The sergeant raised three fingers and one thumb. “Three and a half days, sir.”
“I do beg your pardon, Sergeant,” the magistrate snorted. “Three and a half whole days. Then you rescued Trevor Irkoff and baked the prisoner a . . . casserole . . . for his last meal?” The magistrate consulted his notes. “The denial of which being what precipitated that particular horrible crisis?”
The sergeant nodded. He leaned back and stroked the stubble on his chin. “The poor fellow wanted his mother's special oxtail surprise. Had the recipe tattooed across his genitals, sir. Hard to get enough oxtails these days, but when I asked, all the lads were happy to chip in.”
I bet they were, the magistrate thought. He sighed, tapping the overflowing folder on his desk to settle the papers within it. “I should put you on report, Sergeant. But I won't. There doesn't seem to be any more room in your file.”
The sergeant stood. He braced his helmet under one arm, saluted with his other arm, and stared at a point precisely three fingers above the magistrate's head. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you again for the cake, Sergeant. It smells wonderful. Please don't ever bake me another one.”
The man held his salute. “No sir. Never, sir.”
“Dismissed, Sergeant. Please send in Captain Vice behind you. I believe he's waiting outside. Good afternoon, Captain,” the magistrate said.
The sergeant saluted the captain and left the room. Captain Vice closed the door and sauntered across the office, giving no indication through word or deed he heard the magistrate. Unlike the rank and file guards, the man wore the blood-splattered white apron and cap of a butcher instead of black armor over his plain, dark uniform.
“Good afternoon, Captain Vice.” The magistrate raised his voice and waved the man to a chair.
“So sorry, sir. Years of prisoners screaming in my ears. Now everyone else is obliged to scream, too.” The man shrugged.
“Yes, well. Take a seat, Captain.” Impassioned speeches. Heartfelt pleas. His own conscience, the magistrate thought. The captain is deaf to so many things these days.
“No thank you, sir.” The man remained standing, that stupid little cap still perched on his head. He folded his arms behind his back and stared down his nose at the little man in a white, powdered wig sitting behind a big desk.
The magistrate shuffled papers, rubbing the coarse wig against the naked patch on the back of his head. “I brought you into my office to chat about your upcoming travel arrangements, Captain.”
“What travel arrangements, sir?”
“But first, I wanted to talk about some missing paperwork. Please, indulge me, Captain. Old men tend to get sidetracked and stuck in their ways, and paperwork is my life. You have heard about my son, no doubt?” The magistrate asked, pushing the papers away.
“No doubt whatsoever, sir,” the captain replied. “What of the paperwork, sir?”
“Oh, I had a light maroon file mixed with the other paperwork on my desk the other day. A file meant for my eyes only. A collection of profiles for recently uncovered mages? Destined for the capitol? An unfiled, unsent, unopened file? Could you possibly tell me what happened to that file? Do you remember that particular file, Captain Armand Delacourt Vice?”
“Yes, sir. I thought it odd the magistrate would be so careless as to leave such an important document lying about on his desk, almost hidden in plain sight. I could only assume a mistake had been made.”
“Oh yes, Captain, I made several mistakes,” the magistrate said. Not dismissing you years ago comes to mind. And I should never have officially reported the incident. Oh, my precious Sascha. But it was my duty. And I am a creature of the empire and I am damned. I could not use the loophole the guild found to order another trial after I petitioned the emperor to close the loop. Mages are to be identified, captured, and eliminated. How many Black Guards on patrol that night turned towards the old man’s house, wondering, peering through the darkness? How many citizens heard my watch shrieking and started rumors the next day of mages in the East District?
“Sir?” Vice asked, brow furrowed with mock concern. “Are you unwell?”
“The file, Captain,” the magistrate demanded. “What did you do with that file?” Duty demanded I do something. Such a juicy rumor. Mages hiding amongst the nobility. The scandal of it. The city councilmen had started asking awkward questions. So I sent a company of Black Guards to scour the district and compiled the necessary paperwork with the age, address, known aliases, and mystical powers of the . . . rogue mage responsible for the East District Incident. That was enough to quell to rumors. I got the men out of East District before my poor boy erupted again.
