The room (or was it cell?) allotted to Gherrit was only one stair and two corridors from the sergeant’s office. He was uncertain what to expect; was he to be treated as a witness or a suspect? The room leaned more towards the latter, as it was comfortable and had an open window, albeit one that looked on to the grim courtyard walls. The Brahnzhever was known for its cloths (Gherrit had accounted the value of them some hundreds of times) and the room was bright with colour, from the wall-hangings to a red and white coverlet on the bed in a bold rocks and clouds design. It also had a stout door which his escort locked on leaving. Gherrit did not mind the click of the lock, as he had no intention of escaping. Instead he kicked off his shoes and lay down on the bed. It was soft, the walls were unmoving, the ceiling was plain white and there was no beaked demon posing questions. He could relax after days of anxiety. Gherrit put his hands behind his head, let the ceiling soothe him and let his mind drift until a knock dragged him back to full awareness.
The lock clicked and a youth entered with Gherrit’s bag from the Seeking Forgiveness on the Waters in his arms. When the youth left Gherrit was staring at his re-united possessions with delight. He could change his clothes. He could clean his teeth. He could tidy up his hair and put on a new hair-tie. There were fresh socks in there. Gherrit headed for the bathroom.
A blissful hour later he was sitting by the window braiding his hair when there was another knock, the door clicked open and not one but two people entered. A frown creased Gherrit’s brow. It seemed that witnesses’ (or suspects’) rooms could be entered without permission. He might as well be lounging on a street bench. The two were first a guard to judge from the sword at his waist and the blue, gold and white sash, and second a older woman whose green dress and red hat marked her as a healer. The colours around her were unusually calm and even in their flow.
“Messer Yunierkiz,” she said. “Physician-Mage Tezhedus asks that you attend on her. She believes that you can assist in treating Fremin Dtaie tel Jhaugusis.”
“Call me Gherrit, and I am not a Messer,” Gherrit corrected her. “Of course I will attend but I am forbidden to pass the gates.”
“The ensign here has a pass that covers you until sunset,” she told him briskly, so Gherrit tied up his hair, pulled on his shoes and followed her out, the ensign close behind. Gherrit’s wristband alerted the guards at the gate by emitting a cloud of pink vapour, the ensign produced the pass and they were allowed through. Through the gloomy gate-tunnel, a short bridge over the ditch and they were in a busy market square largely devoted to food. His escort gave him no time to inspect the fruit or smell the spices but hustled on along below the wall. After a hundred paces they turned into a residential street where narrow brick houses crowded close, then through an arch into the rear courtyard of a substantial mansion. Stone columns supported a loggia around three sides, two stories above showed rows of broad windows, a fountain poured water into linked basins and then into a sunken pool where pale fish lazed about. The woman led him straight across to a hallway whose blue and green tiles have it an underwater feel, up a stair and along to a panelled door. This gave on to an ante-room where the ensign was asked to wait, while Gherrit was taken through to a room where Fremin lay on a high bed surrounded by a cluster of physicians. Gherrit was alarmed to see that the web of blue lines now covered her entire leg and the black outline within was thicker and more distinct.
A stout teak-skinned woman with a tired face, very short dark hair and the three green and single purple ribbons of a senior Physician-Mage turned as he came in. “Ah, young man, Gherrit isn’t it? Fremin tells us you can actually see what afflicts her?”
“I can,” Gherrit acknowledged. “I see a web of blue lines in a close mesh over her leg, and underneath them the black outline of a leg like that of the creature that stabbed her.”
“Can you see colours around her? You can? You can see auras and the weavings of the ether and are not a trained mage? Remarkable, but not the immediate issue. I would like to talk to you later but now, could you draw what you see?”
“On paper?”
“No no, on the leg. Trace over the lines. Here, I have one of the styluses we use for this – I use it to mark where I am going to cut in surgeries.” She offered him a stylus which Gherrit took gingerly. Not only did he feel awkward about drawing on Fremin but also female legs were barely familiar to him. In Daruz Alman people kept their lower limbs decently covered and here was Fremin bare from the thigh to the toes.
“Gherrit, just draw the lines,” Fremin told him, and he approached and began to trace the blue web. It was slow work, oddly both intimate and public and not made easier by the
murmurs of the physicians and the occasional gasp and twitch from Fremin when he hit a ticklish spot. When he finished the last blue line (a short thin one that curled around the little toe and across the sole of the foot, causing several twitches and a strangled giggle), he was handed another stylus and asked to trace the black lines. This went a little quicker. When at last he stood back the physicians crowded close, the senior frowning as her finger hovered over his work.
