The Justice of Kings, page 27
I shook my head. “I’m… I did not expect… You seem so calm.”
She shrugged again. “I have been here for years. This is my life now. I have adapted. I do not spend all of my time in the dungeons; a week here, a fortnight there, depending my ‘behaviour’ and the whims of my captors. I have only been back in this cell for a few weeks. Before then I was in one of their rooms, with books to read. They treat me well enough, on occasion, given I am a prisoner.”
I looked over the dirty, reeking girl in front of me, and strongly suspected her of lying. Perhaps she thought me some kind of agent of Vogt’s, sent to test her. “You do not have the look of one who has been well treated,” I said.
She laughed bitterly, gesturing to her filthy clothes. “This… this is for my own protection. The men gamble and whore down here. They drink a skinful and then come looking for something to stick their little pricks into. But even a drunk man will not come near me in this state.”
I had to admire this resourcefulness. For someone who had at one time been used to expensive clothes and perfumes and a life of privilege, it must have wounded her pride to debase herself so utterly. But the fact that she had done so spoke of an exceptionally tenacious spirit.
“What is this place?” I asked. I whispered, but Sanja spoke normally.
“This is where they run their little empire from,” she said. “Fischer, Vogt, my father.”
“Nema,” I breathed. “We were right.”
“Right about what?”
“About… everything. We have been investigating the murder of your mother,” I added. I said it unthinkingly. I assumed she knew. She seemed to know everything else. But her face fell suddenly, like a drawbridge with its chains severed.
“What?” she asked in a trembling voice.
I cursed myself a thousand times; but I could not un-say the words.
“Kasivar, I’m sorry,” I said. It sounded so pathetic. “I… thought you knew.”
The news stole her spirit with the swiftness of a practised cutpurse. It took a long time to console her. At one point one of the guards came to investigate, and I felt my whole body stiffen in terror; but he saw Sanja crying and seemed unmoved, as though it were a regular occurrence. It struck me that she might not have weathered her time in captivity as well as she had let on.
After what seemed like an hour or maybe longer, she seemed ready to talk again. She had spent most of the time lying face-down in the filthy straw and whimpering inconsolably, but eventually she ran out of tears. When she looked at me again, she had changed markedly. I didn’t see a defiant, devil-may-care prisoner who had long since made her peace with her lot. I saw a frightened young girl, her soul crushed to a fine powder, the last of her reserves of morale exhausted.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, for what must have been the hundredth time.
She waved me quiet. “I had wondered,” she said. Her voice was quiet now, barely above a whisper. “There was a time, perhaps a month or two ago. Everything was a little… frantic. The guards started treating me differently. Lots of hushed conversations and angry words. And… you will think me mad, but I just had a feeling, too. This horrible feeling that she had gone. That a little part of me had gone, like someone…” she made a pinching motion with her fingers “… snuffing out a candle.”
“She cannot have known you were here,” I said.
Sanja shook her head. “She knew. I do not know what combination of lies and threats my father used to keep her from saying anything. But he broke her spirit a long time ago. And she was not a strong-willed person to begin with.”
I imagined that Bauer had told his wife that Fischer and Vogt had murdered her son, and if she said or did anything they would murder her daughter too.
We fell to silence again. In spite of my many questions I did not want to press her. I had given her some of the worst news a person can receive, and in an offhand, unthinking way.
“You said the Justice had been investigating it?” she asked eventually. “As painful as it is for me, ’tis hardly a great crime of state.”
“We deal with a great many crimes,” I said, aware that I sounded like Vonvalt, “anything from larceny to treason.”
Sanja grunted. “His arrival has certainly set the hares running here. How go your investigations?”
I gestured to the cell around me. In spite of everything, she barked out a laugh, but it was quickly extinguished by guilt and grief. I had seen, and would come to see, many recipients of the same news – that a cherished loved one had been killed – and there are as many different ways of dealing with it as there are people. Some collapsed; others could not stop laughing from the sudden shock. Sanja, though, seemed to conform to what I would consider to be the most common: initial grief, followed by a period of some lucidity. She would enter her most melancholy phase in the days ahead.
“How did my mother come to be killed?”
“She was struck on the head,” I said. “We do not know by who, specifically,” I added, heading off her next question. “We do not think it was your father, though.”
Sanja snorted. She looked bitter. “Why?”
I fiddled with the hem of my slip. “We do not know that either, beyond conjecture.”
“You do not know much,” Sanja said, a hint of irritation in her voice.
“We know a great deal,” I said, slightly testily myself. “I am here, am I not?”
“Where is the Justice?”
“Further away than I would like,” I murmured. “Do you know a man called Fenland Graves?”
“I have seen him here before. He works in the treasury, one of my father’s most trusted men.”
I nodded. “We have been questioning different people around Galen’s Vale. The trail led us to him.”
“What did he have to say for himself?”
“Not much,” I said. “He’s dead.”
“Good,” Sanja snapped. “How?”
“Our taskman killed him.”
“The Grozodan?”
