Dana Stabenow - Powers of Detection

“When was this, Delphine?”

“Seer, at a little before sunset. My mother let me leave our shop early.”

Sharryn looked at Irene, who nodded.

“Did you go into the bakery?” Sharryn said.

“Seer, I did not. Nestor the baker came out the door as I came down the street.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“Seer, I did. I asked him where Nella was, and he said she had left the shop before sunset to meet me.”

“Step back from the staff,” Sharryn said.

Delphine dropped her hand and scuttled behind her mother, standing on tiptoe to peer over Irene’s shoulder.

“Nestor the baker, come forward,” Sharryn said.

“I won’t then,” he said truculently. He raised his voice. “This is nothing but magic, and black magic at that! She has laid a geas upon us all!”

Irene looked at him. “Why?”

The simple question halted him for only a moment. “To make mischief, that’s why! To bring the blackest of magic back to the Nine Provinces! To enslave us all again to the wishes of wizards! I found Elias kneeling over my daughter’s body!”

Oh, so now she’s his daughter.

“I will not come forward to lay my hand again upon that enchanted staff! Who knows what the wizard could make me say! It is the spirit of Nyssa come amongst us again! I will not!”

Sharryn raised neither the staff nor her voice. “Nestor the baker,” she said, the words dropping oh so coldly into the torchlight, “come forward.”

Nestor, his face contorted with anger and fear, was forced by an invisible hand to place one halting foot in front of the other, until he came before the dais.

“Place your hand upon my staff,” Sharryn said, in that same cold, inflexible voice.

Inch by inexorable inch, his arm was forced up. He cried out when his hand touched the wood, but it caught him fast.

“Nestor the baker of the city of Daean, father in law to Nella, now deceased, were you in your bakery yesterday afternoon?”

“Of course I was in my bakery!” he shouted. “It’s my business, I own it.”

“Was Nella also in your bakery yesterday afternoon?”

“She works there, she’s my apprentice, of course she was there!”

“Were you both there when she was attacked?”

“No, I-aaaaaahhhhh!” Nestor screamed and writhed, tendons distended as he tried to pull free of the staff.

“Were you in the bakery when Nella was attacked?” Sharryn said.

“No, no, I tell you-” Nestor shrieked again. His feet were kicking, pushing at the dais. Tears were streaming from his eyes, mucus from his nose, and his mouth was pulled into a rictus of pain.

Agathi was staring at the scene before her, her eyes wide, her mouth a little open. “What is wrong with my husband? I don’t understand. What is wrong?” Her friend put an arm around her and patted her wordlessly. Crow found a moment to pity her before Sharryn spoke again.

“I will not repeat my question a third time, Nestor the baker of Kleonea.”

He broke, suddenly and absolutely and completely. “All right, all right, make it stop! Please, Seer, please, I beg you, just make it stop! I killed her! I killed Nella! Make it stop!”

And as simply as that his hand was free. He slumped against the dais, his face pressed into the sawdust at her feet, moaning and clasping his arm. Sharryn waited, looking in the moonlight like a statue. The crowded waited, too, silent, still; it seemed to Crow they had ceased even to breathe.

“On your feet,” Sharryn said, and Nestor perforce was on his feet. “Place your hand again on the staff.”

He cringed. “No, Seer, no, please, no, anything but that.”

Sharryn’s voice cracked like a whip. “Place your hand upon the staff!”

One hand, long-fingered, large-knuckled, heavy, roped with muscle, trembling, reached out and touched wood.

“Why did you kill Nella?” Sharryn said.

He hung his head, less in shame than in remembered pain. “I wanted her.”

Agathi cried out. “No!” Her friend restrained her, but it wasn’t easy. “No, it isn’t true, it can’t be true!”

“I wanted her, and she knew it, and she teased me with her knowledge. She raised her skirt for any young buck in town-”

“NO!” Agathi shrieked.

“Oh, it isn’t true!” Delphine cried.

Elias shook his head violently. Even Deon left off nursing his hand to cry out a denial.

“-why not for me?” Nestor said. “Always in the house, parading around in her underdress, taunting me, tempting me.”

Why does the staff not correct him?

It’s the truth, as he sees it.

“I took her, I admit it. There was no bearing it any longer, she was off to gawk at the young men in the town square that evening. Why them and not me?”

“How did she die?” Sharryn said.

“She fought me,” he said, and bared his chest, revealing a series of dark red scratches and one welt that looked inflicted by teeth. “Look here! She provoked me, she scratched me, she made me bleed! She screamed the whole time, I was afraid someone would hear! I just wanted her to be quiet!” He looked at his hand on the staff. “I just wanted her to be quiet,” he repeated.

There was dead silence in the square.

Sharryn broke it by rising to her feet. She took a deep breath and shook Nestor free of the staff as if she were shaking off a fly. “In the matter before the sitting of this Assideres-”

The Sword began to hum.

“-in the city of Daean on the day of the solstice, this second New Year in the reign of King Loukas the Just, I, Sharryn the Seer, find Nestor the baker of Daean in the province of Kleonea guilty of the wanton rape and murder of his stepdaughter, Nella, by confession out of his own mouth, as attested to by the Staff of Truth.” She stepped back. “Let the Sword of Justice come forth and render judgment.”

Crow moved forward, holding the Sword before her like a banner, as indeed it was, the ensign of her command.

It began to hum.

Nestor scrabbled awkwardly backward on his hands and feet. “No! Keep it away from me! Stop it, stop it, I tell you! She made me do it! I shouldn’t be punished, she made me!” A kick from the crowd sent him back into the circle.

Crow halted at the edge of the platform, the Sword brightening to a silver that seemed almost transparent, the blade reflecting the glitter of the stars and the glow of the torches, the stones on the hilt bright with right and rage. The hum rose to a cold, clear tone that went up and up in pitch and volume. People cried out and covered their eyes and ears. Nestor cowered on the ground, one arm raised in pitiful defense, afraid to look, afraid not to. Zeno and Elias crouched nearby, white-faced and staring. Sharryn and Crowfoot alone remained outwardly unmoved.

When Crowfoot spoke, her voice was as cold as Sharryn’s and as clear as the song of the Sword. “In the name of the Great Charter of Mnemosynea, by the power vested in me by King and mage, let justice be done.”

The glow of the blade increased to a blinding ray of light, spilling out over the heads of the crowd. The song increased in volume to the point of pain, reverberating in ears, teeth, bones, blood.

And then it was gone, and the light with it, and the blade returned to the sheath, a long slide of metal against metal, the hilt meeting the scabbard with a satisfied clank.

“The Sword has spoken,” said Crow. Sharryn moved to stand beside her.

People stood erect again, shaken. They looked at Nestor, still sitting in the dirt. “Oh the gods,” someone said, shock in his voice.

The Sword of Justice had taken Nestor’s hands above the wrists. The stumps of his arms had been neatly sealed, no blood dripping, no bone showing, the skin healed cleanly across. The hands that had strangled the life from the young woman had been the price of their crime. The girl was dead, and her Talent with her. Nestor’s Talent had been in his hands, and now it, too, was gone.