The Justice of Kings, page 11
“When is it, this year?” I asked conversationally. Wintertide was the annual Neman festival that generally – but not rigidly – coincided with the solstice, and sat in a floating fortnight in one of two winter months.
“The second half of Rusen,” Vonvalt said, and no more. He took a moment to eat some breakfast, and reopened his book. Then, after another brief spell of uncomfortable silence, he turned to me. “Tell me then, Helena: what did you make of the records from the watch house?”
We had not spoken about my findings last night. Vonvalt, consumed by the contents of Justice August’s news and his own legal research, had bade me prepare notes for discussion this morning instead. Given that someone had tried to kill us, I’d thought that our discussions on procedure and record-keeping, though inevitable, would have been at least delayed. I should have known better.
“The records were good,” I said, trying to focus on the task at hand. “Full and well kept. They provide the date of the complaint, Mr Vogt’s details and a couple of paragraphs of narrative on the matter. Each entry was signed and dated by the constable who wrote it.”
Bressinger made an impressed noise. Vonvalt grunted his agreement as he broke open a boiled egg and began smearing its contents on to a large wedge of tough buttered bread.
“It accorded largely with Sir Radomir’s recollection,” I continued. “Mr Vogt was shipping in a hundred tonnes of coarse grain to Kòvosk. It was to be animal feed for the Legions. There was a considerable amount of pressure to dispatch the grain quickly. Mr Vogt had purchased the grain on credit, using funds from a Guelan bank. He was to profit considerably from the sale of the grain, even with the payment due back to the bank. Apparently the grain shipment was held up by customs in Kzosic Principality and they found that Mr Vogt had not arranged for the correct import warrant from the Imperial customs house. Mr Vogt was adamant that he had arranged for such a warrant. But to complicate matters, it turned out the grain had spoiled along the way and was in any event unusable.
“When Vogt tried to claim on the guarantee for the spoiled grain, Bauer refused on account of the fact that Mr Vogt’s failure to get the right import warrant had already voided the contract. Vogt was convinced that Bauer had somehow contrived for the customs officers to hold up the ship to swindle him out of his guarantee payment.”
“But how could Bauer have known?” Vonvalt asked.
“The merchant we spoke to yesterday said that it was common practice for guarantors to use spies or networks of riders to keep an eye on the cargo they had guaranteed. Perhaps Bauer was tipped off about the grain going bad and had time to get word to accomplices in Kzosic Principality?”
Vonvalt sighed and massaged his chin. “This damnable practice,” he said with his mouth full. He turned to Bressinger. “Your enquiries yesterday were successful?”
Bressinger inclined his head. “Aye.”
“Tell me about how it works. I’ve a good idea, but give it to me in your own terms.”
Bressinger recounted our conversation with the merchant, Lorentz, from the previous afternoon. When he was finished, Vonvalt nodded.
“It is akin to gambling then. And knowing merchant lawmen as I do, I can see plenty of scope for an unscrupulous man to weasel out of his obligations to settle the cost of a lost cargo.” He mused for a moment. “I wonder why Vogt did not press the matter? The mercantile law here is well-developed. It would have been worth his time suing Lord Bauer.” He thought for a moment. “We shall have to find a way to dig deeper into Bauer’s practice. I want to arm myself with as much knowledge as I can before I use my Voice on him.”
“You suspect him, then?” I asked.
Vonvalt shook his head. “I agree with Sir Radomir; Bauer hasn’t the look of a man who has committed murder, especially not his wife. But he is hiding something. He was too quick to indict Vogt, and too quick to withdraw it. Whatever happens we shall need to speak to Vogt as well. Dubine, find out the man’s whereabouts. If he is around then I would speak with him this afternoon. Let us hurry matters along.”
“Sire,” Bressinger said.
“Helena, was that all the ledger from the watch house said?”
“Most of it,” I said.
“What else?”
“That Mr Vogt wanted the matter investigated.”
“And was it? Did he instruct lawmen?”
“According to the ledger, the matter was signed off as closed two weeks later. Mr Vogt withdrew the complaint.”