I paused. “You are well-informed,” I said. I spoke cautiously, and her expression changed. I realised that I had already been duped once by a girl in this kloster. Could this be another elaborate hoax? The girl was certainly Sanja Bauer; one could easily see her father’s features in her face. But perhaps she had been turned in some way? Vonvalt had told me stories of victims of abduction who had gone on to fall in love with their captors – going so far as to defend them at trial.
“You suspect me,” she said with dismay. She grabbed her disgusting clothes. “Look at me. Smell me, for Nema’s sake, if by some chance you haven’t yet. You think I would inflict this on myself if I did not have to?”
“Hm,” I said. I ignored her anguished look. I was suddenly feeling very unfriendly indeed.
“Please,” she implored. “Listen, do you think if they wanted information out of you they would waste time with this ruse? Using me as some kind of bait? They would put hot irons up you. They know the circle is closing. There is too much attention on them and the kloster. They don’t have the time or patience for an elaborate subterfuge.”
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. They would not torture me. They dare not. Not while the Justice is out there. He knows I am here, and he knows who they key players are. If they harm me, or kill me, they lose the only leverage they have over him.” The realisation of this hit me at the same time that I said it. I was imprisoned, but that was all I was. Vogt might have landed me a sharp slap across the cheek, but I doubted he would go further. I probed at it; the wound stung, and in these conditions would turn sour quickly. It needed washing with wine.
“Listen,” Sanja said, growing desperate. “I told you, the guards tell me things. You arrived before Wintertide, no? They said that a Justice had arrived with his retainers, a Grozodan swordsman and a pretty young clerk. They wouldn’t tell me much more than that, just that the Justice had been making enquiries around the town. I could see it had them scared though.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“I’m not a spy!” she said, suddenly fierce. She threw her hands up. “I don’t care one jot if you speak to me. By the sound of it you don’t know a thing of use anyway.”
She turned away from me and lay down. I looked at her for a long time. “Tell me how you came to be here,” I asked eventually.
“Oh, you can drink brine if you think I’m speaking to you,” she said.
I took in a deep breath and nodded to myself. “All right,” I said. I lay down myself and closed my eyes. I felt a few pangs of guilt, but I had to be prudent. I knew first-hand of the subtlety of Fischer and Vogt. The information flow between Sanja and me from that point on could only go one way – to me.
I did drift off in spite of everything, for I was awoken by a guard bringing us food. Nothing had visibly changed. Our surroundings were still poorly lit by the same brazier round the corner. There was no natural light.
We took up the food and ate. It was much better than I had expected it would be. The bread was a little stale, but there was no mould, and they had even provided us with some sausage and cheese.
After an uncomfortable ten minutes or so, Sanja started speaking as though no time had passed since our last conversation.
“It happened a few years ago,” she said. “My brother had died suddenly of a pox.” I managed to hold my tongue on that one. “I was obviously… distraught. Maybe even hysterical. My brother and I were close.” She paused, and for a moment I thought she was going to break down all over again. But she retained her composure. “My father suggested I spend some time up here, praying in the temples. The commonfolk are permitted to; it is not a closed kloster like some.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t really want to. I do not hold much to the Imperial gods, or any gods for that matter. But I came anyway. They came and took me the night I arrived. Vogt’s men. Fischer’s men. Whosever men they were. My father had had a dispute with Vogt, and Vogt had reported him to the sheriff. I thought it was revenge. It took me a long time to realise I was a hostage. I do not think my father was working with Vogt at the time. I think that only happened after they took me. And while I am alive, he will do their bidding to keep me so.”
“Do you have any idea what it was your father was doing? The record indicated a dispute over a shipment of grain, but Vogt withdrew the complaint and it was never investigated.”
“I have no idea,” Sanja said wretchedly. “I have never been told any details of it. I just know they have their hands in a lot of different things – most of it to do with shipping. I am so sick of being here. I fear I am losing my mind. I will get a pox from all the wretches they leave in here with me. They used to let my father visit to see that I was still alive. Now I do not even get that any more, though gods know I hate the man. By Nema I hate him. Look at what he has reduced me to!”
“The Justice will come back and save us,” I said uneasily.
Sanja probed me for more information. I drip fed her some of the less sensitive details. I was still slightly wary, but I could not see the harm in telling her a few titbits. Besides, as she rightly said, if my captors wanted the information out of me, they didn’t have to be particularly imaginative about how they got it.
The time passed. Sanja reminisced about her life and her mother and became melancholic. I tried to steer the conversation between areas that would upset her, like a captain steering a ship through icebergs, but I generally failed, and much of my time was spent comforting the girl who had lost so much.
I do not know how long I was in that dungeon for. The guards would not speak to us and the only way to vaguely keep track of time was by how frequently they brought us meals. It was not long before my sleeping patterns themselves fell into an odd routine as I lost all track time.
And then, roused from another fitful sleep, I saw a guard standing at the gate. My cheek pulsed painfully.
“Come on,” the guard said. Sanja was asleep – or more likely pretending to be – in the corner.
There felt little point in resisting. I allowed him to grip my arm and I was taken out of the cell and around the corner. He did not cover my head this time. Instead he led me down a narrow, ill-lit spiral staircase. I wondered just how deep the foundations of the kloster ran.
