The Justice of Kings, page 28
His breath came out in a horrible rasping sound, and it took me a moment to realise he was trying to whisper something in my ear.
“There is… a passage behind you,” he said haltingly, every word fresh agony. “It is how I got in. It leads out… into the foothills. You must flee, Helena. Leave me. I am done for… but there is hope for you still.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “Don’t you say that. My place is here with you. Don’t make me leave you now – I should never have left you.”
I kissed him over and over again on the side of his face and head, as if in doing so I could restore his health.
“Helena, please… For me… You must leave. Fetch the Grozodan – and Sir Radomir. Bring a physician. If you get here quickly enough with help, I may yet be saved.”
I didn’t realise at the time that Matas was simply trying to get me to run away, and had realised that suggesting he might be saved was the best way to do it. He knew full well that he could not survive a wound in his gut like that. It is strange; for the longest time afterwards I resented him deeply for making me leave his side, when I was so sure that I should have stayed with him. But of course, he was right. Vogt would simply have killed me too – and while I might have welcomed death in that moment, it would have been completely senseless.
“I love you,” I whispered frantically into his ear. I needed him to know. He had to know that it wasn’t all in vain. “I love you.”
“I… love you, Helena. Now please, go. Run to the end of the vault. There is a – ack! – doorway that leads to a spiral stair. Run for me, Helena.”
I kissed him again. The men around us were beginning to close, perhaps realising that something other than parting words were being exchanged.
“That’s enough, girl,” one of them said roughly, and reached out to grab my arm. Before he could touch me, I pressed myself up off the floor, turned and ran as fast as I was able to the end of the vault.
Grunts, and then shouts of surprise chased me down the vault. It was not long before I heard swearing and running footsteps behind me, but I dared not turn around. I had learnt many years before never to turn around. If someone was going to catch me, they were going to catch me. A stolen glance rarely helped.
The light quickly faded to dull gloom as I ran deeper into the long, ill-lit section of the vault. I saw a black door-shaped hole in the wall ahead, which could only have been the exit Matas had referred to. By the time I reached it, there was no light to see by at all.
The men continued to give chase, but they were probably slightly drunk, unfit and unenthusiastic – despite the furious exhortations from Vogt. Thanks to my fleetness of foot, it was not long before their huffing and puffing faded into insignificance. Another lesson I had learned in Muldau was to keep running long after the danger was assumed to be past. I ran through that black hole – which looked for all the world like the open mouth of a gigantic snake – and took the spiral staircase downwards as quickly as I dared.
The staircase ended in a long flat corridor of stone, but I only discovered this after I had walked its length, stumbling and staggering like a blind girl. I could not hear any pursuers at all now, nor see the tell-tale flicker of orange torchlight, and so I took this section at a slow, trembling walk. It felt like an unforgivable delay, and I wept openly the entire time, but I could not risk putting a foot wrong and breaking a leg. If that happened, I might as well have stayed with Matas.
Eventually I reached a low doorway of stone, which led to another steep spiral staircase. Now I could feel the cold air of the night gusting up the tunnel like breath, and the merest hint of moonlight suggested that I was close to making good my escape.
After what felt like an age, I exited into the frigid dark. Disorientated, it took me a moment to realise that I had come out at the base of the foothills just as Matas had said I would. I whirled back around to see the entrance to the tunnel. It was skilfully concealed among the rocks and would only be visible to a careful observer.
Galen’s Vale lay below me, a little way down the hill but not far. I ran across the cold, hard earth to the northern gate. The gates were locked and guarded at this hour, though given the state of it neither of those things would have stopped a determined infiltrator.
“Who goes there?” the gateman called as I hammered on the heavy reinforced wood.
“Helena Sedanka!” I shouted. “I am Sir Konrad’s clerk! I must speak with Sir Radomir at once! There has been a murder!”
“Bloody hell,” the man grunted, and in less than a minute we were charging through the streets on a grey palfrey.
