by Hilari Bell
“But they’re hired thugs!” I protested. “They’re probably wanted for crimes in a dozen fiefdoms!”
“You’re probably right, but they committed no crime in Lord Leopold’s fief—I checked my writs carefully. I can’t hold them just on their appearance.” He sounded quite sorry for it, but his eyes ran over me as he spoke, taking in my rough, now muddy, clothes and the small scar on my chin.
I could see that he thought I looked no better than they did, and I straightened up indignantly. Fisk closed his eyes, like a man refusing to watch an accident he couldn’t prevent.
“I may be unredeemed while Lady Ceciel is free, but I am no brigand. I’m a knight errant, and I think my honor as bright now as it was two months ago, despite the law’s opinion.”
“You’re what?”
“A knight errant,” I said steadily. “In search of adventure and good deeds.”
His lips twitched in the manner I’ve learned to ignore. When you claim a profession over two centuries out of date, you get used to being laughed at.
“I see.” His manner gentled abruptly, as one who speaks to a lunatic. I’ve encountered that reaction, too, and find it more annoying than outright laughter. “But Master…Sir Michael, you might be the most honorable man in the realm and the law still couldn’t assist you while you’re unredeemed. You know that.”
I did know it, but his attitude stung. And I’m Sir Michael because I’m a baron’s son. The only reason anyone is knighted in these modern times is for lending the government large sums of money.
“How about me?” Fisk inquired. Despite the mud on his britches and doublet he managed to look almost primly respectable. He’d once told me ’twas his greatest asset as a con man. “They attacked me, too.”
The sheriff thawed a bit. “Well, Master Fisk, according to what those men say, you’re unredeemed also—”
“But I’m not.” Fisk leaned forward earnestly. “My debt was to Sir Michael here, and he pronounced me redeemed almost two weeks ago.”
The sheriff looked startled. “Was this registered?”
“We’re returning to register it now,” I told him, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “But it doesn’t have to be registered to be legal. It requires only my pronouncement.”
The sheriff ran nervous hands through his hair. “Aye, but did you pronounce him redeemed two weeks ago because he truly repaid his debt, or are you just doing it now, out of expediency?”
I lifted my head proudly. “I don’t lie. Well, I did once, but ’twas not for any personal gain, I assure you.” That hadn’t come out quite as I’d intended.
Exasperation flashed over Fisk’s face, then he leaned forward again, smiling with confidential charm. “He really doesn’t lie. It’s part of his…knightly vows. It makes…assisting him quite interesting. I’m his squire, you see.”
Keeper, his honeyed tone implied, and I bit my tongue on an indignant protest. Fisk was up to something.
“I see,” said the sheriff thoughtfully. “You’ve been, ah…”
“Helping him redeem himself.” Fisk nodded. “And if those men keep trying to kill us, we’re going to have a cursed hard time of it. You’re the law, Sir, and they’re clearly villains. There must be something you can do.”
“Hmm.” The sheriff chewed his lip, and I rehearsed all the things I intended to say to Fisk later. How dare he make me out to be a lunatic! But I kept silent now, for I could see he’d gotten the sheriff on our side, and I’d no desire to be ambushed in every town between here and Willowere.
“Very well. I can’t charge them for the assault, but I’ll hold them for a week for disturbing the town’s peace. The Gods know there’s witnesses to that.”
“Only a week?” Ordinarily ’twould be long enough, but remembering the way Chant had limped, my heart sank.
“Best I can do, Sir Michael.” He rose, and the interview ended in a flood of warm gratitude from Fisk, who then had the cursed gall to take my arm and lead me from the room, as if he was in truth my keeper.
“I suppose you think that was clever,” I snarled as soon as we were out of the sheriff’s hearing.
“It gained us a week. What else did you expect? I told you what happened when I went to the sheriff in Uddersfield, remember? Besides”—we were passing the bench where the thugs had been detained, and Fisk’s voice rose to a normal level—“it’s all your fault, anyway. You should have let me kill them.”
