of his crimes against family. It could be one of his brothers worried that he might threaten their inheritance somehow. It could be one of the family's enemies. He just didn't know. He wasn't even sure it mattered.

  But that wasn't the reason he was here, now. Rather he was here because his father had done something. Or was accused of having done something. He needed to know what he'd done. So as the Chief Magistrate and the guard discussed the matter of the dead assassin, Manx kept quiet and studied the room. Mostly he studied the seats to the side of the chamber and the peers of the realm sitting in them.

  Every seat was full. And while he didn't know much about proceedings in the High Court, he thought that was unusual. More unusual was that some of the nobles in those seats looked angry. Not with him, he suspected. Not with the guards who had failed to stop an assassin from killing himself either. Probably, he thought, with what had happened to the city the day before. Meanwhile the woman who was apparently holding Court here, was the same one he had seen from the library window the previous day.

  Taken together, he realised, that could only mean one thing. They thought his father was somehow involved. That was not a good thing. But he guessed he would have to wait to find out how bad it actually was. And as it turned out, that was a lengthy wait. The Chief Magistrate was more than a little annoyed that an assassin should be allowed to kill himself in the gaol. Quite possibly he was annoyed about other things too, like the fact that he wasn't in command of his own courtroom. The woman in silver was. And while he berated the guards she was finally regaining her calm.

  “So, you were mauled by a lion,” she began coolly when the others had finished. “Do you remember much of that day?”

  “I wish I didn't, Lady” he replied, wondering what she was getting at.

  “And what exactly do you remember?”

  “I remember begging my father not to do that to me. And I remember him laughing with the others as the house guards tied the ropes around my ankles. And then as they lifted the hand crane with me dangling from the end of it. Then I remember being lowered into the pit like a piece of meat, and the lion's head coming closer and closer, before he grabbed hold of my shoulder. I recall the pain and the screaming, and the smell of blood. Then they lifted me up and lowered me down again, and he got my leg. Almost tore me loose from the rope. The claws got my face as they hoisted me up again. After that I don't remember much. I think they thought I was dead. I nearly was.”

  “So you would describe your father as an evil man?”

  “I wouldn't describe him at all,” he answered her. But that was a lie. He would describe him as a monster. A nightmare given flesh. Someone he dreamed of killing. It just wasn't right to say that openly. “I don't know him.”

  “I doubt that very much,” she commented, seeing right through his obfuscation. “But for now you do admit he is the sort of man who would feed his own son to the lions.”

  “I do.” He agreed. He wasn't going to lie for his father.

  “And the sort of man who would make a deal with the very demons of hell to try and take the throne?”

  “What?! I don't know,” Manx answered her truthfully. But as calm as he pretended to be, inside he was suddenly shaking.

  A deal with demons?! Taking the throne?! She was accusing his father not just of bringing these monsters to Winstone, but of treason! That was a death sentence and not just for his father. For the entire family. Probably for him as well. Even though he knew nothing about any of it. Innocence was no defence in matters of treason. He wasn't sure there was a defence. It was all politics.

  And now he knew why she was the one in charge of this courtroom. Whoever she was, she was acting for the King. That took priority over everything else.

  “But good Lady, is there any reason to believe that he would do such a thing?” He asked, not because he doubted she had a case to make, but because he needed to hear what it was. Before he said something that got him marched straight to the gallows.

  “There is a witness.”

  “Oh!” The candle's wick caught fire as Manx instantly knew who she meant. There was always one out there who would stand against his father. One who hated him even more than he did.

  “Forgive me for asking Lady, but would this witness be an ageing man by the name of Walken?”

  “You know this man?” The woman's voice became hard. Suspicious. And she stared at him with anger clear for all to see. She could obviously see more trouble ahead.

  But her question revealed the truth, Manx knew. And everyone else in the chamber knew it too. It was Walken. And it also explained how she could be here in this courtroom, one day after the attack, interrogating him. Walken had obviously heard of the attack and immediately come to her or her superiors with his story. And the chances were that he had already been in Winstone. That he had been behind the assassination attempt the day before.

  “Not exactly, Lady. I know of this man,” he turned his gaze to the floor, “regrettably. And I carry great shame for it.”

  “Go on.” She stared at Manx suspiciously.

  “My father's crime against me was great. I have suffered terribly for it. But I was not the only one to suffer. And his crime against me was committed under the command of the grape. But not the one my father committed against this man.”

  “You will remember that I said that it was the house guards who lowered me into the lion pit from the rope on the end of a hand crane. There were two men who operated the crane that day. One of them was a man named Garren. He was gaoled almost immediately and hung the following day. The other was this man Walken. He escaped his fellow house guards as they took him to the gaol, and vanished.”

  “My father as the Duke of Clairmont, had him hunted mercilessly. He blamed the two men entirely for what happened to me. And when his guards couldn't capture Walken he used ancient law to punish him even in his absence. Everything the man owned was seized. His entire family was gaoled and forced into slavery. And soon after, by means I am not aware of, they all died. His wife and his children.”

  But despite his claim he did know. He just didn't want to think about it. On their very first night in chains, someone or several someones had slit their throats. It was a cold blooded and truly vile crime. Something no one of any worth would do. And it had been done for his father. Done, he knew, because someone – his father – didn't want to admit the truth. That the wrong done to him was his doing.

  “Ever after, Walken has hunted my father. He has tried to kill him several times. Assassins have been sent. Attempts have been made on the other members of my family as well. Petunia, my next oldest sister, was badly maimed. My younger brother Harald was killed in a supposed riding accident. My mother's few letters and the words of those who cared for me all said that it was Walken who did these things.”

  “I can say nothing for certain. But if this witness is Walken, than everything said by him must be considered in the light of the blood feud that exists between him and my father.”

  “I see,” she replied. But obviously mostly what she saw was her prosecution slipping away. She had thought to have him convicted and hung by the end of t
he day.

  “And might I also request that if this witness is Walken, you speak to him of my sincere regrets for what happened to his family. It should never have happened.” But he knew it had always had to happen, because his father was the Duke of Clairmont, and as such he could never be responsible for the crimes he had committed. Someone else always had to be blamed. That was the noble way!

  “I will consider your words.” But judging from the thunderclouds forming in her face, probably not very carefully. She had her suspect in her sight, and she wasn't about to let him go.

  “But in turn I ask you a question. Do you blame this man Walken for what happened to you?”

  “In part,” Manx answered her honestly. “He was a house guard and he was given an order by his master. But he still chose to obey that order and it was wrongful.” It was a mistake to admit that Manx knew. But if he had denied it it would have been a lie easily seen through. So what else could he do?