“Make way! Watch there!” the guard shouted a few times as other watchmen jumped out of the way. It did not take long to reach the watch house. I took great comfort from the fact that I could see the windows aglow with firelight. It was like a beacon of justice in an otherwise lawless world.
I leapt off the back of the horse and burst through the front door.
“Nema’s teeth, what’s the matter?” the duty serjeant asked.
“I must speak with Sir Radomir at once!” I shouted.
“He’ll be asleep,” the serjeant said, frowning. “Tell me what the matter is. Someone been bothering you?”
“There’s been a murder up at the kloster and there’ll be more to come if you don’t get me Sir Radomir this instant!” I thundered.
“Kasivar, what is this bleeding racket?” another watchman said as he entered. “Ah, Miss Sedanka. Jorge, ’tis the Justice’s clerk. What’s the matter, miss?”
I was about to tear my hair out.
“Helena.” I recognised Sir Radomir’s voice from the top of the stairs. He tramped down them in his heavy boots. He was wearing his watchman’s uniform from his feet to his waist, and a simple white sleeping shirt. “Gods, what ails you?”
“The kloster!” I shouted. I could barely speak I was so breathless with frustration. “They’ve stabbed Matas. It’s Vogt! And Fischer is there too! You must come quickly!”
“Nema!” Sir Radomir grunted. He turned to the serjeant. “Sound the alarm. I want ten men, armed and armoured, ready to move off in two minutes. Horses, quick, and swords! And rouse Maquerink and the Justice’s taskman. Now, move it!”
I stood, mute, as all around me descended into organised chaos. A bell started ringing, crashing loudly in an otherwise silent night. Men rushed about, retrieving weapons, breastplates and helmets from the armoury. Outside I heard the clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones. It did not take long for a small host of watchmen to gather and mount up outside the watch house. Several carried torches, and the orange flames flickered and danced in the cold night. Sir Radomir gestured me to join him on his horse, and he pulled me up with a strong grip. I hugged his cold cuirass and he kicked his spurs into the horse’s flanks. Once more I was tearing through Galen’s Vale, this time in the opposite direction.
“Tell me what has happened?” he called over his shoulder.
I explained as much as I could. I was so caught up it was hard to get all my thoughts out at once. But Sir Radomir pieced it together quickly.
“Nema. If only Sir Konrad were here. Gods know how far south the man is now. At least Bressinger is to hand.”
We thundered through the northern closure and out of the gate. Our progress up the dark, winding path which led to the kloster above was slower, but the horses were sure-footed and knew the route well enough, and we surmounted the road in a handful of minutes.
“There it is,” I said, pointing to the concealed entrance I had come out of. The kloster itself loomed a few hundred yards’ worth of track above. “Quickly!”
“You men with me,” Sir Radomir said, pointing at the nearest three watchmen; then he pointed to another. “You wait for the physician and Bressinger and follow me in when he arrives.” Lastly he turned to the serjeant. “Serjeant, take the rest up to the main gate. Arrest Obenpatria Fischer the moment you clap eyes on him. No one else is to leave. Understood?”
“Sire,” the serjeant replied.
We dismounted and I led Sir Radomir to the entrance, scrabbling over the rocks so quickly that I chafed my hands badly on the rough ground.
“Nema, I don’t like the look of it,” Sir Radomir said, and snatched a torch from one of the men. “Come on then. You stay behind me, Helena. Tell me the way.”
We moved, me, Sir Radomir and three watchmen, armour clattering and mouths puffing, up the stairs and back into the bowels of the kloster. Soon we were back in the low, dimly lit vaults.
Matas was lying where he had been stabbed. His face looked ash-grey, and his eyes were closed. Standing next to him, frozen in place and aghast at our arrival, was Vogt.
“What the fuck?” was all he managed.
“Bind him!” Sir Radomir snarled. Vogt started like a hare, but in seconds Sir Radomir’s men were on him, driving him to the floor with knees and boots to the back of his legs and binding him roughly.
I ran over to Matas and collapsed on the hard stone floor next to him. He was unconscious, and his skin was sheened with perspiration. I clutched his hand and squeezed it, sobbing. I watched as my tears fell from my eyes and pattered down on to his face.
