The Justice of Kings, page 3
“I will make a note that the next Justice to pass through Rill should find a shrine to Nema. Somewhere prominent,” Vonvalt said dourly.
“And how exactly shall we do that?” Lady Frost asked.
Vonvalt nodded towards the woods. “There are plenty of deer in those woods. Send a hunter today. Keep the skull. Have it blessed by a priest. Fashion an altar in the Imperial style. It is very simple.”
Bressinger finished counting the coins. “There’s five marks here if there’s a groat,” he said quietly.
Vonvalt looked at the Frosts. There was a long silence. “The fine is a penny per blasphemer,” he said. “Or would you like me to add a charge of attempted bribery to this ledger, too?”
Sir Otmar, reddening, snatched back a handful of the coins. His wife cuffed him sharply.
“Fool,” she muttered, and stalked off.
Once she was out of earshot, and the correct fine had been paid and stored away carefully in our strongbox, Vonvalt addressed Sir Otmar.
“Sir Otmar, I like to think I am a fair man. The Empire grants me a great deal of discretion in dealing with matters such as this.” He paused, thinking of the right words. “I hope you realise that this could have gone very differently. A different Justice on a different day…” He let the words hang. Sir Otmar, who had half the fire of his wife, nodded meekly.
“I know, my lord. I am indebted to you.”
Vonvalt waved him off. “I am not a fool, Sir Otmar. I know full well what will happen when I leave this place. What I am telling you is, you must be more careful.”
“I appreciate the candour, my lord,” Sir Otmar said, and bowed.
We watched him go in silence. Then, when it was apparent that the day’s business was done, Vonvalt closed the ledger.
“I have a bad feeling about this place,” he muttered, and stood. “A bad feeling indeed.”
III
Galen’s Vale
“With the crime of murder, one must be sure of the security of the conviction before the sentence – that of execution – is carried out. To take a life is severe; to take a second in recompense is doubly so.”
FROM CATERHAUSER’S THE SOVAN CRIMINAL CODE: ADVICE TO PRACTITIONERS
The rider found us a few miles outside of Galen’s Vale, a large and wealthy merchant town in the Southmark of Haunersheim – being the country that lay to the east and south of my native Tolsburg. Rill was now a distant memory, several hundreds of miles, two handfuls of towns and a month and a half of travel away.
The air was colder and drier down here than it had been in the shadow of the Tolsburg Marches, and swirled with flakes of snow. Bressinger had tried to lift our spirits with an old Jägelander folk song he must have learnt off Vonvalt, but I couldn’t join in because I didn’t understand the words – he sang neither in Old Saxan, being the common dialect of the Empire, nor Tollish, my native tongue – and Vonvalt didn’t join in because he was prone to silence on these long journeys. He sat hunched in his saddle at the head of our caravan.
The rider was a young lad of the town watch, muscular and full of cocky self-regard. I was immediately self-conscious of my shabby appearance, hunched as I was under my waxed cloak and smelling like the Duke of Brondsey. In the event, I needn’t have troubled myself; he didn’t spare me a second glance.
“Lord Sauter said there was a Justice coming down the Hauner road,” I heard him call out to Vonvalt. He wore a mail hauberk and coif that framed a face ruddy from the cold, and was capped with a kettle helm. His surcoat was blue crossed with mustard-yellow and embroidered with the Galen’s Vale device.
“Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt,” he said, no longer bent over in the saddle. “This is my taskman, Dubine Bressinger, and my clerk, Helena Sedanka.”
The guardsman touched his helmet. He looked distressed. “Sires. Miss.” My heart leapt as he briefly locked eyes with me. “Your timing is opportune. There’s been a murder, not two days ago. Lord Bauer’s wife. Half the town is up in arms.”
“And the other half?” Bressinger murmured to me.
“Be silent,” Vonvalt snapped. He turned back to the lad. “It is a rare thing for a lord’s wife to be killed.”
“’Tis unheard of in the Vale, sire. And neither hair nor hide of an explanation.”
“It was not Lord Bauer?” Vonvalt asked. It was a fair question. It was normally the husband.
