IF WE LIVE

When Richard got back to Vale City, Plott was at work on the rifles. He and his armorers carefully removed the wooden stocks from their barrels and receivers. Plott shook a fine white powder on the stocks with a horse-hair brush. He blew the excess off. The white powder showed prints all over the smooth, dark wood of the stocks.

Marshal Byla watched. “They’re mostly all smeary. “

Plott nodded. “Probably from the force of the recoil. But there are a few good ones.”

 The left hand prints on the foreparts of the stocks were all obliterated, But several clear bits of finger and palm prints showed on the parts of the stocks below the breech. One thumb print was sharp and distinct.

“That’ll hang somebody,” Byla said. “If we can find out a name to go with the print.”

 Plott dusted the gun barrels. A few prints showed, but all were badly smudged. Plott turned the barrels over, showing the numbers stamped into the undersides of the receivers. “Batch numbers,” Plott said. “We haven’t got the machinery to put a separate serial number on each weapon, but we hand-stamp them in batches of a hundred to help keep track of production.”

 Richard nodded. “Can you use them to trace these guns?”

“I think so,” Plott said. “These are new-pattern postwar rifles, with an improved safety. None of them have ever been sold to private buyers. Most of the Hallen militia companies still have war production weapons.”

Clerks delved into Plott’s ledger books, tracing the movements of arms to the militia and Guards units. “Skonaw militia company,” Plott reported. “All four rifles were sent there a couple of months ago, “

“Skonaw’s on the river,” Byla said, “Less than a day’s ride from here. You sure that’s where they’re from?” Skonaw was in Byla’s territory.

Plott shrugged. “They took the whole batch these pieces came from us and sent us a receipt. The four must’ve gone there, but I suppose they could’ve been stolen before they were issued.”

“Check that company,” Richard said. “But quietly. We don’t want anybody running. Now let’s hear what else you’ve got.”

Byla, Smit, and Willot assembled themselves into the investigation board. “The pictures’re the best thing we’ve got.” Byla said. “The ones you wanted that girl to draw.”

Richard looked at the drawings. Each showed a rifle propped against a wall near a window. A line of four or five spare cartridges had been left sitting on the windowsills. The sketches showed a small closet, an empty office, and two boarding-house bedrooms. The artist had carefully drawn a part of the frontage of the Senate into the window-frames, showing that it was clearly visible from each room.

“These are very good.”

“They sure are,” Smit said. “Those rifles leaning next to the windows and the line of spare shots – wasn’t any hot-heads did it. They planned it in cold blood.”

“Here’s another,” Byla said. “That girl did so good on the rooms that we had her try to draw a picture of the woman that rented them. She did it from what people said she looked like. “

 Richard looked at a sketch of an ordinary middle-aged woman. “Can we get some copies made of this?”

“Already done,” Willot said. “There’re these tracing sheets you can lay over a picture to draw on. The clerks’re already working on it.”

 “Another thing,” Smit said. “That thumb print. What about having that girl draw us some copies of it? Then we could look through the deeds held by people in Skonaw and see whether it was the same as any of the prints they made when buying and selling land.”

“How d’you mean?” Richard said. “Don’t people keep the deeds themselves?”

“Sure,” Smit said. “But most people also put a copy in the courthouse, in case they lose theirs. And there’s wills and such in there too, all with people’s names and thumbprints on them.”

 “All right,” Richard said. “Let’s get to it.”

 The artist made a painstaking sketch of the thumbprint on the rifle stock. Other office workers traced her ink drawing on thin, translucent parchment, Smit’s clerks were assigned to the business of rummaging through the documents at the Vale courthouse. Byla sent agents into Skonaw to loiter and ask innocent-seeming questions. Marshal Willot ordered a general inventory of militia armories, giving his Guards officers a plausible reason for checking the weapons of the Skonaw militia company.

Willot’s officer called in the Skonaw company for an inspection of their rifles. Every man appeared with his weapon. But there were only ninety-two men, and the company’s roll, on which the distribution of rifles had been based, claimed a strength of one hundred and sixteen. Twenty-four rifles were missing.

Smit said that this might have been an innocent deception. The government paid the militia companies a small sum for each man on their rolls, and the companies were reluctant to reduce the money-producing rolls. “They’ll keep dead men for years. They use what they call their ghost-money to help fellows in the company that’re having hard times, throw parties, and such. It’s a little crooked, but most likely it does more good than harm.”

But twenty-four guns’re too many,” Byla said. “You was to sell them all for what I hear thieves’re getting for those new patterns you could live off the money for a good two years.”

“That captain must know who got ’em,” Willot said. “That kind of money passing, he wouldn’t dare just sell them to anybody that come up and asked for one.”

 “He must’ve,” Byla agreed. “I wouldn’t be surprised about anything that fellow did. You might not remember, as you was doing your fighting on the other side of the mountain, but this Skonaw company’s the one that gave way.”

Willot’s face hardened. “It is? I thought that was the Vale City people.”

Byla didn’t like that. He commanded the militia units of the city. “Well, it wasn’t. These people up at Skonaw was sort of stuck onto us, though they ain’t in the right county. And when the Stableners got through the wall at Gatwy, those Skonaw bastards just turned and ran before they even got touched. I have to say that some of my boys did give way after that, but it was only because a big bunch of Stableners got into the hole those peoples’d left and started getting my boys where they couldn’t get them back. But Laif Mawvee’s people was on the other side of the hole, and he come up and pushed those Stableners out to plug it. I’d be a dead man if he hadn’t, and the Stableners’d most likely broken out into the Vale. Only the worst of it come out after the battle. It turned out that not a one of the Skonaw company’s officers was there when they went up to fight. So it ain’t much of a surprise that they ran.”

Willot was incredulous. “I never heard of such a thing. How come this fellow’s around to be selling the state’s guns? He ought’ve been hanging from the end of a rope.”

Byla shrugged. “Well, that’s what Laif himself said; he was mad as hell, but it seems like this captain had something in with old Roke. Or maybe not himself, only some of the other people in the company. As they wasn’t at the fight any more than he was, they had to get him off to save their own necks.”

“We ought to get the coward in here,” Willot said. “Sweat him. Selling the rifles’d be enough to take him, even if he didn’t know what they was to be used for.”

“Hold on,” Richard said. “What about the other members of the company? Are you saying that they’re big Lands?”

Byla was uncomfortable. He was a Land himself. “Seems like they must be. I never heard of but one or two of them, but from the kinds of jobs and other stuff they was getting, they must’ve been pretty big. Then, when Kel got in, he kicked them all off the payroll. So, they might’ve had reasons.”

“Get the state payrolls,” Richard said, “We’ll compare them with the list of men in this company. “

Clerks dug up the payrolls of the previous administrations. They checked the list of names from the Skonaw company against the payrolls and swiftly discovered a remarkable degree of correspondence. The number two in the company, a man named Ronal Alawain, had been the personal secretary of the war-time leader. But he had presumably done some real work. Others in the Skonaw company had been more fortunate. From captain down to private soldier, their names appeared again and again on the payrolls. Some had another name written in the margin. This, Smit explained, meant that the supposed government employee had subcontracted the actual work to a starveling clerk for a fraction of his state salary, Others held lucrative jobs which had never required any work, or positions duplicated elsewhere in the bureaucracy of the state.

“Never seen anything like it,” Smit said. “I mean, some favors and soft jobs for your friends and relations. . . That’s only natural. But this ain’t natural at all. There’s something really wrong about this company.”

 Willot nodded. “Everything about the Skonaw company’s damn strange. Look here.” Willot had been delving into the Skonaw’s company’s military history. He drew a rough table of organization. “Skonaw’s in Med county, so it should’ve been in with the other company from there, which was in line with Laif Mawvee’s people in the war.  But Laif turned out to be a hell of a fighter, so they was sort of shuffled off, most likely to keep them out of the fighting. The only time they ever saw a Stablener was that one time when Morik was pushing hardest and every man was needed in the line. “

 “That’s right,” Byla said. “They come up right at the hot of the battle, and I didn’t even know who the hell they was. But I was glad to see them — at first.”

Smit made a lawyer-like summary: “What it gets down to is that there’s something worse going on in Skonaw than just this one little company selling the state’s weapons.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “I want that whole company questioned. Not just the captain. The whole town, if need be. I want you to surround the place, Willot. Do it sometime before dawn, and don’t allow anyone in or out. Then you take your people in, Byla. Get everyone out of their houses and question them. Arrest anyone who wasn’t in Skonaw on the day of Kel’s murder. Search their houses.”

 Smit was fidgeting. “What’s the matter?” Richard asked. “Can’t I order the arrests and searches?”

“Well, maybe you can,” Smit said. “But orders to take people and searches are supposed to have names on them. The ones that’re to be searched or taken.”

 “Can the Guardsmen hold people they suspect?” Smit thought a moment and nodded. “Then hold them, Byla. Send me their names and I’ll fill in the orders.”

