The Hero's Lot (3 page)

They wanted him, it seemed.

He tensed as they rounded a corner, recognition bringing him up short. “Itara, where are you taking me?”

“Eh? Oh, that. Right strange, that is. The archbenefice wanted me to deliver you to Cap'n Reynald's quarters. Told us to hold you inside.”

Vladic rapped at the door and moved aside when the captain, the head of the watch, answered.

Reynald took in the presence of the three men, noted Errol's position between the other two. His face hardened until it took on the aspect of weathered rock. With a sharp nod, he gestured them in.

Errol refused to take the bait. “Why am I here, Captain?”

Captain Reynald shrugged as if the question were trivial. “The
archbenefice ordered you brought here. Too many eyes might witness you being escorted to his quarters.”

The answer only raised more questions, questions he doubted the captain would answer. “What do we do now?”

“We wait.”

 3 
Divide and . . .

S
WEAT COVERED MARTIN
as if he were some wastrel seeking absolution. Perhaps in a sense he was. When dispatching Martin and Luis to find Illustra's heir more than five years ago, the archbenefice's imperative had been simple: Find the king; let no one find out.

Yet someone had found out, and though the accusation had come primarily against Errol, Dane had hit close enough to the mark to endanger not only Martin and Luis but the archbenefice and the primus as well.

Luis, newly elevated to secondus of the conclave, stood at his side. The reader's manner betrayed no hint of nerves. Then again, Luis had less to lose. Martin reflected on that for a moment and then amended the thought. No, if the wrong people discovered their purpose, they would all die, killed by the very people they sought to protect.

He wiped his hands on his cassock and lifted a blunt fist to announce himself on the thick oak planks of Enoch Sten's door. The entrance to the primus's private quarters bore mute testimony to the longevity of the office. Untold fists and knuckles
had worn the finish where he pounded his presence to a deep honey color that contrasted with the age-darkened hue of the rest of the wood.

The door opened to reveal the primus's secretary, a short waddle-throated man. Martin forced his mouth open in imitation of a smile. “Good evening, Willet. Is the primus in?”

Like any secretary, Willet guarded his employer's prestige. “A moment,” he said with a half bow. “I will see if he is up to receiving guests.”

A moment later, Sten appeared at the door, shooing the guardian of his image out as he beckoned Martin and Luis into his apartments. “I will see you tomorrow, Willet.”

Martin inclined his head, respectful as Sten closed and bolted the door. “Will the archbenefice be joining us, Primus?”

Sten shook his head. “No. Bertrand considers the risk too great—as do I. You will both have to leave the island, of course.” He sighed. “We can't risk Dane calling you to testify. I'm sorry, Martin. It means you'll no longer be entitled to the red of the Judica.”

Martin waved a hand to indicate it was unimportant, but a stab of loss struck him even so. “It's not unexpected, Primus. You'll watch after them, won't you?”

Sten nodded. “Liam and Errol are too valuable to lose. Bertrand will think of something. And Errol is innocent, is he not? He didn't help with the cast, did he?”

Luis shook his head. “No, but it hardly matters. The boy is clever—he figured out what Martin and I were doing weeks ago. If Dane examines him, the truth will come out.”

Sten blew air through the white wisps of his mustache. “Worse and worse. Will you cast for your destination?”

Luis gave a shy smile, the skin around his brown eyes crinkling. “I already have. It didn't take any great wit to see we would be forced to leave. There was no time to cast in stone, of course, but for this, wood suffices. We're going back to Callowford. Errol and Liam's village came up seventeen times out of twenty.”

Enoch Sten grunted. “I can't say I'm surprised. It makes sense.”
He paced the room. His old-man's feet shuffled across the carpet in slippers. “We need to determine what makes Errol so blasted important. Have you cast for the person who holds the answer?”

Luis gave a brief shake. “Not yet. I'm taking blanks with me. We'll have weeks on the road. I'll fashion the lots as we go.”

The primus stalked the carpet like a caged animal, his frustration evident. Martin could hardly blame him. Years of planning and work had failed to provide the answer the kingdom desperately needed. The best readers in the conclave had failed. “Are you sure you didn't misread the cast, Luis?”

Luis's dark brown eyes clouded, and he rubbed the naked dome of his head with one hand before answering. “Those lots were as perfect as I could make them, Primus. I've never seen the like on a cast before—first Liam, then Errol, over and over again, as if the drum and the lots were spelled.”

“And your question?” the primus asked. “You cast for the soteregia—our savior and king? The question frames the answer.”

Luis nodded. “For five years I thought of little else.”

The primus uttered an uncharacteristic oath under his breath. Martin wanted to join in.

“I'm sorry, Primus,” Luis said. “In some fashion that escapes me, I've failed.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Sten said with a snort. “You're the conclave's most skillful reader now that we've lost Sarin.” He spat the renegade's name like an epithet.

“Other than yourself,” Luis amended.

“I'm old, Luis. I can't hold the question and its possible answers the way I used to. My concentration slips.”

Martin leaned forward in his chair to catch their attention. Blame and confession would not answer their questions. “I should have realized Errol's importance. Every attack on the way to Erinon came against the boy.”

Sten shrugged his shoulders under the blue robe of his office. “What kind of king would Errol make?”

