The Jackal stepped forward to me at the wall. I looked at John, watching me silently through the eyeholes of his mask, and handed him the Chara's dagger. Then I looked over at the Chara.
For a moment still, his look of trustfulness lingered, as though he expected me to explain this peculiar behavior. But as the Jackal turned away, he reached up to the mask with no flourish and pulled it away to reveal his face. Peter's gaze travelled from John to me and then, within blinks of the eye, his face grew cold and formal, as it did when he wore the Pendant of Judgment.
He kept his gaze fixed on me for a moment longer as his face returned to normal. John went over to the window and laid the mask and dagger there. Then, dismissing me from his look as though I were of no importance, Peter turned to John and said dispassionately, "Andrew learned in his years with me to serve as a mediator between myself and those who wished to communicate with me. Whatever his motives for bringing me here or the constraints placed upon me by this meeting, he has done me one final service by allowing me the opportunity to speak with the Jackal. He said that you had information for me. If he spoke truly, then I would be interested in hearing it."
Ursula walked over to stand beside me. I placed my arm around her shoulders and pulled her back against my chest.
Neither the Chara nor the Jackal took notice of us. They were standing straight and motionless, as though issuing a challenge to each other. John said, in the same neutral voice that Peter had used, "Most of the Koretian people blame the Chara for all the troubles of this land, but those of us who have had many encounters with Lord Alan know that the governor is as much a trickster as the Jackal. For fifteen years now, Lord Alan has profited through the deaths of men: he arrests Koretian noblemen on slim pretexts, and then he tortures them into offering false confessions that they are my thieves. Once the noblemen have confessed to their supposed crimes, Lord Alan is free to execute them and confiscate their land and goods for his own use."
John paused for a second to sweep the hair back from his eyes. That one small gesture seemed to contain all the proof that the Chara would need that he was dealing with a man rather than a god. Having seen John as both, I could sense how, even at this moment, John's godly powers lay simmering below the surface like a hidden fire. But the Chara had not seen that side of John, and I remembered what the Jackal had said about the Emorians' inability to recognize the god. John was left with only his human wit with which to fight his enemy.
The Jackal concluded, "The governor's brutality and the Chara's outlawing of the gods' law, as well as my own activities, have brought this land to a point of explosion. You can no longer continue to hold this dominion as you have in the past. War will be here at any moment."
The Chara was silent for a while. Ursula had turned her face from what was happening; she rested her head on my chest, her eyes closed. I held her softly against me, my eyes still on the men.
"When Andrew was with me," Peter said slowly, "he may have thought he was privy to all of my thoughts, but he was not. Some facts I kept from him, not out of distrustfulness, but in an effort to protect him. I know the information you have just given me, both the governor's activities and the imminence of war. They are the reasons I travelled here myself, rather than send an ambassador. No time existed to send messengers back and forth; I needed to be here on the spot to find a solution to both problems."
"Give us our freedom," said John succinctly. "That will solve the problems."
"Will it?" Peter continued to stand as motionless as he did when he was sitting in judgment; his face, though, had not returned to stone. I had asked Peter once what he felt when he took on the look of the Chara. He had been quiet a long while. Then he had said, "As though I become someone else." That was all that he had offered, and I had not pressed him further on the matter. I knew better than to prise secrets from him, though I had believed that his secrets from me were few.
Now Peter said, "Will it solve Koretia's problems to return it to the state it was in when Koretia attacked Emor twenty-seven years ago? Koretia had no strong central government; it had been torn apart by civil war; its people had no law courts to turn to in order to settle their grievances peacefully. Many people believe that my father fought against the Koretians for twelve years purely in order to exact vengeance for the destruction of the borderland villages. In fact, many more Emorians died in the Border Wars than were killed in the villages. That incident alone was not reason enough to fight. My father continued to fight because he believed that it was the only way to bring peace, not only to Emor, but to Koretia as well. That peace I am sworn to uphold."
