The Saint rapped his staff on the base of the jury box till the pom-poms bounced. Tymon leaned his cheek against the cool grain of the temple wall, his stomach churning as he silently cursed his susceptibility to the sorcerers’ power. The tendrils of raw control emanating from Jedda were particularly troublesome, visible to his naked eye as a shimmering tendril of Sap coiling out toward those she sought to dominate. He noticed, with a shock, that a similar connection existed between the two of them. It neither grew nor shrank but remained steady, a tenuous link.
‘Twined,’ he muttered, understanding. He laid a finger to his lips as Pallas gave him a questioning look. He knew he had to act before the thread alerted Jedda to his presence, even as he was aware of hers.
‘The prisoner will respond to the charges,’ declared Fallow over the continuing din. ‘Let no one say this court is unfair. Let no one say this court does not hear both sides of the issue!’
There was a spatter of adulatory clapping from the priests ranged behind him, drowned out by jeers and whistles as Samiha rose again from her stool. Tymon was finally able to tear his eyes away from Jedda to gaze up at the Kion. Samiha’s thin frame was ramrod straight in the dock. The sight of her standing there, battered and shorn but still confident, still in possession of her soul, acted like a tonic on him. His nausea receded. She gave him the strength to do what he knew he must.
‘These accusations are false.’ The Kion addressed Fallow directly, ignoring Mossing. ‘I did not conspire with rebels, or have anything to do with the attack on the Governor’s palace. I did not prostitute myself. I did preach but that was simply my function as the shanti—’
Shut your lying mouth. The sorcerers’ words rang in Tymon’s mind and were taken up by members of the audience.
‘Shut your mouth. We don’t want to hear your lies. Death to the witch! Kill the whore!’
Jedda was concentrated on the throng, unaware of him as he whispered the watchword for Union, and reached out to grasp the Sap-cord. The subtle flames spilled over his hand, drawing him in. The cord was a path to her. There was no need for the trance. He was already joined to Jedda in the Tree of Being.
‘You deny the charge of perversion,’ sneered Fallow, as the crowd booed and hissed. He did not seem to mind the hecklers so much now. ‘And yet it is well known that you engage in — ah — unusual relations with the members of your own Nurian Freehold.’
Raucous laughter rippled through the gathering. Fallow did nothing to counter it, grinning with open contempt at Samiha. All eyes were on the Kion. Tymon reached cautiously through the Saplink to brush against Jedda’s busy mind. A slew of images flashed before his eyes. He Saw the Nurian girl as she wished to be: a proud, conquering queen, riding high above the world. He Saw what she feared most, which was to be trapped and powerless like the Kion. He Saw her ambivalence toward her sovereign, a mixture of pity, contempt and undefined yearning.
Samiha returned Fallow’s gaze without flinching. ‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘You know precisely what I mean, Kion. Are you not married to each and every one of your recruits?’
The part of Tymon’s mind still following the conversation in the Hall noted the question with surprise. But he did not let it deter him. Just as he touched on Jedda’s thoughts, one of the shadow-beasts flickered to life again on the column. It looked up, sniffing the air. A moment later, Jedda whirled toward him. Her eyes met his and widened in fear.
‘You mean our swearing-in ceremony,’ replied Samiha. ‘It’s purely symbolic—’
‘Sin-bolic,’ hooted the commentators.
‘The truth, Whore of Nur! Do you marry all of your recruits?’ thundered Fallow.
The change of atmosphere in the Hall was complete. Breathless silence descended, as if the Dean’s question contained the whole crux of the trial. Only the two young Grafters were oblivious to the exchange, staring at one another in the shadows of the colonnade. The shimmering thread snapped out of Tymon’s hand as Jedda hastily shut down the connection between them. But by then, he had Seen what he needed to See. He knew, with a quailing spirit, that his enemies were perfectly aware of his presence in the city. And he knew why he had been allowed until that point to walk free.
‘I marry them,’ said Samiha quietly. ‘As I’m sure you’re aware, the ceremony is only consummated with one person.’
