by Anne Perry
Ishrafeli did not argue. Whatever it was that he knew lay silent inside him.
“If we do not have an acceptable advocate for Cassiodorus’s defense,” Allomir continued, facing all of them again, his voice rasping with anxiety, “the trial will not satisfy the letter of the law. But far more important than that, the people will not accept its verdict, and therefore its sentence. I can find no one.” He swiveled back to Phraxus. “I come to you as a last resort. I know you are a soldier, not a lawyer, but at least you could offer an argument for him, and he would accept you. You have served under him and seen the reality and the ruin of war. You can speak of it from knowledge.”
“I can’t!” Phraxus looked beyond them out of the window. There were torches in the streets below as groups of men moved about; though here, high above, they could not hear if there was shouting or a clash of arms. “I am a witness,” he continued. “Any defense must call me. I shall be seen as self-serving. You must find someone else.”
Allomir clenched his fists, his shoulders rigid. The shadows cast by the lamps made his nose huge and his eyes so deep-sunken there was no light in them. “I have tried all the arguments! I have spoken to every advocate.” There was an edge of despair in his voice. “And no one will accept.” He waved his thin arms. “I have told them that they do not serve Cassiodorus, but the ends of the law. The only one who would have agreed to defend him is Styanax, but he is too old and too ill. He can barely hobble about. His voice is a whisper, and even that costs all his strength. But he understands that the law is greater than the individual cause, and we must argue both sides for the balance to weigh truly. If we do not, we ourselves have corrupted the law and tainted the truth.”
“I know that,” Phraxus agreed, leaning forward, “but I cannot serve.”
The silence weighed heavy in the room. Tathea looked at Ishrafeli. His broad brow was smooth, as if the emotion in him was biding its time.
“I hate him!” Allomir said with sudden, deep pain, his voice shaking. “And I hate him doubly for awakening that feeling in me! It is against the spirit of everything we have built and taught.” He turned to Phraxus, jabbing his finger in the air. “Have you seen what is happening to the people? We are becoming divided, father against son. Where there used to be respect, now there is anger and contempt.”
“I know ...”
“Even natural affection is eaten away,” Allomir cut in, the tide of his anger sweeping aside even agreement. “All the tolerance we thought was at the heart of what we loved.” His voice choked. “But how real is it, Phraxus?” he demanded. “If one man’s ambition can tear it apart, is there a greater power of good: honor, pity, self-mastery, enough humility to obey the common will and not permit one man to destroy the old decencies? Or is it all only a sublime delusion?” He moved his hands in agitation and the lamps made his shadow dance on the walls.
“I hate myself for my doubt. That is what I have let Cassiodorus do to me! Were we already so corrupt that we needed only one evil man for us to fall like rotten fruit?” Now he was speaking to Ishrafeli, as if he felt impelled to convince him. “I know he’s guilty! But without a defense, we cannot convict him, and above all we cannot punish him! It will be an invitation to every brash, articulate youth who thinks to try his hand. The truth is that we should have stopped him sooner, but we were too complacent to see the danger. He was handsome and brave, a golden man.” He spat the words, filled with self-contempt. “And we were loath to curb him and risk his temper when we needed him most. We accepted what he offered, without asking the cost.”
Phraxus looked at Tathea and frowned, reaching for a thought in his mind. As if already understanding, Ishrafeli looked at her also.
Allomir swung round. “Yes?” he said suddenly, hope pitching his voice high. “You have counseled the supreme judge of your own land, wherever that is. Will you speak for Cassiodorus, that justice may be satisfied? For Parfyrion, for the law?”
Tathea turned to Ishrafeli. She had known him only a short while—it seemed incredible that it was only hours—but he was her guide, and she remembered the emotions she had seen in his face, the courage and the vulnerability. She would do as he said.
But when he looked at her, smiling, there was no answer in his eyes.
“Please,” Allomir urged. “I will counsel you in the Parfyrian law. Phraxus will acquaint you with the facts and the arguments and a list of witnesses who can be called to substantiate what Cassiodorus may say.”
She looked at Phraxus. He nodded in affirmation.
There was no time to weigh the issue. She must decide now. They would need all night to prepare. There was so much to learn.
“Yes. I will do what I can.”
“Thank you!” Allomir’s ugly face shone with gratitude. He reached forward as if to touch her, then changed his mind. “Then we must begin to prepare. Listen to me ...”
There was time for only an hour’s sleep before they began the day with bread, fruit, and a cheese flavored with wild rosemary. Sunlight poured through the great window, making the lines of the room hard and clean, full of polished wood and smooth marble. Through the window Tathea could see knots of people moving about without purpose. The city was restless. Nobody was trading in the streets, and again there were no women or children.
Allomir left first, and Phraxus, Ishrafeli, and Tathea followed a short while after. It was already warm, and the road smelled of dust and stone and, every so often as they passed a gateway, the sweetness of damp earth.
Tathea was nervous. She saw everything with a new clarity, as if she would remember each exquisite carving and weathered stone. Their preservation might rest on her ability to speak for Cassiodorus with exactly the words which would serve justice and yet show the people of Parfyrion that he was indeed guilty of blasphemy against all they believed.
