He followed her anyway, his page at his elbow, down some dark, stone steps, then, and into the bowels of the Justiciary dungeons.
A lantern hung outside Lady Tathilde Renine’s cell, yet she blinked at the new light beyond its bars. She sat alone on a small stool…a lady of her breeding would never deign to sit on the stone floor, Rhillian judged. The lady’s eyes narrowed in suspicion to see Rhillian, then widened as the Chief Justiciar shuffled into view, and leaned a steadying hand upon the bars.
“Your Justice,” said Lady Renine. “You’ve come. I had feared this insurrection had claimed you too.”
“The law is intact,” Sinidane replied. “Merely somewhat taken aback.”
Lady Renine came smoothly to her feet. “Your Justice, I would like to protest this appalling treatment, as it is clearly beneath a lady of my station. Further, the laws of your beloved Justiciary clearly state that any so detained must be formally charged by an officer of Rhodaan, not on the whim or imperial writ of Saalshen.” This last with a sharp glare at Rhillian.
“Captains of the Steel do qualify, Lady Renine,” Sinidane said mildly.
“The Steel swore an oath before the gods to uphold the office of the Council, not to arrest them!” said Lady Renine. “I have seen many dear family friends and elected councilmen marched past these bars, men the Steel swore to serve and protect with their lives.”
“You seem to confuse the nobility with the Council, Lady Renine,” Rhillian observed. “They are not the same thing, whatever the nobility’s attempts to purchase so many Council seats that it may appear so.”
“I’ll not stand here and be dictated to on matters of Rhodaani governance by a serrin! Just the other day, I was lunching with the serrin ambassador Lesthen, and he assured me that the days of Saalshen’s interference in the affairs of Rhodaan were over. And now we see it happening all over again.”
“Again?” Rhillian asked. “To my memory, we’ve never done this before. Unless you mean Maldereld. Do you mean Maldereld, Lady Renine?”
Lady Renine’s jaw trembled. Sinidane watched her. It was a curious question for the leader of Rhodaan’s feudalists to be asked, before such a man as Sinidane. Feudalists who decried the loss of old human ways, yet professed not to hate the new Council, the new Justiciary, the new laws, the divisions of human power, that had made Rhodaan everything that it was today. To regret the coming of Maldereld would be to regret all those things. To regret, indeed, that a man like Sinidane, practising the things he practised, should even exist.
“I wish to see my son,” Lady Renine replied, her voice low and cold.
“He is in the Mahl’rhen,” said Rhillian. “We do not lock up children, Lady Renine. He is well fed and looked after.”
“Bring him to me!” Lady Renine shouted. Rhillian did not blink, the lady’s furious stare struggled to hold her own, then flicked away.
“We have your correspondence with the Larosans,” Rhillian continued. “The letters. The offers of conciliation, of marriage and alliance.”
“Forgeries,” said Lady Renine, recovering some of her imperious calm. “I was warned the serrin would try something like this. Do not believe them, Justice Sinidane, they are sly and full of tricks.”
“I can prove otherwise. You would have offered the Larosans alliance, would you not? They already wed Sofy Lenayin. You would perhaps wed Alythia Lenayin to one of your allied nobles…perhaps even to your son Alfriedo? Or perhaps one of your new allies in Elisse? King Torvaal of Lenayin’s honour would not then allow him to attack Rhodaan, but only if you could demonstrate true rulership over Rhodaan. To gain it, you could offer the people of Rhodaan peace, against the armies that threaten them.
“But that peace would come with terms, would it not? The Larosans have invoked a holy war to free Bacosh lands of ungodly serrin. If the Larosans cannot demonstrate Rhodaan to be free of serrin, then they cannot claim victory, and the priesthood that pays for much of their war shall be displeased. What would be your intent then, Lady Renine? To rouse a pogrom against all serrin and part-serrin in Rhodaan? To cleanse us from this place?”
“You speak in paranoid riddles!” Lady Renine laughed contemptuously. “We could not do such a thing if we tried. The Steel would not allow it, nor the Nasi-Keth. Saalshen has so many powerful friends in Rhodaan, yet the serrin claim fear of persecution to justify this new tyranny!”
“Or would you seek to use the support for the nobility that does exist within the Steel,” Rhillian continued, “to undermine them? Already we have reports of desertions from amongst their ranks, and protests from some of General Zulmaher’s friends at his arrest. Would you undermine them to the extent that you should encourage them to lose? If the Army of Larosa and their allies should march into Tracato and hand the Lordship of Rhodaan to young Alfriedo, that would solve all of your problems at once, would it not?”
“You fool,” Lady Renine replied, “with your actions here, you make that all the more likely. You undermine the Steel, not us. Its soldiers desert because of your actions, not mine. You would leave us defenceless before the greatest army humanity has ever seen, and now you seek to lay the blame at my feet. Justice Sinidane, you cannot take these outrageous slurs seriously.”
“I assure you, Lady Renine,” said the old man, “I shall take no outrageous slurs seriously, should they be proven to be so. But quantified, proven accusations, I should take very seriously indeed. We shall see, in due course, which these are.”
Sinidane warned Rhillian later, as they made their way slowly up the steps from the dungeon, “Do not think that you have convinced me of the woman’s guilt, Lady Rhillian.” The old man’s grip was firm upon her offered arm, and she climbed slowly. “Nor that of her companions. I do agree to a likelihood, and in all my years I have never known serrin to produce false evidence, but the exact truth of such matters lies only in the laps of the gods. We mortals have only the law, and the law requires proof.”
“If such exists, I shall present it to you.”
“Furthermore, I do not like to see the Council suspended,” said the old man. “The gods shall think it ill. I would ask that you allow it to sit in session as soon as possible.”
“How is that possible, with half its members either arrested or under suspicion?”
“Lady Rhillian, I care not for your difficulties. This city’s institutions have been all that holds us above the barbarian fray for two centuries now. I tell you, I will not see them suspended indefinitely. Instruct one of your people to look into finding replacements for those arrested, I will investigate the legality at this end. You may consider that my order.”
“As you say,” Rhillian agreed. She was not prepared to challenge the man’s authority. They reached the top of the stairs, and Sinidane stopped, turning to face her.
“Is it you who commands?” he asked her, searching her face.
“By default, it appears so,” Rhillian said carefully. “Until General Lucia is returned from the border. It was not of my choosing, but the captains insisted.”
Sinidane sighed, and patted her arm. “I love this city,” he conceded to her. “I love this land of Rhodaan, and Enora. Ilduur too, in my weaker moments.”
“I too,” said Rhillian. “I hope to save them from capitulation to the darkest forces humanity has known.”
“I do not mean love in some woolly headed parochial sense, please understand. I mean that I love them for what they are. For the hope they represent, for all humanity. In fact, parochialism is my enemy. I fight it daily, and today, I see it running loose in my city. Beware the parochials, Lady Rhillian, for they believe in the conceit that Rhodaan’s greatness stems purely from the greatness of the Rhodaani character. And I am well aware that it does not.