Halls of Law Read online

  “Kerida.” The sharp whisper startled her back to herself and she set down the sand pad. Good thing it was Cana who’d seen her daydreaming and not one of the other kitchen serfs. Cana was a decent sort who would rather give Ker a chance to collect herself than use the advantage that reporting her might bring.

  Three weeks of kitchen duty, that’s what Matriarch had said, and no one, not the Instructors, not even an Inquisitor, could say anything once Matriarch had made her decision. Three weeks to teach Ker discipline, to give her time to think. To make her appreciate better that she was a Candidate in the Halls of Law, and what that meant.

  And what could happen if she chose to reject it.

  Ker lugged the last pot closer, wrinkling her nose as she glanced inside. Just as she thought. The oatmeal pot, and all the leftover scraps had hardened into something that more closely resembled the mortar between the bricks of the kitchen walls than anything anyone had been eating lately. No point in asking why no one had put it to soak. No point in asking why this particular pot had waited until now, after supper, to appear, instead of after breakfast.

  When Matriarch decided you were to be taught humility, everyone had their parts to play. Yesterday afternoon there had been teasing, some sharp, some friendly, from the kitchen serfs. Someone had put a stop to that, and today, except for directing the dirtiest pots to her station, everyone pretended she wasn’t even there. Ker didn’t know which was worse.

  She pushed her hair back again and wondered, not for the first time, whether things would have been easier if she’d come to the Hall younger, if she hadn’t started down the path to what she still—after close to two years of Hall training—thought of as her real life.

  Most Talents were found between the ages of ten and thirteen, with boys tending to be a little older. Ker hadn’t been found until she was almost sixteen, which made her a good four years older than most of the other Candidates in her year. She’d thought it was a late manifestation—you did hear about such things—and she’d hidden it, determined not to spend her life in seclusion and meditation. Stupid.

  And part of her—just as stupid—must have gone on thinking that one day she’d be back with her sister in the Emerald Cohort of the Eagle Wing, angling for promotion like the other junior officers. Until yesterday morning’s meeting, that is.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d seen Matriarch, of course. The old woman reviewed every Candidate’s progress regularly, and her cold assessment was recorded. Yesterday, Matriarch had been sitting sideways in her chair, looking out the window of her workroom, the morning sunlight showing every fold and wrinkle in her face. Ker had been marched in, and left standing in front of the desk. She’d been hopeful this might be just a surprise examination—until she’d seen exactly what was spread over the books and papers on the desktop.

  There were the stones she’d chosen and fetched out of the stream to use as training weights. The long stick of ash she’d used as a practice sword. Three arrows badly fletched with goose feathers stolen from the kitchen. The bow she’d been in the process of smoothing into shape. The creased deck of playing cards. Ker laced her fingers together to keep them still.

  “Do you know how many disciplinary lines a Candidate must receive before they are seen by me?”

  Ker blinked and looked up. She knew a question that had to be answered when she heard it. “No, Matriarch.” She kept her eyes resolutely focused just to the right of the old woman’s shoulder. A spiderweb was forming in the upper corner of the window, though Ker couldn’t see the spider.

  “Twenty.” The old woman had brought her sharp gaze round to skewer Kerida directly. She’d waited, but Ker only lined up her feet more carefully. She’d learned the hard way that Candidates—or soldiers—could get themselves into more trouble by ill-considered remarks than by standing still and quiet.

  “Once I become involved, the delinquent Candidate either redeems herself, or himself, from that moment, or not at all.” If anything, the old lady’s eyes were even harder now. “Most Candidates pass their whole tenure here without accumulating twenty lines. You have managed it in slightly less than eighteen months.”

  Matriarch paused again, and again Kerida decided it was better not to speak, though she gritted her teeth.

  “Great concessions have been made for you already. I see from the report that High Inquisitor Pa’narion chose not to question your family at the time you were found.” Matriarch lifted her left eyebrow, the movement barely visible. “Luca Pa’narion has always gone his own way. Had I had the judgment of it, he would never have been an Inquisitor.”

