The Executioner's Cane

by Anne Brooke

  Jemelda’s lips moved, and Simon held his breath, bracing himself for yet another torrent of abuse he undoubtedly deserved. This however did not arrive. Instead the cook twisted her mouth further and spat directly at him. Her aim was good. Her saliva hit him on the right cheek, just below his eye, and flowed downwards towards his chin.

  “Murderer,” she said again, turned on her heels and marched back into the part of the castle she had appeared from. The kitchen, Simon knew, though he had never physically been there. Had never, when he was Lord Tregannon’s companion, needed to.

  Frankel sighed.

  Simon rose to his feet. He stopped looking at the doorway where Jemelda had disappeared and gazed at the cook’s husband instead. His figure and hair were a study of age and greyness, but the colours of his mind folded over Simon’s and were, as he had sensed before, made up of the softness of blue and mauve. For a moment, the Lost One closed his eyes and felt their refreshment on his skin.

  When he opened them again, his vision was blurred, but he did not raise a hand either to wipe away his tears or the spittle on his face.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Frankel shook his head. “I have done nothing, scribe, but you have done too much, and yet you still come to us.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “So you say, again. Yet my wife is right in her beliefs – your sorrow cannot help us. Not now and perhaps not ever. This land is marked for destruction and loss because of you. The gods and stars have made that clear.”

  “Yes, I know it. I am … no matter. You know what I would say already. But surely if I do not even try to correct what I have done wrong in some measure, then the gods and stars have every right to punish us all to the hilt.”

  Frankel blinked at the scribe, as if seeing him for the first time. The colours Simon sensed from him darkened and twisted together before flowing apart once more. In his hand, the mind-cane suddenly felt warmer, a heat that crept from his fingers, down his arm and then into his whole body. He thought it might almost be like hope, but he could not say for certain.

  The other man took a step back and turned away. Simon felt the tears dampen his cheeks, but then the old man turned again.

  “If you come in, Jemelda, my wife, will not harm you,” he said.

  It was only when, legs trembling, he began to follow Frankel towards the kitchen that Simon felt the brush of someone else’s eyes upon him. But when he looked up at a window high at the corner of the ruined building, there was nobody there.

  Ralph

  Simon is here. Covered in mud, wearied and his beautiful cloak torn from the gods and stars know what kind of terrible journey, but he is here. Ralph has never believed he would come. Simon the Scribe. It is what he has dreamed of. It is what he has dreaded.

  Jemelda upbraids him and Simon sinks to his knees. If Ralph were there on the courtyard now, beside Simon, he would tear his servant apart until she ceased to speak. That kind of courage is, however, no longer his. The pounding of his heart is so great in his ears he is surprised Simon does not hear him and look up. But he does not. Ralph knows with the full intent of his blood it is not this man the cook should be accusing in the way she does. It is Ralph.

  Still, it is what Simon grasps that sends shivers through Ralph’s skin. In his hand, Simon holds the mind-cane, its black length and silver-carved top seeming to be an extension of himself. It fits more naturally there than it ever did in the mind-executioner’s hand. Gelahn is dead. Ralph knows that. He saw it happen. He saw the moment when Annyeke Hallsfoot, the Gathandrian First Elder, took up the mind-sword and he saw the moment when the understanding of death swept through Gelahn’s eyes. He will never forget either of these images; they live always in his memory. He did not expect Simon would take the cane and return here. Whatever comes of this, it cannot bode well for any of them. Perhaps if he had the courage to take his stand in the courtyard right now, it should not be Jemelda, but Simon he would need to fight.

  Why has he come here?

  By now the shouting has stopped and Jemelda turns to go. Another pause and then as Ralph blinks to try to focus on the scene, Simon struggles to his feet and limps towards the castle, following the grey-haired old man, Frankel. Ralph is just about to withdraw from his vantage point when he is sure Simon glances up and sees him.

  Ralph scrabbles backwards, all but stumbling over a small table. If he thought his heart was beating fast before, then it is as nothing compared to the pace of it now. Simon must not see him. When Ralph reaches the wall furthest from the window, he slides down, feeling the harsh stone on his back, until he lands on the floor. He is trembling but has no way of stopping it. Something has begun. Something has begun here today, and he is not prepared for it.

  Without thinking, Ralph finds he is crawling towards the makeshift bedding underneath the fractured sky. He feels as if a great weight is looming above, something to face in the future but he longs to hide from it. As he curls inwards both in body and mind – what he has left of it – Ralph understands two things and two things only: the first is that if Simon comes here to do what is wrong, then he does not have the strength to gainsay him; and if he comes here, somehow, to do what is right, then there is no place for Ralph in his plans. Perhaps there never has been.

  It is true then what the gods tell them. What must be, will be, and always too soon.

  First Gathandrian Interlude

  Annyeke

  “No,” said Annyeke Hallsfoot the First Elder of Gathandria, hands on hips, facing her husband who was sitting at the other side of the eating table and was also, to her chagrin, smiling quietly. “Absolutely not. Why should I change my name simply because we have taken the ancient vows together? What good have the traditions been to us so far?”

