The Crooked Key, Chapter 7: Certain Hard-to-follow Legal Precedents
The Crooked Key by Kyle Marquis
Chapter 7: Certain Hard-to-follow Legal Precedents
The banisher left that night, consumed by his two failures in Upper Bant—the deaths of Medru and the priest—and fearing that if he did not reach the capital in time, he would fail again. He had wanted to change horses, as he suspected that people were watching him, but he had no time. Instead he just loaded Panzu into her birdcage (without a cloth this time, as the rain had abated) and raced out of Steplyn with as much speed as the draft horse could manage, heading east for the capital.
Baristoc, the Bright Midden, rose before them with the dawn, a city of ancient walls and new towers, split roughly three-quarters and one-quarter by the River Hezaun, which widened within one mile of the Bay of Marafer so that only three bridges crossed the gap. The river was wide enough that it had been two cities once, or rather a city to the south and a fortress, the Old Rock, to the North, but that was so long ago that everyone now saw only one Baristoc. In these years before the passing of the Clan House Act, the North City was known for its boisterousness, its shocking mix of old wealth and new poverty, its schools and theaters, its cafes and dance halls, its old and inconvenient seats of government (including the duke’s decrepit castle, the Old Rock previously mentioned, and the Cathedral of the Egg). In the west and near the river, where Eilo entered through the Autumn Gate, lived most of Baristoc’s Glyphic community, as the Reed People were still mostly confined to impoverished southern slums. The South City, for its part, contained not just the Reed People, but most of everything else: the majority of the population, industry, palaces, hotels, the old serf markets (this was before the Second Redistricting Act), as well as its own theaters, cafes, and musical halls, these being, on average, technically superior to those in the North City but not as formally or politically radical.
News of Duke Uleino’s death had reached Baristoc a day before Eilo with the arrival of Captain Aklurian, who confirmed rumors already in circulation. Black flags hung in a few windows, and as he rode down Autumn Street, the banisher overheard all kinds of unlikely stories. Duke Uleino had been killed by monsters. Duke Uleino had fought a duel. Hexguards had killed the Duke. His High Guard had betrayed him. There was a great deal of confused gossip about Skaithness, and Eilo could not help himself: trying to act casual, he directly queried a cart driver. The man said that the “mechanical girl” was still alive, but knew nothing else useful.
Stories of a “genie tower” of green stone near Lostdark let the banisher calculate the rate of the Mollusk Temple’s spread. He did some quick mental math, then did it again looking for a more optimistic model, and did not like any of his results.
Fylent Maer kept his offices one street north of the North City’s dockside sprawl, close enough that the air smelled of shellfish and imported spices, and echoed with the cries of fishmongers and gulls. Like most of North City, his office and the nearby buildings had ground floors made of stone and three or four additional wooden stories. An inn and tavern across the street offered stables and remained open at all hours, which suited Fylent Maer just fine, as he disliked horses but loved a drink after work, and he worked in frantic spurts of productivity before hastening across the street to blind himself with hard liquor. Since answering legal questions for banishers no longer paid the bills, most of the lawyer’s wealth came from a lucrative import-export business that exploited one of the few remaining First Clan monopoly loopholes. These monopolistic patents too would one day disappear with the Clan House Act, along with the formal restrictions on settlement and land ownership that hindered the First Clans and left them beholden to New Clan brokers and swindlers, but that would not happen for years, and in that time, Fylent Maer moved carefully and cunningly to avoid violating the tangled laws and mores that tolerated, but never really sanctioned, his operations.
Eilo had no idea how his clanmate could help him, but there was no one else. He stabled his horses across the street, slung Panzu’s entire library over his shoulder (she insisted, though it weighed over a hundred pounds), and stumbled up the steps to the raised ground floor porch of Fylent Maer’s archaic-style house.
A scribe greeted him, then confusedly followed the banisher’s instructions to place the library in the master’s downstairs study for later review. Recognizing the banisher, or at least recognizing him as a banisher, the scribe conducted Eilo upstairs to a waiting room outside the upstairs office. A maid served him tea and scones, and set out a pad of butter for Panzu, as it was still early and Fylent Maer had not yet arrived. Eilo discreetly inquired about his clanmate’s activities the other night, then about any unusual activity around Old Rock or the Palace of Justice, but they could offer him no new insights.
