The White Tree (14 page)

He spent the daylight with the
Cycle
, groping for answers that would bring him the strength to find a solution. Jack Hand kept showing up:

Jack Hand's kingdom grew to hold the two rivers at its north and the golden forge at its south; he married the maiden of the west and saw the sun rise over two hatches of cicadas, but as with all growths it began to take forms he could neither guess nor control. He wiled the days in the Tower of Venge and brooded on the new powers he could feel stirring within his lands. Shadows played in the hands of men he'd never met, men who owed him no homage. In the time-honored right of a king to own the hearts and minds of those who live by his grace in his lands, he dispersed the army of rats to train their eyeless sockets on the men who practiced in secret. He called his advisers to the Tower, trading tactics over maps and oaths over ale.
At the end of seven days he knew the names of the 54 conspirators and the homes of their families. Wise to the ways untreaten roots will bear poison fruit even when the trunk and its branches are hacked and burnt, he dispatched his bluecloaks to reach every manor within an hour's span, and in that way he cut short that threat in a single long-armed stroke; the wails of the doomed had no time to reach the ears of the next in line, and they perished before they could take to the road and plant the seeds of retribution.
He'd meant to send a signal of fire that night to all who watched, but when he gazed from his tower at the fresh green folds of land and the fine white houses of the dead, he puzzled on the balance of destruction and creation. Instead of burning the houses of the traitors, he washed them clean of treachery and bequeathed them to the priests of his patron, and they sang the miracle of the man who'd turned crippling poison into the strength of blood.

He napped through the twilight and first hours of night, then cut out for the docks. Boys shrieked and punched and threw dice. He lingered in the shelter of doorways, wasting half an hour before he spotted the kid who'd told him of Blays' arrest.

"Hey. Barnes."

"I'm George," the boy said, separating from his group.

"Did you find anything?"

"No," George said, waggling his head. "They won't let me into the bailey."

Dante swore. "Doesn't it have windows?"

"Why would a bailey have windows?"

"There has to be some way in."

George shook his head more. "Vance tried to go in when he wasn't supposed to last year and we never saw him since."

"You're smarter than him, aren't you?" Dante said. The boy shrugged and anger flashed through his veins. "I'm beginning to doubt your value."

"You smell," George said, and before Dante could strike him he'd retreated to a pack of eight or ten other boys. Dante took a step toward them and their eyes glittered like animals beyond the light of a fire. They moved forward as one, faces and hands tight. He spat in the dirt and turned away. Once he left their sight he ran and didn't stop until he reached the churchyard. He called out for the nether, released it, called again, convincing himself it was his to command.

The next day gave him nothing. He read through the morning, leaving long enough to buy some bread and salted meat and ask the grocer where and what time they held the trials, then returned to his tomb and read and ate and slept. Like that the hours were gone.

He woke that Saturday and it was some time before he remembered enough to be afraid. He didn't intend to do anything more than go down to the trial and see what turned out, but even that modest plan shook him like a boy shakes a lightning bug in a bottle. He ate a bite of bread, chewing long after it was soft enough to swallow, then put the rest away. He'd puke if he tried any more.

For a while he walked among the tombstones, reading names, feelings his boots in the grass and the dirt between him and the bodies of the forgotten. The stones bore names and titles and families, lands and holdings and glories, cracks and crooked bases and vandalism. A bent-backed figure trudged slowly through the flat part of the yard a couple hundred feet from the hill. Dante crouched behind a tombstone and waited for the man to go away. He reminded himself he was just going to observe, to see if maybe they'd just give Blays the lash and then the two could be back on their way. He scooped up dirt and rubbed it on his cheeks and neck, mussed his black hair, combing it through his fingers to stretch it over his ears and down his forehead. Let them recognize him through that.

