Ison of the Isles

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  “Don’t say a word, Gill,” Harg warned.

  They drew up to the Windemon on the blockade line at the mouth of the firth. “This isn’t right, Harg,” was the first thing Katri said as they clambered aboard. “I know we can beat them.”

  “You can’t see their fleet from here,” Harg said.

  “I don’t have to. I know you’ll think of something. You always do.”

  “Right. This is what I’ve thought of,” Harg said.

  She subsided into a discontented silence.

  Harg didn’t look back as the Windemon pulled away from the other ships. He didn’t think of past or future. All he had to do in life was get through the next hour, and then it would be over.

  They passed the westernmost lookout tower, then rounded the headland to the south. When the Inning fleet came in view he watched Katri take it in, as he had done from the ridge. She still had a defiant look, but it was a hopeless defiance.

  Several ships had guns trained on them as they approached the flagship, as if expecting some suicidal gesture. When they cast anchor a stone’s throw away, Harg took out his watch and checked to make sure it was still before noon. He turned to Gill. “Go over and make sure Talley’s there,” he said. “I’m not talking to any of his minions. Particularly not Joffrey.”

  Presently they heard the shrilling of a fife and the drumming of feet on wood as, on the other ship, the seamen and soldiers paraded onto deck and assembled in lines to witness. At last the rowboat returned, and Gill swung himself back on deck. “They’re ready.”

  “Is Talley there?” Harg asked.

  “Yes. Horns, but he’s a cold fish.”

  Harg gestured Gill and Katri to come with him. The oarsmen rowed them over, and they climbed the rope and board ladder the warship had slung overside. When he stood on the warship’s deck, Harg paused to take in the lines of silent marines and sailors, the wind tugging at their uniforms, snapping their flags. The officers were gathered on the quarterdeck, waiting. Harg forced his face into an air of impassivity as he walked down the double line of armed marines to mount the gangway.

  A group of Inning officers faced him; he scanned them to pick out the slight, fair-haired man he remembered, who bore himself as if shelled in armour, impervious and perfect. When Harg saw his eyes, they were not cold, as Gill had said; they were burning with an interior fire. Harg walked up to him, stopping several feet away.

  “Harg Ismol,” Talley said, searching his face.

  “Admiral.”

  “You have come to accept my offer?”

  “Yes.”

  It seemed to take an effort for Talley to drag his eyes off Harg’s face. He glanced around. “Where is Governor Tiarch?”

  Harg tried to sound unmoved, but it came out bitter anyway. “Fled. She has taken refuge with the Rothurs.”

  Talley’s expression changed. “This is not the bargain I agreed to.”

  “It’s all I can give you,” Harg said. “I can no more fetch her back from Rothur than you can.”

  There was a hard expression in Talley’s eyes, and alarm twisted in Harg’s stomach. It was perfectly possible for the man to go back on his word—take them all prisoner and destroy Lashnish anyway. He said quickly, “She can do you no harm from Rothur. You don’t need a hostage to guarantee the good behaviour of the Torna; and if what you want is an example, I should do.”

  Talley’s eyes narrowed. “You should. You should indeed.”

  Something was about to go wrong; Harg could feel it. He caught Talley’s eye and said, “I’ve kept my end of the bargain. It would be unjust for you to go back on your word now.”

  Talley was silent for several moments. Then he said, “You have betrayed your nation and you have betrayed me. I have no obligation to honour any agreement with you. But I am a just man, and so I will.” He raised his voice so all the waiting troops could hear. “I hereby take you into the custody of the court, to be tried for your crimes by law.”

  Before anyone could move, Harg turned to Katri and Gill and said, also in a loud voice, “See that all my commanders keep our agreement with the strictest honour. All ships are to be surrendered, all arms laid down. The Inning forces must be allowed peaceful entrance to the city.” He looked at them each in turn, till he was sure they understood: any pretext could bring the whole agreement tumbling down, and waste whatever good his surrender might do.

  “You may go now,” Talley said to Katri and Gill, in the voice of a commanding officer. “We will wait one hour before following you.”

