Traitor's Blade

NO MAN BREAKS THE ROCK

The ritual that ends the Blood Week takes place at the Teyar Rijou – the locals call it simply the Rock of Rijou. The site of the city’s original founding, it sits in front of the Ducal Palace. Imagine a large, nearly flat rock, almost as large as a city block, surrounded by lush grass and a profusion of brightly coloured, sweet-scented flowers. Now imagine all that beauty and serenity surrounded by the most corrupt city in the world.

The crowd was massive, mostly because the Duke had made it clear that every citizen of Rijou was required to appear at the Rock on the Day of Dedication. Originally, this had been the city’s annual festival to remember and celebrate the battles fought by their ancestors to hold Rijou. When the Duke brought Ganath Kalila with him from the East, he simply timed his Blood Week to end on what had been the Day of Dedication, now renamed the Morning of Mercy: the time when he would grant mercy to every citizen as part of their promise to fight for Rijou if and when required.

Aline and I were hidden amongst the crowds, listening to the Duke. His speech was well written, and long on the themes of duty and honour – although he had an interesting way of conflating the two so that by the end of the speech duty and honour appeared to mean basically the same thing. They boiled down to: follow the laws and obey those of more noble blood.

The Duke stood on a broad dais, flanked by Shiballe on his right and his son, the boy I’d seen helping Bal Armidor, on his left. Dozens of guardsmen stood around the dais, keeping watch on the crowd. We stayed at the far end, as far away from the Ducal party as possible.

‘And now, my good citizens of Rijou,’ the Duke intoned, ‘the City Sage will speak the names of the noble families, that you might better know your duty to those of high blood.’

The City Sage was an old man who looked half-blind and more than half-senile to me. It was his job to recite the name of each noble house in turn; the more noble your blood in the eyes of the Gods, the further up the roster your name came and the later your name would be spoken.

‘Speak the names,’ the Duke instructed the Sage. ‘Speak the names, and let all here know that the City Sage speaks for the Gods and his word is beyond question.’

‘Calabrian,’ the Sage said in a wheezy voice, barely waiting for the Duke to finish.

A man in blue robes held up his fist. ‘Irobel Calabrian stands in Rijou!’ he called out.

There was a smattering of applause.

‘Oldeth,’ the Sage said.

Now a woman standing with her children raised her fist. ‘Mallia Oldeth stands in Rijou!’ she shouted.

More applause.

It went on like this for some time as they proceeded from minor nobility to higher stock. I asked myself how accurate the City Sage’s spell could be; did the Gods really recognise one man’s blood over another? Did they have a preference – and if so, what was it based on? I had no idea; in my experience they liked to see all kinds of it, and shed in quantity more than quality.

‘Humber,’ the Sage said.

Richel Humber: another noble, another declaration, another cheer.

I wondered how entertaining this was for the lower classes of the city – but these nobles were their landlords, their patrons, their customers, so it probably helped to keep track of who was alive and who was dead, which house had risen in prominence and which had fallen on hard times.

‘Barret,’ the Sage called.

‘Yerren.’

‘Quistellios.’

‘Zierry.’

And on it went, every noble house being listed, but still the name Tiarren had not been called.

‘We had better go,’ I said, taking Aline’s arm. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

She pulled away from me. ‘He hasn’t finished yet!’

‘Look,’ I said, pointing to the dais, where the Duke was preparing himself to speak. ‘The Sage has said all the names he’s going to. The Duke’s obviously last, since – just as obviously – he’s got the most noble blood.’

‘Jillard,’ the Sage called out, his voice no different than when he had called any other name before it.

‘Andreas Jillard stands in Rijou!’ the Duke shouted with practised ease. He held his fist up high to the cheering from the crowd. As it began to die down he kept it there and pumped his fist again until the cheering resumed. He did this three more times before stopping.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘I call the—’

‘Aline,’ said a wheezy voice.

Everyone looked to see who had spoken, but it was the City Sage, his eyes focused on nothing in particular, looking for all the world as if he’d said nothing important, unaware that every eye was upon him.

‘What?’ demanded the Duke.

Shiballe went over and shook the City Sage’s arm, saying something that looked unpleasant into his ear, but the old man ignored him.

‘Aline,’ he said again, as if nothing had happened.

There was dead silence as the Duke scanned the crowd. Even I was confused. The City Sage was calling her by her first name – why?

‘Aline, daughter of Lady Tiarren, stands in Rijou!’ Aline shouted.

Confused noises erupted from the crowd, and the Duke motioned for silence.

‘Aline, daughter of Lady Tiarren, stands in Rijou.’ She said it again, and it sounded as if she’d been practising this one sentence her whole life.

For my part, I still didn’t understand what was going on. Why had the Sage called her – and why call her last? And why call her by her first name, not her house name?