“My cheek needs bathing,” I said. It felt hot to the touch. “I will catch a pox if it is not.”
“Shut it,” the guard said.
We reached the bottom of the stairs. There the passageway opened out into a broad, low-ceilinged rib vault, lit by braziers. The floor was flagstoned, mouldy and damp. In fact, as we approached the bottom of the stairs, I could see by the firelight that the space continued for some tens and perhaps even hundreds of yards.
There were four men standing in an open space. One was Vogt. There were two others, armed and dressed in light armour, whom I did not recognise.
And then I screamed.
The fourth, bloodied and bruised, was Matas.
XXII
A Stolen Life
“The wolf with two heads sees in both directions.”
OLD SOVAN PROVERB
“No!” I shrieked. I tried desperately to yank my arm out of the guard’s grip, but I could not. Instead he pulled me into him from behind and half-crushed me in a bear-hug.
Matas wasn’t wearing his town watch livery. Instead he wore simple, dark-coloured garments. One of his eyes was sealed closed and was rapidly bruising. His mouth had taken a knock, too, judging by his split lip. He looked dazed and woozy, but I could see that he saw and recognised me.
“Let him go!” I shrieked.
“Shut up!” Vogt snapped. He seemed agitated, like he was not fully in control of the situation.
“Helena,” Matas mumbled. He smiled at me. Oh, that smile. My heart aches to remember it.
One of the men struck him. “Shut up, you little prick,” he snapped.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Please!”
“You shut up!” the man who had struck Matas now shouted at me.
“Nema, will all of you shut up!” Vogt snapped. He turned to me. “We found him sneaking into places he shouldn’t have been,” he said. “Your beau, is he?”
“He is nothing to do with any of this,” I said. Tears streamed down my face. “Please—”
“Stop,” Vogt said, holding up a hand. “Stop it. He’s not going anywhere, so stop begging. Now listen. This is a happy accident. I can get the information I want out of you and I don’t have to lay a hand on you – again.” He added the last comment with a smirk. “So: tell me what the Justice knows. Tell me everything about his investigations. If you tell me, your boy here will live. If you don’t, he will die. ’Tis as simple as that.”
“Tell them nothing!” Matas shouted with the last of his energy, and earned a kicking for it.
“Bloody Nema, these two,” Vogt said to the guards. They laughed obsequiously. “Last chance, girl.”
“We don’t know!” I shouted. My voice was strangled with grief. “We don’t know anything about what you’re doing here.”
“That’s what Emilia said,” one of the guards piped up.
“Kasivar’s fucking arsehole, Broderick, shut your mouth before I have your tongue out,” Vogt shouted. He turned back to me. “You are investigating Lady Bauer’s death.”
“Yes,” I said.
“You have discovered nothing at all?”
“We know that money has been coming into the kloster from the town’s treasury,” I said. “More than can be lawfully accounted for.”
“And?”
I tried to think. Tried to think of what I could tell him that would be enough without giving away everything we had discovered.
“We thought Fenland Graves was responsible,” I blurted out.
Vogt looked at me. Then he laughed. “Nema, you lawmen are useless aren’t you? You thought that hopeless dungheap was responsible?” He laughed, and the two men holding Matas – and the man holding me – joined in.
“Well he’s dead now,” I snapped.
Vogt’s face immediately fell. “Yes,” he said. “Dead by your master’s hand, was he?”
I bit my tongue so hard I could taste blood. What a fool I had been to gall the man!
“So,” Vogt sneered. “Murdered by a Justice. There’s irony in that, is there not?” When I did not reply, he snapped, “Speak, girl!”
“He attacked our taskman,” I said. The explanation seemed like reason at the time. “He was killed as an act of defence.”
“Well, we’ve only your word for that, don’t we?” Vogt said.
“I swear that’s what happened,” I said.
“An act of defence?” Vogt asked. His demeanour had changed. He quirked the corner of his mouth, as though he were mulling it over. “I imagine that’s probably right. Graves always was a fool. Well, here’s another act of defence for you.”
I didn’t realise, didn’t acknowledge what was happening until it was already over. Vogt pulled his short-sword from the scabbard at his waist, took a few quick strides over to where Matas was and thrust the sword into his gut.
“No!” I screamed. My legs gave out. The guard holding me let me go as I became a dead weight in his arms.
“Matas!” I wailed, crawling towards him. I heard the men laughing. That people are capable of such cruelty never fails to shock me, even to this day.
They had let Matas drop to the floor, and he lay there in a growing pool of blood, his breath bubbling from his lips. Vogt was shouting at me, but I could not have made out the words even if I had wanted to. Everything had dissolved into a miasma of anguish. I might as well have been stabbed in my own gut.
I reached Matas. Nobody stopped me. I took his head into my hands and pulled his body into mine, weeping inconsolably. I have thought about that moment many hundreds of times over the course of my life. Such visceral grief tends to brand itself indelibly on to one’s mind. It still has the power to make me weep all these years later. Matas was such a good lad, truly genuine and kind-hearted. I would have been honoured to be his wife. How things might have been different.
