The Justice of Kings, page 15
The margrave of Seaguard remained standing, unfazed.
“You need not waste your parlour tricks on me, Justice; I’ve no hesitation in admitting it,” he said simply.
Something was wrong. Vonvalt, the epitome of self-control, was visibly confused. The Emperor’s Voice was not infallible, but we had no reason to think the margrave would be able to withstand it. Only those trained by the Magistratum should be capable of such a thing.
“Shall I allow you some time to gather your thoughts, Justice?” Westenholtz asked. “You seem to be somewhat unsteady.”
“On whose authority did you burn the village?” Vonvalt demanded.
“My own, of course. Rill is a village which falls within my remit. Its people are my villeins and Sir Otmar is my retainer. Was,” he added.
Vonvalt’s hands closed to fists. “You do not deny countermanding my judgment?”
The margrave shrugged. “It appeared to me, Justice, that you had erred somewhat in your judgment. Patria Bartholomew Claver was good enough to inform me of your mistake. Trouble yourself not, Justice; even a member of the Magistratum is not infallible.”
“You have exceeded your authority by a damn sight,” Vonvalt snapped. “Countermanding the judgment of a Justice is treason. Explain yourself before I indict you here and now!”
Westenholtz smirked. “You have been gone too long from Sova, Sir Konrad. Your authority, such as it is, may not be as unshakeable as you believe it to be.”
Vonvalt took this admirably in his stride, but it had a profound effect on me. What the margrave had said, especially in the light of Justice August’s letter, was undoubtedly true. It had been at least two years since Vonvalt had been back to Sova. His only direct connexion with the Magistratum was with the clerks who brought him his stipend and who ferried his ledgers back to the Law Library for cross-referencing. In the seat of the Empire, two years was an age. Entire provinces had been subsumed in less time.
“What nonsense you utter,” Vonvalt spat. “And what did Claver tell you anyway? Pray tell me the nature of the ‘mistake’ I made that he was so decent to bring to your attention?”
“That you released avowed heretics on a mere fine. The law is clear: those who practise Draedism should be burned.”
“There was no avowal. I accused none of heresy. I was not bound by the canon law and dealt with the matter entirely appropriately.” He snorted angrily. “Seaguard has a reputation for cruelty, but I did not know it to have a reputation for stupidity. Tell me: what was it about the insane ramblings of that young upstart Claver that was able to command you so? I did not realise the most powerful margrave of the north dispatched armed men to raze his own villages on the hearsay of a pious boy!”
That hit the mark. Westenholtz drew himself up in a sudden fury. “Such impudence in the face of your betters! One whose father took the Highmark should know better than to lecture an Imperial margrave. You dare come here and question my actions and threaten me with indictment? I should have you flogged! Get out of Seaguard and return to your weakling masters in Sova! You will find the world a much-changed place, mark my words. The Empire has little need for your crusty old hermits any more!”
A deadly silence descended. By this stage I had shrunk back so far I was almost at the door. I was so unimportant I wasn’t sure if the margrave had even noticed my presence. I considered it fortunate that this was a functioning castle and visitors were relieved of their weapons in the disarming room. Otherwise I was certain Vonvalt would have sought to cut the margrave down. He probably would have succeeded, too. For all his bookishness, Vonvalt had spent his formative years as a soldier, and Westenholtz had been right about one thing: Vonvalt’s reputation as an accomplished swordsman often preceded him. I had also seen Vonvalt frequently keep his hand in with Bressinger, and as inexperienced as I was in matters military, I knew that I would not want to be the drafted peasant standing in the way of Vonvalt’s whirling steel.
“This matter is far from over,” Vonvalt said.
“Oh, I consider it very much closed,” the margrave countered, but Vonvalt had already turned on his heel and was storming out. I followed in a daze.
Once we were out of earshot of Westenholtz’s apartment, I said, “What are you going to do? He confessed to breaking the law.”
“Don’t you trouble yourself, Helena; I am going to see that man hanged,” Vonvalt snapped.