“I knew you’d show up, if you weren’t dead already,” Fylent Maer said from the bottom of the stairs. He stumped up the steps, moving fast despite his missing leg, and waggled his silver cane at his clanmate. Whip-thin but a head and a half shorter than the banisher, Fylent Maer looked like a jocular goblin; the morning had been cold and his cheeks were red as apples. When he swept off his tricorn hat, Eilo saw that he was no longer wearing a wig. Baldness suited him. So did sobriety, and the lawyer seemed keen and alert at the moment.
“A companion of mine is going to be executed by hexguards,” Eilo said, rising from the low cushioned bench where he’d been eating and drinking.
“No, she’s going to be executed by the Trusted Seven, magistrates and merchants who collaborated with Nowan de Valc to murder Duke Uleino, effectively kidnap his son, and take over the city. The funny thing,” Fylent Maer said, “is that they don’t even know who she is or why Nowan wants her dead.”
“How do you know more than me?” the banisher asked.
“I ask the right questions. What is the right question now, boy?”
“How long do we have?”
“They need a formal writ from the High Ovarch to execute a foreign citizen without a civilian trial,” Fylent Maer said, crossing to his office and unlocking the sliding door with a brass key. “His Supreme Egginess is currently at a spa retreat in Geshun. Assuming that the High Ovarch agrees—and he generally does whatever the hexguards ask—a horse messenger is already on her way back from the baths. She’ll be in the city by tomorrow, which means they’ll execute her the day after tomorrow, at dawn. Now, why do you care?”
Eilo considered that question as he followed Fylent Maer into his office. He breathed in the old books and rich leather and silk, ran his hands over the warm polished wood. The office conceded to the modern style, with high chairs and desks. Only the lacquerware on one low table and a single modest silk banner proclaimed Fylent Maer’s First Clan status.
“We fought together,” the banisher said. “And as a rule, whatever the hexguards want, I don’t. She did nothing wrong. And she’s…”
“Something new, right?” the lawyer said. “Like de Valc. They’re opposed, you understand. Two powers arising in the world, but there’s only room for one. This new law or new age or whatever is still inchoate, weak. Like a newborn god in that play, what’s the one?”
“The Newborn God,” Eilo said.
“Right.” Fylent Maer settled at his desk, opened a drawer, pulled out a ledger. “There’s only enough room in this world for one of them.”
“I’ve seen the Mollusk Knight,” the banisher said. He remembered the cold slime of his presence. “I know which one I want in the world.”
“And I agree,” the lawyer said, “which means we need to disrupt the smooth transition of power from the late duke to his powerless son. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to do that.”
“I do,” the banisher said.
“I would rather not, actually,” Panzu said, hopping onto the lawyer’s desk. “In fact, I’m looking to leave the city as fast as possible. Hello. My name is Panzu. You run an import-export business, do you not, Fylent Maer? How quickly can you export a mummified cat and her library?”
If Fylent Maer was surprised to find a wisdom cat on his desk, he did not show it.
“One of my ships is leaving tonight, with the tide,” he said. “Now, when you say, ‘library’—”
“Wait, you can’t leave!” the banisher said. “You can tell everyone that Duke Uleino died in debt, killed by a manor lord he insulted and whose property he illegally destroyed! That means the line of succession doesn’t go to Uleino’s son, it goes to his half-sister. It goes to Ryphonia.”
Fylent Maer sat back, eyes going wide. He looked like he had just looked into the Egg of Eime. Then he cackled.
“But you see,” Panzu said, “I would rather not.”
“But you could—”
“I could be killed for what I know, is what could happen,” Panzu said. “I have no interest in heroics, and my interest in politics extends only to avoiding assassination. No, banisher. Did you really think I was going to walk into the Palace of Justice, raise my paw over a statue of the Egg, and tell everyone that Duke Uleino died while legally entangled with some rustic chieftain out in the hinterlands, which throws the whole succession into question?”