 That night the Guardsmen moved out from their barracks in Vale City. In the hours before dawn, they reached Skonaw and encircled the riverside town. Byla’s men waited until the people were up and around. They marched into town and ordered the men and women of Skonaw to leave their houses and assemble in the village’s little square. They were armed with lists of questions and copies of the drawing of the suspect woman. The soldier-policemen worked their way methodically through the questions, cross-checking people’s accounts of their whereabouts on the day of Kel’s death.

Richard waited at Laury’s farmhouse, which was on the road to Skonaw. In the early afternoon Byla galloped up. “We’ve got twenty-three that can’t show they was at home. But there’s four of them that went off together, and one of them is Alawain, that fellow that used to work in the leader’s office, and his wife looks an awful lot like the woman in the pictures. These four say they was going fishing that day, and they was carrying long bundles that they claim was fishing poles all wrapped up. But there’s this one old boy that saw then far down on the road to Val, and he says the bundles didn’t look like any kind of fishing pole he ever saw.”

 “What’re the other three’s names?” Byla gave Richard a scrap of parchment. He filled in the names on the warrants Smit had prepared. “Arrest these four, the company captain, and Alawain’s wife. Search their houses. If you find anything odd, get that woman up there to make some sketches. You can hold the other nineteen people for a few hours – keep trying to check their stories. “

Byla saluted. “Yessir, Judge. It’ll be done. But I got a feeling that we got them that did it.”

“So do I,” Richard said. “Now I want to know why they did it.”

Byla went back to Skonaw. Smit came in. “We got that print, Judge. We looked at all the deeds in Skonaw. The print was plain as anything. A fellow by the name of Harry Jasson.”

Richard looked at his list. “That’s one of the four Byla arrested. Did you know about that?”

Smit was deflated. “Yessir. I just heard. Guess we don’t really need the print on a deed, with him already taken, but it sort of makes it sure.”

“It was good work,” Richard said. “Tell your people I thank them. The print will prove Jasson fired one of the rifles. “

That evening Richard and Laury went down to watch the suspects go past their farm. They rode in a wagon with their hands tied to the side rails. Large bodies of troopers preceded and followed the wagon.

“They don’t look like much,” Laury said. “Except that one. He looks like the devil.”

 Four of the men were hangdog, and the woman was crying. But the fifth man stared boldly at Richard and Laury.

Marshal Byla joined them. “‘That’s Alawain. I believe it’ll turn out he was head of the thing.”

 “He looks like it,” Richard said. “Is he the one who worked for the leader?”

 “That’s right,” Byla said. “And another one, Si Benner, did some kind of work for the war writer. They say he was proud and mighty in those days. He ain’t saying much now “

Byla left. Richard and Laury went back to their house. “Well, you got them, ” Laury said. “They’ll hang, won’t they?”

“I suppose so,” Richard said. “But I want to know why they did it. One half-crazy, embittered man who’d been kicked out of his soft job – I could see that. But there’s something strange about this plot the four or five of them apparently made. That Alawain — he looked mean as hell, but he didn’t seem crazy at all.”

“His wife,” Laury said. “Do you think she knew what she was renting those places for?”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t think she did. Poor woman. I’ll bet she just did it because he asked her, without knowing why. A handsome man with a devil in him – I know how that comes out.”

The next day Richard heard that a mob had tried to attack the suspects. The news of their arrest had leaked to the people in the city, and a huge crowd formed around the road to Skonaw. Byla said that the people were especially angry because the suspects belonged to the Skonaw company. The men of the city militia companies had suffered because the Skonaw company had allowed the Stableners onto their flanks.

“The troopers had to shoot over their heads to keep them off. It was a good thing they went then, because I don’t think any of us could’ve brought ourselves to shoot people to keep those bastards from getting what they deserved. Anyways, me and Willot locked them up in the Guards barracks, figuring those little rooms in Vale courthouse wasn’t good enough.”

Richard nodded. “Have the searchers turned up anything?”

 “They sure have,” Byla said, “But let me start out by telling you about this Captain Gramers. One good thing that crowd did was scare the shit out of the little bastard. When we got him into the barracks he started talking just as fast as his mouth would go, and he says he sold all twenty-four of those rifles to Alawain and Benner. They claimed they was going to sell them one at a time to people they knew. But last night the fellows searching Benner’s house found this place in his root cellar where the ground had lowered a little. Looked like a grave, and the fellows dug it up, thinking it was some poor bastard the devils’d murdered, maybe for knowing too much. But it was nineteen rifles all wrapped up and greased to keep well. I got that drawing girl to make a picture of how they was there in the ground. “

“Very good,” Richard said. “That ties in Alawain and Benner. Try to get something on the fourth man, this Kalley.”

“Yeah, we’re working on that,” Byla said. ‘But there’s something more. We found something really strange in Alawain’s house. One of the boys saw that the walls looked wrong in one room, like they was too thick. So they tore the boards off and found something that looked like letters in this place where one of the boards slid aside to make a hole; but there wasn’t any sensible words on the letters.”

 “You think they’re in code?”

Byla shrugged. “Didn’t see ’em myself, but that’s what it sounded like. Anyways, I got the girl to draw a picture to show how they was found. A rider’ll be bringing them in soon as she’s finished.”

The letters arrived. Richard called Plott, who had some experience with codes. The letters they examined were written on three sheets of parchment. One seemed to be an ordinary and innocuous note written to Alawain by a friend. It was in clear text, but the back was half-covered with mysterious strings of characters. Someone had written out several alphabets and put cryptic marks above some of the letters. Plott guessed that the back of the note had been used as a scratch pad for work on the other two letters. They were both code texts. One sheet was heavier and more yellow than the other; the handwriting covering it was different from that on the other code letter. Byla said it looked foreign: the writing was more looped and rounded than the spiky script of Valen.

“It’s some kind of substitution code,” Plott said. “He was counting his letters on this scratch sheet. It ought to break pretty easily, with all this text to work with.”

Plott took the letters away. Richard called in Dayon, Mawvee, and the investigation board. Byla gave his report. He told them that Captain Gramers and Alawain’s wife claimed that they had known nothing about any plot against Kel’s life. Two of the assassins, Harry Jasson and Jan Kalley, might confess. Byla said they were both mean but weak. Alawain and Benner were different “They’re mean all right. But they ain’t anywheres near to being weak.”

Plott came in. “It was a substitution code, and a complicated one. But the scratch sheet made it fairly easy to break. The yellow letter was written to Alawain, and he apparently kept it to refer to while he was writing his reply.”

Richard read the decoded text of the yellow letter.

“I’m sorry to hear about your money troubles, but my master can’t see why we should send you all you’re asking for. What you sent us about the army of the Vale was good, but you never told us that the Halleners would have so many rifles or that they would be so good. My master says that the making of that many guns would’ve been plain for anybody to see. He doubts that you bothered to look, even after I told you that he wanted to know everything about the Hallen army and the men leading it. He also tells me to remind you that you did not keep the Halleners away from Stada like you claimed you could. When you opened the gate, it was already too late.

He says we will pay for the rifles you bought, plus something for your trouble. The money will be sent the usual way. You are to give the man at least one of the rifles and many bullets to go with it, so that my master may test this weapon.

“As to what you say about my master’s enemy, we don’t know that it would do any good. Also, I doubt that it can be done so easy as you say.”

 Richard passed the letter to Dayon and looked at Alawain’s reply.

 “Has your master become a shopkeeper, a money-grubbing trader? If a man with the wealth of whole countries in his hands can’t pay a miserable five thousand lars to get rid of the worst enemy he and his land have ever had, he is a fool. Malin is turning this country into a camp and the people into an army. He taxes away the money of decent people and breaks us to make more and more of these arms. He has even made the Willeners part of the country to add them to his armies, and made this navy to push his power even over the seas. I tell you that he is planning to take your master’s country and the whole world after it. Nothing will be able to stop his armies. But he has trained me and my friends to shoot, in his hunger to make this great army — and that will be his death. That is true justice.

“Even if he was your master’s friend, I would have to do what I am going to do. You don’t have to live in this country with the Avenshan scum running it, and their whorish women buying up all the land while people of good families are put into debt. Malin raises up nobodies to power while he keeps us from having our fair say in the state and lays our women to put them down with the whores of his family. But he will be dead by the time you read this, and his everlasting scheming will die with him. It will be much easier than you think. His great weakness is his crazed pride, that makes him think everybody loves him and will go down for him like those women he buys. We will have to do it so we are not seen, because his bastards and in laws own the state, but the time will come when the people and the whole world will know and thank us for what we do.

Mawvee and the members of the investigation board stood behind Dayon and read the letter.

“Treason,” Willot said. “Treason and murder.”

“Him and Benner,” Byla said. “That starts to make a lot of things clear.”

Mawvee agreed. “There was a lot of strange things. Parts of the army sent marching off the wrong way, orders and messages getting lost every time they were sent here to Val, the way the Stableners seemed to know where we were going even before we got there, and the way we never got any guns that we didn’t buy ourselves. I sent a letter to the war writer saying we just had to have some, and I figured he’d listen to me. But nothing happened. When I asked him about it later, he said he’d never got the letter. I thought he was lying, or it was just another fuck-up, but it’s plain now – Benner got that letter.”

