5: THE COUNT’S JUSTICE
Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Two days since the slaying of the dragon Xaloma
Janel broke off her narration and looked away.
Kihrin stared. “Xaltorath is your mother?”
She glanced back, her smile black as night. “Much to my regret. But I have it on good authority I’m not a demon. Not fully.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring. And who told you that, again?”
She twisted her hand in a flourish in his direction. “You did. But others have told me the same.” Her bright eyes shone for a moment before pain ambushed her. She exhaled.
“Was it bad, the Hellmarch at Lonezh Canton? I can’t imagine—” Kihrin winced and felt a fool. Of course it was. What a demon would do with a child …
Then he remembered the Capital’s streets years before. Remembered being trapped, still reeling from the same demon’s psychic assault, as he listened to General Milligreest trade insults with the monster. Xaltorath had boasted about what they’d done to the general’s eight-year-old daughter.
And Janel had already told him she’d been eight years old when the demons overran Lonezh Canton.
Kihrin looked away, feeling like an idiot.
Janel’s age matched Kihrin’s criteria perfectly. He felt quite certain that her parentage would as well, that it would turn out her father was really High General Qoran Milligreest.
That made Janel the fourth “son.” Apparently, the demon-claimed child.
A Devoran prophecy somewhere probably mentioned it.
Kihrin hadn’t noticed the table had fallen silent until Janel spoke. “The worst part is it wasn’t always awful. Sometimes Xaltorath was … nice. I never knew which way it would go as a child. If she’d present herself as the demon or something passing for human.” She shrugged and picked at the food she’d been eating earlier. “When I realized she couldn’t control me, I left. I started destroying demons, but apparently, that had been her design all along.”
Kihrin made a sympathetic noise. Looking back, his childhood was happy. Full of crime, true, but also full of song. By comparison, he had no idea how Janel could even form coherent sentences.
Their eyes met again.
Kihrin said, “I’d give a lot to understand what Xaltorath’s angle in all this is. I always assumed it involved trying to summon more demons, but now I wonder. What’s their game?” He pointed his spoon at Janel.
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but I agree. Why didn’t she kill me when I was a child? Why did she attack you? I’ve never made sense of her motives.” Janel shrugged.
“May I tell this next part?” Brother Qown asked.
Kihrin shifted. He’d forgotten their chaperone.
“Please.”
Qown’s Turn. Mereina Castle, Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.
When Brother Qown joined Dorna in the kitchens the next morning, the Vishai priest’s eyes were sunken and bloodshot. He groaned as he slid into a chair.
“Didn’t sleep well?” Mare Dorna asked him.
“Why must everyone sleep on the floor?” Brother Qown whined. “Haven’t you people heard of beds?”
Dorna was taken aback. “We have beds. What were you napping on last night?”
“Pillows,” said Brother Qown. “And rushes and cushions. None of which are an actual bed. And the liveryman I slept next to snored. I’m surprised the noise didn’t wake you. He threw elbows too.”
“Ah, you have to nudge ’em a little when they do that.” She gave him a curious look. “You mean everyone where you come from sleeps in separate rooms? How high and mighty. Here, only noble types do that. Rest of the house sleeps together, the way the gods intended.”
“Or don’t sleep at all,” Brother Qown bemoaned.
“If you find yourself the right partner…” Mare Dorna winked at him.
“Oh stars, that’s not what I meant.” He’d been propositioned the night before too. When he’d refused her, the woman had taken no offense at all. She’d said if Brother Qown preferred to run with stallions, she knew just the man. Indeed, she would’ve matched Qown up with a male herald before the evening finished, if Qown hadn’t told her no. “But at least tell me you look for some privacy for that.”
“For what?” She was all wide-eyed innocence.
“I should have gone back to the Temple of Light when I had the chance,” he said.
“I’ve always found the best thing for a good night’s sleep is finding yourself the right bed warmer. Then the elbows don’t matter so much.”
“Does vow of celibacy mean nothing to you?”
She stared at him, bemused.
Brother Qown reminded himself to stop asking questions to which he knew the answers.
“So you don’t run at all, then?”
“No!” He claimed a bowl and set it down more forcefully than proper.
“Then just say so. Ain’t no shame in it.”
“I belong to a monastic order, Mare Dorna. We take a vow. Physical pleasure is a distraction from our contemplation of divine mysteries.”
The staff was largely absent as they busied themselves preparing the day’s tournament feast. This evidently involved a great many different ways of roasting fruits, vegetables, and game—far more methods than Qown found familiar—most of which was conducted outside. No one had really protested Dorna staking out a corner of the kitchen.