“But Skaithness will die!” the banisher said.
“Better her than—”
“Skaithness will die at the hands of people who would turn you into a monster,” the banisher said. “And then who will stand against the Mollusk Knight? Hexguards and Egg worshipers? They’re...they’re old, Panzu. Their ideas are tired, and they’re as confused as old men trying to fix a pocket watch. They don’t have the strength or the focus to fight what’s rising in the swamps to the west. How far do you think you can flee?”
The wisdom cat lapsed into troubled silence. Fylent Maer thought for a moment, then said, “We don’t need you to get legally involved. After all, if there’s one thing a wisdom cat knows, it’s that the truth itself only matters a little. You could swear in front of the High Ovarch that, legally, the throne should go to Lady Ryphonia of Yanegast instead of the late duke’s son, and it still might not matter. So let’s set truth aside for a moment. What about truth’s dirty slut of a sister? What about rumor?”
“What do you mean?” the wisdom cat asked.
“’Did you hear what my neighbor said?’” Fylent Maer said, raising his voice an octave. “’When she was drawing water, a wisdom cat appeared to her and said that Duke Uleino died in dishonor and that the throne can’t go to his son.’”
“Let’s strike a deal, Fylent Maer,” the wisdom cat said. “I will recite what I know, in public, thirty-three times. That will be my payment for taking me and my library on the ship that leaves tonight.”
Cautious around a spirit, Fylent Maer got up and opened a book of Glyphic Empire legal codes. He read for a few minutes while Eilo got some of his things situated in the upstairs guest room where he sometimes stayed while in Baristoc. When the banisher came back downstairs, the lawyer nodded and held out his hand. Panzu touched her paw to his hand.
“It’s settled, then,” the wisdom cat said. “As a cat, I’m quite hard to find, but I need the two of you to tell me everything you know about the wards and signs and guardian spirits in this city, anything that might cause me trouble as I move around.”
The two Nysse clansmen told Panzu what to look out for. Baristoc was called the Bright Midden because a century ago, a cult believed that they could grow a goddess and bring about the new age of the world by carving a vast labyrinth into the divided city. They did so by convincing Duke Achlon, the late Duke Uleino’s grand-uncle, to build a vast sewer system that stretched across the River Chezaun. A wonder of the world, much imitated, Baristoc’s sewer system nonetheless failed to summon a new goddess, and the cult fell into disrepute. They eventually devolved into murder and cannibalism, and were destroyed by banishers. But their vast geomantic network still remains, and Eilo and Fylent Maer told the wisdom cat how to use it to her advantage, rather than swimming against the current. She disappeared to spread her rumors.
“I’m tempted to join her on that ship,” Fylent Maer said. “You’ve just put my head on a platter—you know that, right? Everyone who wants the boy duke on the throne of Baristoc will want to silence these rumors.” He hobbled around the room as he spoke, tossing important ledgers into a traveling bag.
“You’re really going to leave?” Eilo asked.
“Tomorrow morning, first thing,” Fylent Maer said. “But I’m not leaving town. I have safehouses and friends I can use until things quiet down. Until then—” He tossed Eilo a brass key, then returned to selecting books from the shelf and tossing them into the bag. “We’ll meet up tonight, then go our separate ways.”
“What do you know about Lady Ryphonia?” the banisher asked.
Fylent Maer chuckled and said, “You can call her Rynne. I thought you two were old friends.”
“Ever since Duke Uleino said her name,” the banisher said, “I’ve been trying to remember her. But it’s like these last two years on the road have peeled away my memories of Castle Nysse. I still have everything I learned—facts about spirits I learned from the three libraries, the swordsmanship my mentor taught me—but there’s nothing of me in them.”
That was an odd confession to make to the old lawyer, but he nodded sympathetically.
“A banisher’s work has a way of slicing away who you are,” he said. “You’re left with just…the Banisher. That’s why I wanted nothing to do with that life. That’s why I stick to the big city, and my work. You’ve chosen a hard path, my boy.”
“I’ve made mistakes,” Eilo said. “Mistakes that took less than a second.” He told Fylent Maer about how he killed Medru, the fox-dog woman, and the death of the priest. The lawyer started giving him legal advice until he realized that’s not what the young man wanted.
