The King's Justice Read online

  In his mildest tone, his softest silk, he asks, “Who speaks of evil? I did not.”

  “Blackguard,” she snaps. As her fright fades, her bitterness grows. “Do you think to confuse me? I know you. You are the canker that rots the heart of this town. You do not speak of evil now. You are too cunning for that. But you did then. You were not so bold to say it to my face, but you said it. You said it behind it my back, a gods-fearing woman’s back. You said it and did not admit your wrong. You did not ask my forgiveness.”

  Sweat gathers on her brow. It trickles into her eyes. But she does not blink it away. It is not sorrow or regret. It is an old woman’s trembling fury.

  “If you had said it to my face, I would have told you that I see as clearly as you, indeed I do. And I have a clearer sight of my duty. There was evil in him then. He was a wicked boy, cursed son of a cursed father. Did you think me blind to it? But there is no evil now. With my own love and my own strength, I ripped it from his heart after his father forsook us. With punishment and prayer, I drove it out. Out, do you hear me? I scarred him with my love until he had no room in him for evil.

  “He is a good man now.” She smacks her lips in satisfaction, but does not ease her clutch on her shawl. “A good neighbor with a good living. A kind man who aids the less fortunate. A hard-working man who provides for his gods-fearing mother, his lonely mother, his blind mother. He cares for her with the diligence of a priest.

  “When he catches you, he will drive you from the house. He will drive you to your ruin. When he is done with you, you will beg me on your knees for forgiveness”—quavering, she summons the fullness of her anger—“and I will not give it.”

  Black has heard enough. Such men as Haul Varder do not spring from the earth. They are shaped much as Black himself has been shaped, though by different means. If his purpose and his circumstances permit it, Black will take pity on Haul Varder, for surely the wheelwright’s mother did not.

  Tracing a pattern across his chest with one hand, Black grips the edge of his cloak with the other. “He will not catch me,” he assures the old woman. “I will catch him.”

  Then he swings his cloak in a sweeping gesture that extinguishes every light in the house. When the woman begins to wail, he turns his back on her, strides outside, and leaps for his horse. At a gallop, he rides in pursuit of his quarry.

  He cannot gallop when he enters the forest. The trees are thick, and the day’s light becomes dusk quickly among them. If he turns aside until he comes to the road, he will make better haste. Nonetheless he stays within the woods, following the scent of Haul Varder’s crimes. He is on a track the wheelwright has taken many times. It will lead him to his destination. Trusting his horse to give him as much speed as it can, he sharpens his senses so that errant breezes or undiscovered corpses will not urge him astray.

  He expects an ambush. He knows nothing of the old man who calls himself Sought. He knows only what Kelvera has told him of the man’s bodyguards. It is possible that they are ignorant of him. They have come from a land far to the west, where the King’s mediation does not hold sway. Their ignorance may be complete. Yet Black thinks otherwise. He will be surprised if Haul Varder has not been in Settle’s Crossways during the past night and day. He considers it unlikely that the wheelwright has not heard gossip of the stranger who spoke with Trait in the tavern, the stranger who injured Ing Hardiston and another man at Tamlin Marker’s grave. He believes that Sought’s men will be ready for him.

  The sun’s setting behind him casts spots like fragments of Varder’s mother’s prayers through the boughs and leaves, spots that dance and waver in the low wind, obscuring more than they reveal. Each instance of brightness darkens what lies behind it. But Black does not regard them. He has other senses, forms of perception that are not misled by the sun’s last fireflies. He trusts what he is able to discern. All other concerns he puts from his mind. That he does not, can not, understand the purpose that drives his quarry dismays him, but it does not affect his resolve, or his haste, or his confidence in his mount. It does not make him less the servant of his own purpose.

  Lungs and livers, air and heat. And a hierophant from a land infamous for its winds, a land where wind and sun are worshipped as gods. If it is true that air and heat are elemental spirits, as necessary to life as bright and dark, it may also be true that a shaper born to a parched and baking world knows how to call upon gods that have played no part in Black’s homeland’s wars.

