Shield of the People

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  “Dayne,” he said as he stood up. “I’m glad you could come. And you brought Hemmit and Maresh, excellent. I presume Lin declined?”

  “She did,” Hemmit said.

  “I fully understand, and wish her no ill.”

  “I was surprised by the invitation, your grace,” Dayne said.

  “Sit, sit,” the bishop said. “And none of that ‘your grace’ or any of that. Right now we’re at a table together and I’m merely Ret, and she’s Frienne, and I’m hoping we could just talk.”

  “Of course,” Dayne said, sitting on the other side of the table from Issendel. Maresh and Hemmit flanked him as they sat down.

  “Arlio, can we get some lime ricks for these boys to start?” Issendel said to the proprietor.

  “I’d prefer wine,” Hemmit said.

  “I’m afraid there is no wine,” Arlio said.

  Hemmit scowled. “This is why I don’t come here.”

  “The lime ricks are fine,” Dayne said.

  “And then just bring out food for all of us,” Issendel said. “You decide what’s best.”

  “Of course, Mister Ret.”

  As the proprietor left, Issendel turned his focus to Dayne, his bearded face bright and beaming. “Dayne, I first wanted to sincerely thank you for everything you did yesterday and the day before. I know . . . well, I can imagine, that for a man like you, the ideas we profess, what we’re fighting for, well . . . I know you just don’t cotton to that.”

  “I do not,” Dayne said. “I think your goals are harmful to the nation.”

  “I can’t deny that is true, in terms of how you define the nation.”

  “Which is the problem,” Sister Frienne said. “Your definition is wrong.”

  “Now, ‘wrong’ is harsh,” Issendel said. “Simply different.”

  “How am I wrong?” Dayne asked. “The nation is the ten archduchies, and you think one of them should dissolve itself from the rest.”

  “I think the ‘unity of the ten archduchies’ is a political lie we’ve been sold,” Issendel said.

  “It’s obvious you do think that,” Hemmit said. “That’s the basis of your platform.”

  “Yes, it is!” He wrapped his hands together, meshing his fingers. “We are all trapped together, a tangled mess, when we could be how we were meant to be. Ten kingdoms, open and allied. Stronger through greater reach.” He spread his fingers wide. “The Open Hand.”

  “I thought you wanted Scaloi to secede from Druthal,” Maresh said.

  “That would be selfish,” Frienne said. “We understand the need best because we are Scallic, and we are the farthest from the rest of you. But the point is not merely a free Scaloi, though that would be a result.”

  “Instead of one nation, under one throne, a loose confederacy of ten countries. More, if you consider Corvia or Monitel.”

  “Indeed,” Frienne said. “Our cause is as much for them, or the Napolic colonies, as it is for ourselves.”

  Dayne shook his head. He knew well enough that this was a dangerous path. “Have you no sense of history? That’s the very thing that people fought and died to end. The Kingdom of Druthal shattered in the eighth century, took three hundred years to recover.”

  “Three hundred years of wars and horror,” Hemmit added.

  Issendel smiled, nodding his head in assent. “Well, that was done badly. The nation, as you said, shattered. Kingdoms declaring themselves independent from the crown, anger and acrimony the primary motives. Of course it devolved into wars.”

  “We still bear the scars of those wars,” Frienne said. “Ruined cities along the border.”

  “You have a lot of anger toward the Linjari,” Dayne said. He turned to Issendel. “You speak of avoiding anger and acrimony, when your second here is full of it.”

  “She is, and I try to heal the anger in her heart every day,” he said. “Tell him your story.”

  “Do I—”

  “Your penance,” he said, and when he said it, even though he spoke softly, the words hit with a weight that shook Dayne in his bones. His voice gained depth and authority, in a way Dayne didn’t understand. The same thing as the man with the knife, the power that had spooked Lin.