  “Well, I …” Johan Montfort began to reply, but Annyeke gave him no ground. Which was, she fully accepted, unfair to a man who had had no option but to move into her tiny home due to his own being destroyed in the Wars and had also had the foolishness to ask her to marry him.

  “And besides what have our menfolk given us recently but death and loss and misery?” was her final triumphant question.

  Johan blinked and his smile vanished. Instead one eyebrow raised in a manner she recognised from the not-too-distant day-cycles when her new husband had been her overseer at the Sub-Council of Meditation. In truth, those experiences seemed like a lifetime away. But always the raised brow had signified some misdemeanour of hers which would need to be corrected shortly. Back then, he’d tended to be right in his judgements and she had to acknowledge he was right this day-cycle. Probably.

  Annyeke grimaced, drew up a stool and sat down opposite him. She sighed. “All right. I accept my last statement may have been rather too harsh, but just because I’ve married you doesn’t mean my whole personality changes, you know. I love you, Johan, but I’m still me.”

  This time he laughed before reaching out and holding her hand. She could feel the warmth of his touch flowing upward through her skin. Red and gold and lilac.

  “I know,” he said. “If you weren’t who you are, then I would not be as happy as I am now. And yes, I understand what the former Gathandrian elders have done to our lands and the lands of our neighbours. But I am a man, as is the Lost One, Simon himself. We are not against you, but for you. Surely men and women must work together if we are to be what we could be?”

  She took his hand, kissed it once before letting go.

  “Now that depends entirely on the men and women involved,” she replied. One of the best things about being married to Johan, even if only for a couple of week-cycles so far, was how easily teased he’d turned out to be. Gathandrian women needed every kind of good thing they could find in the great task they all faced of rebuilding their country and, she hoped, that of their neighbours too.

  This time, however, Johan neither frowned nor grimaced, nor even rolled his eyes at her. No, this time, he sprang up from the table, took the three paces needed to bring him to her side
and gazed down at her. His deep blue eyes and serious expression never failed to make it hard for her to breathe, and she experienced no change to that response now. Perhaps men always had the last word.

  Before she could think of gathering her thoughts together and making a suitably caustic comment which would uphold the honour of Gathandrian womanhood wherever it might be found, the colours flowing round him shifted from gold and the calmest of blues to a shade of deep swirling red. They made a pleasing contrast to the soft yellows of her kitchen-area. The next moment, he’d pulled her to her feet – an action that only made her level with the height of his chest – and gathered her into one of his unexpected but welcome mountain-hugs. She breathed in the scent of him – rosemary and winter-jasmine mixed with the wool of his tunic – and smiled. Knew he sensed her smiling. Then she heard his whispered words reverberating in her mind, not spoken aloud.

  You’re right, my love. Everything depends on the man and woman involved.

  *****

  Some time later, Annyeke lay on her back staring up at the patterns of her wooden ceiling. She’d always enjoyed allowing her eye to take in the ebb and flow of the grain. It was an aid to meditation, a secret pleasure. Though of course she would never have admitted it to anyone else apart from her husband. As First Elder of this great city, she couldn’t afford to seem either dull or strange. She sighed and snuggled up to Johan who was lying on his front, snoring quietly. Something she’d teased him about at once when she found the custom out after their joining, and something he’d always strenuously denied. His presence here with her, when she’d kept her feelings hidden for so long, was still a source of pleasure, and it made her gazing at the ceiling and thinking moments more companionable too. Even when he was asleep.

  Because she knew this moment of peace would be short-lived. The remaining elders were expected back in the city later this day-cycle. They had stayed in the place of prayer since the end of the battle – a time she skirted round in her head as the memory of it was currently beyond even her strength – but now they were coming home. She understood why they had stayed away. She could feel their prayer, both its strength and its weakness, flowing through the cold winter-cycle air and through the fields’ lengths between the city and their small gathering. It had been doing this for many days. She had told no-one about it, understanding somehow it was only she who could sense the elders’ prayers. She had not even told Johan, though she thought once or twice he might have guessed at something different in the colours which surrounded her and in the shifts in her thoughts. Annyeke would not bar him from even the deepest areas of her mind. For her, this joining was everything. No, the mind-link strangely forged with the missing elders must be something to do with her new role, and the responsibilities she carried. She had said to herself when she had simply been Acting Elder that it was good for a woman to step forward to take on such a duty. But, by the gods and stars, the road she had chosen to walk on since then had not been easy. No, she would not think of the mind-executioner’s death, it was done, it was done. She must think instead, even as her thoughts latched onto the regularity and distinctiveness of the wood slats above her, of how she might manage the returning elders, and what role they who had betrayed the city to suffering could have in its restitution.

  If only Simon the Lost One were still here. She had grown fond of him in the short time they had been together, trying between the two of them to understand the power of the mind-cane. He had been even more unsure than herself, but he had a kind of courage which showed itself when the greatest need for it arose. She couldn’t help but admire that. She hoped whatever was happening for him in the Lammas Lands would be good, and they would see him again soon. With or without his wretched bird.

