“It was the wizards,” Crow said. “Not all of them, but some. A few very great, very evil wizards, who were fighting each other for power and control.”
“They wanted to be king?”
It was a lot more complicated than that, but close enough. “They did. So the king tithed the people to pay the army, then directed the army to fight the wizards.”
“And they won.”
“And we won,” Crow agreed.
“ ‘We’ won?” Zeno said.
“I was a soldier in the king’s army.”
“Really?” he said, eyes wide. “Did you kill anybody?”
“Only enemies of the king,” she said, and hoped it was true. “And yes, we won, but the problem still remained.”
“The wizards.”
“Yes. Two died in battle, and the third was tried, convicted, and executed in Hestia.” She had been on duty at that execution and still remembered the curses with which Nyssa had fouled the air as she burned. The circle of wizards surrounding her pyre had been hard put to keep up with the counterspells. Even now Crow wondered if they’d managed to get them all.
“And then the king figured out a way to stop the wars.”
“He hopes so. Everyone was tired of war, like you and your father. It was expensive, and destructive, and it killed too many of us. How much do you get paid to work here?”
He grinned. “A lot. Enough for me to send half home to my mother every week.”
She smiled. “The king will be pleased to hear it. That was what he had in mind when he brought the Nine Provinces together to sign the Treaty, and when he worked with them to write the Charter.”
“How does it work?”
She had repeated it so many times over the past three months that it rolled off her tongue like a monk’s evening prayers. “In the Treaty, the Nine Provinces acknowledge the sovereign rule of Hestia. In exchange, the ruler in Hestia agrees to keep the peace.”
“And you do that.”
“And the Sword and Seer do that.”
“How many Swords are there?”
“Nine Swords and nine Seers, one pair for each province.”
His eyes slid to her sword.
“What?” she said, stifling a yawn. It was late, and Makarios’s beer was finally catching up with her.
“How does it work, exactly? Is it permitted to say?”
She chuckled. “I am no wizard, young Zeno. I bear the Sword of Justice. It speaks through me. The Guild of the Magi has laid it under the most powerful of enchantments. Its power draws on theirs.” And hers, and the Seer’s.
“In Hestia? All that way away?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know magic could be made at such a distance.”
“I don’t think the wizards knew it, either, until the king wrote the Charter, and they had to find a way.” She got to her feet. “And now, young Zeno, I’m for my bed, as you should be for yours.”
“What’s that?” he said, his head turning toward the stable door.
She heard it, too, a rising tide of sound with the unpleasant smell of riot about it. The hilt of the Sword slid into her hand.
A crowd was gathering, lit by torches held high. More people were emptying out of buildings, flooding down narrow streets to gather in the square, jerkins pulled hastily over nightgowns, confusion growing into an ugly, palpable anger. Crow saw Cornelius hurrying out of the inn and caught his elbow. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He halted, looking relieved to see her. “Someone has been killed, a girl, they say.”
Behind him Crow saw Sharryn, staff in hand, Makarios at her heels. Both were dressed, barely. Sharryn heard Cornelius’s words. “There’s been a murder?”
Crowfoot climbed to the floor of a vendor’s stand at the edge of the square and looked over the heads of the crowd.
The canvas roof over the dais from which the Kalliopean poet had been holding forth earlier in the day had been removed and a rope tossed over one of crosspieces. The noose at the end encircled the neck of a thin man with a bruised and bleeding face and both arms tied behind his back.
“Elias!” Zeno said, who had boosted himself up beside her, and disappeared into the crowd, heading in the direction of the man.
Crow swore. “Cornelius! Announce us!”
His eyes widened, and he stood up straight. Crow’s request was in the nature of being appointed bailiff by royal command. “Make way for the Seer and Sword!” he called, and proved to have a bullfrog bellow that was admirably suited to the task. “Make way! Make way for the king’s justice!”
Crow raised the Sword over her head, hand clasped around the scabbard, and followed him. Heads turned, eyes widened, people took involuntary steps back, and if a respectful silence did not fall, then at least a path was cleared to the focal point of the hubbub. Sharryn was at Crow’s heels, and they both heard Blanca’s urgent neigh and Pedro’s whinnies. The crowd was surly and hostile, but they pushed through to stand in the small space created for them by Cornelius before the poet’s dais, and the tableau waiting there.
The dead girl was blond and buxom. Her skirts were ruffled and dirtied, her bodice torn, and there were dark marks around her throat. The tip of her tongue protruded from her mouth in a manner that put Crowfoot forcibly in mind of the statues of the stone gargoyles lining the cornice of the roof of the Guild of the Magi back in Hestia. Those gargoyles, however, formed a ring of power designed to keep the forces of darkness from penetrating the sanctuary. This girl had had no such defense.
A man stood next to the body, tall, muscles going to fat. He had a heavy jaw and dark eyes set deep beneath a shelf of a brow. Collapsed against his side, tears sliding down her face, was a plump, blond woman, older than the girl but so similar in form and feature that the relationship was obvious.
Sharryn leaned down to close the girl’s wide, staring blue eyes with a gentle hand. This small act of compassion had a soothing effect on the crowd, and Crow could feel a palpable easing of tension.
Sharryn stood up, leaning on her staff, and looked at the couple. “Your daughter?” she said gently.
He jerked his head at the blond woman. “Hers.”
“I am so sorry,” Sharryn told her.
The woman continued to weep with no reply.
Sharryn looked at the man. “Your name, goodman?”
His expression was not friendly, but he said civilly enough, “Nestor. This is my wife, Agathi.”
“And this was…”
“Agathi’s daughter, Nella.”
“Not your daughter.”
He shook his head. “From her first marriage.”
“Ah.” Sharryn looked around for her new bailiff. “Goodman, a blanket or a cloak, if you please.”
Cornelius nodded, picked up the canvas that had been the roof of the dais, and spread it over Nella’s body without waiting to be told.
“Now then,” Sharryn said, looking at the young man with the noose around his neck. “I see you have determined who committed this foul deed.”
“We have,” Nestor growled.
“Good,” Sharryn said. “You have proof, of course.”
“He was found standing over the body.”
“Ah. Who found him?”
“I did.”
The crowd had crept closer again, the better to hear every word. “I see,” Sharryn said.
He stuck out a truculent jaw. “It is our right, under the Charter, to exact justice.”
“It is,” Sharryn told him, “when it is justice.”
Nestor’s face darkened, and there was a corresponding mutter from the crowd.
The young man with the noose around his neck began to struggle against it and received a cuff on one ear in response from one of the two men holding him. Crow recognized him, and then knew the man he was preparing to hang. These were the two who had fought over the girl in the square that afternoon. She looked down at the canvas-covered body. This girl.
Sharryn looked up at the young man in the noose. “Do you deny these charges, goodman?”