“Sir? You are well aware what should have happened with that file,” Vice said, scowling. The magistrate glared, held up his hand to forestall the captain, and sank back into the dark mire of his thoughts.
I submitted the file to the local provincial magistrate as duty required. Then I buried it among a pile of recent mage reports and threw the entire mess into the stormy sea of imperial bureaucracy. One lost report might be suspicious, but an entire file? Why, I sent it on ahead and those bunglers in the capitol must have lost it. They lose my files all the time. Thankfully, it was nothing important. A stack of routine profiles, minor criminals. Nobody would miss them. Nobody would care. Nobody would harm my Sascha.
A lost file made a flimsy shield for his son’s curse, and the man knew it, but he was an official and a bureaucrat. He fought with pen and paper. It was the best he could do. It was the only thing he could do. The magistrate clung to that certainty.
“I took the file, sir. I read the file, sir. I sent it along to the capitol via special courier, as such documents require. The Imperial High Guards made the trip in two days. Bureaucracy is a beautiful thing, sir.”
“Do you make it a habit of going through my desk, Captain?”
“Does the magistrate make a habit of forgetting to file urgent documents, sir?”
“You could have waited. I could have done something.”
“What could you have done, sir? Legally?” The captain adjusted the angle of his cap.
“I hadn't filed the paperwork. You overstepped your bounds.”
“Did I through action or inaction, do anything the magistrate would not have done, himself? Was not obligated by law and custom to do himself?”
Only in the darkest screaming pits of my soul. “No.”
“Am I to understand it is no longer the magistrate's policy to file, and I quote, ' prompt, honest, complete, and accurate reports,' sir?” The captain cocked his head and smirked.
The magistrate could hear quiet shuffling noises outside. Almost like the sound of greaved feet pacing the hallway. He adjusted his robes, turned back to the captain, and wanted to strangle the man. “No.”
“Then I will be going, sir.”
The magistrate rose like a storm cloud, his black robes swirling around him. The heavy wooden, upholstered chair crashed to the floor as he thundered. “No, Captain, you will not be going anywhere until I send you there. And you will sit down, right now, if I have to bind you to that chair. And remove that damn cap in my presence.”
Armand Delacourt Vice remained standing in the face of the bluster, dismissing it with a hand wave. “Shall we dispense with this charade, sir? What did you think was going to happen? Did you think your status would protect him? Did you think the empire would rejoice at the news? That mage blood can seep to the surface of even our most illustrious families? That nobles are subject to the taint? I'm surprised the High Guards didn't execute the whelp here and throw him in an unmarked grave somewhere along the road. But they followed the law like all good imperial citizens should.”
“That whelp was my son. They had my son. Here in chains in a cell. My son. They would not let me see my son.”
“That child was nobody's son. He had no father. No mother. No family. No country. He was a wizard and a traitor to the state. The High Guards brought me the traitor and I null
ified him, sir.”
“He was my son!”
“You keep clinging to that, sir.” The captain leaned closer to his superior. “You cling with all the desperation of a drifting castaway grabbing flotsam when all the deep, dark ocean lies gaping beneath him. Be wary. The sharks are coming, sir.”
“Please, what did you do to my little boy?” the magistrate asked, suddenly morbid for details of a process he could never stand to watch and did not dare to contemplate now in the privacy of his own mind. But he hungered for details. He had to know. It was as though knowing brought him closer to Sascha.
“You recall the punishment for traitors, magistrate,” the torturer sighed, ticking the points off his fingers. “The Nullification Creed: 'Those without tongues cannot inspire. Those without arms cannot attack. Those without legs cannot rebel. Those without genitals cannot spawn. Leave the eyes to see what they could not destroy. Leave the ears to hear and to repent.' The boy's magical prowess and guilt were sworn in affidavit by a high ranking government official. I merely executed the sentence.”
“You did that to my boy?”