  Ker’s ears grew hot. The High Inquisitor had never been one of her favorite people, but if Matriarch disliked him this much, maybe she should change her mind.

  “Perhaps your family conspired to hide your Talent from us. Perhaps they did not.” Matriarch shrugged. Then her eyes narrowed, and Ker braced herself against taking a step back. “But with you, there is no doubt.”

  Now Kerida did start to speak—but Matriarch held up her hand, and Ker subsided.

  “Not at first, no. The trauma you suffered at your premature Flashing was real, and the block you instinctively created, strong and deep. But afterward?” Here, the old woman turned one hand palm up. “Understandable, perhaps, that your experience should make you fear the Talent, and hide yourself from it. We understand the difficulties that the onset of the Talent can bring, particularly one as powerful as yours. As we understand the force that family traditions and expectations can have.

  “But that was there, and then. And this is here, and now.”

  Ker’s ears had begun to buzz. This was the first time anyone here at Questin Hall had ever spoken to her about that terrible day in her sister’s tent. Gods knew how hard it had been when she’d starting Flashing so late, watching to make sure it wouldn’t show, that no one would suspect. And it had worked. At least for a while.

  Matriarch was still looking at her, dark eyes opaque, but Ker hadn’t moved, though the sweat trickled down her back. Matriarch’s room was always kept hot. The old woman looked back at the pages on her desk, turned one.

  “Four disciplinary lines in as many weeks,” she observed. “Bringing you to twenty.”

  Ker pulled her shoulders back, determined not to squirm under the scrutiny of those glittery black eyes. She was almost eighteen, for the Daughter’s sake. Her sister Tonia had been the standard-bearer of her Company at that age. But Matriarch had a way of making your years, whatever they might be, dwindle into insignificance. Ker swallowed.

  “A review of the lines and reprimands in your history displays a pattern, as does this.” Matriarch gestured at the items on the desk. Kerida shrugged. She’d thought her things had been well hidden. Stupid. “Your attempt to run away, early in your training, was to be expected, perhaps, under the circumstances. This was followed by a period of relative obedience and submission.”

  Matriarch leaned back against the cushions of her chair, bringing the tips of her fingers together. Ker braced herself. “You seemed to be settling down, finally, until these last weeks. Why is that?”

  A direct question. Ker cleared her throat, determined not to show the older woman any fear. “It was the news of the signal fires, Matriarch. You know they’re only lit for some emergency, and the Battle Wings are so far away, beyond the Serpents Teeth, with only the five Cohorts of the Eagle Wing in the Peninsula. I felt—” Ker took a step forward. “I’m not doing anything useful here, and I . . .” And I have a sister in the Eagle Wing. Just in time, Ker had stopped herself from saying that aloud. Talents didn’t have family outside the Halls. No family, no friends. No ties. No allegiance other than to the Law. “You know I was in the military, Matriarch, before I came here. I could be helping—”

  The old woman held up her index finger. “What do you imagine will happen to you, Junior Candidate Nast, if you do not complete your training with us?
”

  Ker blinked at Matriarch’s abruptness. Another direct question. Unfortunately, not one she had an answer to. Her cheeks had grown hotter, and her ears started to burn. Why didn’t the old woman come to the point? “I don’t know, Matriarch,” she finally managed to say.

  “Surely you did not think you could be allowed to return to your family? To your land and your military traditions? You are not the first who wished to reject the Talent, thinking to put their own preferences before the choice of the Mother. Nor would you be the only Talent in our long history who could not submit themselves to the discipline and training of the Halls of Law. Have you never wondered what is done with Candidates whose discipline fails them?”

  Kerida pressed her lips together tightly over her clenched teeth, as cold spread through her body. Dampened. That was the word whispered when Candidates met for midnight feasts—not that she’d been included in many of those. That’s when the old stories came out, the ones the youngsters loved to frighten themselves with, about the evil Feelers, and how they had to be dampened before they could be killed. Even Kerida had been told, when she was little, “Behave, or the Feelers will get you.”

