The Bladeforge (fiction - reader discretion advised)

[HuManBing]

Mending Fences

Gram and I set off shortly before dawn, not least because the Templar convoy was mostly priests, and they were up and finished with vespers and quite impatient to leave.

He and I suppressed yawns in the predawn murk, but we rode along the deserted roads and saw that maybe there was some wisdom to leaving early.

The plan was this: Flex was the convoy destination. But Hasid lay only two or three days' ride away, and the priests would be at Flex for a good two weeks. Gram and I would have ample time to make it to Hasid and do our research, and then come back to meet up with the priests again.

The first days of the trip were dull, but the bandit attack on the third day proved a welcome respite.

They came on us in broad daylight, four of them on horseback, and they blocked the road in front of us. They wasted valuable time shouting at the priests and brandishing their swords in a futile effort to impress us, and it was quite easy for Gram and me to string our bows in the darkness of the wagon's cover and sight down two throats for our arrows to find.

Almost as soon as the two bodies fell from their horses, the others lost heart and fled. Gram came out from the cover of the wagon, loosing off more arrows, as I threw down my bow and took a running jump onto a riding-horse.

This steed wasn't bred for skirmishing, but I figured all I had to do was catch up with the bandit and I'd be all right. I spurred him on and reached down to my waist, finding the tightly bound handle of the blade that lived by my side always.

The man pulled ahead a ways, then veered sharply as an arrow from Gram took his mount in the rump. His horse gave out a shrill cry, and then he circled back to face me, his sword out.

I drew and charged him, deflecting his wild swing easily and giving his horse's shoulder a shallow stab - just a prod, really, with my blade. Horse and rider went over, and I circled round and dismounted, blade out.

"You picked a poor convoy to raid, villain," I said. "The Temple has its own army, now."

He looked up at me, still catching his breath from the fall.

I looked back at the wagon, where the priests were quieting their horses and Gram was mounting up to come to me.

"Take off your pants," I said. "Your shirt too."

He looked at me. I wiped my blade and took a few quick steps closer. He cringed and began to strip.

I saw the hollow ribs and the lean calves. This man and his feeble cronies had seen several hungry days.

"Captain," said Gram. "The priests don't want any more bloodshed."

I squinted at him.

"They what?"

"They say you're not to kill him," Gram said.

I spat. "Let them be the ones on the ground, surrounded by armed men. And see if they get the same mercy," I muttered.

The man looked up at me, wide-eyed. He shivered in his breechclout.

"We're going to hang him," I said. "By his shoulders. As an example."

Gram protested. "But the priests said-"

"He'll live," I broke in testily. "Next person along will cut him down."

I finished tearing his flea-bitten clothes into strips, and bound his hands and feet. Gram helped me hoist him up into the branches of a tree, and we left him there, hanging from ropes threaded under his shoulders, looming ridiculously over the highway.

The man shivered in the cold, blindfolded. But he'd be all right. Gram had made out a sign and hung it around his neck. It said "HAVE MERCY ON ME. I HAVE SINNED".

* ~ * ~ *

A few days later and we got to Flex. I had forgotten how far away the city lay from Hawkbluff. The first time I'd made the trip, I'd shared a wagon with Alicov. Her prattling tongue and her scribbling pen had made the days fly by - to say nothing of her skills between the blankets.

Flex was much as I'd remembered it. We saw the priests to the Temple in the Merchants District, a place I had never been to before, but we ignored the bustle of the bazaars and went instead to the caravan gates. We paid for our passage to Hasid, and settled in for a ride there.

Much to our surprise, we were raided again. The second day out from Flex, a band of six men tried to take the convoy. We shot down two of them and went after them on horseback again, and took two more.

Gram came back, wiping his bloodied blade in disbelief.

"What's with all the bandits?" he asked.

A merchant told us what he knew. Given the stalemate with the sable banner armies, it seemed that the various lords had begun to run low on funds to pay their armies. Without the treasury to support them, the most desperate men had deserted and gone to the countryside. Those who had homes to go to did so. Those without homes eked out an existence through raiding.

"What of Roshan and Palt?" I asked. The merchant made a face and shrugged. Nobody had heard from them for nearly half a year now, since they fell again to Malarchus.

Gram and I exchanged glances. If there wasn't any progress made against Malarchus at Roshan or Palt, then that meant Hasid and Forg would be on the new border. Forg meant nothing to me now, but there was still some business to attend to in Hasid.

We settled back into the wagon and looked forward impatiently to our arrival.

* ~ * ~ *

Hasid was somewhat smaller than Flex, and its walls were smaller and older. Crews of workers were raising them even now.

The accent in Hasid wasn't that different from the Forg accent, I noted with a pang. I heard the Hasid phrase "as you may say" several times, and each time I looked up, half-expecting to see Anveran saying it.

But I reminded myself Anveran was long gone. And the ungrateful whelp-child she had raised was dead to me too.

We checked in at the Temple and met with their lead Templar, Thadros. Quite unlike Stalvan, this man was thin of face, and body, and even of patience. Clearly, the strain of being next in line for Malarchus' attentions had gotten to the clergy as well.

Gram and I rested for the first night in a cramped cell with a single board-hard bed, and then we woke and massaged some feeling back into our joints, before going to the tithing records.

As it turned out, we found Raseyan Verdinesh very quickly. He was a regular tither and a familiar face to the Temple. Apparently he had worked on some of the Temple's buildings.

Gram and I strapped on our swords under our cloaks, and we went forth just before dawn.

* ~ * ~ *

There was a tavern near the worksite, which made it easier for me to watch the men at work. Gram trailed me to make sure I wasn't followed from the Temple, and then he took up in a doorway down the block.

By degrees, it seemed like Raseyan was the foreman. He was not a young man, older than both Bela and Wilmar. But he had undeniable strength, both in his thickset arms wielding the stonemason's chisel and adze, and also in his ruddy voice, calling across the site and setting his men in order.

In a different life, I mused, he might have made for a good army commander.

He took off his cap and mopped his brow, and I saw the beginnings of a bald spot in his crown. I loosened my grip from my sword. This man did not look like a cold-hearted killer.

After the day's work was done, I trailed him to the tavern where he spent modestly for a hot meal for himself and a few of the young apprentices. Then he went home, to a cellar apartment where I heard the unmistakable voices of children in the household as his wife kissed him a welcome.

I could make out two or three voices of young ones. Perhaps I was hearing his wife, though. Some women's voices were hard to tell from children.

Back at the tavern, Gram and I held a hunched discussion over a cut of lamb.

"What do you think?" he asked. "He doesn't seem all that much."

I chewed thoughtfully.

"He's older than I thought he would be," I said. "And he's the last son of the last daughter. I'd be surprised if there were that many Verdinesh still left."

Gram pondered this.

"How old was Alicov when all this happened?"

"Twelve," I said. "It happened fourteen years ago."

Gram sniffed. "All those vineyards and stables and boathouses we saw in Hawkbluff," he said. "And here's this Raseyan fellow, working in the dust and living in a cellar apartment. Makes you think, don't it?"

I shrugged. He seemed happy enough.

"I don't think we have to worry about this one. Let's go back and find out more about the others," I said.

* ~ * ~ *

We investigated more records, going back through the tithes. There was no mention of the Verdinesh in Hasid, except for Raseyan. As the trail petered out, I fetched the records for the Markeides family instead.

We found a few scattered references to them. There were a few tithes here and there. Then, we found a sudden flurry of death notices. Fourteen years ago.

"Does it say Karras anywhere?" I asked.

Gram checked the spelling. "Yes," he said. "But that's not the strangest thing. Look here."

I squinted. But by degrees I made out the name. Alinestra Covelia - 12 years.

"Says here she's dead," he said.

I bit my lip. This was a troubling development. If Alinestra Covelia was dead, then who was the woman in Hawkbluff? Who was my lover?

"It has to be a mistake," I said. "Remember that she was in hiding for a long time. Maybe they gave her a death date to throw off the scent."

Gram nodded. "It's possible. If she was the last hope of the family, it makes sense," he said.

I sat back and rubbed my hand against my eyes. "Look up Remigerius. He was a cousin or something."

Gram put his finger in the page and flipped around. "Here he is," he said. "Actually there's more than one. Looks like there's three in total."

Allie had said something about Remigerius' brothers and kinsmen dying in the raid. So now we had to find out if the old man and the young woman in Falcon's Way were the real thing.

"These all happened at Stablethorpe, a few hours' ride risewards," Gram said. He pulled up a map. "Shall we go?"

I closed the books. "Why not."

* ~ * ~ *

Stablethorpe was largely abandoned - at least by the original inhabitants. The central square was overgrown with weeds, and a baker's shop was almost choked beyond recognition with shoots and sprouts. The stones were covered in leaves and vines, and where they weren't, they were caked with soot and the blackened tar of a great fire.

Still, squatters had made their homes here. They eyed us from the burnt-out windows and eaves of the shells of buildings. Gram and I kept our swords close and dismounted only at the front door of the collapsed structure that was the inn.

Inside, I looked around and waved the dust from the place. A main spar had fallen in the middle, bringing down the staircase and several tables. The firepit in the side had collapsed too, and bits of the chimney stones had scattered to the middle of the room.

Something crunched beneath my foot, and I made out a curious wooden rattle. I picked it up, the little knick-knacks swaying slightly, and suddenly remembered what it was - it was the thing that they shook at weddings, for good luck.

I looked around. This was the ruined inn where Allie had been married to her cousin. I looked closer at the tables and saw mugs, long dry, tipped over or standing where they had been left. Perhaps her relatives had managed to muster some sad show of levity for her sake.

I stepped closer to the collapsed fireplace, and something caught my eye.

I called out to Gram, and he came in.

We pulled the spar off the fireplace. The bones there were unmistakably human.

* ~ * ~ *

It took us several hours' work, but we recovered about four complete human remains from the building, wrapping the bones in our capes and laying them out in the courtyard. Our horses stood quietly in the cold air, drinking from a rain-filled stone trough that had withstood the conflagration.

All finished, we went to the Temple outpost. It was empty, long abandoned, but we dug about in the records and found the burials. Karras Markeides was there, along with several others. And Alinestra Covelia.

We trekked up the hill to the burial grounds and looked about the gravestones. These ones had no names - only numbers. We found the ones we wanted and set to digging, after offering a quick prayer to Mislaxa for this necessary evil.

* ~ * ~ *

All the remains had gone to bone with the passage of time. But Gram had a brush and we cleaned them respectfully as we examined them. We had exhumed the cheap coffins and opened up the caskets of every number that tallied to a fallen member of both families. There were eight in total, including Alinestra's.

I stared at the corpse in her grave. There was a rusted length of iron by its side.

Gram came up to me. "What's the matter?" he asked.

I shook my head. I was trembling with relief.

"Look at the skeleton," I said. "She was supposed to be twelve when she died."

Gram looked and then took a few paces for measurement, and then nodded.

"Too big," he said. "That's not her."

I looked at all the rest. They were all undeniably adults. Not a few had been buried with their swords by their sides.

"I think we need to talk to Raseyan soon," I said. "Somebody's been less than truthful about the bodies."

* ~ * ~ *

I was seated by Raseyan's usual place in the tavern when he came in. Gram had taken up at the next table over, and had started up a game of dice.

He ordered his drinks for self and his apprentices, and then talked to them about the craft. I listened in, happy to hear about stoneworking again, and remembering the craft I had learned in my youth.

"I like that, it's a good technique," I said, at length. "When I left off as a builder, we hadn't solved the load-bearing sheer problem."

He looked at me. "Good heavens, man, that's been the builder's standard for five years. Where have you been since building?"

I flicked my cape out for a moment to reveal the scabbard at my side, then drained my mug.

"The army picked me up, didn't it? I got stupid ideas of glory and gold, didn't I?" I said. Then, with a pointed look at the apprentices, I said "Don't you lot go hankering after battle like some idiot foolsons. You've got a good trade here - don't throw it away like your uncle Hawk did over here."

Raseyan ordered another, but I got it for him.

"You the foreman? Aye, I thought you might be. I'm with the Temple - they remembered the work I'd done as a builder and they took me in even after I became a soldier," I said.

"Reason I'm here is I saw your name in the tithing books. But it reminded me of another Verdinesh. My commander used to speak of him, back out in New Aurim. Have you heard of a Verdinesh who was in the army? Maybe ended up out here?"

Raseyan shook his head. "Couldn't rightly tell you, Hawk," he said. "There may have been several."

Gram turned from his game with a sigh of exasperation. He tapped one of the boys on the shoulder.

"These men can't play worth a penny," he said. "Would any of you care to join?"

I looked at my drink. When I turned back to Raseyan, we were pretty much alone.

"Fourteen years ago," I said simply.

He looked at me. There was a sudden sharpness to his eyes.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Fourteen years ago, my commander said he trained under Lord Malchior Verdinesh. But then the lord moved out here suddenly, and my commander never saw him again. A pity, too. He said if I ever need to train under a real master, I should find Malchior Verdinesh. So I've been searching ever since," I said.

Raseyan eyed me. "Malchior Verdinesh is dead," he said slowly. "He got here at the same time as Malarchus' men. They torched Stablethorpe. He died with his sword in his hand, trying to fight them off."

I turned to him, looking at his face for any sign of duplicity. Then I nodded slowly.

"I hear there was a girl, too," I said.

He stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"Somebody to do with Markeides," I said. "I have my hand on my sword and I really don't want to use it. But I can assure you that things will go very smoothly for you only if you answer my questions."

He swallowed. There was a dangerous look in his eyes.

"Gram," I called. "Move your noisy dice game over to the booths, would you?"

Gram took the apprentices out of the way. I continued looking at Raseyan.

"I know you work hard. I know your apprentices respect you, and I know the Temple especially thinks very highly of you," I said. "You have a wife and children too, and if there's been any unpleasantness in the past, I can assure you I've seen enough in the present to forgive and forget. But I have some questions and they need answers. From you, or from other Verdinesh."

He nodded.

"What happened to Karras Markeides?" I asked.

"He got away," Raseyan said simply.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Because he wasn't there when we got to Stablethorpe," he said. "We were met by a group of them on the road between Stablethorpe and Hasid, and they killed two of our men. We may have taken a few of them with us too. It was dark and we couldn't see." He chewed his lip angrily. "They killed my uncle, Beldrish."

"...Malchior's brother," I said. "I understand. Who was at Stablethorpe?"

"The girl. I don't remember her name. She wasn't Markeides. She was somebody else. But they were getting ready to move her, and our orders were to take her hostage so they'd be forced to negotiate," he said.

"Did she live?"

"How should I know?" he asked testily. "Halfway through the standoff, the black-flag riders swept through town and routed us. They burned everything. They staked Malchior's corpse in the courtyard. That wasn't right. He was a tough old bastard and he didn't always live by the best of ways, but it wasn't right to leave his body hanging like that. Not when he'd served in rank and file like the rest of them."

I relaxed slightly.

"Malchior's dead?" I asked. "There's no record."

"Yes, we listed him as Karras. And Beldrish we listed as the girl. Once they were in the coffins, nobody would be any wiser."

"Say the girl's still alive," I said. "What then? Would you go after her? Hunt her?"

Raseyan gave a curt, nervous laugh that sounded more like a bark.

"I? With what? My hammers and nails? Tell my wife I'm going out for three weeks to put up a fence in New Aurim?" he said. "This was all Malchior's crusade, from the start. The prince's estate meant so damn much to him. Little did he know it was worthless from the moment we left New Aurim."

"How's that?" I asked.

"The prince had an estate out near Roshan - a summer palace with hunting grounds and a river and lake," he said. "It was the first to go to torch when Malarchus moved through."

He laughed bitterly. "And to think we gave up all our lands in New Aurim for that. Ashes in the wind."

I nodded and ordered beers for us both.

"You seem like a good man in a bad world, Raseyan. Have you heard of the Temple's Lovedays?"

He thought.

"I've heard of them. Never too clear what they are though."

I drank.

"It's for settling disputes and old grievances and putting them aside," I said. "The Temple arbitrates and enemies put down their differences and become friends. I'd like to ask the Temple to make peace between the Verdinesh and the Markeides. These feuds only waste lives and resources."

Raseyan looked at me cautiously.

"Sounds good," he said. "But how will we do it?"

I drained my mug. "I'll check with the Temple tomorrow, and I'll leave you a message here at the pub. If you agree to it, the Temple will extend its protection to you."

I held out my hand, open, on the bar.

"Raseyan, I'm glad I came out to speak with you," I said. "I hope we can make peace between the two families. But even if we can't, I hope at least that I can swear my peace to you."

He took my hand and shook it.

"Do that, Hawk," he said. "I'll try to get in touch with my cousins. Times have moved on and we're tired of fighting our parents' battles."

I walked out of the bar, Gram at my side, with an odd feeling of elation.



_

[HuManBing]

The Mechanics of Deliberation

Gram and I approached Thadros with questions about a Loveday and how to administer it. He brightened at the prospect: Lovedays were good publicity for the Temple, which got to play an arbiter's role in bringing two feuding families back to peaceful terms again. The Temple liked it all the more so if one was specially requested.

When Thadros found out the Verdinesh were involved, he scratched his nose and evinced surprise that anybody could have had a cross word with them.

"That family has been humbled in the past, it's true," he conceded. "But they've been good neighbors in the city, through and through. Tithes on time and generous, and always hard working. I'd like to know more about the other party."

Gram was about to say something when I cleared my throat.

"The other party is not in Hasid," I said. "Before I get them involved, I'll need to travel back and obtain their express permission. In such a case, which Templar has the officiating power? You? Or the Temple head at the other party's town?"

Thadros combed through a few texts on his desk.

"This came up just two winters ago, in Lothgren," he said. "Best to follow what they have to say there." He pored over the scroll with rheumy eyes, then tapped a gnarled finger at the judgment.

"Here," he said. "The issue in question is venue," he said. "Both parties must accept the Temple's jurisdiction over the dispute, but they must also accept the Temple's jurisdiction over their persons."

"Personal jurisdiction?" Gram said. "What's that?"

Thadros cleared his throat of some tenacious catarrh and continued.

"Not only must they be of the Temple's faithful, but they must also accept the Temple's teachings and practice them in their private lives. They must acknowledge that the Temple protects them, and give of their own generosity in return," he said. "There are various charts for donations - of money, or time, or sweat."

I thought about this.

"Yes," I said at length. "But physically where? Do we bring them to Hasid, or do we go to...-"

I almost blurted out "Hawkbluff" but caught myself in time. Allie would not appreciate my carelessness.

"...-to the other party's town?" I asked.

Thadros consulted the scroll, then harrumphed and brought up another one.

"These tedious citations," he muttered. "Keep you flipping back and forth through all the cases. Ah, here we are."

He adjusted his glasses.

"This will be an issue in equity, for the Templar to adjudicate as he sees fit," he said. "In other words, there is no hard and fast rule."

I thought about this. If each Templar could make their own rule, then it behooved us to bring the proceedings to Hawkbluff, and either Templar Stalvan or Bishop Trandamere. Not that I distrusted Thadros - but the fact remained that he thought highly of the Verdinesh, and Allie's interests might be hurt were he to officiate.

"Get me an agreement from the parties that they will submit to Temple oversight, and then bring them to the Temple to present their cases," Thadros said. "We can make a special hearing for the Loveday and then make peace among them, brokered and enforced by the Temple."

I bowed and left, thanking him for his wisdom and guidance.

* ~ * ~ *

Back in our quarters, I put on my coat and went out for a walk with Gram in the noisy trade district. He kept a good pace beside me, and I waited till my thoughts were straight before I spoke.

"Let's bring them to a neutral place for the Love-Day," I said. "Keep them away from Alicov's holdings. Bring them to a town in between, like Flex."

Gram looked at me.

"We won't take them to Hawkbluff?" he asked.

"Not until we have the peace. I want Alicov to be as safe as possible, and this Loveday had better be signed and sealed before I let them anywhere near her," I said.

Gram nodded. "Shall we go back to our town, then?"

"Not yet. I want to meet with the Verdinesh."

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, the remaining Verdinesh family was willing to make peace. Several of the women, too distant to even care what the original feud was about, wanted to join merely to appear before the court of equity in their finest dresses - grand and important in the public eye.

When Gram and I went to meet Raseyan for the second time, he had a dinner for us in one of the pubs, and we shook hands and greeted the family members. Sisters, wives, cousins - noisy young nephews and nieces. And not a single one of them older than Raseyan, the youngest son of the youngest daughter.

We dined well and talked a great deal, me finding these people to be a courteous breed. Their reversal of fortunes years ago seemed to have hurt them less than one might imagine. I asked Raseyan about this, guardedly, in a quiet moment together, and he nodded.

"Don't let the gardens and grounds of the New Aurim houses fool you," he said. "Those were Malchior's, and his kinsmen. Me, I was lucky if I got to set foot in his halls once a year." He put down his glass. "When we came out here, it was on the family coattails, following the paterfamilias out in search of his palace. But when he passed, and all the vengeful Verdinesh with him, we learned that coming out here meant something else. It meant freedom, and a new start."

He gestured to his kinsmen. "Before, we were auxiliaries. Supporting houses of the family. Subject to summonses at any time, to come and serve and obey the patrilineage. Now, we're free." He raised a finger, as if to forestall a counterargument. "Of course that freedom comes with a lot of burdens. Freedom to go broke. Freedom to be cheated. Freedom to be misled and lose all your meager fortunes in the winds of chance." He leaned in close. "But now, whatever missteps these people make are their own missteps. No longer the madness of Malchior and his demons in the desert."

He drained his glass.

"We got almost all the people here. There's a little over thirty of us in total, including children, yes!" he said, as a pair of young brothers dashed past him, in a game of hide-and-seek. Then, turning back to me: "But there are a few retainers of the old guard who I'm still trying to track down. And..." his voice went low as he spoke "...I'm still going to have to convince them."

I asked what these relatives might be.

"Oh, no, these aren't technically relatives," he said. "Malchior had a few trusted servants who came home from the battles with him. Not from New Aurim, either - came back from some provinces, and stuck by him. They weren't all accounted for after the raid at Stablethorpe. We're still tracking them down to inform them of the Loveday."

I gave Gram a glance.

"How long before you can find them?" I asked. "We have only four more days and then we must return to our Temple convoy."