The last half of her statement was lost in an explosion of competing voices. There was no further need for Jedda or Wick to manipulate the crowd. The people in the central space surged forward, shouting insults; in his box, Fallow spread his arms in a gesture of resignation, as if there were no more to say. The members of the jury shook their heads in commiseration. Tymon remained by the back wall, numb with shock. It was not the true nature of the ceremony he had participated in with Samiha that distressed him, though he was aware that this revelation was intended as Fallow’s masterstroke. Instead of focusing on the Kion’s heresy, the Dean had simply vilified her character so that no one would take her seriously. He had avoided the subject of her beliefs, her guilt or innocence, entirely. Nothing she could now say would be as important as whether she shared the bed of every man on the Freehold. And nothing could have mattered less to Tymon at that instant.
For he had Seen it, etched in Jedda’s heart — Seen how unwise he had been to come to the city at all. Jedda had not lied. She had not informed her superiors of his arrival: they already knew. All that Tymon had hoped to keep from them was known. The plan with the air-chariot had been betrayed, along with other, more damaging information. For Jedda had used their connection during the conversation on the barge to rob him of a secret he would gladly have given his life to protect. Even as she withdrew from him in the temple he caught a glimpse, brief but unmistakable, of the face of Masha’s oily proprietor. He was not the one at risk. He never had been. He clutched at Pallas’ arm.
‘They know about the Resistance group,’ he gasped. ‘We’ve led them directly to it. Masha’s in danger: so is Bolas. By the bells, Pallas! I’ve been a prize idiot.’
‘So have all of us, maybe,’ muttered his friend, fixing the dock worriedly. ‘There is problem.’
Tymon realised that the situation in the Hall had grown volatile. The more belligerent audience-members pressed about the prisoner’s dock, snatching at her dress through the ropes that encircled the platform. The trial descended into chaos. The angry spectators were too many for the soldiers, who stood in a tight knot about their charge, brandishing their pikes. The priests in the jury box looked on with frozen astonishment as the mob began to shove at the supports on the platform, causing the dock to creak and sway.
‘Fallow had better do something,’ breathed Tymon. He had Seen this before, he realised: it was the scene from his Reading of Samiha.
At that point Fallow did do something. He snarled a command: the four guards surrounding the Kion lifted her up bodily, passing her between them into the jury box. The Saint abandoned his green cushion and stalked through the little panelled door, followed by his scurrying retinue of Fathers. The soldiers pushed the prisoner after them. Although he could not be sure, it seemed to Tymon that just as she was bundled through the doorway, Samiha turned to look at him, fixing him with unerring recognition across the crowded Hall.
He told himself that it was impossible, an illusion, and watched as the girl he had loved — and evidently married, in spite of himself — vanished behind a welter of bodies. That particular detail was certainly a revelation, he thought gloomily, though not in the way the priests had intended. It all made sense to him, now. Why else would the citizens of the Freehold have tolerated his little affair with the Kion? They must have assumed that she had told him about their customs. But that was not her style. Samiha would rather have bitten off her own tongue, he reflected, than make him feel he had been manoeuvred into a marriage he did not desire.
The priests remaining in the Hall had difficulty convincing the audience not to leap into the jury box in pursuit of the her
etic. When Tymon glanced back at the column, both Jedda and Wick had disappeared. A flustered Mossing made the announcement that the trial proceedings would be suspended until further notice. The audience was expelled, booing, from the temple and the two youths plunged out of the Hall doors along with the rest. None of the Fathers paid them the slightest heed as they clattered down the front stairs.
The witnesses had disappeared from the street and the causeway was relatively empty. In anxious, wordless accord the friends hastened toward the first tier and the artisan quarter. There they found Masha’s house tightly shuttered despite the sun. They knocked and waited on the doorstep for an exasperating spell before the door opened, revealing a smooth-skinned lad of about fourteen.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘We’re here to see Masha,’ answered Tymon. He made a dismal attempt at a smile. ‘We came last night: maybe it was your father who opened the door.’
‘Father’s not home,’ snapped the lad. ‘Neither is Masha. You should go away.’
‘Not home?’ Tymon battled a feeling of suffocation. ‘Listen. We’re family. Masha wasn’t taken ill, was she?’