Someone in the castle’s kitchen had left a large pot of porridge to cook over the fire, but it didn’t smell like rice. He scooped what looked like oats into his bowl. Barley? Probably barley.
“Ain’t food a pleasure?” Dorna dribbled red chili sauce over her porridge and added pickled vegetables to her serving.
“Food’s purpose is to fortify and sustain. But what is that?” Brother Qown pointed.
“This?” She held up the lacy shape. “Lotus. You know, you ain’t supposed to eat your porridge plain.” She picked up several bowls on the table and started dumping portions into Brother Qown’s bowl. “Lotus, ginger, cabbage—”
“That’s not cabbage.”
“Course it is. Fermented dor beans, fenis root, pepperleaf, and pickled sour apple. Now throw pepper sauce on top—”
“Dorna, please—” Brother Qown tried to interrupt, but she paid no attention to him.
She handed him the bowl. “Now that’s a proper breakfast. I don’t know what you people cook out west, but it must be boring as dirt.”
“No, not at all. Our cuisine is excellent. I would be happy to prepare a dish—”
“You were going to eat your porridge naked. No thanks.” She returned to her own meal. “Anyway, your whole ‘vow of celery’ sounds stupid, if you ask me. If you don’t want to run, fine, but people forcing you to promise you won’t run? Acting like running’s a sin? Ain’t right.”
Brother Qown inhaled. Losing his temper wouldn’t help his cause. “I appreciate you noticing I didn’t ask you. Besides, it’s not about engaging in carnal relations. We live a simple life to fulfill our spiritual needs and escape the chains of our physical forms.”
Dorna stared. “Our count ‘escapes the chains of her physical form’ every night. I don’t think she’d agree it’s so wonderful.”
“That’s not what I mean—” He paused as Count Janel entered the kitchen. She looked grim.
“How did you sleep, Count?” Brother Qown asked.
“Like the dead.” She pointed to Dorna’s porridge. “Is there any more left?”
“Oh aye, colt.” Dorna fetched another dish and filled it from the cauldron.
Count Janel also added vegetables and pepper sauce to her portion.
Brother Qown thought the remaining cook still using the kitchen would faint when she saw the visiting count plunk herself down on a bench and eat. The cook didn’t dare tell the noblewoman to leave. She did, however, hover around the count like a wren fretting over a raven too near her nest.
When Count Janel noticed, she stood. “Walk with me,” she said to Dorna and Brother Qown. She took the porridge with her.
No one tried to stop the trio from leaving the kitchen or walking out onto the castle walls. Brother Qown suspected people would have objected—soldiers or the like—but Janel was a visiting count. She wasn’t Tamin’s direct liege, but the title still meant something. She could wander freely as long as she didn’t stray into private areas.
“Is anything wrong?” Brother Qown asked. The noblewoman wore a dour expression, extreme even by her own dour standards.
Count Janel leaned against a crenelated wall. “That depends on what my spymaster has discovered.” She looked at Dorna.
Mare Dorna ducked her head and put her hand to her face as though covering for a shy blush. “Ah, you’re a shameless flatterer, my dearest. I’m just a withered old gossip.”1
Janel scoffed. “A withered old gossip who could convince a pebble to confess the name of the river that birthed it. Get on with it.”
Dorna straightened and checked for eavesdroppers. “It’s nothing good. News on the wind is Barsine Banner is filthy with witches. Winter came early, cold and hard. Water buffalo froze to death still chewing their cud; jaguars have turned to picking off people because the wild herds all hightailed it to warmer climes; the late spring will mean a later harvest, assuming there’s anything left. So witches must have done all that, right?”
“And what about the prophecy?” Count Janel asked. “The demon-claimed child?”
“Nobody said nothing about no prophecy,” Dorna admitted. “Demons, though? Word is the local farms harbored demon cults, so the baron stopped all that when he inherited the title. That’s why so much land has been declared forest.”
“Um, forest?” Qown asked. “There’s a huge forest in Kirpis, but it doesn’t convey any magical protection from demon cults.”
“In Jorat, a forest is off limits,” Janel explained, “so it gives the local baron permission to go in and drive off anyone living inside. And yes, that might include any so-called demon cults. Unfortunately, it absolutely will include everyone else as well. No one may live or hunt there. Anyone who does declares themselves saelen, to be arrested on sight.”
“Off limits to all but nobles, you mean.” Dorna shrugged. “Anyhow, whole villages and towns have been cleared out and burned for this reason.”
“Demon cults here?” Janel said. “Where does he think this is, Marakor?”
Brother Qown fought against the impulse to suggest many worthy Marakori had nothing to do with demon cults.