“As far as I know, the man is not under suspicion.”
“I see,” Vonvalt said, rubbing his chin. “Strange.”
“Aye, sire, ’tis that. When we saw your caravan from the Veldelin Gate, Lord Sauter commanded me to escort you in with all haste.”
Vonvalt turned back to me, and briefly took in the sorry bedraggled sight that I was. The Duke of Brondsey snorted and hee-hawed behind me, trembling with the cold.
“I will ride ahead with you,” Vonvalt said to the watchman, then turned to Bressinger. “Dubine, take Helena into town. See the horses are stabled and sort our lodgings.”
“Sire.”
“Where is the body of Lady Bauer?” Vonvalt asked the lad.
“In a physician’s house – Mr Maquerink. He attends to official medical matters.”
“I will see the body first, before it ripens too much for anything useful to be deduced.”
“As you wish.”
They sped away ahead, their horses kicked to a canter. I watched them go.
Bressinger turned his horse and covered the gap between us. He must have been able to read my mind, because he said, “A boy like that is no good for you, Helena.”
My face flushed. “What are you talking about?” I asked hotly.
Bressinger smirked. “We’d best get moving before the weather closes. Remember what I taught you about cloudreading?”
I nodded to a bank of low, dark clouds to the east. “Snow,” I said, sulking.
“Come on then. And this time join in with my singing.”
“I don’t know Jägen,” I said.
Bressinger paused with such deliberate drama that I had to laugh. “Nema’s blood, Helena, you’re as deaf as a timber. That wasn’t Jägen; it was Grozodan. I hope you’re not confusing my country of birth with that of our esteemed master.”
“No,” I said, chortling away. “Not with a poncy name like Dubine, anyway.” I deliberately pronounced it the way Vonvalt pronounced it, Du-ban, rather than the way everyone else did outside of Bressinger’s native Grozoda, Du-bine.
“I’ll cut that tongue out of your head if you don’t mind it,” he said. “Now, listen in, or the next couple of miles are going to go very slowly indeed.”
We arrived at the town itself at midday, entering through the Veldelin Gate, which watched the southern approach. Galen’s Vale was in Haunersheim, though Tolsburg and Guelich had both tried to claim it over the course of its tumultuous history. It was a town that was very much a product of its location, both geographically and politically. Guelich, after all, was the realm of Prince Gordan Kzosic, the Emperor’s third son, and any large town within striking distance of a royal invariably functioned as both a fortress and a temporary palace.
It was a large walled town, built into the slopes of the Tolsburg Marches and cut in two by the River Gale. The surrounding foothills, long and shallow tracts of green, were fertile and well cultivated, and produced enough cabbages, peas, broad beans, onions and potatoes to feed the town and generate a trade surplus – though that was not the real source of the place’s wealth. The River Gale was both wide and deep, and ran all the way to Sova itself, albeit circuitously. It made Galen’s Vale a busy trading hub, and generated enough in merchant tax revenue to provide for a decent town watch, well-kept and patrolled roads, a large temple to Nema the God Mother (that had once been a temple to Irox, the bovine pagan god) and an impressive, fortress-like kloster that occupied a commanding position further up the hill.
The streets thronged with merchant traders, guildsmen, watchmen, commonfolk, lords and ladies. We picked our way through them, anonymous even as we sat high above them on our horses. I noticed that the ground was cobbled for the most part, though still muddy, and the roads had closed shit-ditches, one of the better Sovan imports that was yet to reach much of the outer Empire. Fortunately the cold, as it had in Rill, helped keep the smell to a minimum, though the familiar stench of woodsmoke, piss, offal and shit still managed to pervade the air.
The town’s buildings ranged from thatched daub cottages to towering brick-and-timber town houses. The temples, of which there were dozens, were rendered in large yellowing blocks of stone, stained by generations of woodsmoke and festooned with crude idols. Flowers and other trinkets lay scattered about their steps, most trampled into muddy oblivion. Beggars wailed into the cold air, refused alms and sanctuary in equal measure.