The smooth-skinned boy simply shrugged and began to close the door. But before he could do so, Tymon thrust a foot into the opening.
‘Wait!’ he exclaimed. ‘The least you could do is tell us if she’s sick!’
‘If you don’t get your foot out of the door, I’m going to call for the neighbours,’ answered the lad coldly. ‘They’ll get the city guard. You’ll be thrown in jail.’
They stared at each other a moment over the doorjamb. Then Tymon withdrew his foot, the proprietor’s son slammed the door in their faces and bolts slithered to. Tymon and Pallas were left standing alone in the empty street. In the building across the road, curtains scraped over a window, and a woman told a wailing child to shut its holy trap.
‘Green God,’ muttered Tymon, sinking down on the doorstep. ‘She’s been arrested, Pallas, I know it. What have I done?’
‘Regret serves no purpose,’ advised Pallas. ‘Focus on present. I do not believe that boy is telling truth. I say watch door.’
He was right. They did not have long to wait, crouched in the shadows of a nearby alley — a half-hour at most — before the door to Masha’s house creaked open again. A figure emerged, deeply hooded and cloaked, and glanced warily in both directions before setting off toward the main causeway. The youths lost no time in following. They pursued the hurrying figure until a bend in the road took them out of view of Masha’s residence. When there was no one else about, they quickened their pace, striding immediately behind their quarry. At the sight of them, the figure emitted a whimper of fear and tried to run the last hundred yards to the causeway. But Tymon and Pallas leapt forward as one and caught hold of the fugitive’s arms. They pushed the man against a nearby wall, knocking off his hood. Gord gaped at them in abject panic.
‘It’s not my fault!’ he babbled. ‘They knew! They came! I had no choice!’
‘Where’s Masha?’ demanded Tymon with deadly calm. He took hold of the proprietor’s shirt collar and pinned him, squirming, against the wall. He could have split his adversary’s head against the boards at that instant, but kept his fury tightly in check until it could be of use. He had no intention of allowing his rage to overcome him as it had during Laska’s arrest.
‘In the city jail … They came for her this morning … Said she was mixed up with foreign rebels …’ Gord clawed feebly at Tymon’s arm. ‘Mercy, sirs. I’m sure they’ll let her go, after a few questions,’ he stuttered. ‘She’s only an old woman, after all.’
‘Yes. A weak old woman, confined to her bed,’ said Tymon. ‘And you sent her to prison. What harm has she done to you? All these years you’ve known her: I can’t think of a more decent, hardworking person. And you just turn your back on her at the first sign of trouble. You do nothing as she gets dragged off to prison. You sicken me.’
The fat proprietor’s eyes rolled with terror. He trembled and went limp. Tymon realised that he feared for his life at their hands. The knowledge served to dampen his rage and he let go of Gord’s collar in disgust.
‘You’re just a coward,’ he said. ‘Living in fear.’
‘Maybe he fears, but he also gets rich,’ remarked Pallas.
He made a quick search of Gord’s cloak while Tymon held him and withdrew a bulging money sack. He passed it to Tymon, who opened it.
‘Very rich,’ noted Tymon, holding up a polished talek piece and squinting at it in the light. The money was freshly carved, bearing the profile of the reborn Saint.
‘Those are proceeds from a recent business transaction,’ squawked Gord. ‘Nothing to do with Masha.’
The lie fizzled in Tymon’s ears like a damp festival squib. ‘Right return,’ he murmured grimly.
As his fist connected with the tissue of the proprietor’s face, he had the exasperating sense of a thing come to its natural conclusion, and found to be a complete waste of time.
They left Masha’s betrayer kneeling and blubbering in the gutter and hurried back through the city to the docks as the sun rode high toward noon. Tymon’s heart beat wildly in his chest as he hastened down the causeway. His failure to predict the danger he posed to Bolas and Masha made him wonder what else he had given away to the priests, without realising it. The idea was excruciating.
‘We’re in trouble,’ he murmured to Pallas. ‘They’ve Seen everything, you know, I felt it in the Hall—’
‘I mean to ask you,’ the Nurian put in. ‘How do you know about Masha?’