‘Silence!’ the Duke screamed when the noise grew again. ‘Who dares violate the sacred ritual of Ganath Kalila?’ he demanded, looking around, trying to spot Aline, who was still hidden by the crowds. ‘Who brings shame upon the Morning of Mercy?’

‘Seems like t’was your own Sage!’ someone in the crowd shouted.

As laughter rippled through the people, the Duke cried, ‘Who said that? Who spoke?’ and turned to Shiballe. ‘Find the man who talks back to his Duke. Find him and kill him.’

The crowd was silent again. So, time for me to speak up then. I sighed, then shouted, ‘Pardon me, your Lordship, but my understanding is that no one is ever killed on the Morning of Mercy – hence the name.’

‘Take that man,’ Shiballe shouted to the guards. ‘He is a criminal – an escaped convict, guilty of treason!’

The guards looked helpless as they tried to figure out how to get through the entire crowd to us.

‘The girl is false,’ the Duke cried. ‘She is – the Sage has made an error—’

‘The Sage cannot make an error,’ I shouted back. ‘He is speaking on behalf of the Gods, remember?’

‘The girl is false,’ he repeated. ‘Her blood is false. Her house does not exist. Even if it did, the Tiarrens were petty nobles, barely worthy of notice – so how could her name be called after that of – after that of more noble houses?’

Some of the other ‘petty nobles’ in the audience looked offended, but everyone kept silent.

‘“Let all here know that the City Sage speaks for the Gods and his word is beyond question”,’ I repeated. ‘Those are your very words, your Lordship.’

‘I—’

Shiballe whispered into his ear, and I heard him mutter, ‘Yes – yes, you’re right. I can.’

The Duke looked around his people and cried, ‘Men and women of Rijou!’ He had a warm smile on his face. ‘Rejoice! Rejoice, for as Ganath Kalila has made our city strong in the past, now shall it make us stronger in the future. I hereby declare, as is my right as Duke and Lord Ruler of the City of Rijou, that Ganath Kalila is extended. Today is the final day of the Blood Week. Let it stand as a reminder that we must always be vigilant, we must always be strong against our enemies. And tomorrow we shall come together again for a … for a festival. A feast! The Feast of Mercy! There will be food for all and—’

‘A high price,’ I shouted. ‘A high price for a nice meal.’

The Duke looked down at me from his dais all the way across the promenade. ‘And what does the Trattari have to say?’ he said, the scorn dripping from his voice. ‘A tatter-cloaked traitor, even to the tyrant he served: a traitor to the entire land. What wisdom do you have to say to the people of Rijou? Shall you tell us about your murderous King’s false laws?’

‘I have no wisdom,’ I said. ‘None at all. And certainly Rijou is the last place I would come to recite the King’s Laws.’

There was a rumble of agreement to that. The Greatcoats had never been popular in Rijou, for the people had always seen themselves as a separate city state and heartily disliked being subject to the rule of a man hundreds of miles away.

‘But if you’ll forgive me, I do know something of the laws of Rijou itself.’

The Duke laughed. ‘You would tell us our own laws, Trattari? A man will pay a high price for listening to your lies – a high price indeed for any man here today who acts upon your words.’ This last he directed straight at the silent crowd.

‘It is a high price to remember your laws,’ I said, speaking to the assembled audience. ‘His Lordship is quite correct. But that same price was paid by your own ancestors, by the men and women who built this city, who fought for it, died for it, bled into the very stone beneath your feet. Their blood seeped into the Teyar Rijou for hundreds of years as they fought off attackers from the north, from the south, the east and the west, so that today you might stand on it, that your children and grandchildren might stand on it, and feel something stronger than rock beneath their feet. People of Rijou, your blood – your courage – is the alloy that makes this place strong, that binds you to the Rock. For that is what you are: you are the true Rock of Rijou. You have turned back every enemy for a thousand years and more because, even when you were lawless, there was always one law that held. Your law.’

I drew a breath and then said the words: ‘No man breaks the Rock.’

A smattered cheer broke out somewhere, and I thought I heard a few old-timers muttering the phrase back at me: ‘No man breaks the Rock.’

‘No man breaks the Rock,’ I repeated. ‘But look into your neighbour’s eyes and tell me what you see. Do you see the Rock there?’

I didn’t wait for a response but shook my head sadly. ‘No, you see fear. Fear has taken hold of this city, and it has been wearing it away, not just in your time, but in your mother’s time, in your father’s time. Look into the eyes of your children and you will see the fear there, too, taking root. And what will become of their children, your grandchildren? Fear has struck the Rock, and year after year it strikes again, like rushing water, wearing it away. Look beneath your feet. Do you see how fear begins to erode the Rock? How many more years of Ganath Kalila before the Rock is worn away? How many more Blood Weeks before the Rock is no longer in your hearts?

