It was a scramble to get us all organized for the meeting, what with Esmelda rattling off orders and sending messages by way of the small troop of Senatorial pages who’d appeared on the doorstep, Avi and Terris hurrying back and forth, and Annelys asking people to move here or there or to please get out of the way. In the middle of it all, a City Guard arrived with our weapons, my Ranger’s vest, and an official release from Orelia. Our jailbreak was, if not pardoned, at least erased. Forearm knife, boot knife, and folding utility to go in my vest pocket, they were all here.
I slipped the long-knife back where it belonged, handed over the “borrowed” Guards blade, and settled myself in a corner from which I could keep an eye on Terris. Sometimes I glanced at Avi, her hands full of papers, and I hardly recognized her. She paused in midstride, as if she were going to say something. But what was there to say that we didn’t both already know?
Esmelda wasn’t sure what to do with Etch except ignore him, but he commented to me that he was much happier going off to check on the horses, anyway. Doing something useful. He’d catch up on the news later, he said. He walked out the front door, his shoulders bowed just a fraction, as if the city weighed too damned much. Watching him go, I missed what had grown up between the three of us and later between the six of us. We’d counted on it for our lives out there, but here it was nothing. In some crazy way, I’d come to care about these people, and that caring had stopped me running, stopped me hiding in the Rangers. Would that all be nothing, too?
I wondered if it was worth it to come back.
Esmelda wrapped the two northers in long hooded cloaks and sneaked us into the Senate building through the back way. I wouldn’t have said sneaked to her face, but it sure felt that way to me, winding along the back corridors. She stuffed us all in a little room underneath the spectator’s balconies, one of several such waiting areas, a bland and modern cave — pasty yellow walls and furniture just uncomfortable enough to keep you from getting too cozy.
Two old men had already arrived, Esmelda’s witnesses, I guessed. One wore ordinary clothing but held himself as if he were in uniform. From the shift of his eyes, the spark as they passed over my knives, the hidden ones as well as the visible, and the careful way he placed his own hands, I guessed he knew more than a little about weapons. I’d also bet his loyalty and qualifications were above suspicion. The second man, in scholar’s robes, beamed as he was introduced to Jakon and Grissem. With undisguised eagerness, he asked if he could just please ask them one or two questions about their clan traditions.
“For what purpose?” Jakon asked.
The scholar didn’t seem to notice Jakon’s tone of voice. “We know so little about your culture. We’re anxious to fill in the gaps, to do a little impromptu field work, so to speak. This is such an opportunity, to have two native informants — ”
“We are not specimens to be examined,” Jakon snapped, “to have the living heart of our people imprisoned in your books.”
“Yet if there is to be a new understanding between these people and Clan’Cass, we must learn about one another,” Grissem said. “Why else did you build the trading post? Why else let the Ranger woman and her friends live, instead of killing them as your grandfather would have done?”
Jakon’s chin came up and his nostrils flared. The tendons in his neck stood out. I could not tell if he were more angry or terrified. I knew the temper of his courage, the passion to lead his people in new and dangerous ways. Isolated in the heart of his enemy’s stronghold, he was near his limits. The moment passed, and he held out one hand. “Come, then, and let us learn about each other.”
Esmelda and Avi took up the long benches in the opposite corner, heads together, going over procedure, scheming and such.
Me, I’d rather sit on the floor if I had to sit at all, but this was Laureal City, so Terris and I settled ourselves on two chairs around a table bearing a particularly scabby-looking succulent plant. Terris had that pinched, white-around-the-mouth look again.
I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Montborne loose in the city. If I’d learned anything about killing, it was that the first time was the hardest. Montborne wouldn’t rest easy as long as Terris was alive. He’d learned one final way of solving his problems. And even I had to sleep sometime.
Terris listened to what I had to say. He leaned forward, and for a fleeting moment I saw the boy he used to be — earnest, impulsive, loving. It came to me that he didn’t know why he’d let Montborne live; he’d acted on trust and instinct, as if some god had moved him to it.
If that were true, it better not have been the demon chance.
My muscles itched, wanting to hit something. “You should have left him in that swamp, let him and the things with the light beams fight it out between them. They deserve each other.”
He shook his head at my words, laughing humorlessly. “You sound just like Avi.”
“Avi’s got the right idea about Montborne.”
“Avi thinks only in terms of what’s good for Laurea. That’s not so bad, since she’ll be Guardian of Laurea after Esme. But Laurea and Harth are not the same thing.”
My eyes rested on the ring he wore, the one he’d scooped up from the charred bones of the gate world. Not just the gate world, I thought, the home world, the one we’d come from. The one we must remember, so that the same thing did not happen to our own Harth.
