The press gang and the spectators had moved close, forming a rough semicircle around Gesmas and Dandret. The pickers nodded slowly as they discussed the proposal. "It's practical," one drawled. "They would be here all night throwing together a gallows, since they won't find a hanging tree anywhere near the road, not for a long ride in any direction."
"Why's that?" a soldier asked.
The worker deferentially cast his eyes down when answering. "Why, the growers cut down whatever's near the road, sir. The felled trees are easy to drag to their estates."
The sergeant rubbed his chin, a great block of bone and beard stubble. He had obviously finished mulling over the idea. "He's mad, frightened stupid at the thought of dying."
"So why suggest a worse way to go?" the captain said, more to himself than anyone else. He scowled a bit as he examined Gesmas's proposal, testing it for flaws or hidden hazards. Of course he could find none. That was the point: the offer was flawlessly simple, a perfect solution to the press gang's problem. More to the point, it was selfless, something Dandret couldn't comprehend.
The sergeant unslung the noose from his shoulder. "Why are you even listening to him, Captain? The law says it's gotta be death by rope for traitors."
"Use the rope to drag him," one of the neighbor children noted helpfully.
"Just kill him. He's trying to trick you," snapped Fayard, who Gesmas had the misfortune of calling brother. The sound of his hate-filled voice was enough to cause Gesmas's hound to growl and slink to a roadside ditch for safety. "Everyone thinks he's possessed, the way he comes up with those strange ideas." He shoved one of the pickers. "Go on, tell them."
The young woman mumbled something that could have been either a confirmation or a denial of Fayard's claim. The captain took it as the former. He could understand and accept possession far faster than he could an unselfish offer from a prisoner. "I've heard enough. We'll take him to the village tonight and pass him along to the Inquest. They'll figure out what's wrong with him and deal with the problem appropriately."
The sergeant groaned. "Kill him here. Drag him all the way to Karina, if that's what he wants. But keep us away from the Lord's Inquest. I don't like that lot even knowing my name, let alone having to see those awful faces when I testify."
The rest of the press gang proffered their opinions, as did Fayard and a few of the pickers. Gesmas maintained his silence. The suggestion had worked its magic, transfigured the scene as completely as an alchemist turning lead into gold. For the strange offer to continue to arouse Dandret's paranoia, though, Gesmas knew he had to hold his tongue. It was a wise move, as the scene at the crossroads had not yet played itself out.
The captain finally shouted the debate to a close. His sergeant, though, would not let the issue die. He shook the noose at Dandret and shouted, "These yokels are making a fool of you! If we don't do our duty and kill this dimwit, well be the butt of every barracks joke from now until the harvest."
Dandret didn't respond, only stared in utter bafflement at his underling. The sergeant misinterpreted that confused quiet as an abdication of command. Rope in hand and a murderous gleam in his eyes, he turned toward Gesmas. He took a step forward, gasped, then toppled face first into the dirt.
Captain Dandret motioned for one of the other soldiers to retrieve his throwing knife, which was planted almost to the hilt in the sergeant's back. The prisoner will ride the free horse," Dandret said as he tucked the knife back into a boot sheath, taking exaggerated care not to nick the polished leather. Tie the sergeant to the trailing horse. Well test out this dragging idea on the way to Valetta."
So it was that Gesmas escaped the hangman's noose and left the Malaturno Estate. His hound followed at a run, dodging rocks hurled by Fayard, who didn't have the nerve to throw them at the riders. The faithful mongrel had nearly run itself to death by the time the press gang reached the little village of Valetta. It had opportunity to recover, camped dutifully outside the one-room jail where Gesmas awaited the arrival of the Inquest.
The four judges of the Inquest made an irregular circuit of Invidia, from the Vulpwood in the northwest to the Mantle Woods in the southeast and back again. They took testimony in cases involving treason, sorcery, and any incident pertaining to the wandering bands of thieves and fortunetellers known collectively as the Vistani. The Inquest arrived at midnight wherever it went. The quartet of wagons that made up the somber caravan were always gone before dawn. A month usually separated their visits to any particular village, though a pressing matter would draw them immediately. Gesmas obviously met whatever criteria the judges set for importance. The Inquest arrived that very same night to interrogate him.
The trial was brief. In nearly total darkness, Captain Dandret, a few of the soldiers, and finally Gesmas himself addressed the Inquest. The judges lingered in the jail's shadow-sealed corners, asking only a few questions, in voices that were strangely and disturbingly uniform. Only once, at the trial's conclusion, did Gesmas glimpse a face-eyeless, earless, its nose a small pair of gashes positioned over the larger, mobile gash of a mouth. "Service," that mouth said. The three other judges confirmed the sentence in exactly the same voice, the same grim tone, like echoes from the darkness.
It was one of only two sentences proscribed by the Inquest, and far more rare than the other: Death. The judges recognized Gesmas's talent for what it was, and recognized, too, its potential value to Lord Aderre. Captain Dandret was ordered to escort Gesmas to Loupet Castle, where the young man would become an advisor to Invidia's master. So it came to pass that Gesmas cheated death and entered the service of Lord Aderre as a trusted envoy-the polite title for a spy. By year's end Gesmas had traveled more widely than anyone he knew and had seen wondrous and terrible things that plagued him only now and then as night terrors. He had wandered the decaying halls of Castle Tristenoira and gazed at the beast that dwells below that haunted keep in the Lake of Red Tears. His throat had been encircled by the mismatched hands of the flesh golem known only as Adam, and he had broken bread with the three hags of Tepest, whose guests often reposed on the weird women's table rather than at it.
Gesmas had been saved more than once by those flashes of insight, which Lord Aderre had taught him to read more carefully. He lacked any significant control over the timing of his visions, but quite often they revealed some scrap of truth about the strange lands and frightening individuals he encountered in the service of Invidia's master. So it was, until he entered Sithicus.
From the moment he crossed the border, Lord Soth's domain confounded Gesmas. In the few days he ranged the forest-choked land, searching for the origins of its mysterious lord, he made one wrong decision after another. His worst mistake occurred at a broken-down inn called the Iron Warden. The owner of that slouching two-story ruin came alarmingly close to tricking the spy into taking possession of the inn's deed-a virtual death sentence, as Lord Soth himself used the place to recruit unwitting generals for his skirmishes with the feral elves of the Iron Hills. Gesmas's instincts had encouraged him to trust the innkeep. Only the premature gloating of the man's mistress, deep in her cups, raving about the atrocities the elves would inflict upon athe new Iron Warden," saved him at the last instant from the trap.
Now, as he made his way back to Invidia through a deepening twilight, Gesmas wondered if he had finally exhausted his gift. At the very least, he had used up his interest in espionage. There was no more joy to be had in subverting Invidia's enemies. He thought about resigning his post, taking up the work for which he had long known himself to be best suited. But Lord Aderre would never allow Gesmas to become master of the hounds for Loupet Castle or any other estate. Aderre found the spy's tenderness for beasts amusing. He laughed aloud when Gesmas wept over the death of his faithful hound, which had lost its will to live during one of its master's long absences from the keep.