Above His Proper Station (20 page)

Anrel was tempted to argue, but he did not; he knew that Derhin was right. “Can you not explain to the emperor that the mob demands a sacrifice? Can he not let them have a few underlings to hang?”

Derhin glanced at the door again. “I should not tell you this.”

Anrel shrugged. “Then don't. I am here at your request; I have no hold on you.”

“Oh, you most certainly
do
have a hold upon me, Alvos,” Derhin replied, leaning forward. “Without you I would not be a delegate. Without you the Grand Council would be the emperor's puppet, and from what I have seen of His Imperial Majesty's work so far, I fear that might well have meant the empire's downfall. We owe you a great deal.”

“But not a pardon,” Anrel replied bitterly.

“No,” Derhin said, sitting up again. “Not a pardon. Not now. Perhaps someday.”

“I am owed an uncollectible debt, then.”

“Yes. I admit it; you are. You are a sensible man; I saw that back in Naith. You understand.”

“If I were a sensible man, I would have no
need
for a pardon.”

Derhin smiled crookedly. “Perhaps,” he said. “Nonetheless, we are here, I am in your debt, and I would appreciate your counsel.”

“My
counsel
? Delegate li-Parsil, I am merely an outlaw clerk, a student of law and history who failed to find an appointment.”

“You are a man my late friend Lord Valin trusted and considered a close friend.”

Anrel could not deny that; he stared at Derhin in silent frustration for a few seconds, then said, “Please yourself, then, but let it be upon your own head.”

“We have sent envoys to the emperor,” Derhin said. “We have told him that this was
not
a mere misunderstanding, it is
not
past, and it is
not
settled. We have asked him to deliver to the magistrates, or to the council, the foreign magicians and whatever officials were responsible for distributing polluted wheat. So far, he has refused to listen.”

“That is unfortunate.”

“Yes.”

“Can you not have them arrested without the emperor's involvement?”

“The emperor has said he will not permit it, that they were acting upon his own orders and are not to be punished for obeying him.”

“The emperor is a fool,” Anrel replied. There had been times he would not have stated it so bluntly, but he was already condemned for sedition; what further harm could it do to speak plainly?

“I have been aware of that for some time now,” Derhin said, “but in this case he may have some reason for his reluctance. You know it is traditional to allow the condemned to make final statements; if everyone we hang says he was acting upon the emperor's orders, that will not enhance His Imperial Majesty's situation.”

“True. Could those final statements be prevented, perhaps? Threats made against the families of the condemned to ensure silence?”

Derhin stared at him. “By the Mother, Anrel! Threaten innocents? Women and children?”

Anrel gazed back calmly. “Lord Valin was an idealist; I am not. Even so, I am not suggesting such threats be carried out, only that they be made. Harming innocents would not benefit the government; it would instead provoke the populace. If no one but the condemned is aware that such threats were made, though, then the knowledge will pass harmlessly into the afterlife with them.”

Derhin's shocked expression faded only slightly. “I don't … I don't believe such a thing has been suggested.”

“You might bring it up, then. How much have you offered the emperor for your scapegoats?”

Derhin blinked. “What?”

“Well, you want him to do something he doesn't want to do. In such a case, you must offer payment for his cooperation.”

“Oh,” Derhin said. His expression turned thoughtful. “I had not thought of it in those terms. We had told him that he needed to act to appease the people of Lume, but I don't believe we have offered anything more in return.”

“He probably does not consider the common people a real danger.”

“As you said, he is a fool.”

“You will continue your negotiations with him, then?”

“I am sure we will.”

For a moment the two men sat silently, contemplating each other across the table. Then Anrel said, “There is another name you have not mentioned in this matter.”

He had resisted mentioning this until now, despite the obvious temptation. Here, at last, was a chance to see Lord Allutar brought to trial—not for murder, as Anrel would have preferred, but for the misuse of sorcery and endangering the common welfare. Valin and Reva would be avenged, albeit not as directly as Anrel might have hoped.

“Oh?”

“You made a reference to sorcerers who polluted the Raish Valley farmlands, but you surely know that was the doing of one man, not several.”

“Was it? I have heard rumors …”

“Yes. The landgrave of Aulix. Lord Allutar Hezir.”

“How do you know that?”

That stopped Anrel for a moment. How
did
he know?

Lord Blackfield had said that Allutar's fertility spell was responsible for the pollution, but did Anrel actually
know
that to be the case?

He frowned, trying to compose a reply.

“It doesn't matter,” Derhin said before Anrel could answer. “We can't touch Lord Allutar in any case.”

“What? Why
not
?”

“Because he is a member of the Grand Council.”

“What?”

“Have I not mentioned that? Has no one told you? Delegates to the Grand Council are granted a full pardon for any and all crimes they may have committed prior to their election. It became necessary to enact such a decree to prevent a constant stream of accusations and attempts to discredit or depose delegates—in the early days, just after the winter solstice, some factions developed a tactic of having opposing delegates arrested on purely fictional charges just long enough to prevent them from voting on certain matters. The blanket pardon put an end to it. Delegates are now answerable only to the council itself, not to any lesser authorities or magistrates.”

The audacity of this staggered Anrel. “That's … that's very convenient,” he said.

“It was necessary,” Derhin replied. “At any rate, Lord Allutar cast his fertility spell before his election, so he has a pardon that we cannot withdraw without casting the council into renewed chaos. Even assuming that any magistrate would find a landgrave guilty of a crime for trying to improve his land's wheat yield—and we both know how outrageous an assumption that is—we cannot make any such charge.”

“So of those guilty of malfeasance in the recent events,
all
of them are protected by either the emperor, or by the Grand Council itself.”

“I am afraid that is indeed the case.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“Nonetheless, it is the case.”

