The Broken Blade (8 page)

Fort paused. Eamon watched as the man wet his lips nervously. “Lord Ashway dismissed me,” he said, “but the next day I was summoned again. I was to be the official witness to identify Alleana's body. Then…” Fort faltered and looked up at Eamon. “Then he told me that I was also to sign documents witnessing to the deaths of her husband and her son. I was to spread the account that all three of them were wayfarers and that all three of them had been killed, which was what the official reports would also say.” His face grew pale. “The truth was that her husband and son had already left the city. Lord Ashway was very clear: under no circumstances was I to speak of the truth unless the Right Hand or the Master himself called me to do so. If I did, then my own family would bear the consequences. As a grace to us, Lord Ashway allowed us to formally change our family name to Fort.” Suddenly Fort dropped, shaking, down to his knees. “Forgive me, my lord,” he said. “I lied to you, but I was bound to do only as Lord Ashway had commanded! I am sorry, my lord!”

Eamon's heart beat fast. Ashway had concealed the Tillers' flight from the city. Had Dunthruik's seer come to know of Elior Tiller's truer name, and come to know it too late to stop his escape?

“Captain Anderas!” he called.

The door opened and Anderas stepped in once more. “My lord?”

The other Hands stood about him in silence. Eamon gestured once to Fort. “Take Mr Fort out for a moment.”

“My lord.”

As Anderas stepped forward, Fort rose to his feet. He trembled, but he bowed.

The door closed behind them. Eamon looked back to the Hands but could not read their faces. He marshalled his thoughts.

“You have heard Fort's account,” he said.

“His account merely explains the discrepancy in the papers,” Arlaith answered. “It does not prove that he is not himself a snake.”

Eamon stared at him in disbelief. “He was under commands from Lord Ashway.”

“How are we to ascertain that?” Tramist asked bitterly. “Lord Ashway is dead!”

“The only way to be certain that the truth is being told is to breach Fort,” Arlaith put in sagely.

“He will not be breached,” Eamon thundered.

Cathair gave a clipped laugh. “Calm yourself, my lord!”

“Do you desire the Master's enemies to walk freely in the street, Lord Goodman?” Arlaith challenged.

Eamon's blood cooled at once. There was a baiting glint to Arlaith's eye. “No,” he said, measuring his tone.

“Then this man must be breached.”

“Not if it is proven that he was faithfully obeying the commands of Lord Ashway.” Eamon snatched up the report from the East Quarter and pressed it into Cathair's hand. “Test this paper,” he said, “and I am convinced that you will find that it is sealed with the Master's mark and Ashway's own hand.”

Cathair held his gaze for a moment and then laid his fingers over the paper's seal. As had happened on the very first day that Eamon entered Dunthruik, red light answered him.

“It is as you say,” Cathair told him, setting the paper demurely aside.

Eamon turned to Arlaith again. “As you see, Mr Fort is guilty of nothing but doing as Ashway ordered,” he said. “Breaching him now would therefore be the same as saying that a family connection to a wayfarer is enough to warrant the incarceration and torture of a citizen of Dunthruik. This is a dangerous precedent.”

Arlaith gave him a short smile. “We all know how strongly you feel on matters of the law, Lord Goodman,” he said. Eamon glared at him. “However, you cannot deny that families are influential in such matters.”

Eamon stared at him. Why should he not let Fort be breached? It would show the truth, and at no danger to himself.

But breaching was a tool of the throned, and if Tramist had anything to do with it, it would mean prolonged agony. Eamon swore angrily in his mind. Advocating on Fort's behalf would have been easier if he had not such a keen dislike for the man. Yet Eamon had already made a fool of himself before his enemies on Fort's behalf – what more could be expected of him?

He drew a deep breath. Fort had been made the plaything of Hands who cared nothing for justice. Eamon could not let them breach him.

A thought leapt to his mind and he seized it.

“A family's influence works both ways. I forbid you to breach Mr Fort.”

Arlaith scoffed. “On what basis?”

“The law,” Eamon replied with quiet resolve.

“The law? It is the very law of which you speak that requires this man be breached!” Cathair exclaimed.

Eamon swallowed in a dry throat. “A nobleman of Dunthruik is exempt from the prospect of being breached unless it is expressly commanded by the Master.”

