New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (35 page)

He’d gone to real trouble to track down the map, following it first to Deadweather and then all the way to Mata Kalun. But the kind of regret I heard in those words didn’t seem to match up with the loss of what only amounted to a few weeks—during which he’d managed to invade and capture the biggest city in the New Lands, so it wasn’t like finding the map had taken up his every waking moment.

And the map wasn’t the real prize. It was the Fist of Ka.
Millicent once told me her father had spent years searching for the Fist, digging all over Sunrise, long before he ever suspected there was a map that might lead him to it. I’d seen with my own eyes the long shelf of books he kept in his library about Native tribes and their legends, all part of the research for his quest.

The Fist, and its supposedly godlike powers—that was what had taken years from him. If the map was worthless, there’d still be other places to look, and maybe even other maps. But if whatever I’d copied down from the Fire King’s tomb convinced Pembroke that the Fist itself wasn’t what he thought it was, and all the time he’d spent looking for it had been wasted…well, then his reaction made a lot more sense than if he’d just spent a few weeks tracking down a bum map.

And the more I thought about the legend of the Fist, the more it made sense that the whole thing was just a story, cooked up by people who’d seen things beyond their understanding and were looking for a way to explain them.

What had Kira said were the Fist’s powers? To give life and take it. To heal and to kill. To burn and to build.

Everyone I’d ever heard of who entered the Valley of Ka for the first time—me, Guts, my family, all the way back to the first Cartager invaders a hundred years ago—had been struck down by an invisible, deadly force.

And those of us who took the cure had just as miraculously been healed.

But that deadly force was just something in the water. And the cure was a kind of medicine, growing naturally in that mossy plant. It made perfect sense—except maybe to those Cartager
soldiers, most of whom never got the cure and wound up dropping dead at the feet of the Okalu they were trying to conquer.

I could see as how both sides in that battle might mistake the mass death of the invaders for the wrath of Ka, even though it clearly wasn’t.

Then the power to burn: what was that? If it was the ability to summon fire from nothing, I’d seen Kira do that with the fireballs. It looked mystical at the time, but when she explained the whole thing, it turned out there was nothing more to it than a simple recipe and a lot of practice.

What was left? The power to build. What did that mean? The Okalu had built Mata Kalun, and the massive temple definitely looked miraculous. But from what I’d read in books and seen in pictures, builders on the Continent had created equally miraculous things, from kingly castles to giant cathedrals that glorified the Savior. I couldn’t for the life of me explain how they built them, but I felt sure if I was a builder, it wouldn’t seem any more mystical than thatching a hut.

It all made perfect, stupid sense. There was no Fist at all. Or, more likely, there
was
—and it was hidden away somewhere just like the legend said, buried in secret by a dying and desperate king who hoped someday his people would dig it up and rule again.

But it was all nonsense. That Fist wasn’t going to save the Okalu now any more than it had saved them a hundred years ago.

It was a piece of jewelry.

And Pembroke was angry because it wasn’t going to help him rule the New Lands after all. But he’d figure out soon enough—he probably had already—that it didn’t matter. He hadn’t needed
the Fist to take Pella Nonna. He wouldn’t need it to take the rest of the Continent. He was either going to come out on top, or he wasn’t. The Fist wasn’t going to make a bit of difference either way.

It was cold comfort, figuring all that out now. And it made me feel like a fool. If I’d only realized it, at any point, right up until the end…I could have just walked away. We all could have.

That whole time, we were chasing a fantasy.

Why didn’t I see it? All I had to do was think it through. Why did I believe the fantasy?

Because everybody else did. And I wasn’t strong enough to think for myself.

THE DOOR OPENED.
There were two soldiers, and a third man in uniform—older than the others, with gray in his hair and fancy ribbons across his chest that said he was someone important.

The older man wrinkled his nose.

“He stinks. Clean him up.”

The old man left, and the two soldiers took me upstairs. They let me have a bath, and gave my clothes to an old Native woman who washed them while I ate breakfast. It was morning, although I wouldn’t have known it until I came up from the dungeon and saw the light.

Then they left me alone, wrapped in a cotton blanket. I hadn’t had the manacles on for a while now. They were barely bothering to guard me. If I’d been wearing clothes, I would have made a dash for it.

Pretty soon, the soldiers brought the clothes back, which were tolerably dry. I put them on and was just starting to think
seriously about how I might run off when the man with the ribbons returned.

“Time to go,” he told the soldiers. “Bind his hands. Rope, no chains. And put a gag on him—Governor doesn’t want any editorializing.”

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“An appointment with justice,” he said, in a voice that made me wonder if he was trying to be funny.

They bound my hands behind me and tied a length of cloth around my mouth so I couldn’t talk beyond an “unnnngghh.” Then they led me to the courtyard.

A double line of six soldiers was waiting. The two in the rear had big drums hanging from shoulder straps. The other four had rifles. They stuck me in the middle of the group, between the two rows of rifles. The two soldiers who’d been escorting me fell in on either side to surround me.

We started to march. When we approached the iron gate, the man with the ribbons signaled to a guard on the wall, and he winched the gate open to let us out.

As we crossed the long spit of land toward the port, the seriousness of the situation started to sink in. They didn’t give you an escort like this to take you shopping.

I figured I was headed for some kind of trial. Either that, or they’d skipped the trial, and we were going straight to the execution.

