November 25th
Merrily first saw the Rose Tower from a great distance, peeking above the tops of trees and low buildings around the Eldenway. The glass panels of the observatory at its peak caught the light of the setting sun to the west, reflecting it back in a tiny pinprick like an early star in the growing dusk. For many miles, that was the only hint of the royal city that could be seen at all. Then, gradually, the other spires and tall rooftops began to emerge beneath it. Uellodon grew out of the ground before her like an eager fungus.
She thought back to the day, a year and a half ago, when she, Cyrus, Wigglus, Frederick, and Rolly had first ridden up to these gates. There had been a terrible press of beggars at the roadside then, and it had seemed at first that their little party would be swarmed under. But then a man had emerged from their mass, dressed as shabbily as any but with the poise and confidence of a king. He had raised one hand, and the desperate crowd had melted away in fear. He had given her the small token that she wore now under her shirt. And then he had disappeared.
Now, that man rode next to her carriage as they approached the city, idly humming some nameless tune, shifting uncomfortably in the saddle he had occupied for two weeks of travel, and otherwise behaving like a perfectly ordinary human being. He even picked his nose occasionally.
She had given up trying to understand Boris. He was too slippery. He had evidently undergone some preposterous metamorphosis from an eerie beggar into the trusted secretary of Hobb the Wise, attending his master whenever he left the coach and scribing notes, correspondence, and drafts of the First Minister’s speeches. Gone were the patched robe and hood that he had worn when Merrily first knew him and his companions. Now, he dressed in the sober, dark suit and small white cravat of a professional clerk. The voices in her head had staked out wildly opposing views of the man; whether he was a demon or a prophet or merely an ambitious scribe, they delighted in arguing endlessly. But no part of Merrily could suppress the dark shudder than ran though her whenever he looked at her.
A caravan of Foregrub wagons was ahead of them at the north gate, and there was a wait while paperwork was checked and cargo inspected. And then the wagons moved on, and it was their turn. No men stopped her at the gate, this time, to grope her and take her money. The People’s Watch, with their red and black kerchiefs, had been replaced by red-cloaked men of the Republican Guard with long spears, breastplates, and three-cornered hats. But their faces had the same hard, uncaring look. Seeing the First Minister’s coach and retinue, they snapped to attention and permitted the official party to pass by.
“They’d really look better with those new ‘guns’ the Snugg people are giving to their mercenaries, don’t you think?” remarked Hobb with a sly smile, nodding at one of the smartly-dressed Republican Guard.
“Why don’t you buy some from Rufus Snugg?” asked Merrily, with a sly smile of her own.
Hobb grimaced. “Outrageously, they won’t sell them to the Republic—or anyone else, for that matter. And Rufus Snugg won’t let the designs and formulas out from where he’s brooding on them, in the bowels of that old mine in the north. Little surprise, given Snugg’s relationship with Anne and the Charter Council, but baldly illegal. We’ll put a stop to it soon enough. In the meantime, our own chemists are working on replicating the formulas and designs.”
“Any success?”
Hobb shrugged. “You, Mr. Miller, and Anne Linsey Gray will find out when the Republican Guard appears at the gates of Green Bridge carrying them—or when you come to terms with the Republic.”
He made a tent with his hands in front of his face, and lowered his head slightly, looking up at her through thick, gray eyebrows. His eyes glinted in the dim interior of the carriage. Hobb had, mercifully, refrained from arguing politics with her during most of the two-week trip from Roosterfoot, but could not restrain himself from slipping in the occasional jab. Rather than take the bait, Merrily looked out of the coach’s windows, watching with amusement the soldiers’ visible discomfort as Boris passed near them. He turned his head, looked directly at her, and winked.
Hobb had also refused to say anything more about giant-men, or the returned exile, or whatever else he had seen outside Roosterfoot. Merrily began to wonder if perhaps the First Minister had been putting her on after all, or even had let something slip in a moment of excitement that he now regretted.
It was already dusk when they passed under the great northern gate in Uellodon’s tall, gray walls. A temporary-looking wooden bridge spanned a wide ditch before the gate, while a pile of rubble clogged the ditch where the permanent bridge should have been. Merrily glanced at Hobb, whose bleak face discouraged any inquiry.
In the dim light, the city appeared tidy once again. The graffiti and pamphlets that had littered the walls and streets on her last visit were gone, and people moved about in apparently contented clumps, or ones and twos. There were queues here and there at shops, but gone were the brown-robed Ecclesia priests handing out bread to long lines of desperately hungry people. Merrily tried to read the faces of the passers-by, wondering if she would see the same fear and desperation that had animated them when she was last here. But she found it wearying to stare at strangers in the fading light, and gave up.
“I want to go to the High Court,” she said to Hobb. “I want to talk to Wigglus right away.”
Hobb shook his head. “All in good time, Mrs. Hunter. I appreciate your desire to help us solve this problem, but it can wait until tomorrow morning. I have sent word to have quarters prepared for you at the New Academy; you will be my guest while you are in the city, and Chancellor Pearsy will look after your needs. As a diplomat, you may come and go as you please, of course; but for your own safety, you will be escorted.”
Merrily looked straight ahead, trying to ignore the debate that raged on in her head and the twisting fear in her stomach. A thought began to grow that Hobb had outmaneuvered her.
✽✽✽
The Old High Court of Uelland had been constructed to resemble, in style and function, a fortified castle. The front gate was flanked by two enormous guard towers of thick stone, capped by conical roofs that rose high above the walls. The walls, too, were of thick stone blocks, and the windows on the ground floor were narrow. Two tall, sturdy-looking doors of wood, reinforced with iron, barred entrance. Battlements ringed the tops of the walls, and a tall, elegant roof at sharp angles loomed behind them. Merrily could see figures moving about on the battlements, though few details were visible from so far below.
Only about half a mile separated the Old High Court from Palace Naridium, and so Merrily had little time to absorb the details of the city in sunlight. But it was apparent that, at least for the blocks around the courthouse, the residents had been evacuated and a military perimeter set up. Red-clad guardsmen were posted in squads behind barricades facing the courthouse, with both their crossbows and their own bodies under tension. She could see more red-clad figures posted on rooftops of the buildings around the open square surrounding the courthouse. Their eyes watched closely as she, Hobb, and a small squad of guards approached the square.
Two tall bronze statues flanked the short walk from the street to the gates of the Old High Court. They were both women, robed in the classical style of early Dusk Imperial antiquity. One of the women held a shield before her, and the other raised a sword upward, point out and away from the court building. Their faces were sad, but determined.
