How Firm a Foundation (43 page)

The wagon doors were slammed and locked. Orders were shouted, and the convoy lurched into motion. There was no reason
those wagons had to have been built without springs, Merlin knew. They’d been built that way deliberately, with only one object in view: to make any prisoners’ journey as unpleasant as possible … and to show any witnesses how unpleasant that journey was.

Which is the entire reason they decided not to send them by water after all
, Merlin reflected bitterly.
They’re sending them the long way, by
land, so they can stop in every town to display their prizes, give every village the chance to watch them roll through on their way to the Temple and the Punishment of Schueler. They’re too damned valuable an
object lesson
for Clyntahn to waste sending them by sea … and God knows how many of them are going to die on the way. And there’s not one damn thing I can do about it. I can’t even sink them
at sea to spare them from what’s waiting
.

He watched that clumsy procession of iron-barred wagons lurching slowly northward from the city of Gorath and hated his helplessness as he’d seldom hated anything in Nimue Alban’s life or his own. Yet while he watched, he made himself one solemn promise.

Sir Gwylym Manthyr was right. What had happened to the city of Ferayd was nothing compared to what
was going to happen to the city of Gorath.

.VII.

Royal Palace, City of Manchyr, Princedom of Corisande

It wasn’t the throne room this time.

In many ways, Sharleyan would have preferred that venue, but there were traditions to break. Prince Hektor’s notion of judicial procedure had been to see to it that the accused got the proper sentence, not to worry about any pettifogging legal details like proving guilt or innocence. Trials were
an inconvenient, messy formality which sometimes ended with the accused actually getting off entirely, which was scarcely the reason he’d had the culprit arrested in the first place! Far more efficient and direct to simply have him hauled in front of the throne and sentenced without all that unnecessary running around.

To be fair, the majority of Hektor’s subjects had considered his justice neither
unduly capricious nor unnecessarily cruel. He’d maintained public order, prevented the nobility from victimizing the commoners too outrageously, supported the merchants and bankers’ property rights and general prosperity, and seen to it that most of his army’s killing had been done on someone else’s territory. Theoretically, there’d always been the appeal to the Church’s judgment, although
it had been resorted to only infrequently … and usually unsuccessfully. But by and large, Corisandians had assumed anyone Prince Hektor wanted to throw into prison or execute probably deserved it. If not for the crime of which he stood accused, for one he’d committed and gotten away with another time.

What that also meant, unfortunately, was that being hauled in front of the prince had been tantamount
to being punished. And what that meant, in turn, was that if Sharleyan dispensed justice from the throne room which had once been Hektor’s, those being brought before her would automatically assume they were simply there to learn what fate had already been decreed for them … and that “justice” actually had very little to do with the process. All of which explained why she was, instead, sitting
in the magnificently (if darkly) paneled Princess Aleatha’s Ballroom.

Sharleyan couldn’t imagine anyone voluntarily holding a ball in the room. Only one wall had any windows at all, and they were small. Not only that, but more recently constructed portions of the palace cut off most of the light they would have taken in, anyway. She supposed the vast, gloomy chamber would have looked much more
imposing with its dozen massive bronze chandeliers all alight, but the heat from that many candles would have been stifling, especially in Manchyr’s climate.

Probably just that northern blood of yours talking,
she thought.
As far as
these
people are concerned, it might simply have been comfortably warm. Maybe even bracingly cool!

No, she decided. Not even Corisandians could have done anything
but swelter under those circumstances.

She was dithering, she told herself, looking out across the rows of benches which had been assembled to face the dais upon which she sat. The main reason she’d chosen Princess Aleatha’s Ballroom—aside from the fact that it
wasn’t
the throne room—was its size. It was stupendous, bigger than any other chamber in the palace complex, and almost five hundred
people sat looking back at her across the open space cordoned off by Sir Koryn Gahrvai’s Guardsmen. There were nobles, clerics, and commoners in that crowd, chosen to make it as representative a mix of the population as possible, and some of them (not all commoners, by any means) seemed acutely uncomfortable in their present surroundings.