  “Of course,” Frienne said. “I grew up in a town called Elliataria, just on the Scaloi River, the border between us and Linjar. For centuries, it was, as you said, horrible war between our kingdoms. Elliataria had been a grand city, but it was decimated over and over again by the horrors of that war. It often had been the battlefield, and the fields surrounding it are deep with the dead.”

  “The Wall of Bones,” Dayne said. “But that was long before any of us lived.”

  “Perhaps so,” Sister Frienne said. “But those wounds are deep and long, and we still bear the scars. Elliataria is starving. We can never grow enough to feed our own people. We receive help from Iscala and the rest of the country.”

  “Archduchy,” Hemmit said reflexively.

  “On the other side of the river is a Linjari region called Henijeaut. There had been some towns there, but most of those are empty ruins now, only patches of people living there. They have nothing, no food, no help, not even a local church. My order in Elliataria, our cloister, was the closest church to them. So we gathered up some of the food we had, rafted across the river, and distributed it to the Linjari in Henijeaut.”

  “So that sounds like you were doing well, helping your fellows,” Maresh said. “Because we are all Druth, yes?”

  “That was the spirit in which it was done,” she said solemnly. “But our reward was the people of Henijeaut came into our town with knives and sticks and torches, murdering us and taking whatever they could.”

  “And what did you do?” Issendel asked her, in a tone that showed he knew the answer.

  “Our church was burned down by those . . . people,” she said. “They killed several of the girls in my cloister. So I picked up a relic and brought it down on the head of one of those bastards.”

  “You were defending yourself,” Hemmit said.

  “No, sir,” she said. “What I did was not so justifiable. I didn’t simply fight back.” Her eyes were full of tears. “In the moment I saw myself as Saint Jontlen, or Saint Terrent, doing terrible things in service of God, in service of saving others from the wicked. But I was the sinner there, for I relished their deaths. I stalked and hunted them, killing them with pain and torture. I found joy in their blood and anguish.”

  “And then?” Dayne asked, almost horrified.

  “And then, for a year, the people of the dead moors of Henijeaut spoke in hushed voices of the Red Lady who brought death and fire with her. And I did. I have a heart filled with hate for the Linjari, and that hate has been fed with blood. But hate is never satiated.” She held out her arm, showing scars—dozens of tally marks carved into her flesh. “I marked myself for every life I took.”

  “So what happened?” Hemmit asked.

  “He found me,” she said, reaching out to Issendel and putting her hand over his heart. “And with a word gave me just a taste of peace, a chance of absolution. And I knew I must serve his cause.”

  “Dissolution of the nation?” Dayne asked.

  “Peace, Dayne!” he said. “Peace is my cause! We find peace in Druthal by not forcing everyone to live in one house, forever arguing until we tear open each other’s throats. Instead we should be ten houses, good neighbors who leave each other to their business.”

  “And you think your methods are peaceful?” Dayne asked.

  “We do not engage in violence.”

  “But you block people’s way, chain your arms together. You prevent people from going about their business.”

  “An inconvenience, Dayne, but not violence,” Issendel said. “Surely you can see the difference. Our message will be ignored if we do not capture the people’s attention.”<
br />
  “Forcing a confrontation,” Dayne said. “Maybe not being violent yourself, but surely instigating it. Both times a riot nearly started.”

  “By other people!” Sister Frienne said.

  “But inspired by your actions,” Dayne said.

  Issendel shook his head. “We cannot be responsible for how people react to us. We will continue our work, but always through a path of peace.”

  “Through peace you work with a murderer?” Hemmit asked.

  “Shouldn’t she be in prison?” Maresh asked.

  “Here, she would be. Rotting away in a cell, no chance for her soul. But the law in Scaloi is different. Through confession and absolution and penance, a malefactor can be placed in the church’s hands. Instead of serving in prison, she serves God and the people.”

  Dayne wasn’t sure if he liked that, but he acknowledged that what he had seen of prisons were unjust horrors. “And what is her penance?”