The crowds weren't too bad. A few hundred people had found the time to loiter around the square to laugh and jeer the accused. Others formed a lopsided ring around a red belt of flagstones kept clear by a passel of watchmen in rich brown cloaks. The red stones were divided into twelve sections and looped around an inner circle of white stone. At its center a magistrate held court on a raised dais. Before him, attending his words with dirt-streaked faces, three men dressed in rags and chains awaited sentence. Dante's heart shuddered. Had he missed Blays' hearing? He threaded among the crowd, trading elbows and shoulders. The magistrate murmured something and the mob ruffled with laughter. Dante got about four people deep from the belt of red stones and found he could go no further. He stood on his toes, scanning the faces of the accused, and after several long moments he found Blays. The boy's cheeks looked puffy. A number of lumps and cuts stood redly on his nose and chin, but his eyes were hard and bright.

The three men were dragged off for various beatings and imprisonments and the next man in line was brought to stand before the court and be accused of attacking a tailor. For the next two minutes the magistrate heard arguments of witness and defendant. The crowd cheered his sentence.

"See you next Saturday!" some wag called as he was hauled off. The bailiff stepped up beside the magistrate and thinned his eyes at his parchment.

"Next to stand before this court, Blays Buckler," he said. The people exchanged glances, laughing as the name circulated through the crowd. Dante clamped his jaw together as Blays waddled into the open circle, chains clanking.

"Blays Buckler," the magistrate said, and bulged his lower lip with his tongue. He had a fine, delicate-boned face, and he stroked the saggy skin of his neck while he considered Blays. "The charges against you are of two murders in a public house. What say you of your guilt?"

"Not," Blays said.

"Very well. The witness?"

A man stepped forward and Dante recognized the innkeep they'd seen in the common room of the Frog's Head. He was a fat man, the kind of man who spent more time in his own kitchen than fetching drinks.

"That would be me, sir."

"What did you see that night?" the magistrate said, leaning forward.

"I saw the two boys come in," he said, looking around the craned faces of the crowd. "They looked like rough boys. I've seen too many like them to be fooled by youth."

"To the point?"

"Right. They went upstairs. After a bit we heard some crashing around like the end of the world and a bit after that they walk down cool as the nor'wind. I go upstairs and see the two slain. They had their guts hanging out like does."

"Sickening."

"Yes, sir. I'd never seen human intestines before. Were a sort of pinkish gray, with these funny blue bands around them. Ghastly."

"Indeed," the magistrate said, pursing his lips. "As concerns your earlier statement, is that to say you didn't actually see the murders take place?"

"Well I wasn't about to go upstairs," the innkeep said. "It sounded like people were being killed up there!"

The crowd groused with laughter. The magistrate quirked his mouth, then beckoned Blays forward.

"What do you have to say in your defense?"

"They were tracking me and Dante for days," Blays said. His voice lost its waver as he went along. "They're cultists. They tried to kill us before we turned the tables on them."

"So you admit killing them," the magistrate said, raising a gray brow. He met the eyes of the audience and they laughed.

"It was them or us," Blays said, standing straight in his chains.

"So you say. Can anyone corroborate your story?"

"Co-what-o-wait?"

The magistrate steepled his hands. "Were there any other witnesses?"

"Well, Dante was there," he said. "If he was here he'd tell you the same thing."

"Wouldn't he tell me anything to save his neck from rope burn?"

Blays cocked his head. "Is your majesty calling me a liar?"

The magistrate lifted his eyes to the overcast sky and waited for the nattering of the crowd to die down. He chuckled once they were reasonably silent, scratching his upper lip.

"I'm no king," he said, "and I'd say your motivations cast some aspersions on your words."

"What? Well, how do you know
he's
not lying?" Blays said, pointing at the innkeep.

"Because he'd be hanged for it. He's run the Frog's Head for two decades, and his father before him. Do
you
have family here? Property?"

"I'm a registered armsman of Bressel."

"Your papers," the magistrate said. Blays said something Dante couldn't catch. The bailiff approached him and fumbled through the pockets of Blays' grimy doublet. From here and there the men of the crowd started hissing. The blank-faced bailiff removed a greenish crust of bread from Blays' shirt, then scowled and cast it away. In another pocket he found the papers and carried them to the magistrate. "You're not of the arms
guild
," he said after a moment's examination. "Perhaps you gave them some trouble."