“You’re not a machine, kid,” he said. “And neither is the world. We’re all doing as well as we can. Well, you are. I’m probably not. The truth is that your mentor didn’t do the best job.” Before the banisher could argue, Fylent Maer said, “I’m not saying he didn’t try, or care. But he was old and sick, and very sad. He didn’t push you. You pushed yourself. He should’ve fought harder. He should’ve fought to keep Rynne, for one thing. He left that whole thing half done. At least you finish your work, Eilo, even if you’re not happy with how it ends.”
Eilo tried to remember Lady Ryphonia as he helped Fylent Maer pack. Here in the lawyer’s office, with its artifacts of Clan Nysse scattered on the desk and the shelves, its low ceiling with painted wooden beams that reminded him of Castle Nysse, memories slowly returned, Eilo slowly remembered Rynne’s brilliant swordwork (“useless against a fire scarab, once it starts to spit!” their mentor had said), her laughter as she beat Eilo in contests of memory, and the sound of her harp filling the ruined castle. She had freckles, and curly hair that she cropped short like a boy.
The past few years on the road had stolen away his childhood, or rather, had flensed it, leaving only the lessons—how to identify a jackalroot among potatoes, how to reveal a mimian. He had almost lost the feel of those memories, their subjective weight. His mentor’s booming laugh. The hot wind that blew through the upper floors in summer. Rynne, running along the plookin-trails over the broken roof, daring him to follow.
“Come back to us, lad,” Fylent Maer said gently.
“But does she even want the throne?” Eilo asked. “This city is a snakepit, and a Duchess of Baristoc doesn’t have any real power.”
“Rumor says she’s in the city, and I know for a fact that her supporters are,” the lawyer said. “A lot of people don’t, uh, trust the Trusted Seven, even if they don’t know about Nowan de Valc. They’ll take a bright young scholar like Lady Ryphonia if the alternative is a powerless boy-duke and a general looting of the city coffers. In fact, while that wisdom cat spreads her rumors, you might want to consider contacting her people.”
“I was always told not to get involved in city politics,” the banisher said. “I’m starting to feel like I’ve been tricked.”
Fylent Maer considered that, then said, “It’s a good policy in general. But everything is changing now. We have a chance to...I hate to sound bloodthirsty, but what if we have a chance to get rid of the hexguards once and for all? If we can show that they’ve been collaborating with the Mollusk Knight, we can throw them into disgrace, maybe break their connection to the Egg of Eime. Start rebuilding the banishers. This new world that’s coming might need them.”
“Why did Ryphonia’s mother take her back, just as she started her training?” Eilo asked.
“You’ll have to ask her. Here’s where you should start.” The lawyer handed Eilo one of those new-style calling cards that ladies and gentlemen of the cities had just started to use. It read, MANAHATH BEWOU, FINE GLASSWARE AND ANTIQUITIES.
Eilo changed from his leather coat into the outfit of a young gentleman: a long wool frock coat, gloves and muffler to keep off the chill, and knee breeches. He kept the battered tricorn hat, as it was acceptable for a young gentleman of quality to wear a slightly disreputable hat. He couldn’t risk walking around with the glaive, so he stowed it in his room and Fylent Maer showed him a selection of walking sticks.
“This one’s hidden blade is released with a quick twist of the—” the lawyer said.
“This one,” the banisher said, hefting an ash cane with a handle of narwhal bone molded to fit his hand, and with a steel stud at the base.
“But this one, you see, contains blowgun darts—”
“I don’t need a sword-cane,” the banisher said. “Just some bone and some steel, in case of trouble. Watch my glaive.”
He spent the day speaking with Lady Ryphonia’s loyalists, who seemed much further along in their planning than he had expected—or, he thought, that Lady Ryphonia knew. His first stop was the North City’s Glyphic community where Manahath Bewou, a merchant devoted to some obscure mystical faith from one of those islands, considered the Egg of Eime blasphemy and the hexguards mad buffoons. His fellow conspirator, an elderly lady who operated her late husband’s textile concerns from a tea room near the north wall, knew a great deal about Nowan de Valc from his time as a hexguard. Over tea, she told Eilo that certain hexguards were aware that their fear was what made creatures into demons.
