The Traitor's Heir (6 page)

“Good work, Goodman.” Barns's voice struck him; looking up he saw that a ring of Gauntlet ensigns was forming up about the central part of the square. These soldiers had the double task of keeping back the onlookers and keeping the prisoners from fleeing should they somehow escape the flames.

Eamon did not form part of that line; he followed Barns as more experienced ensigns hustled them out of the ring and into the crowd. Eamon knew the drill: Gauntlet men were always stationed among the masses to keep them calm in what followed. In a daze, Eamon took his place in the pressing throng. Barns moved farther on.

Belaal and a group of lieutenants and ensigns came through the square in procession. Belaal marched proudly at the head of the line, leading his bedraggled, grim-faced prisoners as though he had won them by noble endeavour. A drummer, one of the college's youngest cadets, marched by the captain's side. With each stroke that he beat, the crowds of men and women lurched forward eagerly; some beat their hands along with it. Some spat at the passing prisoners. All jeered them.

“Death to the snakes!” cried one. The whole square filled with the cry.

The procession drew closer and came within the guarding ring; Eamon could clearly see Telo and the other prisoner as they were marched past him. He could only stare.

What could he do?

His mind raced as ensigns began fastening the two men to the stakes with irons. The Gauntlet knew how to use bands, and Eamon saw Wystan wince as the chains came tight about his injured arm. His pain was mocked.

Eamon's breath quickened; the chains were fastened and the fasteners withdrew, leaving the wayfarers open to the crowd's jeers.

He bit his lip hard. Even if he could release the men – a task that seemed altogether impossible… he had no right to. His duty was to the Gauntlet, and he was bound to that service now in ways more powerful than he ever had been tied to Aeryn's father. What call had he to interfere in a matter of the Master's glory? Snakes were snakes, and traitors deserved death.

As the drum beat into his brain Eamon tried to pull himself together. He had known Telo since he was a child; the man was the closest thing to family that he had. Besides which, Telo was the beloved father of a friend. It was true that Eamon didn't know the stranger, but it seemed unthinkable to him that a friend of Telo's might be an evil man.

Captain Belaal went to the centre of the execution space and turned to address the heckling onlookers.

“Enemies of the Master are enemies of the River and enemies of the people!” he called crisply. “These men were taken whilst plotting against the Master and against his glory. Their crime is against you and against him.”

Eamon barely registered what Belaal was saying; his heart was in his mouth and a gagged feeling lay slick all along his throat. It was no enemy bound to the pyre; it was Telo… Couldn't he speak for the innkeeper?

Guilty instinct told him that to speak out would be to barter for a place in the pyre. Belaal had declared them enemies, and both men appeared to be enemies, bound and wretched on the stakes… Could he give his life for such men?

He looked desperately at them and saw Telo raise his head. Their gazes met and locked; it stole Eamon's breath.

“The men before you, people of Edesfield, are snakes: thieves, murderers, and traitors,” Belaal boomed.

“They are thieves that serve a thief.”

All eyes turned suddenly to the innkeeper as his voice resounded: “We do not serve the throned,” Telo called. “We serve the King.”

He spoke out with dignity that surpassed him, shattering in a single moment everything that Eamon had ever believed about him.

A terrible silence fell. Eamon gasped and stared. The innkeeper's eyes were still on his and Eamon could not fathom what he saw there.

“Snakes! Snakes, by their own admission!” Belaal howled, his words stirring fury in the crowd. “Traitors and defilers! They will be put to death as they deserve, to the Master's glory!”

The crowd erupted into hot-blooded yells: “Death to the snakes!”

Stones began flying. The innkeeper received the blows in silence; he had said all that he meant to say. Telo's companion wept and struggled, drawing breath for a cry that was neither defiant nor desperate: “The King!”

King
. Eamon's heart beat fast as the strange word washed through him. The River Realm had a master, not a king. He remembered his mother once telling him that the Master had taken the realm from a king in a great battle long years past – an argument late at night when his father had told her not to speak of it to their son. It had been long ago, if it had even happened, and what mattered was that the Master was sovereign in glory over the River. That was what his father had told him.

