“The lords will never accept it,” Landen breathed, half-astonished. “They have always had direct recourse to the Baron, or to an Assize overseen by a priest of sufficient rank.”
“And how often has a Baron’s judgment gone against them?” Chaddin spoke up now. “I served in the city for two winters, and in the field with the Londray spears for three campaigns. I was always near our father, and you know how soldiers gossip. Not once, not once have I heard of harsh judgment passed on a knight or a nobleman, especially if our father found him useful. At most he levied fines, for theft, wanton destruction, even murder. And he’d keep half the piddling handful of silver links for rendering his judgment and pass the rest onto the aggrieved. As for pressing? He encouraged it.”
“That does not change the basic fact. They will not countenance it.”
“They will if you make them,” Allystaire said. “It is remarkable what men will adjust to when you give them no choice. Besides,” he added, “they will have extra incentive to comply with the magistrate’s judgments.”
“Indeed,” Cerisia put in, before Chaddin or Landen could interrupt. “For on this score at least, lords and knights will no longer have recourse to a Temple Assize. Not with Fortune.”
Both Delondeurs whipped their heads towards the priestess, as if they’d be able to read anything behind her mask. In the dimness of the room, even her eyes were hidden.
“That,” Landen began delicately, “is quite a step for Fortune’s Temple to take.”
“It is. But it will be worth it if it brings us a step closer to a peace.”
“Are you quite prepared to forfeit the payments lords provided your priests for favorable judgments?” said Chaddin, more blunt than his half-sister.
“I am prepared to forfeit those priests,” Cerisia said.
“You cannot speak for Braech in this,” Landen said.
“We will not concern ourselves with Braech or his church just now,” Allystaire said. “I think we are not done with them, but I am not going to pretend we can control or anticipate what they will do. What should concern you both—and the lords you think will not abide judgments made fairly by independent courts—is me.
“If the destitute cannot have the recourse of the law, they can turn to the paladin. And I will see justice done, no matter how little you or your liegemen like it.”
Landen frowned, reached out, and tapped a finger against her winecup. “Why are you so interested in the law at all, then, if you intend to flout it?”
“I do not give a Frozen damn for most laws of the Baronies,” Allystaire admitted flatly. “Not as they are now. If we can make the least powerful served by the law, rather than scourged by it? Then I will care for the law.”
“How do I make them fall in line?” Landen began.
“We do it,” Chaddin said. “I hang the first one brought before me that deserves hanging. Swiftly. You maintain my right to do it.”
Allystaire nodded. “Precisely as I would have said.”
Landen sighed. “That will not be an easy transition, especially given that the man being placed over them is a former rebel.”
Allystaire waved a hand dismissively. “Ruling families engage in that kind of nonsense all the time. It only takes your word, and your willingness to back it.”
Landen looked across the table at her half-brother and extended a hand. “Our father was a monster who would’ve destroyed this Barony to preserve himself. I see that now; you saw it months ago. Help me put his sins right.”
Chaddin stood and took Landen’s hand. The two shook in a quick but powerful embrace of forearms.
Allystaire and Cerisia stood with them. “There is parchment, ink, and pen here with which to make all of this official. No doubt a set of Baronial seals came here with your father. The Archioness can provide her own seal and signature as witness.”
Cerisia was already drawing a heavy, curved silver handle from a pocket in her cloak.
Landen smiled wryly. “In point of fact, the Baronial ring and seals were missing when I came back to the Dunes.”
Chaddin colored and dug into a pouch, producing the thick gold ring, set with a disc of jade bearing diamonds forming the Delondeur Tower, as well as two seals, carved from ivory forming a stamp of the same device.
“Good. Have at it,” Allystaire said. “I intend to read it in the morning. Not that I believe either of you capable of outwitting the Archioness in some way, but I mean to have the Wit and Will of the Mother read it as well.”
“Have you more suggestions?” Landen asked, eyeing the ring that lay heavy on her palm.
