When the Saints

CHAPTER 45

Wulf took his bride into the privacy of limbo and kissed her. There was no danger of either letting go. Between kisses they spoke of love and longing; they promised faith and happiness. They spoke also of sorrow and guilt.

“I truly mourn Anton,” Madlenka said. “Had there been time, I might have accepted my duty to love him. You would have gone away-I might have managed.”

Wulf doubted that he could ever have recovered from the loss, but that did not stop him from mourning his closest brother. “He gave you no cause to love him. And me very little, but I shall miss him terribly. Had I known he was hurt, I could and would have healed him.”

“He did give me up, remember? He wanted us both to be happy. He would not stand between us.”

When Otto forced him not to… But what she had said was true.

“There is no cure for death, and only time heals wounds. My father told us that when he was dying.”

She already knew that Anton was dead and the Pomeranian flag flew over Gallant. He listed what else had happened in the two days they had been apart: that he was now Sir Wulfgang, so she was no longer a countess, but he was the prince’s master of horse, so they would live in Mauvnik, and her name was officially Magdalena, and they would have to make up some story about who she was and how they met. And they had to sup at the palace that evening.

She kissed him again. “First things first,” she whispered. “Let’s find that bed. I can tell that you need it. So do I. And I want there to be no doubt that we are now husband and wife.”

An offer he could not refuse. He opened a gate. “Welcome to the Bacchus, in Mauvnik. The Horse Room.”

She stepped in and peered around in near-darkness. “Did you say ‘room’ or ‘stall’? Is that bed really big enough for what you have in mind?”

Oh, that smile! Was his face as flushed as hers?

“What I have in-”

“At last!” Justina appeared in a swirl of cold air.

Madlenka jumped in alarm and he tightened his embrace. He peered over her shoulder at the twilit landscape beyond the new gate. “Where is that?”

“Elysium. A former monastery and the Saints’ meeting place. Lady Umbral is in conference with the Agioi, and we have been waiting for you. Come!”

Reluctantly he unwound himself from Madlenka so they could obey, but they were still holding hands as they stepped through the gate into a tiny paved courtyard, barely more than a passage between two stone buildings. A river of wind rushed through it, billowing his cloak and the women’s dresses. Straight ahead was a perilously low parapet, and beyond that, nothing, only air and sky, all the way to far-distant hills, dark against the last glow of sunset. Overhead the stars were wakening.

“You must be careful what you say,” Justina said, pushing through the wind to a low doorway. “Weigh every word. And you keep that temper of yours firmly nailed dowwhat n, Wulfgang. You had better leave all the talking to your cadger.”

Madlenka squeaked in alarm.

Wulf squeezed her hand. “She just means you must not let me lose my temper.”

“Yours? What about mine? My temper’s much worse than yours.”

“No, it’s not! Mine is a hundred times worse.”

“Imagine what ferocious children we will have!”

“How many? Five brothers to teach one another fighting and five sisters to love?”

“Will you two alley cats stop that!” The old lady had managed to wrestle the door open. She ducked under the lintel, but both Wulf and Madlenka had to stoop as they followed, still defiantly holding hands. The wind slammed the door behind them and continued to moan through chinks in the shutters.

The room they had entered was roughly square, packed with a motley crowd of standing men and women. Four brass lanterns dangled on chains from smoke-stained ceiling beams and swung wildly in the draft, providing little light and making shadows dance over rough-plastered walls. Heads turned toward the newcomers, and bodies shuffled aside to open a narrow aisle, along which Justina scampered, with Sir Wulfgang and Lady Madlenka at her heels.

Wulf thought there must be forty or fifty people present, and about half of them sported halos. Assume, then, that this was a meeting of both falcons and their cadgers, prearranged so that the three’s-dangerous rule did not apply. The participants must have gathered from far and wide, for their dress styles varied hugely, and even the odors that wafted by on drafts were alien: fish, garlic, lavender, horse, cumin, and cinnamon. He squeezed past monks and nuns, men-at-arms, serving women and grand ladies, gentlemen and workers, priests both Catholic and Orthodox, Muslim men in turbans with womenfolk in burkas… old and young, fat and thin. He soon worked out that those on his right must be Agioi supporters, and the Saints’ contingent was to his left.