Raseyan fished in his pocket. He brought out a stub of a pencil and some of the heavy folded sheets that foremen use for calculations.

"Where are you staying? We'll try to get a message to you before you leave," he said.

I nodded, and Gram wrote down our Temple address for him.

* ~ * ~ *

During the three days that followed, Gram and I went over the laws that applied to Lovedays, and we went through the papers about the Verdinesh as best we could.

Meanwhile, for his part, Raseyan was good to his word. He even put a deputy in charge of the construction work, and took time off so he could go back among his people and find the last few.

The first day for him was unproductive. He spent it within the town limits, visiting with his closer family and trying to get a message out to the retainers. The second day, as I would later learn, he went out to the outskirts and found one of the retainers - a tribal man named Natroch-gar. Natroch-gar was once Malchior's bodyguard, but time and the poor life he led had robbed him of his sight. Apparently, he had been happy to hear of an end to the feud. But he had pointedly warned Raseyan that his younger brother, Drachlortan, would not be so amenable.

The record gets foggy after that.

Raseyan left word with Natroch-gar of how to find him. With the knowledge that time was growing tight, he also told Natroch-gar how to get a message to me directly. He apparently told him that he could ask for Captain Hawk at the Temple in Hasid. That was all he said. Then he left.

Raseyan left word with me of his progress, and then went back the third day to Natroch-gar's home. But the old man was not at his tent, so Raseyan waited. After several hours, the other derelicts in the encampment agreed that Natroch-gar was gone for an unusually long time, for him.

They started to search the fields, and the sun had almost set when they found the old man's body in a furrow. Natroch-gar had many scratches on his calves and shins, suggesting he had been dragged a long way there. There had been cuts in his arms and hands, suggesting a fight. But his assailant had clearly overpowered him and dealt him a massive blow to the head with a blade that took off most of his upper skull and killed him instantly. Only one eye was left, staring up blindly from the ruined orbital beside the exposed caverns of the opened nose.

Raseyan then knew that Drachlortan - once Malchior's most trusted henchman - had come back to action once again. He saw to Natroch-gar's body, and then hurried back to Hasid. He found his wife and children safe at home, but learned from them that a man they did not recognize had come to the home and asked a few questions about Raseyan and the Loveday.

The man had not been threatening or hostile, she said. He had merely introduced himself as a distant family member who wanted to see what the Verdinesh was planning to do. He had taken a cup of wine and some bread, and then left, saying he had business at the Temple.

By the time Raseyan got to me, Drachlortan had already confronted and killed his brother, Natroch-gar, made his way into town to interrogate Raseyan's family, and in all likelihood come to the Temple - either to dispatch me or to keep a close eye on me.

The fact that Raseyan knew this, and still came to warn me, proved to me that I had not been wrong in judging him a man of character.

* ~ * ~ *

"You don't understand," Raseyan said, pacing. "This one is something different. It's said that when Malchior took him on, he was already halfway to the gallows."

"For what?" Gram asked.

"I don't know, something military," Raseyan said. "The stories vary, but whatever it was, it involved killing several people who should not have been killed."

"Who is he?" I asked. It was late, and the candle smoke was a little heavy for me. Wearing my armor and with my sword at my side, I swayed a little on my feet.

Raseyan elaborated. "Tribal man. From the outer provinces. We'd always see him around Malchior, under Natroch-gar's command. A thin-faced, squinty fellow - Drachlortan. But the evening that Malchior died, the tribal brothers weren't with him. When they found out the family was dispersed, they went to ground, taking his last commands."

"Why would he kill his own brother? That makes no sense," I said angrily.

"You're telling me," Raseyan said, chewing a fingernail. "All that I know is this. About seven years ago, Natroch-gar came in from the cold. He approached a small Temple hospice out in the community and asked them to help his failing eyesight. They couldn't do anything for him, so he asked them to hear his confession. Apparently it was something right scary, too. Then the Temple leaves us news of his condition and tells us we can contact him if we want to. But they won't tell us what he's told them, and they suggest we don't ask him about the war either."

He took look outside the window, peering onto the darkness. He let out a deep breath and continued pacing.

"So we reconcile with the elder brother. He was the last to be really close to Malchior. Also the last of that generation, really - he's at least a dozen years older than me. But then we hear his hellion of a brother, Drachlortan, is still around. Still following Malchior's final order, whatever that was," he said. "Some said that a younger man would go to Natroch-gar's tent and exchange harsh words with him. Sometimes there would be sounds of a fight. Somebody shouting that the family has given up, and has allowed the fire to burn out. Some such nonsense."

"So he's pining for the old glories," I said drily. "Don't we all."

"Malchior used to tell us that we were members of his family and that there was a duty," Raseyan said. "That he would make sacrifices for us, but that when he ordered it, every member was to strive to the utmost to achieve the objective he set. And to take it on faith that it would inure to our benefit, when all was said and done. It seems that Drachlortan took the lesson rather to heart."

I rubbed my eyes.

"What does he use? Battleaxe, javelin, bloody slingshot?" I asked.

"I saw him with a large knife," Raseyan said. "The sort you use to chop through thick forest. But that was some time ago."

"How old is he?" I asked.

"About ten years younger than me," he replied.

I stopped. That was quite an age gap, if his elder brother was already so old.

"What do you think he wants, then?" I asked.

Raseyan held my gaze for a long moment and then shook his head.

"Only three men know the final command, and two of them are dead."

* ~ * ~ *

We left the following day, a day earlier than we had planned, in the hopes of throwing Drachlortan off the scent. We did not confront anybody on the highway to Flex, and when we got there, the priests had finished their business and were ready to return to Hawkbluff.

I wanted to talk to them about the possibility of a Loveday, but something told me that the stakes had just risen.

Gram and I kept a wary lookout all the way back to Hawkbluff. Somebody was onto us now.





_

[HuManBing]

Burning Bridges

The priests called for a few stops in the wayside shrines in the rural areas between towns. At each one, they provided supplies - sanctified candles, holy water, and the like. At one they brought a new holy scroll, to replace one that an acolyte had carelessly folded damp and which had mildewed. The priest there, Father Lantos, was very apologetic and made amends by offering us a good lunch. He also aired out some of the holy writs for his superiors to see.

None of which held the slightest interest for me, of course. Since hearing of the death of Natroch-gar, a growing sense of urgency gripped me. It seemed that my hopes for a peaceful resolution of the Verdinesh problem may have been premature.

Gram sensed my anxiety.

"We'll need to get Stalvan to ask Trandamere to intercede," he said. "Hasid is clearly not safe, no matter what Thadros says."

I chewed a straw distractedly.

"Maybe," I said. "I hope we can fix this without inconveniencing the Temple even more, though."

Gram stamped his feet for warmth and turned to me, his breath pluming in the air.

"This is about Alicov, isn't it?" he said. "She's Markeides herself."

I looked at him for a long moment and then nodded.

"Yes," I said. "She changed her name and moved far away to leave this unpleasantness behind. And that's why she took me as a lover - to keep her safe."

I kicked at a stone.

"Hence my concern."

Gram nodded.

"You go on ahead first," he said. "I can ride with the priests."

I shook my head. "My duty is to them. If we're going to ask them to intercede, I need to give them all the favors I can."

Gram looked to his horse.

"Then let me go," he said. "I'll post guards at Alicov's place until you get there."

I started to refuse, but then checked myself. It was an intriguing thought.

"Hold up, I have a second idea," I said.

* ~ * ~ *

When the priests came back out, they found only myself by their convoy, Gram having gone back to Hawkbluff as fast as he could, and with coin in his pocket to get himself a fresh steed when needed.

They wondered a bit at this, but seemed happy enough that I, the Hawk, was still with them. We travelled back at their puttering pace and got back to Hawkbluff after a week.

Gram, on the other hand, arrived in three days flat, wearing out as many as four horses a day. He rode straight to the Overlook District and met with Remigerius and waited for Alicov. He gave her a message, telling her that I had a manuscript for her at my training quarters opposite the Temple, and invited her to wait there for me.

He escorted her there, then when Prasti and Lotal kept a lookout, he explained to her what had happened. That the Verdinesh were tired of the feud and were willing and happy to submit to a Loveday settlement. But that one of the old generation was still around and refused to let the matter rest. She was to await my arrival under the Talons' guard, and then we would figure out what to do.

Apparently, Alicov had turned deathly pale at this news, then gone, tight-lipped, to the secure apartment in the training grounds. Gram asked her what she needed from her quarters, and if there was anything he could get for her. She said nothing, just shook her head. Later she wrote him a list and he went to fetch them - mostly clothes and a few manuscripts she was working on. Remigerius insisted on coming back to stay with her, and Gram brought him under cover of night to the training grounds.

Back at Alicov's house, they installed Lotal. He brought along a red-haired girl he knew from the pubs - a table wench named Cleera. And together they held a tableau until I returned.

As it turned out, our preparations were not strictly necessary. The Verdinesh hunter had no way of knowing for sure that our destination was Hawkbluff, and Gram outpaced him easily.

Instead, the hunter merely followed a much slower quarry - me, and the priests.

* ~ * ~ *

"You bastard," Allie said angrily, throwing down her sheaf of papers as I walked in the door.

"Hello, dear," I said.

"You utter prick," she hissed. "I told you not to go poking around in this stuff and what do you do? Now I'm in hiding and somebody's coming to kill me."

I shushed her gently. "Nobody's coming to kill you," I said. "We're just taking precautions until we find out exactly what this rogue element is doing."

She threw an inkwell at me. It struck me square in the forehead with surprising force and stung like hell.

"I saw them put my people in the ground!" she shouted. "They trailed us halfway across the kingdom just for a chance to jump over me in line to the throne! These people are serious, and I know it, and you either know it and you're lying, or you're don't and you're stupider than cowcakes. So don't you dare lie to me, you donkey-raping pig tumbler!"

I regained my vision and gave a pointed look to Gram, who made a hurried exit to give me time to be alone with Allie.

"We don't know for sure what this one tribal mercenary is doing," I said, rubbing my head. "Raseyan went to talk to the tribal's older brother about the Loveday, and next thing we know the older brother was dead in a field."

Allie sat down heavily. "Great, this is exactly what we were trying to avoid," she said bitterly. "I never should have taken you in. I should have picked somebody either a whole lot dumber and wouldn't try to meddle, or somebody a whole lot smarter who could actually solve it if they did."

"Well, the best thing right now is to keep you out of the public eye," I said, taking her vitriol in stride. "You should avoid your house, but if you absolutely need things from it, maybe Gram can fetch them for you. Remigerius is in danger too and should stay with you wherever you are. You'll be safe here for the time being, but I'm also thinking of smuggling you into the Undercroft if things get really bad."

She looked at me.

"The Undercroft? But only men are allowed in there," she said. "You told me as much yourself."

"Exactly, so nobody will suspect that's where you are," I said. "And my men live there, so anybody who does will have to deal with the Talons."

Allie chewed a fingernail pensively.

"All my life I'd been living under the fear of not knowing. Now you've let the genie out of the bottle and they're after me," she said. "All my family couldn't stop them. I hope you can."

"This time it's different," I said. "This time, even the Verdinesh are on your side, trying to stop him."

She turned away, her face still closed in her fury. "I suppose there'll be one of your men here at all times then?" she said archly.

"Tonight it'll be me and Pejri," I said. Pejri was a farmboy who, along with his brother Tolsin, had joined us in the woods outside Forg against Nanje's men. He was a light sleeper and would have his sword drawn as he was assuming the vertical attitude. A good man to have when something might come lurking at night.

She looked at me, her face still scowling.

"Well, I have these proofs to get through before bed," she said. "Not that my bed here fits any more than one person - another oversight on your part."

"Somehow, we'll survive," I said morosely.

* ~ * ~ *

I slept in the same room as Allie, on a hardwood bench originally meant for people to don their greaves and footwear. I did not sleep well, but I suppose that worked to our benefit as I was alert. Downstairs, Pejri sat with a light, his sword by his side.

In the middle of the night, I drifted back to consciousness when Allie rolled over in the bed and sat up.

She whispered my name, and I gave a click back to her.

Her feet made pittering noises on the flagstones as she came to my bench and sat down. I felt her hair brush my face. She stroked my jaw and nuzzled my cheek with her nose.

"I missed you," she whispered. "I'm glad you're back."

I leaned into her embrace, enjoying the feel of her warmth in the winter night. And that was that.



_

[HuManBing]

No Rest For the Wicked

As it turned out, trouble was progressing at its own steady pace in my wake. The stable boy in Hasid who looked after my horses met a man who bought him a drink and asked him where "those two military types" went. The boy told him we had headed to Flex. The man saddled up and set out that same night - the night after we left.

At Flex, he did his asking around the Temples. He knew I was affiliated with them, as Raseyan had told him as much. He knew my name, as well. Both of these meant that within a day he had visited every Flex Temple and found the one that I had stayed at. It took only the slightest of inquiries to determine that I was on the road to Hawkbluff with half a dozen priests in my care.

From that point on, there was no way I could outrun him. He closed the distance easily in the very first day, but stayed behind us most of the way. He got within visual distance of us while we were at the wayside Temple with the replacement manuscript. Though he hid himself well, he clearly saw when Gram set off. He must have calculated - wisely - that there was no way he would catch up with him or beat him to the destination.

So instead he stuck with me. Maybe he had something to eat while we puttered around in the Temple. Finally, the priests emerged again and I set off with them back to Hawkbluff.

Drachlortan, the last tribal hunter of Malchior Verdinesh's command, went into the Temple then to make a confession. He talked with a relatively junior priest - who noted down, on paper found in his bloodstained hand, that the tribal had made a confession about striking his brother in anger. I suppose this was technically true.

In the private booth, he asked the priest about me and where I came from. The priest's response must have displeased him. From what we can tell, he left his side of the booth, and then went into the priest's private side. He put his hand over the priest's mouth and opened his throat from ear to ear, standing behind him so the blood wouldn't stain him.

Then Drachlortan went to the supervisor's office. There were a few other worshippers in the building that day, but they did not recall seeing anything unusual. My guess is that Drachlortan sheathed his blade again - there was a smear of blood on the back of the confessional priest's robe that suggested a wiping-off before leaving the booth.

The supervisor was busy, as his clerk told Drachlortan. This answer also proved to be unsatisfactory, and Drachlortan killed the clerk. He did so without leaving any mark on the body, and the clerk's body was actually discovered last of all three, because he appeared to be merely dozing at his desk and it was not immediately obvious that his neck was broken.

Outside the supervisor's room, Drachlortan may have pressed his ear to the door. He may have heard the chanting of hymns by a single priest's voice. Because nobody else heard a disturbance, it was likely that Drachlortan knocked politely, and been admitted by the priest himself. They may have had a conversation. In any case, it ended when he staved the priest's head in with repeated strikes against the corner of the table, and left him crumpled at the foot of his chair.

This was the first disturbance that others reported - a series of loud thumps upstairs, and the sound of a body falling. Some went up to the superior's office and tried to get in, but found the door locked. The only possible sighting came from the disgraced acolyte, who was doing penance outside by washing the laundry at the well. He looked up from his freezing task and saw a dark figure open the superior's window and jump down to the ground below. The acolyte knew something was wrong, but given that he was already charged with penance duty for his disgrace to the holy writs, he was not inclined to speak up.

He started talking after the murders came to light and they realized he was literally the only priest left alive in the temple that day.

And Drachlortan, still with no living witness to his face or voice, continued in his journey to Hawkbluff. At this point, he knew my name and my affiliation with the Temple. He may have known my face, and given his habit of talking to his victims before he dispatched them, he was probably trying to get a good description of me. Although he probably did not know my address, it hardly mattered. A quick question with any Temple property once he got to Hawkbluff would likely reveal that information to him.

We suspect at this stage the only thing missing in his mental puzzle was the whereabouts of Alinestra Covelia, the last living target of his dead master's grudge. The only thing that Raseyan knew - and thus the only thing he could have told Natroch-gar - was that she was still alive, and that I was somehow interested in a settlement on her behalf. Drachlortan would have to find out where she lived, what she looked like, what her assumed name was, what sort of work she was doing now, and the fact that she was my lover.

It gave me some slight consolation to know that until he found this out, he was probably not going to kill me outright.

* ~ * ~ *

Stalvan was made aware of the situation, and after some discussion with his cabinet of priests, he was able to give us some limited help.

We gave internal notice to the top-ranking supervisors in the city's various Temples to be on the lookout and to report anybody asking after a list of ten names. Only two of the names - unobtrusively placed in the middle of the list - were actually relevant: Captain Hawk and Master Alicov. The rest were names of other layman who held some unofficial affiliation with the Temple, including one name I'd made up.

Each day, we received reports back from the temples about who, if anybody, had asked after them, along with a short physical description. Nothing came looking for me and Allie though.

After about a week of this, Allie started to grate in her temporary lodgings at the training school. She questioned the wisdom of shutting her away for her own safety if she was going to die of boredom anyway. Meanwhile, her business was also suffering, as all her manuscripts had to be delivered to Cleera, acting as her, and then brought over to our training grounds quietly. Cleera was receiving a small sum of money for her housekeeping, and she was happy enough to play along, as it paid better than shifting tables at the pubs. We did not tell her she was serving as bait. But some of the specialized chores in the Alicov household were beyond her, and she botched the eggs, which froze without careful temperature monitoring in their incubator. When I told Alicov about this, it did not improve her mood.

Our language lessons continued, although I noticed with wry amusement that her selection of words had changed. They now included words like TROUBLEMAKER, FOMENT, INSTIGATE, INCITE, GOAD, and the perennial favorite: DONKEY-RAPING PIG TUMBLER. It seemed almost like she was teaching me words and phrases that would only have any application in a very narrow set of circumstances.

Although, of course, I could not deny that they probably applied perfectly well right now.

After a month of this, Allie began packing her things and preparing to go back to her home, Drachlortan be damned. It was the deepest night of midwinter and she was sufficiently angry enough that she was willing to lug her bags herself through the cold if she had to. The timing had been particularly poor, as it was also my birthday, and I had hoped for some quiet celebration at turning twenty.

"It's no big deal, trust me," she said dismissively. "You stop growing and that's about it."

I sent Lellik-jir ahead to the house first just to make sure. While I waited in the training house's courtyard, Remigerius came to me.

"You're doing a good thing," he said. "But she's not one who can live when caged."

I nodded glumly. "I want, more than anything else, for her to be safe. I only wish I could do that and make her happy at the same time."

"Don't beat yourself up about it," he said. "I had much the same task myself when we first came out here. Except then she was just a girl, and still small enough to put over your knee and paddle when she was disobedient." He smiled sadly. "There's no controlling them once they're full grown."

"I am not disposed to argue with you."

"It's hard, having to be careful. Always watching out, trying not to fall into a routine," he said. "That's the lethal step - falling into a routine. Because then they can predict what you do."

He exhaled, the frost already forming on his fur-lined hood around his face.

"At least you don't have to worry about her education. I had to remember that she was still nobility, and far above me in her station," he said, musing. "I had to pick a tutor for her. Somebody to make sure her finely tempered mind didn't start rusting, out here in exile. The first night she brought her man home, when she was nineteen, I thought they had found her and that she'd be dead in the morning and me with her."

"That was the painter, right?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yes, him. Or he claimed he was a painter. If you could call his scribbles on cards to be painting."

Remigerius put a hand to his bad back. On cold nights like these, his bones gave him problems. "Only he wasn't an assassin. But he was a drunk and a wastrel and a womanizer, and he bullied Alicov about something shameful. Took me two months, but I turfed his arse right out into the gutter. And then went right back into the house and threw his women and idiot friends out as well."

Remigerius gave me a lopsided smile. "Damn, now that was nearly eight years ago." He rubbed his spine ruefully. "Not sure that I'd be able to do that now."

"Hawk, I'm glad you're looking after her. You were right," he said. "People these days, they'd probably take me apart. She needs something better, and I'm comforted to see that you're taking this so seriously." He looked back up to her window. "Whether she likes it or not."

I thanked him.

"And to be honest, the responsibility seems to rest better on your shoulders than mine," he said, grinning.

Looking at him there in the biting cold, I had a sudden sense of his abiding honor. The justness of it all, to stand with your bones aching but your mind solely on the welfare of another.

Now, I wish I had said something to him then. I should have told him that his sacrifice was already the noblest deed of all. That Alicov had been born into gentilesse, but that men like him had attained it through their selfless service and the strength of their character. That his humility, his willingness to raise her up through thick and thin, and to forswear his own happiness to help realize hers, was the mark of a true proud spirit. That having given his life to her defense, he would live on in her deeds forever, and all the echoes of her strong life in history would reverberate with the quiet contributions of his own.

But I never said any of those things. I think I muttered something joking and utterly inadequate back to him - I forget what. Probably some aphorism about women being the harshest yet sweetest burden of all. I remember we both had a good laugh and then he went back inside.

It was the last time I would see him alive.



_

[HuManBing]

The Mechanisms of Determination

There had been no reports at any of the Temples about anybody searching for us, but we moved Alicov back to her place in the middle of the night, just for safety's sake. Lotal stayed with her, and his female friend Cleera was there too. Lellik-jir helped them move in and at first planned to go back to the Training Grounds, but Alicov offered him a cup of wine and he took it. When he was done, he declared himself too tired to walk back, and laid himself down to sleep on a bench in the ground floor office.

They did not know it at the time, but this probably saved her life.

Remigerius went to his apartment on the fourth floor, and Alicov went to the Blue Room on the third and tried to sleep. Lotal and Cleera had been sleeping together in the Black Room, and Alicov allowed them to continue doing so.

"Who am I to come between a man and woman?" she had asked, of nobody in particular.

Not long before daybreak, Cleera got up to relieve herself, and found that a window at the bathroom had been forced open. She ran back and woke Lotal, who drew his sword and went to see. There were splinters on the sill from the broken lock, still blowing away in the breeze, he told me later. He knew that whoever had done this had passed through just moments before.

He sent Cleera upstairs to wake Remigerius and bring him down. Then he went to the Blue Room and found the lock picked, the door slightly ajar.

Inside Alicov's bedroom, the lanterns had all been upset, thwarting attempts to light them quickly. Lotal cursed as he fumbled a light from outside. Alicov was nowhere to be found, but all her bedsheets were on the floor. Somebody had clearly come looking for her.

