"The Spell of the Black Dagger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

CHAPTER 3

Sarai, a little nervous, looked around the justice chamber.

She was seated at her father's left hand, just off the dais, a foot or two in front of the red velvet drapery that bore the overlord's seal worked into it in thick gold braid. The chamber was long and narrow, deliberately built with a slight slope to the floor, so that prisoners and petitioners would be looking up at the Minister of Justice as if from a pit, or as if they dared to look up at a god descending from the heavens-but would probably not consciously notice the slope at all.

The overlord's palace was full of tricks like that. The Great Council Chamber, under the overlord's Great Hall, was arranged so that all the doors were partially hidden, to make it easier for people to believe that what they said there was secret, when in fact there were spy-holes in several places; the Great Hall itself was open to the huge central dome to overawe petitioners; there were any number of clever constructs. The justice chamber hadn't been singled out.

What the architects had never considered, however, was that this slope left the minister, her father-and herself, at the moment-looking down. Or perhaps they considered it and dismissed it as unimportant, or thought it would enhance the minister's self-confidence.

She couldn't speak for her father, but the effect on her was to be constantly worried about falling. She felt as if at any moment she might slip from her chair and tumble down that hard gray marble floor into that motley collection of brigands, thieves, and scoundrels waiting at the far end of the room.

She clutched the gilded arms of her seat a little harder.

This was the first time she had ever been allowed in here when her father was working, and she didn't want to do or say anything that would embarrass him or interfere in any way, and, she told herself, that was why she was nervous. She knew that she was being silly, that the slope was really insignificant, that she was in no danger of falling from her chair. After all, she had been in this room dozens of times when it was empty, starting when she was a very little girl, little more than a toddler, and she had never so much as stumbled on that subtle slope-but still, the nervousness persisted.

Maybe, she thought, if she paid more attention to what was going on in the room, and less to the room itself, she'd forget about such foolishness.

"… and really, Lord Kalthon, how you can take the word of this… this peasant, over the word of your own third cousin, is utterly beyond me!" said Bardec, the younger son of Bellren, Lord of the Games, in a fairly good imitation of injured dignity. "It is not, however, beyond me," Lord Kalthon replied dryly, "since I have the word of our theurgist that you did exactly what this good woman accuses you of."

Bardec threw a quick, angry look at old Okko; the magician stared expressionlessly back, his long forefinger tracing a slow circle on the evidence table beside him. His white velvet robe hung loosely on him, his forearm was thin and bony, but Okko somehow looked far more dangerous sitting there at Lord Kalthon's right hand than the young and brawny Bardec did standing before them.

"I take it," Sarai's father said, "that you do not choose to plead any mitigating circumstances? You do not ask for the overlord's mercy?"

"No, Lord Kalthon, I most certainly do not, because I am not guilty!" Bardec persisted. "I am completely innocent and can only assume that some enemy of mine has somehow cozened this woman into making this absurd charge and that some sort of malign magic has fooled our esteemed Lord Okko into believing it…"

"I am no lord," Okko said, cutting Bardec off with a voice like imminent death.

"I wish I could say the same for our young friend," Lord Kalthon said loudly. "He is, alas, a true noble of the city, born of our overlord's chosen representatives. He is also a fool, compounding his original crime with perjury and false accusations. Stupid ones, at that." He sighed, and glanced at his daughter. She was watching the proceedings closely, saying nothing.

Well, he had wanted her to see how the job was done.

"Very well, then," he said. "Since you show no remorse, or even comprehension, I hereby require, in the overlord's name, that this woman's losses be restored threefold from your own possessions and estates-that would be…" He lifted the notes dangling from his left hand to where he could read them, and continued, "Three sound hens, three dozen eggs of the first quality, three oxcarts, and six oxen, or the equivalent value in silver. I further command that you receive ten lashes from a guardsman's whip, as a reminder that the nobility of the city are not, as you seem to think, the rulers of the people but only the servants of our beloved overlord, and that by insisting on bringing this case this far you have wasted the time of everyone in this room. In the name of Ederd the Fourth, Overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, Triumvir of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, Commander of the Holy Armies, and Defender of the Gods, let it be done."