  The ability to make use of such knowledge here is incomprehensible to Black, but his lack of understanding does not make it impossible.

  His mount stretches to leap a fallen tree. It skitters aside from a thicket of longthorn briar, avoids a sinkhole in a wandering stream, picks a careful path between large boulders. Its care makes him a target for his attackers.

  He is aware of them while they still only hear his approach. He counts four men armed with sabers and other weapons. He recognizes their stealth. He knows that the wheelwright is not among them.

  He detects a crossbow aimed at his hip from the brush on one side, a spear poised to throw from the shelter of an old oak on the other. A man with a dagger ready crouches to spring from atop the nearest boulder. Directly ahead of Black, ten or more paces distant, stands a fourth assailant, waiting with his quarterstaff in case Black is able to evade three simultaneous assaults.

  Black’s movements are mapped in his mind, as precise as though he has foreseen them. Snatching up the edge of his cloak, he catches the bolt of the crossbow in the tough canvas as he vaults from the far side of his horse. The spear plucks at his shoulder, but does not harm him. The man leaping from the boulder lands in the mount’s empty saddle.

  An instant of surprise slows Black’s attackers, an instant of harsh cursing. During that heartbeat’s pause, Black slaps his horse’s rump, causing the beast to buck the man from its back. Prompt to its training, its shaping, the horse begins to trample the fallen man.

  Two or three paces of ground are now clear in front of Black. As one assailant bursts from the brush and another charges past his oak, both drawing their sabers, Black invokes his longsword. Kelvera has warned him against the skill of Sought’s men. As he engages them, he sees that she did not exaggerate. His own skill suffices against one such opponent. Only the many ways in which he has been shaped enable him to counter two.

  Parrying with his utmost speed, he shifts his ground until he has a boulder at his back. With both men in front of him, he fights for his life.

  Thrust and parry, slash and counter, his blade and theirs weave a skein of imminent bloodshed through the gloom. The last glints of the sun strike sparks like stars on the swift iron, gleams briefer than blinks. Black’s horse has fled among the trees. The beast has left one of Sought’s bodyguards broken or dead. There is much to be said for killing both of his immediate attackers, and also the last, who still waits. He imagines that Sought relies on them. Their deaths may prevent the culmination of the ritual that claimed Tamlin Marker. But he cannot be certain of this. Perhaps Haul Varder is all the aid Sought needs. Also he is not confident that he can kill his opponents. They are indeed exceptional. And they do not tire, though he resists them with all the strength of his body, all the gifts of his shaping, all the experience of his many battles. If he grants one of his foes an opening, he may be able to cut down the other. But then he will be wounded himself. Killing them both is not a likely outcome.

  Without hesitation, almost without thought, he changes his tactics. He fights now, not to harm or drive back his attackers, but rather to make himself a different target. He means to cause them to adjust their footing. And when he sees a subtle alteration in how they balance themselves, he takes his chance.

  Headlong, he dives between them, hoping that their blades will not find his back as he passes.

  They are wrongly balanced to turn and strike while he is exposed. For the merest instant, they interfere
with each other. Neither man can swing without hazard to his comrade.

  Black’s dive becomes a roll. He surges to his feet facing the foes he has passed. In the same motion, he springs to assail them.

  He understands what will happen now. He recognizes it as it occurs. The last bodyguard is charging. Black feels the blow of the quarterstaff coming. He knows how to evade it, but he does not do so. Instead he accepts it. When it strikes the back of his head, he accepts the shock, the blinding pain, the fall into unconsciousness.

  The blow will not kill him. He is too hardy. But it will take him where he needs and fears to go.

  When he returns to himself, he is bound spread-eagled by his wrists and ankles. At first, he knows only that he cannot move. Then the pain finds him. The agony in his head is like that of a spear driven through his skull. The back of his head is a sodden mess. Blood drips down his neck to his shoulders. Waves of nausea and the bright echoes of the blow that took him make his guts squirm. They prevent him from opening his eyes. Of his circumstances, he knows only that he is helpless.