Cleera brought Remigerius down, and he had a sword with him. Lotal ran past them downstairs to the second floor, where Alicov kept her archives. He saw a light at one of the tables, and rushed in to find Alicov there, her head slouched over papers, her eyes still and drooping in the candlelight.

"Master Alicov," he said hoarsely, dreading the response. Or more specifically, dreading no response at all.

The moment she turned her head to look at him, he said, was the sweetest moment of relief he had known. Even when she asked him what the hell he was doing up so late, he could have kissed her for being alive and well - never mind foul-tempered.

"There's an intruder in the house," he said urgently. "A bathroom window open."

Her face changed instantly. "I knew it," she said. "I was reading these. I think I know how he found me." She was pointing at some papers and was trying to say more, but Lotal shushed her.

"We have to get out," he said. "Stay with me and we'll get you to Hawk."

They had passed underneath the lintel to the staircase, when they heard a female scream from upstairs and the sound of a struggle. A thick, slicing sound issued several times down the stairwell - like a sharp shovel thrust into soft dirt.

Later we would learn that Drachlortan the hunter had waited in his perch in the rafters until Remigerius was beneath him. Then he had jumped down and stabbed Remigerius once in the thigh and once in the arm during their struggles, presumably immobilizing him long enough to then stab him twice between the ribs, and then once again through the cheekbone. Then he went after Cleera.

Forcing down his instincts to join the fight, Lotal bundled Alicov down to the first floor, where Lellik-jir was already up with his sword ready. It took Alicov several moments to unlock the front door's many deadbolts, and she was out, running with Lotal through the lightening dawn towards the Temple District.

The description of what happened next at the house comes entirely from Lellik-jir's recounting.

He had seen Lotal and Alicov off at the front door, and checked to make sure they weren't being followed. Then he closed and locked the door and went upstairs, his sword drawn and his breathing fast. There was an ominous repeated thudding sound issuing from upstairs, but Lellik-jir judged it to be too regular for a fight. He guessed, correctly as it turned out, that Remigerius had already been disabled, and that Drachlortan was probably battering down a door.

By the time he got up to the top floor and peeked around the corner, the thudding noise had given way to a splintering crash and Cleera's terrified screams from within the Black Room. He saw a crumpled form in the hallway further on who might have been Remigerius, but there was no time to make sure. The breeze blew a sudden gust from the bathroom at the end of the hall as Lellik-jir hurried to the doorway. There, he came face to face with Cleera, her hands held behind her, her slight frame shielding her captor.

The stranger was a tall man, with a thin face and deepset eyes, framed by unkempt dark hair. Even at that distance, Lellik-jir could tell his obvious strength. He was heavily bearded, too, which made his age hard to tell. He could have been a grizzled veteran of forty or a bare man of twenty. He towered over Cleera, whose head barely reached his shoulder. He held a two-foot-long knife by her throat in one hand, and in the other he held both of Cleera's wrists behind the small of her back.

"Let her go," Lellik-jir had said. "I won't ask twice." His sword - like mine, a shortsword - held out before him.

When Drachlortan spoke, his voice held a trace of an accent but was otherwise unremarkable, Lellik-jir said. It sounded like the voice you would hear from a much smaller person.

"This one I don't want. Where is Alicov?" he asked. He took a step forward, forcing Cleera to take two. His eyes, Lellik-jir noted, were an unusual shade of green.

Outside, in the next houses over, lights were coming on and people were rousing themselves. Cleera's scream had woken them.

"Time is not on your side, friend," Lellik-jir said. "Let the girl go and we'll settle this with a fight. At least then you'll have both hands free to die like a man."

Drachlortan smiled then, a ghastly rictus showing some yellowed teeth.

"You will bring me Alicov or I will dispatch the girl," he said. He dug the knife shallowly into her skin, opening up a thin trickle of blood.

Lellik-jir began to lose his patience.

"Haven't you heard what I said, you oaf? Alicov isn't here, and the general alarum is raised and the guards are on their way," he said. "This isn't some pissant backwater thorpe where you can murder people and move on. I'd say you have at most five minutes before fresh parties arrive in overwhelming numbers."

All this while, Drachlortan edged forward to the doorway with the girl in his grip. Lellik-jir probably could have rushed him and cut him down, but he kept thinking of Cleera, and of how Lotal liked her, and that stayed his hand. As Lellik-jir recounted this to me later, part of me understood and appreciated Lellik-jir's regard for her - much the same way as I felt for Allie. But all the same, part of me screamed that we could have stopped Drachlortan cold and saved Alicov the further uncertainty, even if it meant Cleera's death. Especially given the benefit of hindsight.

"I'm going to go now," Drachlortan said. "The same way I came. If you lay a hand on me or the girl, or block my way, I'll leave you both here for the guards to find."

Lellik-jir backed out of the doorway as Drachlortan proceeded forwards through it. The collar of Cleera's nightdress was stained red and the stain was spreading to her shirt.

"Cleera, are you all right? Blink twice if you can," Lellik-jir said, following Drachlortan as he backed down the hallway towards the bathroom.

Cleera blinked twice. Her hands still held behind her. Her breath coming quickly as the front of her reddening shift rose and fell in agonized gasps.

"You have a straight shot for the window now," Lellik-jir said. "Let her go."

Drachlortan shook his head. "Nah, I might take her with me. Or maybe unseam her and leave you to pick up the pieces. Either way, I don't think you can do anything about it."

Lellik-jir stepped forward, matching Drachlortan's slow retreat towards the window.

"We know what you look like," he said. "By sunset there will be pictures of your face in all the squares in Hawkbluff. By the end of the week they'll be up in every village board from here to Hasid. Your only hope is to kill me."

Drachlortan laughed. "You're so naive. To keep my face a secret, I'd also have to kill the girl, wouldn't I?" he said. "And what would your lanky friend think about that?" He meant Lotal.

Lellik-jir cursed himself. He was trying to come up with something better than this, when the darkness behind Drachlortan suddenly convulsed, and the hunter went down heavily, his own shout hoarse in the dawn silence. Cleera fell beside him and crawled a few staggering paces before lying still, and Lellik-jir pounded up the hallway to tackle the man.

What had happened was this: Remigerius, though bleeding heavily from all his wounds and unable to see from his right eye, had risen onto his side behind Drachlortan. When the hunter stepped within range, the older man thrust his sword upwards. It sank deep into the cartilage in the back of the hunter's right knee. Then, with the last of his strength, Remigerius wrapped his arms around the hunter's leg to hold him so Lellik-jir could take him.

Lellik-jir barrelled into Drachlortan, going at him barefisted instead of using his sword, out of fear of hurting Remigerius or Cleera. He landed a few good hits to the bigger man's face before Drachlortan grabbed him by the nape and butted him in the face. The next thing Lellik-jir knew, there was a foot in his stomach, kicking him away.

Suddenly freed, Drachlortan turned and thrust his knife into Remigerius' skull and turned it around and around for good measure.

Lellik-jir righted himself again and recovered his sword. He charged Drachlortan and brought his sword down in an arc that met the bigger man's blade. They struggled, his foot finding the other man's injured knee, and forcing him to the ground.

Then Drachlortan lifted Remigerius' corpse with both hands and hefted him into Lellik-jir's torso. By the time Lellik-jir got back to his feet, the hunter had made his way to the window. Before Lellik-jir could make it to the bathroom, the hunter had already jumped out - three storeys down.

Lellik-jir caught his breath and saw to Remigerius. The man was clearly past saving - the two gaping wounds in his skull evidence that he had, as sworn to do, gone to his death in defence of his ward. Lellik-jir went to Cleera, who had taken a deep cut to her neck when Drachlortan fell.

She had enough breath left in her to tell him, wheezing between the bubbles of her sliced arteries, that Drachlortan had hidden in the rafters until Remigerius came by. She had locked herself in the Black Room while they were fighting.

Lellik-jir waited by her until her pulse stopped from the bleeding, and then he went down to the streets to look for Drachlortan. He was gone, of course, but there was a trail of blood leading from the window where he had leapt.

The blood ran out after a block though.

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

Tracing the Hunter

Lotal and Alicov made their way to the training grounds, where they woke me and Pejri. A third young man, Jaydo, was with us, and we hurried her in.

I left Alicov and the boys, and went with Lotal back to the publishing house. We stopped by the Undercroft to pick up Prasti as well.

When we got there, Lellik-jir was talking to some of the members of the guard. They had taken his sword away and he was sitting on the steps.

I came forward.

"I am his commanding officer," I said. "I can answer for him."

The guardsmen saw us and took in the swords we were carrying at our sides. They asked if we had special dispensation to carry them, and when I showed them the Temple writ, they gave Lellik-jir back his sword.

"This is a mess," the guard leader said. His name was Drasten. "There was a break-in on the upper levels. Two people dead."

Lellik-jir looked around. "Can we step inside?" he asked. "Too cold out here, and people are starting to stare."

We all went in, and Lotal and Lellik-jir told me and Drasten about the events of the night before. They left out any mention of Alicov, but the Drasten was shrewd and asked specifically about Master Alicov.

It was Prasti who eventually handled it, saying that Alicov was not on the premises and had in fact gone away from home on business. This seemed to satisfy the guard.

"Try to keep this quiet, would you?" he said. "The Temple looks after its own, but it's easier to do without people tramping all around lending their opinions."

Drasten nodded. "Well enough. Who do you report to? Stalven, was it?"

"Aye, Stalven," I said.

Drasten gathered his things. "I'll follow up with him. Paperwork, you know - not because of any trust thing," he added hastily. "The captain will have my head if I don't get the papers filled correctly. Especially with a double murder."

When he had left, I turned back to Lotal, who was fidgeting dangerously with his sword.

"Do you want to go up and take a look?" Lellik-jir asked him. "I laid them out on the beds."

We did, both dreading what we would see but knowing there was nothing to be done about it. In a thick velvet sheet in the Black Room, Cleera lay, pale and serene in death - the only violation of her body being the thin, wicked cut across her neck.

In the Blue Room, laid out on several capes from his apartment, was Remigerius, his head a frightful mess of stab wounds and a gaping hole that obliterated the right side of his face and cracked off several of his molars. The last stab from the hunter had gone into his head straight down from the crown, and although it had killed him instantly, it didn't seem nearly as ghastly as the trauma to his cheek. The one eye I could still see was closed, strangely calm, as if he had found some peace in dying for his lady.

I looked at the broad muscles of his arms, which had held Drachlortan fast in place as he tried to flee. These same arms had held off the Verdinesh decades ago. His hands had gripped mine in a sure handshake the last time we'd spoken. Who knew what other battles and brawls they had served in.

Lellik-jir came to the doorway and cleared his throat.

"Lotal's taking a few moments alone to say goodbye to Cleera," he said. "Shall we bring Alicov here to say goodbye to Remigerius?"

I shook my head. "There's no time, and Drachlortan is still out there," I said. "We'll bring him back to the training grounds and we can present him to her there. We can set up a small resting place for him there, in the garden."

Lellik-jir nodded, grimly pleased with the idea. "We can take example of his service and bravery."

I waved him out. "We'll wait until Lotal's done and then we'll move their bodies out together. Master Alicov had a padded cart she used for moving books. We can cover that and move them out in that."

"How long?"

"Give him half an hour," I said. "If he's still not ready, remind him that he still has work to do, and Drachlortan isn't going to come to him."

* ~ * ~ *

We buried Remigerius in a quiet ceremony. We were able to bathe his body and dress him in new clothes, and we put a captain's helm on his head, which helped to disguise the extent of his injuries there. Allie came out to see him and say her farewells before we lowered him into the ground.

Then we went to the Temple to see about putting likenesses of the killer up around town. Lellik-jir had seen him and could describe him pretty well. Allie sat with him and sketched the face in pencil, correcting her mistakes when he pointed them out.

She handed it to me and to the rest of the men.

"I hope you get him, boys," was all she said.

We ran it down to the printer and ordered two hundred of them. Then I sent four of the younger ones to post them up around town, with a special dispensation from the Temple for citizens to make the arrest.

Stalvan came to me later.

"I have been talking with the lady," he said. "It seems there was a lot you had not told me."

I explained that I had not seen fit to burden him with the particulars of my private life. He held up a hand.

"I understand that she is your lover. I have no objection to this. I also understand that the publishing magnate we know as Master Alicov is actually her, is that correct?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And you intend to make peace between her and the Verdinesh during a Loveday settlement?" he asked.

"Yes."

He sighed. "The Temple is careful about choosing the nature of the settlements. Just as the courts of equity may refuse cases for lack of ripeness, or for lack of standing, so too do we refuse cases where there is a real concern over the parties' willingness to abide by the rules," he said.

"I understand," I said. "But Alicov's safety is my main concern now. If the Temple will not broker a peace, then you can expect me to commit to full hostilities until nobody is left to threaten her."

Stalvan held up his plump hands. "Well, we wouldn't want that," he said. "But bear in mind that your actions have unleashed something we didn't foresee. Three priests on the road to Flex are dead because of Drachlortan. If you had come to us first, maybe they would be alive still."

I rose to face him. "Are you blaming me for the actions of this maniac?" I said. "If so, you may discharge me from your service and I guarantee you I'll put things right by him."

Stalvan shook his head. "I'm not explaining myself very well," he said. "Put it this way. Drachlortan has no friends. He can't afford to. He can't let anybody else have any claim to his attentions or loyalties. That's why he operates alone."

Stalvan waved towards the courtyard, where my men were lined up to pay their respects to Remigerius.

"But consider yourself. You have the Temple, you have your men, you have the love of a good woman," he said. "These all strengthen you enormously... but remember that you must also act in a way that does not harm their interests. And the best way to make sure of that is to keep all parties informed as much as possible. So even if you must take a step that may injure a party, they know about it in advance and can consent to it. That is all."

I thought about this. There had been something secretive about going to Hasid. But there so often was when personal safety was at stake. Stalvan had already committed to helping me - that much was clear. He had ordered the Temples to report any suspicious inquiries. And he had already glossed over the murders at Alicov Publishing with the relevant authorities.

"All right, Father, I will remember," I said. "Your interests are aligned with my own."

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, those three priests were the first deaths we heard of, but there had been more. We would not learn of them until the aftermath was all blown over, and the Temple had carried out its investigation. But I tell of them here so that Drachlortan's movements will make more sense in retrospect. He had them planned well, and the results baffled us for days, leaving us thinking that he had some preternatural divining skills for finding his prey. But he lies cold in the ground now, dead as all men must, and it would be a disservice to give him any powers beyond the facts.

After the massacre at the wayside temple, Drachlortan fades from public record for a week. During this time, he may have slept by the road, or in tent camps. Knowing how his brother Natroch-gar carried his tent with him, as many tribal families do, it's possible Drachlortan did the same, sleeping away from the lights of the city by night, as he rode implacably onwards by day.

He rightly suspected that his killings of the Templars would be noticed. Maybe he even did that on purpose to trigger my response. Certainly, I monitored as much as the Temple could, never suspecting that Drachlortan had other means of finding out about me.

We do know that the key breakthrough for him was his arrival in Bishopsgate, at the Seasons Inn. We are not entirely sure if he stumbled on that place by chance. It is easily the most hospitable inn along the Bishop's Highway, and he may also have been drawn by the large number of well-appointed visitors. But Alicov had another theory, and it's probably the correct one. It came to her the first night she had gone back to her apartment, and, unable to sleep, she had thought about her work.

And then sat bolt upright in bed, in the keen moment of pleasure of fusing a key mental connection.

She snuck down to the archives and began checking the publication proofs. This meant she was not in the Blue Room, and luckily missed Drachlortan. She had pored through the proofs until Lotal had found her.

The story had already progressed to my stay in Hawkbluff. Which meant that chronologically, it had already detailed my arrival in Bishopsgate. In real life, that was where I had gotten to know Alicov better, and we had made love in the upstairs room.

Of course, the actual printed material had specially omitted all mention of Alicov. Allie didn't want any of her character to appear in the story at all. So readers of the public knew only that I had gone to Bishopsgate, and rented a room at the Seasons Inn alone, and stayed there a night. During that time, they read about my duel with the poncey cavalryman whom I hit in the crotch with my blunted sword-edge.

It's entirely possible that Drachlortan had picked up one of the many periodicals and read about me there, and then realized he was reading about the same Templar captain. If so, he probably figured I'd be a memorable face in Bishopsgate, and decided to ask about me there. Either way, he finally learned at the Seasons Inn that I had actually been there with a woman. At that point his mission shifted focus entirely, with me relegated to a mere bit player in his objectives as he finally got some real information on Alicov.

He stayed there in the common room for four days. He met somebody there - a Brigadier Trammellstern, who wore an eyecatching uniform and sported a large moustache - and talked to him about me. Trammellstern confirmed that he knew me, though not by name. Apparently, we had had a duel once, and although he had injured me, in the end I had knocked him to the ground like some barbarian.

Drachlortan asked him whether I was with anybody, especially somebody I was chaperoning or bodyguarding. A lady, perhaps.

Trammellstern confirmed this, and told Drachlortan that there had been a red-haired woman with me that night, who had cheered me on like some hooligan. He intimated that the staff at the inn seemed to be on good terms with the woman.

Drachlortan talked to a serving girl at the inn. By the time the conversation was over, he knew enough. He knew Alicov's name and her publishing business, and also the fact that she had written up a good review of the Seasons Inn.

He asked her to leave a message for "Master Alicov". The message read I MISSED YOU BUT I LOOK FORWARD TO MEETING YOU IN PERSON. He then gave a date and a time that he would be there. He declined to give a name, perhaps assuming that she would know who he was.

Later that night, Trammellstern invited Drachlortan for a drink and they talked. Trammellstern asked Drachlortan if he was going to find me. He gave the hunter an appraising stare, which was probably what doomed him. He offered Drachlortan some money if he would hurt me. Torture me, perhaps.

Drachlortan motioned that they should talk outside, but his mind was already forming the conclusion that Trammellstern knew too much and may be able to identify him in future. Since then, Trammellstern has been missing and his body has still not yet been recovered. The back face of the Seasons Inn property abuts onto some wild uncleared woodland, and it may take decades before Trammelstern's remains come to light, if they ever do.

Two hours out from Bishopsgate, he got to a library and sat down to do some reading. When he was finished, he had a pretty clear idea of the writers who contributed to Alicov's periodicals and book lists.

He went to Selbinwood to find one author, and waited in his house for him. He learned from the man what Alicov looked like, and what sort of work she was in. The man was unable to tell him where she lived, but he hardly needed to know that. The name and premises of Alicov Book Publishing was easily accessible at the Hawkbluff directories. So he hardly needed to ask the poor rustic writer in Selbinwood. He probably slit his throat out of pique.

After that, with the dead man's money in his pocket, Drachlortan came to the city of Hawkbluff and very quickly learned where the main Temple was. The fact that there was a military training academy near the Temple confirmed my location, but by then I was already a mere secondary concern. Drachlortan had found Alicov, and he was close to finishing whatever last order Malchior had given him, so many years ago.

I do not pretend to understand the twisted logic or rationales by which he elevated the order to the lifelong obsession it had become for him. Nor do I pretend to explain the fervor with which he had killed eight innocents in the path to fulfilling an expired and obsolete order, given years ago by an old man dreaming of a paradise lost.

But then again, it was no longer my job to understand him. He was an enemy, simply enough. The process by which his aberration was forged was of no interest to me. Except in showing me the weaknesses I could use to eliminate him from my concerns.

* ~ * ~ *

I stood at the silent Alicov building, fingering the folding lens that I'd brought with me from the Palt and Roshan campaigns. The house was empty now, the bloodstains scrubbed from the floors and halls. Allie was at the training grounds under guard at all times by three men, and plans were nearing completion to bundle her into the actual Undercroft itself for safekeeping.

But something brought me back to the house. Something about what Lellik-jir recalled.

The lanky one, Drachlortan had said.

That suggested he had seen Lotal. But not remembered his name. Perhaps he had never known it?

Hence my presence, at dawn, when the sun would be behind the building shining setwards. That angle would obscure the sight of anybody looking into the house, and give me excellent illumination to scan out of the house.

I opened the lens to its full extension and then scanned the windows setwards. Alicov had given me the keys to the other bedrooms - a good half a dozen in all - each named after a color.

In the red room, I saw a great mirror aimed at the windows and a strange spinning thing in the center of the room. There were minuscule drawings and etchings on them. I could not make them out.

Outside of the windows, I scanned the streets below and then raised the eyepiece towards the skyline. Most of the buildings were the same height as Alicov's building. Across the street, the windows were dead level. None appeared to be occupied at this time - or at least, it was hard to tell from the shutters against the rising sun.

I took out a piece of paper and jotted down the positions of the buildings. Then I went to the bedrooms on the other side of the building, even though they faced the blinding sunrise. It would be useful to come back and spy on them through the evening, I thought, when the sun would be setting and brightening my field of vision.

I went to the bathroom and looked at the window. We had put it back into its settings in the wall, and then piled down two large bars in place against it. It wasn't pretty and it didn't do much for the air circulation, but it was pretty clear that nobody would be coming through that anytime soon.

I stood on a chest of towels and looked out the window. I took the eyepiece and looked. There was no building nearby at the same level. The nearest building on this side was a cloth merchant, and it only came up to a second floor. Drachlortan had leapt from this window and landed on the roof of that building, before collecting himself and jumping down two floors to the ground below.

I remembered the pain I felt when, at the battle of Forg against Malarchus' men, I had taken an arrow to my leg. Each step had been a test of my will. And this man Drachlortan had leaped down a storey and then two storeys more to the ground. And then he had hobbled or lurched to safety, all with a bad knee injury caused by Remigerius' blade.

Finding no way to explain how Drachlortan got in through the bathroom window, I went back down the corridor to the central staircase, and climbed up to Remigerius' chambers, now abandoned. He lived in austere surroundings. He had but few books, and he had a neat collection of blades on the wall. In a chest there was a dusty suit of plate armor, heavy and ornamental. There was a rumpled document framed in glass which had a letter written by a woman to Remigerius, thanking him for saving her mother from the river.

I looked around and craned my neck up. There was a ladder in his kitchen, and I took it and found the trapdoor leading to the roof. Even this was barred with paranoid safety - there were three locks across it, and I took my time trying and rejecting the dozens of keys on his keychain before getting it open.