“You may go in,” said Hobb quietly, standing next to her. “They have not attacked anyone who approached the gates, in the past; the gates simply remain shut. Two of the King’s Counselors are inside. They were attending a court hearing when the incident began. They aren’t hostages, but I believe they’ve remained out of some obscure sense of ethical duty. Killbrand tried to explain it, but the abstractions involved stretch even my appetite for pure theory. At any rate, they may be helpful to you. Good luck, Mrs. Hunter.”
His eyes fell to the ground, and he looked as though he wanted to say more; but instead he turned away and walked briskly back toward the nearest barricade, his tall frame sweeping guardsmen away from him like some black-clad broom.
He is a broom of the devil, insisted the Second Voice. He sweeps the unwitting into the dustbin of perdition, where they will be dumped out with the rest of the refuse into the Eternal Trash Pit.
It’s a bit laborious, honestly, criticized the First Voice.
Couldn’t he be sweeping away the human garbage from the streets instead? suggested the Third. Maybe humanity needs a good sweeping, so that the right people make the right rules for a change.
Merrily walked slowly up to the gates. The reinforced doors remained shut.
“My name is Merrily Hunter!” she called up to them. “I wish to enter and speak with Wigglus Snort!”
There was a silence from above, and the doors did not move. She stood her ground, waiting. The gazes of the Republican Guard behind her seemed to bore into her back.
And then, after what seemed hours, the two doors swung outward slowly; she saw that they were made of oak timbers at least six inches thick. Beyond was a shallow passage with a portcullis at the far end. And beyond that, standing erect in a bright chamber beyond the entryway, was Wigglus.
He was thinner than she remembered him, and his curly hair was a bit longer, in need of a trim and a brush. His clothing was torn and dirty, and several small scars tarnished his statuesque face. He wore the medallion of the sword and shield above a rather battered cravat. But it was Wigglus. He smiled at her wryly through the bars of the portcullis.
When the portcullis raised, she rushed into his arms. He held her tightly, and she clung to him fiercely for just a moment.
“I missed you,” she said, pulling back and looking into his startling, emerald-green eyes.
“I told you we’d meet again, Merrily,” he replied with a smile. “But I’m afraid my foresight didn’t extend to the exact circumstances, or I’d have warned you to stay away. Or to bring an army with you.”
“I wouldn’t stay away, and I can’t bring an army. What happened here? And what happened to your face?”
He motioned for her to follow him. “I’ll tell you while we walk. I have a small office on the top floor. It isn’t much, but it’s a place we can sit and talk awhile.”
The entrance chamber of the courthouse was a towering space, with its ceiling nearly fifty feet above their heads. Paintings of old men and women in black robes decorated the walls, interspersed occasionally with statues. The floor was of brilliant white marble, and a large, round window of stained glass near the ceiling admitted softly tinted light. Somewhere nearby a man’s voice was speaking in a hypnotic cadence, its volume calibrated to carry to a large room. The speaker was using Uellish, but it was full of words like “notwithstanding” and “heretofore” and “equitable estoppel.”
“The court is in session,” said Wigglus, nodding his head toward a large double-door that was closed, from which emerged the man’s voice. “Actually, they’ve been in session without break since the seventh of October. The justices and clerks and attorneys are taking it in shifts. My shift is coming up in half an hour, so I can’t talk for long.”
Other men and women, dressed in the sober black coats of attorneys and clerks, moved through the marble-clad corridors of the courthouse. Many carried handfuls of papers with them, and some argued good-naturedly with each other. Most greeted Wigglus politely as they moved passed, addressing him as ‘Attorney Snort.’
Wigglus turned and started up a narrow stair set into one of the interior walls.
“Why has the High Court been in such a long session?” asked Merrily curiously. “You mean to say they haven’t stopped at night, or for meals?”
“Not for a moment,” said Wigglus over his shoulder as they climbed. “That’s why we take it in shifts. The KCs do as well. There are only two of them, so they have to take longer shifts.”
The narrow stair went up for four floors, and then opened out into a hallway, much less grand than the marble corridors on the ground level. Still, it was well lit with oil lamps and natural light from windows at the end, and it was clean. It smelled of books and old wood and oil. Wigglus stopped at an unremarkable door; it had a small placard that read: “Snort, Towel, & Breakthumb.” He opened the door and led her into a modest office, cluttered with bookshelves and dominated by a large desk covered in papers. He tidied some of the papers off a wooden chair and offered it to her.
“I’m afraid I’ve let the place go a bit, as John Towel and Davey Breakthumb are on the outside,” he apologized. “We’ve carried on with some of the smaller cases, but mainly with the Foregrub and Quimble matter.”
“Why has the court been in session for so long?” Merrily asked again. “You told me how, but not why.”
Wigglus sat behind the desk and hunched over. The window behind him left his face in shadows, and he seemed suddenly old and tired.
“By long tradition and precedent, no one may lawfully interrupt a sitting court—not even the King. The Crown has respected this rule for centuries, even during the crisis between King Gordon and the Magistrates. It was only after the Magistrates got tired and suspended their session that Gordon had them exiled from the city. We’re determined not to make that mistake.”
“Hobb didn’t mention this. He just said you’d barricaded yourselves in the Old High Court.”
Wigglus looked at her narrowly. “And you took his word to be complete? I doubt the First Minister would lie you to outright, Merrily, but his selection of facts is tailored to his view of the world. The two KCs who are in here take their shifts in the courtroom to prevent the Crown from being declared in default, true, but they also attend so that the court session can legally continue. That should tell you more about the power of the courts than Hobb would admit. Those two men would much rather be home with their wives and children, and they are free to leave any time—but the minute they show their faces outside the Old High Court, the Republican Guard will storm this place and arrest the justices. So they stay.”
“What is this session all about?” asked Merrily curiously. “What have you been arguing about nonstop for all these weeks?”
“Foregrub and Quimble,” he answered with a grimace. “One of my cases originally, but I’m afraid it’s gotten a bit out of hand. The Crown seized all their assets and took control of their operations throughout Uelland. I won’t bore you with the grubby details, but it’s illegal in about a dozen different ways. Messrs. Foregrub and Quimble themselves have been imprisoned at Hoel since May of last year. On the seventh of October, Justice Woodbrow finally denied the Crown’s motion to dismiss the case and proceeded to set a trial date. Hobb tried to have him arrested while he was still delivering the judgment from the bench, and there was a riot—every lawyer in the building flooded into the courtroom and overwhelmed the Republican Guard. Woodbrow never stopped talking from the bench throughout the whole brawl, and when it was over, he shifted the hearing directly into pre-trial motions.”
