Son of Avonar (18 page)

“Seriana Marguerite of Comigor.”

The heavy-jowled man wore red robes and carried a guide-staff with a gold dragon on its head. Neck straight, eyes forward, I rose and followed him down a passageway, through a tall arched door, and into the Great Hall of Leire. Hundreds of people were crowded along each side of the vast room, their gaily colored dress garish beside the somber, ancient stonework. Cold light fell through the high windows.

At the far end of the hall, scarcely visible through the murky light, twenty men sat at a long curved table. Evard slouched in his gilded chair at the center of them. Sitting on either side of him were others I knew: the Chancellor Villarre, the Dukes of Pamphile, Aristide, and Greymonte, the Earl of Jeffi, an old hunting partner of my father's, his leathery wrinkles sagging in distress. So many who had once been part of my world. On either side of the table were a few rows of observers of high enough rank to jockey for chairs, those like the priests, who had a special interest in those who violated the sorcery laws. Everyone else stood, whispering and murmuring behind fans and jeweled fingers.

About fifteen paces from the table, the heavy-jowled steward stuck his staff out in front of me, barring closer approach. He spoke sideways through his teeth. “Obeisance. Complete. Now.” Surely he was joking. No one of noble family made complete obeisance. The king was the first among equals. And to Evard? Never. I made a deep curtsy as was proper, keeping my head unbowed. My father had sat on the Council of Lords. My mother had been maid of honor to Queen Theodora.

As I rose, I glimpsed Tomas watching stone-faced while a fair, rosy-cheeked young woman clung to his arm, giggling and whispering with other women around her. His wife's name was Philomena.

The heavy-jowled man whispered from behind me. “Obeisance. Complete. Now.” I stood firm.

Evard's relaxed posture was belied by the edge in his voice. “It is the custom for those who live by our sufferance to make a respectful approach.”

“Your Majesty, I bear the honor of all who hold the rank I have been privileged to share. Acquiescence to such a custom would draw the structure of society into question. If such were my intent, I would most assuredly begin at a different place.”

The crowd drew breath as one. Evard slammed his hand on the table. “The only rank of those who enter the Petitioner's Gate is the rank of supplicant. You will follow the custom or you will be forced to follow it.”

It would have been easy, though repugnant, to grant Evard what he wanted, but as with most bullies, it would only leave him with expectations I was not planning to fulfill. I stood quietly while Evard jerked his head to the heavy-jowled man. Three red-liveried guards surrounded me. Two of them grabbed my arms and spread them in the supplicant's gesture. One forced me to my knees and bent my head forward until it touched the floor. After a moment they released me, and I stood again. Tomas was livid. What did he expect?

The chancellor spoke first. “Seriana Marguerite, you have been adjudged guilty of the most serious crimes: consorting with enemies of Leire, conspiring to hide criminals, participating in treasonous activities, plotting to place on the throne of Leire one who knowingly harbored . . .” I did not even listen until Evard began the questioning.

“Where have you spent your time since you so ungratefully repudiated your family's concern?”

“A village in the south, Your Majesty.”

“And who has sheltered you?”

“Peasants. No one of importance.”

“Do these peasants know of your crimes?”

“They know of what I have been accused. I acknowledge no crimes. My husband was a healer who shared a blessed gift with all who needed it.”

The observers gabbled in disbelief. The high priest of Jerrat, a tall man with a craggy face, jumped from his chair. “Insupportable!”

Evard pounded on the table for silence. “Stubborn still, are you? We would advise you to restrain your insolent tongue. It would be easy to overreact to your heedless provocation and do that which might give us indigestion tomorrow. Tell us, madam, in these months since your judgment, have you had contact with any person who has at any time or in any wise practiced, studied, or tolerated the repugnant and unnatural rites of sorcery?”

“I have not.”

“Have you, in any other way, broken any law promulgated in our name?”

“I have not.”

Evard then turned the questioning over to those in attendance. It went on for well over an hour. Had I worked charms or spells? Did I know how? Where had we held the god-cursed rites? Was it true the late Earl of Gault was himself a sorcerer? Had I been intimate with a man since I ran away? The women's questions were the worst.

Tomas looked as if he might burst as the farce played out. His face blazed when one of his friends asked me if a sorcerer could “magic his prick bigger” during the act of love. And when his own wife asked if I pleasured myself, as no man would have a woman befouled by a sorcerer, I thought Tomas might throttle her. Darzid sat just behind him, watching thoughtfully.

I would have gotten through it quite well if a sober Graeme Rowan had not been standing by the door as I was escorted out. But when I thought of him hearing all I had been forced to answer . . . I was truly humiliated.

The journey back to Dunfarrie that evening was even more awkward than that of the previous day. Rowan never shifted his eyes from the road. I could not look at him without anger and embarrassment, and then I cursed myself for caring what a murdering sheriff had heard. We arrived at the Dun bridge near midnight. Honor required me to acknowledge the escort; he could have left me to walk.

“Thank you for bringing me back, Sheriff.”

“I'm surprised you'd wish to return to peasants of no importance.”

Stupid man. Couldn't he see it was better not to interest Evard in this place? I turned to go.

As I started up the path, though, he called after me in a very different tone. “Tell me one thing. What was the place in the city where you wouldn't walk?”

What was one more question on this day? He could have asked it at the rite, and I would have been required to answer. And he had honored my request. “It was the commard, Sheriff. Surely you know of it. The heart of any Leiran city where public rites and performances are held and proclamations posted. In Montevial, the place where sorcerers are burned. For a year, as a warning, they leave it there, the pyre, the stake . . . whatever is left. It is the law.” Words could not pain me. “I heard that Avonar looked like a burned forest.”