“Aye, two. The first we will discuss in the morning. As for the second, not a suggestion as much as a reminder.”
Allystaire remained on his feet. While he did not have height on either Landen or Chaddin, he did have size and he knew how to command attention. He leaned forward lightly over the table, pressing his fists into it, hunching his shoulders and looming over them.
“Power can change a person. Often, it draws out the worst. It did to your father, whether slowly over the many years or quickly over these past few, I cannot say, but he became a monster.” Allystaire stood halfway out of his chair, pressing his knuckles to the table so that he loomed over it. “I am here, in this world, to destroy monsters like Lionel Delondeur. If I have a hand in creating more like him, I would not rest until they were so thoroughly destroyed that when they went to the Cold, the vilest of the dead there would recoil in shock and horror and fear at what I had done to them.”
He pushed away from the table. “Good night. Write fast. And legibly.”
CHAPTER 11
A Crusade for Peace
When Allystaire awoke, he stared at the wooden beams of the ceiling above him. Wonder if my breath will be visible if I let it out. Such was the cold that had seeped through the walls. Quilts and bedclothes had been tossed aside in the night, and a fire barely stirred in the small hearth.
“Damn,” he muttered, “did not bank it properly. Not sure I remember how.”
He shrugged, then rolled his shoulders and winced as the joints crackled. He moved to the window, pushing aside the hide that covered it and tugging at the edge of the oilcloth. The cold air of the outdoors slapped him across the face while thin sunlight needled his eyes. He hurriedly shut it.
“Cold rooms encourage wakefulness and activity,” he muttered, repeating it like some long-lost mantra.
He pulled on long underclothes, woolen socks and trousers that had been on the stones of the small fireplace, finding them only barely warmer than the air. He tugged on his boots and gathered his other clothes, then stumped downstairs.
To Allystaire’s surprise, he found Chaddin and Landen both stretched out upon benches pulled near the hearth. Timmar was moving quietly around the room, sweeping. Allystaire moved towards him, nodding at the sleeping pair and murmuring, “Found them this way when you awoke?”
Timmar nodded. “Aye,” he said back, though not as quietly. “Don’t think they’ve been sleepin’ long.” He pointed to the table and the stack of parchment upon it, pages thickly covered with precise writing. “Lamps were near out o’ oil,” he added.
Allystaire nodded, considering them. “I will wake them in a moment.” He bit at his upper lip. “Timmar, as to the oil, and to all we have been eating and drinking, I am afraid I have not given much thought to your expenses.”
Timmar waved a hand dismissively. “There’re no expenses for you, or the other servants o’the Mother. Not now nor ever. I’ll make allowances where I can for guests o’yours as well.”
“You have to make a living.”
“I’d have no life and no Inn and no family weren’t for you,” Timmar said, shaking his head. “This Inn’ll not collect a link from you while I live.”
“You have to get links from somewhere.”
“Do I? So
far I can trade for what I need with the rest o’the folk,” the innkeep countered, with a shrug. “Ever’one wants beer and my brother and I brewed it best, had the knowin’ of it from our da. Still do. I need bread t’serve, aye. So I trade in kind w’ who’ers got some t’spare. Come spring sure I’ll be needin’ thatch, but I can get help for work like that.”
“That cannot last forever. There will be things you need that the village will not be able to provide. Peddlers and the like.”
“Torvul can fix anythin’. No need for tinkers. Links will come when we need ‘em an’ the Mother allows it.”
“That is dangerous thinking,” Allystaire murmured quietly. “The Mother surely wants you to live and work sensibly.”
“And isn’t that what we’re doin’?” Timmar smiled, revealing gaps and browned teeth. “Barter does for the Mother’s folk for now. If I’m needin’ silver, I’ll present your friend the Lord O’Highgate with his bill. And tha priestess. Links will come,” he muttered, smiling wider, before turning back to his morning chores.
