Page 63 of Crucible of Chaos

‘And for what crime am I to be convicted?’

‘The most heinous of all,’ she replied easily. ‘Pride.’

‘Pride?’

She finally ceased her circling and came to a stop in front of him. ‘You love what you do, and you do it exceedingly well. To fail to appreciate the fruits of life’– she stared meaningfully at his belly– ‘would be to deny yourself the pleasure of your accomplishments. You seek always to educate those around you on principles of the law and the search for veracity because you hope doing so will make the world a fairer place.’ She wagged an accusing finger in his face. ‘You pretend to an obsession with the truth, Estevar Borros, but your true ladylove is justice. It is she for whom you risk your life, and it is to her you drink in celebration when her cause is triumphant.’

Estevar couldn’t keep the smile from his lips. Pride, indeed, was what filled him then, seeing how magnificently Caeda had dissected him– not that he would let her off the hook any more easily than she would him. ‘A pretty speech, Piccolo, but I await the answer to the question you posed earlier. What is war to a magistrate?’

She frowned, but without the hint of mockery this time. There was pity in her eyes; she was sad for him. Sad, and afraid. ‘War is the death of justice, Estevar.’

She’d surprised him, and he found he could no longer hold her gaze, so he turned back towards the channel, where, half a mile away, plotting generals and priests were busy justifying the slaughter of monks. ‘Sometimes, a single act of justice can prevent war. That is the battle we wage, you and I.’

He felt her lean against him as if for warmth, and her closeness made him painfully aware that yet again he lacked a daughter of his own. He wondered whether she really was cold, or whether that, too, was a stolen memory. ‘Why do we wait here then, my Cantor?’ she asked, sounding sleepy.

‘Iawait a boat.Youneed to take cover before it gets here.’

‘How do you know they’ll send one?’

Estevar reached into the small tubular pocket on the left side of his coat and removed a compact brass spyglass. He extended it, then offered it to her.

She took it and held it out towards the mainland, squinting one eye shut as she stared through the glass. ‘I see them, but what does that—?’

‘If we can see them, it meanstheycan also seeme.’

She handed him back the brass instrument. ‘If the margrave was planning on sending an envoy, why would he not have already done so? Why wait for you in particular?’

‘There is something he will need from me, just as there is something I will need from his envoy.’

‘So you’re going to bargain with the Margrave of Someil? Plead for some forbearance before his invasion, or negotiate terms for preserving the abbey?’ She’d kept her tone even, yet the very precision of her words betrayed her sense of disappointment and resignation–as if his impending parley was proof that justice was, like all things in this world, for sale.

‘I am a Magistrate of the Greatcoats,’ he reminded her. ‘I distil the facts from the evidence, preside over a trial and render my verdicts. I do notnegotiatewith suspects.’

She grinned up at him, a delighted gratitude in her eyes that made him sad.

‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘Mother Leogado testified to me that the margrave came here several times in recent months, attempting to cajole Venia into some sort of accommodation regarding the island. When that failed, he sent his all-too-cunning lackey to poison the abbey’s wine stocks, driving the monks to madness and mayhem–all to concoct the justification for an invasion. Having committed such an unconscionable crime, I doubt he’s of a mind to compromise his ambitions when victory is so near.’

‘Old news, my Cantor,’ Caeda said, feigning a yawn. ‘You still haven’t explained what it is the margrave wants from you.’

Estevar reached into his greatcoat and retrieved the little leather message case. ‘When first I arrived at the causeway, one of the margrave’s knights, a Sir Daven Colraig, had waited three nights in the storm to give me this.’

He untied the azure cords securing the cylinder and protecting it from water damage, unfolded the letter inside and handed it to Caeda.

‘From his Lordship Alaire, Margrave of Someil,’ she read aloud. ‘Warden of the March, Defender of the Faith, to you, my friend, in earnest warning. As you love life and value your soul, do not set foot on Isola Sombra.’ She stared at the letter a moment longer. ‘This Sir Daven told you the message was meant for you?’

‘He went to great pains to leave me with the impression that I was the intended recipient.’

Caeda examined the note once more. ‘Except it’s not addressed to anyone in particular, and surely a King’s Magistrate receives a more formal honorific than “my friend”?’

‘Indeed– especially since eventhatturned out to be a lie.’

‘So, this Sir Daven was under orders to challengeanymagistrate or other official who approached the island, get their name, then pretend that was who he’d been waiting for all along.’ Caeda whistled through her teeth. ‘So, the margrave intends to kidnap you and force you to publicly declare to his generals and nobles and whoever else he needs to support his invasion that you, a king’s magistrate, have observed the chaos within the abbey and invalidate the monks’ claim to the island.You’rethe justification for invasion.’ She rolled the note back up and poked him with it. ‘This envoy must think you’re either gullible or easily bribed, my Cantor.’

Estevar took the note from her and put it away before raising the spyglass to his eye. He could make out the little rowboat sailing towards them, and a familiar broad-shouldered, blond-haired paragon piloting it. ‘Sir Daven was perhaps better suited to a career in the theatre than as a sheriff outrider. I should have wondered more at the unaddressed note, but before I could, he distracted me with his tale of twelve knights and their supposedly absent souls. That, too, was a trick–part of the broader plot to justify the margrave’s annexation of the island.’

‘But when we asked Strigan about the knights, he claimed the Bone-Rattlers had spiked their wine and confessed to marking the knights’ naked bodies with those sigils as a prank before putting them back on their horses and sending them home.’

‘The Wolf-King also claimed to have beheaded Abbot Venia’s corpse when you suggested it, and I suspect he would have confessed proudly to any number of crimes if he’d thought they’d make him look more dangerous.’

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