Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Misenchanted Sword

For a long moment nothing happened, save that the people at the far end of the corridor disappeared. He knocked again.

The door opened, and an unhealthy young man peered out at him.

“Hello,” Valder said, “I’m here to apply for a job as an executioner.”

The young man’s expression changed from polite puzzlement to annoyance. “What?”

“I’m an experienced headsman; I’m looking for work.”

“Wait a minute.” He ducked back inside, closing the door but not latching it; a moment later he reappeared, something clutched concealed in one fist. “Now, are you serious?”

“Yes, quite serious,” Valder answered.

“A headsman, you said?”

“Yes.”

“From out of town, obviously.”

“Yes.”

“Headsman, let me explain a few things to you that you don’t seem to know, though any twelve-year-old child in the streets could tell you. First off, the Lord Executioner is the only official executioner in the city, and has no interest in hiring others; if he did, he’d hire his friends and family first, not strangers who wander in. Understand?”

“But…”

“But what?”

“This is the largest city in the world; how can there be just one executioner?”

“That brings us to my second point. The post of Lord Executioner is not a very demanding one; after all, no nobleman likes to work. It’s true that the Lord Executioner could hire assistants, as his father did before him, but there’s no call for them, because hardly anybody manages to require an official execution. Generally, captured thieves and murderers are disposed of quite efficiently by the neighborhood vigilance committees; they don’t come to us. All we get are the traitors and troublemakers who have contrived to offend the overlord himself, and the occasional soldier guilty of something so heinous that his comrades aren’t willing to take his punishment into their own hands, and that can’t just be dealt with by throwing him out of the guard and out of the city. This comes to maybe one execution every two or three sixnights, and it will be a long time before the current Lord Executioner is too feeble to deal with that himself. Which brings me to my third point—you don’t look like much of an executioner in any case. You must be sixty, aren’t you?”

“Sixty-six.”

“Did your former employers retire you, perhaps? Well, in any case, the Palace is not a village shrine for old men to gather at.”

“I didn’t think it was, but I can guarantee that I would have no difficulty in carrying out the job.”

“Ah, but there remains my fourth and final point, which is that we have no use for a headsman in any case. Were the Lord Executioner too old or feeble or ill or lazy to do his own work, or were there a hundred convicts a day to be disposed of, and were you forty years younger, we would still have no use for a headsman; the last beheading in this city was more than thirty years ago, when the first Lord Executioner was still in office and his son too young for breeches. Lord Azrad long ago decided that beheadings were too messy and too reminiscent of the Great War; we hang our criminals here. I had thought that that had become the fashion almost everywhere by now. Our own headsman’s axe has hung undisturbed on the wall behind me for as long as I can recall. Now, are you satisfied that there’s no place for you here? Leave immediately and I won’t have you arrested.”

Dismayed, Valder stepped back. “A question, though, sir—or two, if I might.”

“What are they?”

“Who are you, and what have you got in your hand? How am I to know that what you say is true? I confess I don’t really doubt it, but I am curious.”

“I am Adagan the Younger, secretary to the Lord Executioner, and incidentally his first cousin. I hold a protective charm—you might have been a madman, after all, and you’re obviously armed. As for how you know what I say to be true, ask anyone; it’s common knowledge, all of it.”

“And you wouldn’t know of any place that does need a headsman? This sword I carry is cursed, you see; I can only remove the curse by killing nineteen men with it.”

“Perhaps you’re a madman after all…”

“No, truly, it’s cursed—it happened during the war.”

“Well, maybe it did; many strange things happened during the war, I understand. At any rate, I can’t help you; I know of no place that still beheads its condemned, let alone with a sword rather than an axe.”

Reluctantly, Valder admitted himself defeated. “Thank you, then, sir, for your kindness.” He bowed slightly, and turned to go.

“Wait, old man; you’ll need a safe-conduct past the guards on the bridge. Take this.” He held out a small red and gold disk. Valder accepted it, noting wryly that the man’s other hand still held the protective charm.

“Thank you again.” He bowed, and marched off down the hallway. He heard the clunk of the door closing behind him, but did not look back.

The guard at the inner gate demanded the little enameled disk before allowing him into the tunnel under the bridge, and gave him a slip of paper in its place, which was in turn collected by the guard at the outer gate when Valder knocked on the paving and was released into the marketplace once again. It struck him as odd that it was more difficult to get out of the Palace than in, though he could see the logic to the system; after all, someone with legitimate business might be unable to obtain a pass to enter, but anyone who departed without some sign of having had such business could be safely assumed to be a fraud or worse. It still seemed odd, though.

He managed to distract himself with such trivia for the entire trip out of the Palace and across the market square; it was only when seated in a quiet tavern and sipping cold ale that he allowed his thoughts to return to his problem.

One reasonably positive aspect of his situation had occurred to him rather belatedly. If he could not kill himself, but must wait to be murdered, then he might live for a good long time after he had killed all his nineteen victims; he had no intention of being a willing victim, and that meant that his killer might not be able to get at him until he had sunk irretrievably into senility, or blindness, or some other incapacity, by which time he thought he would prefer to die in any case. He would, he thought, be a rich enough victim to attract a cutthroat fairly quickly once he was known to be helpless, so that he probably would not be left to linger unreasonably long. He might even leave instructions with Tandellin that he was to be killed when he had sunk far enough, without hope of recovery, to make his life miserable.

That was an interesting idea, actually; he rather liked it. The idea of suicide was one that had never really appealed to him, nor had he cared for the idea of allowing some scoundrel to do him in and take possession of Wirikidor. Allowing Tandellin or some other worthy fellow to put him out of his misery, however, was not so bad.

That still left him with the necessity of killing nineteen men. He might yet find a job as a headsman, he supposed, but it would mean travel, extensive travel, to find such a post. He was not at all sure he felt up to any such travel; he felt his age, though perhaps not as much as most men of his years. It would be far more pleasant to find his victims here in Ethshar.

A thought struck him. He was not able to legally dispatch condemned criminals, but if what Adagan had told him was correct, there were neighborhood vigilance committees that didn’t always bother with legalities. He might join such a group, perhaps—or perhaps he could simply track down criminals on his own, and let their removal be credited to the vigilantes. That was an idea with great promise.