An earthly crown

CHAPTER EIGHT

"David," said Marco, "you will come sit through this banquet with me. I refuse to endure hours of rancid food and city elders sucking up to Charles and Bakhtiian all by myself.''

"Maggie is going," said David.

"Maggie," said Maggie tartly, "is serving an official function. I'm going to be the wine pourer for His Nibs and Attila the Hun."

David groaned. "Are you for me or against me? You're no help."

But there was nothing for it. He could see by the look on Marco's face, and by the light in Maggie's eyes as she laughed silently at him, that he was doomed to sit through the state dinner and audience that the barons and elders of the town of Abala Port were holding for the man who had conquered them, Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, and the prince who was his chosen guest.

"As long as I don't have to act as food taster," he muttered, "although with that army in this town, I don't think I'd try to poison anyone."

"You wouldn't try to poison anyone anyway," said Maggie. She rummaged through her carry bag and drew out a clean tunic and the only skirt she possessed. She went on talking as she changed, letting her old clothes drop into a heap on the slatted floor of their tiny inn room. "Owen Zerentous has asked permission to hold an impromptu performance at the end of the banquet, or after the formal audience. Evidently the city elders have some cases they need tried, some people accused of crimes, that they're going to bring before Bakhtiian."

"Trial by personal whim?" asked Marco.

"You said yourself he was educated at the university in Jeds," retorted Maggie. "He must have some concept of justice. Damn it! Where'd that brassiere go?" She upended the contents of her bag onto her cot. David, from his cot, hooked a dark toe through the brassiere strap and hoisted the garment up into the air. "Where'd you find that?" she demanded.

"On the floor, where most of your clothes eventually come to rest."

She snatched it from him with a mock growl and put it on, then a linen shirt, and then her tunic and skirt. The room was crowded in part because it was small, but mostly because neither Maggie nor David could bring themselves to sleep on the straw-filled mattress that served as the room's bed. They had set up their traveling cots instead, one on each side; a tiny aisle led to the door, where Marco stood with his arms folded, surveying the mess.

"Shall we go? It can't smell any worse there than it does here."

"Just because we're over the stables," said Maggie with a laugh. "And where are you sleeping, may I ask?"

"You may not."

"Marco! You're frightening me."

That teased the shadow of a grin from him. David sighed and rose, pulling his sketchpad out of his carry bag. He brushed two flealike bugs off his sleeve and five earwigs off the sketchpad, and ran his other hand along the ends of his hair and through his name braids. "I'm just sure they're crawling all over me. It can't be worse in the town hall."

But it was. It was rank. Marco didn't seem to notice that it was only a thin layer of fresh rushes that covered the floor; that underneath lay a mat of ancient straw and other, happily nameless substances, which had created a kind of fetid loam. It squished. Incense burned in racks along the walls, set up between the windows, and lanterns were set at intervals along the tables. Rank and cloying at the same time. Quite a feat, David thought, to produce two such opposite effects in one chamber.

Charles walked in front of them, together with Bakhtiian. David hung back with Marco, who waited in his turn for the actors. But in the end, the actors sat at a side table and David and Marco ended up on the dais, at the very end of the long beamed table-which was actually three tables shoved together-which seated the guests of honor. The actors were in fine form, being boisterous in an engaging fashion, and the city elders were disgustingly obsequious.

"Have you noticed," said Marco in a whisper, "how Bakhtiian has picked out two boys, there, to eat with him, to share the food from his plate? Honoring them, because they're both sons of important men in town. But it also ensures that no one attempts to poison him."

David hadn't noticed. There was a clump of something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and he was trying to scrape it off. The food thrust in front of him looked unappetizing in the extreme, except for the bread. He didn't trust the water, and the wine had a vinegary-flavor. If this was the best Abala Port could do, then it must not be a very wealthy town.

"I think this is real gold leaf on this plate," said Marco, poking at it with his knife. A laugh burst up from the actors' table, and Marco looked up at once, caught Diana's eye, and smiled winningly at her.

"How has Tess managed to endure these conditions for four years?" David demanded of his plate. "This is appalling."

"Maybe she's as much of a slob as Maggie and you are. Maybe she doesn't care."

"She isn't a slob. Or at least, she wasn't."

"What? As an eleven-year-old in Jeds? But wait." Marco eased his attention back from Diana and propped his chin on one hand to regard David with interest. "You weren't in Jeds then. How could you know? Oho!"

