The City of Ravens

by Baker, Richard

  “Remove the bread and the flagon,” directed the voice from above. “You can keep the container until your next meal. You’ll put the flagon in the basket, and it will be refilled. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Jack. “Listen, I would like to speak to—”

  “One more word, and you’ll miss your next meal. Two more, and you won’t eat for three days. You are not to speak at all, unless asked to. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Jack.

  He fidgeted and grimaced, desperate to say something, anything to keep the person above nearby, but he did not doubt for a moment that the jailer would do exactly what he said he would and skip him for the next few rounds.

  “Good.”

  A shadow moved across the light above; the basket was abruptly drawn up again. Jack resigned himself to chewing on the tough bread and washing it down with the icy water, and considered whether or not he should begin a count of feedings by way of marking the time.

  He slept again, awoke and spent a long time staring at the walls, and then the basket was lowered to him again. He received another chunk of coarse bread and a refill for his water flagon. The cycle repeated several more times. Jack wondered if strangling himself with his fetters might be preferable to eternal incarceration, and to divert his mind from such a grisly prospect, he began to hatch for his own fancy the most outrageous escape plots he could imagine.

  “I could scale the cell walls chimney style, seeing as they have carelessly been left so close together,” he mused. The shackles were unfortunately fixed to a heavy bolt in the cell floor, preventing him from climbing anywhere near the trapdoor above.

  “I see that my jailers thought of that already,” Jack muttered after trying the scheme. “Then perhaps I shall work at dislodging the grate below. I am a small fellow and may be able to fit through the opening and discover where the cell’s wastes are discharged. Given that this place is built upon an artificial island, they are almost certainly emptied into the sea. It is a foul path indeed, but I am desperate and cannot be fastidious in these matters.”

  The bars were as thick as spear shaft and evidently anchored deeply in the stone walls. With the strength of an ogre he could not have pulled them loose.

  “Very well, then. I did not care for that scheme, anyway. Instead, I shall remove these enchanted shackles, thus making available magical abilities that must surely suffice to free me from this dismal place.”

  The shackles were enchanted quite well. Hours of experimentation convinced him that he’d have to break most of the bones in his hands to free himself of the irons on his wrists. Broken hands, of course, would drastically inhibit his ability to work magic, and there was no way that his feet could be crushed or pulped enough to slip out of his ankle irons.

  “Even if I could free myself that way, I would have two broken hands and two broken legs,” Jack mused. “Beginning my escape in such a condition would not be advisable.”

  Before Jack had determined which of the unattractive options promised the best chance for escape within the next decade, he was interrupted by the approach of booted feet, a number of them, in the corridor above. The procession stopped above his cell; a moment later, the trapdoor was pulled open. Lanterns bright enough to make Jack shield his eyes shone down on him.

  “Jack Ravenwild,” stated one of the guards above. “You have been summoned to appear before the Lord High Magistrate to answer to charges of treason, murder, arson, conspiracy, assault, and various other crimes and misdemeanors.”

  The guards lowered a narrow ladder into the cell. Two climbed down and freed his fetters from the bolt in the wall, then escorted him back up to the hall. There he was chained securely, blindfolded and hooded, and finally manhandled through the prison’s labyrinthine passageways and out into the open sea air. He could hear a boat scraping against the stone quay, rocking up and down in the soft swell.

  “The prisoner is ready for transport,” said one guard aloud.

  “Put him in the boat,” another replied. “Chain him securely. The Lady Mayor herself wanted this one tried and condemned speedily.”

  “Are we going to see him again?” asked the first guard.

  “That’s up to the Magistrate,” said the boatman. “I suspect that you’ll hold him for a day or two, and then he’ll be put to death.” Someone prodded Jack with a cudgel and shoved him down into the damp bilge of an open boat. His chains rattled and clanked as they were secured to the boat in some unseen manner.

  “It seems,” Jack muttered to himself, “that attending my own trial is the only opportunity I will have to leave this place.”