He gestured ruefully at the scars on his face. “I’m afraid these weren’t from some grim-faced Republican Guardsman, though. During the fighting I tripped over Attorney Hamhock and landed face-first on a glass pitcher. They don’t teach brawling at the Inns of Court.” Then his face grew serious again. “Fortunately, a few of us had suspected that something like this might happen, and had laid in food stores. There are few weapons, though—only what the bailiffs had with them.”
She blinked. “How does this end, Wigglus? How are you going to walk out of here?”
He shrugged. “No one knows. But the right way is for the Crown to release Messrs. Foregrub and Quimble, give them back their property and control of their companies, and pay reparations.”
“That will never happen,” said Merrily firmly. “You know that, Wigglus. Be realistic. The most you can hope for is some kind of settlement that lets you and Hobb both save face. That’s part of the legal process, right? Settling disputes between people so they don’t have to keep fighting and risk more damage?”
He looked at her seriously, the shadows on his face deepening in the dim light of the room.
“There were some in this building who might have agreed with you, had Hobb not tried to arrest Justice Woodbrow. But few would agree to compromise after that, and those who would have left already. One does not compromise with evil, Merrily. When a wolf comes for your children, you do not give him one or two as a settlement; you fight to save them all.”
We speak of laws, and the rightful actions of the State; not of children, observed the Third Voice. His analogy is not helpful.
What does he know of children? sneered the Second Voice. His kind will never have any.
He knows no less than we do, retorted the First Voice. And why shouldn’t we love justice as much as we love a child?
“So how does this end?” she asked again. “Hobb won’t compromise if you won’t at least try.”
He smiled sadly. “There is always hope, Merrily, even when it seems the very pinnacle of folly. Hobb’s control of Uellodon is not absolute; there are people who remember that the courts have always settled disputes fairly and justly. And there are people, too, who have the will to fight against the wolf, even now, when Hobb’s power is at its peak and the King is his ally. Some defy openly, as we do, and some are hidden. Even in the National Assembly there are those who are sympathetic, if not brave enough to show themselves. If you find these people, you may understand better why we cling to the sliver of tradition in our courtroom ritual, and hold on to our little hope.”
Merrily looked at her knees and said nothing. For a minute there was silence between them. Then Wigglus stood up, walked around the desk, and seated himself in another chair next to her.
“I’ve missed you too, Merrily,” he said softly. “I’ve missed making music with you.” He rose again and walked to one of the bookshelves; from the top, he took down his old wooden violin.
“Will you sing with me, Merrily?” he asked. She nodded, and he tuned the strings carefully. Then, with a gentle sequence of arpeggios, he began to play a song that she had written with his help. They were notes she had not heard for more than a year and half.
For right or wrong, she calls me forward,
Demands my love, commands my love, the boatman’s fare.
I sing her song, though heavens crumble,
And pay the cost, and damn the cost, find heaven there.
✽✽✽
“I read your analysis of the economic policies of the Vereids with great pleasure, Mrs. Hunter. In my view, you put firmly to rest several of Robert Franco’s more outlandish conclusions.”
Wembley Pearsy, Chancellor of the New Academy of Uelland, smiled beatifically at her from behind his large desk. The desk was of dark-stained oak, polished carefully and decorated with an elegant rack of pens and a small crystal paperweight. There was a little plaque that had his name on it in gold lettering. It was otherwise empty.
The Chancellor himself was a tall man, with an unruly beard and a thick, wild shock of gray hair that stuck out pugnaciously in all directions. He was dressed in a rather shabby suit, with no cravat to be seen anywhere. His shirt, which appeared in theory to be white, was liberally endowed with food stains and deep creases.
She looked at him quizzically. “How did you get my term paper from last semester?” she asked.
“Stoat sent me a copy by post over the summer,” he answered, “along with a snippy note about the quality of my new students. I think he meant for it to be insulting, but really, I quite enjoyed the paper. I sent him back a sketch of me teaching in his old classroom here at the Academy, a copy of the new curriculum, and a small box of cat shit.”
She blinked, biting her tongue.
“First Minister Hobb has conveyed to me the King’s sincere desire that I show you around the New Academy, Mrs. Hunter,” the Chancellor rumbled on. “I believe he hopes you’ll be so impressed with the new learning that you’ll abandon your ill-advised allegiance to the pretender Anne and transfer here to Uellodon. We’ll see, I suppose. Would you be my guest this morning as we visit a classroom or two?”
She nodded, remembering her manners through the haze of internal chaos. “I would be pleased, Chancellor,” she said.
We should transfer here to Uellodon, said the Third Voice eagerly. Jonny can come with us, and we can be on the side of rightful authority. This is a safe place to raise a child, First Voice.
We should find Hobb alone and kill him, retorted the Second. We have had dozens of opportunities in the last two weeks, but you two cowards keep outvoting me. When we do, we can return to Father and be with the Elect when the world ends.
Wigglus is in terrible danger, said the First Voice, firmly. He needs us to find a way to end the siege. And look, it added, ending the siege will strengthen order in Uellodon, Third Voice. Are we agreed?
That is an acceptable common interest, said the Third.
We are going to burn in the Pit, growled the Second Voice, and when we do, I will spend all of eternity reminding you both, between our contributions to the endless wailing and gnashing of teeth, that I was right.
Merrily followed Chancellor Pearsy down to the grounds of the Academy.
The New Academy looked, at a glance, very much like the Old Academy. The buildings were the same as she remembered them from her last visit, and the park-like grounds were tidy and manicured. The tall, rather fusty figure of Chancellor Baconton Sourmash, captured into dubious immortality in a ten-foot statue of bronze, still glowered over the campus square, his head and shoulders draped with a somber mantle of brown and white droppings from the many pigeons that roosted on his long-suffering frame. The chalk scrawls had been cleaned up, the lawn clipped, and the broken windows repaired.
In the classrooms, as Merrily and Chancellor Pearsy silently slipped in to watch, men in distinguished robes with gray hair still lectured to packed halls of students seated on the raked rows of benches. But here the differences began to emerge. The students were somehow rougher and older than before, and wore the shabby coats and caps of laborers and field hands. The men lecturing at the front of the halls in black academic robes seemed not quite certain of themselves, and consulted their notes more frequently than any Triad professor would have. The students wrote down every word uttered by the lecturers; there were no questions.
