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.