  His wound is not mortal. It is worse than mortal. It has made him a victim.

  The heat is tremendous. It seems to scald his skin. It has probably burned away his eyebrows and lashes. The hair on his head may be gone. When he tries to blink, his lids scrape his eyes.

  Nevertheless the ways in which he has been shaped go deep. His bleeding slows. With every breath, his nausea eases. Gradually tears moisten his eyes. In stabbing surges, the pain of his head spreads through him. It restores sensation to his limbs. He finds that he is able to close his fingers. He can move his toes.

  Now he feels the pressure of rope on his wrists and ankles. It is woven of sisal or some other harsh fiber. It will not break. And it allows no more than a slight flexing of his elbows and knees. He can bend his joints to achieve subtle shifts of his posture. He cannot gain leverage.

  He is not ready to see where he is. But the rough touch of the surface at his back tells him that he is pinned against native rock. It is crude, studded with protrusions and gaps, written with ridges. He can imagine that he is bound to a boulder, but he believes that he is not. He believes that he is fixed to a wall. The fierce heat and its brimstone reek convince him that he is in a cavern.

  Though his eyes are closed, he knows that the space is filled with ruddy light.

  From some distant source comes a low sound like the slow boiling of a cauldron.

  Then the life returning to his nerves makes him aware that his plight is worse than helplessness. The heat on his skin tells him that he is naked. More than his cloak and hat have been taken from him. All of his garments have been stripped away. Even his boots are gone. Even the bindings of his loins—

  He is exposed for what he is. Every detail of his shaping is visible, every detail except those on his back. From neck to foot, the elaborate sweeps and whorls of his scarification are revealed. They speak a language known to every shaper in the kingdom. The deeply tattooed sigils name and define him. The burned glyphs invoke the powers imminent in his scars. The thin bars of purest silver inlaid under his skin summon the energies of bright and dark to enhance his senses, his strength, his resolve. Together, the inlays, his glyphs and sigils, and his scarifications bind him to his purpose.

  If he hoped now, which he does not, he would hope that Haul Varder’s ignorance of shaping, and Sought’s presumed ignorance of how bright and dark are called upon, will protect him from a complete betrayal of the King. If Sought’s learning suffices to interpret what he sees—to interpret all he sees—Black’s body will tell him how the King’s mediation can be foiled.

  Black has found that he is able to close his fingers. Now he clenches his fists firmly. He means to conceal what little he can.

  When he begins to distinguish voices from the sound of distant boiling, he opens his eyes and blinks them clear.

  He is bound to the wall of a cavern the size of the square where roads intersect in Settle’s Crossways. The ropes at his wrists and ankles are tied to iron stakes pounded into the rough stone. Much of the floor in front of him is level until it is cut off by a rift or crevice that extends the width of the cavern. This fissure is the source of the reddish light and the terrible heat. It is also the source of the boiling. Clearly it goes far down into the heart of the rock.

  From the rift arises a thick, acrid fume, but it does not fill the cavern. Around the walls are a number of natural tunnels, and the cavern’s ceiling has the shape of a funnel. Drawing air from the tunnels, the hot fume streams upward and away until it emerges from the throat of the mountain, the old fumer in the east.

  The air from the tunnels is all that prevents the heat from destroying Black and his captors.

  Off to one side stands a wagon that resembles a house on wheels. Its only door is open, but Black cannot see inside.

  With him in the cavern are four men. Three he recognizes by their arms and armor, by the way they move. They are the guards he fought in the forest. The fourth is surely Haul Varder. He has neither weapons nor protection. He is naked to the waist in the heat, and his chest weeps sweat. He has a black beard like a glower, the muscles of a blacksmith, the solid frame of a laborer. His hands are so heavily callused that he cannot close them completely. Of the four, only he watches the wagon. Only he is impatient. In his eyes, the ruddy light burns like excitement or fear.