"They said I was too young!" Blays cried.

"A likely story."

"Look, you old crow, those guys were trying to kill us! What else were we supposed to do?"

"Peace, peace," the magistrate said, raising his palms. "The court has other business today and you're not the first nor the last to hold himself above the law. That's all this matter is, isn't it? Your defense, so far as it can be believed, is the law of the wilds. The laws of man are derived from the gods of the Belt itself. We believe in justice on this earth and mercy in the heavens." He parted his lips and gazed up at the clouds. "You're to be executed one week hence."

"Well eat shit!" Blays shouted. The bailiff punched him in the eye and he dropped out of sight. Dante shoved the man in front of him out of his way, bouncing up and down to get a glimpse of Blays before they wrangled him back to his cell, but the boy stumbled on his chains, pelted by hard bread and softer, less savory things, and was swallowed by the rabble. The next prisoner was brought forth and the mob forgot about Blays as the process began again.

Dante turned and forced himself away from the white stone circle and its red band. He bumped someone and they responded with a fist to his ribs. Dante's hand clutched at his sword. The man's life was saved by Dante's dim understanding he would only have the chance for one big scene in this town and this wasn't the time for it. He walked on. He walked back to the tomb. He walked in a fugue of scarred faces and screeching voices that echoed from the city walls like the whole thing was shaking apart. Nothing but a show. A dance. An act for the men of Whetton to pat themselves on the back and feel great about having sent a trumped-up monster to his grave. Their laws were as hollow as the black between the stars. He'd see them swing from their own nooses next Saturday.

He felt grass beneath his feet and stopped to get his bearings. Rain was falling, pocking against his hood. Back in the churchyard. Back among the dead. The rest of the town could learn a thing from the way they laid there without screwing anything up. He closed his eyes, shook his head. His chest quaked as he sucked air.

"See the show today?"

Dante didn't turn. He cleared his mind, as best he could, and gathered up the shadows.

"You were there, I'm sure."

"Ah. Already I begin to see how you survived." The voice was nasal, accented with the clipped, burnished words of the kind of man who rode around in knee breeches. Dante faced him then, expecting a strong-chinned, empty-eyed lord, and meeting instead a skinny, dirty, two-steps-from-sackcloth graybeard with stringy hair and an air of patient amusement.

"What do you want?

"It isn't what I want. It's what
you
want, Dante."

"Now that's downright profound," Dante said. He froze, tightening his grip on the nether. "How did you know my name?"

"Lucky guess," the old man said. "My name's Cally."

"Pretty nice beard for a Cally."

"I think I've been hearing that joke for longer than I've been alive." Cally smiled at Dante, letting him stew. "It's short for something obnoxiously longer."

"I'm sorry," he said, unsure why.

"Don't be." The old man folded his hands behind his back and gazed up into the churchyard. A drop of rain hit him in the eye and he blinked. "Anyone would be angry after what they did to your friend."

"It was like a punchline without a joke," Dante said. "It's not fair. He was telling the truth."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Wait a week and find out."

"I know your name," Cally said, looking on him with fever-bright blue eyes, a green corona around their pupils, "because I'm one of them."

Dante jerked back and lashed out with all the nether he could hold. The old man should have ruptured like a sack of oats, spilled his guts like the devotee in the inn. Instead nothing, a slight pressure in Dante's ears. Cally pinched his upper lip, chuckling.

"I didn't say I was trying to kill you."

"Oh, I suppose you're just here for a friendly chat about the glory of Arawn."

"That would be boring for us both," the old man said, beetling his brows. "I've got far more interesting things to teach you."

"Like what?" Dante said. His hand drifted toward his sword.

"Like how they wanted you to find the book."

"Right. That explains why they've been trying to kill me to get it back ever since."

"And sending a single neeling to fetch a copy of a priceless relic makes sense!" Cally whooped, slapping his knee with his shapeless black hat. "I always told them that would be transparent as a window pane, but it always works. It always works!"