Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (34 page)

‘Amaranthium offered me everything that Zorronov could not: a place to speak my mind and fight for freedom and justice. Yes, the Senate is a corrupt maelstrom of self-serving snakes, but it is a
democratic
mess, and I love being a part of it. So, Kal, if you are asking me to favour your friend in tomorrow’s trial, then I am sorry but I cannot help you. However, if you are asking me to see that the trial is fair and justice is done, then you have my word: it will be.’

‘That’s all I came here to ask of you,’ Kal said.

Greatbear smiled sadly. ‘In that case, much as I would like to accept your offer, Kal, it would be inappropriate for me to take a bribe.’

Kal stood up and took the senator by the hand. ‘Then I’ll give it to you freely. You’ve waited long enough.’

Greatbear almost choked on his zalka. ‘What, now?’

Kal laughed. ‘Why not? It won’t take long. Where would you like to do it? On the rug?’

She sat down cross-legged and stroked the skinned-bear’s head. The senator dropped his weight down opposite her, hastily re-arranging his robe to protect his modesty.

‘Are you ready?’ she asked him.

‘You realise, Kal,’ he breathed, ‘that after this, things can never be the same between us again.’

‘That’s true,’ she said, taking the deck of cards out of her shirt pocket and spreading them in an arc across the bearskin. ‘But there will be always be plenty of other rich gamblers for me to go after once I’ve wised
you
up.’

So Kal spilled her secrets for the very first time. ‘Alright, the first rule of cards is that you should
never bluff
, at least not against weak opponents. They’ll just call you anyway. And when you do play, always make a serious bet of at least two-thirds of what’s already in the pot. After all, it's money that counts at the end of the night, not the actual number of hands you win …’

IV.iii

Judge, Jury and Executioner

Kal woke up with a throbbing headache. She had stayed much longer than she meant to at Greatbear’s, and had sunk too many zalka shots. And then, after the gambling lesson, she had gone to Nim’s house party. Nim had scolded her for turning up so late, but was still eager to introduce Kal to all her university friends. Kal had been offered a bottle of dark, cloudy home-brewed ale, which after one gulp she had decided tasted like weasel piss. But even so, she finished the bottle, and also several more, and had even ended up participating in a party game. The aim had been to recite poetry, slowly at first, but faster and faster as the game progressed; Kal had crashed out, tongue-tied, in the early rounds.

Now it was dawn. The bed in Ben’s spare room was hot and sticky. Kal looked to her right, but the other side was empty; Will had been up to his tricks with his gang last night, and had not found time to visit her. Despite the looming trial, he was not worried about either Ben or Felix producing any evidence that might implicate him in the Snake Pit robbery, so he just carried on with his life as normal.

Kal mentally kicked herself. She had only known the man for a few days. Why was she missing him already? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t slept alone for most of her life.

She got up, washed her face, put on a plain white shirt and black trousers, and went downstairs. Ben was in his study, writing. He had his pen in one hand, and what looked like a slice of chocolate cake in the other. There was a half-empty bottle of frizzanti on the desk. He looked tired.

‘What?’ he said, catching Kal’s raised eyebrow. ‘All this is just party leftovers. It would have all got eaten up … if it wasn’t for the fact that my party was crashed by an uninvited murdering ghost!’

‘Have you been up all night?’ Kal asked him. ‘You should have got some rest, Ben. There’s only so much preparation you can do before you go insane!’

‘It’s not
all
stuff to do with the trial,’ Ben said, folding the letter and dribbling wax from a red candle over the flap. ‘Senators have many other responsibilities too, you know!’ He took aim with his signet ring, and banged it down on the wax hard and fast, imprinting the seal with the Godsword coat of arms. Then he slumped back in his chair and let out a deep breath. ‘Wake me in thirty minutes, Kal. Then we had better head down to the court house.’

Kal leaned in to try for a nosey peek at the address on the letter. ‘Want me to run and deliver that for you?’ she asked him.

Ben didn’t open his eyes. ‘No, it’s alright,’ he yawned. ‘I’ll get a goblin to take it. They make great messengers: they can’t read, and if they do get stopped, they’re trained to eat the letter. Actually, one in four times, they eat it anyway …’

Zeb entered the study. Like the pair of them, she hadn’t slept much either. The dark shadows under her eyes were matched by her outfit of black silk. Her long black hair was tied back in a braid. Unarmed, for a change, she still looked like a woman you definitely wouldn’t want to mess with.

