Tracato: A Trial of Blood and Steel Book Three (34 page)

“And they don’t
now
?”

“Rhillian can stop them! She’s the only balance in this city. Someone had to stop Lady Renine, and the only two forces that could were Rhillian backed by the Steel, or the Civid Sein! Which would you choose?”

Sasha stared at the ceiling, hands to her head.

“Sasha,” Errollyn persisted, “I’m sorry Alythia got caught up in this, but Lady Renine has forces that can’t be underestimated. What if she declared open rebellion when the Steel were at the front? A quarter of the Steel has feudalist loyalties, the army could split just on that declaration alone.”

“Damn it, you didn’t know that. You were guessing. If anything happens to Alythia because of this…”

She couldn’t complete the sentence. Errollyn stepped back. He looked remote, in that way he sometimes had, when he pulled back, and trusted no one. He’d always been an outsider among his own people. Could he have been reaching out to them, seeking to prove himself with this act? Surely they must trust him now. Sasha knew how much it had hurt him to be cast out after Petrodor.

He shook his head, and walked for the door.

“Wait! You’re just going to leave?”

He stopped. “I don’t like arguing as much as you do,” he said. “What else do you want?” Sasha stared at him. “Make up your mind. You can either be angry with me and thrust me away, or you can forgive me, and let me back in. You can’t have both. And I’m not going to go chasing after you to beg for forgiveness. Lenays aren’t the only ones with pride.”

“Good for you, finally a serrin who understands the term.”

She walked past him to leave. Errollyn grabbed her arm and pulled her back. She hit him in the chest, and he caught her and pulled her close. Suddenly they were kissing, frantically, hands grasping to burrow beneath each other’s clothes. It had been a while since they’d gone a day without sex, Sasha managed to think as she sought purchase with her back against the wall. Perhaps that was all it was. Or perhaps it was fear. They’d argued before, but rarely as heatedly as this.

There was a storage closet at the room’s end, which was cramped, but with the door pulled to, safe enough from immediate discovery. With no room to lie, and nothing to sit on, they stood, belts unfastening with fumbling hands as Sasha tried to think of something she could do to take charge, because she was still angry, and not about to just submit to his male attentions. But there was nothing but the obvious, and frantic lust compelled her to turn about, braced against a wall, and let Errollyn take her from behind until her legs threatened to give way from the shaking, and his fingers made bruise marks upon her waist and hip. Even now, he made sure she climaxed first. As she recovered, she found that funny, and nearly laughed.

There was a silence as they dressed. Sasha wondered what to say. It had never been a problem between them before. She still hadn’t forgiven him. Was their relationship nothing more than this? Mutual need? No. Of course
not, she was just angry, and thinking crazy things. And she’d never fucked angry before. Everything was confusing, and she had no idea what to make of it. Neither, it seemed, did Errollyn.

Finally she buckled her belt, and left the closet. Errollyn followed. They walked the hall in silence. Errollyn turned back into his class, and Sasha kept walking.

The Tol’rhen hallways were filled with running students and crowds of Civid Sein. Many farmers held pitchforks and other tools, while students bundled large banners, scrawled with Rhodaani script. Others piled torches against a wall, and smeared them with oil from earthen jars, ready to burn.

Sasha waved down a girl she recognised.

“Hala, what’s going on?”

“Reynold is organising a march on the Tracato courthouse!” said Hala with enthusiasm, clutching a bundle of linen. “There should be several thousand people marching!”

“Marching for what?” Sasha asked. Hala shrugged. “What’s with all the linen?”

“For bandages, in case there is trouble.” Hala hurried on, apparently not worried by this prospect.

Frowning, Sasha pushed through the throng. The hall opened onto the grand courtyard, and there was indeed a great crowd gathering, some with makeshift weapons, others with banners or flags, or other symbols the significance of which Sasha did not know. Most of those gathered were Civid Sein from the courtyard encampment, but there were a lot of Nasi-Keth helping them.

She searched the confusion until she spotted Kessligh, arguing with Reynold, but she held back. She did not want to confront Reynold again, not in front of Kessligh. That would be awkward.

Then she realised what she was thinking, and what Reynold had reduced her to. Furious at herself, she thrust forward, pushing past bodies with determination.

“…no Nasi-Keth involvement in this sort of thing!” Kessligh was insisting loudly to a young Nasi-Keth. It was Timoth Salo, a disciple of Reynold’s. He was a blue blood himself, won over to Reynold’s cause, and promoted, Sasha guessed, largely for the significance of his conversion.