“This makes things a lot clearer. We have been concentrating on the initial wound site but the keys to undoing this are not there but here, see, in this knot, and here, where this junction clearly ties together this minor pattern, which feeds, yes, this ...”. The conversation quickly veered into the technical, interspersed with exchanges in languages Gherrit did not know. It was some minutes before the physician realised he was still there and asked him to wait in the ante-room.
“What are they doing in there?” asked the ensign, a young man of around Gherrit’s age, his curiosity escaping the bounds imposed by his sash.
“Trying to cure the effects of being stabbed by a demon with a beak,” Gherrit told him. The ensign was impressed and a little alarmed. Gherrit assured him that the demon had not accompanied the patient and was not likely to manifest in Brahnker City. No sooner had he finished speaking then there came a series of harsh caws from the next room, increasing in volume. This was followed by rapid chirps and then a long drawn-out honk. The two looked at each other. “If it comes in, don’t ask it questions. Just grab it by the neck and whack it against a wall,” Gherrit advised.
After a tense wait the door opened and Fremin strode in, the sheet wrapped around her waist as an impromptu skirt. She hauled it up to the knee with a cry of “Look, Gherrit. You gave them the key. I’m fixed and free of the damned thing!” Her calves were indeed clear skin, unmarred by lines either blue or black.
“The next thing,” she went on “is new clothes. I've been two hundred years in these clothes, the last part spent in a tomb, a cage full of bones, a mountaintop and a ruined cellar. I refuse to appear before a superior court – or any court – in them!”
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“You have to go before the court?” asked Gherrit.
“As witness. A messenger told me just as I got here. The Mage told him I would not be appearing anywhere until cured, so I suppose I have to go now. But clothes first. They used a spell that made my breeches fall apart, and I can’t go out in a sheet. Can you lend me some money?”
Gherrit reminded her that their possessions were currently in custody, including his money-pouch. The ensign had averted his eyes, but now coughed.
“My mother is an administrator here. They keep a stock of clothes for situations such as this and can also make small loans. I can take you there if the Healers agree.”
* * * *
Gherrit was escorted back to his room and stayed there alone for the next two days. For an hour he just enjoyed the peace then, as he lay there, the last few days replayed in his mind. He had been kidnapped, certainly, but then he had rescued himself, kept the demon from stabbing him, led Fremin out of the delving (alright, maybe with one or two mishaps) and assisted in curing her. And he without a single fingers’ twist of high craft. Not bad for a frame-jockey. He basked in the accomplishment for a little. Then there was the question of why Messer Pranik had sent him to deliver a cursed tablet. He no longer believed Pranik’s story about documents and seals and witnessing. Who was the recipient? He no longer had the chest and had left looking at the instructions to the last leg of the voyage, wanting to preserve the sense of freedom as long as possible. Would he continue? If if he did, what then? He would not return to his former life and would find a new one. He sketched scenarios, most fanciful, for a time.
The next puzzle was his new-found ability to see the weavings of the ether. He could raise his arm and check the strands running through the wristband or lift his head and examine the safeguards on the lock or, if he squinted and the wall was in shadow, see the much larger patterns that surrounded the courtyard gate. It seemed a useful skill, but he had no idea – beyond his experience with Fremin’s leg – how to apply it. That too would have to wait until he could find the right advice.
A tract in his native Pallo had been delivered with the first meal. With nothing better to do and in the hope it might distract him, Gherrit now picked it up. It was a thin book, cheaply printed, titled The Soul’s Journey, or First Steps on the Path. He flipped to the first page and began reading.
Gherrit had spent a year as a temple novice after his parents died. It was a better choice than letting the city find him work, kept him fed and housed and might have led to a career had he shown any aptitude for land-craft. Lessons in basic theology had been part of the price. He had suffered through lessons on the different Powers – those of of ploughed field, pasture, garden and orchard, then those of streams, creeks and marsh, those who were immanent in animals small and large, domestic or wild, footed, furred or clawed, on, under or above the earth, those of the earth itself and the crawling things within or, mightiest of all, of the restless seas. What the temples asked for above all was sensitivity, that the land be listened to and humans advised as to its temper. When content the land yielded its bounty, when roused its wrath could bring all undone.
