Carol Berg - Son of Avonar

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The autumn equinox—the Day of the King’s Sufferance. The law stated that on the first day of autumn all those who lived by the king’s sufferance must appear before him and swear they had not trespassed on his favor during the past year. The event was a favorite of those who enjoyed displaying moral superiority without fear of rebuttal or retribution. Observers could question the petitioner about anything, whether related to the past crime or no, and the penalties were severe if one answered untruthfully. A horrid custom. Humiliating.

At dawn on the last day of summer, I met Graeme Rowan at the Dunfarrie Bridge to make the daylong trek to Montevial. He waited on the seat of a rickety farm cart. A lantern gleamed from the seat beside him, revealing, among other things, a gray smudge in the center of his forehead. No surprise to discover he was a pious man, one who would pray at the shrine of Annadis before a journey, marking himself with earth to remind the god of earth and sky that he was his servant no matter where he traveled.

I climbed into the seat without a greeting, and the sheriff put out the lantern and slapped the mule. Only after half a league of the bone-jarring ride did Rowan first break the silence. “I’m sorry this isn’t the kind of carriage you’re accustomed to,” he said after a particularly hard jolt.

“You have no idea to what I’m accustomed.”

“Those men told me of your crimes.” His eyes were fixed on the road ahead—or perhaps the mule’s rump.

“And are you properly appalled at the affront I am to lawful society? Afraid of my arcane connections? Afraid Jerrat will send a lightning bolt to strike me while I’m sitting next to you?”

“I thought it right you should know.”

“You have a highly developed sense of honor—for a sheriff.” For a man with so much blood on his hands.

Jacopo had told me how the sheriff had come by his office. Rowan had saved our local lord’s life while serving in Evard’s first Vallorean campaign back in King Gevron’s time. That campaign, of course, had included the slaughter at Avonar. I glanced at Rowan’s hands that gripped the mule’s reins—short, work-hardened fingers, wide backs with a layer of wiry, reddish hair. Ordinary enough. But I could not look at them without imagining those hands binding women, men, and children to the hastily erected stakes, throwing piles of sticks at their feet, waving the blazing torches close…

Rowan slapped the reins hard. I didn’t think the beast could go any faster. “It’s true I have no rank, neither dukes nor earls nor even a lowly knight in my pedigree, but I manage to keep some sense of right and wrong about me.”

“Do you think that’s why I’m allowed to live? Because of my rank? Does that offend your belief in the law?”

“I’m not your judge—”

“I think I’m glad of that.”

“—but I tired long ago of those who take or leave the law at their will.”

“Rest easy, sir. I would not think of challenging your sense of right and wrong while in your charge. Any man who burned the children of Avonar would surely have no mercy on a depraved soul such as my own.”

His features might have been carved from the oaken planks of that cart. He said no more. In fact, we traveled the entire day without twenty more words between us.

We arrived in Montevial after nightfall. Rowan had started fidgeting a league from the walls. As we pressed through the travelers crowding across the Dun bridge, trying to get across the sluggish river and past the city gates before they were closed for the night, his eyes flicked from side to side, and he moved almost imperceptibly toward the center of the wagon seat. The flickering torchlight made the lines about his eyes and the creased scar in his cheek seem deeper. Once he stopped the wagon, jumped down from the seat, and spoke quietly to a constable who was patrolling a street of shuttered shops. When we at last came to a halt in the muddy stableyard of a cheap riverside inn, he kicked the crowding beggars away from us and snapped an epithet at a ragged girl. The sheriff seemed to think she was trying to steal the mule, but she had only come to take the beast into the rickety stable. I don’t know which of us was more relieved that the journey was over.

When Rowan appeared at my door the next morning, he wore his usual sober garb of tan breeches, a country man’s canvas leggings, and a dark blue coat, cuffs frayed and thin at the elbows. We walked through the city in a mournful drizzle, the crowds growing thicker as we neared the palace. Rowan started at the bump and jostle of the passersby and gripped my arm tighter the farther we walked, as if I might be tempted to run away now I was in the bastion of Leiran aristocracy.

I tried to keep my eyes away from the palace towers that dominated the cityscape and the red banners with gold dragons that swelled limp and heavy from the walls, but as Rowan’s firm hand steered me toward the center of the city, my steps slowed.

“What is it?” asked Rowan.

“I cannot… not that way. There are other ways to the Petitioners’ Gate.” Much as I despised myself for revealing anything to a sheriff, I could not hide the wave of trembling sickness that had come over me.

“Isn’t this the quickest route? I should think you’d want to be done with it.”

“Please, Sheriff. I beg you. Another way.” Some places even pride could not carry me.

“As you wish. As long as we get there.”

The Petitioner’s Gate in the south wall of the king’s residence at Montevial was opened twice a year: on the first day of autumn for the Sufferance Rite and on the last day of the year for the Feast of the Beggar’s Penny—the day when legend said that in the days of trial before he was granted dominion over the earth and sky, Annadis the Swordsman had given his last penny to a poor beggar in the depths of winter, only to find out that it was his own father, the First God Arot, in disguise. Soldiers in red livery guarded the gate, and a line of soberly dressed men of all ages and sizes was waiting to pass through. The men in line—there were no other women—were mostly prosperous merchants or officers. The poor could not afford the king’s parole.

Rowan released my arm at the edge of the plaza that fronted the gate.

“Are you not to hand me over?” I asked when he motioned me to go on alone.

“My duty was to assure your attendance. You’ll find me here when your duty is likewise done.”

“But surely your duty does not extend to taking me back?” I was genuinely surprised.

“My duty, madam, is to uphold the law.”

The sheriff’s fiery emblem glared at me from his blue coat. Revolted, I left him and made my way to the line of petitioners, wrapping my shabby cloak tight around me.

The queue moved slowly through a small courtyard littered with leaves blown in over the walls. No one would ever bother to clean them up for such traffic as passed through the Petitioner’s Gate. Beyond the courtyard was a waiting room crowded with wooden benches. I squeezed onto the end of a bench and fixed my gaze on the muddy stone floor. One by one the names were called. I felt lightheaded. Perhaps I should have eaten something.

An hour passed. I could do this. For Anne and Jonah who had saved my life, for my freedom, I could do it. What could they ask me that had not been asked during the weeks of interrogation before Karon’s trial?

“Look deep inside, Seri love,” Karon had told me. “Look at the beauty you’ve stored up there, the life you hold, the spark that is no other. They cannot touch it.”

I would not let them in. Karon had built himself a fortress of peace to protect his own spark of life, and in the end, it had failed him. He had died screaming. But I was a warrior’s daughter, and I knew of fortresses. To withstand the assaults of the world, you could not afford peace or sentiment. You couldn’t afford to care about anyone or anything. I would give these people no satisfaction.