The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) (6 page)

Arla didn’t sleep well. The pain from her burns stabbed at her all night. Two hours before dawn she gave up. She rose and washed and dressed, strung her bow and tied on a quiver of arrows. She went out into the old town.

It was not the first time she’d walked the empty streets before dawn, but now it felt different. In the past she had been Arla Crail, and just Arla. Now she was a law keeper, and Samara was a city with a terrible crime at its heart.

She walked down to the harbour. This was one place where people were already awake. Dozens of small boats were out in the pre dawn lamping for fish. She could see them like a constellation of stars, each flame trickling light back across the water towards her. It was pretty.

She walked along the harbour street with the water at her right. To her surprise it seemed that the Shining Wake was open. Light flooded out of its windows, and when she came level with it she could see people inside, sitting at the tables. There was a smell of food, fresh bread and jaro, coming out of the door. She sat on the wall opposite and watched.

The men and women inside seemed quite well to do. Their clothes suggested so, at any rate.

Arla was considering joining them. She was hungry. But she heard a step on the street close by and turned. There were two men, both armed. Merchant militia by their look.

“Who are you?” One of them asked. “What are you doing here?”

Arla smiled at them. “No harm,” she said. “I’m a law keeper, just taking the air, seeing the city at peace.”

“Aye, it’s a fine time of day,” one of the men said, relaxing. The other didn’t seem so easily satisfied.

“Can you prove you’re a lawkeeper?” he asked.

“Do I have to?” Arla replied. He had a point, though. She could be anyone, and she was sitting outside a tavern in the pre dawn with a bow.

The more suspicious of the two men seemed not to have an answer for that. Arla guessed he didn’t really want to press the point. “Look,” she said. “I’m going in. You can follow me if you like, but I need breakfast.”

She turned her back on the men and crossed the road to the tavern door. She had to eat or leave, and she was hungry. Inside there were quite a few empty tables, and she found one in the corner where the light was a little poorer. She was still very aware of the degree to which she was disliked by the king’s men, and didn’t often frequent places like this where she might be recognised. This was a merchant crowd, though, and she ordered and ate a light meal with a cup of hot jaro without being bothered. She was glad that she didn’t have to eat fish for breakfast – they had eggs and bread and bacon, which suited her better.

By the time she left the first gleams of dawn were in the sky over Morningside and she strolled up towards the law house feeling full and reasonably content with her lot. She had not felt this easy with herself since… well, not for a long time.

Lamps were burning in the law house and Ulric was already there. She wondered where he spent the night. A counter had appeared since the previous evening, like the bar in a tavern it stretched across the room and Ulric was behind it.

“Good morning to you, Officer Crail,” he said.

“Ulric, call me Arla,” she said.

“As you wish.” He raised the end of his counter, which was hinged, allowing her to pass into the body of the law house. She went to the big room. If anyone was here, that’s where they’d be. Only Hekman had a room of his own. But the big room was empty. Someone had put a table in the middle, and scattered chairs around it. She sat on one of the chairs.

The physic was supposed to see her this morning. She wondered if she’d get another bottle of that potion. It had certainly made the pain go away, if only for a few hours.

Ulric appeared. He was carrying a pile of blood red cloth and a hessian sack. He put them on the table. “Tabards,” he said. “Badges.”

“Badges?”

Ulric opened the sack and pulled out a piece of brass. It was about half the size of a hand and took the form of an oak leaf with a vertical sword across the front. The oak leaf was the symbol of Samara’s council. She knew that. It represented trust, strength, all the things they hoped for. There was a pin on the back so it could be affixed like a brooch.

Arla picked up one of the tabards. It was good cloth, quite thick, and plain red.

“We’re supposed to wear these?” she asked.

“You wore one as a guard,” he said.

Arla took off her bow and quiver, undid her sword belt and slipped the tabard over her head. She put the belt back on. It felt comfortable, but the colour was alarming. You couldn’t go unnoticed wearing a thing like this. She took a badge from the sack and pinned it on.

“Splendid,” Ulric said. “Now you look like a law keeper.”

“Now I look like a Pekkan ship in full sail,” she said.

Ulric didn’t bother replying. He was sorting the tabards into piles on the table, by size, Arla assumed. “No-one else here yet?” she asked.

“The chief’s been here for a while.”

It didn’t surprise her. Hekman and Ulric seemed almost to live in the law house. She wondered if they did, if that’s what the beds upstairs were for.

A voice carried through from the front of the house and Ulric hurried out. Arla followed him more slowly, thinking it might be the physic. It wasn’t. By the time she reached the front door Ulric was already heading back down the corridor with Ella Saine behind him. It was unusually early for a house call from the mighty, so Arla followed them to Hekman’s office.

She stood by the door and listened as Ella told her story, saw the wad of parchment that she laid on Hekman’s desk, and there was that word: magic. Magic had always been the province of the Faer Karan – for four centuries they had ruled by its power and nobody could oppose them. She had seen magic. The Faer Karani Borbonil and his lieutenants had used it to whisk the guard about the land, to heal and kill, and she had seen it. You could not fight magic with a bow. You could not stab it with a sword.

Hekman did not seem to share this appreciation.

“We cannot wait,” he said. “I will not sit on my hands while someone murders children in my city.”

“You must be cautious, Sam,” Ella said. “You are not yet a power in the city. There are those who could crush you and barely notice it. It is not some mindless butcher you pursue.”

“Life is not without risk,” Hekman replied. “You must use what influence you have to defend us. Del will help.”

“Del can barely help himself. He follows Calaine.”

