“Ahhh… so that’s what is troubling you, yes? That I shot a blind man?”
“A blind prisoner.”
Braylar looked at me and forced a smile, thin but surprisingly unwobbly. “It was clear Rose was not going to be cooperative. The whole point of sparing them was to have them be blind witness and keep Gurdinn from pursuing, and Rose would have led them into the woods the moment we rolled off. Or blindly attacked me if I gave him a blade. He has no one to blame but himself.”
I chose not to argue the point. “Let’s assume Crowder does as you commanded. I still don’t quite understand, why the necessity for a warning at all? Don’t misunderstand-I am happy you let them live. But with Soffjian in the company, couldn’t you simply do the same thing to the Brunesmen?”
Braylar replied, “I would have thought you could tutor me on that score. Given your newfound expertise in all things Memoridon.”
And order on the wagon was restored. I felt my cheeks flush, even if I’d been wondering when he might comment on that. Perhaps I should have chosen to talk about caltrops or rolling gears instead. “I chatted with Skeelana briefly. She mentioned that the blindness might pass. Or not.”
“Well, then clearly she neglected to mention that Soffjian is not all-powerful. Blinding dozens of men on a field of battle is not so easily done as all that. Frankly, I am surprised she is still sitting in the saddle. I imagine your short confidant is propping her up just now and tending to her needs. Even if she was inclined, which she is not, my sister won’t be of any use to us or even herself for some time. For everything, a cost, archivist. And some things are less cheaply purchased than others, yes?”
Memory magic did seem to exact a toll on the user. Though Braylar was an unwitting user, at best. I was tempted to ask again how he was faring before recalling the warning. “Are there many like her? Among the Syldoon Towers?”
“War Memoridons? No. Which is likely a good thing.”
“Why is that?”
He swatted at a cloud of gnats. “It is true, if we had more with Soffjian’s very dangerous talents, we would be all but unstoppable. Anjuria never would have opposed us, or if they had, turned into a kingdom of the blind and mad if we allowed any to survive. But the Syldoon have kept the Memoridons in check in part because they are so few in number, and even then, those who can wipe out battalions like my sister are fewer still. There are rigid limits on both counts that all Towers must abide by. Mutually agreed upon limits. Any found violating them risk severe penalties.”
“Such as?”
Braylar looked at me and twitch-smiled-I was finally growing accustomed to it. “The Fifth Man.”
I waited for him to explain, and he must have enjoyed my waiting as he waited until I finally opened my mouth to ask for elaboration before saying, “Any Tower found violating the Memoridon limit must choose one fifth of its forces-nomination, lottery, volunteers, what have you-and summarily slaughter them. This includes the Tower’s Memoridons, so they don’t have incentive to try to swell their numbers on the sly.”
“One fifth. That is a severe penalty. Have many Towers risked such a punishment?”
Braylar replied, “That depends how you define ‘many.’ Four Towers have suffered the Fifth Man, but over the course of several centuries, that isn’t so very many. The largest of these was the Stag Tower-they were a prominent faction, nearly forty thousand strong. It took several days.”
“The Emperor executed eight thousand men?”
The twitching lip froze. “You misunderstand. The Stag Tower had to carry out the punishment themselves.”
“What if they hadn’t? Complied? Has that ever happened?”
Braylar nodded, slowly. “Once. Ten years ago. The Broken Tower.”
“Did you… so you saw it happen, then? Were you in Sunwrack?”
Braylar closed his eyes. “I was. The Broken Tower-well, that’s what they’re called now. Before the incident, they were the Fox Tower. The Broken Tower refused to strike down their own men. They were a smaller Tower-ten thousand strong. And they refused. So, it fell to the other Towers.”
“You and the others executed the thousand men?”
“No. We executed all of the men. Every last one. Most Towers that are commanded to enact the Fifth Man resist, stall, appeal. But none absolutely refused before. We didn’t have all ten thousand locked away. The Fox Tower repudiated, all but daring us to carry the sentence out. Perhaps thinking we wouldn’t. It was unprecedented, as I said.”
“But…”
“But the Emperor ordered it done. The law is the law. And so the other Towers attacked. Some from Fox escaped into the Torchfield and took to the streets. We hunted them down, district by district, house by house. Until every last one of the ten thousand was dead. Along with countless Thurvacians and casualties aplenty among the other Towers. Even Sunwrack, Capital of Coups, in all its bloody history, had never seen carnage in its streets as it did that day.”
We lapsed into silence for some time before I finally asked, “So, what now?”
“Now, we return to Sunwrack, hopefully without encountering any more large groups of armed men that would like to see me dead. And you return to your translation. You said you needed opportunity? Well, unless assaulted again, you shall have it. We have many, many miles before we reach Sunwrack. Surely enough for you to make considerable progress.”
While the prospect of doing something useful that did not require wielding a crossbow made me excited, I paused to ask, “And what of Henlester?”
“What of him?”
“Well, you mentioned you wanted him for political reasons, and because he might have knowledge about Memoridons. Or at least the early versions of them, before the Syldoon used them. Are you going to, uh, interrogate him?”
The wagon bounced over a rut and nearly sent me off the bench. “I do hope the High Priest proves worth the risk. I will not press him with Memoridons around, not until I have something of substance to talk to him about. If there was something that occurred deep in the history of his order, he would likely be aware though, and it would be better to have something concrete to assail him with. So, put your skills to use, Arki, and stop dawdling.”
Even with the rising temperatures inside the wagon, it was a welcome distraction to seclude myself in there and being poring over pages again. The passages in Middle Anjurian, while not easy, weren’t entirely unfamiliar, and tended to go more quickly. Not quick. But more quickly. In some instances, I had to force myself to slow a bit, to be sure I wasn’t missing anything or performing the gravest of translator missteps, seeing what I wanted to.
Still, hours came and went, and there was very little of interest in the remainder of the first chest. Well, of interest to Braylar-I found the entire contents absorbing. But while there were a number of references to the Deserter Gods here and there, none were especially illuminating or revealing anything new or noteworthy. And there were a few more oblique references to weapons like Bloodsounder, with one more corroborating the notion that wielder and weapon shared a name and were somehow bonded in both a physical and metaphysical sense (which was noteworthy, and certainly worth pointing out to the captain), but again, nothing entirely new for the remainder of that day.
We made camp in some woods alongside the road, hiding the wagons as best we could.
The next day passed, and I was so buried in the work I nearly forgot that the Brunesmen might still be out there hunting us until one of the scouts returned and reported that they were no longer even within a day’s ride of us. They had slowed or turned away. Or at least intended to give that impression. Braylar, suspecting a possible ploy and not one to deviate from protocol, especially as it involved gathering intelligence, ordered the scouts to remain vigilant. But it appeared that the blind men had indeed served as a warning.
Even though the Hornmen had been attempting to kill us, I hoped the blindness proved to be temporary. It might have been more merciful to kill them otherwise. No one had an easy path through life, but cripples least of all.