  Jack was transferred from the boat to a small, shuttered wagon that trundled through the streets. The normal bustle and commerce of the city was missing altogether. Jack guessed that the hour was very late, but he’d thought that he had felt weak sunshine through the heavy hood during his short voyage across the harbor in the prison scow. If the sun was up, then the quiet of the city was very peculiar. He shrugged and set the issue aside; he had far more important things to worry about.

  The wagon halted, and Jack was dragged out and hauled up a steep flight of stone stairs. Heavy doors creaked open ahead of him, only to boom shut when he and his captors passed. The quality of the sounds changed—footfalls echoed, the mail of his escorts jingled shrilly. They were inside a large building, which he guessed must be Ravendark Castle, seat of the city hall and location of the city’s High Court. In all the years he’d lived in the city of Raven’s Bluff, Jack had never once set foot in the place. Suspicious guardsmen and nosy bureaucrats made it a bad place to visit, if one’s chosen vocation was not entirely sanctioned by the civic authorities.

  He was ushered into another chamber, and his chains were fastened to a post or rail nearby. A soft murmur of voices sounded anxiously in the middle distance, the muted buzz of a hushed crowd or gathering.

  “If the prisoner is secured, remove his hood,” commanded a strong voice nearby.

  “The shackles prevent the working of magic, my lord,” responded someone very close to him. “He is helpless.”

  “Good. Unhood him, but maintain a careful watch. He is known to be quite elusive.”

  Jack was roughly handled for a moment as unseen hands worked at the bindings of his hood, and then the heavy leather mask was pulled away from his face. He stood in a prisoner’s pulpit, his hands chained together, with the chain anchored to two heavy stone columns. Shafts of dim sunlight slanted across a small, high chamber of stone. Blinking to accustom himself to the light, he twisted around to look behind him. He was in a courtroom, the gallery filled with several dozen people, and in front of him behind a tall stand stood a very stern-looking man with a dour face and large, powerful hands clasping a rod of office. The judge looked over at a mailed guardsman standing by the prisoner’s rail and nodded.

  “Jack Ravenwild, you stand accused of high treason, murder, arson, assault, burglary, swindling, the malicious use of magic for sinister designs, and conspiracy to overthrow the rightful rulers of the city of Raven’s Bluff,” intoned the bailiff. “You stand before Lord High Magistrate Tordon Sureblade. What say you to these charges?”

  “I believe there has been a terrible misunderstanding—” Jack began.

  The bailiff cut him off. “You may plead guilty, not guilty, or no contest to the charges,” the officer said.

  “Not guilty then. I am innocent of every charge brought against me, and I warmly greet this opportunity to answer each one in due course.” Jack cleared his throat and added, “If it please the court, may I be set free of these bonds? I confess that they distract me terribly from the grave matters at hand, and I fear that simply appearing in irons may unconsciously sway the court to view me in an unfavorable and undeservedly criminal light.”

  “Note the accused’s plea as not guilty,” said the Lord High Magistrate from his lofty vantage, “and leave him in his shackles.” In another corner of the chamber, a court clerk hastily scribbled into
a large leather-bound book, evidently recording the proceedings. Then the Magistrate turned his attention to Jack. “Understand, sir, that I am vested with the full and solitary power to hear your case, adjudicate your guilt or innocence, and pronounce sentence. As the High Magistrate for this city, I am the only appellate authority and the final arbiter of all matters of justice and order. You stand before me instead of a lesser magistrate because the charges laid against you are extraordinary in nature and capital in punishment. Do you understand?”

  Jack managed a feeble nod. What little confidence he might have felt at regaining his sight and powers of speech was rapidly dwindling. He suspected he would have a hard time baffling Tordon Sureblade with a convoluted fabrication or warming his heart with charm and earnestness. In fact, he suspected that he would do very well to treat the Lord High Magistrate with the same caution he might give to an angry dragon.

  “I do, my lord.”

  “Very well. Officers of the Watch, you may present the evidence against this man.”