From that day on, every year on the last day of summer I met Graeme Rowan at the Dunfarrie bridge. Neither his sober expression nor his stiff propriety varied from one year to the next, nor did we speak beyond the minimum necessary. The smudge of the gods always adorned his brow. Each year, he listened as I was questioned, and then we returned to our separate lives, duty and the law satisfied.

“Rowan!”

“You! What in blazes . . . ?”

Only a few times in my life had I been at a loss for something to say. The only clue to Aeren's identity was slipping away from me into the night, and standing in my way was one person who absolutely must not know of my mission. Possible explanations raced through my mind and were discarded just as quickly. Graeme Rowan was not stupid.

The sheriff took my arm firmly and propelled me backward into the shadowed alcove between the outer door, the staircase, and the wide entrance to the common room.

“Release me at once. You've no cause to hold me,” I said, in a furious whisper.

“I've every right to investigate suspicious behavior, and I find your presence here extremely suspicious.” Rowan spoke quietly also, in tones that brooked no dispute.

“You have no jurisdiction here, Sheriff. If I should scream that I'm being brutalized, you would have no more rights than any other bully.”

His sober expression did not change, though the sun lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled a bit. “I disagree. Barnard, the local sheriff, knows me quite well. He would most likely be interested in the activities of known lawbreakers in his town.”

“You wouldn't!”

“Test me. Or would you rather tell me what you're doing here? I know there are few things that pain you more than having a word with me, but I really must know what's brought you here.”

And this, of course, was where I was out of words. I couldn't think fast enough. The long day's journey, the terrible doings in the forest, the odd little man running away . . . “Can we step outside, Sheriff?”

“As you wish.”

Beggars, carters, and drunkards crowded the torch-lit lane, but the stranger was nowhere in sight.
Curse the man!
“Have you nothing better to do than bother honest citizens, Sheriff? You should leave me alone and clean up your own district. Take care of the murderous highwaymen that prey on travelers.” To my dismay, my voice faltered a bit as I recalled the brutal scene in During Forest.

If there was any lack of will on Rowan's part to pursue our confrontation, he dismissed it instantly. The pious mark on his brow glared at me like a third eye. “Madam, what do you know of highwaymen?”

Cursing my loose tongue, I folded my arms and looked away.

“Blessed Annadis, give me patience!” he said. “How do you propose I take care of my district if every person in it is so high and mighty as you?”

“Perhaps your district would be better off without a sheriff's care.”

His face flamed, but he gritted his teeth and kept his voice down. Once could not mistake his sincerity. “Five men were slain in During Forest today. They were no ordinary highwaymen, but the most ruthless that ever plagued this road. They've survived for twenty years and were cut down in an afternoon. It's something I must understand. If you refuse to speak what you know, then you've no right to demand anything of me. I ask you again, madam, what do you know of highwaymen?” I had never heard so many words from him all at once.

My distaste for the upright sheriff and my revulsion at his past did not entirely cloud my perceptions. As Jacopo often reminded me, Rowan was neither excessively brutal nor grasping in his day-to-day duties, as were so many of his ilk. And if his unquestioning adherence to a flawed notion of law set him at odds with the ruthless travelers I had seen in the forest, I would not argue. However uncomfortable it might feel for me, reason was on his side. After all, the priests might have nothing to do with Aeren. Perhaps the almond-eyed man's fear of the three had its origin, as mine did, in their handiwork of the day.

“You're right,” I said. What was pride but another garment to be discarded when you had grown past its use? “Not about everything . . . but about this. Yes. I witnessed what happened in During Forest. Quite by chance.”

“And will you tell me of it?”

I glanced about the dark lane. “Can we walk away from here just a little?” Rowan started to protest, but I interrupted. “I promise, I'll tell you why.”

Just down the lane two empty crates sat outside a poulterer's shop. My feet felt as if someone had taken a hammer to them. Making sure I could still see the door of the inn, I sat on one of the crates and propped my heavy boots on the other, leaving Rowan to decide whether to sit on the filthy ground or remain standing, unable to see my face. He squatted, looking uncomfortable.

“I was on my way to Grenatte on private business,” I began, and without mentioning Paulo, I recounted what I had witnessed that afternoon.

“And these priests are in the Green Lion?”

“That's why I was leaving in a hurry,” I said. “They unnerved me, though I don't believe they saw me in the forest, and though one could say they were entirely in the right in the matter. How can I explain it?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “The kill was not cleanly done. Yet, as you say, it's not against the law to be good at defending oneself. But any who can take such men down easily are worth my attention, for rarely are they less dangerous in their turn.”

“So what will you do?”

“I'll speak to these priests and see what they're about.”

“You'll not tell them who you are?”

“Surely this is no concern for my welfare?” he said.

Graeme Rowan's welfare was his own concern. “It just occurred to me that a casual encounter might be less risky than telling them you're a sheriff. In fact”—a scheme began taking shape—“to make things easier, I'd be willing to accompany you while you speak to them. We could say we are cousins.”

“I see no purpose in deception. In this matter, at least, they've no reason to fear me.” He straightened to his full height, looking down at me quizzically. “But if, for whatever reason, you'd like to be present when I interview them, I'll not prevent it. I certainly don't intend for you to leave Grenatte until we can discuss other matters . . . such as what you're doing here.”