Rule

by Rowenna Miller

  “I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know the laws or the legal precedent for executing prisoners of war. But then again, most of you aren’t, either,” I said. This earned a few light chuckles. “I’m not a soldier. I didn’t fight on the field of battle with you. But I’ve risked my life alongside you, and I knew that I wouldn’t be granted even the consideration we’re giving the Royalist leadership now.” Nods from the more fervent Red Caps.

  “This is the first thing that this council is going to do, and it is how you’ll be remembered. You will build the laws of Galitha on the back of this choice. Will it be clemency, or justice?” I paused. “Or does cowardice pass for clemency, or vengeance pretend to be justice?” That earned a few sour looks from across the range of men assembled. I pressed on anyway. “We should be governed not by our basest qualities. Clemency is not weakness when granted fairly in the face of evidence. Vengeance is not justice when meted out to anyone who’s offended you. Consider the crimes of the individuals and judge them from there.”

  “What are you saying?” Niko demanded.

  “I’ve heard these debates consider all of the prisoners as one unit. But they’re not. The crime for which execution is the prescribed sentence is not ‘fighting against us and losing.’ It’s treason.” I waited to see if Niko, if the assembly gathered, understood what I was saying. “Merhaven, Pommerly, and the king conspired to undermine the laws of the land as passed by the then-ruling-body, the Council of Nobles. That was, in my estimation, treason. The other officers currently held prisoner may not have been involved in that conspiracy. Neither was, from the evidence thus presented, Lady Apollonia.” I swallowed the half lie. I knew Polly had been actively complicit, but no one else needed to know the extent of her treachery unless it came out in a trial.

  “They still sided with a treasonous government,” Niko said.

  “Yes, they did,” said Kristos, “but the reasons and rationales of the individual become far more varied at that point.” He looked at me and smiled faintly.

  “Call the vote.” Niko smacked his hand on the table in front of him, dismissive.

  The first proposal on the table, the one that had been debated, was summary execution for all the prisoners. It failed, by a large margin. I exhaled a shaking breath as a new proposal was swiftly made and seconded, to try each of the prisoners individually, and this passed by an even larger margin than the first had failed.

  Noon crested the sky and the councillors recessed to scrounge something to eat, still being served communally out of Niko’s system of provisions. I wasn’t sure why I left the Public Archive and made my way to the Stone Castle, but I did. It was just a short walk across Fountain Square, a strangely familiar set of steps across now-pockmarked cobblestones, beside the scarred and burned fountain.

  No one stopped me; the guards recognized me, or if they didn’t, they knew the uniform of the Reformist army and the woman wearing its colors must be the magician, the witch, the consort of the Rebel Prince—whatever character I played in the story they wrote for themselves of the Galatine Civil War. We were all still writing it, I reminded myself. It wasn’t over, not yet.

  Not while the king and the others were held in cells below my feet.

  “Take me to Lady Apollonia,” I said to the sergeant standing guard over the desk.

  “Has that been authorized by the governors? I mean to say, no offense, but I’ve orders not to allow the prisoners access to visitors. Except when authorized.”

  “Would I be here if it wasn’t?”

  “Suppose not.” The unclear balance of power worked to my advantage this time, but I would have to consider, in future, where I would require the permissions of an ordinary citizen, and where I would walk as an assumed leader. I almost laughed—a year ago I would never have presumed I would be considered an exception to any rule, law, or polite suggestion. “All right, Cortland, you take her down there.”

  Lady Apollonia was held apart from the men; the Reformist army guards running the place kept up the tradition of male and female wards, despite only having the handful of prisoners. I was familiar with the cells, having spent an uncomfortable day in their damp, close confines a year before. I couldn’t sneak a blanket out of the communal storerooms without someone asking what I was doing, but I had a pocketful of brown bread and an apple.

  Polly sat on the floor in the corner of her cell, posture as regal as when she had received us in the parlor at Westland Hall. She still wore the blue-and-gold suit; it was stained with mud along the hem, and her hat was missing.