  One by one, the city authorities paraded through the court the Brothers Kuldath, Iphegor the Black, Marcus and Ashwillow, Zandria and those who survived in her band, several shopkeepers and ferrymen from the Ladyrock, the Master Crafter Randall Morran, a woman by the name of Lady Milyth Leorduin (Jack identified her as Lady Mantis by her voice and virulence), Briesa and other waiting-staff from the Cracked Tankard, and even Ontrodes the sage.

  “That is the man we saw in our house!” cried the Kuldaths, pointing their bony fingers at Jack and quavering with mercantile rage. “He stole our ruby!”

  “I deny any such doings,” Jack replied in turn. “At the hour stated by the Kuldaths, I was engaged in charitable work among the poor. It’s not much, but I do what I can.”

  Iphegor the Black came next. “There stands he who burglarized my tower and murdered my familiar,” snarled the wizard. “If you do not execute him, my lord, I beg you to remand him into my custody. I would be only too happy to take care of the matter for you!”

  “I heard of the incident of which Master Iphegor speaks,” Jack said with a frown of true concern. “While I grieve for his loss, I believe that the man seen to exit his tower answered to a description not unlike that of Sir Marcus of the Knights of the Hawk, or so I heard, anyway. Might I ask if any investigation has been made into his involvement in this sordid affair?”

  Meritheus, the agent of the Wizard’s Guild, followed. “He represented himself as ‘the Dread Delgath’ and joined the Guild under a false name,” reported the stout mage. “As he is an accused felon, we revoke his membership immediately and disavow any association with his actions.”

  “I have no idea what he is talking about,” Jack replied. “I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Wizard’s Guild. Given the spectacular destruction visited upon the city’s theatre quite recently by the archmage of that villainous collection of necromancers and ill-doers, I should hope never to become a member in the future!”

  Marcus and Ashwillow took the stand after that, each in turn. “Our sources observed the accused’s meetings with a swordswoman calling herself Elana on several occasions,” stated the Hawk Knights, each telling the same tale. “As we privately stated to the Lord High Magistrate earlier, we have conclusive proof that Elana is an agent of the Warlord Myrkyssa Jelan, which means that the accused is very likely to be engaged in Jelan’s plots against the city. He also resisted arrest and questioning on two occasions.”

  “Elana did, in fact, contact me about a very mysterious matter of employment,” Jack admitted ruefully. “I turned her down at once, of course, and immediately commenced a thorough investigation of all her affairs. In fact, I had amassed a fair body of evidence indicating that she might have something to do with the Warlord and was engaged in preparing to turn over my findings to the proper authorities when the Hawk Knights evidently mistook my activities for collusion in her sinister schemes. Well, I am glad I had a chance to clear that up!”

  The Knights of the Hawk were followed by Zandria the Red. “He interfered with my legitimate efforts to salvage treasure from Sarbreen’s depths and was directly responsible for bringing my company into contact with a deep dragon, which led to the deaths of two of my partners,” Zandria said. “He also pilfered my notebooks, stole treasure I was engaged in legally recovering, and spied on my preparations in order to prepare an ambush for me below the city.”

  “The Lady Zandria unfortunately suffered a serious blow to the head during the very expedition she refers to,” said Jack. “She has entertained paranoid delusions ever since. In truth, I am her chartered partner in these operations and sought only to fulfill the terms of our contract. Regardless of what you do with me, please arrange medical assistance for her, before her delusions result in a true catastrophe.”

  “Six days ago, a cartload of fresh thatch disappeared from my workshed early in the afternoon,” said one roofer Jack didn’t recognize. “At the end of the day, I noticed that an abandoned house on the east end of the Ladyrock sported a brand new roof.”

  The thatcher’s story was amplified by that of two carpenters and a bricklayer, who reported missing tools and materials they later discovered in and around the same house, while the tavernkeep of the Red Sail identified Jack as the very same man who’d suddenly taken up residence in the abandoned cottage.

  “I visited the Red Sail, yes,” Jack admitted, “but I do not maintain a residence upon the Ladyrock. And I certainly cannot be held accountable if its mysterious owner finally decided to fix the place up. Why do I stand accused of repairing his roof?”

