Chapter 15: My Eye

Frankie

The ring was too heavy.

Azrath slid it onto my finger himself. Every noble in the room bowed.

I had expected a raise.

Apparently this one came with jewelry.

“My Eye,” he said. “My voice in the southern holdings.”

He sounded proud.

I tried not to stand straighter.

Vincent used to sound like that when I brought a difficult job home clean.

“Thank you, Boss.”

“You have earned it.”

Then he asked about the paladin.

There was always a bill.

* * *

We talked after the others left.

“He heals bullet holes,” I said. “His sword eats my guards. And he knows when I’m lying.”

“Not always.”

“Enough to be irritating.”

Azrath stood beside the window.

“The light answers his covenant. He has made himself an instrument of certain promises.”

“Break a promise, lose the light?”

“Breach the covenant. A more substantial matter than missing supper.”

I waited.

“He will defend an innocent entrusted to him. He will not knowingly deliver such a person to death.”

“What if he can’t save somebody?”

“Failure is not the same as choosing the act that kills them. Aldric has buried people before, Francesco. He has not lost his gifts every time.”

“Then he just keeps his hands clean.”

Azrath looked at me.

“He has never been especially good at leaving his hands idle while someone dies.”

I thought about that.

The Boss watched me thinking.

“How does he get it back?”

“Restitution. Renewed vows. Whatever service the breach requires of him. It cannot be purchased with a prayer and forgotten.”

“Sounds like a hell of a contract.”

“It has made him formidable.”

“Can he surrender and keep it?”

“Certainly.”

That was the problem. A prisoner who could turn a lock into sunlight wasn’t much of a prisoner.

I still had the melted lock in my drawer. Every time I needed a pen, there it was.

“The captain,” I said. “From his order. Handed a man to a mob.”

“You have been listening to him.”

“Hard not to.”

“And did he explain what his captain should have done instead?”

“Find another way.”

Azrath inclined his head.

“He will expect to find one here as well.”

Azrath laid two dungeon records on the table.

One prisoner had been caught sheltering fugitives. The other had refused to identify people moving grain beyond the tribute stations.

Neither record named a murder or a robbery. I read both twice.

“This one claims to know him,” the Boss said.

Garran Holt. Former church outrider.

The other was Anet Bell, a miller’s widow.

“What happens to them?” I asked.

“They remain mine until I have a use for them.”

I closed the files and kept my hand on them.

Corven had been innocent too. One night, all the timber back. The Boss had called that proportion.

This wasn’t one night.

I knew it when I opened Garran’s file again. I shut it before the Boss could see me reading the same line a third time.

Couldn’t burn the church. Couldn’t put my guards against that sword. Couldn’t keep paying for doors while Al decided which of my orders counted.

I went through everything I couldn’t do until the thing in front of me began to sound necessary.

The Boss waited.

He had not ordered me to take the prisoners.

I asked for them.

* * *

Brannik built the thing in the old royal weighing house.

Two cradles stood beneath stone weights, with a release between them. His gravity work let one man lift a load that normally needed six.

I told him I wanted to catch Al between two rescues.

“Humiliation,” he said.

“Arrest.”

“And both prisoners?”

“Come out of it.”

He made me say it before he took the job.

There was a master release. Turn the brass key, both cradles settled onto the floor. Nothing dropped. Nobody got crushed.

Brannik demonstrated it three times.

I understood it the first time.

After he left, I gave the key to the royal warder who had brought the prisoners.

“Disconnect that.”

The warder looked at my ring, then bent to the mechanism. I watched him disconnect it.

Can’t say I didn’t know.

* * *

Garran recognized Aldric before the paladin reached the door.

“Sir!”

Al stopped.

The man was thin enough that his wrists moved inside the irons. He had spent the morning asking which road Aldric was coming by. Now he tried to straighten his shirt.

“I told them you’d come.”

Aldric’s face changed.

“Garran.”

“You remember.”

“Yes.”

Anet gripped the rail of her cradle.

“I don’t know you,” she said. “But they said you’d help.”

“I will.”

He stepped inside.

The warder lowered the door bar behind him.

Al turned to me beside the central brake. A dead guard waited at each wall. Hobb was outside with the irons, expecting a fight. Mara had gone to get blankets and food for two released prisoners.

I’d been particular about saying two.

