L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

Kharl wondered if he should try to run.

Then a searing blow struck him from behind. He tried to turn, and he was struck again.

“No!” screamed someone.

That was the last word Kharl heard before he toppled into blackness.

There was a low groan, then another. After a time, Kharl realized that he was the one groaning. He closed his mouth, and the sound stopped. Around him was darkness. Underneath him was something hard-very hard, slimy, and damp. His head was pounding. He levered one hand under him, then the other. His hand slipped, and he tried again. It took him more tries than he could count to get into a sitting position.

He put his hand to the back of his head, gently, wincing as his fingers touched the huge lump there. As he lowered his hand, in the dimness that was like night, he could barely make out the dark substance on his fingertips-blood.

His eyes took in the area around him. He was in a small, stone-walled chamber with a heavy door that had but the smallest peephole, through which a faint glow of light seeped, so little that he could not tell whether it was day or night.

“What you in here for?”

Kharl turned his head quickly, and more pain lanced through his skull. The words came from a figure sitting propped against the outside stone wall.

“They say I killed someone. I didn’t.”

“That’s what everyone says.” The shadowy figure cackled. “None of us did nothin’, we didn’t, and some of us didn’t.”

Kharl started to respond, but then winced as pain stabbed through his skull.

“Don’t matter what you did. Justicer’s going to say you did, ’less he finds someone else who did. That doesn’t happen much.”

Kharl eased himself across the damp and slimy stone floor to the other side of the cell, leaning back gingerly, careful not to bang his head against the rough wall stones.

“You don’t look like an assassin or a docker,” offered the other man.

“I’m a cooper.” Kharl took a deeper breath and wished he had not. The air was rank with the odors of unwashed bodies, filth, and worse.

“Cooper, huh. You a good cooper?”

“I thought so.”

“Why’d you kill someone, risk losing all that?”

“I didn’t,” Kharl said tiredly. “My neighbor’s shop caught on fire. I was fighting the fire, and someone cut the throat of one of those blackstaffers in my shop.”

“Ha! They’ll hang you quick as they can. Lord West, he don’t want to tell the black demons that the murderer got away. Don’t want them shelling Brysta. No, ser. That he don’t. Hang anyone he can to stop that.”

Kharl could see the truth in what the other had said. But what could he do? “They don’t let anyone see you here?”

“You jesting? Won’t see anyone till you go before the justicer. That’d be Reynol, ’cause he hangs everyone, and that’s what they’ll want. Four sentences-that’s all they got. Flogging, time in the quarries, cut off a hand or foot or both, or hang you. You, they’ll hang. Don’t matter you did it or not.”

“You’re cheerful.” Kharl swallowed.

“Yep. Cheerful Kaj, that’s what they call me.”

“What about you? Why are you here?”

“Me? I called that pigswill Egen a bawdson.”

“For that, you’re in here?”

“Lucky to be alive. Egen’s Lord West’s youngest, captain in the Watch. Likes girls, young girls. Didn’t know he was watchin’…said he wasn’t man enough to handle a real woman. Whole tavern laughed. Didn’t say nothing. When I came out later, his men were waitin’…and here I am.”

Kharl had the sinking feeling that Egen and the young swell who’d attacked Sanyle and Jenevra were the same man. There were too many coincidences…far too many.

He could feel himself beginning to sweat, and with the nausea he was feeling intermittently, he wondered if he could hold his guts in.

“Egen…real pissprick…and his daddy just looks the other way…”

That didn’t surprise Kharl.

A day passed, and then another. Kharl thought it might have been three days since the fire, and since someone had killed Jenevra. That was if he’d only been knocked out for less than a day. He walked back and forth, if taking three small steps between walls could be called walking. He stopped and coughed, then walked some more.

“That won’t do any good,” observed Kaj from the corner of the cell-the opposite outside corner from the slop bucket.

“I know,” Kharl replied, “but I can’t just sit here.”

“Might as well. Not goin’ anywhere. Except dancin’ on air.”

“If it’s so important to hang me,” Kharl said, “why hasn’t anyone done anything?”

“You in a hurry to get strung up?” asked Kaj.

“No.”

“Then don’t ask for it.”

“But, I’d think…”

“Simple. They brought you in on sixday. Justicers and lords like long end-days. Lord West is gettin’ old. Needs the days off to keep his sons at bay. Today’s oneday, I figure. Takes a day for the scriveners to write up things formal like. Maybe longer. They don’t hurry once you’re locked away. They won’t come for you till tomorrow, earliest.”

“What about you?”

“Leave me here for another eightday. Drag me out and flog me, if I’m lucky…Egen’s still a pissprick.”

“Why doesn’t Lord West rein him in?”

“’Cause he’s a smart pissprick. Never gets caught. Always brings you in law-like. Me, drunk too much. Claimed I was soused and disorderly. Was lucky. He’d been really put out, and he’d a planted a lady’s brooch or somethin’ on me. That’s what he did to Fliser. Twice. Second time, they hung him.”

“Lord West knows that?”

“Knows some of it. Doesn’t care, I’d say. Older son, Osten, he’s more like his father. Rotten, but not all the way through like Egen. What they say anyway…”

Kharl wanted to shake his head. He’d always suspected those sorts of things happened, but when he’d suggested it to Charee, she’d have nothing to do with his suggestions. For her, all that mattered was that the streets were orderly, no matter how Lord West and his justicers got the job done.

“Not so bad as Gorl, though…”

Kharl was certain that he didn’t want to hear about Gorl, but there was no way to stop the garrulous Kaj, and he supposed, no reason to. All Kharl could do was to walk a few steps and fret, or sit and stew.

He tried not to breathe deeply as he walked back across the cell.

Despite Kaj’s predictions, the gaolers did not come for Kharl until threeday, slightly before midmorning. They took a bucket and splashed water over his hands and face and let him dry both with a small rough towel. Then they bound his hands before him and marched him up the narrow stone staircase. He climbed three flights of steps with centers hollowed by years of wear before they reached a door that led out into the courtyard of the Justicers’ Hall. The sky was gray, threatening rain, but the stone pavement was dry. Kharl glanced at the gallows scaffold at the north end of the courtyard, and below it, the flogging frames.

How had it all come to pass? All he’d done was try to help two women and a neighbor, and he was going to be hanged for a killing he hadn’t done?

The unseasonably cool wind carried a sour odor to and around Kharl, a smell similar to rotting fish, even as he kept looking at the scaffold.

“You’ll be seeing that soon enough, fellow.” One of the gaoler’s armsmen said, yanking Kharl to start him across the courtyard toward the narrow door at the back of the Hall.

Kharl stumbled, then caught his balance, walking deliberately. The armsmen did not try to hurry him. When they reached the outer door, one stepped ahead and opened it. Inside, they guided Kharl along a narrow corridor that ended at another door, which the same armsman opened, and which led into a foyer. On the left side of the foyer was a single set of double doors, through which the three proceeded.