  The guard, Cortland, edged back but didn’t leave. “You needn’t wait,” I said. “I can find my own way out.”

  “I should stay,” he replied. I shrugged. If he was going to stop me from giving Polly food, so be it. I reminded myself that she wouldn’t have done as much for me.

  “I thought I wasn’t to be permitted visitors,” she said pertly, though she didn’t stand.

  “I’m allowed a bit of leeway,” I said to Polly, ignoring the guard’s shadow behind me.

  “Ah, and so power corrupts already,” Polly said, but without the bitterness I had expected. I offered her the food. She stood and crossed the cell in three graceful strides, accepting the bread and wrapping it in a corner of her blanket. “Forgive me, but I fear I may be hungrier before I am relieved of that concern.”

  “So you believe you’re for the gallows, then?”

  “Is there any doubt?” She watched me with clear eyes. “There is, then. I hadn’t held out much hope. Despite you keeping your head.”

  “It’s hardly a matter of tit for tat,” I said. “My head wasn’t payment for yours.”

  “No, I hadn’t expected that.”

  I waited, but Polly didn’t offer what she had expected, if anything. “They’re going to try you all individually.”

  “So we drag out this torture longer, very clever.”

  “I thought you’d be pleased to learn you’re likely to keep your head.”

  “Am I?”

  “If they’d wanted it that badly they could have voted for it already.” I paused, not sure what I had expected. Gratitude? That would have been foolish, and Polly didn’t know—might never know—I had spoken for her. “Tell me,” I finally said, “if you were freed, where would you go? What would you do? You, your father, the others.”

  “I can’t speak for them,” Polly said with a shrug.

  “You must understand,” I said, frustration building, “that you do speak for them. At least… would they foment insurrection again, do you think?”

  “I couldn’t say.” She cut off my impending retort with a flick of her wrist. “But I doubt it. Your new system will doubtless deprive us of our ability to do so. As for me? I suppose I actually would go to West Serafe this time, live in exile. I certainly wouldn’t want to live here any longer.”

  I sighed. I wanted something, some inkling of remorse from her, a hint that she saw the errors she had made, but I had to accept that, as she stood before me in a stained, resplendent Royalist blue suit, she had in her estimation made no errors. Lady Apollonia was not going to apologize. She had nothing to apologize for.

  I turned to leave.

  “Thank you.” Her voice was clipped, polite but terse, but I detected a glint of honest gratitude.

  I turned back. “You’re welcome,” I said. “I—I have no reason to want you to suffer,” I added.

  “I know,” Polly replied. “Despite everything else, I do know that.” She gave me a long, strange look. “I assume you did something. That you had some hand in this small bit of clemency.”

  “I did,” I replied simply.

  “I thought you would.” She shrugged, and sat down again, rolling her apple from one hand to the other. “That, if nothing else, you would be useful.”

  “Useful?”

  “Far more useful alive.” She tossed her apple in the air and caught it. “I find I’m hungry after all. Please do leave me to my luncheon?”

  I swal
lowed, hard, and beckoned Cortland to lead me out of the cells. Of course—Polly speaking on my behalf, saving me from the noose, hadn’t been in kindness. She had read me well enough to know I was a better chance at leniency for her than even her brother was. I wanted to be angry, but strangely, I wasn’t. We both played our hands and we were both still alive. What was there to begrudge any longer?

  58

  THE TRIALS COMMENCED IMMEDIATELY, UNDER A COURT SYSTEM enacted to imitate the old Galatine judiciary but newly staffed with elected, not noble, judges and fitted out with juries levied from the common people of Galitha City. I had no part to play on that stage any longer, unless someone called me as a witness, which I very much hoped no one would. I was tired. I didn’t want to see anyone else dead, even if it was lawful and right, and I most certainly didn’t want to be a part of condemning anyone. Even by telling the truth. I preferred to remain silent.