Voices called out from the direction of the door and Ulric left again, bustling his bulk along a corridor that he all but filled. Arla stayed.

“May I speak?” she asked.

“Of course,” Hekman said.

“This magic – it is called low magic, yes?”

“It calls it so in the book,” Ella said.

“Then is it not a lesser thing than the Mage Lord’s magic, than the magic of the Faer Karan?” Arla didn’t know why she said this, other than she thought Hekman might want to hear it. She knew his vision of the law – inexorable, constant.

“It seems likely,” Hekman said.

“You don’t know,” Ella said. “You’re guessing.”

“Nevertheless,” Hekman said. “Our course is set. We will continue to seek the killer, and if we find him we shall bring him to justice.”

“The truth is that nobody knows what this magic is, what it is capable of. The best course of action is to wait until the Mage Lord sends help.”

“The safest course,” Hekman said.

They argued a while longer, but Ella Saine didn’t try to order Hekman what to do. She seemed to recognise that whatever decision he made was his own, and Hekman had made up his mind. When Ella left he gathered them together in the big room.

Gilan had arrived, and the rest of the new recruits made the room seem quite full. Hekman told them the story again, from the beginning. He didn’t gloss over anything, and by the time he finished the atmosphere in the room had changed.

“We’re going to carry on,” Hekman told them quietly. “Today I want Gilan and Arla to take their squads and pay a visit to the House of Tarquin.”

Arla looked across at Gilan. The big man looked pleased. It would be the second time they had been out in the city as lawkeepers, and at least this wasn’t another trip to Gulltown.

She had to admit that they looked more impressive with the tabards and badges. They walked in a group through the streets of the old town and people stepped out of their way. Uniforms did that after four hundred years of Faer Karan rule. Arla didn’t know where they were going, but Gilan apparently did. They walked up through the increasingly more impressive houses and crossed into Morningside.

The place smelt of money, which to Arla was the same as flowers. There was no hint here of industry, or anything that might offend the nose. The houses had gardens and the gardens were full of flowers and the flowers stood in neat beds that laughed at poverty. Arla had never known poverty until she came to live in Samara. As a guard she had everything that she needed. Clothes, weapons, accommodation, food, and even companionship and purpose were all provided by the guard and the Faer Karan. Before Samara she’d never paid for anything in her life, but the people of Samara had.

This was something that she’d come to understand. Her well being had been at the expense of Samarans. It was a debt. Guards paid their debts.

They stopped in front of a rather grand house just three streets down from the cliffs. Morningside was a hierarchy. The best houses were at the top, so they were pretty close to that. It was clear that the house of Tarquin, while not in the most exalted of company, was no small enterprise.

Gilan didn’t hesitate. He stepped up to the solid looking wooden door and banged on it with his fist. There was a long pause. It grew so long that Gilan looked across at Arla and shrugged. He raised his fist again and at that moment the door opened, as though someone had been watching him.

“Yes?”

The man that stood in the doorway was short, plump and dressed in brown. By the cut of his clothes he was a servant.

“We’re here to speak with the head of the house,” Gilan said.

“We’re not interested,” the servant said.

Gilan pushed forwards, wedging himself in the doorway so that it couldn’t be shut.

“You go and tell Tarquin that lawkeepers are here to talk to him about the warehouse that burned down.”

The servant looked pointedly at Gilan’s hand where it rested on the door jamb, but when the big man didn’t remove it he stepped back inside. “Wait here,” he said.

Arla moved up and peered inside the door. It opened into a courtyard with a large cherry tree in the middle of it, and a fountain on one side. It looked very pleasant.

“A bit heavy handed,” she commented.

“He was going to close the door,” Gilan said.

“It’s his house.”

“It’s Tarquin’s house.”

A different man appeared at the door, and this one could well be someone called Tarquin. He was dressed in a brilliant green coat with a red sash, and there were gold rings on his fingers. Arla saw movement behind him. There were other men in there. She thought she saw a blade.

“Leave. Now,” the man said.

“Are you Tarquin?” Gilan was insistent.

“You threatened my steward. I have twenty men behind me, and if you don’t leave I’ll have you chastised.”

Arla glanced at her lawkeepers. Talis was frowning, but Gadilari was looking almost eager, his hand firmly on the hilt of that well used sword. Twenty men? She wondered for a moment how good he really might be.

“We are lawkeepers,” Gilan said. “We’ve come to speak to you…”

Tarquin, or whoever he was, stepped back and was replaced by a man with a drawn sword. Gadilari took a step forwards. Arla took a step back and an arrow appeared on her bowstring.

“Stop,” she said.

“Or?” The man was a merchant guard. He was probably capable enough with a blade, but if he didn’t go back inside he was going to die.

“I’ve got twenty arrows,” she said. “Go back inside.”

The swordsman looked at her, and the smile faded from his face. He stepped back and the door closed. There was a sound of bolts being shot.

Gilan was angry. “Blood and fire, Arla, we need to talk to him.”

“I’m not going to kill people over a boot in a door, Gilan,” she told him. “We’ll find another way to talk to him. These people have probably never seen a lawkeeper before.”

“They’ll see one again,” the big man promised.

Their first excursion to Morningside had been a failure. Arla had half expected it. These people had been their own law for so long that they could hardly be expected to step aside. Tarquin, if that had been Tarquin, had not seemed worried. Annoyed, perhaps. It was probably no more than a display of arrogance, but it could have degenerated into a street brawl with a dozen men dead. It was hardly an auspicious start for the lawkeepers.

In the end it confirmed something that Arla had always believed, something she had learned from the Faer Karan. It was all about strength. The one with the biggest stick won. Every time.