  They turned and walked away then, down the row of soldiers to their own ship. Everyone watched them, motionless, till they cast off. Then a breath of wind blew past, and a stir passed through the waiting soldiers.

  “Take him to the brig,” Talley ordered. The Torna guards who stepped forward did not touch Harg, but fell in, one on either side and one in front. A seagull laughed as Harg followed them, but it was the only sound.

  15

  Justice

  The warship Pragmatic came into Tornabay at dawn. In the near-total gloom of the hole where they had him confined, Harg had managed to find a pinhole where the caulking had shrunk. When he pressed his eye to it he saw for a moment the city rising up the mountainside, still scarred by the fires. It looked quiet, as if exhausted. Even the mountain was no longer smoking. Then the ship came about, till all he could see was headland and sky. Voices conferred on the deck above, and a scow bumped against the hull. He rose, nervous with the expectation that something would happen now, but nothing did. That was the way these days; his life was one galling anticlimax after another.

  For days he had been blocking off the part of his mind that thought about the future, forcing himself to live one moment at a time. Once in Tornabay, he expected Inning justice to be swift and summary. There would be no time then for reflection.

  It was mid-morning before the marine guard came to get him. Coming up onto the open deck, he squinted in the bright sun. He moved stiffly, not just from lack of exercise; they had given him Inning clothes, and they fit oddly, making him feel restricted and uncomfortable.

  Alongside the warship a six-oared skiff was waiting. As he climbed down into it, he noticed the furtive, guilty stares of the Adaina boatmen, and wondered if they knew something he didn’t.

  “We bound for the palace?” he asked his guard. The man looked away. Harg said drily, “A secret, eh?”

  “A secret the whole city knows,” one of the boatmen muttered. The Torna shot him an angry glance.

  As the boat approached the shore, Harg saw that the dock was lined with troops in bright dress uniform, forming up to march. It looked like there was going to be a parade.

  Waiting on the dock was a mule-drawn wagon. A Torna sergeant curtly ordered Harg to stand in the bed, then brought some iron manacles to clamp on his wrists and ankles. It was then Harg realized he was in the midst of a performance, a piece of theatre staged to demonstrate his abject defeat to the populace of Tornabay. Talley was surely behind this; he wanted the islanders to see their Ison carted through the streets in chains.

  That thought stiffened his back and cleared his mind. It was not Harg Ismol being treated this way; it was Ison Harg, and by implication everyone who had fought against Inning. If this was theatre, then he knew how to play his part. There is one thing Talley doesn’t know: if the Adaina are good at anything, we are good at defeat.

  A fife signalled, and the soldiers formed up. The wagon lurched into motion, nearly knocking over Harg and the two Torna guards stationed on either side of him. “I hope you get a bonus for this,” Harg said to one of them. The man looked stonily forward.

  The route of the procession ran through the Harbourmarket, as if deliberately to retrace the way Harg had come as conqueror barely more than a month ago. The square was packed with people; even the upper-storey wind
ows had children leaning out, their mothers pointing and explaining why the man was being punished. Below, the shopkeepers had come to their doors to witness the last Ison any of them was likely to see.

  Harg tried to keep his head up and look out at them, as Ison Harg would; but every set of eyes wore a little more of the part away, and plain Harg began to show through in patches. He tried to wet his lips, but his mouth was dry. The crowds were strangely quiet as he passed, a thousand eyes just watching. He couldn’t tell if it were pity, contempt, or something else behind them.

  The procession plunged into the steep, narrow streets winding up to the Gallowmarket. Here there were fewer witnesses, and Harg allowed himself to look at his feet awhile. His shoulders ached from the effort of holding his head up.

  The Gallowmarket was teeming when they emerged into it. The impaling stake had been set up again, and for a panic-stricken moment Harg thought they were going to execute him then and there. He clung to the memory that Talley had mentioned a trial.