She had been given a Parfyrian robe so she would not appear too obviously foreign, and they entered the corridors of the large hall of justice without attracting more than casual interest.
“I must speak with Cassiodorus,” she insisted. “I must hear his argument from his own lips.”
“Of course,” Phraxus agreed quickly. “I would have taken you even had you not asked.” He guided her past the public galleries, where they left Ishrafeli, and through an archway along a smooth-sided passage to a door guarded by men dressed in gray tunics. There were no marks of rank upon them, and their armor bore no scars, as if it had never been used in battle. It was a peculiar reminder that the charge was blasphemy, not treason.
Phraxus explained who they were and the guards permitted Tathea to enter, but expressionlessly they barred Phraxus from following her.
The room was bare except for a cot bed and a single chair. The man seated on the bed looked at least as tall as Phraxus and as broad, but there any similarity ended. His hair shone like gold, springing up from a wide brow. His nose and lips were fleshy, his eyes the boldest Tathea had ever seen, as if they would strip all pretense from her, even all privacy. She was chilled with an inexplicable fear, even though the room was warm. She stopped as far from him as she could. He remained seated where he was on the bed.
Oddly, he did not ask who she was. Perhaps he did not care.
“I am going to speak for you,” she told him. “We have an hour in which you may tell me the most important things you feel I should know and say. Are there any witnesses I should call that you have not already mentioned?”
There was laughter in his eyes. “Have you got Phraxus on your list, lady?”
“My name is Tathea. Yes, I have.”
“Ah, good. The noble Phraxus.” He said it with a curl of his lip, full of contempt, as if he knew something that Phraxus did not. “He will speak the truth because he cannot climb outside his nature. And it will hurt him because he would prefer the lies.”
“Anyone else?” she pressed. “I have several soldiers here, and men who have lost their homes and their possessions in the wars with your enemies, tradesmen who can no
w profit from the peace and benefit the city because of it. There is a matriarch who has lost five sons in battle. She will speak for many others.”
His heavy-lidded eyes were too wide apart, the bridge of his nose too thick. It gave his face power and robbed it of sensitivity.
“You have done well!” he said, still half jeering at her. “It seems you really mean to defend me. Why? Are you afraid of what will happen if the old men try to gag me and drive me out?”
It cost her an effort of will to meet his eyes. “Should I be?”
“Oh yes,” he said very quietly. “I shall destroy what I cannot have.”
She had heard bravado before, and certainly she had heard threats. But his words ran through her like ice, as if the hand of death had touched her. She stared into his eyes and saw the laughter and the power in them. She wanted to look away, but she felt her strength of will seep out of her.
His smile grew wider.
She wanted to lash out at him, strike him, and force that smile away. But she was here to defend him. She had promised Phraxus, given her word. The law was greater than the anger or vanity of one person. It was certainly greater than Cassiodorus. He might destroy Parfyrion, but it would not be because of her failure to uphold its law.
“That is your weakness,” she said calmly, surprised to hear her voice sound unafraid. “It is not mine.”
Without warning, rage boiled up inside him. He rose to his feet, towering over her, his face dark and his lips ugly with hate. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone again. His smile returned, but now his eyes were veiled.
“We’ll see,” he said, going back to his seat on the cot. “It is only the beginning, the very beginning. You cannot conceive how far the journey stretches ahead of you.”
She did not answer, but turned and took her leave. When she was outside in the passage and the guards had closed the door, the papers she had brought slipped from her stiff fingers and scattered on the floor. She found her clothes were soaked with sweat, and she was shaking.
The trial was held in a room with a domed ceiling open at the top for the sunlight to stream in. The walls were decorated with carved and painted friezes in soft earth colors. The public benches were packed; she could not see a single vacant space.
Five green-robed judges sat in the center, facing Cassiodorus who stood manacled at each wrist in a railed box with guards on either side. Tathea searched for Ishrafeli, and with a sudden surge of pleasure, almost relief, she saw him sitting close to the front.
The proceedings began with Allomir putting the argument for the prosecution. Everything was smaller, more intimate than in Shinabar. There was no searing desert heat, no bitter tang of herbs on the wind, but rather the faint smell of salt. But the mind of it was the same: the conflict, the weight of judgment, the issues of right and wrong, and the law.
Memory crowded in on her. The past seemed all around, yet beyond her reach, gone forever with all it held that was dear past measure.
“We have observed honor without arrogance,” he said in his harsh voice that could not be ignored. “Each man has known his own freedom and been a servant to the common weal. I will show you that Cassiodorus, in his negotiations with the enemy, has cast aside our ways and sought to make himself the arbiter of what is good.”
There was a rumble of anger from young men in the room. Tathea saw Cassiodorus lean forward in his box and whisper something to a golden youth beside him who in turn spoke to his neighbor. An ugliness passed from face to face.
“Whether that is treason need not be argued,” Allomir went on, with a glance at Tathea as if he had noticed her attention wander. “We have not accused him of treason, but with a defiance of that modesty, that bridle to the power of the individual, which the gods have placed upon us from the beginning, and which has made us what we are.” His voice lowered. “It cannot be broken without a terrible cost, one which we and our children’s children will pay in blood and in tribute all our lives.”
