The Totem-Maker (part twenty-five)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Three

I Am the Cause

(part twenty-five)

“There…” He mounted the steps. “Sits the conundrum.”

“I don’t think I am, that I’ve made a difficult puzzle. Mumas may kill me if he likes, not when. Isn’t that privilege enough? My death, by Lotoq be it so, may not fall in the shadows. The ceremony I ask is not for me…it is that my friend be remembered.”

His face changed. But he said: “I think you know well how you’ve placed him.”

He would not debate, or give advice for nothing. Feeling in his pouch for a scroll where some tenet of law was inscribed, he met the servant already holding the door.

I did not know it, though.

I own myself flattered by the crowd’s amusement, and that they seemed to take my part. I did not turn death over in my mind, since this prospect cannot improve for closer study. How had I placed Mumas? Where he could not escape his shame, I guessed…not caring.

A knight rounded the stables, reining his horse. “You are to be arrested. Will you run?”

“No.”

“No, you won’t.”

I knew his colors, not his insignia. I thought the smile he carried away was for the pleasure of reporting this.

They would have me imprisoned in a cell of Lord Sente’s.

The noble houses did this service for the Emperor, quartered his knights when his entourage entered their city, guarded his prisoners in their dungeons. Cells were made as each house saw fit to construct them, below ground or in towers, kept wholesome or wretched, used when some breach of public order had occurred. Most disputes were confined to their sphere—noble to noble, tradesman to tradesman, household to household, downwards through the laboring and serving classes.

We had no assize to rule on spats. Our marriage-brokers, our buyers and sellers (as to spoken pledges, laughable offers, weights of grain, purity of gold) spatted continually. The fort’s soldiers fought over courtships, preferences, cheating of rations, cheating at games. Or novelties of their own invention…for sport, for boredom. Lady Nyma’s sessions were convened only to resolve matters that challenged the law.

Sente had applied to the governor for the price of my maintenance, and I, loosely checked by the knight who’d arrested me, was made to stand in a metal collar chained to my wrists.

Mumas did not come to his steps to gloat. Lord Ulfas arrived, hurried. On his heels, shouts grew louder, and a clatter of hooves. The wave of human witness parted in a flap, excited, pointing, as four knights preceded a nobleman, riding singly.

Trumpets sounded, and a few of the crowd fell silent.

“Oh, there. I don’t like his looks,” a woman said. “He’s not ugly, but he’s not right.”

The Prince, from his saddle, caught my eye.

26

I Am the Cause

The Totem-Maker (part twenty-six)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)