By virtue of his position, Vonvalt was entitled to be hosted by the town’s most senior councilman. This was usually the mayor or the local justice of the peace, but could often be the town’s most senior priest, or some other lord or knight. Without express instructions as to where to take up lodgings, Bressinger decided to make for Mayor Sauter’s residence, which turned out to be a huge brick town house with attractive timber framing.
“Think this’ll do,” he said gruffly as we pulled our horses to a stop outside its iron gates. We both dismounted, and Bressinger approached the guardsman posted by the entrance.
“Yes?” the guard asked in a manner befitting his trade. He was clad in the same armour and surcoat as the other town watchman had been.
“I am Dubine Bressinger,” he said. “This is Helena Sedanka. We are employees and associates of Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt.” Bressinger showed the man his Imperial seal.
“Ah, yes, sire,” the guard said, bowing. “We’ve been told to expect you. I’ll have the boy take your horses and mule. Are you both well?”
“We’re fine, thank you. We’re looking for the town physician’s residence,” Bressinger said.
“There’s more than one, though I suspect you’re after Mr Maquerink,” the guard said. He pointed back the way we had come. “Apothecary Street. Two roads down, on your right. You’ll see the signage easily enough.”
“Thank you,” Bressinger said. The ostler, a filthy boy redolent of horse shit, appeared and began to lead our animals away.
“Lord Sauter said you were to be provided with victuals on arrival,” the guard called after us uncertainly. “Will you not take some food or wine?”
“Later, thank you,” Bressinger said. I felt my spirits sink. My stomach felt as empty as a sacked granary.
“As you will,” the guard said, nodding, and we made our way on saddle-sore legs to find where Vonvalt had got to.
The physician lived a comfortable existence on Apothecary Street, surrounded by other learned medical men, barber surgeons and astronomers. The road here was cobbled, too, but not rutted like the traders’ roads that branched off from the market square. Mr Maquerink’s house was marked out by a large wooden sign daubed with a blue star, which was the common Imperial mark for a licensed physician. Bressinger pushed his way in to the front room, where the smell of blood and death hung heavy in the air. Through the translucent windows at the back of the house I could hear wild pigs rootling through the physician’s trade waste.
“Dubine?” Vonvalt called from somewhere below. We both turned to our right and saw a staircase descending into the bowels of the residence.
“Sire,” Bressinger called back.
“Come downstairs.”
We obliged, and found ourselves in a single large room which spanned the length of the house. A number of stained trestles were lined up, with more stacked against the walls. Candles – wax, not tallow – burned with a herbal scent that was completely powerless against the smell of decay. Vonvalt and the physician were stood next to the only occupied trestle at the far end of the room, the former with a kerchief of lavender pressed to his nose.
“Mr Maquerink has just been explaining to me how the body was found,” Vonvalt said as we approached.
“Yes, well, Tom Bevitt’s boy found her by the Segamund Gate outflow, caught on a sunken root,” the physician said. He was a stooped old man, grey-haired and moustached. It was as though a lifetime of caring for others had drained his own life force. He was beggar-gaunt, a far cry from the plump physicians and apothecaries I’d seen before. “’Tis a miracle in itself; the undertow is powerful. Few things that enter the Gale are seen again.”
“Who did he tell?” Vonvalt asked.
“He didn’t need to tell anyone. The screaming raised half the eastern closure. The town watchmen fished her out. Brought her here.”
“And no one has touched the body?”
“No one, milord. Save myself, of course, but that was just to arrange her.” He gestured. “And to take a look at that wound.”
I looked where the physician pointed, compelled by morbid curiosity. Not that the sight of a corpse particularly fazed me; I was an orphan of the Reichskrieg, after all, well-acquainted with the sight of the dead. Although Tolsburg was vassalised by the Sovans before I was born, it wasn’t until I was perhaps ten that the after-effects of the war – the shortages of food, the infighting, the last of the uprisings – had calmed down enough that some semblance of normal life could resume. There had been plenty of fighting and death to go around in those early years of my life, and that was not just in Tolsburg. In my nearly two decades, three large countries – the kingdom of Venland, and the duchies of Denholtz and Kòvosk – had all been tamed by the Sovan Legions. Taking into account Vonvalt’s native Jägeland, which sat to the west of Tolsburg, and Bressinger’s native Grozoda to the south, both absorbed thirty years before when those men were adolescents, as well as the original Sovan territories – Sova, Kzosic Principality, Estre and Guelich – it was the largest the Empire would ever be, with nearly a hundred million Imperial subjects living under the watchful eyes of the Two-Headed Wolf.
