Justice Is a Two-edged Sword by DANA STABENOW

It was the first day of the Tattoo Fair, and the town square was bustling with vendors and performers from the nine provinces of Mnemosynea. Pthalean playwrights were rehearsing songs and skits with Pthersikorean dancers. From a dais two feet square a Kalliopean poet was declaiming in iambic pentameter what appeared to be an epic concerning the life of Okeon, the god of the sea, who had five wives, seventeen children, and a great deal of domestic discord that played out, as one might expect, on the hapless humankind living onshore. Next to the dais the poet’s clerk was doing a brisk trade in autographed scrolls.

A Palihymnean had a booth built of shelves of sheet music featuring every hymn written in praise of the gods from Atonis to Tseuz. Foreseers from Yranea set out star charts, some rolled, some mounted on poster board, next to wicker baskets full of fortunes tied with red satin ribbons, and shuffled their prefiguration cards in preparation for their first customers, girls looking for true love, farmers looking for rain, merchants looking for a reading on the futures of surcoats (long or short?) and breastplates (functional or ornamental?). As her mount picked his way through the debris field of wagons, tent poles, heaps of canvas and crates of goods, Sharryn pointed out one Pthalean stand-up comedian rehearsing an act that had a troupe of tragic actors holding their sides. “We should get tickets to that performance. Anybody who can make a Mnelpomenean laugh has to be funny.”

Crowfoot grunted and nudged her destrier through the crowd.

Sharryn looked at her with affectionate exasperation. “When last did you take the time to laugh that hard at something that silly?”

Crowfoot’s destrier whickered agreement, and the swordswoman cuffed her mane without force. “Less of that from you, Blanca.”

Blanca rolled an eye at Pedro, the sturdy brown pony bearing Sharryn, who tossed his head and snorted. “Even they agree with me,” Sharryn said. A bit grimly, she added, “And after Epaphus we could both use a little amusement.”

Crowfoot, ignoring the reference to the events in the provincial capital the day before, scanned the marketplace over the heads of the jostling, energetic crowd. “Where is this inn you keep on about? The road has left me dry as a bone.”

Sharryn brightened. “Makarios’s?” She craned her neck. “There, the red brick building on the corner.” She smacked her lips. “Wait till you taste Makarios’s lager. It truly is the stuff of the gods.”

“Careful, one of them will hear you.” Crow was only half-joking. She looked at Sharryn out of the corner of an eye. Her partner’s eager expression indicated that there was more of interest at the inn than mere beer.

They urged their mounts alewards. Weary of the road and their last Assideres, they were both mildly annoyed to find their way blocked by a small knot of shouting, gesticulating townspeople. The knot grew into a group, then into a crowd, with no way out or around save to walk their horses right over the top of it. That of course would be unacceptable behavior for two of His Most Serene Majesty’s chosen, so they didn’t, however greatly they were tempted.

“A full tankard of cold, crisp lager,” Sharryn said, staring sadly in the direction of the inn. “I can practically smell it from here.”

“Lead me to it,” Crowfoot muttered. “Goodman,” she said to one of the townsmen standing at the fringe of the crowd, and had to raise her voice and repeat herself to be heard over the uproar.

He spared her an impatient glance, then looked again, his eye caught by the crest on the breast of her tunic and by the hilt of the sword protruding from the sheath strapped to her back. What he had been about to say changed to a deferential, “Swordswoman,” accompanied by a bow of the head. He looked for and found Sharryn, almost hidden by the bulk of the destrier, took in the same crest on the same tunic and the staff in her hand, and said, bowing again, “Seer.”

“Goodman,” Sharryn said pleasantly. “What’s all the fuss about?”

“It’s nothing, Seer. A fight.”

Crow surveyed the growing crowd, exchanged a raised eyebrow with Sharryn, and said, “A fight with a large audience. Is this part of the festival? Does one buy a ticket?”

“It’s nothing,” he repeated, with an involuntary look over his shoulder. “A fight over a girl, merely.”

Crow stood in the stirrups and saw a tangled ball of two men crash into the side of a cart loaded with nuts. The cart went over, the nuts went everywhere, and the vendor burned his hands catching the brazier. The two men were forcibly separated by a couple of stern townsmen, and stood revealed to be a young, slight man with dark hair, dressed in the charred leather apron of the smith, and a much larger man of roughly the same age, towheaded, pale-skinned and lantern-jawed, wearing a fletcher’s gauntlet. One of the townsmen, fists on his hips, surveyed the two pugilists with palpable scorn, addressed them with what appeared to be a pithy homily, and set them to work to right the nut vendor’s cart and recompense him for his lost revenue. The crowd began to disperse, but Crow saw the looks exchanged by the two young men and thought that there would be more trouble before long.

“Were you making for the inn?” She looked down to see the eyes of the townsman fixed on her.

“We were.”

“Allow me to lead you there.” He accomplished this with no unnecessary pushing and shoving, Sharryn noted with approval, but a tap on the shoulder, a nod, and a smile; and then there was the massive shadow of Blanca looming behind him, before which people naturally fell back.

They were dismounting in front of the inn when a big burly man burst out of the door, crying loudly in a strange tongue, and swept Sharryn up into a comprehensive embrace. It was returned with enthusiasm. Crow busied herself with an unnecessary adjustment to the left stirrup of her saddle. Blanca snorted. Pedro whinnied. The townsman looked a little startled.

After a while Sharryn came up for air, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. “This is Makarios,” she said.

“I should think so,” Crow said.

“Zeno!” Makarios roared. He had a robust baritone that was easily heard over the noise of the crowd. A sharp-featured boy with untidy dark hair and a sly grin scrambled from beneath a forest of legs. “Master Makarios?”

“Take the pony and the destrier to the stables. Water them, feed them, groom them, clean their tack.” He cocked an eye at Crow. “Anything else?”