  Feelers were put to death and their bodies burned when Talents in those old tales came to the rescue. Feelers. Not . . . Ker took a deep breath and swallowed past the lump in her throat.

  Matriarch leaned forward again, her palms flat on the tabletop. “Let me make this plain. Even should you fail your training, you would not be returned to the world. You would remain here.” Matriarch tapped the surface of her desk with one bony finger. “The Inquisition would be summoned. Your Talent would be dampened. You would never leave this Hall again. Is that what you wish?”

  Talents do not live in the world. That was the old saying, and Ker had never thought about what it meant. No Talent. Not even the ones judged unworthy of training. Maybe especially not them.

  Ker had looked away right then, afraid for the first time. Afraid of what she saw in the old woman’s face. The worn wooden griffins that made up the legs of the huge desk seemed to stare back at her with the same cold emptiness in their carved eyes. Matriarch had actually used the word “dampened” in speaking of Kerida herself. Used it as though it was something she’d ordered done before.

  Ker lifted her hand to her throat, to the place where Inquisitor Pa’narion had rested his hand. She remembered what his Talent had felt like, the cold, piercing shock of it.

  “Well, Junior Candidate?”

  With an effort, Ker moved her head right and left, feeling her fear and her resentment in the stiffness of her neck and shoulders.

  The look on Matriarch’s face didn’t change, but was there some disappointment mixed into the satisfaction in the old woman’s tone? “In the Talent itself, you show yourself capable of great self-control, Junior Candidate. Redouble your efforts in that area. Yours is a great Talent, profound. It is there, whether you like it or not. You must master it, as you must master yourself. For our own sakes, the Halls of Law cannot allow any other option.”

  This time Ker forced herself to nod before baring her teeth. “So if I’m good, I might be Matriarch someday?” She’d meant to be sarcastic, but even her own ears told her she hadn’t managed it. If it was submit or be dampened, she knew which one she chose, but was submission alone going to be enough? Would her anger betray her?

  Still with no change in her expression, Matriarch tilted her head to one side. “I do not usually speak so plainly to Junior Candidates, but it is important that you understand exactly what your circumstances are, and that you give up your childish notions of another life.”

  Ker suddenly had an overwhelming feeling—almost like a Flash, but it couldn’t be, could it?—that Matriarch didn’t like her and wanted her to fail. Ker clenched her jaw and managed to nod again without speaking.

  “Very well.” Once more the sheets of paper were consulted. “Let me see. We might have overlooked the physical exercise, as it did not interfere with your studies, but the rest? Possession of personal arms. Forbidden. Instructing fellow Candidates in games of chance. Forbidden.”

  “No money changed hands, Matriarch.”

  “Practicing hand-to-hand combat. Forbidden.” The old woman looked up. “Attempting to teach those techniques to others. Forbidden.”

  Ker pressed her lips tight. She should have known those girls hadn’t really wanted to be friends.

  “Three weeks of disciplinary work will give you time to reflect. You may meditate at the Mother’s shrine to achieve a state of calm before reporting to the kitchens.”

  Noises of running feet and slamming doors in the corridor outside the kitchen brought Kerida back to the present, and the cleaning of pots. This was what she could expect if she didn’t complete her training. She’d trade her Talent in a heartbeat to get back her old life. But if that road was closed . . . Ker glanced around at the kitchen serfs, seeing them with new eyes. Matriarch had been quite clear. If she didn’t become a Full Talent, they’d dampen her. Then she’d be given some menial job in some Hall somewhere that would free a Full Talent from having to do it. A kitchen or garden serf, maybe. But she’d never leave the grounds of a Hall again.

  Had any of the people around her right now once been in her shoes?