“It is not your boy, sir. It is a lawless mage. It is a vile creature. Its humanity is forfeit. It has become a thing of mutilated flesh and spirit. The High Guard will take that thing back to the capitol. There it will live out its short, remaining days on display in the Atrium of Justice, screaming behind a glass cage as a warning to all citizens who would dare betray their country. Not to worry, sir. The thing retains its dam's blue eyes and the sire's loose ear lobes.”
Sounds of the muffled indignation he would not allow himself to express arose behind the office door. The magistrate smoothed his features and swallowed the raw acid building in his throat, threatening to erupt. He made himself smile and face the captain. He was almost certain it wasn't a grimace.
“They are none of them human, are they?” the magistrate asked, his voice a quiet knell: the pounding gavel of judgment. “Those poor souls brought to your chamber? Those people you turn into things and punish for the good of your country? Such a patriot, Captain. Such a monster.”
"I'm no monster, sir. Your son was the monster. Now he is gone. I consider that punishment enough for your crime. There will be no report, sir.”
“My crime? Judge and executioner, are you now, Captain? Do you see these black robes? I still wear the robes. Punishment for my crime, indeed. No punishment is befitting for my betrayal.” The magistrate dug around for the Dragon Spleen he denied himself for so long. He touched the doll and swallowed.
“There are only two people who know what you tried to hide, Magistrate, and what came of it. They are both in this room.”
No, there are three people now, Captain Vice, the magistrate thought. Unless I am much mistaken, the third party has been listening outside my office the whole time. Someone needs to bear witness to this travesty.
“I protected you. I should have reported you to the High Guards for willfully withholding evidence and obstructing justice.”
“So why didn't you?”
“Respect, sir. To honor the memory of the man you used to be. I did respect you once, and you deserved it. There was no greater upholder of the sacred laws. Now I think you deserve to live with yourself and spend the hours in contemplation. I hope time and meditation grant you peace, sir.”
“Why do you hate me, Captain? Because I would not give up my son? What father would?” And what true, loving father would betray his son to duty? Oh, I don't think I deserve the quiet peace of death either, Captain, but I suspect my reasons are quite different from yours.
“I serve a higher power, which you abandoned, sir.”
“Your sense of duty,” the old man sighed, rolling his hand. “Your obligations.”
“No,” the captain looked surprised, “the empire. The glorious Iron Empire is so much more than the minor obligations of one petty nobleman. You remember our history, sir?”
“Our glorious history?” The magistrate echoed, tipping back the bottle of Spleen.
“In the whole 500 year reign of the Iron Empire, what was our greatest threat, sir? It was never invading armies that menaced our empire. When the barbarians attacked, we defeated and embraced them as brothers-in-arms. We welcomed all nations and creeds if they obeyed our laws though they brought dangerous inventions and wild ideas. We took what we wanted and waved at the rest, and it unbalanced us sometimes, but the empire adapted and thrived. The empire even survived when foreign merchants brought their plagues. We never fell to an external threat, did we magistrate? Our menace came from within.”
“Unstable Emperors,” the magistrate snorted.
“Some of them damaged the empire with their enthusiasm, yes,” the captain shrugged, “but the system endured and outlived them. I told you bureaucracy is a beautiful thing, sir. It flows and adjusts with the natural world, much like a river adapts to the flux of the seasons by shifting its path and carving new embankments. But the empire will not endure an unnatural world, will it, sir? What was our greatest threat?”
“The Calamity of 195,” the magistrate said.
“The Calamity of '95,” the captain agreed. “One thing brought the empire to its knees, sir: The Wizard Rebellion.”
“Some historians say they were justified, Captain,” the magistrate mused, sipping his rum. “All sorts of economic factors and clashing principles.”
“Nothing justifies open rebellion, sir.”
“The rebellion makes fascinating reading, really, if you are a student of history. With all those prosy allusions, I suspect you studied natural history. Or rhetoric, maybe.”
“Politics, sir. The only discipline worth studying.”
“Was ours a just response, Captain, to the '95 Rebellion?”
“Nothing justifies who they were or what they did. We must remain ever vigilant so history never repeats itself, sir.”
