Maerwyn Arrests Two Lords

The Lord-General had not, in his career, arrested a lord. He had, in his career, had the small private satisfaction of seeing several lords resign their commissions at his careful suggestion, and the rarer private satisfaction of seeing two lords removed from the council by the king's hand on the careful evidence of his own quiet investigations. He had not himself, by his hand, taken a sword from a peer of the realm and laid the peer in irons in the cold stone room beneath the western wing of the palace at Vextar. The act was reserved, by long careful tradition of Krypton, for Lord-Generals in seasons that the kingdom had agreed to call extraordinary. The kingdom had not, in his lifetime, called a season extraordinary. The kingdom would, on the third evening after the morning of the wall at Darklume, call this one.

The riders had reached Vextar at the close of the second day after the wall, in the small careful relay the Major had taught them to ride at the close of the morning. They had brought him three names. They had brought also a sealed letter from the heir, addressed to his own hand, requesting that he act on the names under the king's silent assent.

He had read the letter at his desk in the western wing. He had read it twice. He had read it the second time at the small distance from the lamp he had read every important letter at since his twenty-fifth year.

The lead rider had been at the door of the office during the first reading.

The Lord-General had nodded. He had folded the letter once. He had asked the rider one further question.

The rider had bowed. The rider had gone.

He read the heir's letter the third time at the small distance from the lamp. He nodded, once, at the second reading. He folded the letter. He put it into the small steel-bound chest at the foot of his desk that he had used, since his appointment, for the few correspondences his successor would, on the day of his succession, be required to read.

He sent for his three trusted captains.

The three captains were the three he had chosen, in the small slow careful winnowing of his fifteen years as Lord-General, as the three he would, in a season the kingdom would call extraordinary, use for the work the season would require. They came at the third hour of the evening. He gave them three small careful written instructions. He did not give them the names aloud. The names were on the slips. The slips were sealed. He gave them, also, the small careful arrangement of horses and of gates and of the order of the streets at Vextar he had, in the past year, prepared in his head against the small private possibility he had not, until the heir's letter, allowed himself to have.

"Read."

They read. They committed the slips to memory in his presence. They burned the slips in the small grate at the side of his desk.

"You will go at the fourth hour of the evening. You will not, on the road, speak the name of your lord. You will not, at the gate, speak the king's name unless the lord asks. You will, if the lord asks, give him this answer."

He set, on the desk, a small sheet on which a single line had been written in his own hand. The captains read it. They committed it to memory. They burned it.

They saluted. They went.

The arrests were carried out at the fourth hour of the evening, in the small careful order he had set.

The first lord — Lord Anriken of the Hollows — was taken at his own gate, by the captain Maerwyn had chosen for the most public of the three arrests. He did not resist. He had been, the captain afterwards reported, in the small private way of a lord who had been waiting for some weeks for the arrest, not surprised. He had given his sword to the captain at the gate. He had not, on the giving, made any of the small careful theatres a younger man might have made.

Anriken had nodded. He had stepped into the carriage. The carriage had taken him to the cold stone room beneath the western wing. The cold stone room had received him.

The second lord — Lord Selvinor of the Three Rivers — was taken at the small careful inn at the southern gate of Vextar, where he had been, on the small careful intelligence Maerwyn had, attempting to arrange the night ride. He resisted. He drew a knife. He cut the captain's left arm. He was put down by the second of the captain's men in the small narrow corridor of the inn, by a single blow that did not, by the captain's careful instruction, kill. He was carried, unconscious, to the cold stone room beneath the western wing in the second carriage Maerwyn had prepared. The cold stone room received him as well.

The third lord — Lord Verelis of the High Pass — was not taken.