As his thoughts churned in him he felt the strength of Telo's gaze; the whole of time from the beginning to the end of days was distilled into the innkeeper's eyes, in some knowledge or hope that Eamon could not understand.

Telo smiled at him. “The King!” he said, and though there were hundreds of men and women around them Eamon knew that the words were spoken to him.

“Light the pyre!” Belaal commanded.

A lieutenant bearing a torch walked between Eamon and the condemned men, releasing him from the innkeeper's gaze. Suddenly Eamon felt scores of people pressing around him, carried ecstatically forward by the moving torch. The Gauntlet kept them distant from the pyres. The yells were deafening. It was as he took in those around him that Eamon realized that scarcely a pace away was a face he knew.

Breaking from where he stood he pushed roughly through the crowd, reaching Aeryn's side just as the first crack of kindling marked the air.

The crowd pulsed with a screeching cry. At the same moment his friend started forward. Eamon reached her just in time to jerk her back.

“No!” he cried. Those around were oblivious to him as he hauled her backwards.

“Let go of me!” Aeryn retorted. She seemed to neither see nor recognize him.

“Aeryn –”

“Filthy Glove,
let go!
”

With a yell she twisted and turned hard to the side, nearly wrenching away from him; he strengthened his grip and tried to pull her farther back from the execution ring. Aeryn's normally gentle hands clawed at him.

“Let me go!”

“You don't know what you're doing –”

A victorious squeal rent the air. The next scream that Eamon heard was Aeryn's.

“
Father!
”

It was the worst possible time for her to advertise her kinship. There was no alternative. Eamon threw his arm about his friend's neck, stunning her, and jammed his other hand over her mouth. Shouts of primal violence rose from the crowd like flames. Eamon felt bile in his throat as he hauled Aeryn another pace backwards. There was another scream from the ring – long, high, agonized. Eamon found a sob on his own lips.

It was that sound which stopped Aeryn from struggling. At last she saw him clearly.

She tensed in his grip, as though she wasn't sure whether to strike him or collapse in his arms. Her face was haggard in the horrid light.

“Let go of me.” Her voice shook and rage smouldered in fierce eyes. Though the scream and roar of the spectacle went on all around them, nothing was as clear to him then as her face and words, and nothing seemed more terrible than what she might do.

“You can't go to him!” He shook her, so hard that he was afraid he would hurt her – she
had
to listen to him. “
Aeryn!
”

There was a crack as a pile of kindling crumbled in the heat. The smoke in the square grew dense. Ash was cast through the crowd and the air filled with the horrendous smell that Eamon knew so vividly.

His stomach turned. He staggered and turned to one side, retching.

“Death to the snakes!”

Aeryn darted away from him into the crowd. He could not follow her: his throat was racked with bile, his eyes ran with the acrid sting of the smoke, and his ears boomed with the shouts of the crowd.

A hand grasped his wheeling shoulder. “You all right, lad?”

Eamon looked up dully to see a kind, weathered face above his: the smith's. In that hideous moment it was a comfort to him.

Coughing and spluttering, he wondered if he was going to vomit up his lungs as well as everything else. He staggered on to the support of the smith's willingly offered arm. The man helped him to move some distance from the crowd.

They reached the steps of the college and Eamon sat there, shivering. Away from the fire the air seemed clammy. He could see the crowd of men and women beating about the ring, creatures of shadow and smoke about a flaming heart.

The smith sat down by him. “Quite a first day,” he commented. Eamon couldn't answer; the flames still held his eyes.

“Who would have thought it: Telo, one of
them
. Time was when Edesfield was safe from snakes, more or less.”

Eamon could feel grief working into the dark marks about his eyes. Black smoke tunnelled off the stakes. He didn't dare look to see how much remained. How long had he staggered in the square, disgorging his stomach? A moan left his lips.

“Telo seemed such a good man.” Smithy's voice was steady as he pressed Eamon's shoulder in comfort. “Appearances can be deceptive, I suppose. A snake is a snake, lad, and the Gauntlet are just in dealing with them.”

