The King's Hand (54 page)

“Have you a second witness?” Eamon asked.

“I do not need one,” Patagon answered coldly. “A confession will suffice.”

“And the man's present assertion of his innocence does not disconcert you?”

“I am well within my rights, Lord Goodman,” Patagon answered.

“Lord Goodman, I did not do it.” The young man spoke up from his captivity. Patagon cried in rage and struck him.

“Miserable wretch! You'll soon change your tongue!”

“Under torture?” Anger seeped into Eamon's voice. Patagon looked at Eamon haughtily. “Then what would you do, Sir Patagon, if you find more things stolen from your care? How would you repay this woman for the son she lost? Or perhaps you would not care so long as you sate the bite of your anger in this man's flesh.”

“I am sure that I need not remind you of the law, Lord Goodman,” Patagon told him. “In the absence of a second witness, a confession –”

“I know the law,” Eamon retorted. He turned to Anderas. “Captain!”

“My lord.”

“See to it that this young man is imprisoned, but he will under no circumstances be questioned until my return.”

“Your return?” Patagon laughed irately. “If you go seeking his innocence, you may never return. As to his guilt, it is before you; you need do no more than breach him.”

Eamon rounded on him. “Do not presume to tell me when to breach a man, Sir Patagon, unless you are willing to undergo the same.”

The man paled. Eamon ignored it. He turned his horse and tore out of the Ashen.

 

His anger carried him swiftly to the palace, through its broad corridors and to the door of the throne room itself. He did not know what he would say, but knew that the words would come to him. He was known and greeted as he passed, but was so intent on his purpose that he gave no return. Part of him knew that his passion moved him on to folly, but he did not heed the salient warnings of his thought: his heart was aflame.

At the throne room door, the Master's doorkeeper greeted him cordially.

“Lord Goodman.”

“I must see the Master.”

The doorkeeper bowed.

“The Master is in a meeting at this time –”

“This will not wait.”

“I am afraid that the Master –”

“I will see him now,” Eamon thundered.

The doorkeeper was silent for a moment. “My lord,” he said, “if I might offer you counsel –”

“You may not.”

The doorkeeper paused. After a moment, he nodded.

“Very well, Lord Goodman; the Master will see you.”

Stepping to one side, the doorkeeper pushed the door quietly open, and Eamon stepped through.

The Master was there, his crown glinting in its nest of flaming hair. Eamon felt the throned's eyes bore into him coolly. Before the throned stood another, dressed in black. Eamon recognized him at once: Lord Arlaith.

A gasp escaped Eamon's lips as he gagged for breath. The sound magnified tenfold in the cavernous room, and echoed back to him from every wall. He could not interrupt a meeting between the Master and the Right Hand! Yet there he stood. They watched him. In terror, he realized that he could not now leave.

“Come forward, Eben's son.” The Master's voice carried effortlessly to his ears. “Let us hear what ails you such that it will not wait.”

Eamon felt as though a hand pressed down on him. The words that invited him forward both disdained and diminished him. Crippled, he stumbled his way across the hall.

At last he reached the foot of the throne. There he bowed low to one knee.

“Your glory, Master,” he said. The throned smiled at him.

“Rise, Eben's son.”

Eamon rose, painfully aware of the Right Hand's ire. “Master,” he began, “I had no desire to interrupt –”

“If that were true, Eben's son, then you would not have disturbed us.”

A chill cracked down his spine. He could not tell whether the words signalled approval or chastisement. “Being here,” the Master told him, “you would now prove yourself unwise not to press your suit.”

Eamon's chest heaved with barely restrained alarm as he looked up and met the Master's eyes. He saw the flicker of dying embers in his ash-grey stare, and understood the fragility of the ground on which he trod. Of a sudden, Cathair's words returned to him: “
you or I can be removed as easily…
”

Carefully, Eamon bowed his head low. “I thank you for your gracious manner towards my folly, Master,” he said. “I come to speak to you about the law.”