On the roof, there was a single chimney, roofed against the rain, which drew the smoke out of the building. The first two floors never had fireplaces lit, I remembered. And Alicov's own apartment only had one serviceable fireplace, where she took her meals, even though she had eight or so different bedrooms. I remembered her shivering each time before she got into bed from the cold.

I peeked down the chimney. The space between the roof and the top edge of the brickwork was far too small to admit a man of Drachlortan's size. And in any case, there were several grilles in the way to stop debris from falling in. Drachlortan didn't come in this way.

But it wasn't till I circled round to the other side and tripped that I realized how he'd done it.

There was a hefty rope secured to one of the pipes around the chimney. It dangled to the bathroom window, but in this wind it had swayed back around the corner, tapping like a lost branch against the bricks.

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, Drachlortan had actually rented a garret in the top of a nearby building so he could watch the house. It was too low for him to watch Remigerius' level, but he could and did keep tabs on the third level. He had bought into the ruse that Cleera was Alicov, at first.

Thus, it was with no small confusion that he observed Alicov come back to the house. And now there were two redheaded women in the house. He watched and saw the room that the newcomer occupied - the Blue Room - and he determined that evening to break into the house and get to the bottom of this.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

I discovered his garret on the second day after the attack at the house. The landlady said he had seemed to be a writer, and had been interested in writing something for Alicov Publishing. He had paid for a week's lodging up front, and then disappeared after a few days.

I gave her a steel coin and asked her to keep me informed if she ever saw him around.

She never did, though.

Drachlortan had gone to ground again.




_

[HuManBing]

In Pursuit of the Ineluctable

Immediately after the attack, Allie's nerves seemed frayed. She often forgot what she was saying, and her hands shook when she tried to pick things up. But she recovered quickly by degrees, and even regained some of her dark humor, joking with the boys I'd left to guard her.

Still, after about two days, she made it clear that she considered this a strictly temporary arrangement. One way or another, she was to go back to her home and resume her life as publisher and writer. She told me in no uncertain terms that she would not allow the Verdinesh to cow her - especially not now, given that only this one errant agent still cared about the feud.

Although her stubbornness drove me into fits about her safety, I could see that she was clearly not one to be caged up like an animal. Some people enjoyed boundaries and confinements, seeing them as guidance and protection. Allie did not. In captivity, she wilted.

She also drank far more than a woman in her condition should have. Looking on the bright side, in the aftermaths of her binges, it was relatively easy to secure her safety, as she tended to move very slowly, if at all. But each time she hunched over the sickbucket and heaved, it reminded me of some mortally wounded game beast, howling a death-rattle. Not for nothing did I mistake her first such bout for an assassination attempt.

Clearly, we had to resolve Drachlortan, and fast. We searched the houses in the neighborhood, with Drasten's help. For the most part, it was easy going. Word had gotten out that somebody had tried to rob Alicov, and narrowly missed injuring Allie. She and the company were well-liked in the area, and most of the neighbors in the Overlook District banded together.

But no more traces surfaced aside from his garret.

* ~ * ~ *

Sitting at the center of the guards and the Temple reports, I tried to parse out all the sightings. We offered a decent reward for Drachlortan's capture, and circulated that out on the fourth day. News of the initial three Templar deaths in the wayside Temple came to us about then, and then later about the disappearance of Trammellstern.

But that was all that we reliably knew. False sightings came in every so often - somebody seeing somebody they thought could be him, or pranksters just after the reward. We heard a few reports that sounded like they could be feasible, and followed them up as best we could, but all in all progress was painfully slow.

A roadside merchant saw a man who looked like Drachlortan riding past early in the morning. Backtracking from him, we heard a stableboy report the theft of a horse closer in to town, though he didn't see the perpetrator. There had been blood in the hay, perhaps from a leg wound.

Stalvan came to me, to see how I was doing.

"The Temple is right behind you," he said. "But we'd better catch him fast. He's put eight people into the ground already, and if he keeps at it, people will start asking what it was that brought him here."

He put down another piece of paper. I held it, reading it slowly with inexpert eyes.

"Sightings in Crowsridge, Chavelstone, and Seisingate," he said. "Coincidentally the poorest of the villages where we have Temples. Doubtless the reward would do wonders for their coffers."

I passed a hand wearily over my forehead and started reading the reports.

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, the answer was right in front of me, somewhere in the jumble. But I lacked the information to know it. In Seisingate, a man fitting Drachlortan's description had ridden into the forest. Kicking off his blood-filled boot, he had bathed his wound in the leggings and bound it tighter. Then putting on his boots again, he produced a knife and cropped his hair and beard to the skin.

Drachlortan emerged bald and smooth-chinned - a mere boy from the forest. Perhaps a woodsman's son, his brawny arms still new to the axe, which would explain the blade wound in his leg.

He tied up the stolen horse and limped to the village, where he met few people on the road and those who saw him did not note him. He was already two days ahead of the wanted posters that would depict his old face.

He went to the Temple apothecary, which was a side building to the Temple itself in such a small settlement. There was a chimney but no window or door. He limped back around to the front of the Temple and went in, sitting quietly until a young priestess - Aldrenay - noticed his injury and offered to help.

Drachlortan gave her a fairly large amount of money, and Priestess Aldrenay proceeded with her careful craft. She cut around his leggings and helped him climb into a bath, where she mixed soothing herbs.

She asked him how he had gotten the wound, and he said he had taken a bad swing at a tree branch and it had turned in his hand. Aldrenay was still relatively young and did not question exactly how a woodsman's axe would bury itself in the back of one's knee.

She cleaned the wound and placed a poultice in the raw tangle of tendons and shredded flesh. She then straightened the leg and bound it firmly, with splints on both sides. Drachlortan would be entirely unable to run for about a week at least.

She told him this, and apologized.

"Pastor Chelgreave said the old Bishop gave a speech once, about the blessing of the gods," she sad. "Generations ago, their works were plentiful and their blessings were commonplace. Priests would merely have to touch the truly faithful, and they would be healed. Nowadays, we must rely on thread and needles to save whomever we can. Signs and wonders - the world turns from the munificence of the gods, and they withdraw their blessing from us."

Drachlortan did not offer any response to this eschatological line of discussion, but he did respond when she told him to rest at the Temple. He said he was needed back at the settlement and must set off as soon as he can. Aldrenay asked him which woodcamp he worked at - the forests had families who went into the woods and wouldn't come to the towns or Temples more than a handful of times each generation, and the Templars always looked for chances to proselytize them.

Drachlortan had muttered a few concocted directions and then slipped away. Priestess Aldrenay was the only person he had met to get away scot-free. But then again, she had no reason to suspect him, even after the likenesses went up.

* ~ * ~ *

Drachlortan spent most of his time in the wilderness, living from his tent and nursing the leg. At some point in the second week, he moved to a very isolated community where the Temple wagon every month was their sole contact with the kingdom that claimed sovereignty over them. It's not certain how many such humble villages he visited before choosing this one. But we do know what made him choose this one in the end - the Templar there was almost as tall as he was.

Drachlortan went, still limping somewhat, into the Temple premises. The building was little more than a hut, in that backwards settlement, but even so, the statue of each god was in its proper place in the altar wall. Nobody knows what he said to the priest there, or how the fighting began, but the priest was not found until much later, stripped naked behind the main offering table, his neck broken. His private room was ransacked and two changes of his clothing were taken - the flowing cowled robes of the temple, a humble brown for his lowly station. The apothecary was completely depleted of all healing herbs.

And then Drachlortan turned his horse back towards Hawkbluff and towards his quarry.

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

Drachlortan's Ultimatum

We heard nothing of this until much later, when it was moot. Drachlortan came to Hawkbluff dressed as a lowly Templar from the outskirt villages, and he humbly nodded his head to those around him.

At the Bridge District, he hobbled to the Temples asking after a fictitious Templar, meeting polite apologies wherever he went. In this manner he was able to stay around the brothel where Lellik-jir and the boys often spent their nights.

This time, only a few of the greener ones were there. Two boys, Salwen and Veshal, were there drinking and sporting with the women. Drachlortan came in, politely asking whether any patron or employee had asked half an hour hence for a priest, for sickness.

The patron asked around and no answer was forthcoming. But seeing the travelling priest before him with his pouches of medicines, he said he was free to ask around and take collections for his services.

None of my Talons had been with me when I worked for Sardricor in Flex, or they might have remembered that I'd seen a scar-faced priest doing something similar in a slum brothel there. If I had been there, I might have remembered. I might even have begun to suspect.

However the method, Drachlortan found the bedroom where the two men were staying. He came in and closed the door and put on the light while they were still groggy with their long-haired whores.

Even given his leg injury, it was an easy task to kill both boys and their girls before anybody had fully awoken. There wasn't even a scream. He wiped off the long knife and hid it once more under his robes. Before he left the room, he conscientiously checked his shoes. The bodies would not be discovered till much later, and Drachlortan had enough composure to complete his charade of offering his powders and ointments at every room.

By this time, he was accountable for thirteen.

* ~ * ~ *

The guards at Alicov's house were expecting somebody of Drachlortan's old appearance. They did not expect a priest to come. Drachlortan had motioned the first guard into the doorway, and the guard had foolishly obliged. Drachlortan then seized him and cut his throat and slashed his inner thigh. Although nobody noticed it, he held the guard towards the corner, as if helping him relieve himself as the blood ran down his legs and into the gutter. He wiped the blade and hid it again and entered, dragging the body into Alicov's shopfloor.

Inside, he searched every room methodically, and met the second guard on the staircase between the second and third floors. This time, the guard was alarmed, knowing that there was no reason a priest should be here. Drachlortan told him in an urgent voice that his friend was slumped in the doorway down below and seemed to be bleeding. The guard went down with him to the doorway and Drachlortan stabbed him in the back and then cut his throat too. He put both bodies together and continued his search.

On the third floor he inspected Alicov's rooms at his leisure, opening drawers and looking through closets. He apparently saw enough to believe that she had cleared out and was not coming back anytime soon.

He torched the house on the way out and went to the First Temple.

* ~ * ~ *

Drasten was the first to know, and had some men on the scene quickly. Apparently, the buckets inside the house were still good, and they ran in and began dousing the flames as best they could. The fire was worst on the ground floor, but he was able to bring some men up the stairs and to chain down water buckets in rotation.

That done, he came out and saw to identifying the two victims, and then he mounted up, with his lieutenant beside him. They came to us at the Temple training rooms, and told us Allie's home was on fire. He also said two men had been killed guarding it.

"We don't think the fire's an accident," he said. "And I'm pretty sure I know who killed my boys."

Lotal was downright disbelieving.

"He went back to the house?" he demanded. "He actually went back after all that happened? Is he purposefully obscenitying with us?"

Drasten bowed his head before Alicov. He already knew about her identity and role in all this.

"Milady, we'll do all we can to save the house with the water buckets there," he said. "The most important thing for you right now is to stay safe."

She nodded, her face hard to read.

Drasten consulted with me.

"You need help hunting him down?" I asked. "My men are ready and willing."

He shook his head.

"Keep her safe," he said. "We don't want any more civilian involvement right now. I'm going to have to go back and report that I was the one who cleared the house for guard duty, and put those two dead men up for it. And I'm sure the Captain's not going to like that one bit."

He joined his lieutenant at the training grounds gate and left.

* ~ * ~ *

We dressed Allie up in a boy's tunic and put a cap over her hair. We put gloves on her hands so nobody would be able to tell the difference. Given the extreme cold, the scarf kept her neck warm, but it also hid her beardless chin from the Templar at the Undercroft gates. Lotal and Prasti forced a bantering back-and-forth as she played the part of a drinking buddy, staggering back to the Undercroft with us.

We were about to get inside when the priest called my name. I turned and went to him.

"That boy who's with you," he said. "I want a word."

I swallowed, glad that my beard hid my nervousness from view.

"What, Callim?" I said. "I think he's had a few too many."

"This will only take a moment," the priest said.

I motioned them over. Allie stood, staggering a bit, in front of him. She was already half-drunk in reality and was looking forward to getting into my bedroom so she could finish the job entirely.

"I know what it's like to be young and lusty in your celebrations," he said sternly. "But everything in moderation, I say. And you, young man, have been quite the troublemaker in past. If you can't hold your liquor, but haven't the sense to abstain, the least you could do is clean up your own messes."

Allie nodded dumbly at him, unable to speak.

"Next time you feel you have to park a tiger, there are mops and rags in the closet on every floor," he said. "Don't make the Temple clean up your mess. Is that understood?"

Allie nodded. The priest leaned in close.

"Is that understood, boy?"

She coughed and made an affirmative grunt, as low as her voice would go.

He looked at her, a narrow eyed squint that was a bit too searching for my comfort.

"Go on, then, you drunkard. Knock yourself out," he grumbled.

We got a move on.

* ~ * ~ *

Lellik-jir burst in with terrible news. Drachlortan had killed two of our own. The two boys, Veshal and Salwen, were found dead in the brothel, their women cold beside them. He was going to set up an ambush for Drachlortan in the training grounds.

Swearing a few ill-advised oaths in our Temple Undercroft, he headed back out into the cold.

I turned back to Allie. She lay on my bed in glorious incoherent disarray, empty bottles surrounding her. In defiance of the priest's orders, she had indeed parked her tiger in the middle of my floor, and I had had to mop it up. The reeking bucket stood in the corner.

I sighed and returned to my vigil. By my side I had my trusty single-sided shortsword. Also, a bow and quiver, knife, a few throwing axes from Prasti's backpack, and a good deal of rope.

The shadows grew still again, but I continued. There was no way I could sleep now. Not with Drasten's men dead, my own men murdered, and Alicov's house on fire. I had to hand it to Drachlortan - he succeeded in prosecuting this ageing vendetta with a truly excessive amount of resolve. With who-knew-how-many people dead from his actions, the Temple, the Watch, and even the Company of the Hawk were all ready to see the end of him. Perhaps Malchior Verdinesh was looking down proudly, wherever he was.

The first thing I noticed was the flickering candle.

My window was double barred, with glass shut against the wood panels. So the only explanation was that a ground floor courtyard door somewhere had opened, and not been shut. I stood and walked over to the bedroom door. I put my hand against the edge of the door. There was definitely a breeze flowing in.

I drew my sword and whispered to Pejri, who started upright.

"Stay here," I said. "I'm going to lock you in."

"You shouldn't go alone," he said urgently.

"I won't, I'll get Prasti," I said. "But you have to take care of her."

He nodded.

I went out and roused Prasti, and the two of us went through the Undercroft.

The moment I saw the priest at the door, I knew something was up. The door was wide open, and the priest's head was slumped over the table as a freezing gust of wind blew fitfully into the lobby.

"Crap," Prasti said. "The bastard’s gotten inside."

"Go back to our rooms and send Kash to get Drasten," I said. "We'll stay here and post the remaining men to each exit and entrance – nobody gets in or out until morning. There are a lot of innocent priests in this building who could get hurt."

I did not know Drachlortan had been dressed as a priest. The Bridge District brothel owner had failed to recall that a novice initiate was the last person to see Veshal and Salwen alive. Because of this knowledge gap, we were still searching for somebody wearing some style of tribal clothes. No such person emerged.

We got back to our corridor in the Undercroft, and Kash was fetched. He saddled up and rode off to bring the guards, as we made a sweep through the Undercroft. Even at this late hour, several of the priests were awake, in monastic devotions. Each time we saw one, we gave a brief wave and moved on.

I rested in the main chapel for a second. The vault of the ceiling soared into darkness above me, festooned with tapestries of Mislaxa and her sibling deities. The incense thickened the air, drifting in exotic spiced clouds from the braziers, as deep shadows clung beneath the balconies and drapes. Two men stood by the altar, praying in their brown robes.

I went up and joined them, looking at their faces. I did not recognize either of them, but it was hard to tell in the darkness. Nor, I reflected ruefully, had I made any particular effort to learn the names and faces of all the priests in the Temple. I made a note to myself to get to know my neighbors better.

After a spell, the priests looked at me pointedly, and I moved on to the setwards wing.

* ~ * ~ *

Kash made it to Drasten’s and the guard came with his assistant, both on horseback. On the ride over, Kash filled them in on the hunter’s latest movements. They came to the courtyard in a pother of hoofbeats and champing, then dismounted and began to tie up while Kash closed the gate behind them.

Kash’s back was turned when he heard a strange humming-flitting noise. A heartbeat later, he turned to see an arrow bloom from Drasten’s neck. The guard fell forwards, choking, against his horse’s neck as the animal bucked and whinnied. His lieutenant was still turning to look at him when the second arrow took his own horse in the shoulder and the younger man tumbled to the ground, pinned under his mount.

Drachlortan did not finish them off then. The lieutenant’s cries drew Kash out, and an arrow glanced off the flagstones near his foot. Kash ran behind a pillar and began bellowing for the other Talons.

He didn’t have particularly good prospects. Lotal and Lellik-jir, my two men with the strongest personal reasons for bringing Drachlortan down, were both at the training halls. They had taken three other men with them, expecting sustained resistance. Two of my younger Talons were dead in the brothel. That left Gram, Kash, Prasti, and me here at the Undercroft. Young Pejri was locked in with Allie.

Prasti was in one of the side wings when he looked out the window and saw Kash’s situation – the fallen guards and Kash himself sandwiched behind a slight buttress at the courtyard wall. He also saw it was hopeless for him to go outside without being shot down himself too. He shouted out to Kash, asking where the bowman was. Kash gave a response – the second floor.

By this time I had my own bow strung and ready with an arrow nocked. I ran up to the windows and saw the same tableau that greeted Prasti. I flashed a lantern to him and motioned for us to close on the second floor from both sides.

Then I took the stairs up three at a time and paused at the corridor corner. A chill breeze fluttered through the hallway, from some forgotten window. Elsewhere, mutterings of rising consternation from the priests, now risen from their rests but staying, for now, in their rooms as we’d advised them.

Prasti pounded up the stairs at the other end of the gallery and we went down the hallway methodically, opening doors and peeking in. We were met with anxious faces or empty beds – in one, a priest turned to us dismissively while picking over the remains of a plate of food at the foot of his bunk.

“He was up here just a second ago,” Prasti said. “Kash saw him.”

“Well, he’s not getting out,” I said. “And I don’t think he knows where he’s going.”

None of the priests had seen anybody unusual. I apologized for the disturbance, but it was the munching priest who told me something worthwhile, after he’d swallowed his mouthful of bread.

“You didn’t wake us,” he said. “It was that novice who came round knocking on doors.”

Prasti and I blinked at each other.

“Novice?” I asked.

“Yes, from the robes it looked. He had something in a bag with him. He came in and apologized and left,” the priest said.

“How tall?” I asked.

“Big lad. Easily your height and then some.”

“Beard?”

“No – clean shaven.”

I grabbed Prasti and went down the hall. I sent him to stand guard at the end of our corridor – not outside Allie’s room, so as not to give any clue which room she was in.

I ran to the gate connecting the Undercroft to the main Temple and told the acolyte there to bring me a residency list from Stalvan and to wake everybody. The hunter was in the building and was dressed like a novice priest. He was tall and beardless and had a bag with him. Everybody was to lock themselves into their rooms and stay there. We would go room to room and check occupants against the list.

Prasti thought about the routes out from the second level gallery.

“Hawk,” he said. “I think he ran to the chapel.”

We got Gram and Prasti at the ground exit. And then I went to the balcony and looked down. The place seemed empty – several of the braziers were dark, pushed over, I suspected, in the rush.

I looked down the aisle at the altar. Something caught my eye. A hint of cloth over the far edge of the raised table, a scrap of brown against the gold of the altar.

I clicked my fingers and pointed it out for Prasti and Gram below. They nodded, and Prasti crept up the aisle, sword out. I strung my bow again and nocked an arrow, the head steady ahead of Prasti.

“Give yourself up, Drachlortan,” I called. “It’s over.”

There was no response. I whistled to Prasti, and then let fly an arrow. It hit the cloth with a fleshy noise, and something tumbled over leadenly behind the altar.

I nocked another arrow, wondering, as Prasti hesitated. Then he sprinted up to the dais and skidded around the corner, sword up.

He swore, the oath resounding profanely in the holy place.

“It’s a priest here. Your arrow in his skull, Hawk,” he shouted.

"What?!" It was my turn to curse, regardless of the sacred settings.

"Oh, never mind," he called back. "Just looked closer. Slit throat, too."

I had stood up as he said this, and that is the reason why the arrow from my right took me in the upper arm and not the throat.

* ~ * ~ *

I flew sideways, carried by the terrific force of the blow, my bow clattering away uselessly. Drachlortan managed to get a second arrow off even before I hit the ground, though it thudded into a pew beside me. Then he was vaulting over the pews behind me to finish the job, knife out and murder in his green eyes.

I rolled, then stopped, and righted so that my convulsed gaze faced the ceiling above. The pain of scraped bone, and the rubbing of wood splinters in flesh, was proving hard for me to push to the back of my mind like I usually did. Maybe I had gotten soft – too long without training.

Drachlortan threw his massive bulk over me, and I met him with both soles of my feet in a solid kick. His knife went wide, taking the ornamentation off a bench, and I fumbled to draw my sword in my offhand.

He kicked me in the side of the head and everything went distant and grey for a while. There was a disturbing wheezing in my skull that I realized was my own breath, as I dodged a wild swing for my head, the knife chipping the oak from a pew instead.

I brought my leg up hard into his crotch, and he lightened enough that I could roll out from under him. I got up, shaking my head, as he lashed out at my thigh. I felt a tugging in my leggings and saw the knife emerge, slick-red, as he aimed another blow at my chest.

I tackled him, though not before he got a good stab at me. A white-hot pain shot through my collarbone and I felt the taste of blood.

Emptyhanded, I knew I had no reach advantage against his knife. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I barreled into his chest and put the blade-bone of my good forearm into his neck as best as I could, leaning into it with my injured arm. I threw out my left knee to keep his elbow pinned, and the knife with it, and did not let go even as he kicked me hard in the balls repeatedly and brought his knee into my gut.

I saw his face contort, his eyes pinching now. My shoulders ached with the bodily weight I pressed against him, choking him off, even as my fingers grew slick with the blood pouring down my arm. To the left, his knife clattered to the ground, and he put both hands on me to force me off his throat.