Just? The vulturous word hovered in Eamon's mind. What justice was this?

The wind blew ash into his face. People danced around the fires under the watchful eye of the Gauntlet, under his eyes. He heard Telo's voice in his mind again and drove it away in terror.

But Aeryn. Where was Aeryn?

The smith briskly rubbed his hands and patted Eamon fondly on the back. “Go home and rest, lad.”

Eamon rose. Some of the Gauntlet had begun to disperse back towards the college and the barracks. Belaal and a few others remained in the square, encouraging the patriotic celebration.

Eamon was entitled to stay in the college barracks, but he knew that he could not that night. He would go back to the smith's, to the small rented room that had been home since his own had burned down.

He looked once more at the dying pyres; the grim glint of the flames grinned back at him.

The smith disappeared back into the crowd to join the celebrations. With a dreadful shudder, Eamon turned for home.

Smoke permeated the streets, clinging with leech-like intensity to his lungs. His mind tossed over the day's events, trying to force them to a logical conclusion, but there was none to be reached.

His steps wound towards the smith's forge, past the wall where he had sat that morning picking mud from his dagger. Though not even a day had passed, he felt a year older.

He stopped at the building's side door. The forge was cramped up against the wall of a fishmonger's, and the smell of fish and smoke mingled uncomfortably. Scales and innards were mashed in among the cobbles in the yard. They would not be removed until rain came, and the smell would linger for some time thereafter.

Eamon fumbled in the small pouch at his side, searching for his key. Even if he could find it he expected that it would be difficult to locate the keyhole; then again, the door was a feeble thing and he knew it could be convinced to open without one. His father's house had been warm and dry, with broad rooms of books which Eamon had read while his father worked at binding. Eamon sighed; it had been a long time since he had read a book, and longer still since he had bound one.

The lodging that the smith had offered him was made up of an old, disused storeroom that let out the warmth in the winter and did not keep cool in the summer. Eamon's hands had gone from binding books to stoking the forge and polishing blades until he had joined the Gauntlet; then he had paid the smith rent from his slim wages.

His fingers found the stalks of his keys; they chinked as he grasped them in his aching hand. He stood, keys suspended uncertainly by the door, for a few moments. His hands shook. Everything had happened so fast…

Why Telo? The thought hounded him. Why? There had to be an answer.

He could not sleep, not like this. He shoved his key back into his pouch and returned to the streets.

Soon he neared the shattered windows of the Morning Star. No lights burned there that evening; the Gauntlet had doused them and smoke clung to the walls. As he approached, Eamon saw several figures with barrels and bottles fleeing from the doorway; rats that sensed the coming of a feline adversary.

Feeling oddly bruised Eamon watched them go. A smoke-clogged wind pushed the inn's sign on mournful hinges; the doorway yawned blackly before him.

He went forward to the threshold and stopped for a long time there, peering inwards.

Why had he come? Staring at the unfamiliar black he wondered whether he should leave.

Tugging his jacket closer over his shoulders, he stepped inside.

A shred of moonlight followed him through the doorway, glancing off the remains of the inn. Night lay like iron sheets over the tables and chairs, which lay strewn over the floor amid pools of cracked ceramic made slippery by spilt food and drink.

As he passed the bar Eamon saw Telo's wiping cloth laid carefully over three tankards; the struggle had not come from the innkeeper. He stopped and took the rag in his hands. It was the tool of a diligent man.

Swallowing, Eamon laid it back.

He followed the bar to the doors in the wall behind it. Some led into the kitchen; he smelt the fire burning itself to ashes in the grate and saw an open sack of flour spilt over the floor.

A slim corridor led to the stairs, which creaked beneath him. The Star had upstairs rooms for guests – he had sometimes played in them as a child – but the innkeeper and his family had also slept there.

Eamon's curiosity led him to Telo's room. Though small and sparse, it was comfortable enough to receive a weary man at the end of each day. The bed, Eamon knew, had been one of Telo's prized possessions, handcrafted years before by a carpenter who worked in the city. Not many people in Edesfield slept in a real bed, rather than a motley assortment of hay and blankets, but Telo had been one of them.