  Ker rested her forehead on the back of her hand, squeezing her eyes tight. She didn’t want to be a serf in the kitchen or garden—or a clerk in the offices for that matter. But what was she going to do about it? She knew what her sisters would say just now. “Straighten up, soldier.” Kerida took a deep breath and obeyed.

  She had just put the freshly oiled oatmeal pot in its proper place when Senior Candidate Barid Poniara stuck his head in the door. “General assembly in the great room,” he called loudly enough to be heard through the whole kitchen. “Sharply, everyone. You, too, Kerida.” Barid waited for her, holding the door open until she reached it. He took care to abide by the strict rules, and didn’t meet her eyes, but he coughed and brushed at his forehead with his fingertips. Ker blushed, rubbing at the sand there with her rolled-down sleeve.

  As he drew the door shut behind her, he leaned in and breathed, “Here. One hour after the last bell.” She lifted her right hand as a sign that she’d heard him, and proceeded down the corridor.

  Barid would be a Passed Candidate by the spring, and a Full Talent as soon as he completed the last of his solo assignments, but in the meantime, as a Senior, he presided over Ker’s dining table, there to answer the Juniors’ questions, give advice, and maintain order. He was her own age, part of the year she would have been in, if age alone decided such things. Barid was like Cana, one of the few who’d always treated her as though they believed she belonged with them.

  Ker and Barid might have been friends, even good friends, if the differences in their ranks hadn’t been so great. She’d thought there was no one who would risk a disciplinary line of their own to speak to her, but Barid had just proved her wrong.

  Here. Meaning the kitchen. Not very risky, even an hour after the last bell, when every Junior Candidate had to be in bed, and every candle out. If they were caught, easy for Barid to say it was part of her punishment. Barid was well thought of; no one would doubt him.

  Ker found herself quite eager to hear what he had to say.

  She stayed right on Barid’s heels as he went down the short flagstone corridor that led from the kitchen wing into the great room. Like a similar space in a noble’s holding, the great room served the Hall of Law as the area for dining, assembly, and the greeting of outside visitors. Matriarch was already seated at her place among the Senior Staff on the raised platform at the far end opposite the main entrance. Not all of the Senior Staff sitting with her were Full Talents, and for the first time Ker considered what that meant. The Senior Cook, and the Gardener, for example . . . could they be Talents who had somehow not measured up? Chafed too much under Hall discipline? How, exactly, did d
ampening work?

  Ker hurried to her own table, one of the two for second-years, close to the raised platform, and to the Matriarch’s left. She arrived at her seat just as the signal for silence was given. Like everyone else in the assembly, she remained standing, and turned her eyes to the head table, expecting Matriarch to speak. Instead, the old woman signaled a waiting steward who threw open the side doors of the great room. Ker turned her eyes toward the opening—and promptly forgot everything that had been worrying her.

  What, or rather who, she saw moving into the clear space in front of Matriarch’s chair and falling into parade rest certainly explained why they’d all been called back to their tables so soon after supper. Matriarch would want to put on as big a show of strength and numbers as she could.

  Soldiers. More precisely, a Cohort Leader of the Eagle Wing, in her green tunic and cloak, with five of her Company in support. For a moment Ker’s heart rose, but these were all wearing the pale green sleeves of the Opal Cohort. There was no one from the Emerald Cohort, no one who served with Ester. The soldiers shifted place, and Ker realized they weren’t all Eagles, after all. A second Cohort Leader was wearing the purple of the Bears. What was someone from a Battle Wing doing here in the Peninsula?

  Ker automatically sat down when the signal was given. The Candidates, whether Juniors, Seniors or Passed, took longer than usual to come to order. The Wings had their own Talents assigned to travel with them, and it was very rare for military personnel to come to a Hall.

  There’d never been any great friendship between the military and Talents, even though some of the newer provinces called them the Twin Hammers of the Polity. At best, each treated the other as a useful tool; at worst, a necessary evil. The relationship wasn’t helped by the fact that the Halls had the same powers of Law over the Military that they had over everyone else.