“Explain,” Aldric said.

I pointed at the mechanism.

“When I release this, both weights start down. You’ve got one handle. Left lets her out. Right lets him out.”

“And the other?”

Neither prisoner moved.

“The same handle releases the other weight.”

He examined the stone blocks above the cradles, then the iron braces joining the doors to their releases.

Brannik had thought of everything.

I’d had the warder take care of that.

“You altered it,” Aldric said.

“Yeah.”

“What is their crime?”

I could have read the files aloud.

“Nothing that deserves this.”

Garran looked at me as if that answer might help him.

* * *

Aldric set down his shield.

“You want me. Release them.”

“The sword too.”

He put it on the floor.

There. I’d won.

I could call Hobb, put Al in irons, and take the chance that he might escape tomorrow.

The warder watched me. He would report what I did to the Boss.

I looked at Aldric’s empty hands and thought about how much trouble they had already caused me.

“That’s not enough.”

His face went still.

“You can still release them.”

“You can put down the light.”

“It is not a weapon I can leave on your table.”

“Then what the hell am I supposed to hold you with?”

He looked toward the disconnected master release.

“Must you hold me at all?”

Behind the door, I heard Brannik asking why the bar was down.

Al heard him too.

“Frankie.”

He hadn’t called me that very often.

“Take me to Azrath. I will go without resistance. Let these people walk out.”

“You’ll still have your power.”

“Yes.”

“And you still intend to use it against him.”

“Yes.”

I took my hand off the brake.

* * *

The weights began to descend, slowly at first.

Aldric snatched up his sword and struck the nearest chain. White light filled the room. The link split.

The block above Anet lurched downward.

He caught the supporting arm on his shield before it could clear the last ratchet. The shield bent. Stone dust fell into her hair.

The mechanism kept winding beneath the floor.

Break a support and the thing it supported fell.

I’d asked Brannik about that too.

Outside, something heavy hit the door.

“Frankie!”

Mara.

The warder moved toward the bar. I told him to leave it.

I could still have ordered the dead guards under the weights. Maybe they could have held one long enough. Maybe Al could have reached the other.

It would have ruined the plan.

I left them against the walls.

Anet crouched with her hands over her head.

“I have a boy,” she said. “They haven’t told him where I am.”

Garran looked from the bent shield to Al’s face. He understood before she did.

“Please,” he said.

He waited for Al to say it would be all right.

Aldric pulled against the supporting arm. Blood ran out beneath his gauntlet. The ratchet slipped another tooth.

“She’s falling first,” he said.

I couldn’t tell whether he was telling Garran or himself.

He reached for the handle.

Garran shook his head.

The door behind me split along one hinge.

Aldric pulled left.

Anet’s cradle tipped outward. He caught her by the shoulder and dragged her beneath the bowed shield.

Across the room, the other catch opened.

Garran had time to say Al’s name.

The stone hit.

Everything stopped except the winding gear.

It made three more little clicks.

* * *

Aldric was already moving.

He left Anet beyond the mechanism, got both hands beneath the fallen stone, and tried to lift it.

Light ran down his arms.

Then it went out.

He tried again.

Nothing.

Brannik came through the broken door with his hammer. Hobb followed. Mara went straight to Anet.

The warder drew his sword.

“Put that away,” I said.

He obeyed.

People were still doing what I told them.

Brannik saw the master release.

He looked at me once.

Then he wedged his hammer beneath the block and began getting Garran out.

Al knelt beside him when they finished.

I’d seen men after a truck went over them.

Garran looked worse.

Al tried anyway.

His hands stayed dark.

Anet made a sound behind me. Mara held her while she was sick.

When Aldric looked up, I said, “You saved one.”

“You could have saved both.”

Hobb stood with the irons hanging from his hand.

I nodded toward Al.

He didn’t move.

“That’s the job,” I said.

Hobb looked at Garran.

Then he put the irons on the floor beside me.

“Do it yourself.”

Aldric held out his hands.

It was the easiest arrest I’d ever made. I felt sick.

* * *

We took Garran to the church in Brannik’s wagon.

The dwarf wouldn’t let a royal guard touch him.

Anet rode beside Mara. She asked where her son was. Nobody knew yet.

I told Dren to find him.

At the church, Aldric asked to wash the body.