David cursed under his breath. Trust Marco to know him well enough to read him.

"You're blushing under that attractive black complexion of yours, David my boy," said Marco in his most annoyingly superior manner. "Out with it."

"Damn it. Listen. If you breathe a word of this to Charles, I'll have your head. And then where will you be with handsome young actresses?" He leaned forward and peered down the table toward Charles, but Charles was deep in conversation with an old man in a pale blue gown trimmed with silver fur who wore a ring on each finger and a heavy bronze medallion on the end of a gold necklace. Charles's own finery paled in comparison-his signet ring and the chain of office draped down over a painted silk tunic-and the barbarian king looked positively spartan, dressed without any ornamentation at all except the embroidery that ran down the sleeves of his simple red shirt. He wore his curved sword; no one else in the room bore a weapon except his own personal guards: ten at the door and two standing behind him on the dais.

"Do you remember when I taught that seminar at the university in Prague?"

"Oh, yes." Marco's eyes narrowed. "Tess was attending the university at Prague then, wasn't she? In fact, I rather have it in mind that Charles encouraged you to take the position so that you could keep an eye on her.''

David found he could not speak the words, especially since it was the one secret he had ever kept from Charles and Marco.

"You had an affair with her!"

"Marco! Hush. And in any case, I wouldn't call it an affair. We grew fond of each other. True, we shared a bed, but we shared a friendship, too."

"What was she like? I confess I haven't seen her since the year she left for university."

David smiled. In his heart, he felt her presence as an honest and pleasing warmth. She was a good person, an amiable companion, and a fine intellect, though she suffered from insecurity; as well she might, since she was Charles Soerensen's little sister and heir, whether she liked it or not. "She was chubby."

Marco choked on a hunk of bread. "How unromantic of you! Chubby!"

"Well, it's true. She was."

"And then?"

"My seminar ended, and I left. Later I heard she got engaged to another student, but evidently it didn't work out, which I've often suspected is why she left for Rhui so suddenly." And perhaps even why she had stayed there; Tess was insecure enough that David also suspected she might nurse a wound like that for years, especially to hide it from Charles.

"David, you see me at a loss for words. You see me rendered speechless. I am astounded. Amazed."

"Oh, shut up."

Marco laughed and picked at his meat with his knife, trying in vain to find a strip that wasn't spiced to death. Liveried men lit torches and placed them in racks alongside the incense burners, adding a fine, stinging smoke to the brew. Charles laughed at something Bakhtiian said-although David could not imagine a man who looked as hard and dangerous and uncivilized as Bakhtiian did having a sense of humor-and, like a nervous echo, the city elders laughed as well. Maggie, looking serene, poured more wine for the two men. Cara, sitting down at the other end of the table with Jo and Rajiv, stifled a yawn under one hand.

"And just think," said David, "these conditions must be advanced compared to the way the nomads must live. Poor Tess. Whatever do you suppose possessed her to stay there? Sheer intellectual curiosity? Is the fieldwork too good to let go?''

Marco put down his knife. "Oh," he said, as if God itself had just granted him a revelation. "David…"

"And don't you dare tell Charles!"

Marco blanched. "But, David-"

"Give me your word!"

Marco laughed abruptly, an odd note in his voice. "Hell. I swear it. It lends one a warm feeling to think about these youthful indiscretions, doesn't it?"

Marco was definitely acting strangely all of a sudden. "You talk about it like it was in the past, and meant to stay that way.''

"It always is, David. In the words of the immortal Satchel Paige, 'Don't never look back. Something might be gaining on you.' "

"Marco, did you eat something that affected your brain? No doubt there are molds aplenty in this food. Or is that lovely young actress just addling it?''

"I'm just saying that Tess may have changed, and you should… go slowly when you see her again. And not expect too much."

"Hah! Odd sort of advice, coming from you. You sound positively auntly, Marco."

There was a sudden commotion at the far end of the hall. A woman screamed. A jaran soldier stumbled against a chair, tripping backward over it, and sprawled onto the floor. Like a wave rushing in, five men, swords drawn, plunged forward up the central aisle toward the dais. Marco jumped to his feet. David gaped.

For an instant, nothing and no one moved except for the five armed men, who ran toward the head table with death in their eyes and a sudden scrambling of guards at their backs.