The throned raised his eyebrows in unfettered joy. “The law, Eben's son?” It was the kind of surprise that delighted in the unexpected foibles of a child.

“Yes, Master.” Eamon swallowed. “If it would please you, Master, I would discuss the use of confession.”

“Surely, Eben's son, you mean that you would discuss the changing of it?” The Master's voice was very quiet. “You would change a law laid by my own hand?”

Eamon looked again at the deep pools of grey that held and toyed with him. He could give only one answer.

“Yes, Master. I would.”

A terrible silence fell. The Right Hand's acerbic indignation struck at Eamon as the man's eyes rested on him, but he kept his gaze fixed firmly on the Master. The throned watched him. Then a curious smile curved on his lip.

“You are bold and presumptuous, Eben's son.” Eamon tried to keep himself from trembling. “But, where you are such, you will see that I am gracious. You will return here tomorrow morning, and you will lay your case before me and before my Hands.”

“Yes, Master,” Eamon answered. The idea terrified him. “To your glory.”

“Leave, Eben's son.”

Eamon bowed again and turned. As he walked back to the throne room door he felt eyes piercing the back of his skull. The doorkeeper opened it before him. He did not look back.

 

“I'm a fool, Anderas.”

“Would you prefer me to confirm or refute the statement?”

“I honestly don't know,” Eamon answered, and shivered.

They walked the evening together in the gardens of the East Quarter Handquarters. Eamon had been nervous all day, unable to concentrate on anything. Always his mind returned to the terrifying thought of going before the Hands and the Master, of laying before them an argument that would be ridiculed and a case that could only be denied. Worse, Lord Arlaith would be there, and the Right Hand would avenge any slight… And yet, Eamon knew that to not speak out against the law of confession in the city was worse than a disservice to the throned: it was a disservice to Hughan. He knew that what he proposed to do – what he had so often sought to do in the East Quarter – was what the King would have him do, and he desperately feared that the Master would see it, too.

He looked back to Anderas, who watched him quietly. “How is the young man in question?”

“In holding,” Anderas replied. “Sir Patagon was somewhat irritated by the fact that you returned and nobody is torturing his servant yet, but he was reminded that, as you have taken a personal interest in the case, only your command could now initiate such a process.”

Eamon looked down at his hands. “I don't want him tortured. Confessions under torture are not born in truth. There must be better ways to determine a man's guilt or innocence.”

“When charges are pressed and in the absence of a second witness, my lord, the law requires a confession.”

“Forgive me, captain,” Eamon said angrily, “I am clearly not as expert in the law as you. What provision does it make for when a man has nothing to confess?”

“It affords the power to effect a second attempt to acquire a confession,” Anderas replied. They both knew it.

“And if a man has a witness who can prove his inability to have committed the crime?”

“Said witness can also be questioned for the purpose of drawing out a confession.”

“So the proportion of parties found guilty…?”

“Is high indeed, my lord.”

Eamon grimaced. If nothing else, the law was a powerful deterrent, but it afforded no hope to a man like the one who even now sat in the college brig. If Patagon had his way, the man's mother could be questioned as well, and both would finish on the pyres.

“Anderas,” he said quietly, “does this law seem crooked only to me?”

“Lord Goodman, it is not my place to judge the law; it comes from the hands of men nobler than myself. My duty is to execute it.”

“And those that break it.”

There was a long silence. Eamon turned his head back and gazed up at the stars. He knew that if he were to breach the servant, he would know without a doubt whether or not the man was guilty.

You cannot breach every man trusting in his innocence, Eben's son.

The voice stirred his thought. He could not breach every man, and he did not want to breach even one. Breaching was a tool of the throned, designed to break minds and torment them. He knew it well.

But could he not breach one man without injuring him? Would it not be worth a try, if the man's life could be saved?

You are foolish to think it, Eben's son. He will burn beneath your hand, just as your ward did beneath mine.

He drew a deep breath. “Will you summon Sir Patagon, captain?” The captain nodded, brow furrowed.