She shook her head. The boy gave her a quick grin bracketed with mischievous dimples, but his hand on the halters was steady and sure, and Blanca and Pedro allowed themselves to be led away without complaint.

“Makarios,” Sharryn said, “this is Crowfoot, my Sword.”

“So I see. Well, well.” He eyed the townsman. “How did you happen to fall in with such rabble, Cornelius?”

Cornelius grinned. “They needed an escort through the crowd.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

Makarios remembered his duties as host. “You must be thirsty, come in, come in! Sofronia! Beer!” He unceremoniously dislodged a dozing patron from a large table comfortably close to the fireplace and disappeared for a moment, to reappear again with a tray loaded with meat rolls, cheese, and fruit. Crow’s stomach chose that moment to growl, loudly, which made Makarios grin and shove the platter closer to her. Her mouth was full when Sofronia, a plump woman with red cheeks and thick gray hair in a plait hanging to her waist bustled out with four tankards in one hand and an enormous earthenware pitcher in the other, which, pour as they would, never seemed to empty. Makarios grinned at Crow when she noticed this. “You’re drinking on the king’s coin, aren’t you?” and she had to admit that they were. The lager was cold and crisp, tasting of sun on grain, and good, rich earth, and deep, clear water.

Sharryn polished off the last crumble of cheese and sat back with a satisfied sigh. “That was worth the ride.” She smiled at Makarios, who was looking at her with love in his eyes.

Cornelius drained his tankard and went to refill it, but the pitcher was empty this time. “Sofronia!” Makarios bellowed. “Knock the bung out of another keg!”

“You don’t have to get me drunk,” Sharryn told him.

His smile could only be described as lecherous. “Yes, but it’s more fun when I do.”

Cornelius burped. “Excuse me, Sword.”

“The name is Crowfoot, Cornelius.”

She had unbuckled the sword. It rested against the arm of her chair. He eyed it. It was almost as tall as he was. “Do you mind if I ask how heavy it is?”

He was angling for an invitation to test the heft and balance of the weapon. She ignored the bait, more out of a care for his health than for any proprietary feel for the sword. “Heavy enough for justice,” she said, and wished the truth sounded less sanctimonious.

“Of course, of course,” he said hastily. Cornelius was square-jawed and solid, with dark hair neatly combed over dark, steady eyes, jerkin and leggings made with quality but not luxury, knee boots well traveled but also well kept. He wore a guild badge with a Catherine wheel embroidered on it. A trader, then.

“You recognized us,” Crow said.

He nodded. “I was trading in the capital two years ago when the king announced the Treaty of the Nine, along with the Charter of Mnemosynea and the conditions thereof.”

“And what do you think of it?”

He gave her question serious consideration, ignoring for the moment the din rising in back of them as the common room filled with the evening crowd. “If it will bring peace to the Nine Provinces and safe roads to get my goods to market, I’m for it.”

“And do you think it will?”

Their eyes met for a long moment. “I don’t know.”

The corners of her mouth quirked. “I don’t either, Cornelius.”

Night had fallen, and, at a look from Makarios, Sofronia lit the oil lamps hanging from brackets on the walls with a snap of fingers. Crow decided to stretch her legs in the direction of the stables, a glance enough to keep Cornelius in his seat. Sharryn made a face at her just before Makarios pulled Sharryn toward the stairs.

Blanca and Pedro had been brushed to a dull gleam, their hooves looked as if they had been polished, and both had buckets of water and troughs of hay and grain in their stalls. In the third stall down, she found Zeno industriously polishing the metal bits of her tack. Made of the finest steel from the king’s forges, they shone silver in the lamplight, Sofronia’s evening lighting task having apparently extended to the outbuildings. Crow wondered if that included the necessary. She hoped so; one of the less pleasant aspects of being continually on the road was trying to find an unfamiliar outhouse in the middle of the night.

“There must be some magic in your polish, boy,” she said. “That bridle hasn’t looked that good since we left the capital.”

He gave a proud nod. “My Talent is for horses, and anything to do with them.”

“You’re young to know that.” It happened, though, and often enough not to occasion more than idle comment.

Everyone in the Nine Provinces was born with the gift of magic. What kind and how much was usually revealed to them at the onset of puberty, but sometimes it happened earlier. Crow herself had been thirteen when she felt herself drawn to a former soldier who had lost a leg in battle and stumped into her village on a wooden replacement, there to buy out the local stable and begin an ambitious breeding program. He had found her on the back of a fiery-tempered mare, sans bridle or saddle, and his first and last glimpse of her for the afternoon was her gripping the mare’s black mane as both of them went over the fence and disappeared into the forest at a gallop.

She had apologized when she brought the mare back. He eyed her for a long, uncomfortable moment before stumping over to the wall where his sword hung, still in the scabbard in which he had last sheathed it. He pulled it free and in the same motion sent it hurtling at her. It spun, point over hilt, to smack into her open palm. She had gazed at it in astonishment, unable to remember raising her hand.

She smiled now, remembering doughty old Nicodemus and the long, sweaty hours of schooling in the training area he built in back of the barn. Riding, horse care, use of sword and shield and knife and quarterstaff and longbow and crossbow and a hundred other weapons that she would probably never encounter. “But if you lose your sword and your shield and the only weapon you can lay hand to is a Yranean war club,” Nicodemus had said, “then you’d better by the gods know how to use it.”

Her mother had wept when her daughter’s Talent had been revealed. Her father had been proud, especially when she was named head of her own cohort in the last war. She was an only child, and her mother still yearned for grandchildren, making visits home a nightmarish progression of eligible suitors. Her village was too near the capital, it made visits home too easy, so when the king had called for volunteers to bear the Swords of Justice she had seen a job that would keep her on the road for the better part of every year. She’d been second to sign up, and still took a certain amount of pride in the fact that she had been the first to pass successfully through the Ten Trials of the Sword.