Bardec began to protest, but the guardsmen at either side did not let that interfere as they dragged him away, kicking and struggling.

"Young idiot," Lord Kalthon muttered, leaning toward Sarai. "If he'd had the sense to pass it off as a boyish prank, he'd have got off with simple restitution and a small fine."

She glanced up at her father, startled.

"But that isn't fair-that means the woman's benefiting from Bardec's stupidity…" Sarai whispered.

"True enough-but that's not what's important. This isn't the place; we'll discuss it later." He sat up straight and called, "Next case."

The next case was a property dispute; such things were generally handled by a local magistrate or a guard captain, but in this case one of the parties was a guard captain, so the affair had been kicked up the hierarchy to the Minister of Justice.

Nobody questioned the facts of the case, so no magician had been called in, though old Okko remained in his place at the minister's right; Lord Kalthon was called upon to determine not what was true, but what was just.

Sarai listened to the tedious details, involving an unclear will, a broken business partnership, a drunken surveyor, and a temporarily dry well, with half an ear or so, while thinking about other concerns.

Bardec was suffering for his stupidity, and that was fair and just. If he had the wit to learn from his mistake, to change his attitudes, this might be the lesson he needed. If he had not, then at least this punishment might discourage him from gallivanting off with someone else's cart from Grandgate Market next time he got drunk. The money was nothing to him, or at least to his family, but a flogging would register on anybody.

But the woman with the cart was coming out ahead. Perhaps she deserved some compensation for the inconvenience-but why should it be higher when Bardec behaved stupidly in court than if he had been contrite?

Well, it was undoubtedly more annoying for the victim to have Bardec calling her a liar-and perhaps the greater satisfaction was therefore just.

But just the flogging would have been equally satisfying, Sarai was sure.

She listened as the explanation of the property dispute wound up, and her father began asking questions.

It seemed to her that the basic uncertainty in the case derived from the lost contract between the long-dead partners, but Lord Kalthon was not asking about that, nor was he asking Okko to use his magic to determine the contents of the contract; instead he was looking at the diagram one party had provided and asking, "Your family has used the well these past twenty years, then?"

The guard captain nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, standing stiffly at attention.

"And you never had any doubt of your right to it?"

"No, sir."

"But the new survey-do you doubt its accuracy?"

Unhappily, the soldier said, "No, sir."

The merchant began to smile; Lord Kalthon turned to him and demanded, "Did you ever object to Captain Aldran claiming the well before this year?"

The smile vanished. "No, my lord. But my father's will…"

"Yes, I know." Lord Kalthon waved that away and looked at the diagram again. "Okko, lend me a pen, would you?"

Sarai watched as her father drew a line on the diagram and showed it to the two claimants. "As Minister of Justice to the city's overlord, I hereby claim this parcel here…" He pointed with the borrowed quill. "…as city property, to be compensated for according to law and custom at the value of its last transfer of ownership, which I hereby determine to be five rounds of silver, payable in full from the city's treasury. I also hereby direct that the city shall sell this property to Captain Aldran, in compensation for his years of faithful service to his overlord, at a price of five rounds of silver, to be paid by deduction from his salary. All interest and carrying charges are hereby waived, by order of the Minister of Justice."

"But that well's worth more than that!" the merchant objected.

Lord Kalthon asked him wearily, "And the rest of that land isn't?"

"Uh…"

"In the name of Ederd the Fourth, Overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, Triumvir of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, Commander of the Holy Armies, and Defender of the Gods," Lord Kalthon said, "let it be done."

Sarai admired the decision.

If she had been in her father's place, she would have had Okko determine the contents of that original contract; then either the captain or the merchant would presumably have won outright. Either the captain's family would be left without the water source they had relied on for decades, or the merchant would be deprived of the inheritance he had depended upon and had borrowed money against. One man would have had more than he needed, the other nothing.

And making a compromise-well, neither man had been particularly interested in a compromise, surely, or the question wouldn't have reached her father. By invoking his power as the overlord's agent he had removed any possibility of arguing with the results or renegotiating the agreement later. Quite possibly neither man was happy-the merchant had less than he hoped, and the soldier would be paying for what he had thought he already owned-but the matter was settled, and both had come away with what they needed, if not what they wanted.