  “To tell her story truly and honestly,” Issendel said. “And in each telling, the anger leaves her heart, and the blight leaves her soul. Because, truly, her sins are heinous, and no simple act of absolution could possibly resolve them. She must work to be clean.”

  “And it’s work I struggle with,” she said. “But with Ret’s help, I am making that journey.” She reached out and took his hand. When she did, Dayne thought he saw one of the tally marks cut in her arm fade away. He blinked and looked again. There were so many tally marks, there was no way to be certain. Perhaps it was a trick of the light.

  “The point is,” Issendel said. “That is the Scallic way, and you would respect that we handle ours in our own way, just as we would trust you to do the same.”

  “But you can,” Dayne said. “I mean, if your argument is let Scaloi be Scallic, your proof is here with her, isn’t it? She isn’t in prison, but in your hands, as per your laws.”

  “To some degree you’re right,” Issendel said.

  The waiter came with trays of food, laying the plates in front of everyone. Bowls of rice, sweet-smelling meat, strong spicy odors, and every dish garnished with lime wedges and a sliced green fruit of some sort.

  “Your faces tell quite a story,” Issendel said. “Each of you is thinking, ‘this isn’t Druth food’—but it is, because all of this is quite traditional and common in Scaloi. Except Scaloi isn’t what you think of when you think of Druthal.”

  Dayne pointed to the green slices. “Those are the eponymous butter pears, no?”

  “Right,” Issendel said. “The Acserians call them avacada, but butter pear is a good term.”

  “Do they taste like butters or pears?” Maresh asked.

  “Neither,” Issendel said, nibbling a bit of it. “It’s shaped like a pear, it cuts like butter, tastes like . . . well, like itself.” He took a soft flatbread and scooped some of the meat into it. He then added the sliced butter pear and spooned a concoction of a yellow fruit and green herb onto it. He wrapped the flatbread and handed it to Dayne. “Taste this, and you might fall in love with Scaloi.”

  Dayne took it and bit into it. Issendel was right, it was quite delicious, savory and sweet and spicy and rich all rolled together in a single bite.

  His face must have told a story, as Hemmit and Maresh took their own flatbreads and prepared wraps for themselves.

  “What do you think?” Issendel asked.

  “Far better than Yinaran food,” Dayne said.

  “Ha!” Issendel said, clapping his hands together.

  Dayne blushed. “I may not have the taste for the cuisines of every part of Druthal, but I respect them as part of the richer tapestry of this nation. That unity is our strength. We have a shared history, language, church . . .”

  “Our iteration of the church is not yours, though,” Issendel said. “We accept more precepts from the Acserian. We read their holy books and derive much insight from them, and through that, a more fulfilling practice of faith. You won’t find that in the rest of Druthal.”

  “Perhaps not,” Dayne said, “but in Acora you see Waish and Kieran traditions in their expressions of faith. Kellirac beliefs have been woven into our own.”

  Issendel produced a book out of his bag and passed it to Dayne. “A gift. Frienne tells me you knew a bit about Saint Alexis. She was very different from many other saints.”

  “Alexis is a historical figure,” Dayne said, tapping on the book, a copy of Alexis: Saint and Warrior. “I’ve read this one, sir. And I appreciate the gesture. Alexis is sometimes referred to as ‘the last Otajian.”

  “Otajian?” Maresh asked.

  “One of the Elite Orders,” Dayne said. “Mace and flail warriors from the south, its origin both Scallic and Linjari together. But the Order fell apart during their war.”

  “But those traditions live,” Hemmit said. “We saw that with those Royal First ladies.”

  Frienne scoffed. “Heretics. Versed in form but not grace.”

  Issendel gave her a slight gesture of quiet. “Though in truth, the Otajians disbanded half a century before Alexis was born. I think the idea that she had some claim to being one of them was a bit of a romantic notion. But she wore the armor and wielded her mace, and then came here with our queen as a representative of peace for her people in the Deathly Summit.”