“Kel always wondered why Morik just marched straight up to Gatwy,” Richard said. “And paid no attention to the other passes through the Greens. Now we know. He expected these traitors to open the gate.”

“Which they did,” Byla said. “Those musketmen stormed up and killed the whole front rank of my men. I couldn’t figure how they got so many over the wall.”

Willot shook his head. “How could they do such a thing? To hurt their own people and country. . . “

“I’ve looked them in the face,” Byla said. “And I’d say they did it just because they figured the Stableners was going to win. Wouldn’t matter to them if every man in Valen was killed, and all the women dragged off to slave for the savages, so long as them and theirs did all right out of it.”

Mawvee tapped the letter, “The man is half-crazed. All this stuff about women. Seems like he thought he wasn’t getting his due there, and all the world knows Kel got plenty.”

The trial started. Byla and two senators nominated by Larens and Dayon acted as prosecutors. Yon Yonson, Dayon’s choice for chief prosecutor, made Captain Gramers admit to selling the twenty-four rifles to Alawain and Benner. Witnesses remembered renting the boarding-house rooms to Alawain’s wife. Mikel Kaversee, Larens’ nominee to the prosecution team, handled the fingerprint evidence. Byla showed the jurors the sketches of the abandoned rifles and a bullet taken from Kel’s body.

In Valener trials defense and prosecution took turns presenting evidence. Jasson chose to testify after Kaversee showed the thumbprints the jurors. To try to smudge the impression they had made, Smit said. “I believe him and his speaker figure that trying to throw all the blame on the other three was the best they could do. Jasson admitted that he’d been in it with them, but he said he’d aimed to miss Kel, and he claimed Alawain’d made him go along, by blackmailing him, with some crime he’d done. But Yonson really tore into him, asking him what Alawain had on him that was so bad that he’d get himself mixed up with murder and treason to keep it from coming out. Jasson didn’t give any sensible answer, and ended up looking just like the lying, murdering bastard he was.

“A couple of turns after Jasson, Kalley came up to have his say and his story was pretty tricky. He claimed he’d never fired at all, or even known it was going to happen. He said Alawain just told him to take a rifle to a man at a boarding house, and Kalley did it, thinking the whole business was part of the selling of those rifles Alawain’d got off Gramers. The man at the boarding house turned out to be a foreigner, and he already had one of those pecker rifles. The foreigner says the pecker’ll do the job better, but for Kalley to go on and leave the other rifle. Kalley went over to the market wondering what the hell it was all about; then he heard the shots and saw what happened, and he knew. Alawain told him that he had other foreigners and spies working for him: if Kalley talked, they’d kill Kalley and his whole family. Also, Kalley said Alawain knew about some crime Kalley’d done, just like Jasson’d said, and used it to blackmail Kalley into going along and keeping his mouth shut.

 “Byla went up to try to wring some truth out of this wad of lies, but he only made it worse. Far as I could understand what they were talking about, Kalley was telling his story about the foreigner and the pecker rifle because the bullet they took out of poor Kel’s body was supposed to look like the kind they use in those big guns – or the way it was mashed up made it look like that. Byla got all tangled up in this stuff about the shapes of bullets, the different kinds of guns, and all, and I couldn’t tell what the hell he was trying to get at. Seems he don’t know much about guns. Yonson called him over and said they’d better let Kaversee handle this stuff about guns, as he fought in Stada and knows something about them.”

 Kaversee went right to work, asking Kalley if he saw this pecker rifle, Well, Kalley’s got to say yes, as he’s already said that he did see it, so Kaversee asked him to tell just what it looked like. Kalley must’ve seen what Kaversee meant to do, but he had to answer. Then, after they’d finished asking him questions, they brought Plott up and had him tell what one of those guns is really like. Been better if they could’ve gotten one to show, but Plott made it pretty clear that Kalley’d never seen one in his life. Also, he said that the way that bullet was all flattened and broken, you couldn’t really say what kind it was. So that was part of Kalley’s story shown up as a lie.

“But Kalley had other tricks. Right after Kaversee got him to tell all those lies about the rifle, he asked him about this crime Alawain’s supposed to have used to blackmail him with. I was thinking it was pretty stupid of Kalley to use the same lie Jasson had, after he’d seen Yonson tear it apart, but Kalley was smarter than Jasson, and used a real crime he said he’d done, that everybody remembered because it was so strange. This man and woman was found stabbed to death in their bed, and nobody ever figured out who did it or even what it was all about. Kalley said he’d been getting on with this woman, but her husband came in one night when they were hot at it in her own bed. The husband had a knife, and he killed his wife before Kalley could do anything to stop him. But then they fight, Kalley gets the knife away and stabs the man to keep from getting killed himself.

“Well, Kaversee was sort of set back by all this stuff. He shook his head and went over to talk to Byla and Yonson. They sent Byla out to handle it, which seemed like a mistake after the mess he’d made of that stuff about the rifles. Though it turned out that he’d worked on that murder and knew all about it. He started off by asking Kalley about the clothes the husband had on when they got into this fight Kalley was telling about. If he came in from outside like Kalley was saying, he must’ve had on his day clothes, or had he been out wandering around in his nightshirt? Kalley thinks he sees what Byla is after and says that he took the clothes off this man after he was dead. Then he stuffed him into his nightshirt, stabbing the bloody knife through the cloth just above the death wound to make it look like the fellow’d been killed in his sleep. Which was all hellish strange, but Kalley said he was afraid somebody’d know he’d been fooling around with the woman, and if he just left the man lying on the floor in his day clothes, they might figure out that Kalley’d done it. But if Kalley takes the man’s bloody clothes away and leaves them in bed like they was killed in their sleep, he thinks nobody’ll ever figure it out.”

“Well, I didn’t know what to make of it. I’ve been working at the law all my life, and that was the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. And he was telling it to get out of another murder! Then Byla all of a sudden turns around and asks how come Kalley’s saying he did all this weird stuff about putting the man into his nightshirt when that man was found bare, being the sort of fellow that likes to sleep with nothing on. Which Byla knew because he’d seen the bodies. So the whole story was nothing but bullshit, and Kalley couldn’t answer. Byla did a real job of drawing him into all those lies and then showing him up — really made up for the mess he’d gotten into with the guns.”

Yonson presented the letters found in Alawain’s house. The method of decoding was explained; Yonson read out the clear texts. He used Alawain’s reply to the Stablener spymaster as an excuse for a eulogy to Kel, comparing Alawain’s ravings to what he said was the real man. Smit said that Yonson’s version of the real Kel was even more flattering than Kel’s had been.

The trial ended with fervent speeches from the defense advocates. They energetically slandered everyone connected with the prosecution, portraying Alawain and the others as the innocent victims of a sinister conspiracy. The jurors were not impressed. They went out, Smit said, “For just a heartbeat.” When they came back they sentenced all four men, Alawain’s wife, and Captain Gramers to death.

Byla brought the death warrants to Richard. He signed the warrants for Alawain, Benner, Jasson, and Kalley; then he came to Gramers. “Did Gramers really know what those rifles were going to be used for?”

Byla didn’t care for the responsibility. “Hard to say. Maybe he didn’t. I don’t really know.”

“Get Yonson and Kaversee in here; I’ll see what they have to say.” Byla went out. Richard summoned Smit. “Tell me about changing sentences.”

“You can’t move them up, but you can move them down as much as you like. But you got to be careful about that. Fooling around with what the juries do can get you into trouble.”

Byla returned with Kaversee and Yonson. Richard asked them about Gramers. Kaversee shrugged. “If I had to say I’d guess that he’s just a little crook and a fool. But even if he didn’t know what those guns was going to be used for, they was state property and he sold them.”

Richard asked what the penalty for selling state property was. The lawyers mulled over various cases and decided that five years of state slavery would be the usual penalty for selling army-owned weapons.

“That ain’t Gramer’s only crime,” Kaversee said. “After Kel was killed he must’ve known what happened; but he never said a thing till that crowd scared the shit out of him. The little bastard was going along with those murderers like nothing had happened.”

Richard nodded. “I understand the usual sentence for that is ten years. Would you say that’s a sensible sentence for this case?”

Yonson was cautious. “We can’t tell you what to do, Judge. You’re the one who has the power.”

“I know,” Richard said. “But I want to stick to the law and not give these people harsh sentences because Kel was my friend. I’m asking you to tell me what the lawful sentence would be if this were an ordinary murder case.”

Yonson, Kaversee, and Smit agreed that ten years was proper sentence. Richard crossed the word death out of Gramers warrant and wrote in the margin. Fifteen years state slavery.

“This woman…” Richard looked at the warrant. “Sara Nyaard. I’d forgotten her name. What do you say about her? Did she know why her husband got her to rent those rooms?”

Yonson shook his head. “Couldn’t say. I didn’t take any notice of her till late in the trial and neither did anybody else. Alawain and Benner had a fellow to speak for them, and I believe he was to look after her too, but he sort of forgot or something. The judge called on her to stand up and say what she could for herself, and he asked questions to draw out her story. She was crying so much it was hard to tell what she was trying to say. It seems like Alawain just told her to rent those places and not ask why. I’d say she must’ve known he was doing something wrong – though maybe she didn’t know just what.”