“They’re learning to wield it as a weapon, you see,” she said, stirring her tea. “Like the sorcerers of old. I think that’s what Nowan de Valc has done.”
She, in turn, introduced the banisher to a sea captain named Jancel, hero of some obscure naval conflict out east past the Cape of Secret Stars.
“It’s the helmet he wears,” the sea captain said as he oversaw the construction of a greenhouse for his wife’s urban flower garden. “That thing that looks like a conch. It amplifies de Valc’s feelings of rage and fury. I’ve seen them before, worn by priests of the old dead shark gods. The gods are dead, but the priests can call up their teeth from the depths, just by wearing those helmets. Who knows what the Mollusk Knight can call up?”
Everyone he spoke to was devoted to Lady Ryphonia, though mostly because she represented an alternative to the Trusted Seven who were manipulating the ten year old duke, and less out of loyalty to her personally. But though this circle around Lady Ryphonia had no name, they had followers, ready cash, and if Captain Jancel were telling the truth, a modest fleet of warships. They were not ready, materially or psychologically, to fight a civil war, but they understood the danger the Mollusk Knight represented. They, perhaps more than anyone in those early days, recognized that the Mollusk Knight represented both a political and metaphysical threat, and they were willing to fight him even if it meant confronting the Trusted Seven.
Neither they nor Eilo understood the actual political condition of Baristoc, and despite many stories that state otherwise, they were completely unprepared for the conflagration that would sweep across the city and transform the Emmer Duchies in subsequent years. Nonetheless, the banisher even learned Lady Ryphonia’s current whereabouts, at the Saphunon Hotel that would subsequently become so famous, but he did not want to cross to South City just yet. A few minutes before sunset, with the temperature dropping and the wind picking up, he returned from Captain Jancel’s townhouse to the street where Fylent Maer kept his office.
He knew something was wrong right away. Two men in the long, artfully tattered coats of a North City street gang stood outside the tavern where he had stabled his horses. They looked unhappy to stand out in the cold, but they were doing it anyway. They were on guard. And Eilo could see their swords whenever they moved.
The banisher kept his hat pulled down low and walked past the office building’s front porch, listening but hearing nothing as the wind howled. He circled around back to a trash-strewn alley. Stone steps led up to a little-used servant entrance, now covered in trash. Eilo’s key turned the lock. He slipped inside, into a short hallway next to where he had stowed Panzu’s library.
Now he could hear fighting upstairs. He hurried into the ground floor hall and took the stairs three at a time. Three men in scalloped coats stood in the upstairs hall, all wearing short, stabbing swords. Two were dragging a wounded third to the bench where Eilo had enjoyed tea and scones that morning.
When they saw him, they dropped the wounded man on the bench and reached for their swords. The banisher didn’t give them the chance: he rushed forward and thrust the steel spike of his cane into the first man’s eye. The other fighter got his sword out and took a step back, then reversed his momentum and lunged, a dramatic gesture that stretched him across most of the upstairs hall. But Eilo knew the tricks of street gang bravos; he knocked the blade out of line with the handle of his cane. The gangster’s suddenly unbalanced lunge carried him past Eilo, and the banisher spun the cane and drove the spike into the man’s back.
The gangster wore armor under the heavy coat, but the blow knocked him prone. Before he could rise, Eilo abandoned the cane, grabbed the sword of the gangster whose eye he had gouged out, and drove it into the other man’s neck. One-Eye stumbled to his feet holding a dagger, leaving a smear of blood on the wall. Eilo stuck his sword through the man’s wrist, then through his mouth and out the back of his head, pinning him to the wall.
A thump behind him made the banisher whirl around. The wounded man stumbled toward the stairs and fell down them. He landed with an ugly crunch, and Eilo didn’t hear any more from him.
Eilo slid the door open with his dagger. Fylent Maer lay in a crumpled heap behind the desk, his throat slashed, his false teeth on the carpet nearby. His hand still clutched a bloody stiletto. Two more gangsters in fancy coats were rifling through his escritoire, which they had smashed open.
