K Parker - Shadow

'Take them somewhere and, well, try them. Put 'em on trial, lock 'em up, stretch their necks for 'em; you can even let the buggers go, if that's the right thing to do. Just so long as you get them off my slop ticket. I really couldn't care less. If you can't-meaning, if there's no case on the blasphemy counts-we're going to have to try to get them on general fraud and obtaining money by deception, and I have a really bad feeling about that on the basis of the evidence we've got. And if I put 'em on trial on secular charges and they get off, I might as well move into their cell and have the guards drop the key in the melt.'

Monach laughed. 'Which is why you're so keen to get rid of them without bringing them to trial,' he said. 'Not bad. Quite shrewd, in fact.' He altered his tone of voice a little. 'Fact is, though,' he said, 'if the evidence doesn't disclose an apparent blasphemy or other illegal act, I'm not passing false judgement just to get you out of a hole. Understood?'

The magistrate cringed a little. 'Understood,' he said. 'Still, when you hear what the witnesses have to say-'

'I'll assess it for myself, thank you very much, without any helpful pointing in the right direction from you.' Talking to the magistrate like this made him feel a bit guilty; he could see plainly enough that the fix he was in wasn't his fault, and he was pretty sure he'd be doing something very similar if he was in the poor man's position. Nevertheless, it was important to act convincingly.

The magistrate stopped outside another thick, black door. 'Here we are,' he said with fairly obvious relief. 'You want a guard in there with you, in case?'

Monach grinned and pulled back the hem of his robe just an inch or so, enough to reveal the hilt of his sword. The magistrate obviously knew what he was looking at; Monach could sense the fear. 'You shouldn't really be carrying something like that in public,' he said quietly.

'Benefit of clergy,' Monach replied. 'Besides, if they do try and attack me, all your problems will be over.'

The magistrate made a valiant effort to hide his distaste. 'Well,' he said, 'just call out when you're done. We'll be right here.'

The door opened into pitch darkness; the magistrate handed him the lantern, and he went in. He heard the door shut and the bolts go back, and lifted the lantern, extending its circle. At the extreme edge, he caught sight of two faces and took a step forward.

They were sitting on the floor (no furniture in the cell) with their backs to the wall and their legs sticking out straight in front of them. The woman just looked frightened and miserable; the man was frightened too, but some last scrap of self-respect enabled him to scowl. Their faces were mottled with bruises and scabbed-over cuts. Monach settled comfortably on his knees, in the starting position for the third sequence (draw from a kneeling posture to engage an enemy seated opposite; single-handed cut to the throat followed by two-handed overhead cut to the opposite side of the neck; he'd been doing it so often for so long that it was hard to keep his hands still).

'Well, now,' he said. 'Impersonating a god. It may be possible to get in more trouble, but I couldn't tell you offhand how to go about it.'

'It's all a misunderstanding,' the man said. 'We-'

'We didn't mean any harm,' the woman interrupted. 'We were just-'

'We were just spreading the word,' the man cut in, and Monach had to make an effort not to smile; his guess was that they were husband and wife, probably had been for some time. 'Since when is it a crime to preach the Divine?'

'Without a licence from the diocesan office,' Monach replied smoothly. 'Oh, about a hundred and fifty years, though I can't quote you the precise date or section number. Unlicensed preaching; let's see, that's an ecclesiastical felony, five years confined penance to death, depending on the facts; unless you're preaching a god not recognised by statute-basically, that means not listed in Strouthes' Digest-in which case it's incitement to heresy, ten years to death, with mitigation accepted from non-citizens. Failing which,' he went on with a gentle smile, 'there's at least half a dozen secular public order offences that cover the same ground, any one of which'll get you five years or more in the slate quarries. The slate quarries are marginally preferable to confined penance, because the religious orders don't have jails, only prison hulks, mines and galleys. Very few people survive long enough in the galleys to serve five years.' He shook his head. 'It could be worse,' he said. 'You could've been arrested a mile or so nearer to Mael and ended up there. The Guild isn't nearly as humanitarian as we are. Now,' he went on after a pause, during which neither the man nor the woman made a sound, 'since sticking either of you two behind an oar won't achieve anything beyond a minor reduction in the efficiency of the Fleet, here's my suggestion. You stop trying to jerk me around and tell me the truth; I'll see what I can do to get you out of this in one piece. Shall we talk, or would you rather hear about the far more serious offence of impersonating a god?'

He had their undivided attention. Good. 'Let's start with some names, shall we?' he said pleasantly.

'I'm Tiryns,' the woman said, 'he's Louth Ressal.'

Monach nodded. 'And how long have you been married?'

'Twelve years.'

Thought so. 'Where are you from?'

'Ressal's from Josequin,' the woman told him. 'I'm from Morsello-'

'Morsello, in Morevich? You're a long way from home.'

The woman nodded. 'It's a long story,' she said.

'No doubt.' Josequin, Monach said to himself, that's interesting. 'So, what prompted you to start impersonating gods, and how long did you do it for?'

The man and the woman looked at each other. 'It was what happened at Josequin, I guess,' the man said. 'We were lucky' He pulled a face. 'Well, we thought so at the time. We'd gone to Weal; my mother was dying, we left as soon as we heard but we got there too late; when we got back, the city just wasn't there any more. Well, when we found out what had happened, we thought, thank God we weren't there. Then we realised that everything we'd had-the house and my workshop (I was a glassblower)-was all gone, nothing left. We didn't have anything, I couldn't do my work without tools, we didn't know where to turn. Then we happened to meet up with someone on the road who told us about the god in the cart, and we thought-well, why not? Except of course we didn't have a cart; but then, just as we were setting off heading for Sansory, we came across this big old farm cart tucked in under a hedge. Seemed like, you know, an omen; especially when we found a couple of riderless horses feeding nearby. We started from there and headed north-actually, we headed what we thought was north, we couldn't even get that right-and just our rotten bloody luck, the first village we tried was one where these other two had been before-'

'Cric.'

The man looked at him. 'Sorry?'

'Cric. The name of the village.'

'No, I don't think so. It was Scele or Scale, something like that. Can't remember precisely, but it wasn't Cric.'

'Oh.' Monach looked up; that had thrown him. 'And this was after Josequin? You're sure about that? Because God help me if you're telling lies.'

'Positive,' the woman put in. 'And I'm almost certain the name of the place was Scale, because it reminded me so much of my uncle Ascaltus, rest his soul. I don't think I've ever been to a place called Cric.'

Monach took a moment to consider what he'd been told. It sounded entirely plausible; the part about getting caught the first time they tried to pull the scam was particularly convincing, it was just the sort of thing that would happen to the kind of feckless losers he took these two to be. There was only one thing that snagged in the lining of his mind, and it was too insignificant to bother about.