had been his for so long, “you have been accused of treason. The charges have been considered by a jury of the lords secular and temporal of the Empire and of the Church of Charis. The evidence has been carefully sifted, and you have been given the opportunity to testify in your own defense and to name and summon any witnesses of your choice. That jury’s verdict has been rendered. Is there anything you would wish to say to us or to God before you hear it?”
“Your Majesty,” his voice was more than a little hoarse, a far cry from the silky, unctuous instrument it once had been, “I don’t know why my enemies have told you such lies! I swear to you on my own immortal soul that I’m innocent- innocent!- of all the crimes charged against me! Yes, I corresponded with Earl Craggy Hill and others in Corisande, but never to conspire against you or His Majesty! These were men I’d known and worked with for years, Your Majesty. Men whose loyalty to you and His Majesty I knew was suspect. I sought only to discover their plans, to ferret out any plots they might be hatching in order to bring them to your attention!”
He rose on his knees, extending both arms in a gesture of supplication and innocence.
“You know what pressures have been brought to bear on all of us to renounce our oaths to you and to the Crown, Your Majesty. You know the Temple and the Temple Loyalists insist those oaths cannot bind us in the face of the Grand Vicar’s pronunciation of excommunication against you and His Majesty and interdict against the entire Empire. Yet I swear to you that I have observed every provision of my oath, given to His Majesty aboard ship off this very city when I swore fealty to your Crown of my own free will, in the face of no threat or coercion! Whatever others may or may not have done, I have stood firm in the Empire’s service!”
He fell silent, staring at her imploringly, and she looked back with no expression at all. She let the silence linger once more, then spoke.
“You speak eloquently of your loyalty to us and Emperor Cayleb,” she said then, coldly, “but the documents in your own hand which have come into our possession speak even more eloquently. The testimony of the Earl of Swayle further indicts you, and so do the recorded serial numbers of the weapons which were delivered here, in Zebediah, into your own possession… yet ended in a warehouse in Telitha. Weapons which would have been used to kill Soldiers and Marines in our service had the conspirators in Corisande succeeded in their aims. No witness you have called has been able to refute that evidence, nor have you. We are not inclined to believe your lies at this late date.”
“Your Majesty, please! ”
He shook his head, beginning to sweat. Sharleyan was vaguely surprised it had taken this long for those beads of perspiration to appear, but then she realized Nahrmahn had been right. Even at this late date Symmyns hadn’t quite believed he wouldn’t be able to fast talk his way out yet again.
“You were given every opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty to us and to Emperor Cayleb,” she said flatly. “You chose instead to demonstrate your dis loyalty. We cannot control what passes through the minds and hearts of our subjects-no merely mortal monarch can hope to do that, nor would we even if it were within our power. But we can reward faithful service, and we can and must-and will -punish treachery and betrayal. Recall the words of your oath to His Majesty. To be our ‘true man, of heart, will, body, and sword.’ Those were the words of the oath you swore ‘without mental or moral reservation.’ Do you recall them?”
He stared at her wordlessly, his lips bloodless.
“No?” She gazed back at him, and then, finally, she smiled. It was a thin smile, keener than a dagger, and he flinched before it. “Then perhaps you remember what he swore to you in return, in his name and in our own. ‘We will extend protection against all enemies, loyalty for fealty, justice for justice, fidelity for fidelity, and punishment for oath-breaking. May God judge us and ours as He judges you and yours.’ You chose not to honor your oath to us, but we most assuredly will honor ours to you.”
“Your Majesty, I have a wife! A daughter! Would you deprive her of a father?! ”
Despite herself, Sharleyan winced internally at that reminder of her own loss. But there was a difference this time, she told herself, and no sign of that wince was allowed to touch her expression.
“We will grieve for your daughter,” she told him in a voice of iron. “Yet our grief will not stay the hand of justice.”
He wrenched his gaze from hers, staring around the throne room as if seeking some voice which might speak in his defense or issue some plea for clemency even at this late date. There was none. The men and women most likely to have allied themselves with him were the ones least likely to risk their own skins on his behalf, and the last color drained out of his face as he saw the opaque eyes looking back at him.
“The jury which has inquired into your guilt or innocence has found you guilty of each and every charge against you, Tohmys Symmyns, once Grand Duke of Zebediah.” Sharleyan Ahrmahk’s voice was chipped flint, and his eyes snapped back to her face like frightened rabbits. “You are stripped of your position and attainted for treason. Your wealth is forfeit to the Crown for your crimes, and your lands and your titles escheat to the Crown, to be kept or bestowed wherever the Crown, in its own good judgment, shall choose. And it is the sentence of the Crown that you be taken from this throne room to a place of execution and there beheaded and buried in the unconsecrated ground reserved for traitors. We will hear no plea for clemency. There will be no appeal from this decision. You will be permitted access to clergy of your choice so that you may confess your sins, if such is your desire, but it is our command that this sentence shall be executed before sundown of this very day, and may God have mercy upon your soul.”
She stood, a slender dark-haired flame in white, slashed by that violet stole, rubies and sapphires glittering like pools of crimson and blue fire in her crown of state, gazing down at the white-faced, stricken man she had just condemned to death.
And then she turned, Merlin Athrawes a silent presence at her back, and walked out of that throne room’s ringing silence without another word. . VIII.
Monastery of Saint Zherneau, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis
It was raining-gently, for a Tellesberg afternoon-as Father Paityr Wylsynn knelt in the kitchen garden of the Monastery of Saint Zherneau. He felt his plain, borrowed habit growing progressively heavier with moisture as the blowing mist washed over him, but he didn’t care. In fact, he treasured it. It wasn’t a cold, drenching rain, after all. More like a caress, possibly even a kiss from God’s world, he thought with a touch of whimsy as his muddy hands extracted weeds from neat rows of staked tomato vines and the warm, earthy, growing smell of wet leaves and rich, moist soil rose about him like the Archangel Sondheim’s incense.
It had been too long since he’d done simple work, he thought. He’d been so wrapped up in his duties and his responsibilities-his probably arrogant belief that so many critical things depended upon him- that he’d forgotten even the greatest and holiest man imaginable (which he most decidedly was not) was only one more worker in a far greater Worker’s garden. If Saint Zherneau’s had done no more than remind him of that simple fact, he would still have owed Archbishop Maikel and Father Zhon enormous thanks.
But that wasn’t all Saint Zherneau’s had done.
He moved forward a few feet to reach a fresh batch of weeds and raised his face to the tiny, delicate fingertips of the rain. He had two more rows of tomatoes to do, and then the squash. That was going to be more of a penance, since if there was one vegetable he detested, it was squash.
I suppose it’s proof of the Archangels’ workmanship that they created people to be different enough that there’s somebody to like every edible plant, he thought. I’m not too sure why they wasted the effort on squash, but I’m sure it was part of God’s plan. I’m not so sure a taste for brussels sprouts was, though, come to think of it.
He smiled and raised a clod of wet earth in his fingers. He looked down at it and squeezed gently, compressing it into a smooth oval, and for the first time in far too long he felt another, far greater hand shaping his own life.
“Well, what do you think?” Father Zhon Byrkyt asked.
He sat gazing out the window at the red-haired, youthful priest pulling weeds in the monastery’s garden. The young man seemed oblivious to the gently falling rain, although Byrkyt doubted that was the case. In fact, from how slowly and carefully Father Paityr was working, Byrkyt suspected he was actually enjoying it.
“You know my opinion,” Father Ahbel Zhastrow said. “I was inclined in his favor before he ever arrived, and I’ve seen nothing to change that opinion.”