Dorna held up her hands. “I’m just repeating what I overheard. The old baron died in winter. Ever since, the new baron has been tearing up the land trying to put down the witches he insists are attacking his people.” She paused. “Don’t take much, I hear, to be accused of being a witch. And this baron is a firm believer in using fire to deal with witches.”
“What? That’s barbaric.” Brother Qown couldn’t help himself. “Besides, witches aren’t vulnerable to fire.”
“No more so than any person is vulnerable to fire,” Count Janel agreed, “but Tamin isn’t wrong. Someone in Barsine is a witch and is summoning demons.”
“You think there are witches?”
“Yes. And I will find and destroy them.” Her tone left little room for argument.
Count Janel left the bowl and began to walk away with purposeful strides. Dorna and Brother Qown shared a look before they followed, with Dorna darting back a moment later to pick up the abandoned bowl.
“Where are we going?” Brother Qown asked when he caught up.
“The dungeons. I need to speak with Ninavis.”
Brother Qown assumed the dungeon would be one area where Count Janel’s title didn’t gain her automatic entry, but he was mistaken. Few people paid them any attention as they walked. Count Janel looked like a queen strolling through her kingdom, servants scrambling behind her.
However, her confidence was unnecessary: no guard stood at the entrance.
“A soldier was here yesterday,” Brother Qown said. “They’d barred the door from the outside too.”
Indeed, the heavy iron bar lay on the floor. The door appeared open a fractional degree.
Dorna moved beside the door and used her toe to nudge it farther ajar.
A loud clatter greeted the movement; a sword and scabbard resting against the door fell to the floor. They’d just given someone inside in the jail a few seconds’ warning.
“Shit!” Someone cursed as punctuation to a strangled scream. “Ow! Bitch!”
Count Janel abandoned subtlety and barged inside. The dungeon looked much the same as the night before, with a single exception: it appeared empty.
Brother Qown saw no sign of guards or prisoners.
Then a guard ran out from behind stacked wine crates, straightening his tunic and brushing his hair to the side.
Dread twisted in the pit of Brother Qown’s stomach. They’d surely interrupted something sordid.2 If his story about a contagious disease hadn’t been believed … if someone had called his bluff …
“Hey, you’re not supposed to be here,” the guard protested upon seeing who had interrupted him.
“That makes two of us,” Count Janel said.
“Now why are you bleeding, colt?” Mare Dorna cocked her head to the side and pointed to the man’s scalp. Even with his hair pulled over, blood trickled down and stained his leather-covered shoulder.
If the guard had been smarter or more creative, he might have had a plausible story ready. Instead, he reached for the sword at his belt and realized he’d left it with his scabbard—leaning against the dungeon door. He picked up a discarded chain and shackle, wielding it like a flail.
Then the guard rushed Janel.
The count sighed. She stepped forward, grabbed the man by his jerkin, and threw him against the stone wall. He collided with a thick thud, headfirst.
The man’s eyes rolled up as he slumped to the floor.
“Stars!” Brother Qown hurried to the guard’s side, hoping by some miracle Count Janel hadn’t killed the jailer outright. Brother Qown saw other signs of violence; someone had bitten the man’s ear, and they’d been dedicated to the task. Quick on the heels of that thought, Qown realized he should first check on whoever had bitten the man. Count Janel must have had the same worry, because she rushed behind the stacked crates.
When the priest caught up, he saw Ninavis unlocking her shackles with the jailer’s key. Scarlet dripped from her lips and chin as she brandished the manacles at them like a weapon.
To Brother Qown’s amazement, Count Janel smiled. “Ah, now the blood makes sense.”
“I’m not staying in this basement.” Ninavis tightened her grip on the chain and glared.
“No,” Janel agreed. “That would be ill-advised.” She appeared to be putting an effort into controlling her laughter. “Let’s leave this place.”
“Aren’t we going to be in trouble for this?” Brother Qown resisted the urge to wring his hands. He failed to see how the baron could ignore a visiting noble—even a count—attacking his guards.
“Oh yes, I should think we’ll be in a great deal,” Count Janel said, still grinning. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and held it out to Ninavis as the woman hobbled out into the main area. “You have a little something on your chin.”
Ninavis blinked as she took the cloth. “You’re not turning me in?”
“Oh no. It’s not safe here.”
“Huh.” Mare Dorna stood from where she’d knelt, looking at the guard. She raised a hand so they all saw the gray greasy makeup smearing her fingers. “Methinks the girl ain’t the only one with a little something on her chin.”