Zeno was regarding the sword with a fascinated eye. “It’s beautiful. My friend Elias is a smith, but he does nothing like that.”

“All the Swords come from the Magi Guild’s forge,” she said. “They do good work.”

They grinned at each other, and he went back to polishing. “How do you get to be a Sword, anyway?”

“Didn’t your mayor publish the Treaty and the Charter?”

He hunched an impatient shoulder. “Who has time for all that reading?”

She sat down next to him in the straw, setting the sword beside her, the hilt ready to hand. Education was part and parcel of their charter, and besides, Blanca’s tack hadn’t looked this good since it was first made. Blanca, her great white head hooked over the stall, whickered agreement down the back of Crow’s neck. Crow reached up to rub the velvety nose. “You know about the wars.”

He nodded emphatically. “We all do. This is the first year in the last twenty that my father was able to sell all our wheat to the miller, and for a good price, too. ’Course the tithe to the king comes out of that, but it’s half of what it was before.” He scrubbed at a bit of stubborn tarnish. “It’s why my father was able to apprentice me out when my Talent revealed itself. Father can afford to hire someone over the next few years.”

She nodded. “King Loukas thinks that your father ought to be able to sell his grain without tithing to maintain an army. That’s why he proposed the Treaty of the Nine.”

“Yeah, but the king wasn’t the one fighting the wars, that was the wizards.” Zeno looked uncertain. “Wasn’t it?”

“It was the wizards,” Crow said. “Not all of them, but some. A few very great, very evil wizards, who were fighting each other for power and control.”

“They wanted to be king?”

It was a lot more complicated than that, but close enough. “They did. So the king tithed the people to pay the army, then directed the army to fight the wizards.”

“And they won.”

“And we won,” Crow agreed.

“ ‘We’ won?” Zeno said.

“I was a soldier in the king’s army.”

“Really?” he said, eyes wide. “Did you kill anybody?”

“Only enemies of the king,” she said, and hoped it was true. “And yes, we won, but the problem still remained.”

“The wizards.”

“Yes. Two died in battle, and the third was tried, convicted, and executed in Hestia.” She had been on duty at that execution and still remembered the curses with which Nyssa had fouled the air as she burned. The circle of wizards surrounding her pyre had been hard put to keep up with the counterspells. Even now Crow wondered if they’d managed to get them all.

“And then the king figured out a way to stop the wars.”

“He hopes so. Everyone was tired of war, like you and your father. It was expensive, and destructive, and it killed too many of us. How much do you get paid to work here?”

He grinned. “A lot. Enough for me to send half home to my mother every week.”

She smiled. “The king will be pleased to hear it. That was what he had in mind when he brought the Nine Provinces together to sign the Treaty, and when he worked with them to write the Charter.”

“How does it work?”

She had repeated it so many times over the past three months that it rolled off her tongue like a monk’s evening prayers. “In the Treaty, the Nine Provinces acknowledge the sovereign rule of Hestia. In exchange, the ruler in Hestia agrees to keep the peace.”

“And you do that.”

“And the Sword and Seer do that.”

“How many Swords are there?”

“Nine Swords and nine Seers, one pair for each province.”

His eyes slid to her sword.

“What?” she said, stifling a yawn. It was late, and Makarios’s beer was finally catching up with her.

“How does it work, exactly? Is it permitted to say?”

She chuckled. “I am no wizard, young Zeno. I bear the Sword of Justice. It speaks through me. The Guild of the Magi has laid it under the most powerful of enchantments. Its power draws on theirs.” And hers, and the Seer’s.

“In Hestia? All that way away?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know magic could be made at such a distance.”

“I don’t think the wizards knew it, either, until the king wrote the Charter, and they had to find a way.” She got to her feet. “And now, young Zeno, I’m for my bed, as you should be for yours.”

“What’s that?” he said, his head turning toward the stable door.

She heard it, too, a rising tide of sound with the unpleasant smell of riot about it. The hilt of the Sword slid into her hand.

A crowd was gathering, lit by torches held high. More people were emptying out of buildings, flooding down narrow streets to gather in the square, jerkins pulled hastily over nightgowns, confusion growing into an ugly, palpable anger. Crow saw Cornelius hurrying out of the inn and caught his elbow. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He halted, looking relieved to see her. “Someone has been killed, a girl, they say.”

Behind him Crow saw Sharryn, staff in hand, Makarios at her heels. Both were dressed, barely. Sharryn heard Cornelius’s words. “There’s been a murder?”

Crowfoot climbed to the floor of a vendor’s stand at the edge of the square and looked over the heads of the crowd.

The canvas roof over the dais from which the Kalliopean poet had been holding forth earlier in the day had been removed and a rope tossed over one of crosspieces. The noose at the end encircled the neck of a thin man with a bruised and bleeding face and both arms tied behind his back.

“Elias!” Zeno said, who had boosted himself up beside her, and disappeared into the crowd, heading in the direction of the man.

Crow swore. “Cornelius! Announce us!”

His eyes widened, and he stood up straight. Crow’s request was in the nature of being appointed bailiff by royal command. “Make way for the Seer and Sword!” he called, and proved to have a bullfrog bellow that was admirably suited to the task. “Make way! Make way for the king’s justice!”

Crow raised the Sword over her head, hand clasped around the scabbard, and followed him. Heads turned, eyes widened, people took involuntary steps back, and if a respectful silence did not fall, then at least a path was cleared to the focal point of the hubbub. Sharryn was at Crow’s heels, and they both heard Blanca’s urgent neigh and Pedro’s whinnies. The crowd was surly and hostile, but they pushed through to stand in the small space created for them by Cornelius before the poet’s dais, and the tableau waiting there.