The change in his face was even more astonishing than his words—from prim respectability to snarling viciousness in the blink of an eye.
“What?”
“Let’s just sneak up and gut them, I said, but no, you had to give them a fighting chance. I tell you, Mike, next time I’m going to go for the kill, and be hanged to your nonsense about it being ‘more fun if they know it’s coming!’”
He kept this up till we left the building, long after we passed out of earshot of the alarmed thugs. The full Green Moon was setting, and the small, tan Creature Moon, only a crescent, had started to rise. There was plenty of light to make out the smug expression on his face.
“I suppose you think that was clever?” I asked wearily.
“At least they’ll think twice before attacking us again,” said Fisk complacently. “Noble Sir.”
“Noble Sir” is the other thing Fisk calls me when he wishes to annoy.
“Mayhap. Or mayhap they’ll try twice as hard to kill us before we kill them. Did you think about that, my clever squire?”
“Ah…” The smug look vanished from Fisk’s face. I had a feeling ’twould be a long time before he passed me off as a lunatic again.
CHAPTER 2
Fisk
Despite Chanticleer’s lameness, and the first snowfall, which dropped three icy inches on the roads, we reached Willowere in just two weeks, which was a great pity. At that point I’d have welcomed murderous brigands, or anything else that might have delayed us long enough for me to talk some sense into Michael. Not that time would have done much good. I might, eventually, have convinced him that his trust in the law was misplaced, but the other problem was his bone-deep stubbornness, and I don’t think a lifetime of argument could cure that.
The town guard was waiting for us at the outskirts of Willowere. Having experienced the speed with which country gossip travels, I wasn’t surprised they knew of our arrival—they probably knew that when we’d stopped for the noon meal, I’d mended a frayed seam on Michael’s good shirt.
Seated in Chant’s high saddle, Michael looked—well, not like a noble’s son, but at least presentable. I’d have tried to look as respectable as I could, if I had been the one who was facing the law. (Though the one time I’d faced the law, I’d taken great pains to look respectable, and it hadn’t helped a bit.) But I knew Michael was less nervous about facing the judicars than facing his father—more fool he. His father could hurt his feelings. The judicars could destroy his life.
The blue-cloaked guard escorted us, our horses’ hooves echoing off the stones. Gray clouds scuttled across the sky, and the wet thatch and patches of dirty snow made the town look very different from when we’d been here in the mellow brightness of autumn. The cold, fresh wind crept under my cloak, and it was altogether a grim and miserable day—but I wasn’t in the least surprised to see a crowd in the market square, surrounding the low platform where three black-robed judicars awaited us. A legal spectacle draws a crowd, as the scent of blood draws wolves, though perhaps that comparison is insulting. To the wolves.
Michael’s father stood with the judicars, his expression as cold as the weather, but it was the man beside him who caught my eye. His clothes would have attracted anyone’s attention, for the shirt beneath his black velvet doublet was dyed crimson, including the lace of his collar and cuffs, and matching feathers curled over his hat brim. If the ruby in the clasp of his short cape was real, it was worth half the town. But his face made his clothes irrelevant; neither handsome nor ugly, he bore the stamp of power more
distinctly than Baron Seven Oaks, and foreboding filled me even before I turned to Michael and whispered, “Who’s that?”
Michael, for once, looked almost as depressed as I thought he should. “That’s Lord Dorian, Father’s liege. He must have come to see justice done.”
Justice my arse.
With Lady Ceciel’s conviction, Lord Dorian had stood to gain access to his own deep-water harbor, which would have saved him a twenty-two-percent harbor fee.
Michael believed Lord Dorian was an honorable man, who wouldn’t convict an innocent woman for financial gain, but I have no faith in anyone’s honor. If I’d had any hope of Michael’s getting off, it died right then—I’ve never seen the legal deck more obviously stacked. What’s the difference between a lord and a bandit? The lords dress better.