Ninavis rested against the wall for balance while she used her other hand to clean her face. She resembled a flamingo, balanced on her one good leg, doing it with far more skill than Brother Qown could muster. “I’m thirty-five years old. It’s been a damn long time since anyone had the right to call me girl.” She focused on Dorna’s hand. “Is that paint?”
Brother Qown knelt next to the guard and rubbed at the gray leopard spots shading the unconscious man’s chin.
His fingers also smeared the makeup.
“Why would a guard fake their coloring?” he asked.
“The same reason so many hulking guards around here don’t understand a fireblood, I imagine,” Mare Dorna said. “’Cause they ain’t Joratese.” She shut one eye and squinted as she studied his features. “This one’s Yoran, or I’m still an acrobat in a traveling tournament show.” She patted the soldier’s pockets.
Count Janel spared the man a cursory glance before she turned back to Ninavis. “Where are your people?”
“The guards took them to the tourney.” A sour, angry look stole over her expression. “I thought those bastards would make all manner of fuss about leaving me behind when they saw I couldn’t walk, but they laughed and said the baron wanted even numbers, anyway.”
Brother Qown finished examining the prone guard. He had a concussion for sure, but the priest couldn’t do much for him with an audience. Qown stood. “Why would they bring prisoners to the tournament? Why wouldn’t they just leave them here in the dungeons or send them off to a proper jail before their trial?”
The count looked startled. “What? Oh no. There’s no trial. Not in the sense you mean.”
“Excuse me?” Brother Qown felt a moment’s sharp outrage. Even in the Capital, trials were standard. It might have been a twisted and warped pretense, favoring those with money and connections, but by the Eight, there would be a trial.
“We don’t keep jails in Jorat. When someone has trespassed our laws, we hold prisoners for long enough to ensure their presence at the next tourney. Prisoners are given to tournament winners under the belief a champion’s idorrá will bring saelen back into the fold. I’ve never heard of a tournament where the number of saelen awarded mattered, however.”
“Awarded?” Brother Qown choked. “You mean ever since Tolamer, we’ve been selling bandits into slavery?”
“Yeah,” Ninavis said, “that’s just what you’ve been doing.”3
The count’s glare would melt glass. “No, it isn’t. The awarded men and women aren’t slaves or prisoners. They are adopted, brought into a new herd for their rehabilitation. It’s not at all the same thing as slavery.”
Ninavis snorted. “You say sword, I say blade.”
“Now, now, my foals. There’ll be time for philosophizing later,” Dorna said. “We need to figure out what’s what with that guard. Why’s a Yoran trying to disguise himself as Joratese?”
“Plenty of people disguise themselves as Joratese,” Ninavis snapped.
“Aye,” Dorna agreed, “but letting folks assume a wine-stain birthmark means you’re a local girl ain’t much of a disguise.”
Brother Qown blinked. Ninavis wasn’t Joratese? Her accent was perfect. After Dorna had pointed it out, Brother Qown realized the large maroon splash across Ninavis’s face didn’t resemble Jorat skin marking as much as a regular birthmark.
“He’s not the only soldier like this either,” Count Janel said, moving the conversation back to the original topic. “Captain Dedreugh should have been able to understand Arasgon. He couldn’t.”
“Dedreugh’s new,” Ninavis volunteered. “Most of the soldiers are. They showed up a few months ago, when Tamin took over after his father’s death. Tamin said he didn’t trust the guards who let his father die.”
“What happened to those original guards?” the count asked.
Ninavis spread her hands. “That’s a damn fine question.” She handed back the handkerchief, now streaked with blood. “Look, I know you and the baron used to be pals, but there’s nothing friendly about him now. You want to help us? Pull him out of power. You’re the only person who can.”
“I’m not his count. I have no authority over him.”
“So don’t give him an order. Kill him. You can get close enough to do it, and you wouldn’t even need a weapon. You’re Danorak. If you say you had a good reason for doing it, people will believe you.”
Janel stared. “That is not how we do things here.”
“To Hell with how you do things! Do you think anyone dares Censure him? As far as the baron is concerned, anyone against him is automatically with the witches. That’s all the excuse he needs to have his men strike us down. He won’t step down from power. If Kalazan’s prophecy is right about you—”
“Wait.” Janel raised a hand. “What of Kalazan’s prophecy? This business with the ‘claimed child’?”
“Oh, hell if I know,” Ninavis admitted. “Kalazan talks like it’s the cure for every problem we have. He overheard Tamin and his teacher talking about it, before the old baron’s death. How this prophecy predicted someone called the demon-claimed child would ruin everything. They needed to track this person down. That’s why Tamin’s so obsessed with fighting demons. Tamin thinks the demons are leading him to this ‘child’—who will kill Tamin if Tamin doesn’t kill him first.”