  Randall Morran, the Master Crafter of the city’s bardic guild, climbed to the stand with a serious and weighty expression on his face. “The accused took part in the Game of Masks under the guise of Lord Fox,” reported the Master Crafter. “I was present in the robing room on several occasions when he was given his mask for the game or removing it at the end of the evening. He was suspected of cheating by several other players, although I cannot honestly say that I witnessed it.”

  “Of course I participated in the Game,” Jack said cordially. “I was given to understand that, within the Game, players were expected to make full use of all the resources at their disposal to solve the riddle. I would never condone any such behavior had the Game not required that sort of thing to begin with. That was part of the fun!”

  Lady Mantis spoke next, although she wore no mask in the courtroom. “I happened to overhear a conversation between Lord Fox and Lord Tiger, whom we now know was Toseiyn Dulkrauth,” Milyth Leorduin reported. “They were planning some kind of attack or ambush within the Game, something about arming the Faceless Lords with magical wands and striking during the Blue Lord’s Revel. I regret to say that I deemed their conversation to be nothing more than a game within the Game. If only I’d known that they plotted a real murder!” She wiped real tears from her eyes and sobbed delicately. “I cannot imagine what kind of fiend would plan such a thing as the attack at the theater the other night!”

  “Ah-ha!” said Jack. “The Lady Mantis seeks to reverse her guilt upon me! She reports the very evidence I would have given against her. I require her immediate arrest upon the charges you have mistakenly assigned to me!”

  “The fiend burned down my skewer stand and made off with the receipts of a full day’s business,” complained a vendor in sausages from the Anvil, “and he fondled my wife as well!”

  Jack squinted at the fellow and shifted nervously. He didn’t remember doing anything like that. “Perhaps the gentleman has confused me with somebody else,” he offered timidly.

  “I found him spying upon my girls in their dressing rooms, lurking about invisibly while they bathed after a performance,” stated the proprietor of a festhall and dance revue. “When I cornered him, he worked an enchantment upon me that led me to distribute all the money in my coffers and crawl to the Temple of Loviatar on my hands and knees, groveling for forgiveness!”

  “I am certain I had not
hing to do with that!” Jack cried. “Besides, if I was invisible, how in the world does he know it was me?”

  “Because you threw off your spell in order to ride upon my back, lashing me with a cat-o-nine-tails and composing shameful limericks the whole way!” the man stated. “What did I ever do to you, you villain?”

  An awful suspicion began to dawn in Jack’s heart. He hadn’t burned down the sausage-vendor’s shack or harried the whoremaster all the way to the temple of the bitch goddess, but it was not inconceivable that his shadow-self might have done these things during the days it was free to make use of his appearance and abilities. He looked over to the gallery where witnesses waited, observing the trial. Dozens of sullen, angry stares weighed upon him like leaden chains.

  “Are they all here to testify against me?” he asked the bailiff in a stage whisper.

  The officer shrugged. “Only a dozen or so. The rest are here to beg the Lord High Magistrate for your death, on account of the injuries you wreaked on their loved ones, property, and acquaintances.”

  “Oh,” Jack replied. He turned to face the Magistrate as the last witness filed down from the stand. “My lord, is it truly necessary to hear anymore evidence of this sort? It is clear to me that the city has built a flimsy case out of hearsay and circumstantial evidence. I beg you, let us end this farce before we exhaust one more moment of your undoubtedly important time. I am feeling quite magnanimous and shall generously forgive my slanderers for any misstatements or untruths they spoke, in the interest of speeding along these proceedings.”

  “It is ironic that you should speak of truth,” Tordon Sureblade said grimly. He held up one hand—a glint of gold encircled one thick finger. “I wear upon my left hand a ring of truth, which prevents me from speaking any falsehood. It also makes clear to me the falsehoods of others. You, sir, have twisted and wormed your way through the entire hearing, mixing lies and falsehoods with glimmers of a false earnestness. Never in my years of serving this city on the bench of high justice have I encountered such a morally dissolute and utterly despicable person as yourself!”