Martin snorted. “The boy? He's not going to be king, Primus.” The idea was ridiculous. “Luis cast in wood first—Liam is our
soteregia. But there is something about Errol we do not know, and I fear the enemy knows what that is.”

Luis demurred. “I think your preconceptions have blinded you, my friend. According to the lots, Errol may very well be our next king. He may not be Liam, but he has courage, and Erinon's past is littered with sovereigns who lacked even Errol's nominal statecraft.”

Martin grunted to concede the point, then waved his hand to brush it aside. “The boy would be a disaster, Luis, and you know it. He has a deep-seated mistrust of the church.”

“Can you blame him, Martin?” Luis asked.

A weight of regret settled onto his shoulders. Too many times he'd been too slow to act. “No, but speculation gets us nowhere.”

The primus nodded his agreement. “Quite. If the Judica determines that we have already cast for the king, they will make an example of us that will make readers and priests shiver for a hundred years.”

Sten turned his attention to Luis. “The boy is an omne. I shudder to think what will happen if he comes across your lots and finds he may be the next king. He'd run. I know I would.”

“He can't,” Luis said. His eyes pinched and his voice dipped. “After the cast, I destroyed the lots. They are only so much dust now.”

An empathetic pang like an empty longing opened in Martin's chest at Luis's declaration. For five years, his dear friend had worked the stones to perfection, threescore lots as identical as craft and Deas's gift could make them—his greatest work. Countless days and nights had been spent sculpting, shaping, and polishing the stones to ensure the cast would be unassailable.

And the cast had failed.

He rested his hand for a moment on Luis's shoulder.

“When will you leave?” Sten asked.

Martin sighed. Going back to Callowford would be a step back in more ways than one. Church law prohibited any benefice from leaving the Judica until its stated purpose concluded. When his fellow benefices discovered his absence from the city,
they would likely demote him to priest. His shoulders twitched with a mental shrug. “Before dawn. Cruk will come with us.”

Reynald stalked the edges of the carpet, each footstep landing half on, half off the covering. “Well, he did it—curse the old fool.” He sounded as if he were chewing rocks. “Kell actually brought his charge.”

“Beggin' your pardon, Captain,” Itara said. “But I don't think Kell's the problem.”

“No, he's not,” a voice at the doorway said.

Errol turned to see the archbenefice filling the entrance to Captain Reynald's chambers. Behind him stood the primus.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the archbenefice said to Itara. “You have performed your duty. You've earned yourself a nice drink after today's boring post of duty. I won't keep you from it. I think you can leave Earl Stone his staff as well.”

Itara and Vladic bobbed their heads and retreated through the open doorway. Primus Sten closed the door after them and shot the bolt home. Errol restrained himself from bowing to the archbenefice or the primus. His anger wouldn't allow it.

“The boy's a quick study,” the archbenefice said to the primus. “He's become as proud and arrogant as any other noble.”

Reynald growled behind him. “Show the archbenefice some respect, boy.”

“I'd be more inclined to bow and scrape if I weren't a prisoner,” Errol shot back. “Now I'm accused of something I haven't done, and a roomful of churchmen are just waiting for the chance to throw me into prison. That's if Kell and Dane don't have their way and have me executed instead.”

The archbenefice chuckled. “Well, at least you're perceptive, boy. Under the circumstances, I think we can forego the genuflections. It gets tiresome after a while, anyway. Do you have a place where we can sit and talk, Captain? I think we owe Errol an explanation of the day's events. And then, of course, we'll have to devise a means for keeping Benefice Dane at bay.”

Errol followed the most powerful men of the church, the conclave, and the watch to a small dining room deep in Captain Reynald's apartments. The furnishings reflected their owner in their straight-lined elegance and simplicity. A walnut table burnished to a satin glow dominated the room, cabinets of a red wood Errol couldn't identify flanked the table and chairs, and monochromatic paintings adorned the walls. Errol compared the room to Abbot Morin's decadent sumptuousness in the abbey at Windridge and found the captain's quarters to his liking. Everything spoke of a well-made functionality he appreciated.

“Have a seat, Earl,” the archbenefice said. It took Errol a moment to realize Bertrand Canon had spoken to him. He seated himself and laid his staff across his lap, but under the table his hands clenched the ash wood as if he could wring comfort or security from it.

The archbenefice took a chair at the head of the table flanked by Primus Sten on his right and Captain Reynald on his left. They arranged themselves as if their seating held some significance, but Errol couldn't discern the import.

“I need answers regarding Benefice Dane's charges, Earl Stone,” the archbenefice said. “Truthful answers, or so help you, that jackal of a benefice, Duke Weir's sycophant, will have you in front of the headsman, and I will be powerless to prevent it.”

Errol nodded but didn't speak. These three men wanted something from him, and that realization alone made him wary. Martin, Luis, and Cruk had made it plain that, though they liked him, in the end they considered him nothing more than a necessary sacrifice. He doubted their superiors would see things differently.

“Let's deal with Benefice Kell's charge first,” Bertrand Canon said. “Perhaps we can use it to blunt Benefice Dane's line of inquiry. Have you consorted with
herbwomen
?” The archbenefice's mouth twisted around the word as if he'd bitten into something bitter.