I suppose it was to Michael’s credit that he dismounted and climbed the five steps to the tribunal with solemn composure. Me, I’d have bolted under the platform and into the alley behind it. The guards probably would have caught me, but it was a better chance than trying to reason with that lot. Of course, I’d never have been fool enough to come back in the first place.
“Michael Sevenson, thou wast sent to redeem thyself by returning the murderess, Ceciel Mallory, to justice. Hast thou done so?” It was Michael’s father who spoke, and the sound of the high speech, used to signify that a legal pronouncement was binding, sent a chill through me. The last time I’d heard it was when this same iron bastard laid out the terms of his son’s redemption in such a way that even if he won, he lost.
Michael, twisting like an eel in a snare, had rearranged matters so that even if he lost, he won. Or so he said. I’d spent the last month trying to convince him to throw over the whole mess and run for it. Even being declared unredeemed would be better than being marked as unredeemed. But I hadn’t been able to convince Michael of that.
“No, I haven’t.” He spoke serenely, and a murmur of astonishment rose from the crowd. “For she wasn’t guilty of her husband’s murder, or the murder of any other, though she has done things that I think should be reported to the High Liege, and her liege, that a watch may be kept on her.”
Baron Seven Oaks’s face showed nothing, but I saw him swallow before he spoke and knew he wasn’t as unaffected as he appeared. “Then I have no choice but to—”
“Wait.” One of the judicars stepped forward, which I thought quite brave given the way Lord Dorian scowled at him.
“You say that Lady Ceciel didn’t murder her husband? But our investigation showed that he died of poison. If she didn’t kill him, who did?”
“No one. Or rather, he killed himself. He was dosing himself with a magica potion in an attempt to cure his infertility—’twas that that killed him.”
The shock that rippled through the crowd at this was greater than when Michael confessed his failure. That, they’d expected—this was news.
The judicar frowned. “Can you prove this?”
“Not here and now, for the potion was destroyed.”
By me, on the mad night of Michael’s rescue, when I wrecked Ceciel’s alchemical laboratory. If Michael had told me that he’d recognized that potion, I wouldn’t have dumped it. Not for the first time, I wondered how Michael had spotted that one bottle among all the others. He’d told Ceciel that the potions she’d forced down his throat, attempting to give an intelligent person the ability to work magic, had failed, and she’d believed him. So had I at the time, for everyone knows that only the simple ones are sufficiently close to the two Gods to wield magic. Many people are born with the Gift to sense magic, but only if they’re close enough to touch it. After that wild rescue, I’d seen Michael stop to stare at a bush, or bird, or a young lamb for no reason I could see—something I wouldn’t have thought twice about, except for the fear in his expression. He’d found the magica bark and herbs he used to poultice Chant’s leg with remarkable ease, and he hadn’t explained that, either.
Now Michael continued, “It could be proved by an investigation near his home, for all the local herbalists knew of his trouble, and the methods by which he sought to treat it.”
The judicar signaled his notary, who scribbled busily as the judicar went on, “You have no proof of this?”
“No, but I’m certain of it. I would speak with you about Lady Ceciel later, if you’ll permit me.”
It was Michael’s acknowledgment that he was about to be condemned. My heart would have sunk if it hadn’t hit bottom already.
Michael’s father turned to Lord Dorian, murmuring, and the lord’s scowl deepened.
“To weigh her guilt or innocence wasn’t your task Sir Michael,” the judicar said. “You were to bring her back to Willowere, that we might make that decision. But given what you’ve discovered, and taking your youth into account, perhaps you might be granted another chance to bring her in?”
He turned to Baron Seven Oaks. Lord Dorian glared at them both, but the baron wasn’t one to bend to any man’s will—he thought about it.
My heart leapt. He was Michael’s father. No matter how much they quarreled, he surely wouldn’t condemn his own son, a youth of just eighteen, to pass the rest of his life unredeemed. Surely—
Then Michael spoke up. “’Twould do no good. I have no intention of kidnapping an innocent woman. If you want her here”—his eyes went to Lord Dorian—“then you must petition the High Liege to command her liege lord to bring you her case. I won’t do it.”