My own breath came in burning gasps, too. Whatever it was he had hit, it was serious. Something in my chest was shrinking alarmingly and I felt an obscene wet warmth splashing my right jaw from the knife wound.

Drachlortan suddenly jerked his hips and shoulders to the side. I lost my grip on his neck and he crawled a few paces away, gasping, his face red.

I got his knife in my shaking off-hand, being unable to hold anything with my injured right arm, and I was turning back to him when he kicked the pew. The bench tilted and crashed into my shins, then crushed my toes. I jack-knifed in agony.

Then he was behind me, his own hands cutting off the air in my lungs and his voice muttering by my ear as it all turned red, then began to void brightly. I tried to worm my arms inside his grip, but he slammed my skull hard with his own, and everything went vague. I could feel my arm losing its will to obey me - the muscles already taxed beyond their feeble endurance from the loss of blood. Somewhere inside me, something was winding down with a crushing finality.

A comforting warmth began to spread over me, as darkness squeezed into my vision. Beckoning me to release this fight and float into oblivion, leaving behind the mortal concerns of my sad living shell.

Something cold pressed into my left hand, and I closed my fingers around his knife again. I found new determination as I raised up my fist and stabbed hard behind me with his own knife. The grip lessened and the blood returned to my head in a burning wave. Still gasping, and unable to rise to my feet, I brought the knife down hard into the middle of his sandaled left foot, and drove it deep through his bones and into the wood of the balcony floor. He jumped back, agonized, still pinned helplessly, his voice giving vent to a fearsome bellow.

Then he suddenly bucked to the side, an arrow in his gut. He tried to right himself, and another bloomed in his ribs. By the time Prasti got his third arrow nocked he had enough time to aim his shot carefully, and the third and final arrow blew Drachlortan’s left eye out from its socket as it penetrated his maddened brain.

He teetered a moment, his torso bleeding from the armpit where I had stabbed him. Then his right eye turned upwards in its lid and he fell back against the balcony wall. His left foot was still stuck to the floorboards, and he looked like a slouched man, legs splayed out in front of him, sitting down for a nap.




_

[HuManBing]

Regeneration

Drachlortan's arrow had opened an artery on the inner surface of my upper arm, and his knife wound to my chest had gone downwards between my neck and my collarbone. Inside, it had punctured my right lung and caused a frightful amount of bleeding.

Prasti had carried me to the infirmary where I lay on my side until I passed out. The priests had put bindings on me, strong enough to stop the bleeding and the sucking wound.

Lotal and Lellik-jir and the rest buried the two of our boys three days after the attack. The priests he killed were also interred. As for Drachlortan himself, the Temple removed the body and buried him in an unmarked grave at a crossroads. It was their policy that murderers should never have a monument for others to mourn or remember them.

I remained dead to the world for days. I had lost a lot of blood, and my heart beat weakly for the first night. Alicov said I had stopped breathing more than once, and she had pounded on my chest, screaming for the priests to come, until I started again. She had held my ruined hands and kissed my blood-spotted lips. Like her wails of despair, I heard none of this through my deathly stupor.

When I could see, I saw Lotal and Lellik-jir. They were huddled at the other end of the room, talking to an injured man whom I couldn't make out. He was wearing a bandage around his neck. Before me, Allie stayed curled up on a cot, sleeping. Her hair was wild around her unkempt face, and her eyes were swollen from crying.

Tall and sedate, Drachlortan glided among them with a sense of infinite peace. He came to my bedside, meeting my gaze with his flawless green eye on one side, and a deep bloody pit on the other.

"I brought you this," he said, laying down his massive knife. "I don't think I'll be needing it, where I'm going." Rivulets of blood trickled down his hand from his armpit wound.

"It saw good use though. I received it when I completed the Test of the Plains," he said. "It followed me through the Harrowing. When our Elder died, I unsheathed it and bared it against my fellow tribesmen to defend his honor."

Drachlortan sat down. His shins were immense, more like the legbones of a giant.

"I waited for you. Many years, you know. When I heard my brother talking of peace and forgiveness, I knew my time had come. The blade does not lie."

I cleared my throat. My lips were caked with dried blood.

"Why?" I asked him. I couldn't make it louder than a whisper.

His one good eye looked at me, startled.

"Why?" he asked incredulously. "Because I gave my word. To Malchior Verdinesh. To Natroch-gar. To Markeides and all our foes. A man without his word is nothing. He is like an animal."

"Alicov was harmless. She was only a girl when your master was alive. And now she lives without the royal title your master sought," I said. "You had nothing to avenge."

Drachlortan laughed at me, his dark hair unkempt from the fight.

"And you think that makes a difference?" He smiled, his fine even teeth disquieting. "I swore to my master I would obey. He gave an order, and I followed it. That is all."

"And you failed," I said. "She is still alive. See her sleep."

We looked at Allie on the next cot over, her chest rising and falling in uneven breaths.

Drachlortan nodded. "Yes, I failed. But what of my master? See the people who fear and respect him now, thanks to my actions. And all this even though he has been dead for a dozen years."

I looked away.

"Go away, phantom. You are a madman's ghost now."

Drachlortan circled round to my side of the bed patiently.

"Am I so mad as you say?" he asked. "You refused to yield one inch in your battles. Not a step back. Your own men feared you, and your superiors could not wait to throw you under the engines. Are you so different?"

I was silent.

"The grind through Parshelian. The razing of Palt, stone from stone. All for what?"

"For victory," I said, a mite too quickly.

"Victory?" Drachlortan said. "Where are your colors now? What army obeys your banner? And who controls those cities? You did it for the same reason you broke a leg at the horseman's joust. Same as when you won the spearman's contest with your friends. Likewise when you took Sardricor to task."

Drachlortan leaned close. "You, too, know the value of striking fear into all who oppose you. Of making examples. Of inflicting lessons."

"So you make your point, we are similar," I said. "But I'm still here. And you're not."

Drachlortan nodded.

"I have wanted this. For years. At the plow. In the game hunts. Turning my face up from the paltry traps in the woods," he said. "Peace came to the land just as I saw my greatest triumphs with the blade. And peace is the hardest pill to swallow. What business does a man have in the furrowed fields? Scurrying from task to task like a mouse searching for his food? Taking up the hammer and nails and tapping in the dust like a slave?"

"Thousands of people do it," I said. "If you can't bring yourself to, you'd better find another kingdom."

Drachlortan laughed. "I might tell you the same. But for you, Trammelstern would be alive and well today," he said. "But you just couldn't let his words pass, could you? He said something that was difficult to ignore. For you. For me. For people who don't belong among civilians."

"You're a pitiful fool," I snapped. "I have a Temple behind me. I have money to my name. I have a woman at my side. The battlefield is past - I have priests who will bind my wounds and friends who work alongside me. What do you have?"

The hunter waved a hand. "Three weeks ago, you would have been right," he said. "I was a farm hand. Pulling the plow, hunting rabbits in the woods. Thinking only of the past and the order, the rightness, that was long gone."

He flexed his hands. I noticed cuts and scrapes and the bruising on the knuckles. Yet more evidence of our fight.

"Then, everything changed. You came. Alicov was back. And Drachlortan... Drachlortan had a purpose once more," he said. "The voice of his dead lord was strong once again. And battle - glorious battle! - was joined again."

"But you failed," I said. "Worse than that. She's going to be rich because people are going to want to read your story. What do you think about that?"

Drachlortan shook his head. "You are looking at this all wrong," he said. "My master was dead, and my cause had died with him. Now, because of you, he has come back to me. And I had a cause once more. I do not regret dying for that cause. Now I shall be with my master once more, and I will never lift the plow again."

He looked at me.

"You, on the other hand, will live. People will talk to you of peace and forgiveness. They will forget the sacrifices you have made for them. And they will forget the promises they have made to you. The old orders and obediences of past will vanish, and you will receive only curses and blows for your troubles. Worse still, you will become one of those who dreams only of the past, and whose dreams draw scorn and derision from those around you. They will call you a mewling doddard, wishing on the past. They will strap you to a plow and rain kicks and blows upon you. And when they are finished with you, they will give you a grave and a little stick to remember you. And then they will forget."

I turned away. "Leave my side, ghost. There is no place for you in this world."

He came up to the other side, his leg still limping from the knee injury.

"When you see your old friends General Taric, Castellan Berdavestis, or even Templar Prent - ask them about what we discussed today," Drachlortan said. "I'm sure they will help you see what I mean."

I turned back to him, my eyes bridled in hatred. But Drachlortan had already risen and turned away. He left the room in measured steps, dragging his right leg only slightly, then nudged open the door with his elbow, and was gone.

[HuManBing]

Two Tribunals

I hung by a thread for about about five days, then my breathing plateaued and became smooth once again. But it came with a fever and I was in a ranting delirium for nearly a week afterwards.

When I came to, the first thing I saw was Father Stalvan and Alicov, talking in low voices. When I stirred, Stalvan checked to make sure I was sound, and then he bowed and left. Allie sat beside me and pillowed my head on her lap as she told me all that had transpired.

Talking in a low voice, she brought her lips close to my ear so she wouldn't disturb anybody else in the ward. Her voice was oddly soothing, and her auburn hair formed a rich frame around our faces. As she spoke, her voice wavered and she reached for my hand and clasped it, as her teardrops fell in the darkness and wet my face with their gentle salt.

* ~ * ~ *

Drachlortan was dead, that was the first thing she told me. He had been put into the ground at a place the Temple would not tell even us. As for his life, little details were still coming in.

Prasti was summoned away to Bishopsgate to investigate a lead there, and he found the fake note Drachlortan left for Alicov - trying to lure her to a rendezvous there. He spoke with the servants at the Seasons Inn and got permission to look through Trammelstern's effects. He found Trammelstern's diary and brought that back to us to read.

Gram sifted through it. It seemed to corroborate what we were coming to know about the hunter - that he was a menial laborer and farm hand by day and still kept a bit of tribal hunting and trapping by night. He must have rankled terribly at his low station in peacetime. Trammelstern's notes suggested that Drachlortan had no intention of outliving Alicov by very long - like a dying star, he had found a way of flaring back to brilliance, and it mattered little that it would almost assuredly end in his own destruction.

We also received reports about the deaths of the author at Selbinwood and the tall priest in the outlying village. Aldrenay, the priestess, did not come up with her report until much later. All told, Drachlortan's last legacy, after hearing of Raseyan's news and dropping the plow at his farm post, was nearly a score of people dead in a trail of corpses from Hasid to Hawkbluff.

* ~ * ~ *

The Loveday with the Verdinesh had been finalized. It would take place in Hasid, as the entire Verdinesh and remnant Markeides families were there and Allie was the outlier in Hawkbluff. Templar Thadros would officiate. Not that Allie had fought it strongly. With Drachlortan dead, there was little risk to her safety now. My boys would still go with her as an armed escort, but for now that business would be smooth sailing.

"I'll go with you," I said. My own voice shocked me. There was a wheezing weakness in it now. "I'll keep you safe."

Allie smiled tightly and bit her lip. "I know you want to. But it's best you stay here and recover," she said. "I'll be all right."

I was about to say something when she shushed me. "You're no use to anybody all beat up like this," she said. "When I get back I want to see you back on your feet." She smiled sadly. "Or at least if you're still flat out on your back, you'd better be ready for some hard work."

We shared a little laugh at that and she gave me a long, gentle kiss.

"We're safe now," she said. "Thanks to you."

My eyes cut past her to the desk. There were flowers and handwritten notes, presumably from the priests. Then something caught my glance. A two-foot-long knife resting on a white cloth.

"Where..." I coughed. "Where did that come from?"

Allie turned and looked.

"Oh, the knife. It was Drachlortan's. They found it pinning his foot to the ground, and your hand was tight around it," she said. "Even after you had passed out, you wouldn't let go. They brought you here and only got it out of your hand after a couple of days."

She patted me and stood up. "I'll be going tomorrow. I should be back in a week and a half. Stalvan said you should get some rest, because you'll need it."

She left, and I rested. It wasn't till several hours later that I wondered what she meant by those last words.

* ~ * ~ *

Allie made her way to Hasid, flanked by Prasti and Lellik-jir and a few of the boys. She had brought all the relevant papers and witnesses to what had happened with Drachlortan. All of this would need to come out in the peacemaking process - but the good thing was that both families were eager for it to end as expediently as possible.

While she was gone, Stalvan came to talk to me. The first thing he did was to have my bed moved - with me still in it - out of the shared ward and into a private room.

During the move, I realized I was no longer in the Temple Undercroft.

"It's all right," he said. "This is a Temple house of healing. We'll get you away from the rest of the recoverees."

He had a wealth of questions for me - starting from how I met Alicov, to how the book was going, and then progressing onto Drachlortan and how we had come to confront him.

Stalvan wrote down all of my answers and gave me water whenever I needed to pause. He coaxed my story with a gentle bedside manner and it was several days before I thought to ask him what all this was about. We had been talking specifically about how Alicov had incited this vendetta from Drachlortan and how much of her danger I was aware of when I first met her.

"Why are you asking me all this?" I asked. "Alicov said it wouldn't go into her book."

Stalvan waved a plump hand expansively, and dipped his quill in ink again.

"Oh, it's just paperwork. The Temple keeps records, and this is a momentous occasion - the Loveday, you know."

I pondered this.

"But... wouldn't they have gotten all this information beforehand?" I asked. "Alicov is already halfway to Hasid by now."

Stalvan scribbled onward. I turned in bed uneasily. The stitches had healed somewhat and they were starting to itch.

"Let's go back to the visit to Father Lantos at the roadside Temple," Stalvan said. "When you were there, could you name the priests you were escorting? And can you tell me why you sent Gram away at that point?"

I looked back at him and huffed angrily.

"You already have that information - I can't recall offhand the priests I accompanied. Don't you have it written down in a book?" I asked.

Stalvan nodded and squinted. "Yes, yes, of course," he said. "But about the other point - you and Gram? Can you tell me why he came back early and what your thinking was behind that decision?"

I fidgeted.

"What is this all about, Father Stalvan?" I asked. "You're not doing this for Alicov's book. And you're not doing it for the Loveday. So what are you coming to my bedside and bothering me about all this for?"

Stalvan set down his papers and sat forward in his chair. His double chin wobbled beneath his face, but despite his attempt at a friendly smile I could tell the consternation in his tired eyes.

"Very well, Hawk, I'll level with you," he said. "Before I say anything, I want to you understand that I am on your side. I am not the enemy."

I felt a tingle of apprehension run down my spine.

"Go on," I said.

He sighed.

"The Temple is initiating an investigation on you and the Company," he said in a low voice. "They want to look into your conduct since you began your contract with the Temple, and they want to find out what your role is in the Drachlortan killings."

I goggled at him. An investigation? I recalled how serious this was - even mighty General Taric had been brought back to Hawkbluff and made to answer to charges. And his entire army had been split for half a year while the Temple mulled its findings.

"We've been through this before," I said. "You told me that your interests were aligned with my own."

He waved down my protests.

"Yes, that's true," he said. "I for one stand by everything you've done, and that is why I am the one to defend you in this investigation. And believe me, my neck is on the line too. I was the one who brought you into the First Temple."

I said nothing. Drachlortan's last words to me, in his ghostly visit to my bedside, rang in my ears.

"Come," Stalvan said. "Talk to me. Let me know all the good that you have done for my Temple, so that I may make others listen, all right?"

* ~ * ~ *

It turned out that Stalvan had already interviewed my other men. From them, he had gotten a few accounts of the Company as it was formed, and the nature of our work. Apparently, Lotal had unwittingly been tricked into spilling the beans about Calomines and his fight pit.

He came to talk to me about Allie.

"Hawk, I need to ask you a few questions about Alicov. It would be best if you answered truthfully," he said.

"All right."

He tapped his quill. "We have several witnesses who can testify about lewd and unseemly conduct in the Temple grounds," he said. "You also kept her in your room during the night of Drachlortan's attack - all of which are violations of Temple rules. We should probably tackle them in chronological order."

My stomach sank. The feeling of guilt was sudden, and sickening. Stalvan patted my hand.

"Don't worry, everything you tell me will be safe. I'm just trying to find out the whole story so I can refute the accusations of your attackers," he said.

"This is a trap," I said. "You're trying to get me to confess to things that may be entirely false."

He sighed.

"Hawk, there will be a suit in equity against you. There are Templars who think your men are a greater burden on the Temple than a benefit. And this attack is the latest event they're going to use against you," he said. "It's wrong and it's unfair, but I'm the only person who will defend you. You must tell me everything you know, so I can use that knowledge to do my job."

"Thank you, I'll defend myself," I said, with considerable sourness.

Stalvan shrugged. "I hope you know your Scriptures well, Hawk. You're going to need to know them inside and out to make your case. Then you're going to need to know the Commentary that has been filled out on them for at least the past century. And that's only the start. You need to know how the Temple courts have decided each case similar to your own, and you need to get all that done within two months' time," he said. "Good luck."

He dropped a large volume on my nightstand.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Chapters one through twenty-two in the first book of the Scriptures," he said. "There are fifty-six books in total and over a thousand chapters. Get cracking."

* ~ * ~ *

By next morning, Stalvan had been told everything he needed to know. I told him about Allie's real name (which he had known already), about our orgiastic evening spent at the Seasons Inn (which he had not), and about our collaboration on the book.

He asked, and I told him, everything about the training days, where she had sketched our portraits. I told him about the drunken night of feasting and then the competition by the wall. He even knew about the time Allie had seduced me in the holy altar chamber of the Temple, with me thrusting away at her delighted depravity, bare-arsed, beneath the idol of Mislaxa.

Stalvan listened without commenting, making notes in his papers. An underpriest sat beside him, collecting his papers and setting them in order.

When he was done, he turned to Calomines. Some of his questions were very odd.

"When he did this, did you have the right to refuse? Did he present this as a duty to his lord? Were you his employee or did you ever feel like his employee?"

It was about mid-afternoon on the third day of questioning that I stopped him.

"Why are these things important? What are you playing at?" I said.

Stalvan finished off the last note and passed the paper to his acolyte to blot the ink. He looked at me.

"Firstly, I must take stock of the likely charges they will file against you," he said. "Their job is to make the strongest possible argument that you are a bad use of Temple funds."

He looked down the list.

"Right now they fall into three categories. The first is your employment record with the Temple. They're going to make an argument that you used Temple funds for your own selfish gains. They'll probably point to your attempts to broker a Loveday, your considerable travel at our expense, your commercial working relationship with Alicov Book Publishing, and your involvement with Calomines' fight ring," he said.

Then he turned the page.

"Second category is your personal conduct. We have you down for Lewd Conduct, Public Indecency, High Calumny, and Improper Use of Temple Facilities," he said. "Oh, and one of the priests heard you use profanity in the chapel."

He looked at the very last page.

"The last category is in capital offenses. This is the most serious charge category, but it's also the weakest argument they have. They want to tie you in to the murders done by Drachlortan - which I personally think won't fly. And they want to get you for attempted murder of a priest in the altar," he said.

"Attempted murder of a priest in the altar?" I echoed. "When did I do that?"

"Your arrow was found in the body of a priest at the altar," Stalvan said. "His throat had been slit, probably by Drachlortan's knife. Like I said, it's not a very plausible charge, but it does carry the death penalty. So we have to refute it."

I said nothing.

Stalvan waved at this. "The Temple normally wouldn't give you all this lengthy discovery, but you have some powerful friends and they won't let the Temple dispense justice so hastily," he said. "Friends who want you to have a full trial and the chance to prove your innocence."

"Friends like who?" I asked.

Stalvan put a hand to his chest. "Like me, of course," he said. "If they find you guilty, then whatever happens to you, I'd be complicit. The fastest way for me to escape any personal liability is to prove you innocent."

He picked up his quill again.

"But not just my little banner. You also have several other Temples behind you. The First Temple is the most powerful, but the Templars in Flex and Hasid all speak highly of you. And after all, the bull that pardoned your battlefield crimes came down from Bishop Trandamere himself."

There was a brief pause, then he reached out and dipped his quill. He flicked the end and began writing.

"Shall we continue?"

* ~ * ~ *

When Allie got back, she was beaming. The Verdinesh had welcomed the treaty of friendship, and they had included her in the dancing and feasting that followed. The Temple absolved either side of any debt, and affirmed peace between the two families. Allie had met a few surviving kin from her old Markeides family, which made for a few tearful reunions. But when they asked her to stay with them, she had politely declined, saying she had a business and a man to get back to in Hawkbluff.

When she got back, she was happy to see me. Stalvan arranged it so she arrived when he was at my bedside, to ease her into the questioning. After all, she would be a witness too, and could possibly be charged.

Stalvan left me to be alone with Allie, but before he left, I shot him a noted glance and whispered a question to him.

"No, no, no," he said. "This is just a house of healing. And you have your own private room. As a paying client of the healers, you have final power over what goes on here." He scratched his nose. "This isn't, say, the Chapel altar."

When we were alone, Allie told me about the Loveday and how it went. She gave me stories about her long-lost Markiedes kin, and about how she even met a scion of the Raimos family - a middle-aged, softspoken man who even held some sort of defunct title.

We had dinner together, me sitting up so she could feed me at fork's length. She put me in the middle of the bed and brought a basin of warm water and towels to give me a towel-bath. She gently removed the outer dressings around my newest wounds and laved warm water over me, then immediately dried it off with another towel.

"You've gotten a few more scars, Hawk," she said.

"I'm such a charmer, they just can't stay away from me."

She tied new dressings on my wounds and gave me a fresh change of clothes. Then when I felt tired, she poured me a new cup of water and then settled into a nearby couch with a blanket.

I woke up once in the middle of the night, from an ache in my shoulder when I rolled onto it. I looked across at her, serene in the moonlight, staying by my sickbed to keep me company.

I turned back into my pillow, so my sudden tears would fade faster.

* ~ * ~ *

On the third day of her return, Stalvan told Allie about the suit in equity. She had already heard something of it, but he was able to fill in the blanks for her. From the looks of it, there was some political infighting going on. Apparently, Stalvan had some enemies in the Temple, and I was their ticket to unseating him.

The first target of their attack would be me - on corruption, lewdness, and murder.

Then if I was convicted, they would turn their attacks against Stalvan.

There was an outside chance they might bring Allie in as a joint defender too. Either way, she was almost certain to be called as a witness.