He confirmed that guess when Madlenka and he reached the front row and Justina directed them to go and stand next to the left-hand wall. She then disappeared back into the crowd. The room had once been a chapel, for the low dais that stretched across that end would have been the sanctuary and held an altar. Now this was a courtroom, so the judges sat there. To the left, on a high-backed chair just a few feet in front of him, was a lady in white, and he knew at once that she must be the mysterious Lady Umbral. She was slim and probably tall; her gown was finely styled and glittered. But what she herself looked like remained a secret even now, for the chair bore the sort of canopy called a cloth of estate, which shadowed her face. More than dim lighting was at work, though; some sort of sorcery was masking her features even more. If he met her again tomorrow he would not know her. The intent must be that no Speaker could Look through her eyes or open a gate to wherever she might be.

On the right side of the dais, the man cross-legged on a divan was a real surprise, for he was a Turk, and the Agioi were supposedly the Orthodox counterparts of the Catholic Saints. Of course, the Orthodox patriarch still dwelt in Constantinople, and the Ottoman sultan who ruled there now would undoubtedly keep a firm hand on the Speakers in his empire. Not just a Muslim, either, for he was wearing the garishly multicolored uniform of the sultan’s janissary warriors-high headdress with a neck cloth, baggy trousers, curved sword, dagger, and all. Personal slaves of the sultan, originally Christian boys taken in tribute and forcibly converted to Islam, janissaries were the most dreaded warriors in the known world. Even without his Speaker nimbus he would have looked dangerous: big, slit-eyed, tough as tempered steel, and very little older than Wulf himself. Unique among Muslim men, janissaries wore mustaches but no beards.

For a few moments only the moan of the wind disturbed the silence, while the shadows swirled and the two judges appraised the newcomers.

Wulf glanced sideways. The front row comprised a monk, two women, one Orthodox priest, and two men in turbans. The priest and the friar had halos. Beyond them, against the far wall, cowered none other than Alojz Zauber, Havel Vranov’s squire, in civilian dress. The hunched way he was standing and the wide-eyed look he gave Wulf suggested that he was terrified. At his feet lay Leonas Vranov, only half dressed and curled up like a cat, apparently fast asleep on the cold flagstones.

“I am Umbral,” said the woman in white, “prelate of the Saints. We recognize Madlenka Magnus and her falcon, Wulfgang Magnus. Lady Magnus, I appreciate that you have not yet applied for membership in the Saints, but we claim jurisdiction over you. You have the choice of accepting our authority or appealing to the Church instead, which is no choice, really. Sir Wulfgang, you have only recently accepted the woman who is now your wife as your cadger, so you may have to answer alone for any misdeeds of which you are convicted this evening.”

Had Wulf jumped out of the Inquisition’s fire and into the Saints’ frying pan?

“We reserve comment!” Madlenka snapped, her tone more abrasive than Wulf expected or would have dared use.

Lady Umbral did not reply. “Opposite me is Mudar Sokullu Pasha, right hand of the Agioi. We are assembled here this evening to discuss certain trespasses by the Agioi within Saints’ territory.”

“Alleged trespasses,” the Turk growled in a harsh accent. “And trespasses by your falcons in our territory.”

“Alleged trespasses both,” Umbral agreed. “Are you ready to begin, Pasha? I believe yours is the earliest complaint.”

“May the Omniscient, the Bringer of Justice, guide our deliberations. I accuse Magnus and his cadger of being accessories to the murder of the priest Vilhelmas, Speaker of the Agioi, may he find peace.”

Before Wulf could decide whether he was expected to reply, y he findMadlenka made a vague gesture that was not quite like a schoolchild raising a hand to attract the teacher’s attention, but had the same result.

“If by ‘earliest,’” she said, “you mean that it happened first, then I object. The beginning was the murder of my father and brother. They were smitten at the same minute, miles apart. Obviously that could only be-”

“We shall discuss details later,” Lady Umbral said, “but I accept your correction. Pasha, the earliest transgressions on the paper will be the cursing of Count Bukovany and Sir Petr Bukovany, which we attribute to your Vilhelmas.”

“I was not warned that such an allegation was to be included. I believe it is irrelevant, and neither the man you name nor his client can be here to testify. Alojz Zauber?”

Alojz’s teeth actually chattered before he did. He brought them under control. “P-P-Pasha?”

“Speaking only as a witness, maggot, can you shed some light on those deaths?”

“Pasha, my handler denied doing those things. He told me that this boy at my feet, Leonas Vranov, cursed the two victims to please his father the count.”

“I assume there is no use questioning the boy himself?” Umbral asked.

The sleeping or unconscious Leonas had not twitched at the sound of his name.

“None,” the janissary said. “Let us agree on his guilt, and may the All-Forgiving have mercy on him. The wretch’s talons will have to be clipped. Obviously both the curser and his victims were Jorgarian and there was no trespass.”

