Songs of the Earth (63 page)

Elder Festan cocked his fists on his hips and scowled at the sentry in front of the iron-strapped doors.

‘What do you mean, you can’t open them?’ he demanded.

‘The Rede is already in session, Elder,’ the sentry said woodenly, staring straight ahead over Festan’s shoulder. ‘The doors can only be opened from inside.’

‘But how can they be in session with half the Curia cooling its heels out here, and the Preceptor besides? I order you to open those doors!’

‘I’m sorry, Elder. I can’t do that.’

‘Why you—’

‘Leave him be, Festan,’ said Ansel. ‘Shouting at the poor fellow might make you feel better, but it won’t change matters. If they’ve got a quorum they can start the Rede without us, and they can stay in there as long as they want. You know that. Now peace, and let me think.’

Twenty-four scarlet robes clustered around him in the vestibule. Ansel had found them milling in the corridors on his way down to the hall, unsure why they’d been summoned. They had fallen in behind him, a tail to a blazing white Preceptorial comet,
only to find it knocked from its orbit by the closed doors of the Rede Hall. Twenty-four. It couldn’t possibly be enough.

If only Festan was right and he could order the doors opened. If he could face them, he was sure he could prevail. But if the Rede was called and a quorum sat, they acted with the full authority of the Curia, and their deliberations could only be interrupted at their behest. There weren’t even any handles on the doors on this side.

Rhythmic squeaks from further down the corridor dragged everyone’s head round. Elder Tercel, too frail to walk now, was being pushed in his wheeled chair by his brother Elder Morten, almost as stooped and silvered as his charge. Others hurried to help, tripping over each other’s words in their haste to explain. Two more. How many were still to come?

There must be something we can do
, Selsen signed.

‘Don’t drop your colours, we’re not done yet.’ Ansel peered over the shoulders of the crowd, hearing more footsteps. Danilar strode into the vestibule with the ends of his stole whipped out behind him, a piece of paper crumpled in his fist.

‘Thank the Goddess you heard, Ansel. I was afraid the bell might be too late.’

‘It was you who rang, not them?’ Festan asked, and Danilar nodded.

‘Pure chance I looked out of the window when I did, and saw a dozen Elders crossing the court, all robed for the Rede. I came straight here, but the doors were already closed.’

Festan scowled. ‘I can scarcely believe it. Treachery in our own house!’ Shaking back his full sleeves, he stalked up to the doors and pounded on them with his meaty fists. ‘Open up! Open in the name of the Preceptor!’

Dust sifted down as the doors shook in their frames. Several other Elders added their voices to his, chirping their concern like sparrows at a cat in the garden.

Danilar held out the paper to Ansel. ‘Here. I met your secretary
on the way and he thought this might be useful. It’s the absentee list for the first scheduled session next week.’

Ansel smoothed the crumpled sheet between his hands and scanned the names, counting. Eighteen absent, so eighty-one attendees. Fifty-four hierarchs for a quorum. A faint hope began to warm his breast. Could it be possible? He ran his eye round the room again to check his count and the hope dimmed. Twenty-six wasn’t enough to challenge them.

Silently, he offered the paper to Selsen, who read it and handed it back, grim-faced.

Behind him, Festan continued to pound the doors and demand admittance.

‘Saints and angels, Festan, let it be,’ Ansel sighed. ‘There’s nothing we can do for now but wait and see where the arrows fall.’

He leaned on his staff as the tide of righteous anger that had carried him this far began to ebb. So it would end on a bureaucratic technicality. How ironic.

‘Arrows?’ barked a voice. ‘Has war finally broken out in Gimrael?’

Ansel looked round to see scarlet robes melt out of the Lord Provost’s path as he strode into the room in hunting leathers, slapping his gauntlets across his thigh in time with the rap of his boot-heels. With him was another Elder garbed for the hunt, his quiver still across his shoulder.

‘Not yet, Bredon,’ Ansel said. Eadwyn made twenty-seven. Deadlock.

‘So what’s going on? I was in Eadwyn’s deer-park with a clean shot when he heard the bell. Someone owes me a buck.’

Insurrection
, Selsen signed, and the Provost’s brows quirked upwards.

‘Thieftalk? I thought only spies and slitpockets used that, not Suvaeon novices.’

I grew up in Haven-port, my lord. A man cannot help where he comes from. May I borrow your dagger?

Bredon frowned, but produced a skinning knife from his boot top and proffered it hilt first.

Selsen took it and walked to the hall doors, bowing his way past the smouldering Festan.

The sentries stirred uneasily, glancing from the Lord Provost to Ansel and back.

‘At ease,’ Ansel said. ‘Selsen?’

Trust me
. Carefully the novice slid the knife-blade between the two doors below the latch and worked it upwards until it clicked against something. He set his shoulder and heaved, and the left-hand door swung inwards an inch or so under its own weight.

‘Impressive,’ said Bredon, taking his knife back. ‘Growing up on the waterfront has given you all sorts of skills. Who are you, young man? I could find a place for you as a marshal.’

My name is Selsen, my lord. I’m visiting from the Daughterhouse at Caer Amon
.

‘So where is this going, Selsen?’ Ansel interrupted.

For answer, Selsen pointed at the Lord Provost and smiled.

Bredon’s dark eyes registered confusion at first, and then his lips twitched as he worked it out. Hand over heart, he bowed. ‘I accept your nomination under the fourth amendment, my lord Preceptor.’

Of course. Who would have thought a novice from a backwater Daughterhouse could be so finely versed in consistorial law? He looked to Tercel, who steepled his bony fingers under his chin and nodded.

