The Gentleman Bastard Series (195 page)

“With respect, Archedon, I would call on the assembly to also consider the question of higher morality.” This from a pale woman in the first row of seats. Her left arm is missing, and a fold of robe hangs pinned at that shoulder like a mantle. She stands, and with her other hand sweeps her hood back, revealing thin blonde hair woven tightly under a silver mesh cap. This gesture is the privilege of a Speaker, announcing her intention to take the floor and attempt to influence the current discussion.

Jean knows this woman from Patience’s subtle whispers—
Navigator
, three rings, born on a Vadran trading ship and brought to Karthain as a child. Her private obsession is the study of the sea, and she is closely identified with Patience’s allies.

“Speaker,” says Jean/Patience, “you know full well that no proposed contract need be proven against
anything
broader than our own Mandates.”

Patience gets this out quickly, to create an impression of neutrality that is not entirely honest and to stress the obvious before someone with a more belligerent outlook can seize the chance to make a fiercer denunciation.

“Of course,” says Navigator. “I have no desire to challenge the law provided by our founders in all their formidable sagacity. I am not suggesting that we test the proposed contract on my terms, but that we have an obligation to test ourselves.”

“Speaker, the distinction is meaningless.” Foresight speaks now, youngest of the arch-magi, barely forty. She and the Falconer are associates. She is also the most aggressive of the five-ring magi, her will as hard as Elderglass. “We are divided on questions of clear and binding law. Why do you muddle this deliberation with nebulous philosophy?”

“The point is hardly nebulous, Archedama. It bears directly upon the first Mandate, the question of self-harm. The sheer scope of the slaughter this Anatolius proposes risks some diminishment of ourselves if we agree to it. We are discussing the single greatest bloodbath in the history of our black contracts.”

“Speaker, you exaggerate,” says Foresight. “Anatolius has been clear concerning his plans for the nobility of Camorr. Few, if any, would actually be killed.”

“Candidly, Archedama, you surprise me with your dissembling. Surely we are not such children as to delude ourselves that someone reduced to the state of a living garden decoration by Wraithstone poisoning has
not
, by any practical measure, been murdered!”

There is a brightening in the artificial sky as the sun peeks above the horizon. Regardless of the justice of Navigator’s argument, the assembly approves of the manner in which she’s making it. The ceiling responds to the mental prodding of the magi in attendance. The sun literally shines on those that capture general approval, and visibly sets on those that stumble in their arguments.

“Sister Speaker,” says the Falconer, rising calmly and pushing his own hood back. Jean feels another chill at the uncovering of his familiar features—the receding hairline, the bright dangerous eyes and easy air of command. “You’ve never been coy about the fact that you oppose black contracts on general principle, have you?”

Jean draws knowledge from Patience’s whispers. There are about half a dozen Speakers at any time, popular and forthright magi, chosen by secret ballots. They have no power to make or contravene laws, but they do have the right to intrude on Sky Chamber discussions and indirectly represent the interests of their supporters.

“Brother Speaker, I’m not aware of having been coy about anything.”

“What, then, is the full compass of your objection? Is it all higher morality?”

“Wouldn’t that be sufficient? Isn’t the question of whether we might be found wanting at the weighing of our souls an
adequate
basis for restraint?”

“Is it your only basis?”

“No. I also put forth the question of our dignity! How can we not do it an injury when we reduce ourselves to paid assassins for the ungifted?”

“Is that not the very credo by which we work?
Incipa veila armatos de
—‘we become instruments,’ ” says the Falconer. “To serve the client’s
design, we make ourselves tools. Sometimes that makes us weapons of murder.”

“Indeed, a murder weapon is a tool. But not all tools are murder weapons.”

“When our prospective clients want us to find lost relatives or summon rain, do we not take the contracts? Such is the condition of the world, however, that they tend to want our assistance in matters which are regrettably more
sanguine
.”

