The Walls of Air Page 0,48

Gil thought detachedly, remarkable agility for so pudgy a man.

'Be still!' Alwir snapped at him.

The merchant flung himself to his knees in front of the ebony table. 'My lord please I'll neverdo it again. I swear it. The others made me. I swear, it was all Webbling's idea, it really was, Webbling's and - and Pral's - they forced me to go along...' His sparkling hands groped over the polished surface, the gold of his rings rattling on the gleaming wood. His voice babbled on, rising in pitch like an old woman's. 'Please, my lord, I'll never do it again. You said you wouldn't let anything happen to me. I promise I'll do whatever you ask...'

'SILENCE!' Alwir roared.

The two Guards, coldblooded automatons, stepped forward in unison to take the man by the arms and set him bodily on his feet. Gil could see that he was trembling in the soft lamplight, sweat running off his face as if he were melting in the heat. Hestood hanging on to the Guards, weeping.

Alwir went on, more calmly. 'Now, there has been no talk of an execution, though of course some form of severe punishment is in order.'

Govannin looked at her hands. There is only one punishment.'

'Really, my lady Bishop,' Alwir said, 'we do not wish to set a precedent...'

She glanced up. 'I think it an admirable precedent to set.' In the jumping light, her ageless face resembled that of some archaic vulture-god. 'It will certainly cause like-minded thieves to reconsider their actions very carefully.' The long, cold fingers smoothed a wrinkle from her scarlet sleeve.

'If the food supplies were consolidated...'

'Confiscated, you mean? Her black eyes glittered maliciously. There are hundreds of little entrepreneurs throughout the Keep who managed to haul grain and stock and dried goods down from Gae. There are others planning to execute forage missions of their own. How many would show that kind of initiative if it were all going to people like Stooft here? If, after their trouble, they found they would be robbed of what they already have, they might even fight.'

'Fighting would be madness!'

She shrugged her angular shoulders. 'So, in my opinion, would be confiscation.'

'It is not confiscation!'

'A play upon words, my lord,' she said disinterestedly.

With visible effort, Alwir got a grip on himself. The Bishop looked down at her hands with that little ophidian smile and said no more.

'I suppose it is a coincidence that the largest of those -entrepreneurs, as you call them - is the Church itself? That for all your pious talk about the care of souls, your real concern is with the wealth of the Church?'

'Souls inhabit bodies, my lord Chancellor. We have always cared for both. Like you, we seek only the greatest good for those whose charge God has given us.'

'And is that why you, the representative of the God of mercy, demand this man's life?"

She raised her head, flat black eyes under heavy lids meeting his with self-evident calm. 'Of course.' Stooft made a desperate little crying noise in his throat. 'And that is my final vote, as member of the Council.'

'And my final vote,' Alwir grated, 'is that the merchant Bendle Stooft be publicly flogged with thirty lashes and imprisoned upon bread and water for thirty days. Minalde!' He glanced sideways at his sister, who had sat all this while in perfect silence, watching everything that had passed between the merchant, the prelate, and her brother.

She raised her head, dark, jewelled braids swinging against cheeks that had gone as white as paper in the reddish shadows. 'I vote death.'

'WHAT?' Alwir half-rose, speechless between shock and rage.

Stooft made an inarticulate whimpering cry and would have thrown himself to his knees again, had not Janus and Caldern prevented him. He began to sob. 'My lord! My lady!' Tears streamed down his trembling cheeks. Aide raised her eyes and regarded him with desperately held calm, her full lips taut and grey, as if with nausea.

Gil wondered how she could ever have given herself airs about killing one man and maiming another in self-defence. There had been no question about the Tightness of her action then, no storm of protest over it. The man had not hung there wailing between his two guards, pleading for his life, for pity, for time. She had been upheld by the double supports of desperation and rage. Minalde had to do her justice cold.

Alwir started to speak to his sister in a hushed, angry voice, but she spoke over him, sounding strained and thin. 'In

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