  “And died protecting others from the Black Mage and his people,” Dayne said.

  “And there we get the poison that infects our part in this nation, my friend,” Issendel said, his voice growing more passionate with each word.

  The hairs on the back of Dayne’s neck went up at that phrase, the same from Lief Frannel’s letter. The same from the Sons of the Six Sisters.

  Issendel went on. “We were told that, in the defeat of the Black Mage and his Incursion, now we were part of Druthal again, and that the queen’s idiot nephew was now the Archduke of Scaloi. We reunited with Druthal by accession, not agreement.”

  “This was two hundred years ago,” Maresh said. “I mean, all your life, you’ve been Druth.”

  “Under duress,” Frienne said.

  Maresh shrugged and pushed his plate away. “It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Perhaps not, but you live here, in the center of the nation. Maybe you can’t understand us and our lives.” Frienne stood and walked off.

  “And that is the crux of it,” Issendel said. “That at our hearts, we don’t understand each other.”

  INTERLUDE: The Parliamentarian

  JULIAN BARTON, 4th Chair of Maradaine, found the intercession between convocations of the Parliament to be a tediously dull time. In his seventeen years serving in the Parliament, with the exception of the years he needed to campaign for reelection—which he always won handily—he found himself falling into bad patterns. He would make a pretense of working in his office, but just read through newspapers and pence-novels by lamplight until the wee hours. Then he would sleep until midday and repeat the cycle.

  Half the time he didn’t even go back home. There was little cause to. His wife was dutiful enough when it came to public events, campaigning, those interminable dinners. She shone in those moments, the perfect Parliamentary wife. But beyond that, she didn’t care what he did. He was reasonably certain she was having an affair with someone on their household staff, and the most surprising thing about that was how little it bothered him.

  That was why he woke up on the couch in his office in the Parliament building. Woken by the sound of someone pounding on a door in the distance. Not his door. That would have been odd. There was no reason for someone to seek him out. Not even the most panicky member of the Grand Ten would seek him out to solve a problem right now. There just wasn’t a real problem in the works. Their plans were moving apace, and things were underway as they needed to be. The paperwork for the promised promotions had been ratified and submitted, and the bureaucracy would grind through and do what needed t
o be done.

  When he was actually working, when the Parliament was in session, he didn’t fall into these habits. Then he had expectations upon him, and he thrived in those conditions, even when the stakes seemed to be less and less critical to him each year. That might have been the reason he joined this conspiracy when Millerson brought him in. Some sort of thrill, some sort of action.

  Something to match those twenty minutes off the coast of Corvia, when he took command of the Maradaine’s Glory upon the death of his captain and his fleet admiral. When he—as a mere Lieutenant Barton—won the Battle of Polimare Bay for his country.

  A victory that ensured him his effortless election to the Parliament four times in a row.

  The pounding in the hallway increased. Barton got to his feet, found his shoes, and put them on. His coat was lying on the floor, but there was no need to put it on. It was too damned hot to wear it, anyway. This was the worst summer he had felt in Maradaine.

  He went out to the hallway to find the source of the knocking. A bedraggled man was pounding on the office door of Montrose, 2nd Chair of Maradaine.

  “He’s not there,” Barton said. “He’s in Hantal Cove with his family.”

  “How could he?” the man asked. He had wild hair and beard, and a sallow look that made it seem like he hadn’t eaten anything solid in days. Despite that, his clothing was well-appointed and tailored, a woolen waistcoat and matching cravat. This wasn’t some strange transient who had wandered in here.

  Not that Barton should judge. He probably looked the same.

  “He’s supposed to. We’re supposed to return to our constituents this month, you know?”

  “I know that!” the man said. Acoran accent. “But this is critical!”

  Now Barton placed him—the accent and the overdramatic urgency revealed who he was. “You’re Parlin’s man, aren’t you?”