“But you do know your history, don't you, Captain Vice? In the glorious saga of the empire, we have spared only two mages the full traitor's punishment. You remember why our predecessors spared the first one, don't you, Captain?”
“There was nothing left to punish,” the captain said. “That magical abomination obliterated an entire city, down to the rubble and the ashes, and took himself along with it.”
The magistrate corked his bottle. “Very good, Captain. Now, think back more recently. The second wizard we failed to punish. Young Devin. Do you remember why?”
“It was horrible. Still gives me nightmares, sir. What he did was much, much worse and so we spared him. Who knew what terrors the rigors of full punishment would unleash from that demon? The argument has merit, I suppose.”
“That is indeed the official explanation as to why we spared a single mage in our relentless 300 year pursuit of vermin. Some rats are just too large to handle if their death throes threaten to destabilize the empire. You disagree with this, Captain?”
“Are you sure there wasn't some other reason? Some extenuating circumstance we spared one small boy with blonde curls? A shame we could not spare them both, sir.”
“Very shameful indeed,” the magistrate nodded, biting his lip.
“Young Devin seemed passive enough when the they brought him to me.” The captain smiled and flexed his fingers.
The prisoners are always beaten and cowed when they get to you. That is precisely the problem. You see an endless procession of toothless cats and you tend to forget these people were once wild tigers. Well, we didn't catch a tiger this time; we caught a dragon. And a toothless dragon can still breathe fire.
“Passive, was he?” The magistrate shrugged. “Even the most terrible beast is passive once you pull its fangs. Or maybe the monster was baiting you, waiting for its fangs to emerge to strike. We know so little about the mages we hunt. You remember what Devin was doing when we captured him, don't you, Captain?”
“The mages 'we' hunt? When 'we' captured him?” The captain quirked an eyebrow. “I regret to remind you that 'we' were not there whe
n our brave boys in black corralled the mage. 'We' both have higher duties to perform, sir.”
“Surely the men have recounted every lurid detail? Showed you their scars? Missing limbs? Poor Private Irkoff's face will never be the same. Forget the tales around the office. You live in the South District, do you not, Captain? You must have passed the carnage on your way to work several times.”
“I witnessed the aftermath,” the captain said quietly.
“That's as close as you ever get to the action, isn't it? Never carried one of these around in the field, did you?” The magistrate slammed his brass watch on the table, eyes skirting past the delicate, patterns melted into the metal, all that was left of his little Sascha.
The captain reached down and caressed the tiny, metal fingerprints.
The magistrate felt his stomach drop. He wanted to slap the man's hand away. But he couldn't think of that watch as anything other than a tool. It had no greater significance.
“So Devin the ex artificer was such a monster, we spared and exiled him so he would not become an even greater monster? Circuitous, tortured logic. I would have said the artificer's guild was twisting your arm, sir.”
“I sentenced Devin the Mage in accordance to established precedent and imperial law.” The magistrate forced himself not to bite his lip as he parsed that statement. For a wonder, it was true in every particular.
“Yet you would agree it seems suspicious, sir?” the captain asked. “That the one mage with ties to the guild should not only receive a trial of all things, but slip through our grasp with a slap on the ankle and roam free afterward? His weak punishment was a mockery of justice, sir. Why, it almost harkens back to the days of private law and noble privilege. Perhaps the guild used their insidious leverage to enact or circumvent our sacred laws?”
The magistrate pounded his desk, not all of his anger feigned. “Laws flow from the emperor, Captain, not the guilds. Neither the desires of noble nor lofty men, be they ever so powerful, are strong enough to create or abrogate imperial law. We left such nonsense behind us when we abolished the monarchy, remember?” Am I a hypocrite? The magistrate wondered. No, petitioning our emperor to retire a dated law is hardly in the same league as the obstructionist, legislative demands the captain is implying. Emperor Horatio II is a wise and worthy man; I could almost pity the mere guild that tried matching wits with him. I wish that's what happened. The emperor would have brought those miserable artificers to heel like a pack of disobedient curs.
The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 32