He assured her he would use every means at his disposal to dismiss all charges against her. As far as my case went, Stalvan was less certain he could dismiss charges against me.

"It seems like their falsehoods are based around a kernel of truth," he said. "We cannot refute that, so our task will be to make the Temple magistrates see the difference."

Allie spoke up. "What are you going to say about the capital offenses?" she asked. "Those are the ones that have the heaviest penalties."

Stalvan spread the sheets on my bed and we looked over them. The weakest one was the accusation of complicity in the murders of the various Drachlortan killings. Stalvan expected them to withdraw those before the case even went to the magistrate. Either way, he had ample evidence of my motives, and the complete lack of any contact with Drachlortan, to disprove that theory.

The next issue was the killings of convicts at Calomines' fight pit. The way Stalvan saw it, the strongest legal defence to that was that Calomines' lord had already judged them guilty and sentenced them to death. The actual method of their death - to fight in a gambling den - might be distasteful, but it was hardly illegal.

We also had several other defences on that count. I could have been duped into it by Calomines, thinking I was going to a training ground.

"After all, you trained Calomines," Stalvan said. "He invited you to another venue, and you took part there. Afterwards, you refused to continue with the exercise. That's strong evidence to show that you are not a willful murderer."

The second defence, though weak, was that Calomines was my employer, and I was merely an agent of his work. That would mean criminal blame could fall on him too. But Stalvan waved this away.

"For now, I see the magistrate throwing this charge out as well. They were all condemned men anyway - the lord had already found them guilty and sentenced them to death," he said. "The worst that could come of this is a reflection of your character, but that will not carry any capital punishment."

The final issue was the accidental shooting of the priest at the altar.

"This will be harder to explain," he said. "We'll need to have Prasti as your witness. And I'll need to call the priests who saw to the victim's corpse. We have to establish that your arrow was not what killed him - that he was already dead by Drachlortan's knife before you shot him. And we'll also have to argue that you honestly thought that it was Drachlortan you were shooting at. We have plenty of witnesses to say that there was an intruder dressed as a priest that night."

I let out my breath. I hadn't realized I'd been holding it.

"If we can convince the magistrate of your belief that you were shooting Drachlortan, then you will still be guilty of manslaughter," he said. "But if we can convince the magistrate that the priest was already dead, then it becomes... nothing. No murder, no manslaughter. It's not illegal to shoot a corpse with an arrow."

I began to feel very grateful that I had Stalvan as my defender.

"I don't know where to begin to thank you," I said.

Stalvan shushed me. "It should be all right. We have interviewed the priests who cleared up the bodies that night," he said. "They will testify that Drachlortan was indeed wearing a stolen cowl and robes. They will testify that there was a large amount of blood on the tiles behind the altar, and that the dead priest's robes were stained beneath his throat." He looked at his papers. "We have the priests who bathed the body, they will attest that there was very little bleeding from the head wound from the arrow. They will say that most of the blood came from the neck wound. And our argument will be that Drachlortan was the only one who could have inflicted that wound."

Allie chewed a fingernail nervously.

"What about me? And what about the lewd conduct charges?" she asked.

Stalvan sighed. "We can handle this in a number of ways," he said. "And none of them are pleasant, but I'll leave it to you to decide how to do it."

He pointed at Allie. "Firstly, you could absolve yourself of all liability if you put all the blame on Hawk. Frankly, I don't think it will work, because there are many witnesses to testify that you two had a consensual relationship...-"

Allie cut him off.

"You mean, to say he... he raped me?" she asked, incredulous.

Stalvan sat back. "It's one way," he said. "I wouldn't say it's the best way, but it's something to think about."

Allie and I exchanged glances.

"First, it's not even remotely true," she said. "If anything it was more like the other way round. But even if we did make that argument, how does that help Hawk? How does that help you?" she asked, gesturing to Stalvan.

Stalvan shrugged. "I'm not saying it's a particularly good argument, but if your sole objective was to remove yourself from the suit, that might be one way to do it," he said.

Allie shook her head defiantly. "No, thank you," she said. "I wouldn't throw you two into the fire just to save myself."

Stalvan smiled. "That's what I thought you would say," he said. "Then the next issue is whether we can make the opposite argument. Namely, that you raped him."

Allie looked at me. I looked back helplessly. Then, it was useless. We both lost our composure entirely and broke down in giggles.

"Well, to be fair," she said between guffaws, "you were trying to keep me quiet."

Stalvan stepped back a bit and poured himself a quiet glass of water.

Allie dried her eyes from the bout of laughing and I propped myself back up. The laughing hurt my shoulder.

"So, I'm not really seeing a strong argument for rape," Stalvan said. "Not to mention the cases are almost entirely devoid of any instances of an adult woman raping an adult man."

"So, wait... there have been other instances of a woman forcing a man?" Allie asked, incredulously.

Stalvan nodded, distracted. "Usually the man is much younger, or he's feeble minded, or otherwise at a significant disadvantage. There, the usual legal argument is that he didn't know what he was doing, rather than necessarily he didn't want to do it."

He held up another sheet.

"But we digress," he said. "We have the incident in the courtyard, where all of your men and Alicov engaged in public lewdness and nudity."

"When was this?" Allie broke in. "I don't remember."

"It was after the training day," I said. "You challenged us to a height-peeing competition. You won."

Allie gaped. "I did? What? I mean, how is that even physically possible?"

Stalvan continued.

"That's not a huge problem, but Hawk will probably be required to do penance for it," he said. "Alicov may be able to get away with paying a fine. Technically that occurred on the Temple's courtyard, which does not carry a commingling penalty."

Allie piped up. "Commingling? What's that?"

Stalvan fixed her with an amused eye. "It's what you were doing with Hawk on the altar," he said. "Any time a man and a woman are together in violation of the Temple's ground rules, it's called commingling."

There was a pause as he rustled more papers.

"The most problematic event for us is the conduct on the Altar of Mislaxa," he said. "Alicov may be able to plead ignorance, but I'm not sure that would get her off the hook. Hawk certainly is aware that women and men are kept apart in the Temple buildings, and that sexual relations between them are strictly forbidden. Which leads me to think that this one lapse - of commingling and lewd conduct with Alicov right under the most holy idol of the faith - is probably going to give us the most problem of all."

Allie held up a hand and looked askance. "It sort of was my fault, Father," she muttered. "I talked him into doing it."

Stalvan shook his head. "Hawk knew the rules - they were explained to him when he first joined the Temple," he said. "The magistrate will definitely not lessen the punishment just because an outsider persuaded him to violate them." Stalvan smoothed his thinning hair. "Imagine the precedent that would set. Priests would be able to circumvent their vows by acting through a third party."

Allie bit her fingernail and was silent. Her hand sought mine.

Stalvan noted this.

"Now, we do have a defence, of sorts. Well - not really a defence per se. More like a mitigating factor," he said.

"That means it takes something really bad and makes it not-so-bad," he explained to me. I nodded, thankful for the aside.

He pointed to my hand, which held Alicov's.

"She's clearly not just your lover," he said. "Although you're not married, there is clearly a serious commitment between the two of you. He's not just some soldier you picked up for a night of fun, and she's not some streetwalker who warms your bed."

Allie's fingernails bit into my hand at this. I winced.

"It is stated in several of the Scriptures that love, as between a husband and wife, flows from Mislaxa's blessing. I forget the exact terminology, but that's hardly important here," he said. "What is important is that there is an extremely old canon of law that states that Mislaxa's blessing flows with the exercise of marital union."

He looked at me. "You're lucky she seduced you under Mislaxa's altar, Hawk. Imagine if she'd gone for Manith's altar instead." He chuckled. "I fancy myself a pretty good equivocator, but even I would be hard-pressed to find a Scripture passage linking public commingling with the pursuit of scholarly knowledge."

"No doubt," I said weakly.

"Who saw us anyway?" Allie said, suddenly angry. "What little twerp is going to testify they were at the altar watching us shag for a whole ten minutes?"

"It was twenty," I reminded her.

"...-twenty minutes," she finished. "Who does that?"

Stalvan looked through the papers. "Two novices, an initiate, the purser, and the verger happened by at various points during the evening. Apparently the verger saw her come in."

I looked at her, mortified.

"So they saw and they did nothing?" I asked.

Stalvan rolled up the sheets and put them back in his scroll case.

"That's right, they did nothing," he said. "They didn't recognize her, but they certainly recognized you, Mislaxa's truth. And with your fearsome reputation, Hawk, they weren't going to be the ones to rouse the wasp's nest when you were... focusing on other pursuits."

Allie buried her face in her hands. I patted her on the shoulder as best as I could reach.

"I really have to stop drinking," she said. "It always ends badly."





_

[HuManBing]

Versions of Events

Stalvan sent a priest depose Prasti. They went over his findings about Drachlortan's movements in Bishopsgate, and about the suspicion that Trammelstern was murdered in the woods.

"What made you think he was stabbed in the lower back?" the priest asked Prasti.

Prasti looked up. "Eh?" he asked. "I never said anything like that. It's news to me."

The priest nodded. "You said it an hour ago. He was stabbed in the lower back. Who told you that?"

Prasti squinted, illiterate, at the record.

"Dunno what you're talking about, Brother. I never said anything like that," he said. "Maybe you heard incorrectly? All's I know is that he was stabbed in the lumber region."

The priest sighed and crossed out a word. "L-U-M-B-E-R, not L-U-M-B-A-R," he said tiredly. "All right. My mistake."

* ~ * ~ *

Back at Hawkbluff, Stalvan was preparing for my first meeting with the prosecutor team. They would be two priests - Fitbin and Rankwen. He coached me on how to respond to their questions, and how I should not offer any more information than I was specifically asked for.

"Leave it to them to ask the questions," he said. "You just answer as little as possible. If they have an unfair question, I'll handle it."

He went over a final few notes.

"And never, ever lie," he said. "There are times when you can be... creative with the truth... but now is not the time for that. If I hear you lying, you can bet I'll be the first to call you out on it. And this is for your own good."

* ~ * ~ *

Fitbin was a terse, tight-lipped man with greying hair at odds with the warm sierra of his high-ranking priest's garb. Rankwen was a very compact man who had the look of a soldier about him. Under his robes, I wondered if he had space to hide a sword. I wouldn't have put it past him.

They took it in turns to berate and interrogate me. When their questions passed certain lines, Stalvan objected and they rephrased. I gave them only the bare minimum of what they wanted to know. At one point, Rankwen was so incensed he threw a quill stopper at me. After I caught it effortlessly in my good hand, he didn't try it again.

After it all, Stalvan took me back to the Undercroft. To my surprise, he opened a bottle of mead.

"You did very well," he said. "I don't think they have much left to throw at us. They'll go into that hearing room with a pitiful pouch of claims, and I'll be sweeping them out like fly husks."

I drank the mead slowly, careful not to take too much. My blood was still thin - the injuries were still chafing me.

Stalvan tapped his own mug against mine and sat back, hands on his belly, looking quite pleased with himself.

"I think you'll do all right out of this," he said. "I don't think they will be able to pursue the complicity charges, and I don't think they'll really make much out of the corruption charges either. Which means they'll go for the lewdness. For the courtyard incident, you may have to do some penance, and she may have to pay a fine. For hiding her in your room, well, we only have the one incident - and that was on the night that Drachlortan came after her. I think we can argue that down to a mere disciplinary offence."

He took a swig of his mead.

"I'm still worried about the altar incident though," he said. "I don't know how much I can lift from you for that. The magistrates here don't like to extend their judgment to secular activities - so things like even your standard murder and assault charges will be something they probably want to throw out and let a secular court deal with it. But they take the Temple grounds rules very seriously. I'm not sure I can defend you against those."

I nodded, dumbly.

"Alicov - or maybe I should call her Alinestra Covelia now, let's talk about her," he said. "She's a fine woman, in a city of not-so-fine people."

"Yes, I've heard many people say that about her," I said.

"The papers say she was once in line for the Raimos principality," he said. "Is this true?"

I shrugged. "I'm not a historian. But she told me that her family certainly thought so. They thought she might be carrying their heir."

Stalvan nodded. "Was she married to them, or something similar?"

I told him about the marriage to her cousin. "He's dead now, but I believe she was married, yes. She was twelve at the time."

Stalvan winced. "That's young. How do you even know what you want to be in your life at that age? And then there are women married even younger, and having children before they're fully grown themselves."

He finished his mead and then put his cup to one side.

"Well, the reason why I'm asking is this: if she's got any political clout on her side of the family, you may want to ask her for their help. The Temple is separate from secular affairs, it is true, but it is not oblivious to them. If we hear from a powerful family that Hawk is an invaluable asset, we may have no choice but to find a lenient verdict."

He leaned to one side, to put his foot on a nearby chair.

"And you may want to see about getting married to her," he said. "That could help your Mislaxa's blessing argument immeasurably."

"Marry her?" I asked, uncertainly. The thought of a wife seemed absurd to me when I heard that Terrek had gotten married. Now, it seemed like some Scripture passage held that it was my only way out.

"Use your own discretion," he said. "I'm just telling you what would be strongest for your case. Also note that there is no liability in this case between spouses. So even if the opposition tries to split the liability in this case, they will be unable to do it between you and Alinestra."

He got up.

"This is just an option," he said. "It may be worth something, it might not be. The good news is you're not going to be facing serious charges on taking another's life, and we can easily disprove any corruption charges. But we're going to need all the help we can get to make your lewd conduct charge disappear."

I went back to my chambers, pensive.

Alinestra was there, waiting up with Pejri for my return. When she saw me she came to the door and put my arm above her shoulders. Pejri followed suit.

"I'm all right," I protested. "I can walk just fine - Drachlortan didn't hurt my legs."

Pejri gave me the run down on the other Talons and their activities that day, and then left me alone. We were in the small kitchen and dining room in the training grounds. Allie sat across the table from me, playing distractedly with a knife.

"How was it?" she asked.

"Not bad," I said. "Full of good advice."

She looked surprised. "Good advice?" she asked. "At the deposition?"

"Oh, no, I thought..." I said. "The deposition was all right. The prosecution has a pair of real arsewipe priests. Fitbin and Rankwen, I think their names were. No big deal."

I took some of the dry ration biscuits that we kept in the pantry.

"I went for a small drink and a snack with Stalvan afterwards. He said we had a good case as far as the corruption and murder charges go. No problems. But he also said we might have a hard time disproving the lewdness charges," I said.

Allie blew her hair out of her eyes. "Figures. These priestly types will overlook stealing and killing in the eyes of their religion, but put the arrow in the buckle just once and they get all jealous like the swine they are."

I began munching on the biscuits. "He came up with a solution, though, but I don't know how well you'd take to it," I said.

"Please, let it not be rape," she said. "That was a really lame idea."

"He said if you and I were married, that would make his arguments much stronger," I said.

Alinestra looked up at me in surprise.

"Married..." she said. Her tone of voice suggested she was trying a new type of food and she wasn't quite sure of whether she should spit it out or swallow it. "And what did you say?"

"More or less what you just said."

She rested her chin on her hand.

"Well, I can see how it would help his arguments. The whole thing about marital union and happiness, and so forth," she said musingly.

Then she looked at me sharply.

"What do you think?" she asked. "What does marriage mean to you?"

I shrugged. "Not many people in my town were ever formally married," I said. "We couldn't afford it, and the Temple pokes its nose into the whole thing. But I remember my mother telling me about why she chose my father, and then again why she chose Wilmar after him. It seems like it has a lot to do with how much you'd do for somebody else."

She kept her eyes on me, steady.

"So, if it's really a question of how much I'd do for you..." I looked at my bandages, and at the two-foot knife on the training ground wall. "I guess we may as well be married."

She tapped a foot on the ground, like she sometimes did when she was aggravated.

"I've been there once before," she said. "It was a little disappointing. If this is what you need to clear your name, then I'll do it for you. After all, you did your part to help me, too."

* ~ * ~ *

A few hours later, when she had finished her final edits on the current book she was reviewing, she put down her pen and put out the light. She came over to the narrow bed I rested in, now that I was recovering outside of the hospice and the Undercroft.

She slipped her fingers with mine.

"You feel good, Hawk," she said gently. "Everything with you feels good. The way you hold me." I put my good arm around her shoulders.

"The way you talk to me like a friend and equal," she said, nuzzling my cheek with her sharp little nose. "The way you make my body sing like a harp when I'm in bed with you." She chuckled with me at that.

She lay down beside me in the cramped bed, propping herself up on an elbow.

"If we will marry, I don't want it to be just for some legal convenience," she said. "I mean, I don't want either of us to go to jail. So in that sense if it's the only thing keeping us safe, I'll do it. If you want. Mislaxa knows, you've put enough on the line for me as it is."

A pause, in the flickering candlelight.

"But I really like you," she said. "You're a good man. Kind to others. And ready to defend what is dear to you. And you've got ambition too - not many men your age would sit down and ask to learn to read and write."

She shifted a lick of hair from my forehead and looked at me straight.

"And you arranged a Loveday to help me out," she said. "Who would have done that? And when it didn't go quite as planned, you and your men took care of me. And here I am now, finally Alinestra Covelia, after all these years of hiding it."

She kissed my cheek gently.

"Hawk, if you want me, I'm yours," she said. "In life. In death." She bit her lip, and it seemed like her eyes would brim over. "But only if in earnest."

* ~ * ~ *

Stalvan announced the bans at the end of that week, and my men all came to congratulate me, giving me left-handed shakes to spare my injured arm. Lotal and Gram helped her hire some much-needed help for the publishing company, now that she could finally use her real name and entrust others with her duties. On one of these excursions, Lotal told her a story about a discussion he once had with me.

Allie came back to me with a well-feigned indignant look and demanded to know if I'd given Lotal permission to tumble her.

"No," I said. "I just told him that he shouldn't be asking me, he should be asking you. Because nothing I could say would make the blindest bit of difference if your answer was 'no'. "

She hit me with a pillow, calling me a saucy knave and I had to fend off her attacks, one-handed. Then she asked me what I would have done if she'd said "yes". This led inevitably to a series of provocative questions that ended in a bone-shattering bout of naked bedroom exercise and which left me gasping in pain from my wounds.

But Allie enjoyed herself immensely and even added a couple across my chest with her long nails.

* ~ * ~ *

Fitbin and Rankwen heard about this and made appropriate counter moves. By tradition, the bans were announced at least a month ahead of the wedding, to allow for people opposed to the marriage to make their concerns known. Mostly this was just a mere formality - most families would have sorted out the dowry already.

For me, however, this was a substantive matter. Nobody really knew my family, as I had not been eager to tell them about Bela, Sootri, and Wilmar. For Allie, it was a problematic issue because of her own estranged family, so recently brought back in from obscurity.

Fitbin and Rankwen went and interviewed several of Allie's relatives, and they made various conclusions. They then went to Thadros, who had the nominal oversight of Stablethorpe - where Allie had been married so many years ago to her cousin.

Thadros accepted the records from Stablethorpe as proof of her marriage. He also accepted their recorded conversations with Allie's family. Though well intentioned, her family were not trained in the arts of legal argument, and for better or worse, had essentially admitted that nobody knew whether Karras Markeides was alive or dead. The assumption was that he had died in the conflicts between Verdinesh and Malarchan forces.

The two opposition priests also produced evidence showing that Alinestra Covelia's own records officially indicated that she was dead and buried in Stablethorpe. Yet the bones were unmistakably those of a grown man, buried with a sword. The same cemetery claimed that Karras Markeides was buried in the same plot, but the clear falseness of the Alinestra record called that into question.

Thadros concluded that there was not enough evidence to confirm Karras Markeides' death. As such, the marriage between Karras and Alinestra was still technically sound and would stand as proof against a union between her and me, unless otherwise challenged.

I received a letter from Thadros' office explaining this to me. However, perhaps in a sign of his own feelings on the subject, Thadros had helpfully included a list of ways that Alinestra could challenge the decision by appearing before his court in Hasid.

Nonplussed, I went to Allie to tell her this. She had received a letter too, only this time it was from a priest in New Aurim, enjoining her from publishing any books, on suspicion that her biography of me libelled the Temple.

We met with Stalvan.

* ~ * ~ *

"They have been rather clever," he said. "This whole marriage issue is just a delaying tactic. If we could focus solely on that, it would be over in a week. You go to Hasid, you talk to the Markeides clan, and they come before Thadros and tell him that nobody has seen Karras for years and that he has been perceived as deceased by the kin for that time."

Stalvan offered us some mead. To my surprise, Allie refused.

"So why don't we do that?" she asked.

"Well, now we have the libel charge," Stalvan said. "Equally spurious. But this requires you to go before a-" he glanced at the paper "- Father Solapar, and he's way over in New Aurim. Until you do, any books you sell can be held against you in judgment and in the penalty calculations."

Allie's eyes blazed indignantly.

"I will not have my publishing censored through these economic tactics!" she said. "The presses will continue."

Stalvan made placatory gestures. "Hold on, for now. Remember that failure to comply with the Temple order will place you in contempt," he said. "That alone will realize all fines against you. Now, if you let me file a writ of dismissal and then take that to Father Solapar, the libel case against you will still stand, but you'll be able to sell books again without accruing a huge fine."

Allie blinked. "What does that mean?"

"It means I can lift the forbiddance on publishing, and then we go about challenging the court ruling as normal. I'm fairly certain you'll win," he said. "You need to do that before you worry about the marriage annulment. The wedding can wait, but if you dawdle on the book ban, you'll either go out of business right now, or rack up so many fines that you'll go out of business the moment the court hears the case."

He looked at the writ. "Meanwhile, give me a manuscript of the biography of Hawk here," he said. "I'll need to approve that before I can lift the injunction."

* ~ * ~ *

Stalvan and Allie sat at the table and went over the manuscript. She had brought the entire thing, unfinished though it was, and together they combed each page for potential anti-Temple messages.

Stalvan was suitably impressed with the story.

"It seems like it's a strong supporter of the Temple," he said. "You did good as an editor, at least from the Temple's viewpoint."

Allie sniffed. "I didn't do anything. Thank Hawk. He's the one who said those nice things about you."

Stalvan called over to me. "You've written a nice book about us, Hawk."

They worked late into the night, and Stalvan had his first misgivings at the end.

"It would help if you gave it an actual ending," he said. "Something that lauded the Temple a bit wouldn't hurt either."