Vonvalt massaged his chin again. “Troubling,” he said eventually. “And this complaint is two years old?”
“Thereabouts,” I said.
“Come, Helena! What have I told you about the importance of precision in legal dealings?” Vonvalt suddenly snapped, making both me and Bressinger start.
“Nema’s blood,” Bressinger muttered, recovering the egg he’d dropped.
“Two years and three months,” I said, sullen. “The exact date is written in the ledger.”
Vonvalt clacked his tongue. “Very strange. I cannot think why the investigation would be willingly discontinued, particularly where materiel for the Reichskrieg was concerned. Is there any indication as to whether the shipment was sourced from elsewhere? Did Bauer himself, for example, go on to fulfil the contract?”
I shook my head. “There is nothing else recorded.”
“Then we shall have to make further enquiries. I will speak to Sir Radomir again. Hopefully the constable who took down the complaint is still alive and available. Whatever is going on with the murder of Lady Bauer, I’m convinced her husband and Vogt have something to do with it.”
“As you please,” Bressinger said.
We ate quietly for five minutes, leaving Vonvalt to his thinking and reading. Bressinger and I both knew that it was rarely a good idea to break those periods of silence, particularly with idle conversation.
Eventually, Vonvalt turned to me.
“You will speak to the watchman today, the lad you know. What’s his name?”
“Matas,” I said with a surge in my gut. “Matas Aker.” I tried not to show the petulance I felt. Vonvalt and Bressinger had enjoyed teasing me about it the past day or two, which put my hackles up.
“Ask him today about the Bauer girl in the kloster. If he is not on duty, find him at home. He will know about it, I am sure. They are of an age, and he is young enough to be well-versed in the town’s gossip.”
I felt my cheeks redden. I couldn’t help myself. “I don’t like doing it,” I said, my voice lousy with resentment.
Vonvalt put his cutlery down, his features creased in irritation. “That’s as may be, but I pay you the wage of a clerk of the Magistratum, which makes you an official of the Imperial Court – not that you act like it, with your complaining.”
I recoiled from that, as though the man had raised a hand to me. “I am not a spy,” I shot back.
I noticed Bressinger’s eyes widen slightly. When Vonvalt spoke, it was with great restraint.
“You will do as I bid and make enquiries of the lad.”
“’Tis a deceitful practice,” I said. “You are taking advantage of me.”
Vonvalt’s hand clenched. “I care not a groat whether you are infatuated with him or not. Do as I bid, girl, and find out what he knows. You are being ridiculous.”
I felt a hot wash of fury. The last few stretched sinews of my self-control snapped. “You are jealous of him!”
“Oh, Helena,” Vonvalt said with a weary, disappointed anger. He pointed to the door. “Get out of my bloody sight, would you?”
“Sire—” Bressinger said, startled by the suddenness of the confrontation, but was himself cut off.
“Nema’s blood, man,” Vonvalt shouted, pounding the table with his fist and then pointing to the door. “Go and make yourself useful!”
I left the room hot with anger. I stormed through the hallway and yanked on my boots, but in my haste I forgot my cloak. Instead I stomped out into the early morning, kicking through all of the trinkets and offerings left for Vonvalt, and made off down the street.
It feels so silly to write this now, but at the time I truly felt as though that was the end of it all. I had been balancing on the edge of a precipice for months and I had finally been tipped over the edge. I would stay in Galen’s Vale for a little while and live off my accrued wages from my clerkship. After that, who knew? I could do anything I wanted. The world beckoned.
I quickly walked most of the way to the watch house, before I had to slow down to catch my breath. My carelessness in charging through the muddy slush meant that the hem of my kirtle was now dirty and would need to be cleaned. Slowing to a walk also meant I gradually began to feel the cold. I would need to buy a new cloak and pay for a launderer to wash my kirtle, two not inconsiderable expenses incurred in the space of a few minutes. The realities of a life without Vonvalt’s patronage were already beginning to dawn on me. I furiously crushed them beneath an avalanche of righteous anger. I was a simple pawn to the man, to be used to leverage others’ emotions. It was a line I had decided I would not cross.