  Across the square the palace gates opened and another line of soldiers marched out to form a double row. They presented their arms, and then from the gates Provost Minicleer emerged, resplendent in official dress, to meet the approaching column. The cart carrying Harg, and the troop of soldiers around it, drew aside and came to a halt just under the execution stand, so that Harg stood with the stake at his back. The rest of the military procession came to a halt before the gates of the palace. A fife and drum corps shrilled a stirring tune. Then, bringing up the rear of the column, came an open carriage draped with flags and carrying the Admiral. Two people sat beside him: Spaeth, wearing a midnight-blue Inning gown and a jewelled silver necklace that echoed the coils of her hair; and Goth, so frail and wasted he barely seemed alive.

  The crowd hushed at the sight of the two Lashnurai riding with the Inning conqueror. The carriage passed through the square, then came to a halt just outside the gate. Minicleer walked forward to meet it. The drums rolled as Talley descended from the carriage to exchange some ceremonial words with the Provost, who then presented him with a red velvet-wrapped dowel with gold tassels on either end. Talley mounted into the carriage again and held the symbolic stick over his head. The people in the front of the crowd began to cheer. The Admiral acknowledged them with a wave, then turned to Spaeth and took her hand. She rose to stand beside him, breathtakingly beautiful, yet another Inning possession.

  Harg stood watching stonily. It was a cynical, manipulative show, but very clever. Talley seemed to be signalling that he would not denigrate the most sacred symbols of the Isles; he would appropriate them.

  As the honour guard saluted and the cheering grew, Spaeth looked out over the crowd and her eyes fell on Harg. The involuntary flinch she gave was more eloquent than a thousand speeches. At that moment, some Adainas at the back of the crowd began to chant softly. At first Harg couldn’t hear the words; but as the volume rose he realized the chant was “I-son, I-son.” When he looked in their direction they responded, even louder. The guards at his side moved closer, tense; one took hold of his chain. The chant had reached the Innings’ ears now, and some soldiers started out across the market square toward the offenders, but they scattered before anyone could reach them.

  The procession started up again. Talley’s carriage passed on into the palace, and Harg faced forward as the fortress gaped to swallow him. The unruly gang had upstaged Talley’s victory ceremony, and there would be repercussions. Talley had misjudged the Adaina. Defeat was nothing new to them; in fact, a defeated Ison might be even more fully theirs than a successful one. And a dead one might be the most potent of all.

  *

  It was three weeks after arriving in Tornabay that Nathaway Talley got the first intimation that his situation was about to change.

  He had been unwell ever since Harbourdown. The effects of the flogging had healed slowly, but left him susceptible to a series of infections, the latest of which was a painful bronchitis that made him chronically short of breath. At the same time, his nerves were corroded by the knowledge that at any moment it might happen all over again.

  Hope finally came in the form of a round, energetic man with a wild frizz of curly blond hair that ringed his bald skull from ear to ear. His name was Wabin Bartelso. The Wabin Bartelso, as they said in Fluminos—crusading defence attorney, champion of lost causes, grandstander extraordinaire. Nathaway had known him since childhood. He didn’t always win, but he had a knack for making even his defeats spectacularly public. There was no one who struck more fear into the hearts of prosecutors.

  Nathaway didn’t even know he had an advocate until the day they brought him to a courtroom for a perfunctory hearing before a military judge. It was held in the strictest privacy. At first, he and the sergeant guarding him were the only ones in the courtroom, and he stood waiting, unable to find out what he was there for. But when the lawyers entered the room and he recognized Bartelso, he felt such a painful surge of hope that his throat ached and he had to wipe away the tears that started to his eyes.

  They were not able to exchange any words before the judge entered—a Navy officer Nathaway had never seen. As soon as he was seated he called the attorneys to his bench for a low-toned conference and an exchange of paperwork. When this was accomplished, the judge brought down his gavel and announced, “Prisoner, you are free on bond. You will keep the court apprised of your whereabouts while your petition for change of venue is being considered.” He then rose and left.

  That was it. Nathaway stood stunned, his legs feeling too shaky to move, till Bartelso came over to him. “I’m free?” Nathaway said to him.