It was practically a statement that he thought Ceciel’s trial would be rigged, and it affronted every man on the platform as only the truth can. I cursed Michael’s innate honesty from the bottom of my heart.
The judicar stepped away, red staining his cheekbones. Lord Dorian didn’t blush, but the look on his face sent a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold wind.
Baron Seven Oaks showed no sign of guilt, but his face hardened again at his son’s defiance. “Then I have no choice but to pronounce—”
“Wait,” said Michael suddenly. “I want to state, publicly and to be registered, that Master Fisk has redeemed his debt to me and is now free of all obligation.” He nodded to the scribbling notary. “If you’d inform the judicars in Deepbend, I’d appreciate it.”
And I’d thought I couldn’t feel worse.
The men on the platform looked disconcerted at this unexpected wobble in the mill wheel of justice. The baron folded his arms and waited several moments, defying further interruption, before he went on, “Then I have no choice but to pronounce thee an unredeemed man—cast off from thy kin, honorless in the eyes of thy fellows, rightless in the eyes of the law. If any hand be turned against thee, thou mayst claim no redress, from kin, from thy fellow men, or from the law. These are my words, this is my will, let it be thus.”
“Let it be thus,” the crowd murmured. I said nothing. Michael’s face was very pale now, but his expression was amazingly calm, all things considered.
The baron’s face looked as if it had been carved in granite. “I now return thee to the hands of the law, that on the morrow thou mayst be marked with the broken circles of thy broken debt, that all men may know thee for what thou art.”
I’d dreaded it for so long, the reality was almost an anticlimax. The guards led Michael off to the moderate discomfort of the town jail for the full night that tradition granted an unredeemed man—giving him a last chance to find some way to pay his debt. For the broken circles that would be tattooed on his wrists tomorrow morning would be applied with a magica ink that never faded and couldn’t even be scraped or burned away, though I’d seen the scars of men who’d tried.
The men on the platform climbed down, the judicar still flushed and Lord Dorian grimly austere. Baron Seven Oaks looked perfectly composed, though rather white around the mouth.
The guard who held Chanticleer’s reins looked around, baffled. No one had told him what to do with the condemned man’s horse. I made my way through the chattering crowd and claimed him. After that there was not
hing for me to do but find an inn, and then…then nothing, I supposed, though getting drunk seemed like a good idea.
I drank one brandy and gave it up. I didn’t want to be drunk. I went to the jail to try to see Michael and was told he was talking with the judicars. No doubt telling them about Lady Ceciel’s innocence, despite the fact that she’d tried to kill him.
It was his choice, I told myself firmly. I hoped that would be enough.
I went back to the inn, had dinner, and sat alone in a darkish corner of the busy taproom, nursing an ale. Thoughts of getting drunk, which still didn’t appeal to me, alternated with wild schemes for breaking Michael out of jail—all of which involved first stealing a key. They’d probably let me in to see him now, but my pickpocketing days were years past and I’d never been good at it. Getting drunk would be more sensible. Even if I could lift the keys, or pick the lock, and find some way to elude the guards, there was a better than even chance—
“Master Fisk?”
I looked up, startled, at the woman who addressed me. She wore a servant’s gown, with a clean white cap and collar, and had a plain, sensible face, but my nerves tightened. The last servant who’d approached Michael and me was an old man called Hackle, who was looking for a couple of suckers to break his mistress out of jail—though he hadn’t put it that plainly, of course. If this woman asked me to rescue anyone, she was going to get a tankard of ale dumped down her dress.
“Master Fisk?” She sounded dubious, and I realized I’d been staring like an idiot.
“That’s me,” I admitted.
“Come with me.” Her voice dropped mysteriously. “A lady wants to see you.”
“What lady?”