“The Nasi-Keth tires of your neutrality, Kessligh!” Timoth replied with frustration. “Can’t you see what’s happening here? These brave men have come to take the fight directly to the feudalist oppressors, and they deserve our support.”

Several more young students echoed loud agreement.

“Kid,” said Kessligh, “you have no idea what you’re doing. This isn’t what the Tol’rhen is for.”

“It’s
exactly
what the Tol’rhen is for!” Timoth retorted. “To side with the weak against the powerful, to make right that which is wrong! If not for this, why have a Tol’rhen at all?”

“You’re not the weak and powerless,” Sasha snapped. All looked at her for the first time. “There’s more Civid Sein than feudalists, and if the Nasi-Keth join it, there’ll be a proper massacre, they won’t scrub the blood off the pavings in Panae Achi for weeks.”

“If that’s what it takes!” said Timoth, eyes blazing. “Or would you rather that a small group continue to wield power over the majority forever,
Princess
Sashandra?”

“No,” said Reynold, before Sasha could escalate things. “No, Kessligh is right. There should be no Nasi-Keth marching on the courthouse today.”

Timoth gaped at him. “But Reynold…”

“Do as I say,” Reynold instructed, with a level stare. There was a meaning in that stare Sasha could not guess. Timoth fumed, and stalked off. “Kessligh,” said Reynold, with a faint bow to him, then, “Sasha,” with a small smile.

Sasha’s hand twitched toward her blade. But no more than that. Reynold turned away, into the crowd, and Sasha hated herself all over again.

“You should stop the whole thing,” Sasha told Kessligh.

“I don’t have that much sway with the Civid Sein.”

“Nor with the Nasi-Keth, it seems,” said Sasha. Kessligh’s look was hard. “You’ve deliberately kept out of it.”

“Maybe.” Men in the crowd jostled past them. Somewhere, Nasi-Keth were shouting new orders. There were protests. “I recall giving you a lot of lectures, when you were younger. Lectures alone taught you little.”

“I listened sometimes.”

“Only after you’d had the substance of my lecture beaten into your thick skull with demonstration,” said Kessligh. “I could lecture these people until I was blue in the face, I’d change very few minds. People need to learn by experience, Sasha. Otherwise, even should they heed my words, they would never entirely believe the truth of them.”

Sasha recalled a line of Tullamayne. “Men only learn that swords are sharp when a thousand heads lie severed on the ground.”

Kessligh nodded. “And even then, there remains some dispute. Lessons learned are nothing next to lessons earned.”

Sasha looked about them, sourly. “You seem less enamoured of your grand learning institution today than last month.”

Kessligh said nothing. He looked up and around at the statues towering over the courtyard and sighed. “Ideas made these men,” he said. “Ideas carved this stone. I’ve always been a man of ideas.”

“Ideas without morals are like knowledge without wisdom,” said Sasha. “Any fool can shoot an arrow; it takes morals and wisdom to know what to aim it at.”

“Is that Tullamayne too?”

“No,” Sasha said wryly. “That’s just me. But it’s what you taught me.”

Kessligh smiled at her. That didn’t happen often. “Go and find what route this march intends to take. I’ll find a Blackboots lieutenant and see if there can’t be a force to accompany them. Some feudalists will take this for a provocation.”

“I don’t know what help the Blackboots would be then,” said Sasha. “But I’ll ask.”

The people she found in the milling crowd knew little enough, everyone pointed to someone else. She received an evasive answer from one Civid Sein organiser, a pot-bellied pig farmer from the northern border regions, and then Daish emerged from nowhere to grab her arm.

“Justice Sinidane is here!” he shouted in her ear. “He’s looking for Kessligh!”

“Sinidane?” Sasha was astonished, and let Daish drag her from the teeming courtyard. “He’s here himself?”

“He has a palanquin!” Daish explained. Sasha saw the palanquin waiting by the Tol’rhen steps, the strong men who’d carried it resting while Sinidane stood on the third step, and peered at the crowd.

Sasha ran with Daish.

“Justice Sinidane!” she shouted to him. The old man saw her.

“Ah, the lovely barbarian herself!” Sasha did not often smile when someone used that word in front of her, but now she laughed. “Have you seen your wise and courageous uman?”