The dead girl was blond and buxom. Her skirts were ruffled and dirtied, her bodice torn, and there were dark marks around her throat. The tip of her tongue protruded from her mouth in a manner that put Crowfoot forcibly in mind of the statues of the stone gargoyles lining the cornice of the roof of the Guild of the Magi back in Hestia. Those gargoyles, however, formed a ring of power designed to keep the forces of darkness from penetrating the sanctuary. This girl had had no such defense.

A man stood next to the body, tall, muscles going to fat. He had a heavy jaw and dark eyes set deep beneath a shelf of a brow. Collapsed against his side, tears sliding down her face, was a plump, blond woman, older than the girl but so similar in form and feature that the relationship was obvious.

Sharryn leaned down to close the girl’s wide, staring blue eyes with a gentle hand. This small act of compassion had a soothing effect on the crowd, and Crow could feel a palpable easing of tension.

Sharryn stood up, leaning on her staff, and looked at the couple. “Your daughter?” she said gently.

He jerked his head at the blond woman. “Hers.”

“I am so sorry,” Sharryn told her.

The woman continued to weep with no reply.

Sharryn looked at the man. “Your name, goodman?”

His expression was not friendly, but he said civilly enough, “Nestor. This is my wife, Agathi.”

“And this was…”

“Agathi’s daughter, Nella.”

“Not your daughter.”

He shook his head. “From her first marriage.”

“Ah.” Sharryn looked around for her new bailiff. “Goodman, a blanket or a cloak, if you please.”

Cornelius nodded, picked up the canvas that had been the roof of the dais, and spread it over Nella’s body without waiting to be told.

“Now then,” Sharryn said, looking at the young man with the noose around his neck. “I see you have determined who committed this foul deed.”

“We have,” Nestor growled.

“Good,” Sharryn said. “You have proof, of course.”

“He was found standing over the body.”

“Ah. Who found him?”

“I did.”

The crowd had crept closer again, the better to hear every word. “I see,” Sharryn said.

He stuck out a truculent jaw. “It is our right, under the Charter, to exact justice.”

“It is,” Sharryn told him, “when it is justice.”

Nestor’s face darkened, and there was a corresponding mutter from the crowd.

The young man with the noose around his neck began to struggle against it and received a cuff on one ear in response from one of the two men holding him. Crow recognized him, and then knew the man he was preparing to hang. These were the two who had fought over the girl in the square that afternoon. She looked down at the canvas-covered body. This girl.

Sharryn looked up at the young man in the noose. “Do you deny these charges, goodman?”

His mouth opened, and a kind of animal grunting came out, impassioned, forceful, but sounding more like a pig than a man. Sharryn looked at Nestor.

“A demon has him by the tongue,” he said. There was a murmured chorus of agreement.

“Elias is possessed of no demon!” Zeno said hotly, forcing his way forward. “He is my friend, and a good man! He loved Nella! He would never have hurt her!” He looked around and found Crowfoot. “In the name of the Charter that binds the Nine Provinces, I call for justice! I call for the justice of the Seer and the Sword!” He ran to Crow’s side. “You have to,” he said in an urgent whisper. “Crowfoot, you must help him, he can’t speak for himself!”

“Shut up, you little brat,” someone growled, to a chorus of muttered approval.

“Hang him, then!” someone shouted, and others took up the cry. “Hang him!” “Hang the murdering bastard!”

“No!” Zeno cried.

Someone cuffed the boy across the face, and he flew backward into the crowd. Zeno was lost in a trample of feet.

Crow drew the Sword. She held it point up, hilt before her face, and cried, “Let the Sword sing!”

The moon, a new crescent, was well up in the sky, and its light danced along the blade. A single severe, sustained note sliced through the uproar like a sharp edge through flesh. The crowd melted back at Crow’s approach, revealing Zeno prone on the ground. His mouth was bleeding, his cheek was bruised, and he winced and clasped his side when she nudged him to his feet, but he was ambulatory, and he followed her back to Sharryn. The Sword remained unsheathed, and Crow felt the link kick in solidly, with all the weight of Sharryn’s considerable exasperation behind it.

Did you have to do that?

What did you expect, that I would let the child be trampled? Crowfoot kept her face impassive, but in truth she was as annoyed as the Seer was. Now the Sword could not be sheathed again until a verdict had been reached and a judgment rendered. She let the flat of the blade rest lightly against her left shoulder, both hands clasped on the hilt.

“We need no diviners here,” Nestor said. “We can hang a murderer without your help. Yes, and bury our dead, too.”

His wife sobbed out loud, but there was a growl of agreement from the crowd. They had been cowed by the Sword’s song, but there would have to be some resolution of the murder or, Crow had no doubt, there would be more murder done.

Sharryn kept her tone mild. “You live under the protection of the king, goodman. You are, as are we all, subject to the Treaty of the Nine and the Great Charter.” She added distinctly, her eyes hard, “And you will address me as Seer.”

He stared at her, his expression unpleasant. What he might have said next was drowned out by the crowd.

“To hell with this talk! Killer! Murderer! Hang him!” someone yelled, and there was another movement to press forward. Crowfoot stepped in front of Sharryn and raised the Sword. It sang again, the pure note descending into a clear baritone, a long, low pitch of warning that reverberated in the back teeth of everyone in the square. Many clapped their hands to their ears, a few were brought to their knees. A girl screamed, and babies wept.

It was a warning, as sharp as the edge of the Sword itself. It was the first time the Sword had been heard in Daean, but none who heard it could fail to understand it. The crowd fell back as one. The mob lust for blood had been broken with a single note.

“Sorcery,” Nestor said, though he was as pale and shaken as the rest.

“Yes,” said Sharryn. “Of the very strongest. Remember that, goodman.” She turned to the dais. “Bring him down.”

They brought Elias down forthwith and no arguing. Sharryn regarded the man who stood before her. He was looking at the canvas-covered body with tears tracing down his cheeks. She pulled the noose from his neck. There was another angry rumble from the crowd.