We made straight for our private quarters. Our clothes were laid out for us, having been laundered and dried overnight.
“At least they can get something bloody right here,” Vonvalt snapped, and began to stuff his effects roughly into his bags.
“Will you arrest him?” I asked, my heart pounding. I had never seen such an argument before. In a battle of words Vonvalt normally crushed his opponents. It was hard for me to see the man bested.
“Yes, but not now. These bloody mutterings about the Magistratum in Sova. Power struggles are nothing new in the Order, but for a man, even one as powerful as Westenholtz, to speak to a Justice in that manner – to have the temerity – means something is wrong. I must apprise myself of the latest developments, and quickly. And I cannot do that while we are stuck out here in the arse-end of nowhere.”
“‘The wise man arms himself with knowledge before a sword,’” I quoted.
Vonvalt looked at me, and smiled briefly. “Kane. Never a truer word was spoken. Come: get yourself ready. Then prepare an indictment for me with a delay of execution.”
“For the margrave?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.
“Yes,” Vonvalt replied.
My hands shook as I pulled out a roll of parchment. “What’s the charge?”
Vonvalt looked grim. “Murder.”
XI
The Investigation Resumes
“Even the eyes of the owl do not catch everything.”
OLD SOVAN PROVERB
There was not much time. Vonvalt and I discussed the wording of the indictment. I knew that some of the information he was giving me had been gleaned from Sir Otmar’s corpse, and I shuddered at the notion, unable to conceal my horror.
I drafted it quickly, but not recklessly. An indictment was not necessarily a long document, but it had to be proper and accurate and meet the formalities required. That was true of all indictments, but particularly so where the charge was for such a serious crime – and being levelled against a powerful Imperial lord to boot. The Sovan system of justice was said to be the greatest leveller since death, but as with so many other things, the reality often gave the lie to the principle.
I had drafted dozens of indictments in the two years I had spent with Vonvalt, but I had to concentrate as hard as I could to stop my hand from shaking. My heart thumped in my chest and my blood sang with anxiety as I scratched the words on to the paper:
His Most Excellent Majesty the Emperor Lothar Kzosic IV, by his Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt of the Order of the Imperial Magistratum, hereby indicts Margrave Waldemar Westenholtz with the murder, or its incitement or authorisation thereof, of Sir Otmar Frost, Lady Karol Frost and the other inhabitants of the village of Rill, located in the province of Tolsburg, on a date to be determined but nonetheless falling within the Month of Goss.
On this charge and pending execution of this indictment, Margrave Waldemar Westenholtz shall stand to be tried, on which date and by which manner to be determined, and if found guilty of the charge shall have no recourse but the Emperor’s mercy.
Does it not seem odd, reader, that we went to the trouble of penning an indictment at all? Given the lawless and bloody times that were to come, the notion of following due legal process seems risible. Indeed, even back then Vonvalt technically had the authority to simply execute Westenholtz; the man had confessed, after all. But there were a number of reasons why he could not. Westenholtz was a powerful noble, with the patronage of the Mlyanar Patricians and the loyalty of the Savarans. The Order was an increasingly political body, and Vonvalt may have been zealous, but he was no fool. Simply because he did not like the fact that the Magistratum was becoming entangled with Imperial statecraft did not mean that he could ignore it. To kill Westenholtz would have been akin to taking a match to a barrel of oil.
There were other reasons aside from practicality. Common-law convention generally demanded that lords were to be tried by juries. Indeed, as the Empire expanded and more and more people came to be within a day’s ride of a courthouse, it was expected that eventually all would be tried by jury, and the role of the Imperial Magistrate as the dispenser of summary justice would fade. It was already happening; our two-year circuit had been spent almost entirely in the hinterlands dealing with peasant disputes while the burgeoning legal trade filled the towns and cities.
“Good,” Vonvalt said, reading the indictment. It was a document that was imbued with arcane power, exuding a near-tangible authority. I wondered what magic permeated the parchment. “Very good, Helena. Your handwriting is excellent, clear and legible.” He applied wax to it and then impressed it with his seal, then rolled it up and stored it carefully away.