“Yes, my lord. What shall I tell him?”

“That I wish to see him and resolve this matter.”

Anderas bowed. “Of course, Lord Goodman.”

 

Eamon returned to his office and waited. He paced quietly among the shelves, his hands clasped behind his back. His thoughts turned to Hughan: what would the King do in the city, in the quarter, or in that room that very night, in his place? Would he try to breach the man? Would he go to the throned in the morning and speak against the law the Master had inaugurated? Would he have gone to supper with the Grennils, or given Cara leave? Would he have stored grain in a secret cave beneath the quarter?

The questions baited him. For weeks, he had sought to do the work of a King's man – to be the King's Hand in Dunthruik. Sometimes he had even managed to. How long would it be before he was discovered, and how much would he have left undone?

His thoughts raced until at last they were shattered by a knock at the door. He faced the door as it opened. Anderas entered, escorting Sir Patagon.

“You asked for me, Lord Goodman?” Patagon bowed. Though his tone was impeccable, his face twitched.

“Yes. I apologize if I disturbed you.” Eamon looked to Anderas. “Captain, would you be so kind as to lead the way to the brig?”

“Of course.” The captain's face betrayed nothing of his own thoughts.

Eamon gestured for Patagon to leave the office. They followed Anderas into the Ashen and across to the college. There the captain took them into the college building, down several long passages, and then to a small set of rooms at the far end of one wing. The brig was a small and temporary holding area. Any prisoners to be held at length would be taken to the palace and likely confined to the Pit or its vicinities, dependent upon the seriousness of their crimes.

In one of the college cells the young man accused by Patagon was held. He sat quietly in a corner of the cell, staring up at the small window high in the wall above him. The moonlight fell on his face, showing an odd pensiveness. As they approached, he started and looked up, then rose and bowed.

“Lord Goodman,” he said. “Sir Patagon; Captain.”

“Good evening,” Eamon replied, suspicious of a nerve that allowed the man to be so composed.

“Captain Anderas told me that you meant to resolve this matter,” Patagon said. “May I presume upon you and ask how?”

Eamon looked back to the knight. “I intend to breach him.”

The young man stiffened in alarm. Eamon fixed his eyes on the knight.

“Before I do, however, I want your word that, should such a thing prove his innocence, you will take this man back into your service should he wish it, without reproach, and with an apology.” The knight snickered. Eamon looked hard at him. “Do not agree to this blithely,” he warned, “for I will hold you to your word.”

“I agree to your terms, my lord,” the knight answered.

Eamon looked back to the young man: he was white.

“You will get what you deserve, wretch!” the knight said.

“Captain, open the cell,” Eamon commanded.

Anderas complied immediately. The young man's eyes followed the keys as they turned in the lock and flicked up to Eamon as he stepped into the small cell.

“My lord,” the servant said, and bowed again. He trembled. Eamon felt a touch of fear himself.

What if he could not do it? What if he had no choice but to hurt the man?

“Sit down,” he said.

The man obeyed instantly. The servant looked at him again. “This will be easier if you afford me no resistance,” Eamon added. He knew he stalled for time, but he was driven on by a need to know whether the man was innocent. Somehow, his ability to go before the throned in the morning relied upon it.

“Yes, my lord.” The man nodded, though the look on his face implied that he had no idea how he might resist a Hand intent on breaching him. As Eamon approached, he flinched back. “I am innocent, lord!” he yelped.

Eamon laid his hand on the man's shoulder – the servant shook raggedly.

“If you are innocent,” Eamon told him, “you have no reason to fear me. But I must see.”

He kept his hand on the man's shoulder until his breathing calmed. The fear in the servant's eyes reminded Eamon of Slater on their first few meetings – it was fear of Eamon's power and reputation.

For a moment he felt a swell of pride, pride in himself and at what he had accomplished that men should fear him. The voice exulted in it, and as he laid his hand against the man's face, he saw a trace of red by his fingers.