Through the blue heat of the day they argued and paraded witnesses. Allomir showed that Cassiodorus had negotiated the treaty without deference to the people of Parfyrion, their judgment or their wishes. The facts were simple. No permission had been sought. No debate had taken place.
Tathea called witnesses to the long deprivations of the war, its detrimental effect on the welfare of the city and its people, how its art had grown stale, its political life strident and repetitive, its creativity directed only to weapons of war.
The following day she called women who had lost their husbands, their brothers, and their sons in the conflict. They spoke with dignity, but it was their grief-stricken faces that had most power to move.
In questioning the women and drawing from them their pain, Tathea laid naked her own. The desolation she had felt riding across the desert, the loneliness that still haunted her and her restless questioning of the past, all poured through her own words, brief as they were compared to the witnesses.’ The judges listened to her, captivated.
When she glanced at Cassiodorus in his railed-in dock, she saw the brilliance in his eyes, the probing, exultant knowledge of her wounds, and she felt as if something dirty had crept inside her. There was an evil in him that terrified her. She tore her gaze away and looked for Ishrafeli but could not find him in the crowd. Her vision swam, the individual faces blurred, and she had to close her eyes to steady herself.
“Are you well?” It was Allomir’s voice, concerned, oddly gentle. Had he seen in Cassiodorus the same terrible evil that she saw? No, of course not. Cassiodorus was simply a man whose overbearing pride and ambition needed curbing for the sake of everyone in Parfyrion.
And she was defending him! He was laughing at her because he knew how she hated it, just as he knew she could not escape. He was using the people’s honor against them, such was his contempt. Perhaps there lay his weakness. She decided to call one more witness, one that Allomir had mentioned, a historian and lover of the old ways.
“I call Styanax.”
Cassiodorus stiffened. He moved his hands, and she heard the clank of the manacles. She found herself shivering in spite of the sun pouring through the heart of the dome.
Styanax was an old man, white-haired, gaunt-faced. He looked at her guardedly and with dislike, holding onto the rail to steady himself, his thin hands blue-veined and spotted with age.
“You accuse Cassiodorus of blasphemy,” she began solemnly. “How are you sure that it is the gods’ will that the majority should decide all issues, even those which they do not understand because they have neither the information nor the experience? No one has denied that Cassiodorus is the best soldier Parfyrion has had in four hundred years. You have not even questioned that this treaty is both timely and fair.”
Styanax smiled very slightly, only a curve of the lips. “It is a good treaty,” he replied with great gravity. “If Cassiodorus were to rule Parfyrion, his decisions would be far better than the Council’s, at first, and certainly swifter.”
“At first?” she prompted.
“Like all men, he will in time make mistakes, misjudgments. But by then there will be no one left strong enough to make him reconsider. And those who question him he will see not as counselors but as enemies—traitors to his peace and order, his prosperity for the people. It is the age-old pattern of all tyranny.”
It was a risk to ask, but she had to. The purpose was lost if she stopped now. Her hands were still trembling. “Then why did Allomir not say all this? Surely it is part of his argument, if it is true.”
“Because it has not happened yet,” Styanax answered, his eyes holding hers steadily. “Cassiodorus can deny it, and there are many who will believe him. The young are impatient.” He smiled thinly, and she wondered if he had sons of his own. “They would rather have his efficiency,” he went on. “They are tired of the sobriety of the old way, the eternal argument and the discipline. Allomir has not accused him of treason against the state; and it would not advance his prosecution to prove it, e
ven if he could.”
Should she stop now while she had at least half made her point, or continue and risk losing it all? She could feel Cassiodorus’s eyes on her and the brilliant jubilation in him. She made her decision.
“Have you not had other heroes in the past who were admired by the people and were not always modest in the heat of their praise?”
“Of course—”
“And were they a threat to Parfyrion?”
There was a cheer from the crowd. A young man waved his arm. Tathea cringed inwardly.
Styanax inclined his head. “Some were, and we countered the threat by use of balance and the law.”
“Did they always take advice well, even on the occasions when they were right and others less brave, less skilled, were wrong?” she pursued.
“It is not a question of being right or wrong,” he explained with weary patience. “It is a question of power. If you grant any man power over you that you cannot remove from him should he abuse it, that you cannot curb, and in the end cannot even question, it becomes tyranny and then finally enslavement. You have ultimately lost your freedom of conscience, and that means you have lost your soul.”
She turned to Allomir.
He understood. His beaked face was transfigured with the beauty of it. He rose to his feet, smiling at her, then turned to Styanax.
“Is that not the greatest blasphemy of all?” he asked softly, but his voice filled the room.
Styanax sighed, and the anger and despair left his body. “It is,” he replied.
Cassiodorus’s features were contorted with fury. His rage filled the vast room and washed round it, spilling over everyone, feeding on the pride and outrage of the young men who were already preparing for violence. The noise in the room was a low rumble like a gathering tide.
Tathea turned to the judges. Their decision was plain in their faces, but they pronounced it with due weight and in the traditional words.