“Maybe so,” Kaversee said. “But she’s partly guilty in the same way as Gramers. She went along with it.”

Smit nodded. “What’re you going to do with her if you give her state slavery? She can’t work on the roads.”

Richard was irritated. “I’m not going to kill her just because I can’t think of what else to do with her. The question is whether she knew or guessed why Alawain wanted those rooms.”

Yonson shrugged. “The court thought so. But I guess only her and Alawain know the truth of it.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “But I have to decide. Step outside for a moment. I want to think about it.”

They left. Richard looked at the warrants. They were written in a minute hand, as if the clerks hadn’t cared to see what they were about. But the word death stood out. Richard stared out at the soft evening sky. He changed Sara Nyaard’s death sentence to ten years and called the lawyers back. Byla seemed relieved, but the others were professionally detached.

They took the warrants away. Richard put out the lamps and sat alone in the dimness. Laury opened the door. “You finished?”

“Yes. You saved a woman’s life.”

She sat on Richard’s desk. “You mean Alawain’s wife?”

“Sara Nyaard,” Richard said. “If the warrant had just said Alawain’s wife, I might have signed it without a thought. But somebody named Sara Nyaard – for a moment I didn’t know who she was. I realized that I was about to hang somebody I knew nothing about. I asked the lawyers what they thought, but they couldn’t make up their minds. Then I remembered that you kept saying that Alawain was using her.”

Laury nodded. “And I still say it. You should’ve seen him at the trial: the bastard was going to hang anyway, and he could’ve got her off if he’d just stood up and said she didn’t know anything, that he’d made her go along. Only he wouldn’t. I don’t think he even talked to her all through the trial. I tell you, you don’t need to wonder about hanging him. He’s just a thing. “

They heard hammering. The carpenters were making adjustments to the gallows.

“Shut the window, Davy. I don’t want to hear it.”

Richard closed it. “Neither do I.”

 The trial revealed Morik’s connection with the assassins. Most Valens thought Morik had ordered Kel’s murder, and they were infuriated. When the senators assembled to elect the new leader, they competed in making bellicose speeches. Morik had never replied to offers of negotiation; his soldiers still garrisoned some of the forest countries. Kel’s murder was a cowardly and spiteful act of revenge. If Morik wanted war, the senators thundered, let him have it.

Almost as an afterthought, Dayon was elected leader. “Ain’t as much fun as I wanted,” he said. “For years, I dreamed about it, if we could somehow get the state from the Lands. Now that I got it, it’s more like a turd than a treasure.”

“Sorry,” Richard said. “Right now I’m just glad you get the turd instead of me.”

“About that,” Dayon said. “I was thinking you’d best come to our meetings. You’re the only one of us ever even been to the Stablen. And just so you’ll know: I’m going ask Laif Mawvee to be money writer.”

Richard reported these machinations to Larens and Laury.

“That’s some cunning dealing,” Larens said. “Even Kel could hardly do better.”

 “You’ll have to explain it to me,” Richard said.

“Kaversee wants to be leader real bad,” Laury said. “And he’s got a lot of votes behind him. Anything goes bad, he could toss Dayon. But all the Lands’re likely to stick with Laif.”

“’Cause he’s about all they got left,” Larens said.

“Right. The Lands plus Dayon’s people’re enough to block Kaversee.”

Richard shook his head. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do politics at this level.”

“The High Judge ain’t really supposed to,” Larens said. “It was trying to, that got old Roke tossed.”

“That and doing it bad,” Laury said.

Post-riders galloped in with a letter. It was from Morik. Dayon hurriedly assembled the senators. He read the letter to them.

 “I hear you plan to make war against my people because Kel Malin was murdered by men working for me. You say that the letter written to Alawain, the first of the killers, must have been shown to me by the man you call the spymaster. And because I knew the murder would happen and did nothing to stop it, I am as guilty as the killers.’

 “I say to you, first, that this man Alawain did work for me before and during the war. He was a traitor, and I used him, just as you would use any traitors you could find among my people. Second, I say that the man you call the spymaster did know of the killing before it happened. Third, I say that I would have tried to kill Kel Malin, if it had been man to man between him and me. He was my greatest enemy, ruining my plans with cunning and skill. He was dangerous to me and my people.”

 “What is not true is that I knew what the spymaster knew before the killing happened. It is not true that I planned to kill Kel Malin. What you have got wrong is the way you think this spymaster works here in the Castle, near me, so that he could show me Alawain’s letters and the one he was going to send before the killing. He worked in Willen; and, from what I can find out, he got the letter telling of the plan to kill Kel Malin such a short time before Alawain said it was to be done that he had no time to stop it. So the letter he sent to Alawain — the one you call the yellow letter — got there after the thing was done, and not before like you seem to think. That is why Alawain still had it for you to find, when you searched his house.’

“The last thing I have to say is about the way everybody thinks I wanted Kel Malin dead. Like I said before, it is true that I would have tried to kill him if it had been just man to man between him and me. That doesn’t mean I would kill him as ruler of my country. I know that there must be many of you that wish me dead, because of the war and friends you lost in it; as leaders of your country you remember your duty and hold back. Do you think I am so much less than you? Do you think I am so mean that I would throw my country into war for nothing but spite? And it is sure that I could have no reason to kill him but spite. What have I gained by his death? And when I ask this I do not think just of this war you plan to make on my people. When I say he was my greatest enemy, I know that only a great man could do the things he did. Such a man does not hate, does not spite, does not set himself to torment and hurt a beaten enemy. I have heard from people that knew him that he had many good times in my country; he had reasons for not wanting to see it ruined. So I thought he might be as great a friend to me as he was an enemy, some day when the war was years past. That chance, like everything else he might have done, was lost when he was killed.”

 The senators were skeptical. “He’s so sorry Kel’s dead,” Dayon said.  “But it’s plain that he’s a whole lot sorrier we found out that Alawain worked for him. Him or this spymaster could’ve at least tried to warn Kel when they found out what that crazy man was planning to do. But they didn’t, because they thought we’d never find out about Alawain. They took the easy way out, and just let Kel get killed, so they wouldn’t have to say that Alawain was their man.”

 Kaversee thought that Morik’s letter was a clever mixture of half-truths and evasions. “He can’t just say, oh, sorry it was a mistake; it was all underlings that did it, and I didn’t have nothing to do with it. He had plenty to do with setting Alawain and those other traitors on us. He had plenty to do with making the war all this come out of. He’s got reckoning to do.”

The leaders argued over what kind of reckoning they should or could demand from Morik. Marshal Willot explained the military situation. “If the troops go, they’ve got to step out when the snow stops in the Hastab – and I mean they’ve go almost on the very day. We wait, and the fall snows’d get to them before they got anywheres near to Ayventun”

“Maybe there’s just time to send him a letter,” Mawvee said. “He got this letter to us pretty quick. If we could get one to him, he might give in on what we want, now that he knows we’re ready to fight.”

Kaversee disagreed. “We can’t settle it by sending letters back and forth. What if Morik stalls? He won’t know what our plan is, but he knows better than any of us that anything we do in the Hastab, we’ve got to start in spring. So all he’s got to do is keep us talking, like he was going to make peace, and we ain’t going to be able to fight this year. Which means we’ll never fight him. He’ll get away with everything he’s done, and we won’t be able to stop him,”

“What’d you say, Judge?” Dayon asked. “You’re the only one of us even been to Stablen.”

“I don’t know what our troops can do in Hastablen,” Richard said. “It’s so big our whole army would be like a cup of water in the ocean. We can’t take the castle – our biggest guns would barely crack the surface. We might take Ayventun, if we could get there quickly…”

Dayon slapped the table. “I say do both. Send the letter. Start moving the soldiers.”

 “What about the ships?” They all looked around. Richard, the cabinet ministers, and other important leaders were sitting at a long table. The newly appointed navy writer had spoken. “I mean, if you want them to go to Wasper and then the Hastab north shore, they got to go right now.”

Dayon wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to get at chief competitor. “That’s your part, Kaversee.  Why didn’t you remind us about those ships?”

Kaversee was annoyed. “I would’ve, when it came down to it. Hold on a while.” He gave the navy writer a cold look and pulled him out of the room.

Mawvee leaned over to whisper to Richard. “What about that? Think Dayon’s got onto that navy fellow?”

Richard shrugged. “He should’ve passed Kaversee a note, if he thought the ships were being forgotten. But maybe he’s just new at this sort of thing. “

Mawvee shook his head. He was amazed at Richard’s willingness to think well of his fellow politicians.

Kaversee returned. “Well, it seems we can get those ships to Wasper and then the north shore in early summer if they go now.”

“Then they got to be going,” Willot said. “If we’re going to fight, that is. Those ships ain’t in the north sea at midsummer, they’re no use for anything we do in the Hastab.”

 “Then do it all,” Dayon said. “Send the ships. Start gathering the soldiers. Write the letter.”