Of course, I was being ridiculous. Vonvalt was right: my anger was born of my infatuation. I was embarrassed that I had fallen for a young man so quickly, and I was certainly in denial about my feelings. Besides, Sovan social mores, at least at the aristocratic level, decried such passions as vulgar and something to be kept private. At least both Vonvalt and Bressinger were not naturally born Imperials. They had known the merriment of provincial ways before adopting the stern comportment of the Autun.
It took me a long time to find Matas. I was directed by the desk serjeant to the Segamund gatehouse, the fortification which guarded the eastern closure. I remembered it as the gate by which Lady Bauer’s body had been found, at the outermost extremity of the eastern closure. It was clearly a poor area. As I crossed the last cobbled street before the closure proper, I could see that the place was almost entirely given over to warehouses, poormen’s accommodation and unsavoury or unsocial trades like tanneries and foundries. Here the Gale flowed wide and deep, its banks a hundred feet apart and crossable only by wherry. I began to feel the cold’s bite in earnest. At least I’d had the presence of mind to don my boots; the ground was thick with half-frozen mud.
I followed the river. There was no embankment here, and the stinking slopes were strewn with rubbish and shit. Rats, pigs and foxes rootled freely through it all, untroubled by the human activity around them. There were few constables or watchmen in sight, and my good clothes marked me out as an outsider, ripe for robbery, as perhaps Lady Bauer’s had. Despite this, I did not feel as vulnerable as I was. Growing up in Muldau had given me an edge that even two years as an Imperial agent could not blunt.
I caught sight of the Segamund gatehouse. It was formed of two formidable stone towers flanking the Gale. Between them I could see two large gates of cross-hatched iron bars, rusted and slimy with age. They were open, and looked as though they had been open for years. Atop the curtain wall, liveried watchmen in heavy overcloaks patrolled or huddled around braziers alive with orange flame.
I reached the Segamund Gate and asked to see Matas, and the guard led me up the steps to the wall. There, elevated above the buildings and warehouses, the cold wind sang freely through the crenellations and I began to shiver uncontrollably.
“Helena?” I heard a familiar voice call out. I looked over to see Matas standing by a brazier. He wore a large, fur-trimmed cloak that seemed to envelop him.
“Matas!” I called out eagerly. I heard his fellow watchmen muttering and joshing him. His angry glares seemed only to encourage them.
“Nema, you must be freezing,” he said, unstrapping his cloak. I didn’t resist as he wrapped it around me. It stank of smoke but I was too cold to care. Behind us the watchmen continued their jeering. “Come on,” he said, rolling his eyes. He nodded towards the tower. “There’s a fire in there. We won’t be disturbed.”
I followed him self-consciously. Our unguarded behaviour was unseemly by every social convention one would care to name; it was fortunate that our only audience was a group of watchmen who would not give a toss for whether it was seemly or not.
It was markedly warmer inside the tower. It was a square building, four floors high and partitioned into a number of rooms by cheap walls of timber-reinforced plaster. The first room we stepped into had a simple profile, home to little more than a few trestles and a large wooden shield bearing the markings of the Vale which was mounted on the wall.
“Is everything all right?” Matas asked, taking off his helmet and pulling the chainmail hood back. He mussed his hair about for a second, self-conscious that the armour had flattened it so much it was like it had been painted on to his scalp.
I fidgeted with the cloak. “I am pleased to see you again,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “And I you.”
I smiled. My heart thudded. “I have had a falling out with Sir Konrad,” I said. It felt wrong to be confiding in someone in this way.
“What do you mean? Nema, you’re not a fugitive, are you?” He sounded so suddenly and comically disappointed that I had to laugh.
“No!” I said.
“What’s going on?” he asked, smiling confusedly.
I told him what had happened. I could feel myself getting upset as I recounted the heated words Vonvalt and I had exchanged, but it was Matas’s look of concern that drove me, infuriatingly, to tears.