“
Pah!
Fort is no more noble than a rat!” Tramist sneered. “Men like him wind up dead in ditches, covered in their own stinking blood every day.”

“What might you be thinking, Lord Goodman?” Cathair asked, an interested look on his face.

“If it were found that one of Fort's kinsmen was of noble blood, loyal to the Master, then Fort would by extension also have noble blood and be exempt from breaching,” Eamon answered.

Arlaith nodded firmly. “I think we would agree with that, Lord Goodman,” he said with a little smile.

“And yourselves, my lords?” Eamon asked. “Would proof of such a relation content you?”

Cathair assented, but Tramist threw his head back with a wild laugh.

“Are you a magician, Lord Goodman?” he asked. “It is impossible
to do as you suggest. Let me breach the man and let matters be concluded with that.”

“Lord Tramist,” Eamon answered quietly. “I can produce this proof.”

A triumphant, almost ecstatic, look passed over Arlaith's face. It was a trap. Arlaith had prepared it well. Eamon knew it, and had taken the bait like a fool. But he dared not back down.

Tramist leaned forward with mocking interest. “Really?” he snickered. “Well, then, where is it, Lord Goodman?” He peered over Eamon's shoulder as though he expected patents of nobility to be produced by some parlour trick from the folds of Eamon's cloak.

Eamon met his gaze. “He stands before you, Lord Tramist,” he answered quietly.

There was silence.

Suddenly Cathair laughed, and laughed so hard he had to clutch his sides in mirth while tears rimmed his green eyes.

“I had forgotten, in my long and dreary abstinence from your company, how amusing you can be at times, Lord Goodman!” he cried.

“This is not one of them,” Eamon answered. “By right of my title as Right Hand to the Master, I am a noble of Dunthruik. Alleana Tiller was my mother. And Mr Fort is the son of my mother's uncle.”

Cathair fell silent and stared. Tramist did similarly. But the surprise on Arlaith's face was feigned.

“Well, Lord Goodman,” Arlaith said. “It would seem that parlour tricks are a hidden
forté
of yours.” Eamon fixed him with an appalled gaze, but Arlaith smiled.

Tramist gaped at him. “What power in the River Realm saw fit for
you
to join the Gauntlet!” he yelled at last.

Eamon rounded darkly on him. “You would question my allegiance?”

“You!” Tramist cried again. “The son of a wayfaring whore!”

Eamon could have struck him. “You will ask such questions of Captain Belaal, or of Lord Cathair, who was long my guardian and mentor,” he seethed; Cathair squirmed. “Or you will ask it of the
Master himself. You will not ask it of me, and you will not,” he added, “speak of me in such a way again. If you do, you will answer for it.”

Tramist stared at him, open-mouthed. “You would not dare –”

It was then that Arlaith stepped forward. “I am satisfied,” he said. “Lord Goodman, I am more than willing to let Fort go with a full pardon, and to let this matter drop. Your allegiance is utterly unassailable and I am sure that Lord Cathair and Lord Tramist will concur with my assessment.”

The other Hands murmured their assent. Eamon did not trust them, but there seemed little else to do but accept their words. Feeling wearied as with a century of toil, he nodded.

“I am glad that we have resolved this matter. To his glory,” he added.

“His glory.”

 

Eamon left the office. The Hands stared after him and no doubt they spoke as soon as the door shut behind him, but he did not stay to hear it. He did not wish to know.

Anderas waited a little further down the corridor. Fort sat in a small chair beside him, his head hung pitifully between his bound hands. As Eamon looked at them he felt a pang of ire in his breast. Had he sacrificed himself to Arlaith for such a man?

Eamon.
The other voice, so silent in the days since he had become Right Hand, washed through him in an instant.
For him, or any other.

Eamon drew a deep breath and tucked his shaking hands inside his cloak. It was then that Fort heard his approach. He rose to his feet at once and bowed.

“Lord Goodman –”

“You shall go free, Mr Fort,” Eamon told him heavily. Anderas watched him. How desperately he wanted to speak to the captain! But they could only exchange a glance. “The charges have been dropped.”