Perhaps some of that might have been due to the six members
of the Charisian Imperial Guard who stood between them and her dais on either side of Edwyrd Seahamper. Or, for that matter, to the way Merlin Athrawes loomed silently, somberly, and very, very intimidatingly at her back.

The dais raised her throne approximately three feet, and it was flanked by only slightly less ornate chairs in which the members of Prince Daivyn’s Regency Council were seated.
Two more chairs (remarkably plebeian compared to the Regency Council’s) sat directly before the dais at a long table placed just behind the line of Guardsmen and piled with documents. Spynsair Ahrnahld, her bespectacled, youthful secretary, sat in one of those chairs; Father Neythan Zhandor—bald head shining above its rapidly retreating fringe of brown hair, even in the ballroom’s subdued light—occupied
the other.

Archbishop Klairmant was also present, but he’d chosen to stand to Sharleyan’s right rather than be seated himself. She wasn’t certain why he’d made that choice. Perhaps it was to avoid giving the impression he, too, was seated to give judgment ex cathedra, adding the Church’s imprimatur to whatever judgments she rendered. Yet his position might also lead some to think he was standing
as her advisor and councilor.

And he’s going to get damned tired before the day is over,
she thought grimly.
Still, I suppose we’d best get to it
.

She raised one hand in a small yet regal gesture, and a shimmering musical note rang through the enormous room as Ahrnahld struck the gong on one end of the document-piled table.

“Draw nigh and give ear!” a deep-voiced chamberlain—a
Charisian
chamberlain—bellowed.
“Give ear to the Crown’s justice!”

Utter silence answered the command, and Sharleyan felt the stillness radiating outward. Many of the people seated on those rows of benches would normally have been chattering away behind their hands, eyes bright as they exchanged the latest, delicious gossip about the spectacle they were there to see. But not today. Today, they sat waiting tensely until the
double doors of the ballroom’s main entrance swung wide and six men were marched through them, surrounded by guards.

The prisoners were richly dressed, jewels sparkling about their persons, immaculately groomed. Yet despite that, and even though they held their heads high, there was something beaten about them. And well there should be, Sharleyan reflected grimly. They’d been arrested over six
months ago. Their trials had been concluded before a combined panel of prelates, peers, and commoners two five-days before she ever arrived in Manchyr, and they could be in little doubt about the verdicts.

They halted in front of her, and to their credit (she supposed) five of them looked her squarely in the eye. The sixth, Sir Zher Sumyrs, the Baron of Barcor, refused to raise his own eyes and
she saw the gleam of perspiration on his forehead.

Ahrnahld pushed back his chair and stood, taking the top folder from the stack in front of him and opening it before he looked at Sharleyan.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “we bring before you, accused of treason, Wahlys Hillkeeper, Earl of Craggy Hill; Bryahn Selkyr, Earl of Deep Hollow; Sahlahmn Traigair, Earl of Storm Keep; Sir Adulfo Lynkyn, Duke
of Black Water; Rahzhyr Mairwyn, Baron of Larchros; and Sir Zher Sumyrs, Baron of Barcor.”

“Have these men been given benefit of trial? Have all of their rights under the law been observed?” Her voice was chill, and Zhandor stood beside Ahrnahld.

“They have, Your Majesty,” he replied, his deep voice grave. “As the law requires, their cases were heard before a court of Church, Lords, and Commons
which determined their guilt or innocence by secret ballot so that none might unduly influence the others. Each had benefit of counsel; each was allowed to examine all the evidence against him; and each was permitted to summon witnesses of his choice to testify on his behalf.”

There was no hesitation or question in that voice, and Sharleyan heard one of the accused—Barcor, she thought—inhale
sharply. Father Neythan Zhandor wasn’t just any law master. He’d been picked by Maikel Staynair for this mission because of his reputation. A Langhornite, like most law masters, he was (or had been, before the schism, at least) widely acknowledged as one of Safehold’s two or three most knowledgeable masters of admiralty and international law. If Father Neythan said all of their rights had been observed,
that was that.

“Upon what grounds were they accused of treason?”