John's hand rested lightly upon his empty belt. With his back to the window, his face was mainly in shadow. "Peace is something we both want, Chara," he said quietly. "But you cannot buy peace by enslaving a land." He hesitated. I remembered him sometimes stopping in childhood as though he were drawing upon his visions of the gods to know what to say. Through the window came the everlasting song of the cicadas, growing louder as the heat of the day grew greater.
John continued, "If you had talked to the Koretians during your visit rather than staying in the governor's palace most of the time, you would know that my people appreciate the benefits of Emorian law. The great strength of Emorian law is that it is rigid and unchanging; the great strength of the gods' law is that it is flexible. The two complement each other – I know that you do not agree with his, for you do not worship the gods and see the benefits of their manner of judgment. But you will never convince the Koretians to live as Emorians. The best you can do for the Koretians is to free us and allow us to retain what is good about Emor, while bringing back what is good about Koretia. Free us, Chara, and you will have true peace in this land."
"It is not that simple," replied Peter. He paused, and I remembered the pauses he would make during dinner conversations and council meetings and other times when he must subtly assess the man speaking in order to determine whether he was a friend or enemy. He continued in his carefully courteous manner, "You say that Koretia can take over her own affairs without dissolving into civil war. As I have said before, that would require a ruler who could work with both Emor and Koretia, and I have not yet found a man in this land whom I would entrust with that task. That is one difficulty."
His eyes slid over toward me, binding me momentarily, so that I lost all awareness of the woman in my arms and felt only the Chara's cold, pitiless scrutiny. Then his gaze travelled back to John. "The other difficulty is one that Andrew may have mentioned – or would have, if his mind had not perhaps been on other matters. I know, from the questions he asked me at the time, that he was researching this matter immediately before we left Emor . . . out of service to me."
Again, that brief, cold look, and then the Chara returned his attention to the Jackal. "I am not entirely a free-man," he said. "I am bound by the law of my people. I may be a tyrant, as you say, but my tyranny is placed under careful restraints by the rules of my land. If this were fifteen years ago, and Koretia had no governor, I could do as I wished in this land. But Koretia has a governor, who receives his orders from the Great Council rather than me. The governor's appointment is for life, and I may not remove him from office except with the council's consent. As long as Koretia is ruled by its governor, I am powerless to make great changes in this land without permission from the Emorian council. And the council will not give me the power to free Koretia. I know, because I asked it to do so."
Ursula suddenly lifted her head to stare at the Chara. John's face did not change; it was as solid as a mask. He said in a detached voice, "You are saying that you want to free Koretia?"
"I wanted the power to do so. Whether I did so depended on whether I could overcome that other difficulty I mentioned. But the council's word is final in this matter. I cannot overrule it without truly becoming the tyrant I am supposed to be."
"Then, since you could not free the Koretians, you came here to find a way to break their will," said John flatly.
"Yes. Or to find another way to free them." As I watched, Peter came to some sort of judgment about John. His expression softened somewhat, and his voice, already courteous, became cordial. "Before deciding to come here, I asked Andrew what he could tell me about his land. He confirmed what I had learned from one of my spies, that the governor is stealing from the Koretians. I knew that if I could uncover evidence that the governor was defying the Chara's orders to treat the people here with mercy, and if I could also show that he had been stealing goods that rightfully belonged to the dominion, then I would be able to have him sentenced to the high doom for disobedience. With his death certain, I would have the power to decide Koretia's fate. So I came here to get that evidence."
"And did you find it?" asked John.
Peter shook his head, and his hand went briefly up to finger his neck-flap. Then, discovering that his emblem brooch was not there, he let his hand fall once more. "No. If he is indeed breaking my commands, he has covered his tracks well. You notice that I did not ask you whether you had the evidence I need. I know that such evidence is in the palace somewhere, in places where even your thieves cannot go. So if you wish to see Koretia free, I can suggest only two solutions: my freedom or my death. Since I have no heir, my death will plunge Emor into civil war, and the Emorian soldiers will have no time to hold Koretia. My freedom may allow me to obtain the information I need to free Koretia – if that is what I decide to do."