‘What do you mean, how?’ asked Tymon, taken aback. ‘I told you, I Saw it, in Jedda. I should have done so much earlier, actually. I was so busy worrying about the escape I didn’t stop to think I could be making things worse by coming to the city. And now I can’t do a Reading to sort out what’s right.’
‘A Reading?’ Pallas gave a shrug. ‘No loss. Prayers and meditations not help us now. We need real results.’
Tymon peered sidelong at him. It was the second time that day Pallas had reacted in a surprising fashion to talk of the Grafting, as if it were a negligible matter. He bit his tongue on the matter, however, for the scout had a point. A Reading would be worse than useless, faced with the Envoy and his minions.
They made their way with dwindling hope to the western docks where they knew Bolas should be during the trial. The yellow warehouse was exactly where the kindly architect had said it would be, about halfway down the air-harbour, silent and deserted in the midday sun. Though there was no sign of movement, Tymon had little doubt that the building was being watched. They did not approach it but observed it from a safe distance.
After a long and anxious wait, when no one emerged to meet them, they walked slowly back to the Jay barges. Tymon’s thoughts were in turmoil. The air-chariot was useless, his friends in trouble. He knew they must come up with a new plan but could not imagine what it might be. He was dimly conscious, through his anxiety, that there were far more people on the eastern docks than he would have expected at this time of day. He had presumed the townsfolk would be awaiting the second trial session. But the bulk of the populace appeared to have abandoned the temple for the quays. Near the Jay vessels, the crowds became thick and the two youths had to push their way through a barrage of revellers, minstrels, ringmasters and pimps in order to reach the barge behind the striped pavilion. They burst into the welcome calm of the sleeping tent, only to find a tear-stained and puffy-eyed Nell seated beside Jocaste on one of the mattresses.
‘They took him,’ cried the Argosian girl, leaping to her feet at the sight of them. ‘My Bolas. Took him from his own home this morning. His sister told me. Said they had proof he was a foreign spy. Oh, Tymon.’
She could not resist throwing herself against him, even now, her bodice quivering. But there was no mistaking Nell’s genuine distress. He embraced her awkwardly and helped her sit down again by Jocaste.
‘We’ll do something,’ he tol
d her, his assurances sounding hollow in his own ears. ‘We’ll find some way to help them, won’t we, Pallas?’
The Nurian contented himself with a curt nod and remained, as was his habit, on guard by the door of the tent.
‘They will, you know,’ said Jocaste, patting Nell’s shoulder comfortingly. ‘These two fellows can accomplish miracles. Especially our Tymon here.’
She flashed him a confident grin. Nell managed a timid smile in response, gazing wonderingly at the actress as if she were some exotic animal. Tymon grasped that it had taken a great deal of courage for the conventional kitchen maid to seek them out alone, aboard a Jay dirigible. He felt himself warming toward her.
‘I should have been more careful,’ he admitted, slumping down on the mattress beside her. ‘I’m a fool. Bolas and Masha are in trouble because of me.’
‘Bolas gets into trouble very nicely all by himself,’ snuffled Nell. She blew her nose loudly on a bright red chequered handkerchief. ‘You aren’t to blame. I heard about Masha, too. I’m far more worried for her actually.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor old thing. She lost her zest for life when you went away, Ty. I can’t bear to think of her in prison.’
‘Forgive me, I have to get into costume,’ observed Jocaste, rising. ‘We’re doing an extra show because of the crowds, Tymon. I wish I could help you more, I really do.’
‘Why are they all here, anyway?’ he asked distractedly. ‘The people, I mean. I’d have thought they’d be at the temple for the afternoon session.’
Nell and Jocaste exchanged looks.
‘Didn’t you hear?’ asked Nell. ‘They cancelled the trial because of the disturbances this morning. The heretic is supposed to be too much of a bad influence on people. The jury’s already reached its verdict, in closed session. She’ll be executed tomorrow. I caught the crier making an announcement on the way down.’
28
‘Tomorrow!’ Tymon jumped up, aghast. ‘I have to talk to her!’
The words tumbled out without any forethought; he simply knew he must speak with Samiha before the fateful day of execution.
Samiha's Song Page 35