Kaversee said it might do. “It’ll just about have to.” Mawvee pointed to the lightening sky outside the windows. “It’s almost dawn. If we’re going to send the letter, we’ll have to do it today.”

They assembled the senators. Richard sat in the Judge’s gallery with Laury; the senators heard the letter read out and approved. By evening post riders were dashing down the road to Valmo, and north to Avenshan, bearing the letter and orders to send ships sailing.

Laury drove Richard home in a carriage. She was exceptionally pleased and agreeable. “A fine time to be so sweet,” Richard said. “Just when I’m too tired to take much advantage of it.”

“Well, maybe it won’t wear off for a while,” Laury said. “But even if we fight, it’ll be between you and me, without the damn Stableners getting into it. I can handle that sort of fighting — it’s both at the same time I can’t take. “

Richard yawned. “Well, that was my main thought, of course. I knew I’d catch hell if I didn’t do my damndest to make peace. But don’t get your hopes up, cher. I’m not sure this is going to work out “

“Why not? Wouldn’t Morik want to deal? I hear he’s the sort of fellow that thinks he can talk people into anything.”

Richard nodded. “That’s what I thought. I don’t know just what’s bothering me; but when the senators got so carried away, I saw that we couldn’t back down, even if we wanted to. Maybe there’s some reason why Morik can’t back down either. I don’t know what kind of politics goes on in the Castle.”

“Only there’s politics everywhere, in everything all the time,” Laury said.

The senate got down to making law. The Rivers brought up a bill to give pensions to war widows and wounded soldiers. Everyone knew that it was bound for unanimous passage. The Lands couldn’t afford to oppose it. But the senators insisted on having their say, debating passionately against a non-existent opposition. They knew that anything they said for the bill would go down well with the voters,

Most of the other River-Sea bills passed without difficulty. But the Lands, intent on representing themselves as the low-tax party, organized a sharp opposition to the new tax bill. The Rivers summoned up a righteous annoyance, reminding everyone that the taxes would pay for the pensions the Lands had fervently supported. The Lands were not dismayed. They lost the tax vote to the River-Sea majority, but they claimed that they were voting with every tax-payer in Valen.

The senators moved swiftly through the rest of the River program. They settled down to spend the last week of their sitting in the important business of trading private bills. An elderly lady’s vegetable garden had been ruined by dust from a public road; her senator proposed to give her compensation. Others had supposedly suffered some sort of inconvenience remotely connected with the public business. Individual pensions were granted to retiring servants of the state. Obscured boundaries were fixed. Bits of road were extended onto private property. The problems of local governments were sorted out.

 Richard signed all the big party bills and worked his way through the strangely assorted mass of private ones. A High Judge had no veto powers, but a bill he refused to sign was effective only during the term of the senate which enacted it.

“You’re really reading all that stuff,” Kel said. “You’d better watch that. We don’t want to make these big changes too fast. And a High Judge that really reads all the stuff he signs would be the strangest thing the country’s ever seen. “

“Well, somebody ought to read them,” Richard said. “Look at this one. What does that mean?”

He gave Kel one of the private bills. Kel studied it. “Well, it means… Mmnh. It says… Unnh. Hell, I don’t know what it means; if it means anything at all. You’ re getting real picky, asking that a law say something you can understand. Send it off to your law writer. He can tell you what it’s for, sign it. If he can’t, don’ t. “

Richard put the bill aside. Kel brought out a long list of names. “Here’s some more people Larens, Dayon, and Haskin want us to hire. Looks like about a million of them. “

Kel and Richard spent the rest of the evening allotting patronage. They found an amazing swarm of Land party appointees buzzing around the government. There were the Writers, the heads of the government departments; there were street sweepers, toll collectors, officers of the Guard, and a great mob of clerks and copyists. Every one had been hired through Land patronage. Kel and Richard had to choose most of their replacements from lists made up by the River and Sea leaders, which involved them in the delicate business of balancing the patronage claims of the two parties. Kel hired as many crippled veterans as he could. He replaced most of the Land scribes and clerks with young women. He claimed that they were all poor widows and orphan girls.

 Kel fired all of the many marshals and vice-marshals that the Lands had imposed upon the army. He made Jan Willot, his cavalry commander, the sole Marshal of Valen.

“Not Rick Kern?” Richard asked.

Kel shook his head. “When we were talking to the Willeners, Rick’d get all stiff when they wanted something we didn’t. Kind’ve a foot soldier thing, I guess. All that close order drill. Jan’d just keep talking, telling them no without saying no.”

“So horse soldiers learn to shovel the horseshit.”

“That’s a good one. And kind of true,” Kel said. “Strange to pick anybody as Marshal of Valen. That was the job I always wanted: Kel Malin, Marshal of Valen. Has a nice sound to it.”

Richard shrugged. “You’re the commander of both the army and the navy now. That’s better than a nice sound.”

“Some navy,” Kel said. “Levis and a fancy title.”

 The naval schemes embroiled them in elaborate complications. They made Levis Sea-Marshal, the chief admiral of the future navy. He and the big-ship sailors he represented had long lusted after a navy of their very own. But Levis’ promotion displeased Judge Haskin: he thought Levis would use it to take over the leadership of the Sea party. To reconcile Haskin, Kel had to give him control of most of Stada’s allotment of patronage jobs.

“I wish we didn’t have a coast,” Kel said. “That there wasn’t any Seas, or any sea either. If I hear one more word about those damn ships, I’m going to throw the one that says it right out the window. ” There were dozens of shipyards on the coast of Stada, and every one was bombarding Kel with plans for building the navy’s ships.

“Send the plans to Plott,” Richard said, “Let him decide which one to build. And maybe you could have a Navy Writer to handle all this stuff. “

 Kel’s eyes narrowed. “Right. That’d give me another job to use. I could trade it to Haskin to get back some of them we gave him in the Levis fuck-up. If his friends get all the jobs in Stada, a couple of those new River senators ain’t going to be able to stay in their seats.”

Richard nodded. “He hoards patronage like Laury does land. “

 “How d’you mean?” KeI asked. “‘What’s she up to now?”

“She wants to buy a farm,” Richard said. “It’s part of some horse-breeding scheme she’s working on. ” Laury was racing all over the Vale. She was scouting for fine bloodstock and pastures. One afternoon she galloped into Val City, bearing a tolerant Renny in a sling. Richard saw her arrive from his window; he heard her dealing with the people outside his office. “You son of a bitch! Get out of my way. ” Laury’s riding crop snapped against something.

The ancient doorkeeper of the High Judge’s chamber was firmly but unhappily holding his ground. Laury was about to smack him with her crop. Richard pulled her inside, making a gesture of apology to the doorkeeper. He tried to hug her, but she pushed a squirming Renny into his arms. Richard put Renny on a table heaped with letters flattering and importuning the new High Judge. Renny sampled several, but decided that the taste, like the contents, was factitious.

“Why’d you snap your whip at that poor old man? All you had to do was say who you were.”

Laury roamed Richard’s office. She looked at papers, snatched open doors, and peered into cupboards. “I don’t like going ’round saying I’m the High Judgess or whatever the hell you’d call it. You stuck me with it, but I ain’t playing up to it.”

Richard sighed. “All right. But if you’re not the High Judgess you’ve got no business ordering people around. And you could’ve just said you were my wife.”

Laury gave him a bristling look. “Sometimes I don’t like saying that either.”

Renny started to crawl off the table. They both darted for her, bumping their heads together. Richard took Renny and sat down at his desk. Laury perched on a corner. “She’s been driving me wild. You wouldn’t think such a little baby could do much, just crawling around on her belly; but she gets into everything. And tries to eat it. Maybe that’s why I’m so…I didn’t mean that, what I said. It was a lie. But I don’t like it much, this living in Vale City and all.”

Richard played with Renny. “I know. I knew all along that it would be tiresome for you, but I went ahead and did it. Hoping you’d forgive me. “

“You know I will,” Laury said. “Seems like we’re squabbling about something every day. But I can tolerate it, so long as we make up every night. “

“Maybe we shouldn’t wait till night.” Richard caught her hand and pulled her towards him. Renny wriggled between them. “Hmh. She does get into everything.”

Laury laughed. “You don’t know. She’ll get my revenge on you. You’re going to be real sorry we don’t have mama, daddy, and the other people at Hallenwater to help us look after her. “

Richard kissed her over Renny’s head. Renny attempted to consume the buttons on his coat. “About those farms, ” Laury said briskly. Her annoyance was officially ended. “I found me one I want.”

“Well, fine,” Richard said. “But why do you want another farm?”

 “Come out with me,” Laury said. “We’ll look at this place, and I’ll tell you. If you ain’t too busy, Judge.”

Richard wasn’t fool enough to say he was too busy. They stuffed Renny into her sling. Laury took the doorkeeper’s hand and bent over it in formal apology. “Sorry I was a bitch. Wasn’t you I was really mad at. It was him.”

The door keeper suppressed a smile. “Yes, m’am. Next time I’ll know you get to go right in.”