Bakhtiian was on his feet before David realized he had moved. He grabbed the table and heaved it up and forward, and it crashed over onto its side. Plates and glasses and half-eaten food and the dregs of wine spilled onto the steps and clattered onto the floor. His saber was already in his hand in the span of time it took Charles to blink.

David sat there stunned with his food in front of him while an attack was waged not six paces away. Marco knocked over his own chair in his haste to get to Charles. Men shrieked.

"Aleksi!" shouted Bakhtiian as the first of the assassins leapt up the steps. A dark young man in a red shirt jumped over the upended table and cut down the first man so quickly that David did not even see the blow. Jaran soldiers closed in from the other end of the hall. A guard flung himself past David from behind and engaged the nearest assassin. The young man called Aleksi twisted his saber around another man's sword, sending it flying, and with a cut that seemed born of the first one disarmed a second man by disabling his arms with wicked-looking slices. One man left-

And then Aleksi suddenly sprang around and flung a cut back at Bakhtiian, who ducked away from it while at the same time shoving over Charles's chair. Charles landed in a heap, Bakhtiian in a crouch, and Marco tackled from behind the old baron who had sat beside Charles this whole time. From whose robes had appeared an ugly looking short sword, which Aleksi had knocked away.

David had not yet moved from his chair. All of the actors except Owen and the leading man, Gwyn Jones, were cowering under their table. Diana stood beside Jones. She gripped the edge of her chair, staring with bright eyes at Marco, who was sitting on top of the old baron, looking furious.

Now, two assassins were left. The one nearest David had been driven back into a circle whose boundaries were delineated in red: the scarlet shirts of the jaran guard. One lay quivering in a heap; one lay prostrate; one sobbed, clutching his bleeding arms against his chest. The two remaining clutched hard at their deadly-looking long swords.

Bakhtiian rose. "Aleksi, take them," he ordered with astounding calm.

Aleksi nodded without expression and stepped forward, and the others made way for him. The elders and other barons on the dais clumped into a frightened group. Cara had already run down to Charles, and she helped him to his feet. Marco stayed sitting on the old baron.

And the most horrifying thing of all was that it was beautiful to watch. Barbarian he might be, but he was an artist with the sword. Two of them, against one of him, with such different weapons, but there was no doubt what the outcome would be. The knowledge made the two assassins desperate. Aleksi looked as cool as a man out for an evening stroll. One of his comrades shouted something in a joking voice, and Aleksi actually cut down one man with a swift slice along his face and chest, paused beside his comrade long enough to grab a saber in his other hand, and turned back to face the last man.

"And you realize, of course," said Ursula el Kawakami, appearing in all her unwonted splendor beside David, "that he's already at a distinct disadvantage, using that saber on foot against long swords. That's a cavalry weapon. Amazing."

Aleksi used one of the sabers to distract the poor man and neatly hamstrung him with the other. The man screamed out in pain and collapsed to the floor. There was a moment's pause. The assassins were all disarmed.

Then everyone in the hall turned to look at Bakhtiian.

He sheathed his saber, and the scraping sound it made in the hush sent an atavistic shiver down David's back. At once, the barons and elders of Abala Port flung themselves on the floor in an obscene frenzy of groveling.

But Bakhtiian ignored the nobles of Abala Port. He delivered a stinging rebuke to his guards, in his own language. They did not grovel. They looked ashamed.

At the door, a pack of jaran soldiers appeared, and they quickly entered the room under the command of an expressive young man and moved out to take control of the hall, to drag the prisoners aside, to move the heavy tables off the dais, to thoroughly search every man in the room save those of Charles's party.

And when that was all accomplished, Bakhtiian said something more. One by one the original guards came forward, all but the two who had stood on the dais, and each man laid his saber at Bakhtiian's feet, disarming himself. The intensity of their shame was painful to watch.

"Goddess Above," whispered David, "must it be done so publicly?'' Had he remembered that Ursula was standing there, he would not have said it aloud.

"Of course it must be done publicly. It's a lesson for everyone." The dishonored guards filed from the hall. "What do you think he'll do to the prisoners?" She sounded breathlessly excited. Aroused, even, David thought with a shudder. "And to those terrified townsmen?"

Marco slipped back beside them, no longer needed at the front. "Now we're about to see what justice means to the conquered," he whispered. They waited. Bakhtiian waited. The silence stretched out until it was a visceral thing, agonizing to endure.