Crowfoot stepped forward. “Good people,” she said. “You stand in the presence of the Seer of Truth and the Sword of Justice. By the pledge of the King, there will be order.”

A translucent aura enveloped both women in a haze of light, casting their features in bold relief. Staff and Sword gleamed as if dipped in quicksilver. The illusion was gone in an instant, leaving only a tenuous memory of itself behind. Later, some would dismiss it as simple magic, a glamour conjured up to intimidate the ignorant and the foolish, yet another example of the wizarding sleight of hand that, out of control, had led to the last series of wars that had brought Mnemosynea to its knees. Others wouldn’t be so sure. “I had my doubts about the Charter,” old Pavlos said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand after downing a tankard of Makarios’s best. “But after watching those two witches at work the other night I’m thinking we’ve got a king we should keep.”

“Bring a chair for the Seer,” Crow said to Cornelius in a quiet voice. “Set it up on the dais. And cause torches to be lit, as many as may be found, and set them about the square.”

It was done. Sharryn took the seat, staff in hand. Crowfoot stood a little behind her on her right, Sword held in front of her. “I will hear witnesses in this matter,” Sharryn said. It was all very irregular, lacking in the formality the king wanted to mark the dignity of the judicial process, and it was also night, a thing the Council would have abhorred. King and Council both wanted the Seer and the Sword to hold court in the full light of day, beneath the clear gaze of the full populace. But the Sword was out, and its appetite for justice, laid on by powerful geas, must be satisfied.

Cornelius’s voice rang out. “All witnesses having knowledge in the matter of the foul murder of Nella, daughter of Agathi, stepdaughter of Nestor, come forward to be heard.”

“When and where was the girl’s body found, and who found it?” Sharryn said.

Nestor stepped forward. “I found it.”

“Lay your hand upon my staff,” Sharryn said.

He hesitated, and did as he was told. “State your name.”

“I am Nestor, of the town of Daean, of the province of Kleonea.” He looked at the staff as if afraid it might refute his words. It remained inert, a length of polished, knotted pine, gleaming coldly in the moonlight. He gained courage. “I own a bakery. Agathi is my wife. Nella was her daughter.” Agathi sobbed into the shoulder of another woman, who patted her back.

“Tell us where and when you found Nella’s body.”

He looked at the staff, at his hand resting gingerly upon it, and swallowed. “Seer, she was in the bakery when I went to close the shop. She was supposed to do it, but she was ever a flighty piece, more interested in flirting than she was in selling bread.” He pulled his hand free and pointed at Elias. “And I found him with her, crouched over her, interfering with her!”

The crowd erupted. “Pervert!” “Hang him!” “Filthy murderer!” “Killer!” “Hang him now!”

Sharryn waited with flinty composure until the cries died down. “Replace your hand upon the staff. Did you see him kill her, goodman?”

He hesitated, looked at Elias, back at the staff. “Seer. No. I did not see him kill her.”

“You said the girl liked to flirt. Was this man one of the men with whom she flirted?”

The baker scowled. “Seer, she flirted with them all. If she did not do more.”

“I see. Thank you, goodman. You may step back.”

The crowd shifted and stretched to see better. No one was yawning despite the late hour.

“I will speak to the accused next,” Sharryn said.

“Seer, he has not the ability to speak,” Cornelius said in a low voice.

“I understand that,” Sharryn said, and looked around for Zeno. He stepped forward, a little stiffly as the injuries inflicted by the crowd began to tell. “Can you understand him, Zeno?”

“Seer, I can!”

She beckoned to the accused. “Are you willing to have Zeno speak for you?”

The young man nodded once.

“Come forward, then,” Sharryn said, “and place your hand upon my staff.”

He did so without hesitation. His face showed more bruises than Zeno’s, and he limped.

“Your name, goodman.”

He looked at Zeno. “Seer, this is Elias, son of-”

“Your name first, goodman.”

The boy looked startled. It was probably the first time anyone had called him goodman. He squared his shoulders. When he spoke next his voice had deepened and carried clearly to the edges of the crowd, silent now, and watchful. “Seer, I am Zeno, son of Nilos, son of Arete, of the village of Pierus -”

Ten leagues south of Daean, Crow thought.

Was it on the map?

No.

Typical.

“-of the province of Kleonea.”

Sharryn gave a grave nod, and waited, somehow, rumpled and red-cheeked as she was, contriving to appear worthy to bear and exercise the will of King and Charter. The rule of law was so new to the Nine Provinces that no degree of authority could be lost to an apparent lack of dignity on the part of the Two. They were building a myth as much as they were an institution.

“Seer, this is Elias, son of Damara, of the town of Daean, of the province of Kleonea,” Zeno said. His voice gathered force. “He is a smith, and my friend! He didn’t kill Nella, he loved her!”

“He told you so?”

Zeno flushed. “Seer, he doesn’t have to.”

“In fact, he does,” Sharryn said, not unkindly. “Please confine yourself to what the witness actually says. When did he come upon the body of Nella?”

Zeno conferred with Elias, who grunted and gestured. Zeno turned to Sharryn. “Seer, he says that they planned to meet at the bakery after work, to walk to the square and see who was performing for Festival. She was lying on the floor when he walked in.” Zeno swallowed, his bruised face looking a bleached, blotchy purple in the torchlight. “He says her skirts were up over her head, and when he pulled them down he saw the marks on her neck.”

“Was she cold to the touch?”

Elias shook his head violently and grunted at Zeno. “Seer, he says she was warm. He thinks her killer could not long have left her there.”

Sharryn looked at Elias. He had not the build of the blacksmith, but you could not choose your Talent, it chose you. His shoulders and arms were well muscled, though, developed by his trade. His hand grasped her staff as if he needed the support.