Sasha nodded vigorously. “Aye, he’s about this high, grey hair, walks with a limp.”

Sinidane scowled, but his eyes twinkled. They’d met twice before, at Tol’rhen functions. Sasha guessed he’d once been a skilled hand with the ladies, and liked to demonstrate that he had not entirely forgotten.

“Dear girl, are you a tease, or a fool?”

“Must I choose?” And to Daish, “Find Kessligh for me?” Daish nodded and rushed back into the crowd. Sasha climbed the steps to the old man’s side. “Aside from flirting with me, what brings you here, Your Justice?”

“Oh, things.” Sinidane’s humour faded as he regarded the crowds. “I never tire of this city and its curious sights. Do you know what route they take?”

“Up High Road, as far as I can make out.”

“Feudalist territory,” said Sinidane. “But it could be worse, much of it is feudalist territory, around the Justiciary. When I was a young man, I recall dreaming of the day when all Tracato’s lands would be merely lands and not defined by the loyalties of one group or another.”

“I miss the countryside,” Sasha said sombrely. “When I lived there I had wild, youthful ideals. The longer I stay in cities, the more my ideals choke and die.”

Sinidane regarded her seriously. “I am sorry for it,” he said. “Youthful idealism can be a curse, but without it, civilisations would perish.”

“How many have perished
because
of it, I wonder?” Sasha replied, looking out at the courtyard.

“Do not despair yet,” said Sinidane. “For as long as the Nasi-Keth have influence over the Civid Sein, I will not give up hope.”

“Kessligh does not believe the Nasi-Keth in Tracato can be led,” said Sasha. “He says their beliefs are too strong to be swayed by him, and they must learn for themselves.”

“Reynold Hein, at least, seems an intelligent, reasonable sort,” Sinidane offered.

“He tried to rape me,” said Sasha. She did not look at him, but she felt his silence, pressing at her side. It was important that he knew. So much more important than her own wounded honour. When she did finally look at him, she saw something in the old man’s eyes that chilled her.

Fear.

Kessligh climbed the steps to join them, with clacks of his staff. “Your Justice.”

“Yuan Kessligh. Or would you prefer Ulenshaal?”

“The Nasi-Keth will not be marching with them,” said Kessligh, ignoring the question. “Reynold Hein has forbidden it.”

“That’s something at least,” said Sinidane.

“Something, yes. Good or bad, I don’t know.”

Sinidane look at Sasha, then at Kessligh. Wondering, perhaps, if Kessligh knew what Sasha had just told him. Sasha did not know herself. Perhaps Sinidane saw, or guessed.

“Something I wished to ask you,” said Sinidane, skipping over the issue entirely. “Four of the seven senior justices have been dismissed by Lady Rhillian.”

“Only four?” Kessligh did not appear particularly surprised. “Generous of her, I hadn’t thought she liked even three of you.”

“My own position with the feudalists is now somewhat difficult,” Sinidane explained, “since I helped her to select the four dismissed.”

At least half of the senior justices, it was common knowledge, and considerably more of the junior ones, were in the pay of the feudalists. Sinidane alone remained beyond reproach. No doubt the two others selected to stay were under Rhillian’s duress…and probably Sinidane had helped to arrange that too. It was a bold move from a stubbornly principled man, who knew where many skeletons were buried.

“And now you’d like me to suggest men from the Nasi-Keth to fill some of the vacancies,” said Kessligh. Sasha wondered if he and Sinidane had talked of this before. Perhaps not…where else were Sinidane and Rhillian going to find educated scholars of law, with independent hearts, to fill such seats?

“I’d ask for you yourself,” Sinidane affirmed, “but you’re needed here.”

“For what good it will do. I will ask some of those best suited, but I can’t promise you anything.”

“Good enough.”

“Your Justice, how is my sister?” Sasha asked.

“Dear girl,” he said, “I’m afraid I cannot know. We justices are not to be directly involved in the affairs of prisoners in the Justiciary.”

“I know that.” Sasha scuffed at the steps with a boot, frustrated. “Just make sure she’s looked after. You can at least ask someone to see to that.”

“The Justiciary is independent, dear girl,” said Justice Sinidane, sadly. “Would that I could intervene.”

“You’ll find that you can.” Sasha gave him a deadly stare.

“Sasha,” Kessligh warned her.

Sasha waved a hand in angry frustration, and strode back to the crowd.