  Instead, I began to search the city for my friends. Alice, Emmi, and Lieta had all worked for the Reformists in the main compound when I had last been there, but the city was turned inside out as the bulk of the Reformist army set up encampments around and in it. Wounded poured into the hospital within the city, the storehouses were overwhelmed with requests, and already tensions strained between the city’s Red Cap main force and the mixed group of Reformists who arrived with our army. A brawl broke out within a day of victory, several of Niko’s officers picking a fight with noble officers from the Sixth Regiment.

  After a few rabbit trails leading me to defunct addresses and a burned-out block of the quarter our shop had been in, I finally found Alice. She was still sewing shirts, set up with a small company of seamstresses and tailors to serve the army in what had been an upscale haberdashery. I saw her before I entered the building; she sat cross-legged on a table pulled next to a large window that had somehow survived all the fighting intact. In the wide swath of sunlight, she rapidly stitched a hem into a shirttail.

  “I don’t suppose you have any of your cousin’s burned scones with you?” I asked as I walked inside.

  Alice started, dropping the shirt and jumping off the table with a heavy thud. “Sophie!” She gathered me into an uncharacteristically enthusiastic embrace. “I heard you were captured, but then I heard you were all right, and then my sister said she saw you in Fountain Square, and—oh, this is a relief.”

  “I’m fine, of course I—” I stopped myself. There were no blithe assumptions that anyone was all right, not now. “And you?”

  Her jaw settled into a hard line, and she glanced around the bright shop. “I’m taking my break,” she said loudly. A man in a red cap nodded, his lips curled under in a perpetual scowl that might have been habit or might have been an old injury.

  I followed her outside into the chilly sunshine. “It’s a cold winter this year.” She clapped her hands together and then wrapped them in her apron. “I ought to have taken my cloak but no bother about that now.”

  “You don’t want to speak in front of them?”

  “They’re loyal to Niko Otni, to a fault.”

  “Has Niko—or these men—treated you badly?”

  “Not just me. We’re still required to work for the army if we want to eat—at least, if we want a share of the food Niko confiscated. When we were under siege, it made sense. Now?” Her exhale was a stream of white. “Now people need to go back to tending their families and trying to get their businesses running again. Those of us who can’t fight he gives half rations even though we work twice as hard. No work, no rations. My mum and I are sharing mine.”

  “I didn’t realize—I’ll make sure this is addressed right away.”

  She nodded, as though she didn’t believe this was possible. “Well, frankly, Niko has no right to be in charge of all of us any longer.”

  “Only if he’s chosen by the council as one of the governors.”

  “And if he’s not? Some of these lads won’t take to that easily.” She pursed her lips. “They’re set against Theodor ruling, in any way.”

  “So is he, I would say.” I began to laugh, but it died on my lips.

  “I hope it’s that easy.” Alice shook her head, her cheeks reddening in the chill of the wind. “But it isn’t just Theodor. It’s all the nobles. They’re—the Red Caps won’t be happy if the nobles aren’t routed out of Galitha completely.”

  “I don’t think,” I said deliberately, “that anyone will be completely happy with the decisions that stand. That’s how we’ll know we have a good compromise.”

  Alice essayed a smile. “That sounds about right.”

  “Where are the others—Emmi?”

  Alice’s face drew taut. “Emmi is working in the hospital. Any Pellian who can charm cast was summoned there, under no uncertain terms.”

  “To cast charms for the patients?”

  “Otni heard that you had some luck doing so down south.”

  “Yes, but—” I sighed. “I had different methods.”

  “The Pellian methods won’t work?” Alice sighed. “Poor Emmi, working all that time for no reason.”

  “It should work, but I can do better,” I said. “And I’ll see you soon.”

  Evening was already falling, so I hurried home instead of to the hospital, feeling a bit chagrined that I hadn’t thought to go there first and see what I could offer. Everyone I thought of clamored for my help, for my hands and eyes and, often, magic. They hung from me like weights. I shook my head—no, I was lucky. I could help, I could give more of myself. Unlike so many in this city, I hadn’t lost everything.