“How did you lose your voice, goodman?” Sharryn said.

Elias looked at Zeno, who looked angrily at the crowd, and said hotly, “It’s not because he labors under an evil curse, Seer, no matter what these people say.”

Sharryn waited.

Zeno looked at Elias, who pressed his lips together and gave a curt nod. “His tongue was cut out, Seer.”

“By whom?”

“By the army of Nyssa.”

The crowd moved and muttered, and Crow knew Sharryn felt as she did the wave of almost tangible hatred. Nyssa had not wasted her occupation of Kleonea making friends, it seemed. Not that she’d had many friends in any of the Nine Provinces, judging from the cheer that had gone up as the wizard burned at the stake two years before.

“Why was your tongue cut out?” Sharryn said.

Zeno didn’t have to ask Elias. “Seer, Elias was a spy for the king. He was betrayed to the wizard, who cut out his tongue in punishment.”

The crowd gasped. “The smith spied for the king?”

“A likely story,” growled the baker. His wife, collapsed in exhaustion in her friend’s arms, had strained eyes fixed on the still form beneath the canvas shroud and was oblivious to everything else.

Crow was suspicious at this fortuitous turn of events. It’s hard to hang a war hero. Did you know?

Such punishment for spies was common practice among Nyssa’s troops. You should have paid more attention in history. By some trick of expression or movement Sharryn refocused attention on herself. To Elias, she said, “Why did you go to the bakery?”

Elias and Zeno put their heads together. There were more grunts, a few gestures, some wriggling of fingers. “Seer, Elias finished work early today, uh, yesterday now, I guess. He was anxious to see Nella. And-” He hesitated.

“And?” Sharryn said.

Zeno was reluctant, but Elias nudged him and grunted. Zeno flushed. “Seer, Elias was afraid that Nella had heard about the fight he had had with Deon.”

By not a flicker of an eyebrow did Sharryn or Crow betray that they had been eyewitnesses.

“Seer, he was afraid Nella would be angry. He wanted to speak to her, to explain what happened.”

Sharryn spoke directly to Elias. “Did you see anyone in the bakery besides Nella?”

The smith shook his head. “Seer, he did not,” Zeno said. Elias grunted something. Zeno’s eyes widened. “Seer, but he found something!”

“What did he find?”

Elias nodded at his tunic, and Zeno stuck a hand in the pocket. He pulled out a leather rectangle that curled naturally into a tube in his hand, straps and buckles dangling. He stared at it, puzzled.

“A fletcher’s gauntlet!” someone cried.

They turned as one to the big, fair man standing behind Elias. “No,” he cried. “No, not me, I didn’t!”

“Step forward and show your left arm,” Sharryn said.

“No, I-”

Rough hands were laid upon him, and he was thrust forward, his arm brought out by force. It was bare of anything but the sleeve of his dark green jerkin.

“He’s the one!” “Guilty!” “Hang him!”

“Silence,” Sharryn said mildly, but the force of the word rang like a tocsin, silencing the crowd. To Elias she said, “You found the gauntlet in the bakery with Nella?”

Elias grunted. “Seer,” Zeno said, “Elias found it next to Nella’s body. He put it in his pocket when Nestor refused to believe him and called down the mob.”

“I see.” Sharryn looked at the fletcher. “Step forward, goodman, and place your hand upon the staff.”

The big man with the baby face did so, his eyes suspiciously bright.

“Your name.”

His voice trembling in time with his knees, he said, “I am Deon, son of Andrew, son of Cyma, of the city of Daean in the province of Kleonea, and I did not kill Nella!” His voice caught on a sob. “I loved her, I would never hurt her!”

“How do you explain your gauntlet next to her body?”

Deon looked at his hand on the staff, the agonized fear on his face clear in the moonlight. He looked up at Sharryn, and said imploringly, “Seer, I-”

Sharryn was inexorable. “How do you explain your gauntlet being found next to her body?”

The fletcher was struck by sudden inspiration. “Elias must have stolen it and put it there to cast suspicion on me! I never went to the bakery, I-” He screamed, a high-pitched agonized sound that made everyone flinch. His legs went out from under him, and he remained upright only by virtue of the staff, gleaming in the moonlight, his hand clamped to it. “Make it stop, make it stop, ahhhhhhh, no!” He screamed again.

“How do you explain your gauntlet being found next to Nella’s body?” Sharryn said pitilessly.

He screamed a third time, writhing like a fish on a hook, but he could not pull his hand from the staff. “I went to the bakery to see her, to ask her to spend Saturday at the festival with me, but she was already dead, I swear! I did not kill her, I did not! Make it stop, make it stop!”

Sharryn made no move, but his hand was suddenly free, and he crumpled into a boneless, sobbing heap before the dais.

“Raise him up,” Sharryn said, her voice cold.

Elias and Zeno, their faces grim and awed, pulled Deon to his feet. Elias grunted at Zeno. “Seer,” Zeno said, “Elias wishes to vouch for Deon. He has known Deon since they were boys. He knew of Deon’s love for Nella. He doesn’t believe Deon would hurt her.”

Deon looked steadfastly at the ground, shoulders shaking.

“It is certainly more than Deon was willing to do for him,” Sharryn said tartly.

There was a brief silence.

Well?

She was strangled. Her killer knew she worked in the bakery, knew she would be there at closing time, and had strong hands.

And our choice is a smith or a fletcher. You’re a lot of help. What does the Sword say?

Nothing. It won’t until you identify the guilty and pronounce a verdict. You know that.

I live in hope. “Goodman,” Sharryn said to Nestor. “Were there any signs of a struggle in the bakery?”

He shook his head. “Seer, there were not.”

So she didn’t fight. She knew him, and the attack came too suddenly for her to struggle.

“Who knew this girl?” Sharryn said. “Step forward and be heard.”