  The three guards keep watch on Black, but they betray no particular interest in him, no animosity for the death of their comrade. Black’s helplessness contents them. They will react to him only if he struggles, and then only if his struggles threaten to free him.

  Sweltering, Haul Varder paces the stone. He has been promised much, and has done much to fulfill his role in Sought’s ritual. He has in him a wellspring of cold rage that has enabled him to commit deeds he would not have imagined without the old man’s promises. At Father Whorry’s urging, and because Sought wished it, he accepted Jon Marker as his shop servant. Grinding his teeth, he endured Jon Marker’s insufferable courtesy and meekness and labor, though he knew the man’s demeanor was false. He knows too well that all courtesy and meekness are false, feigned by men who seek to conceal their contempt, men who know him and his mother and hold only scorn. Still he did as he was bid. Because he had dealings with men who had dealings with robbers and cutthroats, he could guide the old man’s guards to the camps of brigands. With his own hands, he took insufferable Jon Marker’s insufferable son. With the old man’s guidance, he harvested the boy’s lungs and liver while the boy still lived. In every way, he has served Sought’s commands and whims, and has endured the old man’s disdain. He desires what he has been promised more than he craves respect. For him, all respect is false. He will never trust in it.

  No, Haul Varder does not wish for respect. He covets fear. It is his dream, and the old man’s promise, that he will be feared. That he will be feared so extremely that strong men will loose their bowels and women will grovel in the dirt.

  He is impatient to see the old man’s promise honored.

  Vexed and suffering in the heat, the wheelwright waits as long as he can. Then he shouts at the wheeled house, “Enough! It is enough! I have endured too much of your preparations and researches. Is there no end to your dithering? When will you let me kill him?”

  He believes that Black’s death will transform him. It will make him fearsome.

  “Kill him?” the old man answers. In normal tones, his voice is a quaver that masks its strength. Now it is a shriek. “Imbecile! We do not kill him!”

  In a fury of haste, Sought leaves his dwelling. He springs to the stone with the lithe confidence of a much younger man, a newer priest. His beard spills aside in the breezes from the various tunnels. He wears a long robe colored or dulled to the same hue as the light from the fissure. It is voluminous and flutters about him, giving the impression that inside it he has spent decades in near-starvation.
Its secret is that it conceals many pockets containing various powders and implements, some or all of which may be needed at any moment.

  The stiff mass of his eyebrows gives him a look of perpetual astonishment, yet he is not surprised by Haul Varder’s presumption. He is only surprised at himself. Immersed in his last preparations, in the near fruition of his life’s work, he forgets too easily that lesser men are sheep-headed fools. It is only the near-mindless fidelity of his guards that allows him to stand so close to the achievement of pure glory.

  Exalted by the heat, Sought sweeps forward. Clutching the wheelwright’s sweat-slick arm, he drags the man closer to Black. An arm’s length away, he halts. “We do not kill him,” he repeats, openly exasperated. “Are you blind? Look!”

  He points to the sigil on Black’s right shoulder. “There.” He indicates a glyph decorated with scars on Black’s ribs. “There.” He directs Haul Varder’s gaze to an extravagant whorl in the flesh of Black’s lower abdomen. “There.

  “The signs are plain. This man is the King’s Justice. We are indeed fortunate that he has come against us. I will make good use of his enhancements. Yet for that very reason, he must live. If he is slain, the King will know it. Even at this distance, he will attempt to intervene.

  “You do not understand the danger. I have spent an age of my life in study, and lakes of blood as well. Still I cannot measure the reach of the King’s powers. I know only that they are great. To end the wars as he did, they must be great indeed. We will not risk his awareness of what we do.”

  Then Sought shrugs. He releases Haul Varder. Swallowing his ire, he says, “When we are done, we will not care who knows. The King can feel as much fear as any man. Until then, his Justice will serve us. We will take his inlays”—he muses for a moment—“perhaps two or three of his glyphs”—then he continues more strongly—“and as much blood as he can spare. But we will not allow him to breathe his last until our task is complete.”