The ring bore the symbol of a doubled circle surrounding a single dot. He wore it openly, as Esmelda wore hers. Mother knows what they’d said to each other about it. Avi might be the next Guardian of Laurea, but Terris had taken on a far heavier burden with this ring.
The Senate chamber’s walls were covered in polished stone instead of wood. Some kind of marble, I thought, cold and echoing. Solar lights, high on the ceiling, cast muted shadows everywhere. Above us in the galleries, people hurried to claim the last few seats.
I followed Terris and the old dragon through the double doors and down the wide central aisle. An oval table had been placed at the front of the room, with chairs for the Inner Council and their aides. Avi, Jakon, and Grissem stayed behind in the little room, along with the two expert witnesses, to wait for Esmelda’s signal. The rest of the Council filed in from the side, wearing their long green robes, surrounded by their pages and adjutants. Last came the gaea-priest, carrying a silver bowl of water and a dwarf tree in a planter.
As I stood with Terris behind Esmelda’s chair, my eyes jumped around the room. I glanced from the half-circle of clear space around the table to the low railing and then the rows of chairs for the Senators with aisles running up to the crowded public sections, the balconies above them, the doors now being closed by uniformed Senate ushers. I marked where the City Guards stood, the extra security around the oval table, how Montborne had placed his own men. They were too few for the coup Avi had feared, but enough to cause trouble. I recognized a big-shouldered man as Montborne’s bodyguard from the day Pateros was killed. There was no sense of immediate threat from any of them, just waiting and watching, marking my presence even as I did theirs.
The gaea-priest took his place at one end of the table and Montborne at the other. Esmelda, as Guardian of Laurea, stood in the center, facing the audience. At her signal, the gaea-priest began the opening ceremony. He must have done it a hundred times, but for me the ritual held a fascination — the way the room fell still, the way the priest set down the bowl and planter, the musical clinking of his amulet charms. The way he dipped his fingers in the water and touched it to his lips, then dipped again and sprinkled the drops over the tree.
“In the name of all oneness,
Which we pledge to preserve
In thought and deed.
May the cycle of life
Bless these proceedings.”
His voice sounded a little quavery, and not just with age. I hated priests, but how could I hate him? He was nothing more than an old man who’d spent his life in wishcrap rituals like this one, believing with all his soul that some Laurea-loving god was up there listening to his prayers.
Maybe there was. Ay Mother, maybe you’ve been listening to me, too, all these years.
The priest set the bowl in front of Esmelda. She dipped her hand into the water. The dotted doubled circle incised on her ring gleamed as she let the drops fall on the roots of the tiny tree.
The bowl passed then to an older man with a fancy medallion of copper and gold — Hobart, the Senate Presidio. Then to the red-haired medician and a stern-faced man I recognized as the Senior Judge. Then to Montborne. He too dipped his fingers into the water and sprinkled it on the tree. His face, with that too-smooth skin, was intent and calm. Did he, like the bald priest, believe? Was I wrong about him, holding a grudge against a man who was no longer an enemy?
The other Council members performed the ritual and returned the silver bowl to the priest. He signaled that everything had been done right. The Inner Council sat down in their padded armchairs at the table and the rest of us in the wooden seats behind. Terris readied his notebook and pen, still officially Esmelda’s adjutant. I almost laughed aloud that Terris, who’d stood in the Northlight and taken me and Montborne to hell and back, should now be sitting here like a schoolboy writing down his lessons. What he had done — what he had seen — these things couldn’t be taken out of him.
As Esmelda rose, I sensed a subtle change in the room, like the shift in a dusty steppe sky before a twister breaks. I’ve never been one for listening to speeches, and I didn’t now, not much. Most of my attention centered on Montborne and his men, the two officers standing behind him and others by the doors and the stairs to the gallery.
Gradually my focus shifted back to Esmelda’s speech. She’d finished with her opening comments — boring wishcrap about Laurea’s long and honorable traditions. She sounded just like a scholar, and I reminded myself she’d once represented the University on Pateros’s Inner Council.
Montborne’s expression didn’t change as he listened, just the tightness around his eyes. His gaze flickered to Orelia, sitting on the far side of Esmelda in her black uniform. She kept glancing from Esmelda to Montborne, looking more unhappy all the time. I wondered what Montborne had told her. She wasn’t a likely ally. Her priority would be keeping order in the city. I wondered how much one Ranger could do against Montborne’s and Orelia’s people together.
