Montborne’s voice thundered above the general outcry. “I accuse Terricel sen’Laurea, who just yesterday returned from a secret mission to our norther borders.”
Esmelda stood motionless, as she had through Montborne’s entire speech, but now the Councillor in the fancy neck chain pushed forward and gestured for order. Terris tensed, ready for action. I grabbed his shoulder and held him firm. Anything he said would only make things worse. It was only one small step to ask Who sent Terris north? Montborne meant to bring Esmelda down as well, or else tie all Laurea into knots trying. By the time things got sorted out, he aimed to be in control, and no one would remember that Esmelda had also made accusations against him.
“These allegations are outrageous!” cried Hobart, the fancy-chained Councillor. “Outrageous and monstrous!”
“But if they’re true?” demanded Orelia, rising and pounding the table so that water splashed from the silver ritual bowl. “What if they’re true?”
Ah, so that was how Montborne had gotten to her.
“Truth? You want the truth?” Quick as a striking snake, Esmelda seized the opening. Any other time, the old dragon might have gotten the room back under her control. The Inner Council would have listened, as well as half the Senators. I caught the flashes of unguarded feeling on their faces, fear and suspicion warring with the bone-deep need to believe in her. But the crowd at the back and up on the balconies, the many-headed monster, wavered on the very edge of riot.
“Truth is not something to be determined by a popularity contest.” Esmelda’s voice sliced through the uneasy murmurs. “Montborne has raised some very serious charges, charges that bear on the very heart and future of our nation. These charges merit the most thorough and careful investigation. How can we possibly do them justice here, bandying them about like a pack of irresponsible playground insults?”
A few people in the front rows sat down again. A Senator in the front row wiped his florid cheeks with a handkerchief, as if the sudden reversal was too much for him.
“These allegations will be heard in the proper time and setting,” Esmelda went on, “as well as evidence that the weapons produced by Montborne were manufactured right here in Laureal City — in a secret military facility — under the orders of General Montborne himself.”
“Impossible!” Montborne shot back, still brandishing the second dagger. “Any fool can see these are norther daggers!”
“If the distinguished general will kindly —” Hobart, the Senate Presidio, tried again.
Esmelda made a slashing gesture with her hands. Suddenly the doors under the spectators’ balconies flew open. Head high, Avi strode down the wide central aisle, Jakon and Grissem only a pace behind her. In their quilted vests and elkskins, their hair like spun gold, faces stern, they seemed proud and strange but not, as Montborne said, savage. I’d fought as hard as anybody at Brassaford, I’d spilled as much blood, but I knew now what savage really was.
The entire chamber went wild — people screaming, jumping up and waving their arms, ushers vainly trying to calm them, Senators and Councillors calling for order, the priest chanting, Montborne’s men looking confused and astonished, some of them unnerved — the whole mess worse than a barnfowl coop after a raptor bat has just swooped in, and twice as brainless. A bunch of spectators rushed for the doors, but Orelia motioned her people forward. They moved quickly to hold back the worst of the panic. Me, I was on my feet with one hand on my long-knife hilt and the other on Terris’s shoulder, grimly counting how many throats I’d have to cut to get him out of there alive.
In front of the oval Inner Council table, Esmelda waited, still as a carven statue. The two northers had turned round to face the audience, Avi between them. They stood, legs apart, balanced lightly on the balls of their feet, arms folded across their chests. It was too bad, I thought, that Jakon couldn’t dance for the crowd — then they’d really sit up and notice.
How it happened, I didn’t know — whether it was something Esmelda did or the strength of her presence or the northers’ inhuman calm, or maybe just plain curiosity winning out over batshit stupidity, but the room grew quiet again. People cleared the aisles and sat down, some still pointing and whispering to their neighbors, others hushing them up. Montborne glanced around — he knew the moment had gone to Esmelda. Behind that waxy-smooth face, I sensed him juggling for another opening, trying to outguess what she’d try next.
Esmelda’s voice was intense, but clear and low, as if she had no need to shout or make dramatic gestures. It was enough to talk as she did about desperate times, about hope and dreams. She was no Pateros, even I saw that. Pateros could take someone like me and make me think I could do great things — Esmelda made these people think she could. For this time and place, though, it was enough.
If Avi could do the same thing, she could also sign that treaty with Jakon’s people, marry him, and bear a half-norther heir to succeed her as Guardian. Maybe there was a chance for peace with the north after all.
