David Farland: The Sum of All Men

It seemed madness. He asked the others, “Do you—do you feel anything?”

When Chemoise got news that her betrothed was attacked while on guard duty, gutted by some spice merchant, it was as if the dawn sun went black, losing power to warm her. Or it was as if she'd turned to pale clay, her flesh losing all color, no longer able to hold her spirit.

Princess Iome Sylvarresta watched Chemoise, her Maid of Honor, her dearest friend, desperately wishing for a way to console her. If Lady Jollenne had been here, she'd have known what to do. But the matron had been called away for a few weeks to care for her grandmother, who'd had a bad fall.

Iome, her Days, and Chemoise had been up at dawn, sitting near the huge, U-shaped storyteller's stone in the Queen's topiary garden, reading the latest romance poems by Adalle, when Corporal Clewes broke in on their reverie.

He told the news: A scuffle with a drunken merchant. An hour or more past. Cat's Alley. Sergeant Dreys. Fought nobly. Near death. Slit from crotch to heart. Called for Chemoise as he fell.

Chemoise took the news stoically, if statues can be said to be stoic. She sat stiffly on the stone bench, her hazel eyes unfocused, her long, wheat-colored hair stirring in the wind. She'd been weaving a chain of daisies as Iome read. Now she laid them in her lap, on a skirt of coral-colored chiffon. Sixteen and heartbroken. She was to have married in ten days.

Yet she dared not show her emotions. A proper lady should be able to bear such news lightly. She waited for Iome's permission to go to her fiancée. Thank you, Clewes,” Iome said when the corporal continued standing at attention. “Where is Dreys now?”

“We laid him out on the common, outside the King's Tower. I didn't want to move him any farther. The others are laid out down by the river.”

“The others?” Iome asked. She was sitting beside Chemoise; now she took the girl's hand. It had gone cold, so cold.

Clewes was an old soldier to have such a low station. His trim beard was stiff as oat stubble. It poked out from under the broken strap of his iron pikeman's cap.

“Aye, Princess,” he said, remembering to address Iome properly for the first time since he'd intruded into the garden. “Two of the City Guard died in the fight. Poll the Squire and Sir Beauman.”

Iome turned to Chemoise. “Go to him,” she said.

The girl needed no further urging. She leapt up and ran down the path through the topiaries to the little wooden Bailey Gate, opened it and disappeared round the stone wall.

Iome dared not stay long in the corporal's presence alone, with no one other than the Days, who stood quietly a few paces off. It would not be proper. But she had questions to ask him.

Iome stood.

“You're not going to look at the sergeant, are you, Princess?” Clewes asked. He must have caught the anger in her eye. “I mean—it's a messy sight.”

“I've seen injured men before,” she said stoically. She looked out of the garden, over the city. The garden, a small patch of grass with trimmed hedges and a few shaped shrubs, sat within the King's Wall, the second of the three walls within the city. From here, she could see four of the King's Guards on the wall-walk, behind the parapet. Beyond that, to the east, lay the city market, just within the castle's Outer Wall. The streets in the market below were a jumble—roofs of slate, some covered with a layer of sand and lead, forming narrow chasms above the rocky streets. Smoke rose from cooking fires here and there. Fourteen minor lords had estates within the city walls.

Iome studied the area where Cat's Alley could be found, a narrow market street just off the Butterwalk. The merchants' wattle houses there were painted in shades of cardinal, canary, and forest green, as if such bright colors could deny the general decrepitude of buildings that had been settling on their crooked foundations for five hundred years.

The city looked no different today than it had yesterday. She could see Orly rooftops; no sign of murderers.

Yet beyond the castle walls, beyond the farms and haycrofts, in the ruddy hills of the Dunnwood to the south and west, dust rose in small clouds along the roads for miles. People were traveling to the fair from distant kingdoms. Already, dozens of colorful silk pavilions had been set out before the castle gates. In the next few days, the population of the city would soar from ten thousand to four or five times that number.

Iome looked back at the corporal. Clewes seemed like a cold man to have been sent to carry such ill news. Blood had been everywhere after the fight. That much Iome could see. Crimson smeared the corporal's boots, stained the silver boar embroidered into the black of his livery. The corporal himself must have carried Sergeant Dreys up to the common.

“So the fellow killed two men and wounded a third,” Iome said. “A heavy loss, for a mere brawl. Did you dispatch the spice merchant yourself?” If he had, she decided, the corporal would get a reward. Perhaps a jeweled pin.

“No, milady. Uh, we busted him up a bit, but he's still alive. He's from Muyyatin. A fellow named Hariz al Jwabala. We didn't dare kill him. We wanted to question him.” The corporal scratched the side of his nose, displeased at having left the trader alive.

Iome began to stroll toward the Bailey Gate, wanting to be with Chemoise. With a nod, she indicated that the corporal should follow, as did her Days.

“I see...” Iome mused, unsettled. A rich merchant then, from a suspect nation. Come to the city for next week's fair. “And what was a spice trader from Muyyatin doing in Cat's Alley before dawn?”

Corporal Clewes bit his lip, as if unwilling to answer, then said coldly, “Spying, if you ask me.” His voice choked with rage, and now he took his eyes from the stone gargoyle up on the keep's wall, where he'd been staring, and briefly glanced at Iome, to see her reaction.

“I do ask you,” Iome said. Clewes fumbled to unlatch the gate, let Iome and her Days through.

“We've checked the inns,” Corporal Clewes said. “The merchant didn't drink at any of them last night, or else he'd have been escorted from the merchants' quarter at ten bells. So he couldn't have gotten drunk in the city walls, and I doubt he was drunk at all. He's got rum on his breath, but precious little of it. Besides, there was no reason for him to be creeping through the streets at night, unless he's spying out the castle walls, trying to count the guard! So when he gets caught, what does he do? He feigns drunk, and waits for the guards to close—then, out with the knife!” Clewes slammed the gate shut.

Just around the rock wall, Iome could see into the bailey. A dozen of the King's Guard stood there in a knot. A physic knelt over Sergeant Dreys, and Chemoise stood over them, shoulders hunched, arms crossed tightly across her chest. An early-morning mist was rising from the green.

“I see,” Iome whispered, heart pounding. “Then you are interrogating the man?” Now that they were in the public eye, Iome stopped by the wall.

“I wish we could!” Corporal Clewes said. “I'd put a coal to his tongue myself! But right now, all the traders from Muyyatin and Indhopal are in an uproar. They're calling for Jwabala's release. Already they're threatening to post a ban on the fair. And now it's got the Master of the Fair in a fright: Guildmaster Hollicks has gone to the King himself, demanding the merchant's release! Can you believe it? A spy! He wants us to release a murdering spy!”

Iome took the news in, surprised. It was extraordinary that Hollicks would seek audience with the King just after dawn, extraordinary that the Southern merchants would threaten a ban. All of this spoke of large matters spinning wildly out of control.