A Draw of Kings

9

SCOUR





MARTIN FINGERED THE THICK CASSOCK that warmed him against the predawn chill of the cathedral stones. Deas have mercy, he needed a bed. A hot bath and clean clothes had not assuaged his need for sleep, only accentuated it. Luis stood on his left, as he had twice before when they’d set out for Callowford. Errol and Karele, the small man he still thought of as the master of horses, stood on the other side. Errol seemed only slightly less nervous than Martin himself. As for Karele, the little man appeared unaffected by anything outside the shadow lands.

Bertrand Canon’s door opened. Cleatis, his secretary, nodded greetings to each of them, without allowing them entrance. “His Excellency is asleep, Benefice Arwitten.” His voice held a strong note of remonstration.

Martin sighed. “I’m no longer a benefice, Cleatis. Wake him.”

The secretary’s face puckered into a circle of disapproval, but he disappeared into the expansive interior of the archbenefice’s apartments.

Canon emerged after a few short moments, his hair disheveled but his eyes alert. He shrugged. “Old men sleep lightly when they sleep at all, and I am older than most. What concern brings you to me early enough to escape the notice of the rest of humanity, my friend?”

Now that the moment was upon him, thin needles of dread danced up and down Martin’s spine. He took a deep breath to summon his courage. With a bow to Canon’s office he met the man’s gaze and cut his eyes to the archbenefice’s secretary. “I have come to make confession, Excellency.”


Canon’s eyes widened with surprise, but the good-natured smile didn’t slip from his face. “And you have brought interesting witnesses with you, I see. I always enjoy your approach to orthodoxy, Martin. Your unique interpretation of the traditions of the church never fails to lighten the tedium of an otherwise dull proceeding.”

He turned to his secretary. “Thank you, Cleatis. You may withdraw. I will send someone for you when Pater Martin and I are done.”

Martin raised his hand. “A moment please, Cleatis. Would you be so kind as to ask Primus Sten to join us? I feel the need for his witness most acutely.”

Canon’s secretary nodded and withdrew. They waited in silence until Sten, bleary-eyed and heavily robed, joined them. The archbenefice sniffed and gave himself a shake. “All right, Martin, we’re all here. What’s this about?”

He turned away from Canon’s gaze to pace the floor. “I pray that you grant me indulgence to confess, Excellency?”

The archbenefice’s thick white eyebrows rose, and he took his lower lip between his teeth in thought. When he addressed Martin again, his voice mirrored the formality. “Very well, Pater. You have invoked the office of confession. In front of these witnesses, I grant you permission to proceed. Speak no word that is untrue and omit no detail that might serve to deceive. You are adjured by Deas, Eleison, and unknowable Aurae.”

Again, the archbenefice’s clear blue-eyed gaze robbed Martin of the ability to speak. His steps measured the length of Canon’s audience chamber, came back again. “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? For centuries we’ve put the acolytes at their tables with ink and parchment, copying the liturgy of the church because we didn’t have Magis’s book, and every sheet of lambskin or vellum sent out from the isle, even to the smallest church in the most insignificant province, says Aurae is unknowable.”

He took a deep shuddering breath, felt it leave his lungs in stuttering puffs of air. “And it’s all wrong, Excellency. Aurae is knowable.”

Canon’s lips tightened in disapproval. His hands clenched the arms of his chair as if only a supreme effort of will kept him from denouncing Martin where he stood. “Pater Martin, your confession takes a most unexpected form. Are you stating fact or belief? I’m sure I need not remind you that many have gone to the block for espousing that heresy.”

Martin bowed. “It is a fact, Excellency, and the reason I have asked Primus Sten here as a witness. I did not think you would trust the demonstration of proof to the secondus or the omne, since much of my journey has been shared by them.”

Canon’s gaze never left Martin’s face, but he lifted one hand to beckon the primus forward. “Do you have your tools of office with you, Enoch?”

The primus nodded, his wispy hair fluttering with the motion. “When Cleatis summoned me, I suspected you might desire a cast.” He glanced at Martin. “Though I only brought ten blanks. If the pater’s demonstration requires more, we’ll have to send someone to the conclave.”