After a moment or two, I caught the change in the faces of the crowd. Most of them were children when Esmelda stood out there on the plaza and the rains came down to put out the foundry fires and the plague ended. Yet they seemed to somehow remember, as if that history were bred into their blood.
As if to underscore the mystery of Jakon and Grissem, she began by reminding the audience of the long history of conflict between Laurea and the north. Times I’d never heard of, not being a scholar, things that happened hundreds of years ago. And Brassaford. Ah yes, these people remembered Brassaford. A murmur passed through the room like a gust of bitter wind and then as quickly died down. If Jakon or Grissem felt it, they gave no outward sign.
“And so, we come to the present,” Esmelda said. “To here and now. To today.”
A few people in the balconies grumbled, impatient for answers to the questions Montborne had raised. The Senators, who knew the rhythms of official speech, settled down to listen. Orelia and some of the Inner Council members leaned forward expectantly.
“Let us consider the northers as they are today. Let us consider these northers.” Esmelda gestured toward Jakon and Grissem.
“Let us ask ourselves why they have come before us — openly — into the presence of their dearest enemies. They still bear their weapons, so they are not prisoners. They make no hostile moves, you see them standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a Laurean Ranger, my daughter and heir, Aviyya. So clearly they have not fought their way here. What then?
“They are here at my invitation. To end the long years of bloodshed. To begin that very era of peace and prosperity that Pateros dreamed...”
The room had gone so still I could hear Terris’s heart beating as clearly as my own.
“But, as General Montborne has so kindly pointed out, there is still the matter of Pateros’s death to be resolved. The General has said — or rather, the preliminary investigation has suggested — that Pateros may have been killed with a norther dagger. Jakon — ”
With a single fluid movement, Jakon drew his dagger and handed it to her across the table, hilt first. Even so, every City Guard and military officer in the room jumped. Esmelda balanced it in her fingers, as if studying its ornamental markings or testing its weight. When she raised it, she did not brandish it. She held it as a scholar might display a relic or an antique artifact. I thought again of that day twenty years ago, when she stood out in the plaza and the rains came, as if at her command, to quench the fires.
“This is a norther dagger. A true norther dagger.” She laid it in the center of the table beside the one that had killed Pateros. “Montborne, let us see how yours compare. Are they...norther daggers? Or are they malicious frauds, designed only to mislead us? To turn us against each other and those who would become our allies? Is that the conspiracy you warned us about?”
Esmelda looked down at the daggers for a moment before continuing. She seemed taller and darker, and she spoke in a voice that would crumble granite.
“The matter of the assassination of a Guardian is one of grave concern. None of these charges may be dismissed out of hand, no matter how far-fetched they seem. These weapons are now evidence for an official investigation. But to avoid any implication of special interest, I hereby recuse both myself and General Montborne from any part in the investigation. Instead, I appoint Senior Judge Karlen — ” she pointed to the serious-faced man sitting beside Montborne, “City Guards Chief Orelia, and the gaea-priest Markus.”
The bald priest blinked as if surprised someone was taking him seriously, and then squared his bony shoulders. Orelia flushed, and for a moment I thought Esmelda a fool for choosing her. Then I understood. Orelia had already let Montborne manipulate her once. She would bend over backwards to avoid any appearance of favoritism to him. Her jaw clenched hard as she rose from her seat and took possession of Montborne’s two daggers. And Mother help that one-eyed man of hers if he had anything to do with their forging.
Esmelda proposed some sort of resolution — authorizing this or that, all preliminary stuff, and quickly drew the meeting to a close. I gathered it meant Jakon could go back and talk officially to his grandfather. Nobody here was about to promise anything more or to guarantee what the Rangers would be doing on the border in the meantime. But it was a start. The audience grew noisier, restless even before the ushers opened the doors.
I couldn’t understand how Esmelda let the moment dribble away. Why not nail Montborne right then and there? She had the daggers as proof; what more did she need? Orelia and the others on the investigating committee would track down every connection. Within a day they’d know who made the daggers and where. Montborne was as good as dead.
The old dragon was crafty. If she pressed charges now, she’d lose the people who still thought Montborne was a hero. All she had to do was sit back, let the investigation do its work, and then take all the credit — the Guardian who unmasked the traitor general.
I wouldn’t be in Montborne’s place for all the trees in Laurea.
But I watched him as he stepped around the table to speak to Hobart...and he didn’t look like a man who’d just lost.