  “On a pretty pricey bond, so don’t go skipping off,” the lawyer said.

  It was not just the thought of being free; it was the thought that someone had actually helped him that collapsed Nathaway’s shaky control. This time, he broke down and wept, putting his arms around Bartelso in inarticulate gratitude. When he was able to get control of himself, the lawyer handed him a handkerchief and said, “Nat, my boy, you look perfectly shocking. It’s a good thing your dear mother can’t see you. Can you make it to the gate?”

  Nathaway nodded, wanting to escape before someone changed their mind. He had always felt safe and at home in courtrooms, but not this one.

  Before they reached the door, Bartelso stopped him and said, “You need to know, there will be some gentlemen of the press outside. I don’t want you talking to them in this state, but they need to see you. All right?”

  Nathaway nodded.

  It felt unreal, dreamlike, to be out on a busy, sunlit street, where people were going about their business as if it were a normal day. Bartelso had a cab waiting, and swept him toward it past the curious stares of the onlookers. With Nathaway safely stowed inside the carriage, the lawyer turned back to talk to the newspaper men. Nathaway could hear his tone of shock and outrage, but not the words.

  When Bartelso joined him in the cab, he said, “I’ve promised an interview to the Intelligencer, once you feel up to it.”

  Nathaway’s brain felt full of cotton balls. “What do they want to interview me about?”

  “Those prison walls must have been pretty thick if they could keep out all the controversy you set off.”

  “Controversy?”

  Bartelso assessed him as if to be sure he could handle the news. “Well, in a nutshell, what the Navy did to you sent the most frightful shock through the land. It was one thing to hear of a hundred cruel atrocities perpetrated against the natives—but a single injustice against an Inning, why, that was too much. And not just any Inning, either. It finally made everyone realize that what your brother did in the Forsakens today, he could do to them tomorrow. What’s more, he would.”

  “That should have been obvious for months,” Nathaway said bitterly.

  “Ah, but there’s nothing like a little sympathy to change the landscape. The natives who
suffered were ciphers. You, they knew. They remembered you as an appealing child. They’d watched you grow up. And those letters of yours—well, they made you friends you’ll never know. It’s going to be a pleasure to defend someone popular for a change.”

  So, popular or not, they were still going to try him. “When is the trial?” he said.

  “Not set yet. I’ve petitioned to get it moved to Fluminos, where there’s not this absurdity of martial law to contend with.”

  “No,” said Nathaway.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not leaving the Forsakens,” he said, with a touch of the steely stubbornness that had gotten him into this mess. “Not without Spaeth.”

  For once, the premier debater of the land declined to argue. “It may not be an issue,” he said. “Honestly, Nat, I think there wouldn’t be much eagerness to prosecute you, in the Navy or out, if it weren’t for your brother. This whole thing has gotten far too hot for the brass to touch, and they would just as soon drop it, if Corbin weren’t pursuing it like the moral absolutist he is. There is something vindictive about it. Your father made a devil’s bargain, giving up his firstborn to appease the military. I told him he would live to regret it, but he listens to advice about as well as the rest of you.”

  They soon arrived at the hotel where Bartelso was staying. It was a cozy, family-run place on a secluded street off the Rivermarket. The proprietor, a motherly Torna woman, took one look at Nathaway and decided that he needed pampering. He was soon bundled off to the room adjoining Bartelso’s, with a full meal in hot pursuit.

  Over the next week, as Bartelso cautiously reintroduced him to the world, Nathaway found that a striking Inningization had come over Tornabay. The war, followed by the arrival of something like peace, had brought an influx of journalists, contractors, and most of all, lawyers from Fluminos. The hotel where they were staying was packed with them, and the adaptable Torna had obviously learned to cater. Nathaway’s room was furnished with such studious Inningness that at first he suspected Bartelso of trying to reclaim him from temporary cultural confusion. The shelves were lined with classics, the food was a homey blend of recipes. But he soon concluded it was the Torna themselves doing it, because everywhere he looked it was the same. Inning was simply the fashion of the day.