Allie puffed her cheeks out angrily. "There isn't an end, and for good reason," she said. "It hasn't happened yet." Stalvan poured another mead, and offered her one, which she pushed away from her. "Maybe when you win this case then I'll print something nice about the Temple and how it solves everybody's problems... after it's finished creating them in the first place, eh?"

Stalvan chuckled good-humoredly. "I'm not asking you to write a hagiography of me or the Bishop. This would be purely your decision. But I will say that if you could find a way to work in something very positive for the Temple, it will go some way to making the opposition look very foolish. And it will help Father Solapar in New Aurim kick the case out of his docket."

Allie made a disgusted noise in her throat.

"First you tell me who to marry - for the good of the lawsuit. Then you tell me what to write about - for the good of the lawsuit. What next?" she asked. "Next thing you know, you'll be telling me it would really help our lawsuit if I went to bed with you."

Stalvan shook his head. "No, actually that would really hurt our lawsuit. Do not do that under any circumstances whatsoever."

Allie threw her pen down on the table in exasperation.

"Very well, you'll have your edits. I'll throw something together and you can give me your stamp to take to Solapar," she said.

"Thank you."

"Just don't expect it to survive beyond this lawsuit," she said angrily.



_

[HuManBing]

Commitments

One thing the suit did not stop was the training, thank the gods. Amidst the inanities and insanities of the court's documents, the fusty old frocked priests poring over old dead case law, and the notices upon notices piled high from the wily opposition - training was the only thing we could turn to.

If anything, the Company's fortunes grew even as my case deepened. The Temple mentioned nothing of the case, and posted no notices in public. Allie suggested it was as Stalvan had said: that the case highlighted a growing rift in the church that would be unseemly for the public to know of. Perhaps Stalvan's enemies knew that the Company was popular in Hawkbluff, and that bruiting my name about with infamies would lose the Temple much of the support of the nobles' armies they wanted to win.

Either way, our training hall became busier and busier with the warming of the weather. And captains of restive men, bored with the travails of peace while Malarchus squatted in our two border cities, came to pay their respects to me, hinting at the rumors they'd heard, and their support.

It was a heartening time. Although my wounds were still healing, I sat in on the sparring and watched the drills, feeling my blood warm to see it. After about a month, my injuries had healed well enough that I could follow along, though I still stayed clear of the sparring matches.

Calomines knew better than to appear before me in person, but he sent his men to train under me and the usual fees. Lavedistran, another noble house guard, came to me with his force of men, and told them to pay heed to my strong young sword arm, and my sharp clear eyes. Finally, a man with a forked beard and a rangy build brought his troop to train with us. His name was Lattoverdius, and he served a noble house that had only a small number of men and presumably even smaller coffers, given his inability to pay me.

I suffered his delinquency without complaint. He had once been a nobleman's son himself, before he turned his back on the nobility to go to fight for his king.

"I was eighteen and I'd come of age - I took one look at the banquets, the balls. The endless kneeling and bowing and scraping," he said to me by the bathing trough. "I laughed and left it all behind. Then they came to get me, and bundled me back to my sire's hearth." He took a short pull of his wineflask.

"I learned from that," he continued proudly. "I ran away again and enlisted. They sent me to Lothgren as part of the horsemen's outfit. When my sire sent men after me that time, my entire company took the whips to their backs." He laughed at that, showing a few missing teeth. "Still, when the sire passed on and my cousin took the reins, I had to come back and answer a few charges. By the time they cleared me, my company had moved on."

I stopped him. "Moved on? Where to?"

He shook his head and made a face. "Palt," he said. I made a suitable noise of sympathy. "They stayed there for two weeks and then suddenly there was a new flag flying above the battlements," he said. "Nobody's heard from them since."

He fixed me with a taciturn eye.

"Your men have much in the way of horseback training?" he asked. When I described our training to him, he thumped me on the shoulder. "That'll see you through your competitions... maybe. But you'll need more than that if you're going to lead a unified charge. Bring them to my namesake's one day. Let me drill your men in exchange."

I nodded. It sounded good, and my men would be happy for the change in routine. And it wasn't like I had much else to occupy me. Allie had already made the requested changes to the book, and it had met with Stalvan's approval. Now she undertook the journey to the capital, New Aurim, to get the publication stay lifted, with Stalvan's blessing and his writ of appeal in her knapsack. Two priests, both hand-picked by Stalvan for their expertise in Temple censorship, accompanied her there.

She would have a stiff test of her patience ahead of her. It took her no fewer than three weeks' petitioning and hearings to finally get the publication stay lifted.

* ~ * ~ *

It felt odd at first to have a steed beneath me, and I recalled the last competition I joined before they banned me. Then, I had ridden a loaned horse from Himlak, awkward and stiff-kneed. I remembered I'd cursed the dumb beast for its otherness - the fact that it would not heed my commands or shy away, or take heart, in my own example.

Lattoverdius gave me better riding legs. He first had me riding a horse with no saddle, to better feel the horse's will and wishes. Through his coaching, I learned to better gauge the steed's mood. Before too many sessions, I could guess when the horse's resolve might waver, and then I could egg it on gently with a light pet of the hand on the side, or a squeeze of my knees.

My men joined in as well, and they took to the sport with differing degrees of skill. Lellik-jir, unsurprisingly, outdid all of us - he always did have a good farm-son's rapport with animals of the yoke, beasts of burden.

* ~ * ~ *

I did leave Hawkbluff once during this time, to go with Allie up to Hasid to see Thadros. By this time, the printing presses were back into service again, and the only thing left was for us to petition and lift the bar to our marriage. When Allie first got back from New Aurim, she was absolutely exhausted. The first thing she did was to draw a bath, and she passed out in the tub from fatigue, only to awaken hours later in the clammy waters.

She slept all day, and I made her something to eat - a bit of dried preserves, some honey, some oat cakes. When she rose, she spent a few hours reading and editing papers with her usual intent focus. At noon, her assistant, Lorisel, came to the shop. She had started with Alicov a few months back, but I hadn't met her much. All I recall were hours of meetings and discussions and interviews while Allie sought her help in the bookstore. Lorisel came in and they finished a quick discussion.

Then Allie wrapped her cloak about her shoulders and came to me. She was still a little thinner than usual, perhaps because of her strenuous trip, but she gave me a radiant smile and put her hands on my shoulders.

"The joys of having help in the house," she said, and gave me a kiss.

She sat with me for an hour, going through several travel books, plotting out our trip to Hasid. After the drudgery of the capital, Allie wanted a more scenic voyage for our marriage matters. She set her books on the lap-lectern I'd gotten from New Aurim, flipping through pages with one hand and absent-mindedly picking from my plate of honeyed oat cakes with the other.

By the end of the day, she'd settled on the various waypoints and we were ready to go.

"Do we need to bring one of the boys?" I asked.

She shrugged. "We can bring one or two, for security."

With the Company training in full swing, Lotal and the long-time friends could not be spared. I chose two of the younger lads instead - Kash and Pejri. We set out the next morning for Hasid.

* ~ * ~ *

While the two lads set a lazy pace in the melting spring weather, and while Allie and I invoked the lustful whimsy of our first wagon-ride meeting, matters were afoot in the rest of the kingdom.

In Flex, Nanje had briefly held top rank as Lord, until the noble houses wised up. They sent him to Forg, installed as keeper of the mines, where he stayed in the fortress he'd built outside the town, sulking.

His old rival, Taric, got no such gentle treatment. As soon as Malarchus had returned, Taric was deployed to the far chillwards reaches of the kingdom. By the time he arrived, there was barely anything left to salvage of Palt and Roshan. Malarchus' army was as entrenched as ever, and this time the sable lord had brought women and children. This was not the raid-and-despoil of before. This was outright colonization.

Taric took the unusual measure of instituting a strict regimen of secrecy about the disposition of the enemy. Earlier, when I had served with Taric, reports of the enemy's unusual soldiers and their ranks of rotting infantry had indeed gotten back to the Thenolite populace - even though they were not always believed. Now, no word got out. The wild rumors that swirled in the first few weeks of Malarchus' return were silent, now. No answers about them.

Either way, the seizure of Roshan and Palt seemed to be Malarchus' main goal, this time. We'd already been at war, with no change in the borders, for a year. Taric remained at Lothgren, where he garrisoned his army, taking orders from Bishop Trandamere and King Caropalix.

And the uneasy truce held, like an awkward pause in the storytelling.

* ~ * ~ *

We reached Hasid in good time, given all the detours that Allie planned. One stop was at a smokehouse, which reduced Kash and Pejri to helpless giggles as the incense proved too much for them. At Hasid, Templar Thadros received us, and his tone was apologetic. Though still curt, he was friendly enough to Allie's kin and the Verdinesh when they gave their testimony. It only took him a day's hearing to overturn his earlier findings, and the Markeides record now reflected that Karras was legally dead. Thadros declined to say whether Allie was now a widow, or whether her earlier marriage had been invalid from the start. He did declare that there was now no longer any impediment to Allie taking me as a husband.

The old bastard even smiled slightly as he said it. I think he may have blinked twice in quick succession too, but that might just have been my own imagination.

We stayed at a quiet, clean place in the weaver's district. Allie specially got a room with a balcony, and she admired the sunset after we had our dinner brought up. Her face had smoothed into an open serenity, and she seemed like a young girl as she hugged herself and stood with the breeze catching her skirts and scarf.

I joined her and she insinuated herself under my left arm. She gave me a perky kiss on the cheek, and then narrowed her eyes and gave me a less innocent kiss on the jaw. I felt the shock of her touch course down my entire body.

"Careful now, this is how we got into trouble in the first place," I said.

She caught her lip in her teeth. Her hand strayed, wickedly.

"Would you? Here, on the balcony?" she asked.

The idea must have really gotten her going, because she was quite insistent about it. We got to the point where I had to physically lift her up and carry her back inside to the bed for fear that somebody might have happened by and looked up.

She didn't seem that disappointed, all told, and we managed fine on the bed. It was for the best, really.

After all - once bitten, twice shy.




_

[HuManBing]

Hawk's Helpmeet

"A ceremony would be good, but nothing too opulent," Stalvan said. He was eating some toasted bread with cold meats, and he paused to brush crumbs from his robe. "If it's too grandiose, the opposition might be able to build in some sort of childish dig at you in court," he said. Then he popped another devilled egg into his mouth. His jaw clicked as he chewed contentedly.

I considered this. "Is there some sort of wrist-binding? That was how we did it at my village - when people even bothered with a ceremony, that is," I said. I dimly recalled Lotal's half-sister, Kellin, walking around town for a day with her husband Rithak tied to her left arm. It made various little chores a little inconvenient, but the two of them were so happy it made no difference. I do recall wondering how they handled trips to the latrine, though. Probably not the sort of thing you really wanted to be privy to, on your first day of wedded bliss.

Stalvan had put more bacon into his mouth and it was some time before he could talk clearly again. By way of clarification, he waved his fork abstractly as he chewed and gulped hurriedly.

"We usually tie your wrists together at the ceremony, but it's only required for the feast that follows. That's not prescribed for the full day, although honestly if you really really want to do that, I could have a word with the officiator about it," he said. "I don't think it directly contradicts any Scripture, and I reckon we could find some support for it in the apocrypha."

I waved this away. "No, no need," I said. "I'm just wondering."

He speared a garlic and wild onion sausage and waved it around at me with his fork.

"This is a really good inn," he said. "How did you find it?"

I told him that Allie and I stayed here the second night we met. Trammelstern also fought me and later met Drachlortan here. Allie gave them a good write up and they were grateful.

He scratched his back and grunted in approval. "I'm going to need to read more of her books," he said. "See if there's any others who owe her favors."

The Seasons Inn had a small reading room upstairs with a few of the latest gazetteers, and Stalvan and I retired to that room after breakfast to talk about the wedding. The first thing he said was that it would be a heavily Temple-sponsored affair.

"Remember that a primary reason we're doing this is to help your case, and prove to the Temple that you're a good layman," he said. "It's a demonstration to the Temple that your character is sound and good. Anything that threatens that is to be avoided at this time."

His hand went to the pile of papers by his side. It was the sum totality of the manuscript for my biography, annotated with various bits of marker tape put into the sides for easy reference.

Stalvan flipped through to the relevant part and then peered at the page.

"Ah yes, the manuscript has you staying here alone that night," he said. "But Alinestra tells me you were actually with her, is that correct?"

I nodded.

Stalvan made a note. "I have read this manuscript all the way through and I'm pretty familiar with it. But it deviates from the facts at several key points, so you'll forgive me if I need to get caught up."

"So," he continued, closing the manuscript, "the wedding probably won't merit more than a Signing and Dedication. Neither of you has any family in Hawkbluff, and although a Full Joining would usually call for some family to be present, in this case I don't think the Temple would take too kindly to it."

"Why not?" I asked, not that it was of much concern to me.

He looked over at me.

"Usually Full Joinings are done for young people who have observed the practice of chastity and purity before marrying," he said. "Alinestra has already been married, so that automatically makes her a dubious choice for it. And don't forget why we're doing this in the first place. Your actions at the altar have also dashed any prospect of a Full Joining."

He rearranged the manuscript and sighed.

"All we want to do is to convince the Temple that you are a law-abiding citizen and a credit to the church," he said. "Nothing more, and certainly no less."

* ~ * ~ *

They picked a cloudless spring morning for it. Alinestra could not wear white, but she had picked a lavish banquet gown and they had brought a maid in to put her hair up with jewels. I came to the Temple provisioner with Lotal and Lellik-jir, and the three of us had been given uniforms that bore the Temple's symbol of the sideways lemniscate.

It struck me momentarily that I bore a fairly strong resemblance to Trammelstern. Then the thought vanished as they sat me down with the barber.

I had not cut my hair or beard since boyhood, and although I rinsed it every night and soaped it every week, it matted together in clumps. The barber tried to tease out the curls and whorls, but eventually gave up and cut it instead. First he worked away with scissors, and then brought a razor over my throat and chin.

When he passed the mirror before me, I looked in amazement at a clean-shaven pageboy reflection. My cheeks were sunken, now that the scurf that covered them was gone. The wavy locks of golden hair were gone too, replaced by a skullcap of blond hair that covered the bemused chorister's head in the looking glass.

I turned my head to the side. The squire in the mirror did likewise, and then grimaced at me.

Lotal and Lellik-jir fell about laughing at my confusion, but when their turn came, they giggled like children when they saw their long-lost faces returned to them.

"Looking spry there, you old dog!" Lotal said.

The three of us emerged, fresh-faced as farmboys, and dressed in our ceremonial martial uniforms, on loan from the Templar's wardrobes. We met with Allie at the courtyard of the training grounds, where several members of Stalvan's temple awaited us. I was also struck by the number of members of the public there were, too. Most of them were people who had ambled on by during the handful of open training days we'd held. I suppose it was an unusual spectacle, a military type getting married.

When she saw me, Allie gave out a little scream of surprise, and then hid her laughter behind her fan. I suppose she had finally overcome her earlier difficulty in believing I was so much younger than her. We came up before the dais, and the gathered guests fell silent. Unusually, I was standing to Allie's left. My right arm was a little stronger, and it was decided that while it healed fully, we would bind it in the ceremony.

The priest spoke in the old tongue for a spell, while I snuck sidelong glances at Allie.

She had ribbons in her hair, and there was a touch of rouge in her cheeks and lips - unusual for a woman who rarely colored her face. Her eyes were clear and smiling as she followed the priest's esoteric speech, and when she gave her response in the same tongue, her voice rang out, polished and clear in the brisk springtime sunlight.

The priest turned to me. He spoke in the common tongue, now, and it was all as Stalvan had coached me before. There was the matter of duty. Of devotion. Standing beside my wife and showing the world that I had defended her with strong arm. But the priest also spoke of faith and trust - that I had come to love what I knew about Alinestra, but that I must also trust in what I did not.

I looked across at her, open and beaming in the azure stillness.

The words that Stalvan had coached me came readily to my lips. The names of the gods. The auspices of the temple. The bond of my word.

"In the eyes of Mislaxa, then, you are one," the priest said, and deftly drew a knot in the gold-threaded ribbon. My wrist met Allie's and her fingers sought mine. "Go with the blessing of the Temple, and bear our peace between you."

The choir opened at that moment, filling the courtyard with their soaring notes. By my side, my men were rising to shake my good hand. Several of Allie's authors and poet friends came to her with bows and smiles and gifts of flowers. Amidst the singing and the chuckles, however, I looked up.

The sky was a deep blue arch, mesmerizing. The day had started off clear, but by degrees some very faint clouds had appeared, cottoning the morning. Standing in the courtyard, I looked up from the quadrangle and saw, transfixed, that the clouds were dashing by above us at dizzying speed - flecks, windwhipped, among the cerulean.

Allie pinched my arm.

"Are you all right?" she asked, smiling despite her slight frown of concern.

I collected myself and gave her a wink.

"I was just lost in thought," I said. "It is all so beautiful." And then I gave her an unabashed stare. My wife, now.

"Beautiful," I repeated, half to myself, and kissed her.

* ~ * ~ *

Later I learned that Rankwen had attempted to post up a notice of service or something similar. Apparently it was just another one of his legal tricks. But Stalvan had foreseen this and had intercepted all of the opposition's men before they could get to the wedding place. It was a sign of how seriously they took it that they would be willing to interrupt my wedding to gain an advantage.

One place they did manage to get to was my bedroom in the training halls. Prasti had gone back to make sure everything was all right for my wedding night, and found my door plastered with notices, gummed and stuck over the entire surface. In a hurried last-minute change of plans, we decided I would stay at Allie's for the evening instead.

This pleased her immensely. After the feast, there was much toasting and drinking, though both of us stayed sober - all things considered. Stalvan told me about the legal notices on my door, and that he had it under control. Allie's colleagues kept up a string of jokes, literary allusions, and snatches of song from arias and operas.

There was dancing, which pleased my men well. Allie had friends who worked at the printers - mostly women, with slight fingers for typesetting. They also liked finding themselves among healthy soldiers. I suppose all that sitting around in cities gets to the mind after a while.

Back at Allie's, the women let me in with her, but they locked Lotal and the others out. This was part of the tradition, as it turned out. Lotal and the boys traded jibes and hearty innuendoes with the maids, and after Prasti had them in guffaws, they consented and let them in.

Unfortunately for me and Allie, it was only the first half of the tradition. We gave them music and food and wine, and then as the evening became night, Allie and I tried several times to draw away to the third floor and the bedrooms. But the maids, and now my own men, wouldn't let us leave.

They called toast after toast. Her friends asked her to sing an apassionata from a certain opera about newlyweds. My men asked me to join them in retelling a story of martial prowess. And all of them kept finding gleeful reasons why the party could not survive without us both.

At one point, Allie squeezed my hand and put her lips to my ear. There was a thundering whisper that I couldn't quite catch, but then I didn't have to. For a delicious moment, she pressed her body against mine in a fashion that was distinctly unbridelike. Then she was away again, answering some wag's question about the "Mother, Maid, and Man" virtuoso part.

It was well past midnight when we were able to get away, and that only because Lotal took pity on me and rose when I got up. By that time, Allie had been taking good advantage of the wrist binding to rest her hot little hand on my thigh, and to pinch my arse beneath the table, and frankly we were both ready to throw the lot of them out and go at it on the couch if need be.

"I'd better be going," I said. "She's tired and wants to go to bed."

That drew a laugh. I'd finally broken down and started drinking. Not much - just a glass or two - but on getting up, Allie overbalanced and I wobbled a little.

Lotal got up with me too.

"Here," he said, "let me help you."

I looked at him.

"No thanks, tonight I'll go it alone," I said. "I'm of age, y'know."

* ~ * ~ *

I did solve one little mystery that night. Allie took me to the red room, and lit two lanterns and then stripped me bare and jumped on me, much as I'd expected she would. After that, we rested awhile and then fell to again, this time with the two of us sitting upright in bed together and looking each other in the face. Once in a while, watching each other, I'd lose my composure entirely and start laughing - she would join in. To all our giggles, there was a tinge of disbelief, too. So this was what it was like. To be man and wife. One flesh.

For her, it was different though. In between sighs and the strange little catches women get in their breathing, she would open her eyes wide at me and say, with a guilty expression, that she felt like she was taking advantage of a pageboy. It must have been the barber's work.

After the third time, I fell into a stupor of sorts and all her egging on was of no avail. She poked and prodded, and scratched me with her long fingernails, but I just rolled away and threw an arm across my face. And that was when she got up and lit all the lanterns in the room.

I could see why it was called the Red Room. Draperies of deep crimson festooned the ceiling, and thick curtains swayed in front of an unseen breeze. But she put a small fire into a little device in the middle of the room. I remembered seeing it when I came here after Drachlortan's arrival in town - a delicate thing which rotated with panes of tiny etchings and paintings on it. Although my attention was on other issues then, I do remember peering at the weird little thing and wondering what on earth it could be for.

Allie flicked a shutter, and suddenly I saw on the ceiling a grand, startling display of orgiastic vistas of human carnality, frozen into a single tableau of surpassing excess.

"What the..."

I squinted, trying to make sense of it all. There were too many legs and arms and upturned panting faces. Allie looked up too.

"Oh, it's upside down," she said. "My mistake."

She lifted a glass panel and made an adjustment.

The tableau leapt back into position on the ceiling, this time mildly clearer.

"I didn't realize you could even fit that many people on a bed," I mused.

She sat down at the edge of the bed and put her foot to a pedal. And, impossibly, I watched open mouthed as the people began to move. Slowly at first, but then faster as her pedal picked up speed.

"My word," I said. "That's... remarkable."

Allie nodded. "Moving paintings," she said. "There are clans of people who do nothing but tinker with new toys and novelties all day. Every so often one of their ships come into port."

I grunted, distracted. The entire mass of people on the ceiling was writhing away in a frenzy of depravities. Here was the treasure trove of human indulgence, then - like some sort of diabolical machine, each moving part slid back and forth, quickening with Allie's footwork.

"I have several others that are like this," she said offhandedly. "We can watch them if you like. But you should see one that this Aurim painter did. It's just an endless loop of ants, building towers and knocking them down. It's not very arousing but by Mislaxa it'll make your head boggle."

I felt myself regaining interest in our bedtime activities. I rolled back towards her and reached for her. She smiled.