“Matas,” I said, my voice hoarse and strained. In that moment, his eyes fluttered open and focused on me for a fleeting moment.
“My Helena,” he said, and smiled. Then his eyes closed again.
For a strange moment I felt nothing at all, as though there was simply too much grief for my mind to accommodate in one sitting. Then, as I felt the anguish building inside of me, ready to burst out in an animalistic wail, I saw men entering the vaults – the same ones who had dragged me down here. They must have been drawn by their master’s cries, but for all their great bravado in murdering a helpless lad and smacking about a maid, they baulked when squaring off against Sir Radomir and his town watchmen.
“Here,” one of the watchmen close to me said, shoving his pike into my hands and drawing his short-sword. He nodded to Vogt’s prostrate form. “Best watch him, Miss.”
Then, before I knew what was happening, he, Sir Radomir and the rest of them rushed forwards to engage with the newcomers in a bloody, chaotic melee.
I looked down at Vogt, who looked up at me. My grip on the haft of the pike tightened. It was a heavy length of wood, eight feet long. Its tip caught the light of the nearest brazier.
A flash of panic widened his eyes.
“Don’t even think about it, girl,” he said.
I looked over to my left. Several men were lying on the floor; two of Vogt’s henchmen and one watchman. Their groans and cries filled the small, low space as their lifeblood drained away. I watched as Sir Radomir took the life of another, smashing his sword into the man’s face and neck like it was a chopping block. The sheriff wielded his sword like a hatchet, his style brutal and functional, honed in the Reichskrieg and then on the streets of Perry Ford and Galen’s Vale. It had none of the lethal grace and flair of Bressinger’s swordplay, but it did the job, much like the man himself.
I turned back to Vogt and levelled the pike at him. Even then, though, I doubted I could do it. With as just a cause as I was ever like to get, and with hate and anguish permeating my every fibre, I still couldn’t bring myself to plunge the tip of the pike into the man’s flesh. The act of killing, after all, is so offensive to one’s nature, especially when the victim is as helpless as a kitten – even if not as innocent. I wondered what Vonvalt would think if he could have seen me in that moment. Would he have had sympathy, or would he have had me arrested for murder? That I had any confusion about it at all was telling.
I was broken from my reverie by movement. A glimmer of motion in the false darkness on the other side of the brazier. I brought the pike up instinctively, but nonetheless with difficulty. I felt my bloodlust melt away, to be replaced with an overwhelming sense of exposure and fear. The pike was unwieldy; it would not take an agile man to outmanoeuvre me.
“Put it down, lass,” a voice called out. “You’re going to get yourself hurt.”
A man wearing a Jadran habit stepped out into the firelight. He carried no more than a dirk, but it was more than enough to best me with.
I kept the pike between us, the tip trained on his heart.
“Get back,” I said, but my voice was quiet and hoarse. Fear closed my throat up. I knew I had only one thrust – which had to at least incapacitate him – before he closed the gap and killed me.
“I’m not interested in you,” he said. “Just Mr Vogt here.”
He knelt down furtively next to Vogt and started sawing through the cords that bound him.
“Stop it!” I tried to shout, but it was barely a whisper. The pike felt heavy in my hands. My grief and fear were overwhelming me, as though someone had draped heavy chains across my shoulders.
The cords around Vogt’s wrists snapped, and both men started scrabbling frantically at those around his ankles. I was watching Matas’s murderer escape, and there was nothing I could do about it. Worse – I could hear fresh clashes from where more of Vogt’s men were entering the fray at the other end of the vault.
Vogt and his man stood up. “Here, give me that,” Vogt snapped, taking the dagger. He pointed it at me. “Right; now you listen to me, girl,” he said, seconds before the head of the man next to him was split from his crown to the top of his nose. Vogt cried out and flinched violently as blood sprayed the side of his face. The man in the habit collapsed to the floor, and his assailant pulled his sword free with a squeal of steel on bone.