It wasn't necessarily exactly what the law demanded, but it settled the matter.

And, it occurred to her, Bardec's case had done the same thing. Giving the woman the extra money had helped to settle the matter. It might, perhaps, have been fairer if the overlord's court had taken the additional payment as a fine and kept it, since in fact it was a penalty for perjury and for accusing the court, in the person of Okko, of incompetence-but that might have looked greedy.

The important thing, Sarai saw, was to settle the question, one way or another, and without leaving anyone any more angry about it than necessary. If Bardec's money had gone to the city treasury, he could have accused Lord Kalthon of greed, of being more concerned with money than with justice; if the merchant had simply been required to sell the well to the captain, there could have been any number of delays and complications, arguments about price and interest, and so forth. Her father was avoiding all that.

She remembered something that had been said at the dinner table once, when they had had Lord Torrut, commander of the city guard, as their guest. Her father had joked about how Lord Torrut might as well be called the Minister of War, since that's what soldiers do, they make war-but men everyone would want to get rid of him, since there hadn't been a war for two hundred years. Lord Torrut had countered that perhaps Kalthon should be called Minister of Peace, since his job was to make peace- but there hadn't been all that much peace in the past two hundred years, either.

Both men had laughed, and Lord Kalthon had said, "We both keep the peace, Torrut, and well you know it."

It was true, Sarai saw-they both kept the peace. The city guard was the whip to threaten the horse, and the city courts the apple to reward it. People had to be reasonably satisfied with the results, when they took their disputes to the overlord's courts; they didn't really care what the laws said, only whether the disputes went away and the results looked fair.

Looked fair.

That was something she really hadn't thought about before.

And she'd completely forgotten about the sloping floor until she looked down at the next pair, defendant and plaintiff.

Her mouth fell open in a way most unbecoming a young noblewoman as the case was described. Kallia of the Broken Hand, a demonologist, accused Heremon the Mage of stealing certain esoteric substances from her workshop; Heremon denied the charge.

A wizard, accused of theft? And no mere apprentice, but a mage?

"Very well, Okko," Lord Kalthon said, turning to his theurgist, "what actually happened here?"

Okko frowned, and his nervous fingers finally stopped moving.

"My lord," he said, "I have no idea."

Lord Kalthon stared at the theurgist.

"I'm sorry, Lord Kalthon," Okko said, "but the differing magical auras surrounding the alleged crime are sufficient to confuse even the gods. I cannot get a plain and trustworthy answer to even the simplest question."

"I hate these cases," Kalthon muttered; Sarai didn't think anyone heard him save herself and perhaps Okko. Then he sat up straighter and announced, "Let the accuser stand forth."

Kallia of the Broken Hand strode up the long room, her long black cloak swirling behind her, her face hidden by a deep hood and her hands concealed in black suede gloves. She stopped, gathered her cloak, and stood before the Minister of Justice.

"Show your face in the overlord's palace, magician," Kalthon said, irritation in his tone.

Kallia flung back the hood; her face was thin and pale, her straight hair was black and worn long and unadorned. The three vivid red scratches that ran down one side of her face, from temple to jaw, stood out in shocking contrast to her colorless features. She glared defiantly at Lord Kalthon.

"Speak," Kalthon told her.

"What would you have me say?" Kallia demanded. "'I've told my story and been called a liar. I know what you people all think of demonologists, and it's true we deal with creatures even worse than humans, but that doesn't make us all murderers and thieves."

"Nobody here said it did," Kalthon said mildly. "If the overlords of the Hegemony believed demonology to be inherently evil they would have outlawed it. We accept that your occupation does not condemn you-and at any rate, you're here as the accuser. I've been given a summary of your claim, but I'd like to hear it all from your own mouth."

"It's simple enough," Kallia said, slightly mollified. "Heremon robbed my shop-I woke up when I heard the noise, and I looked down the stairs and saw him leaving with his arms full. He didn't see me, and I didn't say anything, because I was unarmed and defenseless, and he's a powerful wizard. When I came downstairs I found that several of my belongings were missing."