They rode out to the farm. “At Hallenwater we breed draft animals,” Laury said. “That’s where the steady money is. Or where it was. Ema told me about all these things they’re going to build someday, and it seems like there’s going to be less call for heavy horses. Kel was telling me how he was going to change the army, and he said he was going to make the Guards into some kind of riflemen and mount them all on light horse. I figured the Guards’d buy a lot of their new horses from the High Judgess, if I had any light horse to sell. So I thought I’d get me a little farm here to start breeding up some light stock, while mama kept on with the drafts in Hallenwater. Maybe some racehorses too. Plott told me the racehorse’s still going strong where you came from, even with all those machine-things.”

     “Very shrewd,” Richard said. “But you ought to remember that your parents’ shares in the corporation will make you very rich. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do.” Laury said. “I’m a horse-breeder. It’s what I do.” She poked a restless Renny back into her sack. “One of the things, anyway.”

The farm lay on the banks of the river. It bordered directly on the city, within a short ride of the square. Val was not blessed with suburbs. “There’s others to the south and west,” Laury said. “But this is the one I want.”

Richard nodded. “A beautiful piece of land.”

“Well, yes. But the good part is that they’ve almost got to sell. Didn’t you see how low down most of the fields is to the river? It’s bound to flood every spring. People must be crazed, putting grain into land like that. But it’d be fine for pasturage.”

“I see,” Richard said. “But remember you’re rich. You don’t have to beat the poor, crazy farmers down to the very least they’ll take.”

Laury was amazed. “But this is business.”

Laury bought the farm on the river. It was too late in the year to do anything but start construction of stables and other horsey buildings. Laury occupied herself by buying a second farm bordering on the first, three market-garden operations southwest of the city, and several properties in town. She hoped that her horse-breeding operation would someday expand onto the second farm, but she bought the other properties as speculations. The Rivers’ abolition of the many sinecures the Lands had created drove many sinecure-holders out of town, opening some choice bargains. Laury was sure the demand for housing and land would pick up again, despite River promises to keep the government payroll low.

 The scale of her operations alarmed Kel. “They’re calling her the woman kepta, Laury Ayvens, and Val’s landlady.”

 Richard nodded. “She’s overdoing it.”

“You think so?” Kel said. “Can’t say I do. I only meant that it looks a little funny. She could get other people to buy up those places for her, so it don’t look like she’s trying to own half the Vale. And she might’ve gotten some for me. After all, if it hadn’t been for me, all those Land bloodsuckers wouldn’t be selling their places for her to buy up. It ain’t fair for her to snap up all the good buys while I’m busy running the state for her. “

 Richard told Laury what Kel had said. She laughed and nodded. Maybe it would be better to use dummies to make her future purchases. “But Kel’ll have to get mama or one of his women to buy, if he really wants some of those places. I ain’t got the time. “

 “So I see,” Richard said. They were eating supper. Laury sat with Renny in her lap and held sheets of parchment close to her myopic eyes. She was reading letters from her friends and business associates. The cook she had hired came in to discuss the organization of the kitchen and household. Carpenters appeared to ask her about some detail of the stables they were building for her. Her rental agent dropped by; she gave him a long list of instructions. She and her stable master talked about the horse-shopping they had done. All the while she was chewing up choice bits of food to put in Renny’s mouth, playing with her, nursing her, and changing her diapers.

 The next day Richard told Kel about Laury’s incessant activity. “She’s a Hallen woman,” Kel said. “That’s just the way they are. I’ve told you about the troubles I used to have with them.”

“Yeah,” Richard said. “But I’m not sure we’re talking about the same kind of trouble. You’ve had a lot of women – maybe almost as many as you say – but you haven’t really gone all the way till you get married. “

 Kel studied him. “Well, you don’t look all that happy about having went all the way,  so maybe I’ll just stay a virgin on that part. Which I was planning to do anyway. What’s the matter – ain’t you and Laury getting on?”

Richard shrugged. “I think we’re doing all right. But you know Laury: every damn thing matters; everything’s got to be just so. I’m hoping she’ll settle down when the snow melts. We won’t be so cooped up, and she can spend some of her frantic energy on her horses.”

“Sounds sensible,” Kel said. ” But what would I know, an old marriage-virgin like me? All those women I’ve had don’t mean a thing compared to the strange stuff you’re supposed to know because you’re married,”

“All right, Kel,” Richard said. “Just forget I said that. I’d rather not have it brought up in every other sentence. What’s next?”

 “Some more of this foreign stuff,” Kel said, “I’d rather talk about women myself. Or even about getting married. “

Foreign ambassadors and representatives were hurrying to Valen. The little countries of the southern continent had noticed the outcome of the war. Their ambassadors asked Kel and Richard to aid this country against that aggressive neighbor, or to help this rightful ruler against that foul usurper. Most were unable to offer Valen any sort of return, so they tried to bribe Kel and Richard with promises of money or women. Both Kel and Richard were indifferent to money; Richard ignored the other offers. Kel enjoyed them.

“Somebody throws a woman at me, I’m going to catch her. And if she asks for a little something, I’m always glad to give her some of what I’ve got; in one way or another. But I’m damned if I see why they think just getting laid’s going to make me do what they want me to.”

One of the ambassadors approached Laury. He heard of her avaricious acquisitions of land and concluded that she was bribable. Laury rode him down with a horse she was exercising. Richard met the battered, mud-coated ambassador on the road and said a puzzled hello. The ambassador eyed Richard’s horse with glassy nervousness and hurried away. When he got home, Laury told Richard what had happened. Richard thought it was funny, but Laury wasn’t amused. “Keep those people away from me. They’re like slimy, crawly things.”

Richard made an effort to lighten it. “I know. And that man was a fool; but remember, he was being a slimy, crawly thing for his country.”

Laury gave him a look of ferocious distaste. Her pale eyes seemed to flash.

“What’s really going on?” Richard said. “Why are you so mad at me?”

“You been fucking Ema?”

“What the hell? I haven’t even seen her since… the night Kel got elected leader.”

“I dreamed you were fucking her. It was so real it hurt.”

“You dreamed it. But – but I didn’t.”

“Tell me you don’t love her.”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t. Not like I love you. I liked her. She’s sweet.”

             “So I’m not sweet?” Laury said.

            “Ema’s like a cup of milk,” Richard said. “You’re like a shot of whiskey.”

             “Hmpf.” Laury tried, and failed, to find something wrong with the comparison. “Well, you’re like a cup of cold water. You just make sure only I get a drink.”

            The next morning, she got a letter from Ema. “She’s carrying! I knew she was going to have a baby. There must’ve been some sign when they were in town. That’s what the dream was about!”

            “So… Not about me at all,” Richard said.

            Laury ignored this detail. “Sweet life! Her handwriting is the worst I’ve ever seen. Between it and my terrible eyes, I can hardly read it.”

            They heard Renny cry. “Go judge stuff,” she said. “Mama’s coming to see the wonder baby today. So be home on time.”

            Richard went to court. Jerzy Smit, the law writer, brought in an opinion he had finished. It was an intricate property dispute involving tangled inheritances and obscured boundaries: the usual stuff of Valener law. Richard carefully read the opinion; Smit explained the precedents he had invoked. At first he had been annoyed by Richard’s diligence: he took it as a reflection on his competence. But the questions Richard asked flattered his expertise. His explanations became tutorials on the law of Valen, with amusing digressions on the legal blunders and human follies exposed in the case at issue. The law, Smit said, was a compressed account of the passions and errors of men and women.

            They heard gunshots. “What the hell?” Richard said. “Are the Guardsmen playing with their new rifles?”

            Smit looked out a window. “Sounded like it came from the square.”

            One of the young copyists burst in. “Judge! It’s the Leader – somebody’s shot him. They’ve killed him.”

            Richard and Smit stared at her. She started crying. Richard got up and went down through the solemn, seldom used courtroom. He stepped out on the courthouse’s high pediment and looked down into the square. A large number of people crowded the steps of the Senate. Richard heard women weeping and children asking frightened questions.

 A small group of Guardsmen stood around the door to the court. They gripped their new carbines and scanned the upper stories of the buildings around the square. One of them came forward. “Judge. Maybe you’d better take cover.”

Richard shook his head. “Where’s Kel? The leader.” The soldier pointed to the crowd at the Senate stairs. “Form your men around me,” Richard said. He sent one of the men to bring more soldiers. He took the others into the crowd.

 Kel lay on the broad top step of the Senate stairs. Blood pooled all around him. A distracted Guardsman was trying to apply a tourniquet above a wound on Kel’s arm. But most of the blood was flowing from his chest and stomach.

 Richard lifted Kel’s head. “Kel…”

 Kel opened his eyes. He saw Richard and tried to smile. He looked up to the sky and died.

Richard stared at him. He felt for a heartbeat and lifted Kel’s shoulders, holding them against his chest. Kel’s head hung over his arm. Richard set Kel’s body down. He turned his head to a natural angle. “Take him inside. Somebody take him inside.”

 The Guardsmen took down one of the Senate’s tall doors and used it as a stretcher. They carried Kel’s body into the Senate and put it on the counter’s table. Somebody took the big flag hanging behind the table and put it over the body.