The farther gangster had his hands full with papers, so Eilo hit him at a run with both blades. The sword skimmed off the hidden plates of his armor, but the dagger buried itself in his chest. They crashed into the window at the far end of the office, splintering wood and glass. The banisher heard the other gangster moving and dropped, losing the dagger, as a hatchet whistled over his head. He parried the next hatchet-swing from the floor and the narrow thrusting sword snapped; a desperate kick forced the remaining gangster back and bought Eilo time to scramble to the corner of the office…where Fylent Maer had left a vase full of walking sticks.
Seeing his chance, Eilo grabbed one and pushed the gilded trigger that would reveal the sword cane’s hidden blade. Unfortunately, this walking stick was not a sword cane but an arquebus; pushing the trigger discharged the gunpowder; the shot blasted through the office wall and the force of the detonation knocked Eilo to the ground, his ears ringing and his face soot-blackened.
But when the last gangster raised his hatchet to finish the banisher, it stuck in one of the low ceiling beams. Before he could yank it out, Eilo grabbed another walking stick from among those spilled all over the floor, tried again, and drew three feet of razor-sharp steel. By the time the gangster got his hatchet back, Eilo was ready: he deflected the savage swing with the cane, then struck the gangster in the neck with the blade. It was only a glancing blow, but it pierced the gangster’s jugular. He stumbled around, clutching the mortal wound and spurting blood all over the office in great arcing sprays until he eventually dropped beside the corpse of Fylent Maer.
The man with the dagger between his armored plates still lived. Blood ran down his bearded chin.
“You work for Nowan de Valc?” the banisher asked.
“Fuck you.”
The man wasn’t going anywhere, so Eilo decided to let him consider his predicament for a few minutes. The banisher went upstairs to retrieve his glaive. When he got back, the mercenary was dead.
“Banisher!”
Eilo spun, but it was only Panzu in the form of a woman-headed cat. She walked over the office rug, leaving dainty little bloodstains. Then she saw Fylent Maer.
“I tried to get back in time,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“To get back from what?” the banisher asked.
“Open the window,” the wisdom cat said.
Happy to clear out some of the gunpowder smoke, Eilo nonetheless had to shove the damaged window open with his new cane. A fire raged just past the tavern across the street: the docks were burning.
“My ship,” Panzu said. “And listen: before he died, the captain says that those green stone towers have appeared along the River Hezaun. They’re spreading toward Baristoc.”
The banisher searched the dead men while Panzu spoke. They belonged to some minor street gang nominally loyal to the Trusted Seven, but that didn’t give him any useful information. It was only when he checked the gangster Fylent Maer had stabbed—he’d broken his neck falling down the stairs—when he discovered something interesting.
“Permission to enter Old Rock,” Eilo said. He held up a brass badge, then a leather wallet full of stamped paperwork. “Do any of these men have an intact coat?”
“This one-eyed fellow,” the wisdom cat said. “What are you—?”
“The Mollusk Knight is coming, and I don’t know if he’s going to reach Skaithness before that messenger from the Ovarch does,” Eilo said. “I’m going to go into the castle. Into Old Rock.”
“And?”
Screams from outside made the banisher look through the window again. The gangsters who had been lurking on the corner were on Fylent Maer’s porch. They were joined by some of Trezion’s Boys, also wearing bulky coats to hide their armor. The gangsters and mercenaries were fighting for their lives against five soldiers Eilo didn’t recognize. Despite having the advantage of the high ground, they lasted just a few moments before the soldiers hacked their legs out from under them, then scattered into the darkness.
“And hope that all the fighting gives me an opening,” the banisher said, preparing to leave.
Despite stories to the contrary, probably encouraged by Eilo the Banisher’s subsequent support of the Restructuring, neither he nor Panzu had any idea who the Champions of the Gate were, nor did they directly cooperate or even see each other during subsequent events, except during that one moment. At that time no one, not even the Champions of the Gate, knew that their age had already ended and that the great restructuring of the world had begun.
*