"What sort of belongings?"

Kallia hesitated, and Kalthon allowed his expression to grow impatient.

"Blood," Kallia said, "jars of different kinds of blood. And gold, and a few small gems, and some small animals-a ferret, some mice, certain rare insects."

"These are things you need in your, um, in your business?" Kalthon asked, stroking his beard.

"Does it matter?" Kallia asked wearily. "It might."

Kallia frowned. "Then yes, I need them in my work. Demons often demand payment for their services-blood, or gold, or lives, usually." She turned and shouted at the observers at the room's lower end, "Not always human lives!"

Sarai, perversely, found herself grinning at the woman's defiance and forced herself to stop.

Kalthon nodded. "And you believe the thief to have been this Heremon the Mage?"

"I know it was he, my lord!" Kallia insisted. "I saw his face plainly and his robe, the same one he wears now! I see him almost every day; there could be no mistake. And who but a wizard would want things like virgin's blood?"

"Anyone who thought to sell them," Kalthon said calmly. "Particularly when there's gold, as well. So you know Heremon?"

"Of course! Our shops are across the street from one another, on Wizard Street in Eastside."

Kalthon stroked his beard again. "And you are rivals, perhaps?"

Kallia looked perplexed. "I had not thought so, Lord Kalthon, but why else would he choose to rob me?"

Sarai watched as the interrogation continued. The question of how the thief had gotten into the shop came up; the door had been broken. Kallia was asked why she had had no magical protections for her gold and gems, and she explained that she did have protection: a minor demon, a nameless imp, really, served as her nightwatch. The creature had been found dead- further proof, if any beyond the sight of Kallia's own eyes was needed, that the thief was a magician of some power.

Several of the observers were growing visibly bored; most trials were much briefer, with Okko settling matters of fact in short order, allowing Lord Kalthon to get directly to the matter of setting the penalty. This case, on the heels of the boundary dispute over the soldier's well, was dragging things out unbearably.

The next area of questioning was a little more delicate. Given that Kallia was a demonologist, with many of the resources of Hell at her beck and call, why had she resorted to the courts for justice, instead of simply sending a demon after Heremon?

It took some coaxing before she would admit that she was afraid. Heremon was not some mere apprentice; he was a mage and was reputed to be high in the local hierarchy of the Wizards' Guild, a Guildmaster perhaps-though of course, no outsider could ever know for sure anything that went on in that Guild. Kallia feared that if she took personal vengeance upon Heremon, the Guild would retaliate-if, indeed, whatever demon she sent succeeded in the first place; there was no telling what magical defenses the mage might have, particularly since he would surely be expecting some sort of reaction.

She had not cared to risk the enmity of the Wizards' Guild. People who angered individual wizards might live; people who angered the Wizards' Guild did not. So she had resorted to the overlord's government and appealed to the Lord Magistrate of Eastside, who had passed the whole affair on to the palace.

And here she was, and what was Lord Kalthon going to do about it?

Lord Kalthon sighed, thanked her for her testimony, and dismissed her. Heremon the Mage was called forward.

"My lord," he said, "I am at a loss to explain this. Kallia is my neighbor, and I had thought that we were friends, after a fashion, and there can be no doubt that her shop was robbed, for I saw the broken door and the dead demon myself, but why she should accuse me I cannot guess. I swear, by all the gods and unseen powers, that I have never set foot in her shop without her invitation and that I did not break her door, nor slay the demon, nor take anything from her shop."

"Yet she says she saw you there," Kalthon pointed out. "She lies," Heremon said. "What else can it be?" The questioning continued, but nothing else of any use came out. Heremon would not speak of the Wizards' Guild, insisting that he had sworn an oath to reveal nothing about it and that it was not relevant.

Lord Kalthon sighed again, more deeply this time, and waved the wizard away. When the participants were out of earshot he leaned over and asked Okko, "Who lied?"

The theurgist looked up at him and turned up an empty palm. "My lord," he said, "I don't know. By my divinations, the wizard spoke nothing but truth-but there are spells that would conceal lies from me, simple spells that even an apprentice might use, and that a mage of Heremon's ability…"He didn't bother finishing the sentence.