Martin shook his head, his stomach roiling inside like a pot of boiling water. “I do not believe so, Primus, though His Excellency may require it.”

Canon regarded him, licked his lips with a pale tongue. “I find myself unprepared for such a demonstration, Martin. I think perhaps it would be best if we continued the form of the confession. There is a tale here, and I would hear it before we engage the primus in his craft.”

He moved across the room, retrieved a chair, and seated himself. At his wave, the others did likewise.

Grateful the archbenefice had asked him to do so, and hoping the telling would somehow lessen the shock, Martin related his journey. Yet when he spoke of Cruk’s near-death injury and their meeting with Karele, he realized he had been mistaken. Canon’s thick eyebrows began a gradual climb up his forehead and stayed there. By the time Martin mentioned his encounter with Aurae in the council of the shadow lands, his superior’s eyes were wide with surprise and disbelief. Yet the biggest shock remained.

Martin brought his portion of the tale to a close at the point where Lord Weir’s treachery landed them in a Merakhi prison, with the captains forced to fight in the arena until they died. He turned to the young man in the chair behind him, his narrow face still boyish and open. Still.

“Errol, would you please relate what happened to you?”

To the lad’s credit, he didn’t protest. He rose, so different from the boy he had been, and walked the space in front of the archbenefice as he spoke of captivity, his friendship with Hadari, the ilhotep’s Ongolese guard, and his encounter with the book.

Canon lurched forward in his seat. “What?”

“I read the book, Excellency,” Errol said. “The book of the history of Deas and Eleison that Magis took to battle with him.”

The archbenefice sat his chair, shaking his head in denial. “No. It was lost.”

Martin bowed. “Lost, Excellency, not destroyed. Please continue, Errol.”

“Hadari let me read it,” Errol continued. “He wanted me to. The book says Aurae is knowable but incomprehensible.”

“And I believe that wording, Excellency, is the source of our centuries-old error,” Martin said.

Bertrand Canon slumped in his chair, slack-jawed, his right hand making vague summoning gestures in Sten’s direction. The primus came forward and bent at the waist to place his head close to the archbenefice’s.

“Yes, Excellency?”

Canon’s mouth worked for a moment before any words came out. “Cast for this?”

“Which part?”

His eyes searched Errol and then swept to Martin and Karele. “All of it.”

Sten straightened. “Your Excellency, it will take some time if I take each person’s confession as a discrete quantity. There may be a more expedient approach.”

The archbenefice snorted his vexation. “Out with it, man. What is it?”

“I can cast once to see if everything said is true.”

“Why would you not?”

Primus Sten sighed. “Because it is not the same as casting to see if they are telling the truth. A man can believe he is speaking the truth even while he is quite wrong. This makes him mistaken, not a liar. Casting for absolute truth is a far more stringent cast than whether one believes what he is saying. Yet, I thought I should offer it in order to confirm Martin’s, um, confession.”

“Confession?” Canon snorted, turning to face Martin again. “You’re trying to dump hundreds of years of church tradition into the sewer, Pater. You tricked me.”

Martin bowed, accepting the rebuke. “My apologies, Excellency.”

“Humph. Enoch, cast to see if everything said is true, absolutely true.”

Twenty minutes later, Sten pulled the first of the lots from the drawing bag. “Yes.”

Canon gaped. “Yes, what?”

The primus licked his lips. “Yes, it’s all true.”

The archbenefice pointed a shaking finger at the pine lot. “Draw again.”

“How many times, Excellency?”

Canon’s finger trembled in the air as if he were counting outcomes. “Twenty.”

Moments later, Sten pronounced the results. “Seventeen out of twenty draws say Pater Martin and Errol Stone have spoken the absolute truth. There can be no doubt, Excellency.”

Bertrand Canon’s gaze swept to Martin again, but this time it passed over and through him, unseeing. Then his voice exploded, filling the room. “By all that’s holy, why didn’t you grab the book? Deas in heaven, Martin, we’re at war! If we reveal this to the Judica, the chaos will be twice what it was during Weir’s assault, ten times.”