They visited a course in mathematics.
“For any right triangle,” the professor intoned solemnly to the full lecture hall, “the sum of the squares of the two sides forming the right angle is equal to the square of the third side.” He indicated a simple drawing on his chalkboard. “Provided,” he added, “it leads to an economically just result.”
Merrily looked sharply at Pearsy.
“We’ve made great advances in geometry,” he whispered.
They visited a course in engineering.
“Two considerations govern all others, when approaching a project in civil engineering,” proclaimed a small, weedy-looking man with a small, weedy-looking beard. By his robes, he held himself out as a professor. “First, that it be built in service to the public; and second, that it be as large as possible, to better serve the public, which is very large.”
“A golden age of socially-informed engineering is dawning, is it not, Mrs. Hunter?” remarked Chancellor Pearsy quietly. Merrily narrowed her eyes and stared into his face. She thought he looked uneasy, but couldn’t be sure.
In a small and rather shabby barn tucked behind one of the grander halls on the campus, they found a class full of dull-looking students. They were seated at rows of benches, and occupied with making clay pottery badly. At the front of the room, an enormously fat man with a large red beard and a forest of unkempt red hair snored loudly on a couch.
“The College of Applied History,” said Pearsy, not bothering to lower his voice. “When the miscreants of the old academy fled last year, Professor Titley-Balles stayed behind with a few other loyalists. He maintains it was out of a sense of duty to the institution of the Academy, but in my view he was simply too fat to slip out the sewers with the rest of them. He’s tenured, so we can’t sack him, but we’ve had to make some changes to curriculum and the allocation of facilities. I expect he’ll take his pension and retire quietly next year.”
Merrily looked on the recumbent historian and his classroom of pottery-makers, and found that she felt a surge of pity.
Then they visited a lecture hall in which children populated the raked benches. Some were as young as six years old, and the oldest were perhaps thirteen.
“A model classroom,” whispered Pearsy as they stood in the back. “We are developing new methods of instilling democratic values in the youth of the nation.”
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An unkempt older man in a dark academic robe and a square cap was explaining some variety of political theory to his youthful audience. The children sat very still, writing quietly on small sheets of paper. On the chalkboard behind were written such words as ‘nation,’ ‘justice,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘Republican Guard.’ A flag with the crowned eagle of Uelland in black against a white field hung from a pole to one side of the board.
“Their families will receive extra food if they get high marks on the quiz,” explained Pearsy, sotto voce. “The applicant pool for this course was quite large.”
“Now, my friends,” said the lecturer in a friendly tone, “we are going to learn about how to watch your parents, and also about the rewards you will receive when you report the rules they break this week.”
There was a disturbance at the rear of the lecture hall then, on the other side of the room from Merrily and Chancellor Pearsy. A number of people in dark, bulky clothing had begun filing in through one of the rear doors. By their shapes, there were both men and women among them, but each face was obscured by a white, grinning mask, of the sort worn by the lesser grade of mummer. A few of them, it seemed, carried musical instruments, and they struck up a jolly tune with banjo, pipe, horn, and a small drum.
Pearsy’s face turned an unpleasant shade of red, and he bolted from the room, screaming for the Republican Guard. The man at the front of the hall remained put, but shouted loudly for the intruders to depart. They did not heed his instructions; instead, they descended the steps of the hall in time to the music, handing out candy to the children nearby and tossing it to those further away. The veneer of studious attention shattered, and the children shrieked and laughed at the comical music, grasping for sweets. Merrily watched in detached bemusement as the masked, black-clad figures made their way down to the base of the hall, strutting outrageously.
The lecturer drew forth a cane and swung at the closest masked figure, but the woman—her hips and chest revealed it, if not her face—casually caught the cane in one hand, holding it fast. Then she held out her other hand behind her, and one of her colleagues placed into it what appeared to be a large banana-cream pie. With an exaggerated wind-up, she delivered the pie directly unto the face of the astonished lecturer. The children in the room erupted in gales of laughter.
The black-clad figures—there were perhaps a dozen of them—strutted and danced around the front of the hall, where two of them quickly erased the writing on the chalkboard and, while their comrades played and cavorted, replaced it with the following words in giant lettering:
THE GROWN-UPS ARE LYING TO YOU
Three of the intruders flung loose bundles of printed papers into the air. And then, as quickly as they had come, they vanished out the door at the base of the lecture hall, which the professor would customarily use to enter and leave. The lecturer in junior social theory was left picking bits of cream pie off his face and absently eating them.
Some instinct seized Merrily, and she dashed down the steps of the hall, toward the door from which the masked partisans had departed. There was a narrow passage beyond it; to her left, she saw a door to the bright outside swinging shut. A trail of leaflets marked the path of their departure. Merrily sprinted down the hall, bursting out of the building. The backs of the black-clad intruders could be seen entering the low dining hall, though it was well past breakfast and not yet time for lunch.
Something clicked in Merrily’s memory from her last visit to the Royal Academy, and she instantly knew where they were going.
Into the building. Through the largest kitchen. To a small, narrow passage at the back. She had come this way with Cyrus last summer, evading Pearsy’s spies to find a quiet place and share a few crucial words.
Through the tight opening, down the narrow stairs to the disused ale cellar. She saw the grate in the floor close just as she reached the landing, and a faint light waning from beneath it.
Let us find Pearsy and show him! said the Third Voice urgently. Whoever these people are, they’re plainly enemies of the Republic. We’ll be safer if Pearsy trusts us, because then Hobb will trust us.
Follow them, you twit! countered the First Voice. Once we know who they are and where they’re going, then we can decide who to tell.
We should have nothing to do with this, sniffed the Second Voice. We needn’t take sides among these infidels, who—
SHUT UP! thundered the others.
Merrily pried open the grate. There was no ladder beneath, but there was a faint light coming from one direction. With no more hesitation than if she were stepping into a bath, Merrily dropped down through the hole and into the sewers.
She had stood here, in very nearly this exact spot, last summer, peering at Cyrus as he hobbled on his wooden leg and held up a single lamp against the darkness. She had asked him, then, why he wouldn’t accept Hobb’s invitation to teach at the New Academy.