There was a brief silence from the crowd, whose mood was by then more bewildered than hostile. They were still angry, but they were intent on every word spoken in the drama being enacted before them, determined to see the story through to its end.

“Excuse me,” a strong voice said. The crowd parted to let two women through to the space before the dais. They were both delicate of feature and dark of hair and eye. Middle age had brought the elder laugh lines and gray hairs, and her waist was no longer as slender as her daughter’s. Both were well dressed and bore the unmistakable stamp of the burgher. Both also bore the pincushion bracelet of the tailor.

“Seer,” the older woman said, bending her head briefly. “I am Irene, daughter of Charis, daughter of Kiril, and a tailor in the city of Daean in the province of Kleonea. This is my daughter, Delphine. Nella was her friend.”

Irene looked at Delphine, who didn’t move. Irene placed a hand on her daughter’s lower back and gave a firm nudge. Delphine was forced forward a step, and there she halted. Her brown eyes were wide and fearful, and she was obviously reluctant to speak. Her mother nudged her again.

“Seer,” she said. “I-I am D-D-Delphine, d-d-daughter of Irene, d-d-daughter of Martin, of the city of Daean in the province of Kleonea.” She clasped her hands before her tightly and looked imploringly at her mother. Her mother looked implacably back.

“Delphine, daughter of Irene, place your hand on my staff,” Sharryn said. The girl looked desperately this way and that, found no help, and took three stumbling steps forward to place a shrinking palm against the wood. She looked surprised not to have her hand struck off at the wrist.

“You knew the dead girl?”

“Seer, I d-d-did.”

Sharryn waited. Delphine knotted her free hand in her skirt.

“Come, goodwoman,” Sharryn said. “There is nothing to fear here, so long as you tell the truth.” Delphine cast a quick look at Deon. There was no blood or bruising on the hand that had lain upon the staff, but the fingers had yet to move, and he cradled it tenderly against his chest. “Did you see Nella yesterday?”

Delphine gave a quick nod. “Seer, I was at the bakery in the morning. Nella and I made plans to meet at the sweetshop and go round the square to see who was here for Festival.”

Keeping a weather eye out for visiting poets, no doubt.

Quiet. “Did you see her again yesterday?” A shake of the head. “Did she speak of Elias or Deon to you?”

Delphine looked even more uncomfortable, if that was possible.

“Did Nella perhaps have many friends among the young men of the town?” Sharryn suggested.

Delphine’s relief was immediate and immense. “Seer, she did. They were all in love with her. She was so beautiful, why shouldn’t they be?”

“Did she favor any one above the rest?”

The girl’s brow knit. “Seer, I believe she did not.”

“Not Elias the smith? Not Deon the fletcher?”

“Seer, I believe not.”

“It’s not true,” said Deon, “she loved me!” Elias said nothing, staring straight ahead with a face like stone.

“So you went to the sweetshop to wait for Nella,” Sharryn said to Delphine.

“Seer, I did. But she did not come. So I went to the bakery.”

“You went to the bakery?”

“Seer, I did, but the baker said she was gone.”

There was a moment of silence. The hilt of the Sword began to vibrate in Crow’s hands, and a faint, fine line of light limned the edge.

The kneading of all that dough also makes for strong hands.

“When was this, Delphine?”

“Seer, at a little before sunset. My mother let me leave our shop early.”

Sharryn looked at Irene, who nodded.

“Did you go into the bakery?” Sharryn said.

“Seer, I did not. Nestor the baker came out the door as I came down the street.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“Seer, I did. I asked him where Nella was, and he said she had left the shop before sunset to meet me.”

“Step back from the staff,” Sharryn said.

Delphine dropped her hand and scuttled behind her mother, standing on tiptoe to peer over Irene’s shoulder.

“Nestor the baker, come forward,” Sharryn said.

“I won’t then,” he said truculently. He raised his voice. “This is nothing but magic, and black magic at that! She has laid a geas upon us all!”

Irene looked at him. “Why?”

The simple question halted him for only a moment. “To make mischief, that’s why! To bring the blackest of magic back to the Nine Provinces! To enslave us all again to the wishes of wizards! I found Elias kneeling over my daughter’s body!”

Oh, so now she’s his daughter.

“I will not come forward to lay my hand again upon that enchanted staff! Who knows what the wizard could make me say! It is the spirit of Nyssa come amongst us again! I will not!”

Sharryn raised neither the staff nor her voice. “Nestor the baker,” she said, the words dropping oh so coldly into the torchlight, “come forward.”

Nestor, his face contorted with anger and fear, was forced by an invisible hand to place one halting foot in front of the other, until he came before the dais.

“Place your hand upon my staff,” Sharryn said, in that same cold, inflexible voice.

Inch by inexorable inch, his arm was forced up. He cried out when his hand touched the wood, but it caught him fast.

“Nestor the baker of the city of Daean, father in law to Nella, now deceased, were you in your bakery yesterday afternoon?”

“Of course I was in my bakery!” he shouted. “It’s my business, I own it.”

“Was Nella also in your bakery yesterday afternoon?”

“She works there, she’s my apprentice, of course she was there!”

“Were you both there when she was attacked?”

“No, I-aaaaaahhhhh!” Nestor screamed and writhed, tendons distended as he tried to pull free of the staff.

“Were you in the bakery when Nella was attacked?” Sharryn said.

“No, no, I tell you-” Nestor shrieked again. His feet were kicking, pushing at the dais. Tears were streaming from his eyes, mucus from his nose, and his mouth was pulled into a rictus of pain.

Agathi was staring at the scene before her, her eyes wide, her mouth a little open. “What is wrong with my husband? I don’t understand. What is wrong?” Her friend put an arm around her and patted her wordlessly. Crow found a moment to pity her before Sharryn spoke again.

“I will not repeat my question a third time, Nestor the baker of Kleonea.”