Martin winced at the rebuke. How many times in the past weeks had he reviled himself for not returning to the Merakhi capital to attempt recovery of the book? Only Deas knew how much of the upcoming wrangling in the Judica it would have eliminated.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Canon said. “That was uncharitable. Please forgive me.” He breathed deeply, appeared to take hold of himself.

“Surely the timing of this is beyond coincidental, but it is difficult for me to see anything but evil in it.” He shook his head in surrender. “If we tell the Judica the book still exists, they will be unable to think of anything else. And if we tell them Aurae is knowable and the solis Karele has the means to control the cast, they will dissolve into chaos, unable to confirm the most basic decisions.”

He laughed but the sound contained no humor. “Forgive me for sounding less than grateful at your news, my friend, but your tidings hold edges that might bleed the kingdom of the surety it needs.” He sighed, then pointed a pale, veined finger at Karele. “I think I would like to see this confounding of lots for myself.”

Nearly an hour later, after several casts had yielded contradictory results, the archbenefice shook his head in wonderment. “Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.” He grunted. “I’m still not sure I believe it.”

He paused to run his hand slowly down his face before turning to Karele. “Is it possible for any power other than Aurae’s to affect the lots this way?”

Karele shook his head. “Only Deas, through Aurae, can confound the cast.”

The archbenefice breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s something anyway.” His mouth tightened. “I want every member of the Judica and conclave tested before word of this gets out. After that,” he sighed, “Deas help us, it will be chaos.”



Canon pronounced the Judica proceedings finished for the day and bade Errol and the rest to accompany him back to his chambers. Once there, his mien of unshakable confidence slipped from him like a discarded robe. “That makes three today, three out of twenty, and Deas alone knows how many more tomorrow.”

Martin shrugged. “Hardly unexpected, Excellency. Weir brandished extraordinary power. Many perceived him as Illustra’s best hope for survival. Three is not such a great number.”

“There shouldn’t have been any,” Canon snarled. “The church is supposed to look to Deas and the conclave for . . .”

He stopped, his anger dissipating, and flopped in a chair. “I’m going to have to readjust my thinking.” He gnawed one corner of his lower lip in frustration. “We’re moving too slowly, gentlemen. At this rate it will take days to confirm the Judica, and then we must do the same with the conclave.”

“That at least should go more quickly, Bertrand,” Primus Sten said. “Every reader we confirm can assist us in confirming the rest.” He covered a delicate cough. “We could have done the same with the Judica.”

Canon chopped the air. “No. I will not trust vetting the benefices to any except those in this room. Too much is at stake.”

Errol massaged the muscles between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand, then switched. He hadn’t carved so many lots in succession since Naaman Ru held him prisoner. He was out of practice. “Since time is so important, Excellency, why did we adjourn so early?”

The archbenefice took a deep breath, appeared to relax before he spoke. “Our presence is requested at the palace by the council of nobles. Most have managed to make it back to the isle. They’ve asked the Judica to attend their gathering.” He turned to regard Errol. “Earl Stone, have you had the pleasure of participating in the council’s deliberations?”

“Only once, Excellency, when I was first raised to the nobility. I don’t remember much of the proceedings.”

“Ha.” The archbenefice snorted. “If you think the Judica is long-winded, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise. A simple rule, my boy—the more people you have in a council, the longer it’s going to last. They’re usually held at night to keep the deliberations as brief as possible. With this many people involved we’ll be fortunate to adjourn before dawn.”

The thought of having to participate in the proceedings as a member sent an icy drip of nervousness across Errol’s skin. “What do they want to talk about?”

Bertrand Canon raised his eyebrows at him in surprise. “The defense of Illustra, Earl Stone. It won’t be the Judica or the watch that musters the men who will fight on the kingdom’s behalf, my friend.” He sighed. “That task will fall to the nobles. From the greatest duchy to the meanest lord, the nobles will be responsible for conscripting an army to face our enemies once the weather breaks.”