‘Benedict,’ she said. ‘Why is there a crowd of cheering people outside?’

Ben opened one eye. ‘And so it begins,’ he said. ‘The trial is just a day’s entertainment for some people. I have my fans and supporters around the city. They’ll want to escort us down to the Forum. We should be safe, though; I trust the public these days more than I do the Senate Guard. So come on, let’s go give them a show!’

Ben leaped out of his chair, grabbed his purple senatorial robes from the back of his chair, and threw them over the shabby clothes that Kal was pretty sure he’d been wearing since the party. He picked up his document case and gestured for Zeb to lead the way outside.

The two guards sent to protect Ben tried to hold back the crowd as the three of them stepped out the front door of the mansion, but Ben ignored them and dived in among the people. Kal smiled as she saw him shaking hands and clapping backs. People were quizzing him about the trial, but Ben deflected the questions with jokey answers, and instead turned the conversations back on the crowd: ‘How’s the fish business, Haral? Hello Bullo—I’ve tried to get rents reduced in Crab Corner. That leg isn’t going to grow back any time soon, Mistra, but there is public money available if you bother filing a claim!’ Ben’s supporters were street traders, bankers, merchants and even other junior senators, and Ben knew all their names—a simple memory trick, but they loved him for it.

The guards awkwardly tried to clear a path and encourage Ben and Zeb on their way. Kal followed in their wake, wondering if the guards knew that the murderer they were watching out for was an armoured phantom who would be fairly hard to miss in a crowd. Probably not, she guessed; it was unlikely that their boss, Felix Firehand, had told them what his famous ancestor was getting up to these days.

The sun rose in the sky, getting hotter and hotter, as the group shuffled down and around Arcus Hill on their way to the Forum. Kal was glad they were walking slow; any faster and she’d break a sweat. The crowds on the street were growing as they approached the plaza of imposing civic buildings. Noise and clamour leaked from the Forum. Kal frowned: had
all
these people got up this early for Zeb’s trial? She saw a man run up to Ben from the direction of the Forum, and speak to him urgently. Ben’s eye’s widened, and he set off at a fast walk, leaving his supporters trailing.

Zeb had been left behind as Ben rushed ahead. Kal caught up and took her friend’s hand as they walked the final few hundred yards to the court house. The crowds ahead were getting louder and louder.

‘Is it too much to hope,’ Zeb said, ‘that the commotion in the Forum is because that bastard Firehand has become the latest murder victim?’

Kal’s mean streak wasn’t as pronounced as her friend’s. ‘I wouldn’t wish that kind of death on anyone,’ she said. ‘Don't worry, Zeb—we can win this battle in court, the fair way, without any help from murderers.’

They finally entered the Forum. Last night, when Kal had passed through, it had been deserted. Now it was jam-packed. People hung out of windows and crammed the balconies and rooftops. On the ground, the crowd was pressed up in the south-west corner, where on the podium, the four wooden posts that Kal had seen being erected now had decorations …

Two men and two women had been nailed to them: hanging from six-inch spikes that had been driven though their palms; hanging like salted fish left out to dry. A figure, dressed in green, was stalking the podium in front of the dangling victims. Kal recognised the figure’s weapon before she recognised the face—the sun flashed off the flat side of the lochaber axe like it was a mirror.

‘Amaranthium!’ General Cassava roared. The crowd cheered and whistled, simply in response to the name of their city being shouted at them. ‘I returned from the Wild to protect you, and protect you I will. Yesterday, when I was granted executive powers, I took an oath to serve this city in its time of need, and my work has already produced results: I have upturned the Senate House, poked around in its darkest corners, and look what fell out: traitors and dissidents!’

Ahead of Kal and Zeb, Ben was trying to push through the crowd, but people were packed into the forum shoulder-to-shoulder. Defeated, he turned back to Kal and Zeb with a look of anguish in his eyes.

‘Do you know the people stuck up there?’ Zeb asked. ‘Who are they?’

