The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (74 page)

"The council meeting was the worst, of course," he said through chews. "You heard how I had to remind the lords of my full authority before I could get them even to lower their voices."
I reached down to take a handful of nuts. "After that, I imagine there wasn't much they could say."
"You'd be surprised," said Peter dryly. "Lord Dean gave me a small lesson in logic. I felt as though I were a schoolboy again. It was offered to my attention that, firstly, the dominion governors are lords of the council. Secondly, the dominions are therefore under the care of the council. Thirdly, the Chara may therefore only interfere with the dominions when they are without governors or in wartime. And fourthly, in conclusion, as follows from the premises, propositions, and postulates, I should keep out of Koretia until war actually breaks out – at which time, of course, the law allows me to try to bring peace. In other words, my High Lord believes that I should wait until the land is half burnt before I try to extinguish the flames. I was not impressed by his logic, and said so."
"You must have succeeded in convincing him that you were right."
"Stubborn as a Chara – that's the phrase, isn't it? That characteristic comes in handy sometimes. At any rate, I managed to bend the conversation over to the subject of my travelling companions, so that the council lords ended up spending the rest of their time arguing amongst themselves over which of the lords would accompany me on the trip. To my mind, the most logical course would be for the High Lord to remain safe in Emor while I'm gone, lest anything happen to me. But Lord Dean insists on going to Koretia – I think he wants to keep his eye on me."
"I suppose that we can depend on him for pleasant conversation, at any rate."
"If pleasant conversation is what you're expecting, I must crush your hopes by telling you that the other member of our party is Lord Carle."
I reached down again to the bowl and fished among the smaller nuts. "That will be tedious for you. Didn't you have any say in the selection?"
"I could hardly refuse to bring Lord Carle. He knows more about Koretia than I do . . . and bringing him saves me the necessity of bringing a conspicuous bodyguard."
"He'll hate every minute of the trip."
"Actually, I think that he'll receive great joy from seeing all of his worst opinions about Koretia confirmed. Andrew, are you planning to touch
every
nut before you choose one?"
I smiled. "They are my nuts. Be grateful that I'm sharing them with you – it's not one of my duties as a palace guest."
"Mmm." Peter licked his fingers and stared straight forward, toward the window. "The question of your duties came up at the meeting, actually. Lord Dean and Lord Carle are travelling in their own identities, along with their free-servants, and I am to be plain Lord Peter once more – there are about half a dozen honorary lords of that name scattered around Emor. The council asked me what disguise I planned for you. They didn't think that 'palace guest' was enough of a title to explain your presence on the journey."
I held out the largest nut toward Peter and said easily, "If Curtis and Francis are serving Lord Carle and Lord Dean, then I'll be free-servant to you."
Peter took the nut from my hand. "Thank you. It wasn't something I could command of you, but it's in fact what I suggested to the council. Since I'm to be disguised as a mere lord, I saw no reason why you wouldn't be willing to take on a lesser rank as well. At any rate, I thought you might have a better idea than I do of what to pack for Koretia. I was going mad at noonday trying to figure out what to take."
"Are we leaving so soon?"
"We're leaving tomorrow. I can't depend on thirty council lords to keep a secret for long, and I'd prefer to reach the governor's palace before the Jackal has news of my presence in his land. I've felt obliged to send my private messenger to Lord Alan, telling him of our trip, but I'm hoping that the various threats I wrote behind the lines will inhibit him from announcing our journey."
"Then let me see what you've packed so far." I rose and walked into the Chara's sleeping chamber, leaving Peter to stay and collect the nut bowl.
He had laid a number of items out on the bed in an orderly fashion. Most of the clothes, I could see at a glance, were too heavy to wear in Koretia. I began placing to one side the items that he could not bring; in the process, I uncovered a bone-handled dagger.
I am not sure how long I stood staring at it. Presently I heard Peter say from behind my shoulder, "Lord Carle tells me that the Koretians wear their free-man's blades all of the time – not only on ceremonial occasions, but also as a form of protection. I can't bring the Sword of Vengeance, of course, so I thought that I'd take this."
I placed a breech-cloth to the side, being careful not to touch the dagger in the process. "I didn't realize you had kept it." Even to me, my voice sounded as cold as an Emorian winter.