‘Selsen, my boy, you never cease to amaze me,’ said Ansel, a grin threatening to break his composure. ‘Let’s see this done.’

Beautifully balanced as they were, the Rede Hall doors swung open with a hearty shove from Selsen and scattered the two sentries inside. Surprised Elders swivelled round in their seats, and on the Preceptor’s dais Goran choked on his speech.

Ansel stood in the doorway and stared at the assembled Elders. A few stiffened defiantly under his eye, but a few more cringed.
And well you might, duplicitous curs!
His belly roiled with rage.
What were you promised to support that fat slug’s ambitions?

Bredon and Danilar took station either side of him, and behind him he heard the remainder of the Elders taking their seats. When the shuffling and rustling finally faded away, he let his gaze rest on Goran, standing in front of the Preceptor’s chair with its carved Oak backrest, and dared the man to look away first.

‘This,’ he announced, ‘is an illegal Rede.’

‘We convened a quorum of available Elders, as mandated by consistorial law,’ Goran declared. ‘We are quite within our rights to vote—’

‘Shut up, Goran.’

‘—to vote on issues concerning—’

‘I said be
quiet
!’ Ansel struck the floor with his staff. ‘One more word out of you before I’m done and I’ll have the Lord Provost arrest you.’

Goran drew himself to his full height, colour rising in his cheeks. ‘On what charge?’

‘Why don’t we start with contempt for the process of law, and work up from there?’ Ansel roared. ‘Marshals!’

Behind him, the four sentries stamped to attention.

‘How dare you!’ Goran blustered. ‘You have no authority to do such a thing!’

‘Don’t I?’ Ansel glared at him. His voice quivered with rage. ‘I am Preceptor of this Order.’

‘Not any more.’

Silence held the hall breathless in its grip.

Ansel’s knuckles whitened on his staff. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You were put aside by majority vote as unfit to hold office. I am Preceptor now.’ Triumph sparkling in his piggy eyes, Goran gestured to the clerk at the desk below him. ‘The vote has already been recorded in the ledger.’

Fury boiled up Ansel’s throat, sour as the urge to do violence.

‘Unfit, am I? Let me tell you who is unfit for holy office, Goran! Who keeps their own staff of questioners, even though they were outlawed with the Inquisition?’

Goran blinked, and the assembled Curia sucked in their breath. ‘Did you think I didn’t know that you use those questioners to inflict pain on young men for your own personal gratification?’

Bredon laid a hand on Ansel’s arm. ‘Is this true?’

‘It’s true, I just couldn’t prove it,’ Ansel hissed back. ‘None of the poor wretches he abused is still here to testify against him.’

‘Dead?’

‘All bar one.’

Puce-faced, fists trembling at his sides, Goran burst out: ‘Lies! I won’t stand here to be slandered by you, Ansel. Your tenure is over. Marshals, I demand you remove this man from the chamber.’

‘Can you produce this witness?’ Bredon whispered under restless mutters from the watching Elders.

‘I sent him away from Dremen for his own safety.’

‘That’s good enough for me.’ The Lord Provost raised his voice. ‘Hold fast, men.’

‘What are you doing? Arrest that man!’ Goran levelled his finger at Ansel. ‘You’re finished, do you hear me? You’ve been clinging onto office on the strength of your war record for far too long – you should have stood down years ago.’

‘At least I have a war record to be proud of,’ Ansel retorted. ‘Where were you when the fires burned, Goran? Where were you when the legions rode out against twice their number at Samarak, when the arrows were so thick in the sky they made midnight of noonday? Tucked up snug on your father’s estates like a hen on her nest, weren’t you?’

A raspy cough broke out with the words, but Ansel could not stop now. His blood was up the way it hadn’t been since the desert wars, when his life had depended on steel and stones and a strong
horse under him. He dashed moisture from his lips on the back of his hand.

‘I was there.’ A hand plucked at his sleeve but he shook it off. ‘In the blood and the muck and the stench and the flies. I was there because I swore an oath to defend the faith with my body and my soul, though it might cost me my life. You all swore that same oath when you received your spurs. Is this what we are become?’

‘The Order has changed since the desert wars, Ansel,’ Goran fired back. ‘Our numbers have dwindled, the faith is diminished. Swords and rosaries are not enough any more. If we are to reverse this decline we need a new hand at the helm, a new voice to rally the faithful.’

‘And you think that voice is yours? You think you have the stones to sit in that chair?’

Ansel thrust out his hand to point at the Preceptor’s seat and saw crimson smeared across it, speckling his brocaded sleeve. Another cough flayed his lungs and he staggered, saved from falling by Selsen’s shoulder under his arm.

‘Yes, I do. Look at you,’ Goran scoffed. ‘You’re dying, old man. Go out to pasture where you belong.’

Ansel straightened up with an effort. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth and he spat onto the marble tiles to clear it.

‘I am where I belong,’ he said, biting off each word. ‘For the Oak and the Goddess, to my last breath. What do you stand for, Goran, that makes you so much better suited to lead than me?’

‘It’s over, Ansel! We have voted for a new Preceptor, accept it!’

‘Um, the vote is void, Elder Goran,’ the clerk squeaked.

‘What?’

‘It’s void.’ Brother Chronicler clutched his papers to his chest, a shield against the stares levelled at him. ‘There was no quorum.’

‘There were fifty-four names against the motion, man!’

‘Yes, but there are eighty-two Elders present,’ the clerk rushed out, shrinking down inside his black robe under the weight of scrutiny. Next to him, Tercel and Morten nodded.

‘Count again,’ Goran ordered.