“Hey, come now,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. Despite my crying, the physical contact sent a thrill through me. “There is no need for that. ’Tis an argument. I argue all the time with the serjeants.” He shrugged. “The Justice seemed like a decent man to me. He won’t hold a grudge.”
“You don’t understand,” I said once I had regained myself. “I don’t want to be a clerk. The pressure of it makes my brain boil. Sir Konrad has given me so much, I owe him everything, but… I am terrified I am not the person he wants me to be. He is the smartest and wisest man I have ever known. I am nothing, just a gutter rat from the streets of Muldau. I could barely read when he took me on. Now I can speak three languages. I wear fine clothes. Men of great rank and breeding are terrified of me when they learn that I am an officer of the Crown. I just… I feel like I don’t know who I have become. I’ve transformed into a completely different person and it frightens me.”
Matas had no idea what to say. Of course he didn’t; who would, except Vonvalt himself? I hadn’t meant to unburden myself so fully, but I hadn’t been able to help it, despite how emotionally vulnerable it left me. Bressinger didn’t want to hear of my woes. He already thought me ungrateful. I had no other friends to speak of, since we passed through every village and town like food through a gullet. Matas was the first person I had met who seemed interested in what I had to say no matter how foolish I looked.
And then he kissed me.
I was not expecting it. I had never been kissed before. Muldau had been a rough time, and romance had been as far from my mind as it was possible to be. And then I had spent two years with Vonvalt and Bressinger, every waking moment travelling, or dispensing the Emperor’s justice, or learning. There had simply been no time for it, no opportunity.
I kissed him back, or what I thought was kissing back. I had very little idea of how it was supposed to go. I don’t think Matas had much idea either. But it did not matter how inexpert it was; it was thrilling. My whole body felt as though it would combust.
We pulled away. I was glad my face was ruddy from the cold, for I was blushing furiously. Matas began to laugh, and then I laughed too. I think we would have kissed again, had we not been reminded of how close we were to being discovered by the sound of voices carrying in from the curtain wall.
“I have not been kissed before,” I said.
“Nor have I,” Matas admitted. “I did not think my first would be with one so beautiful.”
I smiled. I could not stop. It was as though someone had distilled excitement into an essence and I had swallowed it.
But, as much as I wanted to enjoy and lose myself in that moment, already I could feel the unease growing in the back of my mind. It was like a splinter lodged under the skin. What was I doing? I could not simply leave Vonvalt. Did I really expect never to see him again? To avoid him and Bressinger for weeks while their business concluded and then just live out my life in the Vale? At the very least I needed to speak with him – and frankly – about how I felt. Now that the heat of the moment was well past, and I had more time to reflect, I began to regret my careless words and my storming off.
My unease must have been plain to see, for Matas asked me, “Is something wrong?” He looked suddenly downcast. “Are you not happy?”
“I am thrilled,” I said, “truly.” I sighed, looking about the plain chamber. “But I am torn, Matas, so torn. I do not know what to do. And I should tell you that I came here on a pretext – or rather, I was supposed to. Sir Konrad sent me to speak to you to ply you with questions about the Bauer case. I refused him. It was what led to our argument.” I gestured to the room, laughing cynically. “And here I am anyway.”
“What does Sir Konrad want to know from me?” Matas said, alarmed. “I had no hand in it!”
“No, no,” I said, daring to touch him on the chest. His surcoat was cold where the chainmail had sapped all the heat from it. “It was about Lord Bauer’s daughter, up at the kloster. He thinks you would know about it.”
“Only what others know,” he said, still confused. “I have no special knowledge on the subject.”
“I think that is all he is after. Some local knowledge.”
Matas shrugged. “I can tell you what I know, but…” He frowned. “… Helena, I thought you wanted to leave the Justice’s service?”
I sighed again. I did not know what I wanted. “I will have to speak with him no matter what I do,” I said. “It might placate him if I return with something useful.”
We stood in silence for a moment.
“There could be a place for you here,” Matas said, toying with his gloves. “I know we have only just met, but I feel…” He stopped, embarrassed.