 Richard sat in one of the senators’ chairs and stared blankly at the flag-draped body. The people came into the senate chamber and milled aimlessly around. Some of them pressed around the table, reaching out to touch Kel’s body. The Guardsmen formed a ring around the table and shoved the civilians away.

Kern appeared from somewhere. Kel had made him a vice-marshal in the reformed Guard, but he was as confused as the people in the crowd. “My God, Judge, they killed him. Who did it? What’s happening?”

Richard shook his head. “Are the Guardsmen out?”

Kern nodded.

 “Get them to surround the square. Don’t let anybody out until they give their names and addresses. Make sure nobody is carrying concealed firearms. Ask everybody if they saw anything.”

Kern was relieved to have something to do, “Yessir, Judge. I’ll get to it. ” He hesitated. “One thing… With the leader dead we’re not supposed to… I mean, if we have to take people or something – can we do that without a leader?”

 “I don’t know,” Richard said. “Get Smit: the law writer. He’s around somewhere.”

Smit was standing among the crowd in the chamber. “You can’t give the Guard orders,” he said. “Not without a leader. That would mean the counter, as he serves in the leader’s place when… When there’s no leader. Kern could put the soldiers out and ask people questions, but he can’t take anybody till the counter says it’s all right.”

“Go on and surround the square,” Richard said. “If you come across anyone suspicious, hold them on the spot until you get word that the counter’s given his authority. And send Marshal Willot to me.”

Kern went out to organize the Guardsmen. Smit coughed. “Uh, Judge; you’re not supposed to be in here – down in the Senate itself, I mean.”

Richard looked at Kel’s body. “I don’t want to be here. Let’s go find the counter.”

 The counter lived in an apartment attached to the Senate house. Servants roused the old man from his bed. He was confused, but he signed a document prepared by Smit. It renewed the police powers of the Guardsmen, which had lapsed at the moment of Kel’s death.

“Searches,” Richard said. “I want the Guardsmen to search all the buildings around the square. “

Smit nodded. “You can order that yourself, as High Judge. All we got to do is write up the orders.”

They hurried back to the court. “The counter doesn’t seem up to this. Is there a way for me to take over the leader’s powers?”

“There is,” Smit said. “You and the leader have to sign a paper together, saying you combine all your powers in one or the other of you. With the counter only being acting leader – I don’t know. I guess it’d be all right.”

“Write up the search orders,” Richard said. “And make a draft of the agreement to combine powers.”

Willot came in. “Sweet life, I can’t believe this. Kel… He was the greatest man I’ve ever known. Who’d want to do such a thing?”    

 “I don’t know,” Richard said. “Have you heard anything about trouble in other parts of the country?”

Willot shook his head. “Nothing”

 Smit brought in the search warrants. Richard signed them. “I want you to search every building around the square, Willot. If you find rifles or other weapons, don’t touch anything. Put a guard on the place. Get Kern to send people who think they saw something here to the court. Don’t allow the witnesses to talk to one another and get confused about what they saw. “

Willot nodded. “I get you. How about sending messengers? Seems like to me the other judges’d better be told.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “And another thing — Kel’s sister is somewhere on the way to my wife’s farm. You’d better find her and take her back to the farm. Send some Guardsmen to stay there.”

Willot took the warrants and went out.

Smit gave Richard a sheet of parchment. “This is the combined powers agreement.”

Richard read it. “Explain the law.”

“It’s just what it says it is,” Smit said. “The leader gives you all his powers. Or it can go the other way, with you giving your powers to the leader. It lasts till the senate sits, when you’ve got to put up a new leader.”

“Good,” Richard said. “Do you think the counter will sign it?”

 “I expect so,” Smit said. “But it’d be best if one of the senators asked him about it.”

Richard nodded. “Send one of your clerks to find Dayon. And get someone to see if Laif Mawvee’s in town. Then start bringing in the witnesses. Let them wait down in the courtroom and bring them up here one by one.”

The first witnesses had been standing near Kel. By custom, petitioners waited on the Senate stairs every morning. The shrewd politician went to hear their grievances. Kel had been accepting petitions, shaking hands, and making jokes in his usual style. “I saw him crossing the square, ” a middle-aged woman said. “So I went over to shake his hand for getting money for my boy that was hurt in the war. I wasn’t going to ask for nothing.”

 Richard nodded. “What happened next?” The woman wiped her eyes. “Well, I was just about to touch his hand. And all of a sudden — he was lying on the ground. I guess I must’ve heard the guns and seen him fall, but it seems like I don’t remember. He was just lying there. I couldn’t hardly understand what was happening. He said, ‘Son of a bitch. Sweet life. Not now.’ And then he closed his eyes. I thought he was dead, but I saw him look at you when you lifted his head, Judge.”

 Some of the other witnesses thought the shots had come from the crowd. They had seen people running away. But most of the soldiers standing guard duty at the doors of government buildings said the shots had come from upper stories around the square; mostly from the market, they thought. A veteran of the battle of Stada was sure the shots had come from longhammer rifles.

Richard ordered the searchers to concentrate on the market. A Guards officer soon came to report. The searchers had found two rifles on the upper floor of the market.

 “Just the rifles? No sign of the people who used them?”

“No, sir. The one’s in a little closet sort of place, and the other in a room nobody’s renting just now. Both places’ve got windows you can see the Senate House from.”

Richard nodded. “Anyone see men leaving those rooms?”

“Nobody we talked to yet. But an awful lot of people come and go ’round the market.”

 “Keep hunting,” Richard said. “Have you found Kel’s sister?”

 “Yessir. We took her to your wife’s place like you said.”

 Richard dismissed the Guardsman and called Smit. “I’m going out to talk to Kel’s sister. When I get back I want to see Dayon, the counter , and Marshal Willot. “

“Right, Judge,” Smit said. “And if you don’t mind my saying — you should see Marshal Byla. The city’s his territory.”

“I had forgotten that,” Richard said. “Tell him I apologize for taking over. I’ll let him handle the rest.”

 Richard rode to the farm. Laury and Sissy had done their crying. Laury was restlessly angry. Sissy was grim. “I came to ask about Kel’s body,” Richard said. “Where do you want him buried?”

Sissy grimaced. “I hadn’t thought about that. On our farm, I guess. In Avenshan.”

“You find them,” Laury shouted. “You better get them that did it.”

Sissy grabbed her arm. “You be quiet. This ain’t the time for one of your fusses” She looked at Richard. “Just the same, you find them.”

“I will,” Richard said. “I promise you I will.”

Richard went back to the court. Smit had rounded up Dayon, the counter, Willot, and Marshal Byla, the Vale’s police commissioner and chief prosecutor. Dayon had persuaded the counter to surrender the leader’s powers. Richard and the old man signed the instrument which combined powers, “This’ll be just until the Senate sits,” Richard said.

“Well, I hope you’ll call the senators soon,” the counter said. “I guess I’m not up to playing leader at a time like this, but I don’t care for this combination thing. It ain’t the way things’re supposed to work.”

 “I ‘m going to call them as soon as I can,” Richard said. “This is just to allow us to carry out the investigation. Let’s get the marshals in here and find out what they’ve done.”

Marshal Byla gave the report. “We found two other rifles. They were in corner rooms of houses just along the street from the square. Both places were rented by women – maybe the same woman, from the sound of it. The landlords and the other folks we’ve talked to don’t remember that anybody ever came to live in the rooms, so it’s most likely that they were rented for just this one thing.”

 Richard nodded. “Did you leave the rifles alone?”

“Yessir, Judge,” Byla said. “Like you ordered. Or like I hear you ordered Marshal Willot. “

“I’m sorry,” Richard said. “I wasn’t thinking of such things. He was my friend.”

Byla was mollified. “Well, I guess nobody would’ve. Anyway, Marshal Willot’s boys did a pretty good job of the searching.”

“Your men will do the rest,” Richard said. “Using as many of Marshal Willot’s soldiers as you need. But first: Smit, didn’t I see some sketches one of those women in the office had done?”

Smit nodded. “Yessir, Judge. It’s one of those copy girls. I forget her name, but she did some real clever drawings of people.”

 “Find her,” Richard said. “Then send her to draw detailed sketches of the rooms the rifles were found in. When she’s done, take the rifles and anything else that looks important. Then search those rooms. Tear them apart, “

“It’ll be done,” Byla said, “What about the rifles? What do you want us to do with them?”

“I want them locked up and guarded,” Richard said. “Plott may be able to trace them — so we can find the killers through the guns. When you move them, I want you to make personally sure that your men carry them only by the tips of the barrels. I don’t want them to touch any other part. You get me?”

“Well, I guess so,” Byla said. “About the way you want them to be carried. But why?”

 “Fingerprints,” Richard said. “The barrels and stocks of those rifles are always pretty oily.”

 Smit, Byla and the others nodded. They understood fingerprints. The Valens used them on deeds and other documents.

Richard told Byla, Willot, and Smit to conduct the investigation as a board, with Byla as chairman. He ordered Dayon and the counter to summon Laif Mawvee and form a second board to attend to the day-to-day business of the leader.