Cyrus’s eyes glittered at her in the dim light of the lantern. “There’s good, and there’s evil, Miss Hunter. They’re different. It’s not a matter of perspective, or context, or convenience, or social agreement. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. You can’t call one the other and make it so, any more than a turd in this sewer can put on a hat and become the King of Uelland. So be sure you know which is which—and be damned sure you’re on the right side.”
The faint light flickered, further down the tunnel. She stepped cautiously after it, wading through the fragrant sludge that flowed around her upper thighs. She had no light source of her own, and once she left the grate behind her the only light came from the dim, bobbing glow ahead of her.
Hands grasped her arms and shoulders in the dark, and something sharp was pressed into her side.
“Hold still,” said a man’s voice. It was not an angry voice, but it promised violence if she should resist. She did not.
The light ahead of them stopped, and then grew stronger. She soon saw that it was a single lamp, held aloft by a man wearing black clothes. Others came behind. They still wore the grinning white mummers’ masks, but they had added wide pants of oiled leather to their outfits, as proof against the flow of sludge. As the lamp came closer, she saw that two more of the masked people held her.
A tall figure held the lamp, dressed as the others; by his movements, she judged he was a man. He drew near to her and held the lamp over their heads, peering his masked face at hers and tilting it, as if he were examining her closely.
“Merrily Hunter?” he asked in a soft voice with a faint sardonic edge. “It is you, Mrs. Hunter. What a surprise. I quite enjoyed your term paper on the Vereids.”
“Why does everyone in the city of Uellodon have a copy of my term paper?” complained Merrily sullenly.
✽✽✽
Wallingford Spoon, Chancellor of the Royal Academy in Exile, leaned forward over the small table in the dimly lit room. Merrily had no idea where they were. She had been blindfolded and led through the sewers for many minutes, before climbing a ladder, being led up flights of stairs and down stone hallways, and finally arriving here. It was a small room with a single table, some empty bookshelves, and a boarded-up window. A bit of thin sunlight filtered through the cracks in the boards, and there was also a narrow, hooded lantern on the table. Merrily still smelled strongly of sewage, but Spoon had removed his hip-waders when they ascended from the tunnels, and with them most of the unpleasant odor.
“I’ve no idea why anyone else has your paper,” replied Spoon. “But Stoat sent me a copy over the summer. The Academy in Exile has a Carolese lawyer in Ville Porpo that receives mail on our behalf.”
Chancellor Spoon was a tall man with a broad, sturdy frame. He had brown hair, now graying, and a well-trimmed beard that was silver with age. His green eyes held a perpetual twinkle of sardonic amusement. Professor Spoon had been Cyrus’s instructor in Applied History at the Royal Academy, though Spoon was only a few years older.
“Why are you and the rest of these people back in Uellodon?” she asked. “I heard you and the other professors and students fled the city last year.”
“That’s accurate… approximately,” agreed the Chancellor. “A few stayed behind, either out of principle or practicality. Some had families they didn’t want to leave. But most came with us. And, besides my tutorial year students here, those that fled are now safely tucked away in the hills of northern Carelon. It may be hard to believe, Mrs. Hunter, but the first priority of the Royal Academy is still to teach, to research, and to analyze and discuss and publish. Most of our students don’t break prisoners out of the Rose Tower or swing around on chandeliers or get tangled up in high politics.” He gave her a pointed look.
Merrily blushed. “The chandelier wasn’t me. That was Cyrus, and another woman, and my husband, Jonathan Miller.” To her surprise, the words wrenched at a pain deep inside her, tearing open again the briefly-forgotten wound of her parting with him.
“You’re a true student of Cyrus Stoat,” said Chancellor Spoon with a wry grin. “He never could bring himself to practice discretion when extravagance was within reach.”
“If the Academy has set itself up in exile, then why are you here?” she pressed.
Chancellor Spoon looked at her seriously. “Because, if Stoat and I disagree on methods, we are of one mind on principle. The teachers and students hiding out in Carelon are the Royal Academy. The rabble that infests the Academy grounds right now are one vein of the rot that is spreading under Hobb; the most dangerous one, in fact.”
Merrily thought about that, as the three voices warred in her head.
“Because of the children,” she said finally.
“Quite right, Mrs. Hunter,” answered the Chancellor with a faint smile. “No revolution can endure without a change in the underlying culture, either before or after the fact. This is why most revolutions simply dissolve into a new edition of the same old system, whatever their outward political trappings. Same ideas, different hats. But Hobb has set about to change the culture. We have no monolith of shared religious authority that can redirect it, as they do in the Holy Empire; what binds us together in shared values is language and story and history. And how are those values passed from one generation to another, Mrs. Hunter? The Royal Academy, and Triad University, and the countless smaller schools and lone village teachers that rely on them for knowledge and methods and ideas. They are the future of our people. They either preserve it or wrench it onto some new course. If Hobb is permitted to change the knowledge and values that are given to young people today, then in twenty years he will have won his war.”
As he should, said the Third Voice. And as he will.
As he must not, answered the Second Voice. God is the only source of truth and right values. If we follow Hobb, we will burn.
“Then why are you fighting against him, Chancellor?” asked Merrily, desperate to sway the debate inside her toward some sort of peace. “Why would it be wrong for Hobb to win?”
The tall academic cocked his head to one side and looked at her curiously. He paused a moment, and then spoke. “Well. It is a surprising question from you, Mrs. Hunter, but not unwelcome. Applied History must always confront the ‘why’. Very well.” He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Then he stood up.
“Come with me,” he said. He picked up the lamp from the table and led her to the door of the small room.
Outside, in a dim hallway, were a young man and woman of about Merrily’s age, in drab, functional clothing. They glanced at Spoon and Merrily as they exited, but Spoon waved for them to remain in place. There was dust on the floor, and debris of broken furniture as well. A painting of a man in the robes of an Ecclesia priest hung on one wall, but a slash marred it from one corner to another.
Spoon held up one finger to his lips, and then walked quietly down the hallway. He paused at a broad but decrepit double door, peering through the crack. Then, with a grunt of effort, he set his shoulder to the wood, forced it open, and stepped through.
Inside was a tall, arched space, its upper recesses lost in darkness. Sunlight from the outside filtered through stained-glass windows that began at waist level and soared up at least fifty feet. The lower portions of the windows were boarded, and in the upper reaches she could see holes where the glass had been shattered in places. But the sunlight still reached in, casting vivid colors all over the floor of slate tiles. Wooden pews, some toppled over, lined the broad floor of the open space, and an elevated altar stood at one end. The space on the wall behind the altar, where the Unbroken Circle should have been, was empty.