It was Bressinger. Behind him were four more watchmen. They must have followed us up through the sally port after the initial rush. Lurking at the back, clutching a medical case and looking distinctly uneasy, was Mr Maquerink.
“Don’t kill him!” I shouted as Bressinger lifted his sword to dispatch Vogt. “He is a witness!”
Bressinger’s arm halted mid-stroke. Vogt shrieked and dropped to the floor. The watchmen looked at him in disgust.
“Bind him,” Bressinger said to a pair of the men behind him, and then, to the other two, “You, come with me.” Then I watched as they ran off to join the fight and rebalance the numbers.
I dropped the pike again, glad to be rid of its burdensome weight. I watched dispassionately as Vogt was pressed into the stone floor, his hands and ankles rebound with such tightness that he cried like a little boy. Mr Maquerink stepped out from the shadows and moved past me, kneeling beside Matas.
And then there was nothing for me to do but wait out the rest of that long night.
It took three days for Matas to die. Vonvalt returned on the second. I was sitting in the ward in Mr Maquerink’s house when I heard the Justice arrive downstairs.
Matas did not stir when the cold gust from the open door found its way upstairs, nor when the sounds of Vonvalt and Bressinger talking quietly echoed through the house. Vonvalt had actually been on his way back for most of a week. Bauer had been found, but not by him; rather, Justice August had found him. Doubtless to speed the conclusion of our business in the Vale, she had taken it upon herself to track the man down, using her powers to enlist the local wildlife to the task. She had discovered him in Estre – one of the three principalities surrounding Sova – was governed by Luka Kzosic, the Emperor’s second son. Bauer was being transported back to Galen’s Vale by August herself and a small troop of Imperial soldiers from the wayfort at Gresch. The caravan was expected imminently.
Mr Maquerink had done all he could for Matas – he had cleaned and bandaged the wound and lain him down on one of the beds in the ward. But Matas had taken a sword through the gut. Only his youthful strength, and perhaps a fortunate angle on the thrust, kept him in this suspended half-life. I held his hand and wiped the sweat from his brow, but he varied between deep unconsciousness and brief spasms of delirium, and I knew, in my heart, that he would not recover.
“I am sorry, Helena,” I heard Vonvalt say.
I turned to see him standing in the doorway, ruddy-faced from the chill, a tall, imposing figure in his stately clothes and heavy cloak. He radiated cold and he was spattered with mud.
I turned back to Matas. I admit that I found it hard not to blame Vonvalt.
“I have been told the boy came looking for you,” Vonvalt said quietly. “Driven by love and worry, no doubt.” Vonvalt’s words, spoken with soft contrition, brought fresh tears to my eyes. “There is to be a trial,” he said. “I will have confessions from Bauer and Vogt today—”
“Do you think I care about that at all?” I snapped. Anger filled me. I felt my skin flush and I felt suddenly lightheaded. “Do you think any of that matters to me now?”
Vonvalt stood there. He looked at me apologetically, but it was clear he was not going to say anything. He was either too awkward, or felt that Matas had been acceptable collateral damage to his mission, or a mixture of the two. Either way, I wanted to be rid of him.
“Get out,” I snarled. “I don’t want to see you.”
Vonvalt nodded. “As you wish,” he said, and left.
I cried then until my throat was raw and I had no more tears left to shed.
People came and went. I heard snatches of news: that the kloster had been dissolved, that all the monks and nuns were being rounded up for questioning, that Lord Sauter had been arrested, that the Legions were coming to secure the town and the treasury.
They were all either wrong or hugely exaggerated. It was true that, as I stood vigil over Matas, Sir Radomir’s men were questioning every member of the kloster. Emilia was arrested and put in the town gaol, and there were other arrests as well as a few dramatic but short fights in which Vogt’s henchmen were killed or detained and then summarily executed as the law permitted.
The kloster was not dissolved but most of its activities, save those which were necessary for the functioning of the town, were suspended. Most of the monks and nuns were confined to their quarters, allowed out only to eat together. I think the town authorities were afraid of them all massing together, but I knew that the majority of them were completely harmless.