"You said you didn't want it any more, so I kept it for myself, because it reminded me of the night I gave it to you."
I turned then. Peter was watching me with a carefully neutral expression and guarded eyes that brought back to me a shock of memory. When I was able to speak again, I said, "It isn't a night that I would want to forget either, so I'm glad that you kept the dagger."
Peter's expression eased. He reached over to the bed and said, "I suppose that I can't take the seal-ring; that would be proclaiming my title. I will take the brooch – nothing could part me from that – but I'll keep it hidden till we reach the governor's palace. Tell me, how does it feel to be returning to Koretia as an Emorian?"
"Despite my frequent assertions," I said wryly, "I don't feel very Emorian at times. If a Koretian asked me to explain the law-structure of Emor, for example, I wouldn't know what to say – and this, despite the fact that I've had the best teacher on the subject."
Peter's gaze flicked toward me and then back. Just as I never understood why he asked questions about subjects he was well versed in, so also he never asked the reasons why I made elementary enquiries. "We haven't spoken on the topic very often," he said. "The law is the last thing I want to think about when I have a free moment with you. What is it that puzzles you?"
I went over to the sleeping chamber's chest, pushed the lid open, and began pulling out his lighter tunics. "Nothing that's important. Just various things that are unclear to me about the law's division of powers between the Chara and his council. You said that the prisoner who was tried today was under the care of the council because he was a council official. But didn't you have a case recently where you yourself handed down judgment on a council official?"
"It was a more difficult case than that: I was judging one of the junior council lords who was being tried for murder. Ordinarily, the council takes care of its own, and I have no power to do anything other than offer my recommendations when the crime takes place in the palace. But if the crime is serious, then the council judge may ask me to sit in judgment on the case. If you ever want to explain Emorian law to a Koretian, you may tell him that an entire, thick law book is devoted to the three crimes punishable by the high doom, and I'm the only one who has that entire book memorized, so I'm usually the one who takes such cases. But since I and the council judge are the only ones who try prisoners for the Great Three, I don't suppose that most Koretians have even heard of the high doom."
The room was dark with night shadows. I could not see what lay at the bottom of the chest, so I stood up, took a stick from the fire that had blazed in the chamber all day, and reached over to light the oil-lamp attached to the wall. I said, without looking Peter's way, "How did you decide whether to apply the high doom in this case?"
Peter was silent for so long that I thought he would not reply. Finally he said, "In this particular case, the prisoner was placed under the high doom because he had killed an unarmed man."
The lamp had finally caught fire. I stepped back and watched to be sure that it would stay lit. Behind me, Peter said, "But perhaps that's another Emorian custom that a Koretian wouldn't understand."
"No," I said, tossing the lighted stick back into the fire. "Killing an unarmed man is considered just as serious an offense in Koretia."
I stared at the fire a moment longer. Then, feeling Peter's eyes at my back, I looked over at him silently. Peter turned away and carefully undid the sorting I had just made of his clothes. "I fear that I have led both of us into a pitch-black cave, without bothering to bring a light with me," he said. "Let us move on to another subject. How did you spend your day? Aside from listening to insults from Lord Carle, I mean."
"I spent my day doing absolutely nothing."
Peter continued to look down at the items he was aimlessly moving from one pile to another, but a smile crept up the side of his face. "That sounds glorious. Where did you do this nothing?"
I came over beside him and took a belt out of his hands. "In the council library, to begin with; hence my embarrassing appearance at your closed meeting. I must apologize to Lord Dean tonight before he takes vengeance on the porter."
"I wouldn't bother." Peter left the sorting to my hands and sat down on the bed near me, leaning back against the wall. "I was witness to the porter's own apology, which was the most eloquent piece of poetry I've heard since I had a Daxion bard up on charges of stealing a bit of butter from the palace pantry."
"You put a bard on trial for stealing butter?"
"It's hard to believe, but the law classifies that as a major crime. Any use of the Chara's goods or money for forbidden purposes is considered a crime of disobedience – though you'll be relieved to hear that I let the bard go free. As for the porter, he has nothing to worry about; Lord Dean is fully occupied with planning this trip. Where did you go after you left the meeting?"