  Theodor’s old townhouse had survived the worst of the barrage, and he and I, along with my brother, Sianh, Annette, and Viola, took up lodging there. Any intention of moving into separate houses had never been mentioned; we gravitated without needing to say anything toward one another. I lifted the latch and found everyone already gathered in the parlor, warming themselves by a roaring fire in an otherwise sparse room. Much of the furniture had been taken in Theodor’s absence, but we contented ourselves with pillows and bolsters on the floor as though we were in a Serafan reception room.

  “There is no other way,” Kristos said. “We have to requisition the noble wealth if we’re to allow the people to recover. If,” he added with emphasis, “we are to take away Otni’s stranglehold on the food and supplies in this city.”

  “As long as his Red Caps control the storehouses, we can’t very well expect fair governance,” Theodor agreed.

  “Why can’t the council just order him to give them up?”

  Theodor sighed. “Gentleman’s agreement. Well, as gentlemanly as Otni can be. We did form a government without his input, as we were forced to, under the pressures of war. He stockpiled and controlled supplies, under pressures much the same. So we rather grandfathered in both systems with the understanding we won’t revolt against one another. Eventually—soon—we’ll get rid of the storehouse system and Galitha City will get seats on the council.”

  “Lovely,” Annette said. She twirled a pocket watch on its chain between her fingers. “So what now—you requisition noble lands, money, silk, and gold? Viola won’t be keen on giving up her jewelry.”

  Viola laughed and snatched the watch from Annette. “If it means knocking that smug look off Niko Otni’s face, it’s worth it. I won’t repeat what he said when I installed those portraits of you four in the council chambers.”

  “He can eat his shoe,” Kristos said. “Those were most excellent portraits. And we’re not brutes. We’d requisition land and bank assets only. Wouldn’t dream of taking their personal effects. It would flood the pawnbrokers’ market with ugly suits and gaudy jewelry, anyway.”

  “There’s simply no other way,” Theodor said reluctantly. “Not only for ending Niko’s stranglehold on our goods here, but we can’t allow the nobility to retain the means of production—the means of wealth, really—and expect any sort of democratic system to work. But…”

  “But taking it from them will certainly cause some stri
fe as they’ve no real means of livelihood,” Kristos filled in, not bothering to wait for him to complete the thought. “We’ve been over it before. I’m not sure, frankly, that I care about their pedestrian difficulties, but what do you propose?”

  Theodor sighed. “I don’t know—perhaps let them keep their homes and some pittance of acreage—fifty, perhaps?”

  “Fifty acres is more than anyone else would have,” Kristos retorted.

  “And it wouldn’t take long for them to buy up neighboring acreage,” I added. “If they have the means to build their estates back to what they were, soon we’re in the same mess as before.”

  “I know!” Theodor spat. “I know. I just…”

  “You don’t want to imagine your family home overrun by peasants?” Kristos asked blandly.

  Theodor’s mouth went taut. “I said no such thing. Galatine Divine. I never even expected to see the place again.” His eyes closed, briefly—leaving Rock’s Ford and Westland Hall meant he might never set foot in his childhood home again. I knew he felt that pain deeply, even if he didn’t say anything about it.

  Especially now, with the trials concluded. His father, Pommerly, and Merhaven were all sentenced to hang, alongside most of the noble officers. Polly was spared the noose but exiled from Galitha.

  Viola tapped her graphite pencil on the pad of paper in front of her, her sketch of the fire-gutted building across from us paused. “What do they do? The nobles.”

  “They deal with a little unfairness,” Kristos muttered.

  “That’s not what I mean—literally, what do we want them to do? Become tinkers and tailors? They’re not exactly skilled labor. I could hire myself out as a portrait artist, of course, but most of them are utterly useless.”

  “I think that’s something we have to accept that we’ll work out later,” I said softly. “I know. These are people you know, people you care about. But… but we can’t care about their troubles to the detriment of everyone else, can we?”