Fort's face lit up with joy and he fell to his knees, clasping at the hem of Eamon's cloak. “My lord, you work miracles!” he cried. “How can I repay you?”

Eamon stooped and raised the man to his feet. He quietly met his gaze. “I would be grateful, Mr Fort,” he answered softly, “if despite all that you have suffered for her actions, you would forgive your cousin, for her son has secured your release.”

Silence met his words. It tore palpably across Fort's face. Both Fort and Anderas stared at him, the former warily, the latter astonished.

Slowly, Eamon drew the bindings from Fort's hands. The man looked at him again. A sliver of disgust touched Fort's erstwhile jubilant face.

“Yes, my lord,” he said.

Eamon drew a deep breath. “To his glory, Mr Fort,” he said.

Fort bowed. “To his glory, Lord Goodman.” The words were coldly given.

Without waiting for Fort to rise, Eamon passed on down the corridor.

He came back into the Ashen where the bright sun stung his eyes. The square was full of people who bowed as he emerged. Eamon imagined that the crowds had seen him riding to the Handquarter and wondered at the wrath on his face.

At his command the stable hands swiftly brought him his horse. Eamon came down the steps to meet them. With curt words of thanks he climbed into the saddle and was about to spur Sahu on when a voice came after him. “Lord Goodman,” it called. “Did you know, when you joined the Gauntlet, that your mother was a wayfarer?”

Eamon felt as though a more terrible silence had never fallen. The press of shocked faces all around him was like talons sinking into his flesh.

Slowly, he turned. Cathair stood about a stone's throw away. The Hand's face was creased in a scowl.

“Will you not answer?” Cathair called again. His green eyes flashed and the Lord of the West Quarter surveyed the Right Hand as though he had been made the victim of dire treachery. “The woman who bore you worked foully against the Master and against his glory and so I ask you, my lord Right Hand: did you know it when you took your oaths?”

Eamon received both words and look without flinching. The whole city hung dead in the air around him.

“I did not,” he answered. “I was a child, Lord Cathair. I was told that my mother was killed for her purse.”

“By your father?”

“Yes, Lord Cathair.”

“It would seem that he lied to you, Lord Goodman.”

“Perhaps he did not know the truth,” Eamon answered, “or perhaps he sought to protect me from it.” A wave of sadness washed through Eamon. He wondered whether his father had known the history of the name he had borne. “But as for my own oaths, Lord Cathair,” he said gently, “they stand as they were made.”

Cathair held his gaze for a moment and Eamon wondered whether the Hand's expression softened.

“The decisions a man makes for his house are binding, my lord, and must be well considered,” he answered at last, “as I am sure yours are.”

Eamon nodded once towards him. “To his glory, Lord Cathair,” he said.

“To his glory, my lord.”

As Eamon turned to urge his horse from the Ashen, the onlookers bowed once again. He could not see their faces, nor could he fathom what they now made of the Master's Right Hand. He knew then that the nature of his lineage would be all over the city within the hour.

What would the Master say? He could not think on it. All he could think, and that bitterly, was that he had held to the King. He had held, and sacrificed himself, for his mother's worm-like cousin.
In the long day that followed, Eamon could barely lift his head to meet the gaze of any that enquired after him. His own household, Fletcher, Cartwright, and the maids whom he saw in his quarters, said nothing of his lineage to him, but it did not encourage him. Other men watched him sidelong as he moved through palace halls, and Hands hushed their conversations as he passed, and bowed with over-formality.

Most terrifying of all, the Master said nothing about Fort; he only watched Eamon with his keen gaze and spoke of other things. But Eamon felt his disapproval and it cowed him into silence. He fully expected rebuke and knew that when it came it would be crushing.

It came the next morning. As the servants wove and moved in the silent dance of their service and Eamon took his chair to breakfast, the throned fixed him with a penetrating glare.

“A day, Eben's son, yet still you do not deem to speak?” The Master's voice was fierce and quiet.

Eamon painfully drew his eyes up from his hands. “Master,” he began, “I –”

“You believed that I should learn it from Lord Arlaith, or from palace gossip?” Edelred spat. “Should not my Right Hand speak out such things to me the very moment that they occur?” The voice became a menacing roar. “You have dishonoured me, Eben's son.”