The King's Hand (40 page)

“Perhaps he had some business to attend to,” Eamon said.

Anderas, who had remained with him until all others had left, allowed a sceptical look to pass over his face. “No man should leave your hall without your indulgence, nor without thanking you, my lord.”

“He is the Right Hand's own lieutenant,” Eamon answered, as though that might excuse the behaviour.

“Yes, Lord Goodman.” Anderas's voice sounded restrained.

“You mistrust him?”

Anderas did not answer at once. He carefully weighed his reply. “I may not answer your question, my lord, without being frank.”

“You may be frank with me, Anderas.”

“But, in such matters, not without your leave,” Anderas answered. “This is not a policy to which Mr Kentigern holds, and for that reason I mistrust him. My lord, I would urge you to be cautious. You may well have the Master's support, but you will have enemies at the palace; Mr Kentigern, and the Right Hand himself, may be among them.”

Eamon looked at the captain in surprise. As much as he wanted to discount it, he knew that Anderas could be right. Ladomer worked for the Right Hand. Unwittingly, his friend could be being worked against him. Or perhaps his friend's words were warnings: warnings of how the other Hands – including Lord Arlaith – viewed him. He did not think that Ladomer would willingly work against him. They had been friends for so long; they had lived through Dunthruik together. It was Ladomer who had encouraged him in those days while he was estranged from Mathaiah, and Ladomer who had brought him to the Gauntlet. It was Ladomer who had always encouraged him not to despair of becoming Right Hand himself.

Eamon shuddered. That ambition had meant so much to him once. Now he reviled it.

Anderas looked at him and Eamon met the gaze. “I cannot know Mr Kentigern's heart, captain,” he said, unable to suppress his sorrow. He had known it once.

“No, lord,” Anderas replied. “And he cannot pretend familiarity with yours.”

C
HAPTER
XXI

T
he twenty-first dawned clear and bright, with fading stars that glistened in the pale sky and air so crisp that the crying of the gulls at the port could be heard even in the East Quarter.

Eamon and Captain Anderas went out of the city to ride. Eamon once again envied both Anderas's horsemanship and his ability to cope with the early hours of the morning.

Upon their return to the East Quarter, Anderas announced that he had some Gauntlet business to attend to.

“You remember Lieutenant Greenwood?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“He is being promoted to college draybant this morning – something I must oversee, though it will hardly be a trial! By your leave.”

“It is a promotion he certainly deserves,” Eamon nodded. “It pleases me greatly.”

Anderas disappeared into the college. Eamon returned his horse to the stables and retired to his office, where Slater brought him breakfast as he studied the day's papers. The servant moved so silently that if Eamon had not seen him he might not have known the man was there at all. He watched his servant's movements with admiration. Just as the man was prepared to withdraw, Eamon spoke.

“Mr Slater.”

“My lord?”

“You did well last night; the whole household did.” It was true: everything had been perfectly performed. “It was a supreme effort, and much appreciated.”

Slater bowed. “Thank you, my lord.”

“Please pass my congratulations on to the whole household,” Eamon added, “and let a glass of wine go to everyone with it.”

Slater bowed, awkwardly this time, and left. Eamon thought he saw a trace of red on the man's face; whether it was from pride or embarrassment was difficult to tell.

 

About mid-morning, Anderas came to see him again. The captain bore a confused but pleased look on his face and a large collection of papers under his arm.

“Lord Goodman.”

“Captain,” Eamon answered, setting aside the pile of papers that he had finished dealing with – mostly regulations on how much could be traded and brought into the quarter. “You look bemused,” he added.

“I am.”

“Yet you seemed very lucid earlier this morning.”

“I was very lucid this morning,” Anderas told him.

“And what has bemused you, captain?”

“This,” Anderas replied, setting the papers down. “A dispatch that Draybant Greenwood and I received this morning.”

“After the ride?” Eamon asked.

“Most definitely. Indeed, these papers surprised me so much that I decided to come to you myself on the matter.”