Allystaire chuckled. “Very well. I see you have it well in hand, but Timmar, if you will not take silver from me, at least take my thanks. I have not always spoken them to the people of this village. Things appear in my room or my tent: food, scarves, warm clothes, wine, lamps and oil, and I think nothing of it, because all my life, servants have been there to provide such things. Yet you are not my servant. I am yours. And I fear I have not always said so.”
“Cold but you use a lot o’words t’say a little,” Timmar said, grinning. Then with the grin melting into a more serious expression, he added, “Just offer a thanks now’n’then if ya feel the need. All o’us ‘ave seen ya bleedin’ for our very lives. Three times now I’ve seen ya fall, and e’ery time thought you’d died. Seems t’me most men would be dead, what you’ve been through, and you been through it for us. Thanks go both ways.”
“Three times?” Allystaire’s brow furrowed.
“The warehouse, the knights who come t’take ya away, the…” He trailed off, shivering. “The dead things.”
“Battle-Wights,” Allystaire said. “Name a thing and we fear it less, or so I hope,” he added. “At any rate, Timmar, thank you. Now I am off to go break the ice in the water barrel.”
“Got a mallet back here for that,” Timmar said.
Allystaire lifted up his right hand, curled loosely into a fist. “If I am to found a knightly order it is time to be back in knightly training.”
Timmar snorted. “Holler when ya pass out the fourth time so’s I can drag you t’the fire ‘fore you die o’the cold.”
Allystaire laughed, then he was out the door and, bare chested and bare headed, his breath was stolen from him as surely as if he’d been punched in the gut by a Gravekmir.
Still yourself. Master it. Count slowly to ten. He made it to eight before he began pulling clothes on over his head. Though the cold was already inside them, and he felt only a little warmer than before, he fought off the urge to duck back inside and stand as close to the hearth as Timmar would let him. Instead, he went around the corner to the barrel.
As expected, ice had gathered thickly on the top. He pushed past his elbow the shirts he’d awkwardly tugged on and took a deep breath, curling his hand into a fist.
Allystaire drew his arm back and then hurled it, knuckles first, against the ice. It rebounded. Pain blossomed from his knuckles, up to his wrist.
He grunted, moved his feet to take a better stance, bent over the barrel, and punched again.
Cracks appeared in the ice.
A third time, then rapidly a fourth and fifth, and his hand plunged down into the frigid water. Hastily he scooped it up, splashed his face. Then, holding his arm gingerly at his side but walking at a carefully measured pace, he re-entered the Inn.
He found Timmar placing hooking a large kettle over the hearth, and Cerisia, dressed in spotless white furs, sitting at a table where she could watch the door.
Her lips turned upwards into a faint grin. She murmured, “Really, Sir Stillbright? At your age?”
Allystaire hoped his cheeks were already reddened enough by the cold to hide any flush. “It seemed appropriate, Archioness. It is how every Oyrwyn squire begins his winter mornings.”
“You’ve not been a squire for many long years,” Cerisia said, her mouth still quirked. “Still, I would imagine that five blows is a respectable number for a rain barrel so deeply frozen.”
“Once upon a time it would have been two,” Allystaire said, smiling faintly himself. “But you are correct to think it a foolish gesture.”
“One would imagine,” Cerisia said, “that you of all men should have no need to prove anything to yourself.”
Allystaire shrugged awkwardly, feeling exposed as he stood a few feet from the door, feeling the wafts of cold air that edged around it. “Winter encourages idleness. I only wish to guard against it.”
“Idleness? Have you slept more than a handful of turns any night since you recovered? Have you rested a moment when you when had it?” Cerisia looked to the sleeping Chaddin and Landen. “You’ve more than fifteen years on both of them, and the labors you pushed upon them have laid them low. You are up with the dawn, breaking ice. I should think, Allystaire Stillbright, if there is any man who could do with a bit more idleness, it is you.”
Allystaire wasn’t entirely sure, since the light inside was still dim, but he didn’t think he liked the way her eyes flashed when Cerisia said idleness. Or the set of her mouth.