"Out to do more nothing. I did it under a certain tree in the garden."
Peter smiled and pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his interlocked hands around them as he leaned further back. "I'm glad that you found a good use for my birthday present. You've no idea the trouble I had in convincing the gardener that Emor would not crumble if he planted a Koretian tree in the palace grounds."
"Is it a Koretian tree? I didn't know."
"It turned out to be less expensive to bring a sapling over the black border mountains than to buy one of Emor's few remaining trees. I hope you won't stop using it, now that you know its barbaric origin."
I didn't bother to reply, but tossed a tunic at Peter. Laughing, he prevented it from landing in his face. "If you've spent an entire afternoon doing nothing, then you must have had a particularly terrible morning. I hope that our talk in the Map Room wasn't what drove you to seek pleasure ahead of duty."
I shook my head and knelt down to pull Peter's travel pack from beneath his bed. I knew that it was there only because I had cleaned the floor around it during my time as his slave. Over ten years had passed since it was last put to use.
As I stood up, I saw that Peter was still watching me expectantly. I said, "Lord Dean saw me in the council library before the meeting. We had a talk on marriage."
"Ah." Peter let the word drop like a heavy pebble into water. When the ripples were beginning to fade, he added, "Well, you needn't pass on to me what he said. I'm sure it's the same that was said to me at the meeting. That was what the council spent most of its time discussing: my ill-considered decision to visit a dangerous land when I have no heir. Fortunately, the lords did not insist that I beget an heir tonight, before leaving Emor."
I began to fold the tunics in the tidy manner which had never come naturally to me, but which pleased Peter. After a while, Peter said, "It seems a curious topic for Lord Dean to discuss with you. Did he say why he chose you as the messenger of his views?"
I noticed that his voice had taken on a note of quiet authority, but I ignored this and said simply, "He has asked me to mediate for him in the past."
"That isn't what I asked." He waited. When I did not reply, he said, "Andrew."
I continued to stare down at the tunics, but my hands were checked in their motions. Peter said, "Andrew, it is my duty as Chara to know what methods my council lords are using to try to influence me. Do not make me have to command you in this matter."
I stared at the items I was packing and took a moment to still my heart before saying, in the neutral voice that the Chara's clerk adopted when reporting the words of a witness, "Lord Dean said I would be able to demonstrate clearly to you the importance of fathering an heir. He also said he was sure that, like any other man, I understood the desire to raise a family."
I did not look up at Peter, but I heard him slowly let out his breath, as though he himself had taken the blow. "May he die a Slave's Death," he said. "He actually told you that?"
I did not reply. His voice dangerously low, Peter added, "High Lord or not, he can be summoned on a charge of insulting a free-man. I would request such a charge if you wished."
"No." I reached over and picked up the dagger without thought, and then placed it hastily in the pack before reaching for the tunics from the chest. Finally I said, "He probably just forgot."
"Lord Dean never forgets."
The bitterness in Peter's voice made me look up. Peter was staring into the distance as though peering at an invisible scene. "When I was four years old," he said, "Lord Dean took me to see some kinsmen of his in his hometown of Busedge. It was the first time I'd ever left the palace, and it was one of the happiest periods of my life. The High Lord let me have my way in everything; he wasn't strict with me the way my father always was. Toward the end of the visit, I confided to Lord Dean that I had once tried on the Pendant of Judgment to see what it felt like. Lord Dean promised to keep my secret – and he did, for many years. Then, one day about a year before my father died, I was talking with my father and Lord Dean – you may remember, for it was on the night when we first spoke. Suddenly, to gain a trivial point in an argument with my father, Lord Dean mentioned what I'd done. I've never forgotten the look my father gave me, and I've never trusted Lord Dean since then."
He pulled his gaze away from the past, reached to his tunic, and unclasped the emblem brooch in order to toss it to me. "You'd better pack this now. . . . It was perhaps unwise of Lord Dean to reveal his true nature so clearly to the Chara To Be. These days, if I were about to be cut down in battle and needed the help of either Lord Carle when he was being his most brutal or Lord Dean when he was being his most amiable, Lord Carle is the one I'd turn to."