Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (9 page)

The area where I was supposed to meet Maylien had a touch more polish and architectural
stability, but that was only because the Elite colonel who was trying to burn us out
of the sky on our way down had started a dozen buildings on fire in the process. The
residents had replaced them in much the same way that buildings were always replaced
in the Downunders: by scavenging in the wreckage and adding the permanent on top of
the temporary, but at least the canvas was new and the mortar between the charred
old bricks was fresh.

The burning leather shop where we’d landed had been replaced by a lopsided teahouse.
I found Maylien sitting at a tiny table on the porch outside despite the chill. She
was wearing stained leather and wool in the browns and greens the Rovers tended to
favor. She had her calves resting on the chair across from her, though her well-worn
boots hung over the edge so as not to get mud on the seat. An oversized pack lay on
the planks beneath her knees with Bontrang perched atop it. She had a steaming cup
of tea in her right hand and her left resting on the hilt of a utilitarian sword.
All in all, she looked more right and happy than I had seen her at any time since
she took her sister’s coronet.

When she saw me approaching, she nodded and smiled, dropping her feet off the chair.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d make it, but I ordered you a cup of tepid slop anyway. Now
that you’ve arrived I’m sure they’ll eventually deliver it.”

“I didn’t get the paper.” There was no point in holding the worst news back from Maylien.

She sighed. “I’m not surprised, really.”

“I followed your uncle and the Lord Justicer to see whether they’d recovered them.”

“And?”

I quickly described what I’d witnessed. “If either of them had it, they pretended
not to, though I can’t see why they’d have done so.”

Maylien snorted. “At court lying is like breathing. The one only stops when the other
does. But I don’t see any gain in it for either of them here.”

The owner of the teahouse arrived then and rather unceremoniously dropped a chipped
pottery cup on the table in front of me. The water was hot and the brown bits on the
bottom suggested that he’d dumped a few ancient and twisted tea leaves into it. That
or rat droppings. It was hard to tell the difference from the flavor, but I didn’t
like tea anyway, so it was kind of a wash.

While the two of us were dealing with the tea, Maylien tipped Bontrang off her pack
and undid some straps that bound what I had taken to be a fold in the canvas but was
instead a separate piece. Bontrang squawked and flew up to Maylien’s shoulder as she
passed what turned out to be a second, smaller pack to me. I undid the flap and glanced
in at a tangle of wool and silk and leather straps all tumbled together—my gear, including
the Blade’s garb that her seamstress had made for me.

“I didn’t have time to pack it properly,” she said, “but I thought you’d want it.
This, too.” She picked up an oblong bundle that had been hidden under the pack until
now. “Your swords and the longer knives,” she said very quietly.

“Thank you.”

“I knew you’d need them.” The door banged shut as the owner vanished into the depths
of the tea shop, and Maylien let out a long breath. “If we don’t have the paper and
they don’t have it, where do you think it went?”

I shrugged, there were too many options. “It could easily have been destroyed with
the way the Elite were throwing around magic there at the beginning, though I’d have
expected to see some remnants if that were the case. Or it
might have gotten buried in the wreckage of the chairs. One of the nobles could have
grabbed it, or that rogue Blade if the document stayed on the table when the duchess
fell. It was within easy reach of the king’s seat and the shadow trail was all over
there.”

“Devin?” Maylien asked the question with a deceptive sort of calm.

I winced. Not all that long ago she had spent some time with Devin, my onetime best
friend who had since turned into an enemy and traitor to our goddess. He’d chained
her up and threatened her familiar’s life as a way to keep her from using her magic
to escape. That was back when Devin had been working to put Maylien’s sister on Thauvik’s
throne—rather ironic considering present events. I suspected that Maylien hated him
even more than I did.

I shook my head. “No, even I’d have recognized
that
shadow trail, and Triss didn’t know who this was. One of the lesser masters of the
previous generation, probably. Someone who either never had the opportunity to distinguish
themselves, or simply didn’t have the talent.”

“I’m not sure whether I’m glad about that or disappointed,” said Maylien.

“Devin’s not all that great a Blade either, so it’s probably even.”

“You misunderstand me. I’m disappointed that I won’t get the chance to kill him myself,
but glad that you won’t have to.” Now she laughed. “Don’t give me that look. I’ve
seen the two of you talking, and I’ve heard you talk about him. I know how hard it
would be for you to have to kill him, and since I care about you, I’m glad you won’t
have to make that choice.”

I didn’t want to talk about Devin, so I asked, “What will you do now that the document
ploy has fallen apart?”

Maylien took a deep breath. “The slaughter at the Council of Jade will have turned
many against my uncle, and it can’t go unanswered. I will go to war against the Crown.
What other choice do I have?”

L
ife
is identity. When you kill someone, you rob what remains of the body of any true
relationship with the person that once inhabited it. That was never clearer than when
you saw someone’s head on a stake. No matter how perfectly preserved the features,
the
person
was simply gone.

The Duchess of Tien’s head went up first, a lump of dead flesh impaled on a stake
and nailed over the traitor’s gate. I watched from the edge of the square as it was
followed by more than two dozen more heads, including two earls, five counts, eight
barons, and a dozen mixed clan chiefs and other lesser nobles. The other thirty or
so casualties of what was being called the Jade massacre were being hailed as martyrs
for the Crown and given a mass state funeral paid for by the king’s personal house
purse. At least, that was the word on the street.