Or perhaps you do like it, you idiot, he thought.
Cerisia lifted a brow. “Break fast with me, Allystaire? We probably have matters to discuss and I have found it difficult to find time in your schedule.”
Allystaire nodded and took a seat opposite the priestess. “Why did you stay? Surely you could have escaped near the end of the battle.”
“Straight to business then,” Cerisia said, with a faint fall in her voice. She brightened as she resettled in her set and went on. “By then I had a vested interest in your survival,” she replied. “And in you knowing that I was on your side.”
“Why did you come to the battle, anyway? Your Temple did not commit significant troops. Nor did Braech’s. Was the Anathemata less of a threat than you had promised?”
“After the Anathemata was proclaimed but before the former Baron Delondeur gathered his men to march, Braech’s Temple suddenly had less stomach for the fight. I refused to participate any further in the battle than they did. So far as they knew, anyway,” she added, leaning forward almost conspiratorially.
“Are you trying to tell me that you somehow aided in our…” Allystaire hesitated over the word victory. “Survival?”
Cerisia straightened. “Did it not occur to you wonder why Delondeur’s bowmen played so poor a part in his attack? Did you not wonder why he didn’t simply bury you in missiles?”
“Too little time to train proper bowmen. The men he brought were, in the main, not real soldiers. A real archer is at his craft for a lifetime. A man without that kind of time with the bow is more of a danger to his fellows than his foes. Not to mention,” Allystaire added, “the ruthlessly practical was never Lionel’s style. Not where others would see, at any rate.”
“While that may have been true, surely he would have engaged in more practical strategies as he was foiled. As it happens, orders were given to arm every man with crossbows for an assault. Someone had the sense to test the weapons before marching the men off only to find that every single one was flawed beyond repair. The strings, especially, were broken. And the spares had all rotted.”
Allystaire was momentarily puzzled, till he remembered a contemptuous flick of the Archioness’s hand snapping the string of a crossbow that had been aimed at her. “Your doing?”
“The initially broken strings, occasionally rotted stock or fouled mechanism, yes,” Cerisia r
eplied. “I will admit that I was unaware of the cache of replacement strings. That, you can blame on Delondeur’s amateur soldiers; they weren’t packed well and the weather took care of it. But I would have done what I could.”
“Why? Your own Temple had proclaimed us outlaws along with the Baron,” Allystaire said. “I do not think I understand you, Archioness. You rode with an army to our gates, an army that your own Temple helped bring into being, and then sabotaged them from within.” He shook his head slowly, repeated, “Why?”
“Can you not credit that I meant what I said in the letter I left you about my sympathy for the people of this village?” Cerisia shifted uncomfortably, her eyes sliding away from his. “When I saw that the Baron had enlisted sorcerers to aid him, when I realized what that meant, I could not stand idle. I hadn’t the men nor the military knowledge to affect the battle directly. I did have the powers my Goddess grants to me, slight though they may seem to you, and I employed them as best I could.”
Allystaire was silent a moment. “Thank you, Cerisia. You risked a great deal in aiding us, especially, as I understand it, with sorcerers present. I am in your debt.”
Timmar bustled past their table, heading for the kettle that had begun to sing. As he carefully slid it from its pole, Chaddin and Landen began to stir, groggily sitting up and knuckling sleep away from their eyes, or the pain of having slept on a bare wooden bench from their backs.
“All I would ask of you is to do what I wanted when I came here in the autumn,” Cerisia said. She let that hang in the air a moment, and Allystaire felt the intensity of her stare, till it was broken by her delicate laugh. “Not that. What I want, Allystaire, is much the same as what you want: to avoid bloodshed.”
Allystaire swallowed, looked down at his hands on the table, noticed the slight swelling of the knuckles of his right hand, frowned. “What is it that you think I mean to do, Cerisia? Burn all Temples of the Sea Dragon to the ground? Tear Londray apart? Install myself as Baron in a bloody march to the Dunes?”
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