One of the townspeople finally found enough courage to rise to his knees. "Please believe," he stammered, "that we knew nothing of this."

Bakhtiian glanced at him as if at an afterthought. ' 'I assume, Baron," he said in a cold voice, "that you have laws by which you judge such cases here."

"Of course! Of course!" Their fear was almost as humiliating to see as their desperate attempt at appeasement. "The punishment for treason is death."

"Then by your own laws shall they be judged." He lifted his chin, and the prisoners were led away.

"The sentence shall be carried out at once," said the baron, and he snapped an order to a younger man, who hurried out of the hall on the heels of the prisoners. A richly-dressed old woman wept noisily in the corner.

Bakhtiian found his chair and sat down in it. He looked at Charles. Charles raised one eyebrow and sat down next to him. Cara remained standing behind Charles, but she did not touch him, although David could tell she wanted to. Her hand hovered over his shoulder, veered toward his sleeve, and settled, twitching, at her waist.

"Sit!" said Bakhtiian impatiently to the barons and elders. "You said you had other cases you wished to bring before me."

David realized that his rump hurt, from sitting so still, from being so tensed up. Maggie crept over to them and Marco put an arm around her. She was so white that her freckles stood out like blazons. The actors had crept out from under their table and they stood in a tableau, clutching one another. Not one eye left Bakhtiian for more than a second, except perhaps for Charles, who looked thoughtful and not at all cowed. None of them dared move as, one by one, prisoners were led in, their crimes recited aloud, and Bakhtiian begged to judge and sentence each one.

But in every case he deferred to the elders of the town, to their own laws, and placed the judgment squarely back on them according to their own customs. Despite himself, David was impressed by Bakhtiian's restraint. Especially since some of their own people had just tried to murder him.

Last of all an unremarkable young man was brought forward. He had a big nose, rheumy eyes, and he looked young and frightened. The baron sighed and relaxed, as if he knew the worst was over.

"This young man is accused by Merchant Flayne of raping his daughter, and although the usual punishment is that he must marry the girl, he's but an apprentice in a neighboring shop, and she was out walking at night by herself, and there is another merchant who has agreed to marry her despite-" He broke off because Bakhtiian stood up.

Stood up and took the three steps down to the accused with deliberate slowness. Glass rasped under his boots. Faced with Bakhtiian's devastating stare, the accused dropped to his knees, clasped his hands together, and began to plead in the local dialect.

"And is it true?" asked Bakhtiian in a voice so soft that David could barely hear him. "Did he force her?"

"He has confessed to the deed. It's the sentence that concerns us-"

Bakhtiian drew his saber and killed the young man.

Cut him through the throat so quickly that it was done before anyone realized he meant to do it.

Charles stood up, right up out of his chair. Bakhtiian stared at the corpse and took a step up to avoid the pool of blood growing, flooding broken bits of glass and plate on the floor. He flicked a glance back at the dais. Slowly, slowly, Charles sat down. One of the actresses gave a great shriek and fainted. Bile swelled in David's throat, and he clapped a hand to his mouth and fought against it, gulping, feeling it poison his tongue and burn his lips.

"David," whispered Marco, and David felt Marco's hand press into his back. "Breathe slowly. Breathe slowly."

Bakhtiian turned to regard the baron. "Is there anyone else?"

The baron could not speak for a long while. He held one hand to his breast, and his eyes bugged out, staring. "None, lord," he stuttered. "No more." No more to be judged, did he mean? Or was it a plea for no more of this harsh and merciless justice? That was no justice at all, no law, but only the tyrant's whim.

Bakhtiian turned to look at Charles. "Will you accompany me?" he asked, and David could not tell if it was a request or an order.

"I'd better wait for my own people, who are a trifle discomposed," said Charles. How could he remain so self-possessed? The calm mask he wore for an expression only added to David's dismay.

"He's cool," muttered Maggie.

"Oh, come now, what did you expect?" hissed Ursula with disgust. "Frankly, I think it was a just execution."

Bakhtiian inclined his head, to acknowledge Charles's decision. "Then if you will excuse me," he said, distinctly to Charles, not to anyone else. He swept from the hall, his guards behind him. The young man named Aleksi lingered behind, and David saw him slip a folded piece of parchment into Charles's hands. Then he, too, was gone, and they were left with the weeping actors, the shell-shocked townsfolk, and the dead man.