The theology of Sebres Brahn took a different turn. Where other traditions were concerned with human behaviour insofar as it pleased or upset the land, Sebres Brahn had preached right conduct as the way to elevate the soul, sending it on a journey to some mysterious final destination. Gherrit could not understand much of the argument and found the discussion of the further reaches of the afterlife unconvincing. After all, while everyone knew that souls persisted after death, sometimes staying around but mostly going on, as far as Gherrit knew no-one knew what happened when they finally became unreachable. Yet the argument was appealing in its stress on responsibility for oneself and the need to be active in improvement. It led Gherrit to wonder if he had been too passive, too accommodating in life. Messer Pranik had played him for a fool; should he seek revenge? Sebres Brahn advised against it as an ignoble motive and injurious to the soul, but the notion of letting things lie gnawed at Gherrit.
* * * *
On the third day he had another visitor. The door opened on a person so flamboyant as to hurt the eyes. The man sported long curls of a glossy black, a luxuriant red beard and fierce moustache, a crimson waistcoat over a vibrant green shirt whose sleeves ballooned out at the shoulders, full trousers striped red and silver and boots glossed to a shine that reflected his attire. He swept off a high-crowned hat, placed it over his heart and spread his fingers across it in the manner of a Pallo grandee, then addressed Gherrit in his native tongue.
“Noted Gherrit, if I may? My name is Seyastrik, Fielne Seyastrik, and I have the honour to be city-friend to great Daruz Alman here in Brahnker City. I hope you will grant me an hour of your time?”
Gherrit rose from his reading place by the window, flustered. Was this person mocking him? He was a lowly accounting clerk, not a gentleman of rank. The apparition advanced into the room and, with a “May I?” placed the hat on the table where Gherrit ate his meals and pulled out a chair. He sat, admired his boots for a moment and then grinned at Gherrit.
“The Brahnaks don’t do advertising. No window illusions, no floating billboards, not even a calling doorknob. So I do it in person. ‘Whose that handsome fellow in the lovely shirt? Why. It’s Seyastrik the broker, whose bills are honoured on sight from Kaber to Frouan and beyond.’ Don’t let it put you off. I’m here to advise on your court case tomorrow.”
After another admiring glance at the boots Seyastrik went on “The authorities here tell me of any case involving a resident of our city. For the most part these are uninteresting – waterfront brawls or routine commercial disputes, and I leave them to the courts. Your case caught my eye at once. The Court of Theological Equity? I had to have a legal acquaintance explain it to me. Trafficking with a demon? Whether an underman has a reasoning soul? My boy, these are matters well beyond the usual.”
“It was an accident,” began Gherrit, then switched to “Tell me, how much trouble am I in?”
Seyastrik checked the lacquer on his nails for chips. “ The Brahnaks take commerce with demons seriously, but lack of intent is a defence. The pesky things have been known to turn up un-summoned. In the matter of the underman? None at all, as far as I can make out. You are required only to witness to its conduct and perhaps as to the whereabouts of the Mage Saore. Where is he, by the way?”
“Dead,” replied Gherrit flatly. “Dead and eaten by crabs in the Hansippif Wild.”
Seyastrik sat up straighter. “Tell me all.”
Gherrit hesitated then thought that since his story would come out in court there was no point in concealing anything. Further, he trusted Seyastrik’s aura, which had a considered look to it. He told of Messer Pranik’s offer, the voyage, Saore’s outrage over the removal of the underman from his custody, his kidnapping, escape and the discovery of Saore’s body and of Sthirothh. The bloodied corpse was not a pleasant memory. Seyastrik listened gravely, not interrupting except to confirm that Gherrit was (had been?) employed by Pranik & Sguirres of Daruz Alman. Gherrit went on to the delving, his revival of Fremin, their final escape and rapid dispatch to Brahnker City.
“A harrowing journey indeed, and one fraught with peril,” commented Seyastrik. “If you repeat that tale with your hand on the stone I can see no reason for the court to find anything wrong in your conduct. The court is made up of four Luminaries versed in Brahnak theology and three lay judges, and the Luminaries may be interested in the gift the demon gave you.”
A worried Gherrit asked what punishments and appeals Brahnak law allowed. It was some comfort to learn that the Brahnzhever did not inflict capital or corporal punishments, less so to find that extended terms of ‘contemplation’ were usual, and foreigners might be required to work for a set period.
“However a Court of Theological Equity has wide latitude according to my legal friend. It is concerned most of all with finding the correct theological principles to apply in novel circumstances, in this case the status of the underman Gzhunghik. I am informed that Gzhunghik is happily bashing iron while awaiting his fate.”
“Her fate,” corrected Gherrit absently. Seyastrik said he hoped the Brahnaks did not try to find her a husband and went on to give Gherrit a quick brief on court procedure.