‘Senators,’ Ben lamented. ‘Friends. Certainly not traitors and dissidents! Pacifists and republicans, more likely. It looks like Cassava is cleaning house.’

The general was walking along the line of posts, her heavy axe held aloft with perfect control, its blade lightly tickling the necks of the nailed-up senators. ‘This fool was entertaining Dragonites—our city’s mortal enemies—in the Senate chambers.’ Boos and hisses floated up from the crowd. ‘This greedy leech was embezzling money—your money!—from the public purse.’ More boos and obscene shouts. As Cassava walked the line, thin red lines appeared scored across the victims’ throats. Almost at exactly the same moment that Cassava reached the last man and turned to face back down the line, the slits opened up like seams splitting in clothes, and fountains of blood sprayed out over the front rows of the baying crowd.

Ben stared directly at his colleagues as they died: a supreme effort, since Kal knew how much death and violence distressed him. Then he looked to Kal and Zeb and put his arms around their shoulders. He was pale and faint, and the women had to take his weight and guide him away from the crowd.

‘Is this even legal?’ Kal asked him. ‘What can you do about this, Ben?’

‘Nothing,’ he groaned. ‘Not unless I want to be next. At this rate, not even the new consuls will be able to stop her … and that’s assuming Cassava lets the elections go ahead.’ He urged them in the direction of a wide, low building fronted by a long colonnade. ‘Come on, let’s get to the court house. We can only hope that it’s a place where justice can still be found in this city.’

When they were halfway up the steps to the court house, General Cassava’s voice rang out once more across the Forum:

‘Kal Moonheart!’

Kal froze, causing Zeb and Ben to stop, too.

‘She is out there in the city somewhere,’ Cassava said. ‘Maybe she’s even listening to me right now. Are you, Kal? I know that you are also busy taking the fight to the monsters that haunt Amaranthium. What a team we would make, Kal, if you joined forces with me. Come to me, Kal—my door is always open to you!’

‘Not a chance, you mad bitch,’ Kal muttered under her breath, as she and her friends made it to the top of the steps and entered the court house.

IV.iv

Man of the People

Kal flopped down in the low, padded cerule chair. In the cool stone interior of the court house, its velvet cushion was the only soft place to sit. The court room was empty, apart from a handful of guards who glared at Kal for daring to sit in the magistrate’s seat (but didn’t themselves dare to ask her to move). Ben preferred to walk as he waited, and he paced the stone benches that would soon be filled with clerks, members of the jury, and other court officials. Zeb stood, arms crossed, nervously watching the sundial on the wall, the shadow of which crept ever closer to noon, when the trial would open.

Kal gazed absent-mindedly around the empty space, trying to clear her mind of all that she had just witnessed in the Forum. Carved coats of arms decorated the balconies of the public gallery. She recognised the crest of the Godswords—a vertical blade on a divided field—and also that of the Firehands—an open palm surrounded by fire, a subtle alteration from the clenched fist of centuries ago. There was another striking design that looked familiar, but that Kal could not put a name to: five skulls—one central, and the other four at the corners of a square escutcheon.

‘Whose crest is that?’ she asked Ben.

He blinked and shook himself out of this thoughts. ‘That one? Oh that’s the Truebolt family crest—the fallen legion whose statues stand in the Field of Bones, remember? Old General Truebolt insisted on the skull devices when the king knighted him before sending his legion off on that suicide mission. Truebolt was a mischief maker, by all accounts. He had a motto he was fond of: ‘If you lack—’

‘Godsword!’

Felix Firehand had entered the court room, and people were now starting to fill the lower benches and the public gallery. ‘I didn’t think you’d show,’ Firehand said mildly. ‘I thought you would decide to be circumspect and not risk your career taking on a man who has never lost a prosecution.’

Kal noticed Ben glance over at the jury who were filing in to take their seats: twenty senators, men and women mostly from rich aristocratic families like Firehand’s. ‘There’s always a first time for everything,’ Ben managed to retort.

Firehand clapped him on the shoulder patronisingly. ‘Well, there will be one consolation when you lose, at least: you’ll be a man of even
less
standing and respect in the Senate than you are now, so at least General Cassava will leave you alone.’ Laughing smugly, he walked away and joined his legal team on the prosecution bench.