“Where are we?” breathed Merrily.
“Kavant Cathedral,” whispered Spoon in reply. “It’s been boarded up since Archdeacon Ratwaddler and the rest of the priests were… disappeared. No one from the outside is allowed in or out, by order of the King. So, of course, it’s the perfect place for our little company to hide. We come and go through the sewers.”
Merrily took a deep breath, looking around at the majestic windows and the altar. Even in a state of shattered disrepair, the deliberate architecture, the detail of the stonework, and the sheer size of the nave created a palpable feeling of quiet and humility. She found tears springing to her eyes, as something that she had ignored for months found expression again.
This is God’s home, said the Second Voice.
“Why did you bring me here?” asked Merrily softly.
“You asked why we struggle against Hobb,” answered Chancellor Spoon. “This is part of the answer, and the part that’s easiest to see.”
She looked at him sharply. “A cathedral of the Ecclesia? You are a believer?”
He snorted soundlessly, shaking his head in disgust. “Hardly, Mrs. Hunter. Religion is the product of intellectual and moral sloth—a near-universal human desire for someone else to be responsible for the outcomes in our own lives. But Hobb, and presumably King Leeland, were not content to grapple with that instinct through reason and demonstration; they simply had all the priests murdered. They didn’t even bother with the fig leaf of judicial process. The priests were inconvenient, so they were killed and thrown in the Green River. Their bodies still turn up from time to time downstream. That act was murder at a horrific scale, and the only correct outcome under the ancient laws is conviction and execution.
“But not in Hobb’s Republic. Already the National Assembly has passed something it calls a ‘law,’ retroactively forbidding the practice of any religion within the borders of the Republic. This edict is punishable, if the King or his delegates so desire, by imprisonment, or exile, or death. And so Hobb’s mass murder was after the fact made legal, and justified, and morally correct. It was the priests first; and who will be next? If we recognize the principle that the populace can cause anything at all to be just simply by voting for it in sufficient numbers, who next will they justly choose to murder?”
They stood in silence together under the dimly magnificent colored light of the broken windows.
At last Merrily spoke again.
“And you have risked your lives to return to Uellodon,” she said, “to struggle against Hobb’s new academy and new culture—with pies and pamphlets?”
“Oh no, Mrs. Hunter,” replied Spoon softly. “Not only with pies and pamphlets.”
“Are you going to let me go?” she asked. “Or are you going to kill me to protect your secret?” To her surprise, there was less terror in the prospect than she’d expected.
Spoon looked at her gravely, his face cast in a mix of red and blue light.
“Will you expose us?” he asked.
Yes, we absolutely will, declared the Third Voice. But we’ll tell him ‘no.’
You’d cast our lot with fools and tyrants, accused the First Voice. The answer is truly ‘no.’ Second Voice, where do you stand?
Who cares? grumbled the Second Voice. I have no interest here. Let them all kill each other and take a shorter, straighter path to the Pit.
She shook her head. “No. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
He smiled. “Then you may go.”
✽✽✽
“I have been visited by an angel, my daughter,” said Father.
Merrily, on her knees before him, stared silently at the floor.
“Do you know what he told me, daughter?” asked Father. He sat quietly in the simple, unpadded wooden chair in his office. Bandages wrapped his face, holding poultices that eased the pain of his livid scars. “He told me,” continued Father, “that evil not only stalks the streets of this city, but also lounges comfortably in the halls of power. He told me that we who love God must confront this evil and cast it down.”
That sounds like the kind of nonsense that God would say, observed the First Voice acidly.
We risk damnation merely by thinking these thoughts, retorted the Second Voice. Be silent, or throw away our only chance at peace and salvation.
The First Voice was silent.
“What would you have me do, Father?” asked Merrily, still on her knees and staring at the floor.
Father knelt in front of her. He did not touch her, but he was very close. She could smell the poultices, and the faint odor of corn starch.
“Since the days of the First Prophet, Man has looked up to the stars and counted them. He has made maps of the sky that are constant throughout the generations, and he has seen by this that the heavens are God’s first and most perfect creation. They are a testament to the timeless power of the Almighty. You cannot argue with the stars.
“But now a man has looked at God’s stars and placed one there that does not belong, as if the Creation could be improved upon. You know this man. His scribblings and ravings are an abomination against the Most Holy. People will hear him and be tempted away from faith.” He paused. “This man thinks you are his friend, doesn’t he?”
Merrily looked up sharply at Father. “Rolly? You mean Rolly, and Professor Tentimes’ new star?”
The bandages twitched slightly. She thought it was a smile.
“You must kill him,” said Father.
Merrily tossed uneasily in her sleep, surfacing briefly from the dream. Her mind was filled with guilt and fear. No. Father had never asked her to kill Rolly herself. Her mind had invented that part.
Hadn’t it? And what was this thing that had done the inventing, if not Merrily?
She drifted back into sleep, even as her conscious mind, still locked in the emotion of the dream, tried to rationalize the murder she was sure she had never committed.
She was with Jonny. They were beneath the great canopy in Hog Hurst’s trading square, and she wore a garland of flowers on her head and a white dress. It was warm. She and he were dancing together, slowly, in the simple swaying, turning rhythm of Jonny’s Step. A little band of men and women and goblins played a slow beat on one side of the dance floor, but somehow no one else was there. The canopy was empty, save for Jonny and Merrily.
This wasn’t how it was, that night, she remembered. There were many people—people from their home in Hog Hurst, people who had travelled from Green Bridge to celebrate with them. And the weather was a bit cold, as the wedding was in October. But this was how her dream insisted it must be.
He looked in her eyes as they danced.
“Can you imagine how it would have been if we weren’t here now, dancing at our wedding?” he asked. A curious question.
“Yes,” she said. “I can imagine it.”
He nodded. “I can, too,” he said. “I can imagine what would have happened if you’d said ‘no,’ that day on the road after Uellodon. I don’t think I could have come back here, to home. I’d have gone off somewhere else. It would have been too much. And I’d have spent a lifetime running, and trying to forget, and not being able to.”
She smiled up at him. “Gloomy thoughts for a wedding night, my love,” she said. “Why imagine such a sad world into being, when it doesn’t exist?”
He kissed her.
“Because it might,” he answered.
She pulled him close to her and drew her arms tight around the back of his neck. He held her waist close to him, and they pressed their bodies together as they turned slowly. She clung to him desperately.