"So, my wicked plan worked," she said, and came to bed again.

* ~ * ~ *

At one point, my arm hurt too much and we tied it to the rung of the bed so it wouldn't move about so much.

I thought this would buy me a reprieve from her lusts.

This also turned out to be a mistaken belief.

* ~ * ~ *

In the morning, there was a knocking on the door. Allie was still asleep, but I was awake immediately and for a moment I thought of the Verdinesh.

"Who is it?" I asked, none too politely.

It was Lotal. "Just checking," he said.

"Checking what?" I asked.

"That you're still alive," he said. "Stalvan remembered you were still convalescing."

I winced. I felt like I'd been beaten up and then trampled. It had been a good night.

"Tell Stalvan it was his idea I get married. If she kills me in the night it's his fault, damn his eyes."

"All right," Lotal said. And that was that.



_

[HuManBing]

Before the Blinded One

The day of the trial approached, and Stalvan headed up an office of three young priests, all writing and transcribing and preparing documents. The preparations were exhaustive. Every legal point that the opposition had intended to bring up was analyzed and cross-analyzed, and every counterpoint and defense had dozens of Scriptural verses and quotations to back it up. Stalvan also had names of Temple court cases from the past that supported his points, and he had gone even further and brought up cases that likely weakened our argument, and then he had produced counterarguments to rebut even those.

I was thankful that Stalvan was my lawyer.

Stalvan had gotten all the various staff at the Temple under his interviews, and he had built up a fearsome corpus of evidence to prove my innocence, or at least mitigating factors. As the pre-trial hearings began, Allie and I sat in to hear the two sides debate the merits of their cases.

For the morning, Stalvan and his aides brought out record after record from the Temple accounts, to rebut the accusation of corruption and misuse of Temple funds. Fitbin and Rankwen produced some of their evidence - mostly testimony, little in the way of written words - and then began negotiations. They managed to get it down to an agreement that Stalvan would admit his expenditures were "irregular and unprecedented", but they would in exchange drop all accusations of fraud and corruption.

Allie smiled at me brightly when Stalvan came back with their offer. We accepted the settlement immediately and then broke for lunch.

"It doesn't surprise me in the slightest," Stalvan said, popping a boiled egg into his mouth and chewing. "They only had the barest of rumors to go on. And they must have known that I am in control of all the books anyway."

He dabbled his fingers in a waterbowl and then patted them dry on a towel.

"No, I think they're saving their energy for the murder and the public indecency charges," he said. "We'll probably get round to the presentations on murder today. I doubt we'll get round to the public indecency until tomorrow, if then."

He poured himself a generous cup of juice and drank contentedly. "But not to worry - their arrows and spears shall fall before our armor like the Host of Dostalvante."

He belched quietly and smiled.

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, the murder charges were significantly more drawn out. Fitbin and Rankwen did not relinquish their accusation that I was liable for Drachlortan's killing spree. They leveled accusations that I had either worked in tandem with him, or that at least I had been reckless in endangering others.

At this point, they moved to have Allie testify against me. Stalvan then produced the wedding certificate showing that she and I were married. Fitbin and Rankwen immediately dropped their attempt to get her to testify.

And once more, I began to see the formidable scope of Stalvan's legal training.

The block against Allie taking the stand also meant that they could not bring up the issue of Remigerius' death. Nor could they use the testimony of the writer in Selbinwood - Allie had been literally his only real contact, and no other would represent his interest in the case.

Fitbin and Rankwen had some testimony gathered from my men, about my nature and my soldiering ways before we came to Hawkbluff, but Stalvan quashed that testimony by arguing it prejudicial. Apparently, there was a doctrine that said a person shall not be tried for the same crime twice, and he extended that to exclude all the war-crimes for which I was allegedly pardoned by Trandamere's bull.

That left a few incidents, which they attempted to introduce to the record. Obviously, they were able to get Calomines' facts about the slave fighting ring. We rebuffed that with Lotal's testimony that I personally sickened of the sport and left halfway through, disgusted. Then they brought up the Marquis of Oakensborough. Stalvan brought up contrasting evidence to show that the Marquis had been pocketing the Temple's military funds and that I had merely shaken things up to see they were rightly being used for guard salaries.

Finally, Fitbin and Rankwen brought in a cowering man in ill-fitting workman's clothes. Something about his face rang a distant bell in my mind, but I couldn't place him.

They asked him to state his name and his trade, but I still didn't recognize him. Then they asked him about an incident in Flex, on Loafbringer Street, and then it all came back to me.

That was the day that we had tortured Sardricor of the Company of the Scimitar. This man was one of the shifty-eyed tenants who had let us into the house to lay the trap for Sardricor.

I immediately told Stalvan about this, and he raised an objection. We conferred and he went before the court to state that this was undeclared witness testimony, and that it was before we arrived at Hawkbluff and thus was outside the scope of our Temple affiliation.

The court adjourned for the day to debate the issue of whether to allow the Sardricor testimony.

Later that day, I found out from word of mouth that Sardricor was dead. We had beaten him so badly that he never regained consciousness, and he expired while still wrapped in the carpet where we'd left him, though a few days later.

Apparently, my kinswoman Varadis had even put up a bounty on my head for a month or so before word got back to her that I was a Templar mercenary now. The posters had come down very quickly after that.

* ~ * ~ *

The next day, Stalvan greeted me. He was happy, though he looked like he had not slept much.

"We have a good number of cases," he said. "The point we're trying to make today is that any pre-Temple history of yours is irrelevant in this case."

I nodded. "Do you think you can pull it off?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Put it this way," he said. "Fitbin and Rankwen always had a lousy case. They're just throwing marbles in our path. I have a good broom."

And indeed he did. He had prepared several points, but after he made the first and backed it up with case law, the Temple commission stopped him and asked several pointed questions to Fitbin and Rankwen about timeliness. When they couldn't answer to their satisfaction, the commission threw out the evidence.

The nervous workman left the stand - a figment from the troubled past - and the talk turned to the issue of the dead priest.

Stalvan was ready, and called the witnesses to the stand. The afternoon was taken up with testimony about who it was who killed the priest at the altar. By the evening break, it looked like the commission had no choice but to go with Stalvan's argument - that Drachlortan's knife was the only thing that could have killed the priest, and that my arrow struck a corpse that had already had its throat slit.

* ~ * ~ *

That night, we went back to Allie's house and we went to sleep in good time in the Black Room.

Halfway through the night, I woke with a gentle start. I had dreamed that the court was in session again, and when I opened my eyes I was a little confused.

I lay on my side, and she nestled back into me, like a baby. Her breathing was even and peaceful, and her hands were resting at waist level, gently holding my clasped arms across her belly.

I shifted slightly, and Allie gave a little squeak in her sleep and raised a hand to her neck. She twitched her hair to one side unconsciously, draping it along her jaw. Then she was still again, hands resting on my wrists once again.

For a long time I watched my wife as she bared her neck to me in the moonlight.




_

[HuManBing]

Unexpected Issues

The next day, the court cleared my record of responsibility for the dead priest at the altar. Stalvan had proven beyond a doubt that my arrow had not killed him, the court said. The only thing left was whether I had intended to kill the priest at the time.

If I had, then the mere intent could be a minor crime, they said. They asked me to take the stand.

I did so, remembering the responses that Stalvan had prepared with me. Although they phrased the question a few different ways, I kept to the truth - which was that I honestly thought it was Drachlortan at the altar, and that I had no intention of harming any true priest.

The commission noted this as a possible minor misdemeanor on my record but otherwise waved it away. Depending on the rest of the case, they indicated they might even expunge it entirely.

With this issue solved, the court cleared me of all allegations of violent offenses.

That left only the offenses involving Allie - the public indecency charges.

* ~ * ~ *

Stalvan took us to an inn at the edge of town. Far away from anywhere where Fitbin or Rankwen might have snooping ears to eavesdrop.

He smiled apologetically as he poured wine - for me and himself only, not for Allie, as her refusals had become routine now. Stalvan called up some spiced meats, as Allie had an odd hankering for peppers, and we tucked in.

He looked at her first, and then at me.

"We've already talked about the biggest problem," he said. "Concerning our case, we must answer to the defilement of Mislaxa's altar. But, our strategy must be to link the act you committed to her blessing. I checked this very carefully and we have found that indeed the classicals did worship her in a capacity as a goddess of fertility. So what you did might not be so terribly bad after all, especially as nothing terrible has befallen you yet."

He dried his mouth and then looked at Allie.

"So, Mislaxa obviously doesn't have you on her list of sinners to punish. Of course, it would be easier to prove this if we had some sign of actual favor from her," he said.

There was a pause, which went on for just a bit too long. I looked up at him.

"Was I supposed to say something?" I asked, puzzled. But he was looking at Allie.

"Milady Covelia, I understand you have some beneficial news for us?" he said gently.

She set down her fork and looked at me.

"Hawk–" she began.

The moment she opened her mouth, I knew what she was going to say. The certainty of it hit me like a physical blow, as all the details came together. Her avoidance of wine. Her cravings for odd foods. Even the way she liked my hands on her belly as we slept at night.

"You're pregnant," I said flatly.

She looked at me, her mouth silently open, as of robbed of breath. Then she closed her mouth and nodded mutely.

"When did this happen?" I asked at length.

Allie's gaze darted nervously around the table. When she looked back up at me, I saw a measure of fear in her eyes.

"I think it may have been that night I showed you my teas," she said. "The ones that...-"

"...-don't work?" I finished for her.

Stalvan broke in, tapping his knife on the table for emphasis.

"This helps your case enormously," he said. "Ee-nor-mous-ly. What better proof of Mislaxa's blessing do you need?"

I rubbed the heel of my hand against my temple. Things were progressing much faster than I had intended. A wife, and then merely days later, a child as well? If only my mother could see me now, I thought. Certainly nothing in Terrek's training camp had quite prepared me for this.

"Well, the child will continue to be an issue even after the case is over," I said sharply to Stalvan. "Maybe they don't teach you that in the seminary."

Stalvan held up his hands. "No doubt, I didn't mean to speak lightly of what has happened," he said. Then he broke into a broad grin again. "But... may I congratulate you both on this happy occasion," he said. "This will clear your name, I'm sure of it. And the child will bring such joy for years to come!"

I shot him a glance, but his face seemed sincere. I turned back to my food without a word to either of them.

Allie tapped her fingers in an agitated tattoo against her fork, and then turned her face back to the table. Then she pushed the plate away from her and rested her jaw on her right hand, staring off into the distance, distracted.

After a few moments of gazing hungrily at her plate, Stalvan took it from her and piled her meat onto his own. He did have the courtesy to give an apologetic grimace as he did so.

We finished up and left the inn. I stopped on the stairs down and looked up. It was early afternoon, and Allie was a few steps behind me, her hair rippling in the wind, with a pink spot high on each cheek. Her eyes were troubled, gazing off into the distance.

I went back up to her and offered her my hand. She looked at me, startled, and then took it. We descended the stairs together, carefully.

Then she gave me a sad little smile.

* ~ * ~ *

The court saved the charges of indecency for last, and it was a large file. They pored over the case for a while in silence, giving us more than enough time for Allie to fill me in on the details. She believed it could have been as early as the night of the actual altar-top incident itself. If not, there had been regular happy couplings between us (though admittedly in the privacy of our bedroom) for weeks and months afterwards, any one of which might have provided the union of seed and blood needed to distill our posterity to her womb.

The thought of it made my head spin. I could barely keep up as Stalvan argued the Undercroft commingling down to nothing, and the wallside competition down to a reprimand.

"So those medicines don't work," I whispered to Allie, a trifle irked by their unreliable magic.

She gave me a troubled look. "I don't know," she whispered back. "They always have. But maybe it's just not certain."

Stalvan came back to the bench in a hurry. He was followed by an acolyte trailing papers and files.

He pored over some papers with a quivering finger and then looked up. I began to suspect that something was amiss. I came up to him.

"Something's amiss," he said. "They're about to call up a surprise witness. Apparently they only found her last night."

"A witness?" I said. "Who?"

He stuck a finger in his ear and turned it around and then withdrew it, grimacing.

"Grisel? Risel?" he said, waving. "Somebody who works for her."

I cast my mind back. There was a new woman in Allie's house, who worked in the printing office. I couldn't remember her name.

Allie knew it. "Lorisel?" she said. "What could they want with her?"

Stalvan sat down with us. "She's a domestic helper?" he asked.

"No, a printer's assistant," Allie said. "She only goes on the first level with the manuscripts, and on the second level with the books. But there's no reason to expect she's got anything bad to say about me. She just works there."

Stalvan tapped his foot agitatedly.

"I'm going to move to strike her testimony, whatever it turns out to be," he said. "But I don't think I can do it before she actually says it."

I stopped him. "Is that a bad thing?"

He made a rocking gesture with his head. "The tribunal is not supposed to be influenced by testimony after it's been stricken. But if she says something really bad about you, it may not fade from their minds so easily. We may have to allow the full cross-examination to take place, if only to disprove what she has said."

* ~ * ~ *

Lorisel was a petite blonde woman with perpetually frazzled hair and tired eyes. She was well-learned, however, and she was good with words and worked hard, which was why Allie hired her. But there had been a certain silence about her that talkative Allie always found disquieting, as if she were nursing a deep sorrow or anger.

When she took the stand, she spoke in a thin, reedy voice and the tribunal had to ask her more than once to repeat herself louder.

Bit by bit, she explained the nature and position of her work. Reading over manuscripts, checking facts with the list of experts Allie had kept. Making corrections for grammar and spelling, as well as suggesting revisions for style. Every once in a while she went upstairs to the second floor to check the old copies of published books, usually in the occasion of proofreading a subsequent book by the same writer.

Once in a while, when she went up to the second floor, she would hear sounds of passion from the third. That would be myself and Allie, she assumed.

Stalvan objected. "This testimony is irrelevant," he said. "It is not against the law for men and women to couple in their own homes. Commingling has nothing to do with civilian houses, only Temple property."

Rankwen countered that this was probative of our nature.

"The assistant's testimony will go towards demonstrating that the two accused are creatures unable to control their lustful urges," he said. "We ask the tribunal to consider all facts in order to weigh the nature of the charge."

The tribunal conferred briefly and gave Lorisel the go-ahead.

Lorisel began a catalog of evidence she found around the store's workspace. Stains on the couches. Patches on the tablecloth. Traces around the sink in the kitchen. Allie and I listened, our eyes widening as she made her scandalous chronicle.

Then we looked at each other in a species of horrified guilt. Everything she had said was eminently feasible. We really had done all those things in all those places. Allie bit her lip.

Rankwen had not finished. He asked her a question about a specific date, when she had come back to the shop late at night, to fetch a misplaced manuscript that she needed to take to the writer in the morning. She had let herself in quietly, not wanting to wake us.

"Tell them what you saw in the living room."

She swallowed and said that she heard an odd noise. There was a light on, and when she came to the living room door at first she thought maybe I had fallen asleep in the couch. I was sitting facing away from her and there was a lamp behind me.

She came quietly to put out the lamp, in case it started a fire. Then she stopped as I stirred and adjusted my legs. She said I had given out a sigh of satisfaction, and she knew I was far from asleep.

It was at that point that she also realized I was naked from the waist down. She moved back to the doorway, embarrassed, but then saw Allie rise up from in front of me. Allie did not see her, but then again she appeared to be focussed on other things.

"Would you say she had been kneeling?"

Lorisel thought about this. Yes, she decided. Given the angles involved, Allie would have had to have been kneeling in front of me. Or lying down. If she had been standing up, Lorisel would have seen her over the chair.

"Very well. Please continue."

Stalvan objected.

"The witness had no business being in the house at that time. What happened in Covelia's living room at night is no business of hers," he said.

Rankwen stood up and responded.

"On the contrary - she had every reason. She had returned to her place of employment specifically to carry out her professional duties, the delivery of the manuscript. She came into the living room concerned about intruders, and found defendants thus engaged."

The tribunal overruled the objection. Lorisel continued in her testimony.

At first, she didn't know what Allie could have been doing on her knees. Then I had stood up, taken Allie's hands, and then led her back to a chair behind her. She took the fall, smiling, and I knelt before her. There was some moaning, but Lorisel still had no idea what was happening.

It wasn't until Allie hitched her dress up over my head and wrapped her stockinged legs across my shoulders that Lorisel finally understood. She left in a state of no small agitation and furthermore forgot to pick up the manuscript she had come to fetch.

Stalvan flashed me a look of exasperation. He did not look pleased at the prospect of rebutting this evidence.

There was more, though. Rankwen put another date and time to Lorisel, and she told of another incident. This time, she had seen us coupling in the kitchen in mid-afternoon. That was all.

Stalvan rubbed his eyes, his forehead creased.

"Request permission to adjourn," he said.

* ~ * ~ *

He looked notably older as we sat down to discuss this at a nearby tavern.

Allie was angry.

"How can they even talk about this? It all happened in my own hearth. What business is it of the Temple's what I do with my lover in my house?" she said, louder than necessary. Some people at a nearby table looked at her, then at me.

Stalvan massaged his eyes with his thumbs.

"It's not you they're after. It's Hawk," he said tiredly.

"So what?" I countered. "What I do with Allie in her house... why is it relevant?"

"Evidence tending to prove guilt or innocence," he quoted. "That's what they allow in the court. I don't know for sure what they're up to, but I have a pretty good idea."

He picked up a small penknife and scratched a diagram in the beery surface of the table.

"This here is the altar incident," he said. "I think we have a pretty good argument why it's not an actual offense to Mislaxa. But it's still a transgression of Temple rules, as is the wall incident. If they can prove that you and Hawk were acting less out of religious fervor and more out of base desires, then our defense of Mislaxa's blessing is that much weaker."

He looked at us both.

"Are there any other incidents you can think of in the house that Lorisel may have seen or heard? Anything at that happened outside the strict confines of the bedroom. We don't need any more surprises," he said.

Allie looked askance into her flagon of tea.

We started counting them off.

"There was that one time on the book table," she said. "Then once by the fireplace in the living room."

"And the kitchen. Maybe... four? Five times?" I said, doubtfully.

"Oh, and the staircase," she said.

"The staircase," I agreed. "Yes, that time."

Allie's eyes widened. "Oh, heavens, the window," she said.

I groaned. How many people had seen that?

"What's this?" Stalvan asked sharply.

Allie told him.

One time, late last autumn, she had been moving the oldest books from the second floor into the reinforced book vault in the cellar. Several hired hands had winched the book crates down to street level and were placing them into the vault doors. Her part done, Allie had gone to take a bath to clean the dust and grime off.

A shout from the workmen interrupted her in the bath, and she threw on a robe to cover her nakedness. She went to the window, calling to them. One of the crates had started to come open, and they wanted to know whether they should reseal it now, or just put it to one side and shelve the rest of the crates first.

She leaned out to take stock of the situation, craning her head for a better view, and it was at that moment that I came out into the corridor behind her. I came face-to-cheek with the delightful sight of her unprotected lower half.

She would come, in the fullness of time, to regret this.

Out of sight of the workmen, I had then inserted myself into the conversation, so to speak. Allie had soldiered on, keeping her instructions relatively professional, all things considering. Then she had given up and fallen back into the corridor with me to finish things off at our own leisure.

Stalvan blinked.

"Were the workers part of a guild or company?" he asked.

Allie shook her head. "They were laborers Remigerius hired that morning in the marketplace."

Stalvan nodded. "Good. Less traceable, then. I don't think we have to worry about this."

He sat back and mopped his brow.

Then he laughed. The guffaws became louder and louder and he even ended up slapping his thigh and thumping the table. We looked at each other in consternation as he was overcome with gales and sobs.

When he could speak again, he wiped tears of laughter from his eyes.

"Are you all right?" Allie asked him.

He waved her away and nodded, still giggling.

"I was just thinking: Young people these days," was all he said.

* ~ * ~ *

Fitbin made his speech, about how the testimony showed we were given to lustful pursuits, and how we had a history of engaging in copulations without shame in places that were public.

At this point, Stalvan objected and requested that the public part be stricken. Allie's house was not public.

Rankwen asserted that it was public, as the lower levels doubled as a workplace which was open to the general public. Stalvan countered that in all these times, they were locked to the general public.

The tribunal declined to issue a ruling on the public aspect of her building, and we had to continue without the strike.

Fitbin continued, and it was just like Stalvan had predicted. He disparaged the idea that we had any sort of religious thought in our heads when we took it upon ourselves to couple like animals in heat on the blessed altar of Mislaxa. He presented the testimony of Lorisel as tending to prove that we were given to these lusts at home and outside of it, and thus that the argument of Mislaxa's blessing is without merit.

Stalvan rose and brought in a doctor of physic, who presented evidence of Allie's morning sicknesses and the various tests he had run on her waters. She was pregnant, and the child was potentially conceived the night of the altar incident.

Stalvan also brought in a young acolyte who had overheard us in the altar room. He asked him to tell the court what he heard Allie say in the aftermath.

"She dedicated her tenth child to Mislaxa's brother," he said. "And she bowed her head."

Stalvan stressed that Mislaxa's blessing had come in response to her supplication, and thus the act at the altar was not an offense to the gods.

Rankwen and Fitbin recessed, then came back with some questions for the doctor and the priest. But Stalvan had coached them well, and the day ended with their reliability intact.

* ~ * ~ *

That night, Allie and I slept in the Black Room. I helped her into a bath and then drew lines underneath the tally and counted them up.

"The score is 155 - 78," I said as she came back.

She looked at me as she dried her hair in a towel. Otherwise, she was naked. There was no outward sign yet of the baby. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"You win," I said. "You woke up on top of me 155 times. I only woke up on you 78 times." I put the chalk back into its holder.

She looked at the tallies.

"Does this mean you're... leaving my bed?" she asked. Her face was remarkably composed.

This question surprised me. I came to her with a blanket.

"I hope not," I said. "But the game should stop. I don't think our little one will appreciate it much if I wake up on top of you anymore. Do you?"

She relaxed into a lopsided smile. Then she gave me a kiss and we went to bed, side by side.

In the middle of the night, she tapped me on the shoulder. I was not sleeping deeply, and I turned to her.

"You were right, you know," she said. "I could change after all. I haven't needed a drink for months." She nestled into me. "You're a good man, Hawk."

I held her hand and wondered at the many things in me that had changed in the past year.



_