Wulf could only guess what clipping talons meant, but it gave him cold shivers anyway.

Lady Umbral said, “If we accept the brancher’s word.”

“So we can move on to the matter of Vilhelmas’s murder.”

“Not yet. Prior to his death, Vilhelmas transported himself and others out of a crowded hall in Castle Gallant. In as much as he was an Agios, he offended by using talent within Saints’ territory, and what he did was a flagrant violation of the first commandment.”

The janissary yawned, showing a maw full of yellow teeth. “Maybe so. Vilhelmas has gone to the Affirmer of Truth, and is beyond human judgment. So has the man who shot him, the cleric Magnus. But Marek’s accessory is here present. He was equally guilty, and that public assassination was certainly both trespass and a violation of the first commandment.”

Madlenka squeezed Wulf’s hand encouragingly, but did not look at him. height="0e

“We can include it on the paper without accepting your interpretation of it.”

“More important than that,” Mudar Sokullu Pasha said, as if everything so far had been trivial and they were at last getting to the meat of the matter, “the next day that same Wulfgang Magnus destroyed half the Pomeranian army, about sixteen thousand men. This may be the worst sorcerous bloodshed since the days of Tamerlane. That, too, was both trespass and violation of the first commandment!”

Wulf had been thinking of the Inquisition as his greatest danger. He might have been misled by his ignorance.

Umbral said, “We do not yet concede either of those acts to be crimes. Two nights ago, a member of your order, namely Alojz Zauber, transported Havel Vranov and some men inside the defenses of Castle Gallant so that they could overpower the garrison and open the gates. Count Magnus was among the dead. That is a much worse violation of the commandment, for it has no workaday explanation, and it is blatant trespass.”

Baring his teeth in a menacing smile, the janissary glanced around the room. “‘No workaday explanation’? Have you never heard of simple treachery, woman? Can you produce witnesses who saw who opened the gates? What pig filth! Does that complete the charge sheet? Have you more to add?”

Impossible jumps at Chestnut Hill did not count, Wulf concluded, nor instantaneous trips between Jorgary and Rome. All that mattered in this court were secrecy and territorial boundaries, with killing other Speakers a distant third. And yet the Saints and Agioi gathered here might be the true rulers of Europe, for who could gainsay their decisions?

To his astonishment, Madlenka released his hand and took a step forward. “My lady… and Pasha… All his life, Havel Vranov has been the Wends’ bitterest enemy. This year he has been supporting them, a traitor to his king. I charge the Agioi with… I believe the word is ‘tweaking’?… tampering with his mind.”

Nothing of Lady Umbral’s expression could be read, but her tone of voice registered surprise. “A very cogent suggestion! We add it to our complaints. But it must have been the first trespass, and traditionally we now judge the charges in reverse order-the reason being that recent events are more easily examined. Also, once an offender is sentenced to death, his earlier misdeeds no longer matter. Two nights ago, Pasha, an Agioi Speaker, caused a Jorgarian fortress to fall to a traitor, Havel Vranov. That is trespass!”

Astonishingly, the ferocious-seeming janissary laughed. “You think so? Brancher Alojz Zauber, go stand there!”

He pointed to the center of the dais. The squire nervously stepped over the sleeping Leonas and went where he was bid, stooping as if afraid of losing control of his bladder. He seemed unsure of which direction he was supposed to face. “P-P-Pasha?”

“Normally, grunge, since ydder. He ou are not yet fledged, your handler would have to answer for your actions. But since he was murdered, you have taken to using power on your own authority, so you must suffer the consequences.” He showed his yellow teeth again. “If any. Understand?”

“Oh yes, Pasha.”

“Where were you born, you louse-infested, unclean, eater of pigs?”

As if seized by a sudden revelation, Alojz swung around to face Lady Umbral, and began to gabble. “In Jorgary, my lady, in Pelrelm. I was a shepherd like my father, and baptized a Catholic, but four years ago, about the time I was due to have my first communion, Father Vilhelmas came to see me. I’d never heard of him, but he explained that my mother was an illegitimate child of the count’s late brother, so we were both related to the count. He showed me what a Speaker could do and promised me that Speakers never want for anything: riches, comfort, respect. Herders don’t live long, you know. Rustlers don’t want witnesses, so they cut our throats; even if they just hamstring us to delay pursuit, we may freeze to death or die of wound fever. But Father Vilhelmas promised me long life and health, warm beds, no hunger. He said I would have to confess before my first communion, and if I told a Catholic priest about the Voices he would call me a Satanist. The Catholics would burn me at the stake or lock me up in a-”

Mudar Sokullu broke into the tirade. “Cease, in the name of the Eternal! The infidel priest bribed you and probably tweaked you. You were born in Jorgary, so you’re a Jorgarian. And you are still unfledged. So no trespass!” he told Umbral.