Eamon looked at the papers; they bore the symbol of the Crown Office and were marked with Rose's seal. Eamon flicked through the pages and then, seeing the signature that he expected at the end of the long document, he smiled.

“The chief architect, one Mr Lorentide, has been doing some work for me,” he answered. He had not expected it to be done so swiftly.

“I understand Mr Kentigern's comments from last night a little more clearly now, my lord,” Anderas told him, gesturing to the papers.

“Do you share his objections?” Eamon asked.

“Not at all,” Anderas grinned.

Eamon took the papers in hand and looked again at the topmost sheet. He only needed to sign it to authorize the new pecking order for the reconstruction and renovation of the quarter.

He did so with a smile and a flourish, and then passed the papers across to his captain.

“Thank you, my lord.”

“How are the people from Tailor's Turn?”

“Still in Crown Office care, but once the architects set to work – which should be today or tomorrow – we should be able to get them properly re-housed until repairs are complete.”

“Good.”

“There is another matter that needs your attention, my lord,” Anderas said as he scooped the papers back into his arm. “Several arrests of suspected wayfarers were conducted yesterday on Mead Road.”

Eamon's heart sank – more men and, more likely, entire families for the pyres.

“One of them insists that it is his right to plead his innocence before you.”

Eamon looked at the captain in surprise. “That was bold of him!”

“It is a very unusual request,” Anderas answered, “which is why I mention it. The law of appeal hasn't been invoked in living memory.”

“Because it was abolished long before living memory.” Eamon remembered reading about the law when he had been studying at the college in Edesfield. The law had given that any arrested man had the right to appeal before the highest authority available to him. Eamon suspected that the law had been abolished to enable and facilitate just the kind of cull that the Master was currently conducting.

He looked quietly at Anderas. “I cannot – and will not – see him under the law of appeal,” he said. It would be an affront to the throned, and a dangerous one. “But I will see him. You may bring him to me.”

“Yes, Lord Goodman.”

 

Not long later, a servant arrived to announce that the quarter's draybant of law had come to see him. He was the man who dealt with the more problematic aspects of the Master's law in the quarter. Eamon granted him entrance and was not surprised to see that the draybant and several ensigns accompanied a man whose wrists were heavily bound. The prisoner was not young, but he did not seem old either. Though flanked by the ensigns, the man tried to hold his head high. As Eamon rose from the desk, the draybant bowed and the prisoner did also. The ensigns followed suit.

Eamon strode forward and stood before the prisoner. The man remained bowed low.

“My lord,” he said, “may you show the Master's glory in all you do.”

“Rise,” Eamon told him. The man did so.

“My lord.” The draybant handed a collection of papers across to him, and Eamon read them swiftly, enough to gain the man's name and the reasons for his arrest.

“Mr Fort,” he said, addressing the prisoner, “there are some serious charges against you. You stand accused of plotting with wayfarers against the city and the Master. And I am told that you refute this charge.” He paused seriously. “What have you to say?”

“Produce the plot, my lord,” the man answered steadily.

“You are bold, Mr Fort,” Eamon told him.

“If what I hear of you is true, my lord, and if my words are true, then I have nothing to fear in being so.”

Eamon blinked hard. Had not Ladomer said that his stunt at Tailor's Turn had called his sanity into question?

The man before him did not seem to be of that opinion. Heartened by Eamon's attention, he spoke again. “My lord, my family has no part with the wayfarers. We are all loyal to the Master. Our taxes are paid, our work is done, my own son serves with the Gauntlet – he is posted to the south-western borders under Captain Iset. My daughter is married to Lieutenant Malter of the South Quarter. My wife, while she lived, was a woman who served the Master with her whole heart all the days of her life.
Now
I am told that I have a part in a wayfarer plot, but the truth is that I am envied!”

“According to these notes, Mr Fort, you were seen ‘meeting at strange hours with wayfarers'.”

“I work in fishing,” Fort answered, exasperated. “I often meet men at dawn or dusk. These men were not wayfarers. If they had been, why weren't we all arrested whilst meeting? This is nothing more than an anonymous report delivered by an envious competitor, intended to harm me and my trade.”