The rumors said that Thauvik was claiming that funding the memorials out of his own
pocket was the least he could do to honor the fallen patriots who had given their
lives to save his own. They were also saying that more arrests and
executions were expected at any moment, which sounded to me like a not so subtle signal
to any nobles who might want to dispute the official version of events.

The Lord Justicer himself supervised the display of the heads, an operation that took
well over an hour. The thick oak beam where they nailed up the stakes didn’t have
the room for even a dozen traitors, so while one crew was putting up heads and branding
their cheeks with the inverted crown of the traitor, another was mounting two more
beams. A huge crowd gathered in the square during the process, and not the typical
bunch of local knockabouts and urban poor for whom the displaying of traitors provided
a cheap morning’s entertainment.

Oh, they were there as well, and pleased as always to see their overlords suffering
some of the same rough justice that usually fell most heavily on those who could least
afford it. But there were as many or more in the crowd that had calluses built with
dueling swords, or the more utilitarian weapons of personal guards, as there were
those whose rough hands came from the tools of laborers. That spoke volumes about
the way the ruling class felt about the deaths of the previous day.

What said even more was that not a single one of the many nobles and their guards
wore the crests and colors that their respective stations would normally have required.
Cowls and hoods were much in evidence as well, far more than the slight chill would
reasonably have justified. The nobility did not want to be seen to be in attendance.
That suited me just fine, as it made my own cowl and loose poncho that much less visible.

Once the last head was nailed in place, the Lord Justicer mounted the scaffolding
the soldiers had used for the work and, with a face the color of yesterday’s rice,
unrolled a huge scroll. This was the proclamation of outlawry for the dead, and its
first reading here at the traitor’s gate was the main reason for the noble presence.

The Lord Justicer took a deep breath and began, “Let it be known that on this, the
second day of Winter-Round, His
Royal Majesty, Thauvik the Fourth, has decreed that the following individuals have
been adjudged guilty of high treason against the Crown of Zhan, and are forfeit of
their lives and titles: Jiahui Dan Tien, once Duchess of Tien and Countess of…”

The reading of the names and titles took a long time and the crowd grew steadily quieter
and angrier as each of the dead was announced. More and more hands fell to rest on
sword hilts, and the Lord Justicer kept looking steadily paler and paler as the names
and titles rolled out into the silence.

Odds on whether the crowd put his head up with all the others when he’s finished speaking?
Triss asked.

At the moment I’d call it an even bet. The nobility don’t like to see their own cut
down at the best of times and in ones and twos. The sheer number of the fallen here
puts this on the edge of the knife.

I wonder if that’s Thauvik’s plan? Concentrate the angriest of his peers in one place
and provoke them into the open slaying of one of the great officers of the realm?
That would certainly give him an excuse to execute the lot.

I don’t think he can afford that kind of bloodshed so soon after yesterday, not with
so many of his nobles more than half ready to start an open rebellion. Besides, if
he wanted to do that, he’d have the alleys packed with Crown Guard instead of city
watch. If Thauvik’s trying to provoke them into tearing his Lord Justicer apart, it’s
more likely because he wants to get rid of the last reputable witness to the legitimacy
of Maylien’s papers of adoption.

Now, there’s a thought. I could see Thauvik thinking that was a grand idea.

I nodded and then another idea occurred to me.
From his point of view it might also serve as a way to allow his lords to vent some
of their anger on a proxy for the throne in a way that costs him nothing he values.

As the potential for violence grew, more and more of the common folk wisely slipped
from the square. By the time the last name was read out, there were very few left
in that square who didn’t possess noble blood or carry arms for
those who did, and I began to think that Thauvik really had chosen to throw the Lord
Justicer to the wolves.

“…Clan Lord of Reshi,” said the Lord Justicer, concluding the roll of the condemned.

Total silence fell in the square while the crowd waited to see what further names
or penalties might be read out. This was the moment when it could all go bad and I
slid deeper into the doorway where I’d taken station, ready to shroud up or break
the door’s lock and duck inside as necessary.

The Lord Justicer paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “It is customary
in times of open rebellion, such as this, for the Crown to name those outlaws who
remain at large and to levy penalties on the families and estates of those who have
been adjudged traitors to the realm, and today is no exception. The Crown declares
the Baroness Maylien Dan Marchon
Tal
Pridu an enemy of the realm and all her lands and titles forfeit along with her life.
A reward in the sum of ten thousand gold riels is levied for the delivery of her head
to the palace gates at any time of day or night.”

I was surprised by that, actually. It was only one-fifth the sum that Thauvik had
put on my head, and all I’d done was put him on his throne. The crowd remained silent.

“Further,” said the Lord Justicer, “anyone, noble or commoner, who delivers the head
of the sorcerer-baroness to the Crown will receive the Barony of Marchon and all its
entailed titles and fiefdoms, for themselves and their heirs, unto the end of the
kingdom.”

That created an angry buzz in the crowd, and no surprise. Some were no doubt unhappy
at the thought of one of their peers picking up such a choice title. But I suspected
that it was the inclusion of commoners in the potential rewardees that really rankled.
It had been at least a hundred years since the last time any commoner had been raised
to the nobility outside of special recognition for valor on the battlefield. In the
entire half-millennia-long history of the Pridu dynasty, a grant of rank that lifted
a commoner into the peerage couldn’t have happened more than a handful of times.
Further, I couldn’t think of a single historical instance of such falling on anyone
not already in service to the Crown.