‘No man breaks the Rock,’ I said.

‘No man breaks the Rock!’ I heard a woman yell. ‘No man breaks the Rock!’

I saw the Duke whisper into Shiballe’s ear and the little man stepped down from the dais and spoke to one of the guards, who took one of his fellows and began pushing through the crowd to where that call had come from.

‘And look,’ I shouted, ‘here comes fear once again, worming its way through the cracks in the Rock. Watch: they are pushing through you to take that woman – and for what? For treason? For murder? For theft? No, they come to take her for speaking the first law of Rijou. Will they take her from you? And if so, will others fear to speak the words upon which your city is built? And if that fear carries to your children, will they live their whole lives without speaking it? And if they never speak it, will your grandchildren grow to adulthood never knowing the words? Do you even remember the words? Do you even remember your own first law?’

‘No man breaks the Rock,’ an old man shouted from deep inside the crowd. ‘Take me! Come and take me away, damn your black hearts! You can break my old bones. You can break my neck. But no man breaks the Rock!’

‘No man breaks the Rock!’ came the cheer. ‘No man breaks the Rock!’

‘No man breaks the Rock,’ I agreed, holding up my hands for quiet. ‘The Duke is your lawful ruler,’ I said. ‘I am a Magister, and I have no say over who rules you, or whom you allow to rule you. The Khunds to the east claimed to rule you, didn’t they? What happened to them?’

‘They met the Rock!’ came a shout from somewhere to my right.

‘And the Lords of Orison: they came south with their armies and said Rijou was theirs too, didn’t they? What happened to those armies, I wonder?’

‘They met the Rock!’

‘And the barbarians from Avares, to the west? They have skirmished along your borders many times, have they not? And one day they will come again and throw their hordes against this city: rank upon rank of fighting men armed with swords and clubs and spears. Do not fool yourselves: the men of Avares fear neither death nor mutilation. Their bloodthirsty warriors are bred on battle and bathed in the blood of their enemies and they will come back one day soon, of that you can be sure. And what then, when they do?’

‘THEY WILL MEET THE ROCK!’

I could see Shiballe speaking to more of the guards, issuing orders to the captains. There looked to be some hesitation there.

‘They will meet the Rock,’ I agreed, once the noise had died down. ‘But only if the Rock is still here.’

The crowd didn’t look happy at that suggestion, but I continued, ‘Your Duke – your lawful ruler – has brought you Ganath Kalila. It is a tradition from the East, not from here.’

There was some angry murmuring; a great many people remembered when there was no Blood Week.

‘He says it makes you strong. I ask you, when you sit hiding in your homes as assassins openly wander the streets, do you feel strong?’

Silence.

‘When you hear your neighbours being pulled from their beds and slaughtered in the night, do you feel strong?’

More silence, but the anger was palpable now.

‘This girl,’ I said, taking Aline’s hand and raising it, ‘this girl’s family was taken from her, each and every one of them, and slain – not in battle, for that is not the way of Ganath Kalila. Instead, men came – men dressed in black, wearing no family crest. They boarded up the family’s home – before the Blood Week had even begun. The guards didn’t stop them. The Duke didn’t stop them. You didn’t stop them.’ I choked for a moment before saying, ‘I didn’t stop them.

‘And now they are dead, and this girl is alone in this world. And despite that – despite all that, she is standing here now, fulfilling the Duke’s law – fulfilling your law. She could have fled, but she would not. Instead, she stands here upon the Rock of Rijou.’

I pointed to the Duke. ‘Your Lord says he can make the laws as he sees fit, and so Ganath Kalila will see one more sunrise, one more sunset. And why should you complain? For he adds just one more day to the Blood Week – just one more day. I will tell you this: I have travelled the length and breadth of this land a dozen times over, and in every part of the country, in every town and village and hamlet, and even here in Rijou, a week is seven days. And yet already Ganath Kalila – the Blood Week – lasts nine days! And so now it will be ten – and next year? And the year after that? The Duke says Ganath Kalila makes you strong. Think how strong you’ll be when every day of the year is Ganath Kalila!’

A dozen of the Duke’s men were pushing and shoving their way through the mass of men and women between us. The crowd was densely packed, but while their progress was slow, it was steady. We were running out of time. I looked down at Aline for a moment before turning back to the crowd. ‘This young girl is a small thing, no bigger than your own children. She weighs barely as much as a mug of ale on a dry day. And so I must ask you, will the Rock take her weight? Or will it break under the pressure of your fears?’

‘No man breaks the Rock,’ a woman said. She was big and broad-shouldered, and she stepped towards us before kneeling in front of Aline. ‘I will guard the girl’s life if she stays, and I will guard her name if she leaves. I will pay the red price.’