The meeting broke up. Dayon waited till the others had gone. “‘Why’d you put Laif on this leader board? We don’t need a Land for anything. The people that killed Kel was most likely Lands of some sort.”

“Maybe,” Richard said. “But I want to separate Mawvee from Lands of that sort. He’s the only one who could cause us any real trouble.”

 “You thinking we can get him to come over? I don’t see that there’s much chance of that. Laif’ll vote against his people, if he thinks they’re wrong, but he was more or less born a Land.”

 “I don’t expect him to leave his party,” Richard said. “If we can get him to lean our way I’ll be satisfied. We may have to do some hard things before this is over, and I don’t want him against us. Anyway, I can over-rule anything he and the counter do that you don’t like.”

“Well, maybe , ” Dayon said. “What hard things’ve you got in mind to do?”

“I haven’t got anything in mind,” Richard said. “I’m just saying that we may need all the support we can get, with Kel gone.”

Richard, Laury, and Sissy set out for Avenshan with Kel’s body. The road climbed ahead of them. Most of Valen had a fairly temperate climate, but Avenshan was a harsh, subarctic country. Clouds were banked over their heads, held against the Hightops by winds from the northern and eastern seas, Dirty, melting snow was hummocked in the deeply shaded valleys

“I remember how Kel used to talk,” Sissy said. “He’d say Avenshan was mostly up and down, and where it wasn’t it was hardly more than a coat of dust on solid rock. When our mama was trying to get him to be a farmer, he’d say that’d be easier to grow stuff on a brick than in Avenshan.”

 They got to the Malinhelve, the ancestral lands of the Malins. Kel’s brothers were waiting around a grave they had chopped into the half-frozen earth. They slid a plank under the shrouded body and carried it to the grave. Richard, Larens, and Kel’s brothers looped ropes under the plank and carefully lowered the body into the ground. They stared down into the open grave.

One of Kel’s brothers pushed a few clods of wet, dark earth down on the white shroud. Richard covered his eyes with one hand. Laury gripped his arm. The brothers gingerly covered the body with light spadesful of earth. They quickly filled the grave and patted a mound into shape.

Alvan, the eldest brother, leaned on his spade. “He was the most troublesome fellow I ever knew in my life.”

Ekun, the second brother, nodded. “Who’d ever’ve thought he’d be great.”

“Well, he did,” Sissy said.

“True words,” Alvan said. “Guess you got to believe it, to be it.”

 “Let’s go in, ” Sissy said. “There’s no use standing out here in the dirt to talk about him.”

They went into the farmhouse. A large crowd of onlookers edged forward behind them. The people filed past the grave. Richard saw some of then taking little bits of earth from the mound. He heard the strange, murmurous sound of thousands of people weeping and talking in soft, troubled whispers.

Inside the house Richard and the others sat at a long table. They picked at an enormous quantity of food in an uncomfortable silence. The house was crowded with the Malins and their many friends and relatives.

 One of the men brought out a keg of whiskey and passed glasses. The liquor provided an excuse for relaxing. They started remembering when Kel had done this or that. Most of the stories recalled Kel’s involvement in some kind of deviltry. Alvan said it seemed like Kel had saved his good deeds for other countries.

 “What about that time he killed the bull?” Laury asked. “Did he really do that?”

“Well, he said he did,” Alvan said. “And there sure was a dead bull at the end of it. I don’t know what really happened. I guess only Kel and the girl knew – for there was a woman in it, like there just about always was with Kel. I don’t remember her name. She died later; I think in childbirth. Anyway, there ain’t nobody alive that saw it.”

“I saw it.”

They all turned. An old woman stood outside the open window. She and the others in the crowd had been discreetly listening to the family members’ stories.

Alvan was surprised. “Maggy Hallorn. You saw it? Why didn’t you ever say?”

Maggy was embarrassed. “Because – well, because I wasn’t doing like I should when I saw it. I guess it don’t matter now, as my husband’s been dead all this time, and the fellow I was with too.”

“Well, go on and tell it,” Alvan said. “Here – take a glass to wet your throat.” He passed her a sizable tumbler of whiskey.

“Just a taste,” Maggy said demurely. She promptly knocked back the whole glass. “Well, it must be a good thirty years – or maybe five-six more – and me and my fellow was in this shepherd’s hut up above where it happened. Guess I don’t have to tell what we was doing there: it’s all the same story, that part of it, though I never tired of that tale. I used to…well, anyways, we saw this girl coming up to the field below us. She was… Well, I don’t remember what her name was. But she was a lively, pretty thing about sixteen.”

A woman spoke from the crowd. “Ella Karnilla. That was her name.”

“Who’s that?” Maggie said. “How d’you know what her name was? “

 “Because I’m her daughter.” The crowd parted, revealing a noticeably pregnant woman. She looked as if she were Laury’s sister.

Maggie saw the resemblance, “It’s plain who your daddy was, honey. You can tell that baby you’re carrying what a man his granddaddy was and how you got made from what he did to save your mama’s life. I remember now — it was young Ella for sure. It was her people’s field me and my fellow was in – that was why we noticed her. We saw that she was coming up to look after her mama’s sheep, that was just above us on the mountain, and we was hurrying to get out of there, so she wouldn’t see us. She cut across the fenced field just below us, coming along to where we was. I believe she saw the bull just at the same time I did.”

“I don’t know what he was doing there, and I know for sure he wasn’t supposed to be in that field, because I’d cut across it the same way Ella did, when I was going to see my fellow. I believe it came out later that a fence’d fallen down to let him in. Anyways, Ella saw the bull and he saw her at just about the same time. She slowed a bit and then walked as fast as she could go, but didn’t run, so as not to tease him up, as it’ll do if you run around in front of a bull.”

“Only it didn’t do her no good not to run. Even before that bull was known to be one of the meanest animals around, though good at stud. He was all black, and his horns was both long and wide, which my daddy used to say was always a sign of meanness in cattle. Just as soon as he saw Ella he started to paw on the ground, and he set off after her real quick.”

“When she saw him come Ella ran as fast as she could go, and it looked like she’d make the fence easy; but she set her foot on a stone or a piece of earth that turned under it, and she fell hard. She got right up, but she fell again. It was plain she’d broken or twisted her ankle. Me and my fellow jumped up and ran down the hill towards her, but it looked like we wasn’t going to be able to do nothing but carry poor Ella’s body away. She kept getting up and falling down again, sort of jumping and crawling along to do her damndest to get out of there, but you could see she wasn’t going to make it.”

 “All the while Kel had been riding down the road that ran along side of the field. I hadn’t been looking at him, from having my eyes on Ella and the bull, but it seems like I remember what he looked like better than anything about it. He was wearing one of those wide-brimmed lowland hats, a strange, foreign-looking thing, and riding a big, slick horse. And seeming mighty happy with himself, which is what he always was like. “

“He saw what was happening and set his horse up to the fence like he was thinking to jump it and just ride down and scoop Ella up. But he’s too close to the fence, it’s too high, and he don’t have time to come round and get his speed up. So he made the horse crash right into the fence, jumped down onto the field, hit running, and kept going just as fast as he could go. But it didn’t take nearly as much time for it to happen as it does for me to tell it. He just saw how it was, and the very next thing he was down on the field, all so quick my eye could hardly follow what was going on. “

“Kel ran towards the bull like cattycornered to the way it was going, and he was waving his arms and yelling all the while, trying to turn that bull away from going after Ella. Which you could do with most, but not that bull. He had his head down and was set on goring poor Ella. So Kel just ran right up to him, maybe not knowing what else the hell he could do. And he put out one hand and grabbed at the bull’s horn.”

“What happened next was the damndest thing I ever saw, and I’ve lived long enough to see plenty. It looked like Kel’d jerked that bull’s head right around. But maybe the bull’d finally decided to turn and gore Kel. You could say that the bull put one horn down to hook at Kel, and Kel just sort of helped it along, pushing that horn so it caught in the ground, and the bull broke its own neck, from being running along so fast and all of a sudden getting its horn caught and twisting its neck with all that weight behind it.

“Well, the bull kicked and twitched for a while, but his head was turned halfway around on its neck. It was dead all right. Kel held onto the horns for a while, maybe holding himself up. For when he did let go, he sort of swayed and almost fell. Then he went over to where Ella was lying, just looking up at him. He tottered a little, and when he got to Ella he fell to his knees. He sort of made out like he did it to help Ella up, only I guess he was pretty shaky.

 “Well, my fellow slunk off when he saw it was going to be all right, and I guess I should’ve too. As I had no business but one being there, and my man was always a jealous sort.  I just stood there looking at Kel. He was the biggest, strongest man I ever saw in my life, and even when he come up here about the voting I thought he was still about the best-looking; and in those days, when he was just twenty. . . ” Maggy waved her glass at Kel’s daughter. “Well, it ain’t no surprise you got made, darlin’. A fellow that says hello saving your life by killing a bull with his bare hands ain’t easy to say no to; and when he looks like young Kel did, you’d be a fool to want to. Guess you’d’ve had another half-brother or half-sister from myself, if I’d ever had the time or the chance.”