“We are not helpless in the choosing of the contracts proposed to—”

“Sister Speaker, your pardon. I interrupt because I fear that we are prolonging this discussion unnecessarily. Allow me to lay your points to rest, so that we may return to cutting our previous knot. You say it’s the scope of this particular contract that earns your strenuous objection. How do you suggest that we scale it down to a more agreeably moral operation?”

“Scale it down? The whole enterprise is so bloodthirsty and reckless that I can hardly conceive of how we might mitigate it by sparing a few victims among the crowd.”

“How many would we have to spare for such mitigation as would please you?”

“You know as well as I, Brother Speaker, that this is not a question of simple arithmetic.”

“Isn’t it? You’ve listened to proposals for many black contracts over the years, contracts involving the removal of individuals, gangs, even families. You might have objected in principle, but you never made any attempt to have them disallowed.”

“A contract for a single murder, while an undignified thing in itself, is at least more precise than the wholesale destruction of an entire city-state’s rulers!”

“I see. Can we agree, then, on a point at which ‘precise’ becomes ‘wholesale’? How many removals tip the balance? Are fifteen corpses moral, but sixteen excessive? Or seventeen? Or twenty-nine? Surely we must be able to compromise. The low triple digits, perhaps?”

“You are deliberately reducing my argument past the point of absurdity!”

“Wrong, Sister Speaker. I take your points very seriously. They have been treated seriously in our laws and customs for centuries! And they have been treated thus:
Incipa veila armatos de!
We become instruments. Instruments do not judge!”

The Falconer spreads his arms. Vestris flaps her wings, hops to his left shoulder, and settles back into comfortable stillness.

“That has been our way for centuries, precisely because of situations like this.
Precisely
because we are not gods, and we are not wise enough to sift the worthy from the unworthy before we take action on behalf of our clients!”

Jean has to admire the Falconer’s cheek—appealing to humility in defense of an argument that magi should be free to slaughter without remorse!

“It is madness to try,” continues the Falconer. “It leads to sophistry and self-righteousness. Our founders were correct to leave us so few Mandates by which to weigh the proposals we receive.
Will we harm ourselves?
This we can answer!
Will we harm the wider world
, to the point that our interests may be damaged? This we can answer! But are the men and women we might remove penitent before the gods? Are they good parents to their children? Are they sweet-tempered? Do they give alms to beggars, and if so, does this compel us to stay our hands? How can we possibly begin to answer such questions?

“We make ourselves instruments! Anyone we kill
as
instruments, we deliver to a judgment infinitely wiser than our own. If the removal be a sin, it weighs upon the client who commands it, not those who act under the bond of obedience!”

“Well put, Speaker.” Archedama Foresight is unable to suppress a smile; the sun has risen while the Falconer has made his arguments, and the chamber is flush with a soft golden glow. “I call to my fellow arch-magi for binding. We have no time for the diversion of philosophy. The subject of a specific contract divided us this morning. It divides us now. One way or another, we should end that division, working firmly within the context of the law.”

“Agreed,” says Temperance. “Binding.”

“Reluctantly agreed,” says Providence. “Binding.”

Jean/Patience feels a warm glow of gratitude. Providence has bent a point of etiquette, speaking his judgment before that of the more
senior Patience, but in so doing he has confirmed the verdict, three out of four. Patience, whatever her actual thoughts on the subject, is now free to conceal them and do a small kindness to Navigator.

“Abstain,” Jean/Patience says.

“Binding,” says Foresight.

“Bound, then,” says Temperance. “All further discussion outside the Mandates is set aside.”

Navigator pulls her hood up, bows, and sits. The assembly is restored to its previous stalemate. Providence has refused to sanction the proposed contract, while Foresight has endorsed it. Temperance and Patience have yet to express their opinions.

“You have more for us, Speaker?” Temperance directs his question at the Falconer, who remains standing.

“I do,” says the young man, “if I don’t strain your
patience
in continuing.”

Jean is struck by the ambiguity of his insight into this affair. Is it possible to make puns in thought-speech? Was that the Falconer’s design? Or is Patience, in translation, highlighting nuances her son didn’t intend? Whatever the truth, none of the arch-magi take exception.