Eamon watched him for a moment. “Mr Wilson,” he said, turning to the draybant of law, “what other evidences are there against Mr Fort?”

“Allegations of previous family involvement with wayfarers, my lord,” Wilson replied.

Eamon looked back at the man before him. At the draybant's statement he rolled his eyes and flexed his hands in their bonds.

“I have been cleared of that!” he cried. “Lord Ashway investigated the matter years ago. Will you shame my children for that?”

“I would hear of this thing from you,” Eamon told him. He did not make it a request.

The prisoner took a deep breath and closed his eyes, as though steeling himself against a bitter memory. “The alleged traitor was my cousin. She exhibited wayfarer sympathies from her youth. She held little respect for the Master; in that she disdained her name, and my family's generations-long tradition of service.”

“And what did she do?” Eamon asked.

“She married a man from outside the city,” Fort answered. “It was suspected that he was a wayfarer, though that was not known when she married him. My uncle would never have permitted their union, otherwise. He always wanted her to be loyal to the Master, as he was and I am still.”

“To the point, Mr Fort.”

“The Master began a purge of wayfarers in the city about fifteen years ago, when rumours of some ‘Serpent's heir' started reaching Dunthruik.” His tone was derogatory. “During that cull, many suspected wayfarers disappeared from the city before they could be apprehended. My cousin and her husband were implicated. When the Gauntlet tried to apprehend them there was a skirmish and all three of them – wife, husband, and son – were killed and sent to the pyres, to the Master's glory. Lord Ashway cleared me of any connection to her and her filthy work,” he continued, “and had my family change its name to avoid being tarnished. We dutifully did so, and we should not pay the price for her treachery now!”

“Calm yourself, Mr Fort,” Eamon told him firmly. “You will not answer for what you have not done.” Fort fell silent in surprise, and Eamon looked at the papers again. The thought crossed his mind that he might well be expected to breach the man to verify his story, but as it occurred to him he reviled it. Breaching was a tool of the throned's mark; he would not do it.

“Mr Wilson, is there any other evidence against this man?”

The draybant shook his head. “No, my lord, bar this single report.”

Eamon paused for a moment. “In the absence of other evidence and of an accuser to bring this charge, Mr Wilson, please intercept the notices of arrest going to Mr Fort and to Mrs Malter.”

“You will release me?” Fort gaped.

“Mr Fort, the Master has no delight in a falsely imprisoned man,” Eamon answered, “just as he has no delight in being betrayed by a man to whom he has shown grace.” Fort watched him carefully. Eamon gestured to the ensigns to unbind him. “You shall go free, Mr Fort – I will not even breach you – and no shame will fall on your family. But if it is found that you have been treacherous, then no mercy will be shown to you; less still will the Master show to your children.”

Fort paled. “I am loyal to the Master.”

“Then go free, Mr Fort.”

The bindings fell away from the man's hands and he rubbed briskly at his wrists. Eamon wished that the man were loyal to the King, as his cousin had been. He wondered what the woman's name had been.

Fort bowed low to him. “You truly glorify the Master, Lord Goodman.”

“Do the same,” Eamon answered. “You may go, Mr Fort.”

Fort turned, and the ensigns left the room with him. Eamon looked across at the draybant before handing the papers to him. “Thank you, Mr Wilson. You may tell Captain Anderas that Mr Fort has been dealt with.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Wilson nodded. “I will make the necessary notes in quarter records.”

“Thank you. Mr Wilson,” Eamon added as the draybant prepared to leave, “who was this woman whom Mr Fort mentioned?”

“Her name is not known to me, my lord,” Wilson replied. “It will be in the records. I can look for it. Captain Anderas might also know of it – he was close to Captain Etchell, who was serving under Lord Ashway at the time of the incident.”

“Very well, I shall speak with Captain Anderas,” Eamon answered. “If I have no luck there I shall send word to you. Thank you, Mr Wilson.”