He broke, suddenly and absolutely and completely. “All right, all right, make it stop! Please, Seer, please, I beg you, just make it stop! I killed her! I killed Nella! Make it stop!”

And as simply as that his hand was free. He slumped against the dais, his face pressed into the sawdust at her feet, moaning and clasping his arm. Sharryn waited, looking in the moonlight like a statue. The crowded waited, too, silent, still; it seemed to Crow they had ceased even to breathe.

“On your feet,” Sharryn said, and Nestor perforce was on his feet. “Place your hand again on the staff.”

He cringed. “No, Seer, no, please, no, anything but that.”

Sharryn’s voice cracked like a whip. “Place your hand upon the staff!”

One hand, long-fingered, large-knuckled, heavy, roped with muscle, trembling, reached out and touched wood.

“Why did you kill Nella?” Sharryn said.

He hung his head, less in shame than in remembered pain. “I wanted her.”

Agathi cried out. “No!” Her friend restrained her, but it wasn’t easy. “No, it isn’t true, it can’t be true!”

“I wanted her, and she knew it, and she teased me with her knowledge. She raised her skirt for any young buck in town-”

“NO!” Agathi shrieked.

“Oh, it isn’t true!” Delphine cried.

Elias shook his head violently. Even Deon left off nursing his hand to cry out a denial.

“-why not for me?” Nestor said. “Always in the house, parading around in her underdress, taunting me, tempting me.”

Why does the staff not correct him?

It’s the truth, as he sees it.

“I took her, I admit it. There was no bearing it any longer, she was off to gawk at the young men in the town square that evening. Why them and not me?”

“How did she die?” Sharryn said.

“She fought me,” he said, and bared his chest, revealing a series of dark red scratches and one welt that looked inflicted by teeth. “Look here! She provoked me, she scratched me, she made me bleed! She screamed the whole time, I was afraid someone would hear! I just wanted her to be quiet!” He looked at his hand on the staff. “I just wanted her to be quiet,” he repeated.

There was dead silence in the square.

Sharryn broke it by rising to her feet. She took a deep breath and shook Nestor free of the staff as if she were shaking off a fly. “In the matter before the sitting of this Assideres-”

The Sword began to hum.

“-in the city of Daean on the day of the solstice, this second New Year in the reign of King Loukas the Just, I, Sharryn the Seer, find Nestor the baker of Daean in the province of Kleonea guilty of the wanton rape and murder of his stepdaughter, Nella, by confession out of his own mouth, as attested to by the Staff of Truth.” She stepped back. “Let the Sword of Justice come forth and render judgment.”

Crow moved forward, holding the Sword before her like a banner, as indeed it was, the ensign of her command.

It began to hum.

Nestor scrabbled awkwardly backward on his hands and feet. “No! Keep it away from me! Stop it, stop it, I tell you! She made me do it! I shouldn’t be punished, she made me!” A kick from the crowd sent him back into the circle.

Crow halted at the edge of the platform, the Sword brightening to a silver that seemed almost transparent, the blade reflecting the glitter of the stars and the glow of the torches, the stones on the hilt bright with right and rage. The hum rose to a cold, clear tone that went up and up in pitch and volume. People cried out and covered their eyes and ears. Nestor cowered on the ground, one arm raised in pitiful defense, afraid to look, afraid not to. Zeno and Elias crouched nearby, white-faced and staring. Sharryn and Crowfoot alone remained outwardly unmoved.

When Crowfoot spoke, her voice was as cold as Sharryn’s and as clear as the song of the Sword. “In the name of the Great Charter of Mnemosynea, by the power vested in me by King and mage, let justice be done.”

The glow of the blade increased to a blinding ray of light, spilling out over the heads of the crowd. The song increased in volume to the point of pain, reverberating in ears, teeth, bones, blood.

And then it was gone, and the light with it, and the blade returned to the sheath, a long slide of metal against metal, the hilt meeting the scabbard with a satisfied clank.

“The Sword has spoken,” said Crow. Sharryn moved to stand beside her.

People stood erect again, shaken. They looked at Nestor, still sitting in the dirt. “Oh the gods,” someone said, shock in his voice.

The Sword of Justice had taken Nestor’s hands above the wrists. The stumps of his arms had been neatly sealed, no blood dripping, no bone showing, the skin healed cleanly across. The hands that had strangled the life from the young woman had been the price of their crime. The girl was dead, and her Talent with her. Nestor’s Talent had been in his hands, and now it, too, was gone.

Magic destroyed was a debt owed. And debts to magic must always be paid. It was the First Law, and the most binding of them all.

Nestor stared at the stumps where his hands had been, unbelieving. He would be unable to practice his trade. Never to knead another batch of dough, never to slice fruit for a tart, never to ice cakes, none of it, ever again.

More, he would be unable to wash himself, to clothe himself, to feed himself. Unless he could find someone to perform those tasks for him, banishment and slow starvation were his fate. And with the mark of the Sword burned into his forehead proclaiming his offense for all to see, there would be no succor for him anywhere.

In that moment Nestor himself seemed to realize the depth and breadth of his punishment, and turned mute, pleading eyes to his wife.

Agathi spat in his face, turned her back, and walked away.

So did everyone else.

The square emptied out in groups of five and six. Nestor hunched over his maimed arms and scrabbled away.

“We never do this in moonlight again,” Sharryn said, descending from the platform.

“Agreed,” Crowfoot said, following. “They did warn us.”

“They did. Gods, I need a drink.”

“I know where to find one,” Crow replied.

There was a shy touch at her elbow, and she looked round to see Zeno, awe and gratitude warring for primacy on his young face. “Thank you, Sword. Thank you for saving my friend.” Behind him, Elias bowed.

She managed a brief nod, a rough tousle of Zeno’s hair, and turned for the inn and bed, and no one tried to stay their path.

At least not that night.

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