“I bear no particular love for the people of Camorr. Neither do I bear them any particular ill-will,” says the Falconer. “The proposed contract is drastic, yes. It will require deftness and discretion, and the removal of many people. It will have consequences, but I would argue that none of them are relevant to us.

“Let us look to the first Mandate, the question of self-harm. Do we have any particular attachment to the current rulers of Camorr? No. Do we have any properties or investments in the city we can’t protect? No! Do we invite trouble for Karthain by causing upheaval two thousand miles away? Please … as if our presence here couldn’t protect the interests of Karthain, even were Camorr two miles down the road!”

“You talk of investments.” Archedon Providence speaks now, a disarmingly mild man about Patience’s age, a staunch ally of hers. “Anatolius casts a wide net with this scheme. Any feast at Raven’s Reach will command the presence of the city’s money, including Meraggio himself. We
do
maintain accounts at his house, and others.”

“I’ve researched them,” says the Falconer. “But do these people
run countinghouses or trade syndicates by themselves? Any one of them will have family, advisors, lieutenants. Capable and ambitious inheritors. The money in the vaults won’t go anywhere. The letters of credit won’t vanish. The organizations will continue operating under new authorities. At least that’s my conclusion. Do you find it to be in error, Archedon?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Nor I,” says Foresight. “Our few ties to Camorr are secure, our obligations to it nonexistent. Who can name a single concrete injury we would do ourselves if we accepted the Anatolius contract?”

The chamber is silent.

“I trust we may consider the first Mandate dispensed with,” says the Falconer. “Let’s give due airing to the second. What Anatolius proposes—and offers to pay a fair, which is to say, exorbitant price for—is that we
engineer an opportunity
for him to work his revenge against the nobility of Camorr and against its foremost criminal family. Now, I am merely being exact. I’m not attempting to disguise the magnitude of his intentions.

“With our aid, Anatolius will likely succeed, and hundreds of the most powerful men and women in Camorr will be gentled. Our sister Navigator is correct to point out the foolishness of dancing around this point. These men and women will never again have a single meaningful thought. They won’t be able to wipe the filth from their own asses. Their fate will be tantamount to murder.

“I would certainly not wish that on anyone I knew or cared for, but then, we are here to consider, as the archedama put it, the concrete injuries of our actions, not to hone our sympathy for distant persons. We must measure whether the disruption this would inflict could be so widespread as to compromise our own interests, and our freedom of action.”

“Forgive my suspicion,” says Jean/Patience, “that the Speaker has come to this assembly well-armed with conclusions to aid us in that measurement.”

“Archedama, I would be a poor advocate indeed if I dared to speak extemporaneously on such a crucial matter. I’ve given this contract a great deal of thought since it was first proposed.”

“If it were carried out,” says Archedama Foresight, “what would happen to Camorr?”

“I think it impossible,” says the Falconer, “that literally every noble in Camorr could be caught in this trap. There must inevitably be those too ill to attend, those out of favor at court, and those traveling abroad. There will also be those that leave too early or arrive too late. Dozens of them are sure to survive. Anatolius understands this. His point is made regardless.

“Camorr possesses a standing army of several companies, along with a rather infamous constabulary. At the end of the night, the survivors would retain a disciplined force to keep the peace.”

“That’s what they’d be used for, then?” Archedon Providence adopts a tone of mock surprise. “Certainly not to settle old scores? Camorri are so famous for their deep sense of restraint where lingering grudges are concerned.”

“I’m not trying to be fatuous, Archedon,” says the Falconer, “or unduly optimistic. But our information—and our information is better than the duke of Camorr’s—is that the duke’s standing forces are reasonably loyal to the throne and to Camorr itself. Of course there’d be blood on the walls. Doors kicked in, alley fights, that personal Camorri touch. Yet I think it likely the army and constabulary would stand aside from these affairs until the strongest survivors restored a legitimate chain of command.”

“Are you seriously arguing,” says Providence, “that Camorr would, after a few knife-fights in the dark, suffer no further instability from the sudden and rather horrific subtraction of several hundred nobles?”