‘THEY WILL MEET THE ROCK!’
I could see Shiballe speaking to more of the guards, issuing orders to the captains. There looked to be some hesitation there.
‘They will meet the Rock,’ I agreed, once the noise had died down. ‘But only if the Rock is still here.’
The crowd didn’t look happy at that suggestion, but I continued, ‘Your Duke – your lawful ruler – has brought you Ganath Kalila. It is a tradition from the East, not from here.’
There was some angry murmuring; a great many people remembered when there was no Blood Week.
‘He says it makes you strong. I ask you, when you sit hiding in your homes as assassins openly wander the streets, do you feel strong?’
Silence.
‘When you hear your neighbours being pulled from their beds and slaughtered in the night, do you feel strong?’
More silence, but the anger was palpable now.
‘This girl,’ I said, taking Aline’s hand and raising it, ‘this girl’s family was taken from her, each and every one of them, and slain – not in battle, for that is not the way of Ganath Kalila. Instead, men came – men dressed in black, wearing no family crest. They boarded up the family’s home – before the Blood Week had even begun. The guards didn’t stop them. The Duke didn’t stop them. You didn’t stop them.’ I choked for a moment before saying, ‘I didn’t stop them.
‘And now they are dead, and this girl is alone in this world. And despite that – despite all that, she is standing here now, fulfilling the Duke’s law – fulfilling your law. She could have fled, but she would not. Instead, she stands here upon the Rock of Rijou.’
I pointed to the Duke. ‘Your Lord says he can make the laws as he sees fit, and so Ganath Kalila will see one more sunrise, one more sunset. And why should you complain? For he adds just one more day to the Blood Week – just one more day. I will tell you this: I have travelled the length and breadth of this land a dozen times over, and in every part of the country, in every town and village and hamlet, and even here in Rijou, a week is seven days. And yet already Ganath Kalila – the Blood Week – lasts nine days! And so now it will be ten – and next year? And the year after that? The Duke says Ganath Kalila makes you strong. Think how strong you’ll be when every day of the year is Ganath Kalila!’
A dozen of the Duke’s men were pushing and shoving their way through the mass of men and women between us. The crowd was densely packed, but while their progress was slow, it was steady. We were running out of time. I looked down at Aline for a moment before turning back to the crowd. ‘This young girl is a small thing, no bigger than your own children. She weighs barely as much as a mug of ale on a dry day. And so I must ask you, will the Rock take her weight? Or will it break under the pressure of your fears?’
‘No man breaks the Rock,’ a woman said. She was big and broad-shouldered, and she stepped towards us before kneeling in front of Aline. ‘I will guard the girl’s life if she stays, and I will guard her name if she leaves. I will pay the red price.’
‘I will pay the price too,’ said a man, more a boy really, barely taller than Aline herself. ‘No man breaks the Rock,’ he said as he knelt.
‘No man breaks the Rock,’ another voice said. I couldn’t see who spoke this time, but soon I could hear the phrase repeated over and over as men and women knelt upon the ground. When the sounds stopped there was a wide circle in front of us, and behind that almost every member of the crowd was on one knee.
I heard clapping: the Duke. He stood on the opposite side of us, some hundred feet away, flanked by Shiballe and his guards, and fifty bowmen were arrayed in front of him, arrows nocked and aiming at the crowd.
‘Such pretty words,’ he said. ‘How masterful, Trattari, that you can make treason sound so noble.’
‘The first law of Rijou ain’t treason!’ a man stood up and said angrily. An arrow appeared in his neck and he dropped to the ground.
‘Treason is what I say it is,’ the Duke replied calmly. ‘And any man or woman who speaks again is a traitor and subject to execution. Ganath Kalila will hold today, and for ever. The girl is a criminal and she will be taken and dealt with, and her name and bloodline extinguished, as will all those with traitor’s blood in their veins.
‘Well?’ he said finally, into the silence. ‘Well, Trattari, is that all you have to offer them? Words? You’ll not get much from that. A dead man cannot feed his family. Where will they be when you run away, tatter-cloak? Where are your fellow Magisters to come and enforce your interpretation of the law once you leave? Come on now, “Greatcoat”, you have heard the evidence! Now tell us your verdict!’
The crowd was looking at me and all at once the fear was back.
‘My verdict is this,’ I said firmly. ‘Ganath Kalila is unlawful. It violates the laws of this land – and more, it violates the laws of this city. My verdict is that henceforth there shall be no Blood Week in Rijou.
‘But the Duke is right,’ I said. ‘I will leave here – alive or dead, I will leave here today. So I cannot be here to preserve the decision. There is no army of Greatcoats coming to protect the verdict. There is only you. There is only the Rock.’
One by one I pulled the plain black buttons from my coat and popped off the soft leathery caps to reveal the solid gold disks beneath, each stamped with the symbol of the King’s Magisters. Within a few moments I was holding enough money in my hand to feed each of twelve families for a year.
‘I need a jury,’ I said, ‘twelve men or women who will see to it that the verdict holds. Twelve people who must face what comes after I leave, who will see to it that no man forgets what was said here. Twelve who may well die in the attempt.’ Then I threw the golden coins onto the ground in front of me and waited as they clattered and rolled.
No one reached for them.
Silence filled the Rock of Rijou as nobles, soldiers and commoners waited to see what would happen next. Aline squeezed my hand for reassurance, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face. I had failed her. I had brought death to this little girl and to myself, because I was obsessed with the belief that my King had some ingenious plan – that he’d had it all along – and that the quest he’d given me all those years ago had some meaning.
‘Find the Charoites,’ he’d said, as if jewels could change the world any more than words could. And now Aline would die, for no better reason than that she’d wanted to hear her family’s name called out, to preserve her rights of inheritance – as if those had any value in this hellhole. In the end, the City Sage hadn’t even given her that. He’d spoken her name, but not that of her family.
The Duke smiled at me from his distance. He would smile until the last coin stopped spinning, until he could see the resigned despair on my face, and until someone in the crowd, realising they had pushed their ruler as far as they dared, decided they would do better to curry his favour by killing us.
The City Sage sat next to the Duke, looking for all the world as if he’d fallen asleep. The old fool couldn’t even remember to give Aline’s family name. That realisation brought back the memory of the wreckage of Aline’s home, now the unconsecrated tomb of the Tiarren family; dead and gone now, their names never to be spoken in Rijou again. Almost every pair of eyes in the crowd was locked onto the spinning coins on the ground, but a few stared at me. Did any of them know Lady Tiarren and her children? Did they blame me for what would come next? How many deaths had I faced only to bring this thirteen-year-old girl to meet her end at the Rock of Rijou, gambling her fate on the hope that, somehow, the people of the most corrupt city in the world would stand up and risk their own lives for hers. I turned to Aline and she gave me a brave little smile, crooked on the left side, like the hint of a secret about to be told. That smile. I wanted to hold her, to say, you are precious to me, even though I didn’t know why; I had no right and no cause. I wanted to tell her that all would be well, that I would protect her no matter what happened, but I couldn’t. Her life lay in the shining metal pieces and the hands that would either take them up or watch them fall. Aline and I turned together to look at the coins, spinning slower and slower on the ground, coming to the inevitable conclusion.
No one reached for the coins.
So I listened.