“But who told him to help Vranov take the castle?”

“His own idea entirely. Four days ago he brought the priest’s body to us at Alba Iulia, as he should. He was told to return to Cardice and wait until we assigned him a new handler.” The janissary made a gesture of dismissal, as if throwing away a walnut kernel. “The boy is weak-minded. Whatever he did was his own idea and the voivode did not order it. The wretch is solely to blame. You may have him! Hang him, burn him, stone him, whatever you want.”

“You told me to make myself useful!” Alojz shouted, then cowered even lower, clearly terrified of what he might have provoked.

“And how else did you make yourself useful?” Lady Umbral inquired gently. “By ancient custom, we keep no secrets at these conferences.”

Staring at the floor, the squire muttered, “I tweaked the bishops at the parley to help cover up Father Vilhelmas’s blunder at the banquet. That’s a permitted exception to the second commandment! I helped the count’s attack on the castle because he told… er, asked… me to. I was trying to help my handler’s client!” He blinked like a child about to weep and blurted: “I’m only three months short of being fledged. I hoped if I did a good job they would jess me and let me take over the contract!”

Umbral’s face remained unreadable, but her chuckle was eloquent. “We are aware that the Agioi, unlike the Saints, let their falcons fly without the restraint of cadgers, answering only to the voivode. So Father Vilhelmas, a member of the Agioi, had a contract with Havel Vranov, a count in the peerage of Jorgary? This is not trespass?”

Mudar Sokullu gave Lady Umbral a glare so toxic that it should have melted her into a puddle of terror, although it might have been directed at Alojz. “There was no contract between Vranov and Father Vilhelmas.”

“So on whose behalf was Vilhelmas acting?”

There was a long pause before the janissary answered. “Duke Wartislaw’s.”

Until then the spectators had been eerily quiet, but at that news Wulf detected a sort of wordless murmur, a shuffle of feet. The wind moaned and the lamps continued their crazy dance.

“Wartislaw,” the janissary continued, “flew three falcons of his own. We were not aware until a few days ago that he had also hired Vilhelmas and was using him to meddle in Jorgarian affairs. Vilhelmas should have informed us and obtained our permission. But this sniveling trash is a Jorgarian, and no concern of ours. Take him and clip his talons, or kill him and let us proceed to discussing the massacre of the Pomeranian army.”

“I am not sure I want him,” Lady Umbral said tartly. “As he indirectly caused the death of Lady Magnus’s husband, Sir Wulfgang’s brother, we shall let them pronounce sentence in due course. Stand over there, brancher.”

She pointed at Wulfgang. Alojz lurched down the step and hurried to his side, giving him a nervous smile, which Wulf did not return. Madlenka sought out Wulf’s hand again.

“When,” Umbral demanded, “did the Agioi learn of Vilhelmas’s trespass, and why did they not act to stop it sooner?”

“Vilhelmas has gone to the Source of Peace. The matter is of no importance.”

“It is of importance to me.”

And to Wulf. Now he knew how Vilhelmas had turned up at the head of the Wend invaders. Almost certainly he had been watching Anton, the unexpected new count who had arrived to take charge of the defenses. They had not yet met in the flesh, but Vilhelmas would certainly have been Looking in on Vranov’s visit to the town that Sunday and seen Anton announce himself in the cathedral. By then Wartislaw must have infiltrated an advance force into Long Valley, and when Anton rode off to inspect the frontier post on Tuesday, Vilhelmas had gone to take charge. He had gone to commit murder! When Anton had been wounded, he had mockingly sent him home to bleed out or die of wound fever. Very likely he had cursed him to make sure. Any lingering guilt Wulf felt over the priest’s death now evaporated.

The janissary scratched his right armpit vigorously. “As Allah is my judge and witness, the Agioi discovered the situation only a handful of days ago, but we decided it was a personal vendetta and the politics were incidental. Vranov was so convinced that Wartislaw could take Castle Gallant with his bombard that he turned his coat. Half a year ago he wrote to Wartislaw and offered to deliver Castle Gallant to him without a shot being fired, helped by his cousin Vilhelmas, a Speaker. Wartislaw meant to take Gallant by force, but to have Havel Vranov give it to him would have been much cheaper and an exquisite pleasure. Making Havel Vranov pay-pay long and hard-for all his crimes was an old ambition of his, so much so that he had ordered Vilhelmas to contrive the Hound’s utter destruction. He was to be branded a traitor and a Satanist, so that both king and Church would turn against him, and his nights would be filled with terror.”