“Not tonight,” she said. “Tonight, I love you, Jonny Miller.” And she kissed him again.
She turned and looked at the band, and saw the familiar, squat-headed form of King Simon. The little goblin watched her solemnly, and winked.
✽✽✽
Merrily, wearing a long pink gown and an elegant hat, stepped out of the padded cabin of the coach and onto the steps outside Palace Naridium. The two red-cloaked Republican Guards at the door stood to attention, and a soberly-dressed butler extended a polite elbow to escort her into the Grand Ballroom. She saw, with bemusement but little surprise, that it was Boris.
“You do pop up at the oddest times, Boris,” she observed. “I’d like to know what game you’re playing at.”
He smiled slightly. “If you did, Mrs. Hunter,” he replied, “then you’d wish you didn’t.”
“You’re a second-rate mystic,” she said sourly. “All atmosphere, no substance.”
He shrugged. “You must permit me my idiom, Mrs. Hunter,” he said. “Idiom arises when we must understand truths that are difficult to grasp without a reference in story and language. And sometimes atmosphere is substance.”
Three days had passed since she first visited Wigglus in the Old High Court, and there had been no change in the circumstances of the siege. Men had followed her around the city whenever she went out, with no great care to hide themselves. Where she went, people recognized her, and took care to speak in glowing terms of their newfound security and equality. There was gathering from all and sharing alike for all, they said. Everything was just and fair, they said. But their eyes were afraid.
Merrily and Boris passed into the grand hall. The great chandeliers hung dark in the air above them, and Merrily looked up toward the dim ceiling high above. She remembered another night in the ballroom, eighteen months ago, watching Jonny and Cyrus and Mari Snort swing ponderously across the broad, open space on one of those chandeliers, transiting impossibly from the fifth balcony on one side to the same level, where she stood on the other. She heard the echo of the wonderful, terrible music that had filled the room from the little chamber orchestra in one corner, and the throbbing beat underneath it. And then the moment that had come after, when Jonny swung her low before him, kissed her, and asked if she would marry him.
“It was an inflection point, Mrs. Hunter,” observed Boris next to her. “And I thought the music was a nice touch, if I do say so myself.”
“You were there?” she asked, looking at him sharply. “And don’t wink at me, or I’ll punch you.”
He raised an eyebrow, and shrugged instead.
They passed through the darkened hall and into a smaller chamber, where a table was set for dinner. Hobb the Wise was there, dressed in his inevitable gray suit. There were three other men as well, and a boy of perhaps thirteen years. One of the men she knew to be King Leeland III. She had seen him on her last visit, though they had not been introduced. He had a strong, solid frame, a roguishly handsome face, and a thick mustache. His black hair was beginning to show gray, but at thirty-four years of age he was still in the prime of manhood. The King was dressed in a tastefully subdued dinner suit with a single gold medallion around his neck.
Chancellor Pearsy was the second of the three adults, though he looked oddly out of place in his rumpled evening attire. The third man wore the simple white shirt, gray cravat, and black coat of a clerk. His hair was curly and brown, and his face youthful. Yet the face had a hardness to it that suggested a man of terrifying principle. His eyes were dark, and he had an angry scar across one cheek.
“Merrily Hunter of Green Bridge,” announced Boris, “envoy of Anne Linsey Gray.” Then he withdrew. Hobb stepped forward, took her hand politely, and bowed.
“Permit me to introduce you, Mrs. Hunter,” said the older man. He presented her first to King Leeland, who nodded distantly in return to her precisely moderate curtsey.
“This is Maxime Robe,” he said next, indicating the man in a clerk’s suit. Mr. Robe nodded coolly, keeping those cold, dark eyes locked with hers. “Mr. Robe helps me with the National Assembly,” added Hobb vaguely.
And then he turned to the young man. Merrily’s eyes widened slightly as she recognized his straw blond hair and familiar jaw line. The Crown Prince seemed to have sprung up at least two feet since she had last seen him in Green Bridge. She had known him, then, as a serving boy at a tea house that Mrs. Bridge and Mrs. Freeway had visited frequently. She learned later of the ruse, and of General Sir Warren Logwall’s abduction of the boy. But she recognized him from his resemblance to his mother, despite the different color of their hair.
With his father, the King, Merrily saw very little resemblance at all.
It was an intimate gathering. The King said very little; he seemed out of sorts, and Merrily thought his face was slightly pale. He sipped at his wine, and listened attentively as Hobb rambled on about events and characters at the National Assembly, and in the administration of the city. Pearsy took his turn describing in glowing terms the successes of the New Academy in its third full semester. He made no mention of the disruption in the children’s classroom, and Merrily fancied he kept a nervous eye on her, lest she should bring it up. But she did not.
A dozen servants brought in the first course of the dinner, and then the second, and the third. Merrily poked at her food.
“And what shall be done about the judges and the lawyers?” she asked finally, cutting through Pearsy’s description of the new curriculum in Critical Theory.
There was a sudden and uncomfortable silence at the table, which, of course, she had intended to produce.
“What shall we do about them?” asked Mr. Robe in his cold, soft voice. “Tell us, Mrs. Hunter, what we shall do about them. As they occupy a building that is the rightful property of the State, without the mandate of the State, it seems to me that the only proper disposition is at the end of a noose. Their leaders,” and he brushed, apparently unconsciously, at the scar on his face, “necessarily merit exemplary punishment. Where am I wrong?”
She stared him levelly. “Forgive me, Mr. Robe, for I have not made law my specialty. But it seems to me that a sitting court of law acting within its jurisdiction, and the people who practice within it, are, by definition, carrying out the mandate of the State.”
Hobb smiled sardonically. “At the risk of dragging a legal debate onto the dinner table, Mrs. Hunter, it seems to me that you’ve gotten to the heart of the problem here—jurisdiction. The law courts are a relic of an old regime that the National Assembly has so far declined to reinstitute in the modern State. But, legal arcana aside, there are practicalities. The courts command respect and loyalty from some. They have a history, and Uellish respect history. Their place is in history, and we would prefer to usher them there gently, not to cast them into the dustbin. What are their terms?”
“For the disposition of the Foregrub and Quimble case to be respected by the Crown,” she said, “and for the work of the courts to go on without interference.”
“And what is the work of the courts, Mrs. Hunter?” asked Mr. Robe.
She blinked, and turned her head to one side. “To hear and decide legal disputes, if I’m not mistaken,” she replied.