John wore a slight smile as he listened to the Chara's candid words. Then his smile faded. "I cannot risk letting you go. I do not trust you enough to be sure that you will free Koretia if you gain the power to do so. As for your death, I have no wish for that to occur. But by tomorrow, the governor and the Koretians will know that you have been kidnapped, and the war here will have begun. We will have to leave here when that happens. And as I already explained to Andrew, we cannot take prisoners with us."
The Chara stood motionless. His expression did not change. In a voice much colder than before, he said, "Then you and I will have to do much thinking this day to find a solution. It is not only my own life that hangs in balance here."
The Jackal nodded. His command, spoken in a softly raised voice, brought two of the thieves into the sanctuary to take the Chara away. As he walked out, Peter passed me without a word; I was still cradling Ursula against me. Peter reached the door, and then hesitated a moment, looking back at us, before allowing himself to be led away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
John waited until Peter and the thieves had left, closing the door behind them. Then he turned, walked rapidly to the window, and laid his palms down on the windowseat, leaning forward as far as he could without falling. Ursula lifted her head again and slipped out of my arms to come over and place her hand on his back. He looked up at her touch and asked, "Will you let me speak with Andrew alone?"
Ursula nodded and left the room, her gaze switching from John to me, as though unsure which brother she should be aiding first. When she was gone, John turned, picked up the Chara's dagger from the windowseat where he had laid it, and stared at it. He said meditatively, "I often think it would be better to be the one under the sentence of death than to be the one doing the sentencing."
"The Chara said something like that to me once," I murmured.
John looked at me silently. Since he made no reply, I asked in a flat voice, "What next?"
"I asked Ursula to leave because I have one more task I wish you to take on." John moved forward to me, the dagger still cradled gently in his hand. "This task is more dangerous than the previous one and may yield no help at all, so feel free to refuse me on this. I'd like you to go back to the palace and take all of the papers you can find that belong to the Chara. They may be of use to us. If you meet anyone, you'll have to devise a tale to explain why the Chara is missing and you are there. It's possible that you'll be arrested."
I smiled humorlessly and shook my head. "As to that, I've been arrested before. I've also been enslaved, beaten, and seen the eyes of the friend I love when he discovered what I'd done to him. At this point, nothing matters except finding a way to free Koretia. If these papers might help, I'll fetch them."
John touched my arm and said with quiet intensity, "Do not give way to despair. I have had to do many times what you have done for the first time today, lure a trusting man to his death. Do not allow the numbness you now feel to conceal from you any dangers. I still have need of your help, and I have no wish to lose a blood brother again."
"I'll be careful," I promised.
o—o—o
Perhaps I would have been, if I had not met Lord Carle.
He came upon me as I was sorting through the small pile of papers in Peter's chamber. The council lord entered the room waving his hand, trying to bat away a Koretian blood-fly that had taken a fancy to him. His face was red and perspiring, and as the blood-fly landed on his neck for a fourth time, he cried out, "If the dog-people who live in this place do not destroy themselves soon, then I pray to the Koretian gods that this land be burnt to the ground! No civilized man should have to live in such a place, where even the Emorian soldiers have acquired so thick a barbarian accent that I suspect their brains have been melted by the heat. It took me five minutes to make myself understood to the guards at this door, though no doubt they let you in immediately, since you appear so at home in this land."
I did not look up. I had found under one of the papers the Chara's emblem brooch. Without thinking why I was doing so, I slipped it into the satchel John had loaned me. In a cool voice I asked, "May I help you, Lord Carle?"
"No, I do not need to talk to the Chara's servant, I need the Chara himself. Fetch your master to me."
"The Chara spoke of walking about the city this morning, but no doubt he will return soon. You may wish to check the governor's library to see whether he is there."
"I have just been with the governor in his library, and I would like the Chara's opinion on the subject we discussed. Why are you not with your master?"