LITMIR.BIZ

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against their better judgment, the Fellowship Sorcerers had also endorsed today’s return of the princess’s purloined ransom. Lysaer’s avoidance of that truth was duplicitous. Pained by the loyalty due his own king, the ambassador endured through the unjust malignment, while Avenor’s justiciar widened the charges in his sonorous, gravelly bass.

      “What is the Fellowship’s silence, if not evidence of collaboration? By this lack of intervention, events would suggest that the Sorcerers may support all of Arithon’s actions against us.”

      “They gave their vaunted sanction to Rathain’s crown prince,” Etarra’s Lord Harradene allowed. “If the Fellowship stands together as the Shadow Master’s ally, the consequence can’t be dismissed. They may have become corrupted. If they deem the use of dark magecraft as no crime, Prince Lysaer, as the public defender of the innocent, would naturally be obstructed in his legitimate claim to rule Tysan.”

      The clan prisoner’s sharp protest became shouted down by another voice as accented as his own. “Now there’s a braw, canting spiel, well fitted for a mealymouthed lawyer!”

      Mute on the benches, the ambassador from Havish shut his eyes in relief.

      Volatile as spilled flame in the red-and-gold surcoat of Alestron’s unvanquished clan dukes, Mearn s’Brydion, appointed delegate of his brother, sprang up in pacing agitation. “While you bandy conjecture in mincing, neat words, let us pay strict attention to procedure! If this slaughter at the Havens ever happened, where’s hard proof?” He cast suspicious gray eyes toward the sailhand, impervious himself to the looks turned his way by townsmen distrustful of his breeding. “Or will you sheep dressed in velvets let yourselves be gulled by the word of a man disaffected?”

      As the deckhand surged forward, flushed into outrage, Mearn raised a finger like a blade. “I’ve not said you’re a liar! Not outright. Arithon’s a known killer, that much I grant. I witnessed the debacle he caused in our armory. But whether his slaughter of these companies at the Havens took place as a blood crime, or some cruel but expedient act of war, the killing was done on the soil of Shand. Can’t mix your legalities for convenience. Town law won’t apply to a kingdom. Under sovereignty of Shand’s founding charter, as written by the Fellowship of Seven, Prince Arithon’s offense is against Lord Erlien, High Earl of Alland. As caithdein of that realm, the Teir s’Taleyn is charged to uphold justice in the absence of his high king. The question of Prince Arithon’s guilt falls under his province to determine.”

      “What is the old law to our city councils?” cried the plump, ribboned spokesman from Isaer. “Just hot wind and words! The caithdeins’ authority was broken when the uprising threw down crown rule. And even if our mayors cared to bow to dead precedents, has this new evidence against Arithon not tainted the clans’ legal claim? What if the Fellowship’s morals are debased? Shall we wait and watch our cities become victimized?”

      Talk rose, scored through by a treble run of panic. Even the sallow, bored Seneschal of Avenor thumped his stick fist to be heard. “Should we risk being deceived, or stay willfully blind, then suffer the same ruin that leveled whole buildings in Jaelot?”

      From all quarters of the chamber, heads turned. Ones bare and close cropped to accommodate mail, and others fashionably coifed. Earrings swung, and jewelry chinked, as every face trained on the Prince of the Light. He alone could speak for both factions, through hard-won respect and ties to an old blood inheritance.

      Yet it was Lord Shien, joint captain of Avenor’s field troops, whose remark stormed the floor into quiet. “If the barbarian before this council was sent as an envoy to declare his chieftain’s enmity, we have sure trouble here at home!” A large man, with meaty, chapped knuckles and a frown that seemed stitched in place, he raised the bull bellow he used to cow recruits. “And whether or not the Master of Shadow has embraced wickedness, or sacrificed lives to buy power, dissent from the clans will give him a free foothold here to exploit. We dare not allow such a weakness. Not before such dire threat.”

      Attention swung back. Like blood in the water amidst schooling sharks, men fastened their outrage upon the offender held bound within reach. “Sentence the archer! Condemn him for treason! Let him die as example to his brethren!”

      “Do that,” interceded the long-faced justiciar, “and according to town edict, he dies on the scaffold, broken one limb at a time.”

      “He was sent to contest a legitimate point of law!” Mearn s’Brydion warned. “Take his life in dishonor, and your clans here will never be reconciled.”

      “A child knows better than to break into state chambers bearing arms!” a southcoast mayor bristled back.

      Inexorably, sentiment aligned. The delivery of the chieftain’s message had been insolent, a mockery of civilized practice. No townsman remembered the bygone tradition, when a ceremonial arrow gave symbolic exchange of a high king’s censure from his liegemen. Where those old ways once forestalled needless bloodshed, now, they were seen as provocation. The trade guilds had suffered too many losses in clan raids to trifle with forgotten forms of etiquette. Nor was Lord Shien inclined toward forgiveness. Not when his divisions had been held home in Tysan, guarding the roads from the spree of vengeful ambushes launched after Lady Maenalle’s execution. His blood burned in balked rage for those companies marched south, every comrade in arms to perish untimely of a sorcerer’s fell tactics in Vastmark.

      Only the ambassador from Havish regarded the clan prisoner with pity. The man waited, his stance easy. His attention never shifted from the face of the prince on the dais.

      Lysaer s’Ilessid withheld intervention. Serene as smoothed marble, his form touched in light like the finished planes of a masterpiece, he allowed the dissonant chaos of argument to roll and rebound and gain force. He listened for the moment when his disparate factions became unified, their imprecations a shouted resonance of passion, crying for blood in redress.

      Then he held up one hand. A spark snapped from his palm, the smallest manifestation of his gift. But the flare of illumination cracked like a whip through raw noise and engendered immediate silence.

      Before venomous animosity, he stayed detached, his diamonds like frost on a snowfield. Then he inclined his head to the captive before him. “You’re fully aware, a vote cast now will condemn you. Town law has small mercy. You could suffer a brutal public maiming before death.”

      The clansman said nothing.

      Lysaer used the pause. While the atmosphere simmered in fierce anticipation, his study encompassed every minister, hard breathing in velvets and furs. The officers of war endured his regard, unflinching, then the mayors, with their gnawing, hidden fear. The prince they had signed into power was royal, closer in ties to clan ancestry than they wished. The price of their protection from the Spinner of Darkness might come at the cost of their coveted autonomy.

      Yet to refute the traditions of city law outright, Lysaer had to know, he would flaw the amity of their support. Foremost a statesman, he showed no hesitation. “The case of your clans might have fared best by waiting. Before you shot down your colorful ultimatum, you could have heard out my answer to this document.” He fingered the torn scroll of parchment in unfeigned regret, as he added, “For you see, I have no intent to accept the burden of crown rule at this time.”

      After the first, indrawn gasp of surprise, a stunned stillness, as if the overheated air had hardened to glue, with every man gaping at the prince.

      Lysaer showed long-suffering equanimity. “There are truths to this conflict against the Master of Shadow even I have withheld from general knowledge. I wish above all to avoid seeding panic. After the failure of our late campaign, we need order more than ever to rebuild.”

      He had his factions riveted, the ambassador saw, struck by a surge of admiration.

      “Arithon s’Ffalenn may have been born a man, but he has foregone his humanity,” Prince Lysaer resumed. “His birth gift presents an unspeakable threat. This, paired with his use of unprincipled magic, redoubles our peril before him.” Lest the quiet give way to fresh altercation, Lysaer delivered his solution. “I sit before

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