I couldn’t put my finger on what made me so twitchy. I used to be able to feel out a place, to pick the breaker with my eyes closed, but now everything seemed all jumbled and twisted.
All the while, Montborne watched Esmelda like a hunting snake.
If she felt his eyes on her, she gave no sign. I couldn’t concentrate any more on what she was saying — something about turning Pateros’s dreams into reality. Maybe leading up to convincing these people that bringing Jakon here was Pateros’s idea.
Then Montborne was on his feet, shouting, punctuating the air with sharp gestures. For a confused moment, I couldn’t make out what either he or Esmelda were saying.
“It’s time to tell the truth about Pateros!” Montborne cried. “Not about his dreams but about his death!”
“Out of order!” A Senator in the front row, a white-hair with a pinched mouth, stood up, waving one skinny arm. “Out of order!” His voice was lost in the sudden outcry.
“What about Pateros’s death?” someone else shouted.
“Shut up and let him speak!”
Silently I cursed Esmelda for how easily she’d allowed him to seize the advantage. Maybe she was too old to face him down after all, too slow, too weak —
“General Montborne, I fear my colleague is correct. You are indeed out of order.” With a gesture and a few calm words, Esmelda took the center once more. The rumbling subsided. Senators leaned forward in their seats, and behind them, spectators watched with open mouths.
“However,” she went on, “these extraordinary times demand flexibility as well as initiative. Each new point of view can, in its own way, add to our resources. If you have some special insight to share with us, pray continue.”
I saw now that she’d anticipated this move of his. She was giving him room to hang himself, certain that she could counter anything he brought up. But she was taking a calculated risk with Montborne. She might know him here in the city, but she hadn’t fought with him through the Brassa Hills. He wasn’t called Butcher for nothing. I didn’t like the feel of this at all.
“It was Pateros, with his courage and vision, who led us to victory at Brassaford, who held back the norther horde and kept our homes and families safe.” Montborne stepped forward, gesturing to the room. “It was Pateros who sought to forge a new future for our nation — a future of strength and freedom from fear.”
Montborne knew how to work the crowd, that was sure. I could imagine him calling out battlefield orders in those same ringing tones. I bet the audience could, too. He used everything — his powerful speaking voice, his military bearing, the shock of the moment — to his advantage. He had everyone’s attention as surely as if he held them in his outstretched hand.
“But Pateros was cut down before those dreams could become reality, murdered in the center of this great city — in plain day — by the most treacherous villainy. But not...”
The room had gone dead silent now, the spectators craning forward to catch his every word. Even the skinny old Senator who’d challenged him sat rapt.
“...not by the isolated act of a madman or a disgruntled trader, as some would have us believe. By the most vile and cunning conspiracy, one that reaches from the barbaric north right into the heart of our oldest and most trusted institutions.”
A mixture of dismay and incredulity rippled through the crowd. Their whispers sounded like the far-off rustling of bloodbat wings.
“People of Laurea, Senators and citizens, hear me! I have discovered evidence — undeniable, incontrovertible proof of this very conspiracy!”
The audience surged and muttered, their cries blending into a dull roar. I remembered the crowd on the day of the Funeral Riot — the many-headed enemy. The City Guards moved forward, positioned to intercept any movement from the audience, but Orelia held them back with a signal. They’d be no help if things got too tight. For right now, we — Terris and I — were down here and the crowd was up there, and we had a precious little space between us. Not even a pea-brained twitterbat would call that an advantage.
On a signal from Montborne, a City Guard marched down a side aisle and up to the table. Had Montborne somehow gotten Orelia to do his dirty work for him? The Guard wore a patch over one eye and carried two long, slender leather-wrapped bundles.
I didn’t like the look of this at all. Neither, apparently, did the rest of the Inner Council. A few of the Senators rose to their feet in protest. At my side, Terris turned pale.
The one-eyed Guard unwrapped the two bundles and laid them on the table in front of the general. I did not need to look to know what they were. One of them had an official-looking card tied to it.
Montborne picked up the tagged dagger. With a dramatic flourish, he lifted it overhead, the slender blade catching the light, and laid on the oval table. “This is the norther dagger that killed Pateros!
“And this — ” he picked up the second blade and held it high, with exactly the same gesture. If I’d blinked, I wouldn’t have known it was different except for the tag fluttering like a rock-dove pinion. The crowd held its breath as he set the second dagger down.
“Unbelievable as it sounds, yesterday this exact duplicate was smuggled into Laureal City — ”
The audience rumbled like an avalanche about to bust loose. Montborne held them back with a gesture.
“ — and discovered, hidden...in the possession of that man!”
He whirled and pointed straight at Terris.