“According to what laws?” he pressed.
“Mr. Robe,” said Hobb sharply, “I implored you a moment ago not to drag a legal debate onto the dinner table, and you have now done so. Here it lies, kicking and screaming and knocking over wine glasses. See, I’ve got a bit of legal debate on my cravat. I believe what Mrs. Hunter intended to discuss was, in fact, politics—and that is a different beast. Considerably less kicking and screaming is needed for it to be discussed politely at a dinner table.”
He turned his thin smile at Merrily.
“Your friend, Attorney Snort—he must have a sense of practicality. He and his friends in the courthouse are adrift from any source of real political power. The National Assembly is against them, the Republican Guard is against them, and the King and his Heavy Arms are certainly against them.” Perhaps realizing his presumption, Hobb glanced for a moment at the actual King, seated at the head of the table; Leeland III said nothing, but nodded slightly. “No body claiming to be part of the State can survive without political support, and the judges have very, very little.
“But we have made progress, Mrs. Hunter, haven’t we? Their demands are a fair opening position. It is better that we discuss terms, rather than principles, Mrs. Hunter. Terms are flexible, and principles are not. Would you kindly convey to the occupants of the courthouse, when you next see them, that the Crown is prepared to enter into negotiations on a legal settlement regarding the acquisition of Foregrub and Quimble’s assets, and also on the release of the two men themselves from Hoel.”
She leaned forward. “If the judges truly have no support, First Minister,” she said, “then what’s stopping you from storming the courthouse? The lawyers and judges have only bailiffs to protect them, and they are lightly armed. They will present little more resistance than a few hundred priests.”
Hobb’s face darkened, and Merrily realized too late that she had struck a heavier blow against her adversary than she intended.
The painful moment was interrupted as servants entered to clear away the remains of dinner. Others brought in a salad course.
“As a sign that you take negotiations seriously, First Minister,” she asked, “would you release Messrs. Foregrub and Quimble from Hoel so that they can consult with their legal counsel on settlement negotiations?”
Hobb leaned back in the chair and stared across the table at her.
“You are audacious, Mrs. Hunter. I admire that. Your mistress is well served by you, even if you are not well served by her. I will order the release of Samuel Foregrub, but not Hector Quimble.”
Merrily looked away, and found that the Crown Prince was staring at her closely. His face revealed nothing beyond intense interest.
“They are separate business concerns, First Minster,” she began. “They will both need—”
“Foregrub only,” interrupted Hobb sharply. His pale eyes narrowed. “I will offer further concessions only after I receive concessions from the other side.”
The dinner was soon concluded, and Merrily rose to leave. Chancellor Pearsy and Mr. Robe departed together, and the King and his son left the room by another door. Boris reappeared; before she saw him, Merrily could sense his presence by the strange wash of unreality and déjà vu.
Hobb, before he too departed, gave her a shallow bow.
“I sincerely hope, Mrs. Hunter, that we can reach a resolution with these people,” he said. “And with your mistress as well.”
“You have said nothing more of your fairy tale Giant-men,” said Merrily softly. “Have you found they no longer exist?”
Hobb shook his head. “They do exist; I know this to be true. The nearer danger is that our current divisions widen, and we lose lives in pointless bloodshed when we should be united in defense.”
“Queen Anne will need to know more about them before they factor into her decisions,” retorted Merrily. “She won’t be persuaded by your word that they are real.”
“One impossibility at a time, Mrs. Hunter,” said Hobb sadly. “Good evening. My secretary will show you out.” And with that he left through the same door as the King and Crown Prince.
Merrily turned to face Boris.
“Was it a productive dinner, Merrily Hunter?” he asked.
“Barely,” she replied sourly, leaving the room before he did.
“This way, Mrs. Hunter,” he said. “The front gate is closed, and I will show you to a door in the side. Palace Naridium is large, and newcomers are often confused by its passages.”
“I found my way out on my own last summer,” she said, slightly ashamed at her own pugnacious tone.
“You broke a window and escaped onto a rooftop,” said Boris calmly. “Had Rolland Gorp been less precise in his calculations, you would then have died on the stones of the palace courtyard rather than landing in a cart full of manure. Let me take you by a better-smelling, less dangerous route.”
She acquiesced and followed him through the lamp-lit passages of the palace. They bypassed the Grand Ballroom, emerging through a side door into the rain-swept courtyard. Her carriage was standing by, lit by oil lanterns on its exterior. The liveried driver held open the door for her, and she gathered up her skirts and stepped in.
She jumped; there was someone in the carriage with her. By the light of the lanterns, she could see a shock of blond hair, and the gangly, thin form of a young man. Her hand crept down to where Lady Triggle’s dagger was strapped to one thigh, inside the skirts.
“Good evening, Mrs. Hunter,” said the future Leeland IV. “I’m sorry for scaring you. I don’t mean you any harm.”
“Why are you in my carriage?” she asked. Her hand found the dagger and drew it out in the darkness.
By the light of the lanterns, she could see his blue eyes glinting.
“Mrs. Hunter,” he said, “I would like to ask you a favor. You are my mother’s agent, yes? And are you loyal to her?”
Merrily nodded silently.
“Good,” he continued. “Then I want you to help me escape from this place. I want to return to Green Bridge.”
“How?” she asked. “I don’t imagine they’ll let you walk out the front gate.”
“No,” he agreed. “They won’t. I’ve tried. I’m watched all the time while I’m here. They’re watching me now; I told Hobb that I wanted to give you a letter to my mother. He read it first, of course, and made changes.”
He handed her a folded and sealed sheet of paper. “Do what you like with it,” he said. “It’s nonsense. I wrote it so I could bring it to you, and we could talk for a minute.”
She blinked. This was not what she expected from Leeland’s son.
“How can I help you, Your Highness?” she asked finally.
He leaned forward in the carriage, bringing his face into the light. She could see real fear and pain in the young man’s countenance.
“Right now there is one place in the city where Hobb’s spies and the Republican Guard can’t go,” he said. “One place that’s off limits to them, where I’ll be away from Hobb and Mr. Robe and father and all the rest of them; where I’ll have people who will help me get back to mother.”
“And where is that?” Merrily asked, beginning to dread the answer.
“I want to retain the services of an attorney,” he said. “A very specific attorney; one who’s stuck his thumb in Hobb’s eye for more than a year. He’s in the Old High Court, and I want you to take me there, please.”