The Totem-Maker (part thirty)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Four

To Be and to Choose

(part thirty)

I faltered in, stumbled over boots, drew laughs and found myself misdirected. I whispered: “My lord Banche, will I sit below the dais?”

Banche shut his mouth mid-answer, as three knights rose and bowed. They sat on the floor. I and my counsel sat, on this first bench. Mumas and his scooted within earshot, furtive, and no one corrected them.

The Prince entered, lowering hands in the air. “Quiet! In this chamber, I abdicate all authority. We have it so, in the North…” He said these things walking, kicking feet aside, to stand before Lady Nyma. “A king in the Hall of Council is no king. A man of great landholdings owns none. A mother is counted childless.”

“Whereas our law requires no disturbance, or irrelevance introduced, under threat of arrest, once a proceeding has formally begun.”

The Prince smiled, and a passage—that showed on his face—of imagining a cool retort, ended with Lady Nyma’s further:

 “I have not yet asked my officer to announce the case, and summon the parties. We have not begun. Be seated.”

“You see how it bodes,” Banche muttered. “Will Nyma’s verdict be allowed to stand, be interfered with…”

The Prince sat at Banche’s side, and our bench was full.

“Citizens and guests, Petitioner and Respondent, Counselors.”

The officer spoke; Lady Nyma drew down a tablet, topmost of several at her right hand. As our parts were announced, we rose. The Prince did not. His knights on the floor did not.

Lady Nyma spoke: “The Petitioner asks the court to consider whether laws which pertain to dispute by challenge, pertain to the slave as to the master. The Respondent charges the Petitioner with trespass in his house, and with assault upon his person; the Respondent requests that Cime Decima be made to offer reparation, which the Respondent’s counsel states his client will accept, in the form of the Petitioner’s being bonded over to Mumas Martas, by Cime Decima. The Respondent asks that the court dismiss the request of the Petitioner; and that the session be closed upon this resolution. The court dismisses the Respondent’s charges, denies his request, and will hear the Petitioner’s request.”

I wanted badly to peer at Mumas. I had known nothing of his designs on me; I rejoiced in their dismissal… But I began to feel myself the walker, high on the mountainside, who dislodges the pebble.

The officer shouted: “Cime Decima!”

A confusion of echoes, of stomping feet, of many chains and rings of wealth jingling as the seated half-turned. Cime followed a rush of air, the drawing back of a curtain, a faint scent from his robe reminding me of Lom, and our home.

“This you swear before the court, Cime Decima. That you ask nothing in reparation from Mumas Martas; that you will put no price on the dead slave Lom. That for your part, you withdraw from the case altogether, will press no claims, will speak no word in future.”

“I do.”

32

To Be and to Choose

The Totem-Maker (part thirty-one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)