"What of the woman?" the Minister of Justice asked. Okko shook his head. "Lord Kalthon, she is so tainted with demon scent that the gods I confer with will not admit she exists at all, and can say nothing about whether she lies."

"Damn." He considered. "Okko, you know something about the other schools of magic, don't you?"

Okko eyed the minister warily and hesitated before replying, "A little."

"Who can tell if a demonologist is lying? Who can't a wizard fool?"

Okko thought that over very carefully, then shrugged. "I would guess," he said, "that one demonologist could tell if another were engaged in trickery. And I'm sure that one wizard, properly trained, can detect another's spells."

"Then can you find me a demonologist we can trust? One who has no prior connection with this Kallia? And we'll need a wizard, one who's not in the Wizards' Guild…"

Okko held up a hand. "No, my lord," he said. "All wizards are members of the Guild. For anyone not in the Guild, to practice wizardry is to commit suicide."

"Well… do your best, then."

"As you wish." Okko bowed his head. Lord Kalthon straightened in his chair and announced, "This case cannot be decided today. All parties hereto will return here tomorrow at this same time. Failure to appear will be accounted an admission of guilt and a crime against the Hegemony, punishable at the overlord's pleasure; if there is anyone who has a problem with that, tell my clerk. Next case."

Sarai sat, only half listening, as the next case, a local magistrate's son accused of rape, was presented. She was thinking over the two magicians' statements.

If Heremon was lying, then why had he robbed Kallia? A successful wizard didn't need to resort to theft, not for the sort of things taken from Kallia. Even dragon's blood was not so rare or precious as all that. There were supposed to be substances wizards used that would be almost impossible to obtain, but they weren't anything a demonologist would have.

But then, if Heremon had not robbed Kallia, why would she say that he had? What could she hope to gain by making false accusations? Could she perhaps have some use for Heremon? Might she need a wizard's soul to appease some demon?

Sarai shook her head. Nobody knew what demonologists might need except other demonologists. That might be the explanation, but she wasn't going to figure it out; she didn't know enough about the so-called black arts.

Could there perhaps be something else at work?

The case before her father impinged slightly upon her thoughts, and she considered the fact that Kallia, while not young and of no remarkable beauty, was a reasonably attractive woman, while Heremon was a dignified and personable man of late middle age. Could there be some sort of romantic, or at any rate sexual, situation involved here? Nobody had mentioned spouses on either side of the dispute.

But both Kallia and Heremon had plenty of resources at their disposal; why would either of them resort to robbery, or false accusations of robbery?

If Heremon were, in fact, the thief, why did he break in through the front door and generally make such a mess of the job? He might not have any experience at burglary, but he wasn't stupid, to have attained his present status-the title "mage" was only given to a wizard of proven ability, one who had trained apprentices and who had demonstrated mastery of many spells.

And if Heremon was not the thief, who was? Had Kallia broken her own door and killed her own demon, to fake the theft? Killing a demon did not seem like a trivial matter, especially not for a demonologist, who would need to deal with other demons on a fairly regular basis.

Sarai mulled the whole thing over carefully.

When court was finally adjourned, she and her father returned to their apartments for a late supper. Kalthon the Younger and his nurse had waited for them, so the meal was hurried, and afterward Lord Kalthon settled at little Kalthon's side to tell him a bedtime story.

Sarai might ordinarily have stayed to listen-she loved a good story, and her father's were sometimes excellent-but tonight she had other plans. Instead, she put on her traveling cloak and headed for the door.

Her father looked up, startled. "Where are you going?"

"I just want to check on something," she said.

Kalthon the Younger coughed; he was a sickly child, always down with one illness or another, while Sarai was a healthy young woman, able to take care of herself. "All right," Lord Kalthon said, "be careful." He turned back to his son and continued, "So Valder the king's son took the enchanted sword…"

Sarai closed the door quietly on her way out, and a few minutes later she was riding one of the overlord's horses down Smallgate Street toward Eastside, toward Wizard Street.