  Next to her on the blankets, Johan stirred. In sleep, he reached for her, mumbled something she couldn’t catch and then wrapped his fingers round her arm. The muttering eased away. Annyeke smiled again.

  The love-creation they shared between them had been a revelation also. Indeed she wished she had been joined to him far sooner than this, although all the gods and stars knew the time then would not have been right. Their love had been forged in battle, when the true calibre of them both had been most clearly seen.

  Now though things were different. Annyeke snuggled closer to the man she loved and her smile deepened. What she had discovered with him here was a thousand times better than she’d expected from all her most private dreams. In truth, her knowledge of a joining relationship had been hazy at best; she couldn’t remember her mother and father ever having been happy together, and of course they were both dead. How she felt about her husband and how they were together was, she imagined, as far removed from her parents’ experience as … as the distance of the land of the mountains from the Gathandrian city.

  Though the mountains were destroyed, lost forever in the war. They would never return. Annyeke swallowed and felt the darkness of loss spike through her mind. She shook it away, refusing to allow the memory to spoil this moment, here and now. Because all she could sense around her, apart from her own doubts, was peace. The peace of her simple wooden ceiling, the peace of the blankets wrapped around their bodies, keeping the winter chill from their skin. Even the peace the two of them had created in this room – she could sense its soft golden colours drifting through her thoughts. She treasured each sensation, trying to hold on to it, make it part of herself, for as long as she could. But, no matter how much she tried, she could not gainsay the sense of something about to happen, something just out of reach which might take all this happiness away. Or, at the very least, leave it as something to be put aside in the light of her Eldership duties and then picked up once more when she was able. And, more than anything, she wanted her husband to be the major part of her life. She hated the thought that being First Elder might make things difficult. Still, Johan had his own role in the Sub-Council of Meditation, which would become increasingly vital as the Gathandrians began to rebuild their world. Both of them would be busy.

  So many fields to seed and so many paths to walk on ahead. She should stop worrying, and trust to her own skills to cope with whatever lay in the future.

  With that comforting thought filling her mind, Annyeke closed her eyes and slept again, the warmth of Johan’s body wrapping itself around hers as she slept.

  Her rest that morning was dreamless and held no terrors for her. She had planned to wake long before Talus, her young charge, returned from his makeshift school for the midday meal, but in the event it was the tendrils of his enquiring mind which disturbed her and brought her gasping awake and blinking almost unseeingly at her ceiling again.

  The light swish of the curtain hanging across her front door brought Talus’ thoughts into sharper focus as he came inside, and Annyeke slipped out of the bed and grabbed her clothes. Johan stirred and mumbled something, but she paid him no attention. As she struggled into her tunic, Annyeke spun a quick mind-net round her bedroom so Talus wouldn’t dart in to try to find her. Not that he would do such a thing – at only seven summers, he found any notion of romance between adults utterly horrifying – but in her experience you could never be too careful. She made the net’s colours yellow and lilac – the colours that seemed most suited to them both.

  As she swung back her rich red hair and reached for the clip, she realised something she hadn’t had the sense to pick up on first. Talus was worried. Something had happened. Without a second thought, she dropped the clip and ran for the front room.

  She entered in a cloud of concern and brushing back her hair with one sweep of her hand in order to be able to see properly. Talus blinked at her, eyes wide.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him, her words falling over themselves in the attempt to be heard. “What’s happened?”

  It might have been easier to probe his mind, but Annyeke had never been a supporter of using that technique when dealing with a child. In any case, her words tended to spill out when they were needed and she’d never been able to sto
p them, not fully.

  Talus blinked at her again and she glanced down. Seeing the top of her tunic was open to the elements, Annyeke felt her skin redden and she hurried to close the buttons.

  Sorry, little one, I was sleeping.

  At least that wasn’t a complete lie, she thought. She needn’t have worried however. Talus just shrugged. But she could still sense the lines of concern in his mind. They didn’t diminish even as she heard footsteps behind her and felt the warm aura of Johan at her side.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked quietly, repeating the question she’d asked only a heartbeat ago.

  But by then she knew exactly what had happened. She could see the image in Talus’ mind even as he spoke the words aloud. She could see the small group of them standing in the snow outside her home waiting for her permission to enter. Her own mind-net must have served to make her ignorant of their presence, although she could not guess how long they might have been there. Once she let them in – as she must do for the sake of her land and her own peace – then everything would be different and everything would begin.

  “It’s the elders,” Talus whispered. “They’re back.”

  Chapter Three: The Mission

  Simon

  Inside, Jemelda’s kitchen was dark and when he entered, Simon had to blink and allow his eyes to adjust before he could see anything. The snow-raven remained in the courtyard and the scribe had had the wit to deposit the mind-cane near the bird. The two of them should be able to look after each other well enough. The cook herself said nothing. She simply bustled about at the work surface near the small window, keeping her back distinctly turned. The scribe could sense the colours pouring from her in short bursts: red, black, deathly white. He had no need to enquire as to what her feelings might be, though they seemed to run far deeper than he had anticipated. But he could not blame her. It was up to Frankel to offer him half a smile and nod, silently, at a small stool to the left of the door.