“Standing Order Number Three-a,” intoned the functionary. “The Provosts’ Court is summoned into immediate session.”
The bustle restarted, but was changed. Several lesser functionaries spilled from a doorway and raced off, while many of those who a moment before had been hurrying somewhere now waited in muttering groups to see what happened. A rather more plainly clad official, obviously senior enough not to need a fancy uniform, came up and spoke briefly to the first functionary, who raised his staff in salute and went back to the main door.
The official spoke in a low voice to the Gate Sergeant, who showed him the passage in the leather-bound book but this time allowed him to read it for himself. The official stared at Ribek for several seconds, glanced at Maja, nodded and gestured that they were all five to follow him. He led them across the crowded hall to a wicket set into a large double door.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” he said. “Your men can go, but you will be needed as a witness.”
He led the way through the door into a much smaller, but no less ornate chamber, with a double row of portraits of severe-looking men running round the walls.
“You two sit there,” he said, gesturing toward a carved bench between two windows in the right-hand wall. “Keep an eye on them, Sergeant. We don’t want any trouble.”
“There won’t be any,” said Ribek, amiably. “We are guests in your city, so of course we’ll behave ourselves.”
The official stared at him icily.
“Let me advise you, sir,” he said, “that you have caused the Provosts of the City of Larg to be summoned from their evening leisure and convene in emergency session. They will not take kindly to any display of frivolity. Ah…”
Before Ribek could answer he turned away to greet a plump, bald man who had come hurrying in, panting slightly, and with sweat streaming down his flushed cheeks. The first official beckoned to the Gate Sergeant, and the three of them talked together in low voices.
A younger man came in, placed a ledger on the reading desk by the door and handed a large book bound in black leather to the plump man, who opened it on a table at the center of the room and started to leaf through it. The pages were thick and yellow, and creaked faintly as he turned them. He found what he wanted and started to read.
A gong sounded in the entrance hall and the big double doors were thrown open by two more uniformed men, who then crossed the room and opened another pair of doors in the wall opposite where Ribek and Maja were sitting. Two older men, wearing golden velvet gowns, despite the heat, and strange, floppy black velvet caps with a jeweled brooch at the center, walked through. The man at the desk entered their names in his ledger. The plump man bowed to them as they passed. They nodded to him, and he picked up the book and followed them.
“Proctors,” muttered Ribek, and gestured toward the double line of portraits. “Same outfit all the way along, apart from those fellows in armor over in the corner. Look at the dates on ’em, too. Bottom row’s three-hundred–odd years later than the top row. Fat fellow will be Clerk of the Court—something like that.”
More Proctors followed, in twos and threes. Maja picked up their feelings as they passed—irritation or anxiety or excitement, but from all of them a sort of bewildered surprise. The last one hurried in and through, followed by the man with the ledger. Two men with short pikes came in from the entrance hall and stood guard, the outer doors closed, then the inner ones.
More waiting. The Gate Sergeant now was too nervous to stand still, and paced to and fro until one of the inner doors opened and an arm beckoned to him from beyond. He made an effort, squared both jaw and shoulders and marched through, every inch the steadfast man-at-arms. The doors were too thick for voices to carry, but his inner nerves and fright were signals strong enough for Maja to follow as he marched to the center of the room and halted smartly in front of a long, weighty table—ancient oak, she could tell—and saluted. Someone asked a question. He answered stolidly, telling his story.
More talk, some argument, a decision, and an order. The inner doors opened, and a guard gestured to Ribek to come through. Maja followed him.
The room was much as she had pictured it, in the same grand style as the anteroom but six times the size. Tall windows overlooked the square, and yet more portraits of past Proctors lined the remaining walls. Yes, the Proctors sat in a row of throne-like chairs behind the table, with the Clerk of the Court at one end with his assistant beside him. The black book and the ledger lay open in front of them.
The guard who had brought them led Ribek and Maja to face the Proctors at the center of the table and withdrew. The Proctor at the center of the line tinkled a little bell and turned to the Clerk.
“Please proceed, Master Tongal,” he said.
“Very good, Master President,” said the Clerk. He looked at Ribek.
“Your name, please?”
“Ribek Ortahlson, and this is my half-sister Maja.”
“And the purpose of your journey?”
“I and my sister had been traveling south with our half-sister and brother to negotiate future marriages for them among a branch of our people who live beyond Tarshu. We were halted by the fighting there and decided to return north. But we learned that men and boys using the Imperial Highways were being rounded up at way stations and being impressed into the army. To avoid this we chose to use byroads, and so came to your city. We wanted no more than to pass through it, but we were stopped by the barrier because we were carrying a few magical objects.
“We were advised by a passing merchant that our best course was to hire a pass-box at the gate, to enable us to carry them through the city. We were resting on the bridge—we’ve come a long way, and were tired—when the Gate Sergeant arrested me for carrying out magical procedures and brought me here. May I explain what I was doing?”
“Please.”
With the same quiet reasonableness Ribek told the court what he had told the Gate Sergeant.
“It’s a bit like hearing a bat squeak,” he added. “Most people can’t, because the pitch is too high for them, but I know two or three people who can. There’s nothing magical about that. The same about hearing moving water—it just runs in my family. A big river like yours can be really interesting.”
A Proctor near the other end of the line rapped his knuckles on the table twice. The rest turned to look at him.
“This is a crucial point,” he said. “If the procedures were not after all magical, then there is no need to wake the Sleeper. The Clerk of the Court tells us that he can find no precedent for the use of this clause in the Standing Orders, so we have no guidance. All we can be sure of is that to wake the Sleeper may have the most momentous results, affecting the whole city, our whole way of life. Perhaps the barrier will be removed. Do we really want the dangerous magics of the Empire to come flooding into our pleasant city? Do we want to be drawn into the so-called Watchers’ war against the Pirates?”
A second double rap broke into the mutters of agreement. Heads turned toward the sound.
“A further point,” said the rapper. “If we believe the witness that he can hear the speech of the river—and there is nothing to show that he is not one of the common enough type of lunatic who fancies that he can hear voices—why should we not also believe him that the practice is not magical, or at least not magical in the sense of pertaining to the type of magic against which our city is so fortunately guarded?”
Another rap.
“I wholly agree,” said the new speaker. “Furthermore, if it were magical in that kind of way, surely it would have been stopped at the barrier.”
Rap after rap, with the Clerk’s assistant desperately trying to get it all written down.