He had ridden south, at the close of the second day after the morning of the wall, on a horse no clerk of the council had registered. The chronicler will note, for the small care of the season's record, that the wall at Darklume had named all three lords on the same morning, but that the news of the wall had reached the third lord by a route the chronicler does not, on his own current reading, know — a route involving, perhaps, a courier from one of the two compromised Counted Houses at Marrowport, perhaps a small word in a corridor at the palace, perhaps the small careful accidents of the kind the warlock's table had been making throughout the chronicle. The third lord had been gone, by the time Maerwyn's captain had arrived at the lord's house, for almost two days. He was, by the morning of the arrests, somewhere south of the Caedrin border. The chronicle will not, in S17, find him. The chronicle will, in S18, locate him in Sereveld, where the third compromised Counted House the wall had not named — there had been four altogether on the wall in Krypton-letters, two at the Doge's hand and two not — would, by some quiet decision of its own, take him in.

Maerwyn went to the king at the fifth hour.

The king was at his small careful chair by the fire in the inner chamber. The king's clerk sat at the small table beside the fire, with the small careful book the clerk used to read aloud, in the evenings, the day's letters in the order the king had always preferred them — domestic, then military, then foreign, then private. The king's clerk had, on this evening, not yet read. The clerk had been waiting for the Lord-General to come.

The Lord-General came in. He bowed. He stood at the small careful distance the king's chair had always been addressed from. He did not speak.

The king looked at him.

The king said, in the small dry voice he used for the one decision of the moon:

"Done?"

The Lord-General inclined his head.

"Two of three. The third is south."

The king nodded.

He did not, on the nodding, speak again. He did not, on the nodding, look at the clerk. He looked at the fire. The Lord-General waited the careful count he had been waiting for fifteen years for the king's small dismissals. The king did not, on this evening, dismiss him. The king said, after a long count, in the same small dry voice:

"The cathedral."

The Lord-General did not, on the word, react. He waited.

"Tell the cathedral, when the cathedral is told, that the king has heard its mirror."

The Lord-General inclined his head.

"And tell the heir that the king does not, on this matter, speak again."

The Lord-General inclined his head a second time. He did not, in the inclining, speak. He had been spoken to by the king for the longest sentence he had heard the king speak in three years, and he understood that the speaking was at an end for some long time to come, and he did not, by any of his trainings, attempt to extend it. He bowed.

"Sire."

He left the inner chamber.

He went, at the sixth hour, down the long careful stair to the cold stone room beneath the western wing. He looked, for a count of perhaps thirty seconds, at each of the two lords in his care.

Anriken sat on the stone bench at the western wall. He looked up when the Lord-General came in.

Anriken nodded. He did not, in the nodding, ask any further question. He looked at his own hands. The Lord-General waited the count he had been waiting on prison thresholds since his twenty-fifth year. After the count, he turned.

Selvinor was not yet conscious. He lay on the second bench, in the small careful posture the captain's deputy had laid him in, with the small bandage at the back of his head. The Lord-General did not, in the looking, lean down. He did not, in the looking, taunt. He looked the count he had given Anriken. He turned.

He went up the stair. He went to his own desk in the western wing. He sat at the desk for a long count. He drew, before he wrote anything, the small careful slip from the steel-bound chest. He read the heir's letter a third time. He folded it. He put it back. He took a fresh sheet of council paper. He wrote, on the small careful first line, the date and the small careful summary of the arrests. He wrote, on the second line, the small precise sentence the king had given him.

He set the pen down.

A kingdom that arrests its own is a kingdom that has not yet decided whether it is a court or a battlefield. The chronicler does not, in the close of this chapter, attempt to decide for the kingdom. The chronicler observes only that the council chamber at Vextar, on the morning of the seventh day after the wall, would convene with seven members where it had, for forty years, convened with eight; that the king would, by his silent assent, sustain the arrests; that the heir would, in the small careful seat she had taken at her father's right hand for the first time in her life, watch the council vote; and that the council, by a small careful majority of five to two, would vote to prosecute. The kingdom had not, in the year of the chronicle, prosecuted a peer. The kingdom would. The prosecution would, in the seasons to come, be the small careful battlefield on which the kingdom would decide what it had been on the question of the warlock for ten seasons before it had begun to read.

The heir would, by her seat, decide. The Major would, by the small careful pickets at the perimeter of the cathedral, defend. The priest would, by the small careful steady prayer he had not stopped saying since the night of the gate, anchor. The girl would, by the small bead in her cupped left hand, spend. The chronicle, at the close of the chapter, has only just begun.