“I won’t murder Tamin.”
“So you are the demon-claimed child? Because that sounded like a confession.”
Count Janel ignored her and turned to the other two people in the dungeon. “Brother Qown, Mare Dorna, can you smuggle Ninavis to our quarters?”
“They’ll see me.” Ninavis pointed to her face. “This is distinctive.”
“Ha, found it!” Dorna lifted a small tin from the guard’s pockets. She unscrewed the lid, revealing the gray cake makeup the guard must have used to paint his face. “Give me five minutes and your own nana wouldn’t recognize you. Then it’s just getting you back with a bad leg, but I reckon we can manage.”
“What about him?” Ninavis indicated the unconscious guard.
“Drag him behind those crates,” Dorna suggested. “That buys us at least a few hours’ head start, before the other guards find him. We should have a good solid lead on any pursuit the baron organizes by then.”
“We’re not leaving.”
Dorna sighed at Janel. “Foal—”
“We’re not leaving,” Janel repeated, looking her true age for a moment, a sullen teenager about to stomp her feet. “I promised these people if they surrendered, they’d be treated fairly. I refuse to flee as long as there is a chance Tamin will trample my word.”
Ninavis pursed her lips and looked Janel over. “You might just be worth something after all, little noble.”
Brother Qown hid his smile. It wasn’t an occasion for smiling even if he felt pleased by this result. “How will you discover Tamin’s plans?”
Janel straightened her shoulders. “By the simplest method possible: I shall ask.” She gave the three a stern gaze. “Wait in my chambers. I’ll return once I have more information.”
She left before they could lodge a single protest.
They stared after her. Then Dorna pulled off a split overskirt, a gray wool wrap with indigo thread forming horse head patterns along the hem. She tossed the garment to Ninavis. “Wear it like a cloak. If we don’t want folks staring, we best be covering up your sorry excuse for armor. That shabby leather stands out a damn sight more than a bit of parti-color on your face.”
“Hey now. Tanner made this. It just needs patching.” Ninavis wrestled with the wool fabric, draping it around her.
“Tanner’s a tanner?” Dorna guffawed. “What would you lot have called him if he was the village piss farmer?”
“Mare Dorna!” Brother Qown winced and tipped his head to the bandit leader. “Don’t let Dorna bother you. She’s just upset we’re not running.”
“Running’s the smart move,” Dorna said. She waved a hand in Ninavis’s direction. “Now come over here where the light’s better, dear, while I fix your face. Priest, be a good foal and drag the guard into the back, would you?”
Brother Qown started to protest, but they didn’t have much time before someone realized this guard had been left by himself. He dragged the man backward.
The going was slow.
When Brother Qown had been first given this assignment, he’d thought he’d be posted to Tolamer Canton’s castle. A quiet, sedentary duty where he could concentrate on meditation and guiding the count’s spiritual development. Something where he didn’t have to move around.
He needed to exercise more to keep up, if he intended to keep traveling like this.
Ninavis kept throwing annoyed glances in his direction, as if about to interrupt her painting session with Dorna to drag the guard’s body herself, broken leg or not.
He dropped the man behind the crates, using a frayed and tattered blanket to cover him. As long as no one looked too closely, the guard appeared to be napping. Brother Qown checked to see if Dorna or Ninavis were paying him attention.
They weren’t.
Brother Qown put a hand to the guard’s chest, focusing his energy as his mentor Father Zajhera had taught him. He entered Illumination, a peculiar sensitivity to the tenyé surrounding all things, the universal light playing across cloth and skin and dirt and flesh. Illumination allowed him to see tenyé, the essential nature of every individual object in the world. That energy didn’t always coincide with objective appearances. He might well trip and crack his head open while seeing through its filter. But to make up for the inconvenience, a whole universe of possibility opened to him.
The Joratese—or those from Eamithon or Kazivar—might call what Brother Qown did magic. He knew better; he tapped into universal grace, tasted the divine. A holy gift.
No, it was the holiest gift.
The angry mottled gash marring the guard’s aura suggested concussion, internal swelling, bleeding. If Brother Qown left him there, the man would sleep his way right through the Second Veil and into the Afterlife.
Brother Qown set his hand against the man’s head. First, he soothed the brain tissue inflammation, then fortified the cracks in the man’s skull before shoring up the bleeding wounds too small to see. The guard would sleep and sleep hard, but if Qown finished his job, the guard wouldn’t die.
And if any Joratese discovered what Brother Qown had done, they might well put the priest to death instead.
“Hey, what’s taking so long?” Ninavis called out.
“Coming.” Brother Qown rushed after them.