Anrel glanced at the shuttered windows, and sighed deeply. “Delegate li-Parsil,” he said, “I am beginning to think that the empire
deserves
the disasters facing it.”

“Only the Mother and the Father can say whether that is so, Master Murau,” Derhin replied. “But I fear you may be right.”

16

In Which Anrel Visits Several Parts
of the Imperial Capital

The remainder of the conversation achieved nothing of any great significance; Anrel told Derhin something of a few of his exploits and inquired after the health of Amanir tel-Kabanim, while Derhin told Anrel a great deal about the work and workings of the Grand Council since it had first convened. At last, though, both ran out of questions, and they agreed to separate.

Anrel waited while Harban once again blindfolded Derhin, bound his hands, and led him out to Lord Blackfield's coach, and once he heard the rattle of harness and creak of the wheels, Anrel descended to street level himself and set out on foot—not for Dezar House, but for the Pensioners' Quarter.

The damage was far worse than he had expected; anything that might burn had burned, and not a single structure in the quarter still had a roof. Even most of the walls of stone and brick had fallen; bricks had cracked and crumbled in the intense heat, and mortar had burned away. Blackened corpses still lay in the rubble here and there. The major streets had largely been cleared of rubble, but for the most part the watchmen and laborers had not yet ventured into the still-smoldering ruins on either side.

Ordinarily after two days in the summer heat the stench of those bodies would be horrific, but these were so badly scorched that the smell of decay was almost undetectable.

The smell of smoke, on the other hand, was overpowering.

Anrel avoided the workmen clearing the wreckage as best he could; there were half a dozen teams moving through the streets, hauling away debris. Each of these groups was composed of three watchmen and half a dozen laborers, and Anrel did not want any contact with watchmen—though these wore the deep red of the City Watch, rather than the green of the Emperor's Watch.

Except for those crews, the only signs of life were insects—ants and buzzing flies. Even the rats had not yet returned.

This devastation was at the emperor's orders, and according to Derhin, His Imperial Majesty considered it a mere incident, over and done with. Anrel wondered whether His Imperial Majesty had
seen
just what his hired magicians had done, seen it with his own eyes.

He made his way through the once-familiar streets now rendered strange, and found his way to his own erstwhile home on Tranquillity Street.

The house, once home to a dozen people, was now not even a shell, but merely a collection of fragmentary walls in a sea of ash and charcoal. Anrel took some comfort in the fact that he could see no evidence of human remains; apparently all his housemates had escaped.

Or perhaps they had died in the streets, but at any rate they had not been caught in their beds. He had not thought that any of the three boys would have allowed themselves to be trapped here, but the old man, Apolien—well, who knew what he might have done? He had always been incomprehensible. And there had been the people in the other rooms—a mother and two daughters in one, a husband and wife in another, a pair of brothers and their adopted son in a third.

Where had they all gone? Surely, they had not all perished; where were they, then? Some might still be hiding in the ancient tunnels, but most had probably scattered through the city, hiding in alleys, perhaps taking shelter under the watchmen's arches—every thief and beggar knew that the best place to hide from the watch was in the shadows under their very feet.

But they might come back to see what had become of their former home, just as he had. He leaned over a ruined wall and picked up a blackened scrap of iron from Apolien's bed frame, then scratched a quick message in thieves' cipher into the soot covering the wall, the plaster that showed through the letters standing out whitely against the black.

It read simply,
DYSSAN—DEZAR HOUSE
. He thought that would be enough so that anyone looking for him would find him. They would need to figure out that he was staying on the second floor with Lord Blackfield, and not with any of the other residents above or below, but he did not think that would be a real obstacle.

That done, he turned and walked away. There was nothing left for him here.

He arrived back in Lord Blackfield's rooms in time for supper, and the Quandishman questioned him as they dined, eager for every detail of both his conversation with Derhin and his visit to the Pensioners' Quarter.

“If you will pardon the indelicacy, Master Murau,” Lord Blackfield said when Anrel had finished his account, “I take it that for the past season or two you have been making your living outside the law.”

“It is difficult for a wanted criminal to do otherwise,” Anrel replied.

“Do you intend to resume your life of crime?”

“Not if I can avoid it, my lord.”

“Yet you returned to the Pensioners' Quarter, and looked for your former comrades in your illicit enterprises.”

“Say rather, my lord, that I looked for my friends and neighbors.”

“Of course, of course; how terribly rude of me! And I am sure that I do not need to tell you that I would consider it most inappropriate should you participate in any sort of thievery or other misbehavior while living here as my guest.”

Annoyed, Anrel said, “My lord, while I stay here, I have food and shelter far superior to anything I might obtain by other means. I have no
reason
to resume my old habits.”

“Of course! But you may not yet have considered a possibility. I take it you left a message of some sort, telling your former neighbors where they might find you?”

Anrel had not mentioned the note he had scratched on the wall, but it was not an unreasonable inference from some of his remarks. “I did,” he acknowledged.

“Naturally, and I would hardly expect otherwise. However, I want to impress upon you that you must make it absolutely clear to any of your friends who might visit that any pilferage or other damage to my household is not acceptable. Remind them that while I may not be a noble of the Walasian Empire, I am nonetheless a sorcerer. I know how to place wards upon my belongings, and I feel no need to rely on watchmen to protect my home or my person.”

“Of course, my lord!” The possibility that Mieshel or Doz or Po might think it clever to steal a few choice little treasures from Lord Blackfield had occurred to him, and Anrel knew it was a legitimate concern, but he thought he could keep any visitors in line.

“Also, if you don't mind, I might be interested in meeting some of your old comrades. I might be able to find employment for some of them.”

Startled, Anrel said, “I will mention this, my lord.”

“Thank you. Now, might I interest you in a little wine? I have a case of red newly arrived from Lithrayn …”