“But of course Vilhelmas had tweaked Vranov to turn his coat in the first place, as Lady Magnus suggested?” Umbral’s voice oozed scorn.

Madlenka squeezed Wulf’s hand.

“Oh, Vilhelmas may have nudged him a little,” the janissary growled in his harsh croak, “but you are well aware that tweaking cannot move a man far along a path he does not wish to tread. Havel succumbed because he is a coward and afeared of his sins.”

“Then why are you so hard on the brancher? He has completed his handler’s work magnificently. Vranov has made war on his own king, is now seen to be in league with the devil, and is trapped in a stolen castle with his would-be ally buried under a mountain of snow. You should be heaping praise on the boy.”

Alojz straightened up, leering. He glanced at Wulf as if expecting approval, and promptly shriveled again.

The pasha spat on the floor. “If you think he is so good, you jess him. Let us discuss Magnus’s cold-blooded destruction of the Pomeranians.”

“By Our Lady, I am surprised to hear a member of the sultan’s army worry about bloodshed,” Lady Umbral said. “That was a brilliant application of talent, with a tiny effort producing great results. Clearly the powder wagons were ignited by lightning and the explosion brought down an avalanche. It has been accepted all over Christendom as an act of God.”

“But not all over Islam. Not in Pomerania. And not by the Agioi. It was trespass!”

“It was not!” The shout came from Madlenka. “Those lands belonged to my father… er, my… to the count of Cardice! It was the Pomeranians trespassing, not Wulf!”

“Lady Magnus is correct, Pasha,” Umbral said. “Occupation is not ownership. There had been no surrender or peace treaty. Is there anything more to discuss?”

“Certainly!” The janissary pointed a hairy finger at Wulfpeace. “He murdered Vilhelmas!”

“Sir Wulfgang,” said Umbral, “advance to the center.”

Wulf strolled to the middle of the room and stepped up onto the dais, where he bowed to Umbral, then turned to bow to the pasha. Madlenka noted admiringly how handsome and brave he seemed, completely calm, and very unlike the cringing Alojz who had stood there a few minutes ago.

“Your brother pulled the trigger to kill the priest,” the Turk said. “That was cold-blooded murder!”

Wulf shook his head. “With respect, Pasha, it was justice. Two days previously, that same priest had led an attack on that same building and slaughtered the garrison, offering no preliminary challenge or quarter. The post belonged to my king and my brother the count, who gave us permission to perform the execution. As lord of the march and lord of high justice, he had the legal authority to so.”

“You were seen by workadays! That was a violation of the first commandment.”

“Marek was seen, true. But less than an hour earlier, Vilhelmas had created a major display of talent in the hall of the keep at Gallant. He tore up the rules first!”

Madlenka heard a few quiet murmurs of amusement and approval behind her.

But Wulf had not finished. “I am grateful to you for revealing his motivation, Pasha, because we have all been puzzled by it. Now that we know that Vilhelmas was working for Wartislaw and not Vranov, it makes complete sense. Vranov lost his temper, which I daresay is not an unusual occurrence, and uttered curses, so then Vilhelmas made him vanish-in a p uff of sulfurous smoke, I expect. He was instantly branded an agent of Satan, until Brancher Alojz tweaked the bishops the next day and undid all that good evil, er, I mean good work.” He bowed again.

The Turk showed his teeth in a snarl. “Then let us discuss the bloodbath in the Ruzena gorge and the death of Duke Wartislaw. You blew up their powder wagons and slaughtered thousands of innocent men!”

“Do you have eyewitnesses that saw me do this terrible thing?”

“I have witnesses who heard you claiming to have done it!”

“But I am such a liar!” Wulf said sadly.

This time there was open laughter at the way this newly fledged falcon was defying the dreaded hand of the Agioi. The Turk flushed with rage.

“You may withdraw, Sir Wulfgang,” Lady Umbral said sharply. “Unless Sokullu Pasha has more questions. Pasha, we have discussed the charges. Shall we ask the jury to find a verdict?”

“May the Giver of Wisdomry to guide their deliberations.”

The six people in the front row joined hands. Led by the monk, they stepped away in a daisy chain and, one by one, vanished into the air. The room erupted in a babble of many tongues.