“Upon the following specifications, Your Majesty,” Zhandor said, opening a folder of his own. “All stand accused of violating their sworn oaths of fealty to Prince Daivyn. All stand accused of violating their sworn oaths to the Crown of Charis, freely given after Corisande’s surrender to the Empire. All stand accused of raising
personal armies in violation of their oaths to the Crown of Charis and also in violation of the law of Corisande limiting the number of armed retainers permitted to any peer of the realm. All stand accused of trafficking and conspiring with the condemned Tohmys Symmyns of Zebediah. All stand accused of plotting insurrection and armed violence against Prince Daivyn’s Regency Council and against the
Crown of Charis. In addition, Earl Craggy Hill stands accused of violating his personal oath and abusing and betraying his authority and position as a member of the Regency Council in the furtherance of their conspiracy and his own quest for power.”

Stillness crackled in the ballroom, and Barcor licked his lips. Craggy Hill glared at Sharleyan, but it was an empty glare, little more than surface
deep, for something darker and far less defiant lived behind it.

“And has the court which heard their cases reached a verdict?”

“It has, Your Majesty,” Ahrnahld said. He turned the top page in the folder before him.

“Wahlys Hillkeeper, Earl of Craggy Hill, has been adjudged guilty of all charges brought against him,” he read in a flat, carrying voice. Then he turned a second page as he had
the first.

“Bryahn Selkyr, Earl of Deep Hollow, has been adjudged guilty of all charges brought against him.”

Another page.

“Sahlahmn Traigair, Earl of Storm Keep, has been adjudged guilty of all charges brought against him.”

Another whisper of turning paper.

“Sir Adulfo Lynkyn, Duke of Black Water, has been adjudged guilty of all charges brought against him.”

“Rahzhyr Mairwyn, Baron of
Larchros, has been adjudged guilty of all charges brought against him.”

“Sir Zher Sumyrs, Baron of Barcor, has been adjudged guilty of four of the five charges brought against him, but acquitted of the charge of personally trafficking and conspiring with Tohmys Symmyns.”

The last page turned and he closed the folder. Then he turned and looked up at Sharleyan.

“The verdicts have been signed,
sealed, and mutually witnessed by every member of the court, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you,” Sharleyan said and sat back in her throne, laying her forearms along the armrests as she gazed at the men before her. The ballroom’s tension crackled higher now that the formalities were out of the way, and she felt the witnesses’ focused attention like the rays of the sun captured and concentrated by a magnifying
glass. But not quite like the sun, for this focus was cold and sharp as a Cherayth icicle, not fiery.

It
ought
to be fiery,
she thought.
I ought to feel passionate satisfaction and justification at seeing these men brought to the end they deserve. But it isn’t, and I don’t
.

She didn’t know precisely what she
did
feel, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was what she had to
do
.

“You’ve heard
the charges against you,” she said in a voice of ice. “All of you have heard the verdicts. All of you have had ample opportunity to see the massive weight of evidence which was brought to bear against each of you. No honest-minded man or woman on the face of this world will ever be able to dispute the proofs of your crimes, and the records of your trials are open to all. Every step of the process
which brings you here this day has been in accordance with the law of your own princedom, as well as the law of Charis. We will entertain no pleas or protests against the justice of the court which tried you or of the scrupulous observation of the law, your rights, or the verdicts. If any of you have anything you wish to say before sentence is passed upon you, however, now is the time.”

Craggy
Hill and Storm Keep only glared, helpless fury burning in their eyes. Deep Hollow’s facial muscles quivered, although Sharleyan couldn’t have said what emotion woke those spasms. He pressed his lips together without speaking, however, and her eyes moved to Black Water. The duke’s face was dark with anger and curdled with hate, yet she actually felt a flicker of sympathy in his case. His father’s
death at Darcos Sound was what had brought him into the conspiracy. At least he had the excuse of honest anger, honest outrage, not solely the cynical ambition which had served Craggy Hill and Deep Hollow.

“I wish to speak,” Baron Larchros said after a moment, and Sharleyan nodded to him.