The woman on the table was probably in her early forties, death-grey and clad in a green dress with expensive cloth-of-gold piping. The water that she had been fished from had not been kind to her remains, but even my unpractised eye could tell she hadn’t drowned.
“That’s a serious blow,” Bressinger remarked, “and not with a bladed edge.”
“You have a good eye for corpses,” the physician said. I watched Bressinger and Vonvalt exchange a brief look.
“Quite,” Vonvalt said dourly.
We all stood in silence for a few moments.
“Who is the sheriff?” Vonvalt asked.
“That would be Sir Radomir Dragić,” the physician said.
“He knows of this?” Vonvalt asked.
“Of course,” the physician said. “All of Galen’s Vale knows about it. Lord Bauer is a well-known man; his wife was well-liked.”
“Is Lord Bauer popular?”
The physician hesitated. “Well-known,” he confirmed.
“And what is the sheriff’s reputation?”
“An effective lawman, though as sour a man as you are ever like to meet – and a drunkard to boot.”
“I am yet to meet an effective lawman who was not so,” Vonvalt remarked as he edged closer to the corpse. I saw how he was careful not to get close enough to contract a pox. Corpses were known to exude noxious vapours in the same way a fire emits smoke.
“A single blow to the side of the head,” he murmured. “Applied with some considerable force.”
“Yes, milord,” the physician said. “A killing blow for certain. Look how the skin has split and parted, and the skull has broken. A club or some other blunt weapon, wielded by a strong arm.”
“How can you tell it was not done with a blade?” Vonvalt asked. It was a question he certainly knew the answer to. He was simply testing the old physician.
Mr Maquerink gestured to the wound with his index finger. “A sword or axe would have cut the skull as surely as the skin, and with a clean incision. This has been smashed like a block of granite. You can see from the pattern of the fractures in the bone, and the way the skin is burst open, rather than hewn.”
“You have experience of such wounds?”
“You’ll be hard-pressed to find any medical man in Galen’s Vale who has not had first-hand experience of such, thanks to the Reichskrieg.”
Vonvalt nodded. We all stood looking at the corpse, as if staring at it for long enough would yield up its secrets. But it was clear there was little more to be divined. Lady Bauer had been struck a vicious blow that had probably killed her outright. As the most senior Imperial lawman, it was within Vonvalt’s gift to conduct the investigation, and subsequent trial, by the Sovan Law of Precedence.
“Is there anything else remarkable about the body?” Vonvalt asked quietly.
“Nothing, milord,” the physician confirmed. He gestured again to the wound. “Ve sama horivic.”
It is as you see it. The words he spoke were High Saxan, the language of the governing classes, but it was a common enough phrase that no one needed a translation.
“Murder, then,” Vonvalt said.
“Aye,” Bressinger said quietly next to him.
Mr Maquerink looked nervously at Vonvalt. When he spoke, his voice was pregnant with worry. “Will you use… your power, on her? I’ve heard it said some Imperial Magistrates can converse with the dead.”
Vonvalt eyed the corpse. He shook his head gently. “No,” he said. He looked up and down the length of Lady Bauer’s body, sadness in his eyes. “The body is too decayed. Dead too long.” He paused, thinking for a moment. “Stand back,” he murmured, and everyone quickly obliged. He held out a hand, his fingers splayed, his arm pointing at Lady Bauer’s head. His face took on a slightly pained aspect as he assessed the chances of a successful séance. After a few seconds, his hand dropped. “No. No, I will not even try it.”
“Who knows what manner of things have their claws in her now,” Bressinger muttered.
Vonvalt looked at him sharply. “Guard your tongue. That is not for bandying about.”
