Grand Conspiracy: Second Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ pheasant wings and peacock eyes. Next came a skinny, bald man robed in sable and purple velvet; then a wizened creature of indeterminate sex, with one gouged-out eye socket and a blackthorn walking stick capped with a crow skull and fringed with rattling bone beads. Four liveried footmen brought up the rear, loaded chin high with oddments and bizarre paraphernalia.

      The array was eclectic. From his unobtrusive vantage outside the hub of activity, the old man picked out several portable bronze braziers, clay vessels stamped with runes, and two amphorae of ruby glass. Less wholesome than these, stained with the aura of dark usage, was a goblet made from a cranial bone rimmed in tarnished silver. A trailing tangle of embroidery identified the filched mantle from a ransacked hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood. Two matched onyx candlesticks wafted a perfume of heavy incense, even through the rampaging wind that rushed in, rank with the salt rime razed off the harbor.

      Through a sifting swirl of snow, the rattle of bone beads, and the sonorous flourish of the herald, the page boys wrestled the heavy doors shut. There panoply paused. The crown’s master healer hastened forward and bowed under the gimlet regard of the Lord Commander. The high councilmen looked bored, and the clerks stood resigned, while the countrywomen whispered from the inner doorway of the factor’s office, their capable hands pink from wash suds.

      Their interest was matched by the old man in the rag coat, tucked in his corner with the pert fascination of a house wren. ‘You know that’s a necromancer’s stick?’ he commented to no one in particular. ‘Very rare. Dangerous, too. I wonder whose unpleasant little sigil lends it power?’

      Across the warehouse, the official with the resplendent dress exchanged smooth talk with the healer. His seamless, court bearing set each gesture apart, while the more heavyset Lord Examiner shifted from foot to foot in resentment, and the servants divested their burdens with thinly concealed distaste. The guardsmen and the robed magistrates looked on like cranes, overseeing disposition of the eccentrics, who were named as prisoners under arraignment for the practice of unlawful sorceries.

      Their condemned status notwithstanding, they argued. The discord swelled into an arm-waving clamor concerning who held right of precedence. The magistrates deadlocked over whose authority should silence them, while the herald, resigned, waded in and settled their shouting with a peasant’s practice of drawing straws. In decorous language, the clerk of the court then assigned each mismatched contestant to a cot with an unconscious occupant.

      The bald man jabbed his splayed fingers and demanded that everyone stand back.

      ‘What, for you?’ the woman retorted, skirling in spangles to face him. ‘Why should we give way one inch for a showman who couldn’t draw spells to drop fresh dung from a pig?’

      The altercation flared, while the withered oldster caught in between remained single-mindedly oblivious.

      ‘Good people!’ the herald called in vexation. ‘There will be no specialized treatment between you. The Lord Examiner and Avenor’s crown magistrates will judge merit upon equal standing!’

      A strained truce prevailed, while the master healer looked irritated, and the contestants who had rudely invaded his domain reclaimed their sundry paraphernalia. Under the frosty regard of the Lord Examiner and the unnamed, dapper high officer, they began setting up with businesslike self-importance. The heavyset secretary broke out his lap desk and uncorked his inkwell, while his chilblained apprentice sharpened his quills, and the robed clerks readied the sunwheel seal and gold wax, and snipped lengths from a spool of white ribbon. The magistrates shook melting snow off drooped hats. They peered down long noses to render judgment as the woman unclipped the clasp at her throat, shed her train amid an electrical jitter of reflections, and undertook the first trial.

      She began by spreading her sequin train over her assigned victim. She lit tapers. The ancient, carved sconces streamed cloying smoke as she waved long-nailed hands to a chiming descant of silver bracelets. For an interval, the officials coughed and dabbed runny eyes, while she circled the cot and muttered a singsong incantation.

      ‘A farce, indeed,’ muttered the old man in the shadows. His eyes became piercing, narrowed to slits as the flashy train was whisked off to unveil the man underneath. His pale face was still, the comatose limbs no more responsive than before.

      The magistrates straightened from their whispered consultation. The elder one rapped out his verdict. ‘The accused is proved guilty of fraud.’

      ‘Another charlatan!’ the Crown Examiner concurred. He pronounced the lighter sentence. ‘The objects used for this act of chicanery shall be burned without recompense. The offender will be fined ten silvers and set free with a warning not to repeat her offense.’

      ‘No more have I coin, since your constables ransacked my lodgings!’ the woman yelled in defiance.

      The magistrates lent her outburst no credence. ‘If she has no relations to dun for her fine, give her penury and hard labor with the city’s slop crews.’

      The secretary scribbled the added amendment, and the woman resorted to curses. Her shouts turned shrill as two burly guardsmen ushered her, struggling, through the door and remanded her into the custody of the garrison men-at-arms posted in the snowfall outside.

      Due process ground on, as ribbons and seal were proffered by the clerks, under candles that flagged in the draft as the outer doors were shoved closed. The healer masked his face in weary hands, and the raggedy character with the crow skull stick flashed a triumphant smile celebrating a rival’s departure.

      ‘Next defendant,’ droned the magistrate. ‘Make your case for the court.’

      The man in gaudy velvet strode forward. Chin held high, each gesture theatrical, he unwrapped a set of shell rattles, then lit something in his brazier that gave off a reek like singed wool and cat piss. His display opened with patterns chalked in a circle around a row of candles, moved on through a muttered consultation with a smoky quartz scrying ball, then broke into rattling, witha swaying ululation over a brush tied from a hanged man’s hair. The act ended in daubing a sticky decoction over the face and the feet of his still unconscious subject.

      The fine for his failure was double the woman’s.

      ‘Well, at least they recognize a fake when they see one,’ the old man said, bemused from the sidelines. His expression now shaded toward genuine concern, as though he perceived something more than straightforward trial and judgment.

      Last came the shapeless oldster. The shed hood revealed female gender and a filthy bristle of white hair. She wore a necklace of pig’s teeth. The necromancer’s stick pinched within her twig fingers seemed to glare blue for an instant as she bent and ignited the twisted black rootstock she had shredded in her brazier.

      ‘No!’ The old man flipped up his cowled collar and strode out of the shadows, no longer deferent, but charged to a startling, sharp air of command. ‘You will not light that here, madam!’ Nor was his authority less than absolute as he entered the circle of candlelight. ‘The herb you’ve chosen will cause harm in this case, and that stick is an unclean implement with which to recall a man’s blameless, strayed spirit.’

      ‘The lad will awaken,’ rasped the crone, the glint in her single eye sullen.

      ‘Pass the Wheel, more likely,’ the old man corrected. The improved illumination fully revealed him, even to the peculiar, detailed threadwork that patterned his coat of drab motley. The boots he wore underneath the long hem were a horseman’s, scuffed with hard wear and marred at the toes with small holes that looked punched by cinders. For some reason beyond logic, that oddity СКАЧАТЬ