We packed up the rest of our things, donned our travelling clothes and hurried out of our quarters. We picked our way back to the disarming room, where Vonvalt was reunited with his sword, and then we were back outside in the courtyard, into the crisp winter air. There our attention was drawn by a large gathering of soldiers, each wearing a distinctive black surcoat embroidered with a white Savaran star. In their midst was a Neman priest wearing a tatty purple habit. The priest was delivering a sermon and the men were listening, rapt.
Vonvalt motioned for me to keep walking, and it was not until a few minutes later, when we had reached the stables and were mounting our horses, that he spoke to me.
“Those’ll be the Templar initiates that that knight alluded to at breakfast,” he said sourly. “Claver’s handiwork.”
In a matter of minutes we were mounted up and urging the beasts out of the castle gates.
“What are you going to do with the indictment?” I asked as we moved through the township and left the vast edifice of Seaguard to fade into the morning mist behind us.
“I will have it dispatched from Baquir,” Vonvalt said. “I want to be out of the range of the margrave’s men – and those Templars – before we post the notice back to him.”
“You think he would send men after us?” I asked, a chill running through me. It was as though for my entire life I had been looking at the world through a thin veil, and now it had been pulled away. It is amazing how fragile even great institutions of state can be; how quickly the world order can descend into chaos.
Vonvalt’s face was grim set. “What happened here goes beyond mere insolence,” he said. “Margrave or no, he would never have spoken to me like that without being assured of his position. If the patricians and the Templars are both behind him, we need to be careful.”
“Is it not dangerous to issue the indictment, then?” I asked. I spoke more loudly now that we were out of earshot of the villagers. “Will it not enrage him?”
“It is, and it will,” Vonvalt replied. “Hence the delay. An indictment with a delay of execution is merely a piece of paper until I say otherwise. But I do not want the man to put me from his mind merely because he has put me from his sight.”
“Could he not just tear it up? Or burn it?”
“Of course. But I have still issued it. The indictment is a mere formality. My word as Justice is enough.”
“What about Claver? Will you indict him too?”
Vonvalt all but spat. “We will find Claver, mark my words,” he said darkly. “An indictment will be the least of his troubles.”
We reached Baquir the following morning, where Vonvalt had the indictment dispatched by a liveried company of messengers. Then we returned our horses and went back to the Imperial Relay.
The journey back down the Hauner road was as fast and frantic as the journey up, but mercifully uneventful. This time, as we reached Vasaya and we were reunited with Vonvalt’s destrier Vincento, we could see the large Templar encampment that the knights in Seaguard had told us about. Hundreds of tents were pitched perhaps half a mile from the town, and the air was redolent of cook fires and filled with the distant ringing of military drills.
Vonvalt eyed the mass with contempt, as though he could set the tents alight with his glaring alone. The business in Rill had stung him badly and seemed to have knocked his mind out of joint. In the two years I had known him personally, I had seen Vonvalt get angry fewer times than I have fingers. Now he seemed to exist in a semi-permanent state of it.
We pulled away from our vantage point and carried on down the road. It took us most of the afternoon to reach Galen’s Vale, and we approached the Veldelin Gate as night was falling. I could see that the Wintertide decorations had been removed, and it was only at that point that I realised that we had passed into the month of Ebbe and the Imperial New Year. It meant we had been gone for thirteen days, and it was clear that Vonvalt was eager to have the Bauer case disposed with so we could conclude our business in the Vale. Of course, by that time, the gulf between what Vonvalt wanted to happen and what actually came to pass had grown very wide indeed, and would remain misaligned for the rest of his life.
Although I did not say anything to Vonvalt, I took great comfort from seeing the wet, mossy walls of the town again. It felt something like a homecoming. It speaks volumes of my naïveté at that time that my thoughts were now preoccupied with seeing Matas again, as though our courtship could resume uninterrupted by greater events.