‘I will pay the price too,’ said a man, more a boy really, barely taller than Aline herself. ‘No man breaks the Rock,’ he said as he knelt.

‘No man breaks the Rock,’ another voice said. I couldn’t see who spoke this time, but soon I could hear the phrase repeated over and over as men and women knelt upon the ground. When the sounds stopped there was a wide circle in front of us, and behind that almost every member of the crowd was on one knee.

I heard clapping: the Duke. He stood on the opposite side of us, some hundred feet away, flanked by Shiballe and his guards, and fifty bowmen were arrayed in front of him, arrows nocked and aiming at the crowd.

‘Such pretty words,’ he said. ‘How masterful, Trattari, that you can make treason sound so noble.’

‘The first law of Rijou ain’t treason!’ a man stood up and said angrily. An arrow appeared in his neck and he dropped to the ground.

‘Treason is what I say it is,’ the Duke replied calmly. ‘And any man or woman who speaks again is a traitor and subject to execution. Ganath Kalila will hold today, and for ever. The girl is a criminal and she will be taken and dealt with, and her name and bloodline extinguished, as will all those with traitor’s blood in their veins.

‘Well?’ he said finally, into the silence. ‘Well, Trattari, is that all you have to offer them? Words? You’ll not get much from that. A dead man cannot feed his family. Where will they be when you run away, tatter-cloak? Where are your fellow Magisters to come and enforce your interpretation of the law once you leave? Come on now, “Greatcoat”, you have heard the evidence! Now tell us your verdict!’

The crowd was looking at me and all at once the fear was back.

‘My verdict is this,’ I said firmly. ‘Ganath Kalila is unlawful. It violates the laws of this land – and more, it violates the laws of this city. My verdict is that henceforth there shall be no Blood Week in Rijou.

‘But the Duke is right,’ I said. ‘I will leave here – alive or dead, I will leave here today. So I cannot be here to preserve the decision. There is no army of Greatcoats coming to protect the verdict. There is only you. There is only the Rock.’

One by one I pulled the plain black buttons from my coat and popped off the soft leathery caps to reveal the solid gold disks beneath, each stamped with the symbol of the King’s Magisters. Within a few moments I was holding enough money in my hand to feed each of twelve families for a year.

‘I need a jury,’ I said, ‘twelve men or women who will see to it that the verdict holds. Twelve people who must face what comes after I leave, who will see to it that no man forgets what was said here. Twelve who may well die in the attempt.’ Then I threw the golden coins onto the ground in front of me and waited as they clattered and rolled.

No one reached for them.

Silence filled the Rock of Rijou as nobles, soldiers and commoners waited to see what would happen next. Aline squeezed my hand for reassurance, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face. I had failed her. I had brought death to this little girl and to myself, because I was obsessed with the belief that my King had some ingenious plan – that he’d had it all along – and that the quest he’d given me all those years ago had some meaning.

‘Find the Charoites,’ he’d said, as if jewels could change the world any more than words could. And now Aline would die, for no better reason than that she’d wanted to hear her family’s name called out, to preserve her rights of inheritance – as if those had any value in this hellhole. In the end, the City Sage hadn’t even given her that. He’d spoken her name, but not that of her family.

The Duke smiled at me from his distance. He would smile until the last coin stopped spinning, until he could see the resigned despair on my face, and until someone in the crowd, realising they had pushed their ruler as far as they dared, decided they would do better to curry his favour by killing us.

The City Sage sat next to the Duke, looking for all the world as if he’d fallen asleep. The old fool couldn’t even remember to give Aline’s family name. That realisation brought back the memory of the wreckage of Aline’s home, now the unconsecrated tomb of the Tiarren family; dead and gone now, their names never to be spoken in Rijou again. Almost every pair of eyes in the crowd was locked onto the spinning coins on the ground, but a few stared at me. Did any of them know Lady Tiarren and her children? Did they blame me for what would come next? How many deaths had I faced only to bring this thirteen-year-old girl to meet her end at the Rock of Rijou, gambling her fate on the hope that, somehow, the people of the most corrupt city in the world would stand up and risk their own lives for hers. I turned to Aline and she gave me a brave little smile, crooked on the left side, like the hint of a secret about to be told. That smile. I wanted to hold her, to say, you are precious to me, even though I didn’t know why; I had no right and no cause. I wanted to tell her that all would be well, that I would protect her no matter what happened, but I couldn’t. Her life lay in the shining metal pieces and the hands that would either take them up or watch them fall. Aline and I turned together to look at the coins, spinning slower and slower on the ground, coming to the inevitable conclusion.

No one reached for the coins.

So I listened.