I told the guard to let him.

Al was already through the door. He hadn’t asked my permission. I’d given it anyway.

Benny stood in the doorway while I dictated the terms of confinement. Aldric could remain at the church under guard. He could tend the sick, teach, and receive visitors. He couldn’t leave the district or attack royal officers.

Without the light, the guards could hold him. The Boss had agreed to leave a useful prisoner in my custody. A living, fallen paladin would discourage rebellion better than a martyr.

I had used that argument myself.

Aldric read the paper.

“Anet is released without conditions,” he said.

“Already done.”

“Her child.”

“We’re looking.”

“Garran’s family receives his body. His effects. The truth.”

I nodded.

“Say it.”

“They get the truth.”

He signed.

Behind him, Rosella covered Garran’s face.

I asked whether there was anything else he needed.

“Leave.”

I did.

* * *

Azrath received the report before supper.

He didn’t ask about Garran.

“You have accomplished what years of force could not,” he said.

I stood where he had given me the ring.

“He’ll get it back.”

“Perhaps. Restitution may take him some time.”

“And when he does?”

“By then he will know that you understand him.”

The Boss put a hand on my shoulder.

“My clever boy.”

My clever boy.

I’d have done a hell of a lot to hear Vincent say that.

Back home there’d been a hundred people who knew where I belonged. Here, I’d started with a room the Boss gave me and a job I knew how to do. Get through the day. Be useful tomorrow. Maybe he’d find the way back.

I’d stopped asking him about the way back. Hadn’t stopped wanting him to be pleased.

Well, he was pleased. Garran was dead, and the Boss was pleased.

The Boss kept his hand on my shoulder. I’d wanted that hand there all evening. Now I wanted to knock it away.

I stood still and let him finish telling me how well I’d done.

* * *

Brannik was waiting outside my office.

He put the brass key on my desk.

“You gave me your word.”

“I needed him alive.”

“You had him alive.”

He pointed at the key.

“If you want another machine, I approve what it does and I stay until it stops. You change it behind my back again, you never get another nail from my forge.”

“Brannik—”

“I’m staying because I know what you can do with my work. Somebody ought to.”

He left.

Mara came in later with Anet’s release.

“Her boy is with her sister. Dren found them.”

“Good.”

“She won’t come here.”

“Then rent her somewhere.”

“I have. She chose the house.”

She set down the paper without sitting beside me.

“Does she need money?”

“Yes. You will pay it. She doesn’t have to see you to collect.”

I nodded.

Mara watched my hand beside the new ring.

“Did he praise you?”

I didn’t answer.

She understood.

“Don’t tell me you did it for us.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were going to tell yourself.”

She went upstairs without looking at me again.

I stayed at the desk until the tavern went quiet.

Usually Mara came back for the lamp. She would find something I’d forgotten to eat, tell me the accounts would survive until morning, and stand there until I admitted she was right.

I listened for her step until there was nobody moving overhead.

I took the two dungeon records out of the drawer. Anet Bell. Garran Holt.

Garran had straightened his shirt when Al came in. Like a man meeting somebody he respected. He’d wanted to look decent after all that time in a cell.

I could still see his hands doing it.

I pushed the records away.

The brass key lay between them.

I’d known what Al was. Seen him carry people out of the flood. Watched him offer help to a guard who might have been sent to burn him alive. Every time I’d called him a nuisance, I’d known exactly what kind of nuisance I meant.

He kept making it harder to tell myself I was doing fine.

Now he was under guard, a good man was dead, and the Boss was pleased.

That was what I’d bought.

I went to the washstand behind the screen. There was nothing on my hands. I washed them anyway, taking care around the ring.

Caught myself doing that.

Christ.

I took it off and set it beside the basin.

Water dripped from my fingers.

I had been telling myself a bad man wouldn’t care how this felt. A bad man wouldn’t have paid for Anet’s house. Wouldn’t have sent for Garran’s family.

I’d cared before I released the brake. Knew better then too.

I dried my hands. The ring lay where I had put it. Without it, I was a fellow who’d bought a tavern and made some promises. With it, I could get doors opened, orders obeyed, men released.

Tomorrow somebody would need one of those things.

I stood over the basin a long time.

Then I put it back on.

I didn’t go upstairs until I was sure Mara’s lamp would be out.