We passed through the gate to find the town slowly bedding down for the night. I was bone-tired, but to my immense disappointment, instead of heading for Lord Sauter’s residence and to the soft, comfortable beds therein, we made straight for the watch house and up to the sheriff’s office. To our great surprise, we saw that Bressinger and Sir Radomir had, by coincidence, just themselves returned from somewhere, having arrived as little as a few minutes before us. Both were still armed and cloaked, their faces ruddy from the cold.
“Justice,” Sir Radomir said, surprised, as Vonvalt pushed the door open. “You are back.”
“I’ll have some of that,” Vonvalt said, nodding to the wine in the sheriff’s hand. “And for Helena, too.”
“What happened?” Bressinger asked.
“By the look of you both, you did not achieve the satisfaction you sought,” the sheriff said, pouring out two over-generous measures of hot wine. I accepted my goblet gratefully, and we spent a moment decloaking and arranging ourselves into the chairs in front of Sir Radomir’s desk.
“No,” Vonvalt said, and relayed to them what had happened in Rill.
“Nema,” Bressinger swore. “The situation gets worse by the day.”
“Indeed,” Vonvalt said tiredly. He’d finished his wine and Sir Radomir obliged him with some more. “Westenholtz cared not the least that he’d acted against the Emperor. If anything he seemed to delight in his own insolence. What troubles me the most was his immunity to the Emperor’s Voice.”
“What exactly is the Voice?” Sir Radomir asked, his eyes flicking between the two men. “A trick? Or some kind of magick?”
“It is magick, be in no doubt,” Vonvalt said. “It is the power to compel a man to reveal his mind. As I have said before, it does not work in every circumstance, nor on all men; but it should have worked on him. Lord Westenholtz has had no training from the Order as far as I know – though having read Justice August’s letter, I am not so sure any more,” he added warily.
“It would take a man of special character to resist it,” Sir Radomir said. “I’m no lamb, and by Nema I thought I’d been hit by a charging bull.”
“And you are certain that Westenholtz ordered the deaths of the villagers?” Bressinger asked. I had to concentrate to understand him; his Grozodan accent thickened when he was tired.
“He told me himself.”
“Seaguard has always been a severe place,” Sir Radomir said grimly. “But ’tis still a rare thing to take the sword to one’s own villeins. The margrave must be a very pious man.”
“To a fault,” Vonvalt said. “I’ll warrant Claver needed little honey in his ear before he was dispatching armed men south.” He sighed. “Speaking of which, we saw men for the Templars, too. Thirty or so, wearing the white star. And more encamped at Vasaya. Hundreds, there.”
“Bloody Fate,” Sir Radomir muttered. “We had the same here, last week. Neman priests up from Guelich asking for fighting men for the Frontier. Sauter said he would release anyone in the town’s service who wanted to go. Perhaps a hundred went, all told. ’Tis an easy sell for the poor.”
“They’ll be waiting for the margrave’s men, then,” Vonvalt said. “Vasaya will be a staging area for them all.”
“Actually, I think they’re waiting for Claver,” Sir Radomir said. “Last piece of news I heard was that he was ranging as far east as Roundstone to beseech Baron Naumov. He’s another one of your lords with a reputation for piety. But that news is hardly fresh.”
“If Claver is planning on heading south with those Templars, I’ll bring the whole company to a halt until he is turfed out of it, mark my words,” Vonvalt said. “By Nema, it is a foolish enterprise.”
The conversation had started to pass me by. My heart was pounding. Had Matas gone? I had left in the dead of night nearly two weeks ago without a word. Did he think I had lost interest and absconded?
“We’ve had no news of anything like what you have mentioned here in the Vale,” Sir Radomir said. He looked troubled. “About the Mlyanars and that lot making moves in the Senate.”
“No,” Vonvalt said. “But we are still hundreds of miles from the capital. News can travel slowly, particularly if those at its source want it to.” He was quiet for a moment while he lit his pipe. Soon the familiar haze and smell of smoke filled the room. “What progress have you made here?” He gestured around him at the stacks of old leather-bound ledgers that had appeared in the office since we had last been in. They were dusty and worn and smelled of damp. “This is new.”