There was no way to run. The soldiers had me penned in so tight I could barely see past them to the ships in the harbor.

We turned down the boardwalk. There were a few merchantmen and importers doing business, but not nearly as many as
there usually were. The ones we passed spoke in hushed voices and were careful not to look at us.

We started up the main street, which was just as empty as the boardwalk. Compared to its usual chaos, Pella Nonna seemed quiet as a funeral.

When my brain made that connection, I got woozy.

Halfway to the palace square, the drummers started up. Hearing the drums boom right behind my ears, so loud I could barely think, was almost a relief after that unearthly quiet.

As we neared the square, I saw the first hints of the crowd, and I realized why the streets were so empty. Practically the whole town was there—it was as big an audience as the one that greeted
Li Homaya
when he came back from his southern campaign.

Then we turned the corner, and I saw the gallows. In front of the palace steps was a twenty-foot-tall scaffold with a standing platform about a third of the way up. Hanging down from the top of the scaffold was a rope with a noose on the end.

There wasn’t going to be any trial.

As they walked me over to the platform, I saw Roger Pembroke at the top of the steps, flanked by a handful of aides in uniform. He was wearing a starchy, stiff-collared shirt and the long blue coat from the day before.

Two of the soldiers marched me up a narrow set of wooden steps onto the gallows. They positioned me just to one side of the noose, facing Pembroke with my back to the crowd.

The drums stopped. Pembroke slowly walked down the stairs until he stood just far enough above the scaffold to look over it at the crowd.

A short-eared Cartager in a Rovian soldier’s uniform walked
behind and to one side of him. When Pembroke stopped, the Cartager kept going until he was a few steps farther down.

Then Pembroke began his speech.

“Good people of Pella Nonna! I stand before you today, twice a humble servant—of his majesty King Frederick, sovereign of New Rovia…and of this community, which it is my great honor to serve as your Governor.”

Pembroke paused to let the Cartager translate his words for the crowd. I wondered if the band—Salo and Illy and the others—was in the audience, and whether there was any chance they might intervene. It seemed unlikely, but it was all I had.

“When first I stood before you,” Pembroke continued, “I swore upon my honor that I would rule with justice for all—that New Rovia would be a land in which every man, woman, and child”—he paused just long enough to glance at me—“would enjoy equal rights, and
equal responsibilities,
under the king’s laws.”

He paused again for the translation.

“In contrast to the bigoted rule of my predecessor, I guaranteed you no criminal—no matter the color of his skin or the size of his ears—would go unpunished. And, just as certain—no honest man, however thin of wallet or small of stature, ever need fear the hand of government in his affairs, except as a guarantor of justice and impartiality.”

It took an unusually long time for the translator to get through that last bit. I wondered if he was as confused by it as I was.

“When I first took office,” Pembroke went on, “certain rumors reached my ears, of the foulest and most despicable nature. It was said that lawless bands of men roamed the lands to the north, taking slaves at will from the Native population. Worse, to my
ears, was the allegation that these traitors to human decency were my own countrymen—Rovians who had cast off the laws of not merely their king, but their Savior.”

Now I understood why they’d gagged me. Underneath all the confusing words, the lie he was spinning was so massive it was almost breathtaking.

“I undertook to lead an expedition in order to prove, once and for all, the truth or falsity of this claim. To my great horror, I discovered it to be true, and the perpetrators to be at large in the Valley of Ka. My troops engaged them—and these criminals, with
but one exception,
died in combat rather than face the king’s justice.”

When he got to the “exception” part, he waved his hand at me.

“The person before you today stands guilty of the charge of trading in human flesh. And though his tenderness of age, and the natural affection I have for him as a consequence of our common nationality, cause me more pain than I can express—”

That was a bit much.

“—my duty as your Governor demands that I exact from him the ultimate punishment. For the law is the law, and so help me, I am duty-bound to enforce it without prejudice or mercy—no matter the outcome, nor the price to my heaviness of heart.”

He lowered his head, looking me straight in the eye.

“Egbert Masterson, I hereby sentence you to death by hanging.”

The drums started up again as one of the soldiers stepped forward to fix the noose around my neck.

I don’t know why I wasn’t more scared. Even as they tightened the noose and I felt the scratch of the rope against my neck, I hardly felt a trace of my usual stomach-clenching fear.

I didn’t feel much of anything. It was like the whole thing was happening to someone else, while the real me floated somewhere above it all, watching the scene like a spectator at a play.

The rope was so tight now I could feel my pulse thump in my neck. As the soldier stepped away, I thought I heard someone yelling, trying to be heard over the pounding of the drums.

The soldier walked over to a long lever that rose up from the platform on the far side of the stage. He put his hand on it, and some part of me registered the fact that once he pulled the lever, the bottom would fall out of the trapdoor beneath my feet, and I’d drop.

The part of me watching from above wondered how it would feel.

Someone was definitely yelling something—the same word, over and over. I hoped they’d have the good manners to stop when the drums did so I could die in a dignified silence.

“GOVERNOR!”

A man leaped onto the platform at a running jump, making the whole gallows shudder so violently it was a wonder it didn’t spring the trapdoor under my feet. He was a big fellow, with a thick head of brown curly hair, and my first thought was that he looked awfully familiar.

“GOVERNOR!” he yelled again.

Pembroke raised his hand. The drumming stopped.

“Commodore Healy,” said Pembroke, not bothering to hide the surprise in his voice.

It was Burn Healy.