close Bravonovel

Download Bravonovel APP

apple VIA APP STORE google VIA GOOGLE PLAY

Table of Contents

＋ Add to Library

Previous Next

Chapter 2

  • The Hall of Judgment stood at the center of the Martin Family estate, a square building of grey stone with a roof of black tiles and a floor worn smooth by three hundred years of knees.
  • By the time they arrived, the sun stood directly overhead and the courtyard outside was packed with people. Disciples in grey, stewards in brown, elders in robes trimmed with the family's blue. They had come to watch a fifteen year old boy be sentenced, and they had come early.
  • Four instruments stood in the middle of the hall. A wooden frame with ropes. A trough of salted water. A table with three seats behind it. And a stone pillar carved with the family's laws, at which the accused was required to kneel.
  • David Bishop did not kneel. He walked to the pillar and stood, and the crowd murmured.
  • Behind the table sat the Patriarch, Zayn Martin, a heavy man with a grey beard and hands that had not held a sword in twenty years. To his right sat the Grand Elder, Hank Martin, the family's only alchemist, old and thin, with eyes that had seen too much and given up on surprise. To his left sat the Seventh Elder, Kun Martin, whose son had accused him.
  • Kun Martin did not look at David. He looked at Zara Martin, and his mouth was a thin line.
  • "David Bishop," the Patriarch said. "You stand accused of the theft of the Dragon Vein Seal from the Ancestral Shrine. The seal is the root of this family. Without it, the veins beneath our land fail, the wells run bitter, and the family's oath cannot be renewed. Do you understand the charge?"
  • "I understand it," David Bishop said.
  • "Do you confess?"
  • "No."
  • A ripple of sound went through the hall. The Seventh Elder's hand closed on the arm of his chair.
  • "Then let the accuser speak," the Patriarch said.
  • Sam Martin came forward. He was the same age as David Bishop, a head taller, with a narrow face and a bruise the color of an old plum still showing along his jaw. He had the family's blue at his collar and his father's confidence in his walk.
  • "On the third night of the eighth month," Sam said, "I was returning from the eastern watchtower when I saw David Bishop come out of the Ancestral Shrine. The shrine is sealed at night. Only an elder's key opens it. He was carrying a box against his chest, and when he saw me, he ran."
  • "Which gate did he come out of?" David Bishop asked.
  • Sam blinked. "The... the western gate."
  • "The western gate has been bricked shut for eleven years," David Bishop said. "It was closed after the flood. There is a wall of blue brick across it, and a stone tablet naming the year. Anyone who has walked past the shrine in daylight would know that."
  • The crowd stirred. Sam's ears went red.
  • "I may have misspoken," he said quickly. "It was the northern gate. The one under the bell."
  • "Then tell the hall what was in his hands," Kun Martin cut in, before David Bishop could speak again. "Enough of gates. The boy was carrying the seal box. The box is iron, blackened, with a lock of three teeth. Is that not so, Sam?"
  • "Yes, Father."
  • "And the box is coated inside and out with blood cinnabar, to keep the seal from being tampered with," Kun Martin said, turning to the table. "Anyone who carries that box against his chest for the length of a courtyard will be marked. The cinnabar stains the skin red for a month. It cannot be washed off."
  • He turned back and smiled at David Bishop for the first time.
  • "Show the hall your hands, boy."
  • The hall leaned forward. Two hundred people, all of them certain of what they were about to see.
  • David Bishop raised his hands.
  • They were thin and pale, and across the palms and the backs of them, from wrist to knuckle, ran a lattice of half healed whip cuts, red and raised where the salt had been.
  • And nothing else. No red. No stain.
  • "That is impossible," Kun Martin said. His voice had changed. "He wore gloves. He must have worn gloves."
  • "He was searched when he was taken," the Grand Elder said, without opening his eyes. "The record says a grey robe, a pair of cloth shoes, and a jade pendant at his neck. No gloves. My own steward performed the search and signed it."
  • Silence.
  • "The cinnabar also stains cloth," David Bishop said, and his voice was quiet, and it carried to the back of the hall anyway. "A robe carried against a stained box for even a hundred paces will show it, and it will not come out with lye. The robe I was wearing that night is still in the custody room. It has whip marks and blood on it. It has no red on it."
  • "You are not listening, Sam Martin," David Bishop said. "Every proof you bring requires a mark that does not exist. A gate that is not open. A box that did not stain. A robe that is clean. You have built a story out of things you were told, not things you saw."
  • He turned to the table.
  • "Patriarch, I ask the hall one question. If the seal was taken from the shrine, why is the shrine's own lock plate still sealed and undamaged? The plate is a formation record. It writes the hour and the key that opened the gate. Grand Elder, you know the plate cannot be forged. Have it read."
  • The Grand Elder's eyes opened.
  • "It cannot be read," he said slowly. "The shrine's gate was opened the same night. The plate was broken."
  • "By whom?"
  • "By the thief, presumably."
  • "Then the thief had access to the shrine's formation plate," David Bishop said. "Which only four people in this family have. The Patriarch. The Grand Elder. The keeper of the shrine. And the Elder who holds the eastern key."
  • He looked at Kun Martin.
  • The hall exploded.
  • "You dare," Kun Martin said, and he was on his feet, and his robe had come open at the collar, and there was a red mark along the inside of his right sleeve where the cloth had been pushed up. A red mark that had not been there before, and that would not come out with lye.
  • Zara Martin stepped in front of her son.
  • "Sit down, Seventh Elder," she said.
  • "Out of my way, woman."
  • "Sit down," she said again, and the floor beneath her feet cracked in a thin line from heel to toe, and the dust of three hundred years jumped up off the stone. Above her head, pale mist gathered and took a shape, and the shape had tusks.
  • Six ancient mammoths.
  • The hall went from noise to nothing. Even the Patriarch stood up.
  • "Enough," Zayn Martin said at last. "The trial is suspended. Seventh Elder, you will surrender the eastern key to the Grand Elder, and your courtyard will be searched before sunset. Sam Martin, you will remain in custody. And you, Ninth Elder, will take your son home and keep him there."
  • "My son is not guilty," Zara Martin said.
  • "I did not say he was." The Patriarch's eyes went to the red mark on Kun Martin's sleeve, and then away. "I said the trial is suspended. Go home, Ninth Elder. This is not over."
  • She bowed, shallow and cold, and took her son by the arm.
  • They were four steps from the door when the Seventh Elder moved.
  • It was not a challenge. It was not a sentence. It was a palm, opened flat, aimed at the back of a boy's head, with enough Origin Energy behind it to break a stone. Kun Martin had decided, in the way of a man who has already lost everything, that it was better to end this now.
  • David Bishop felt the air change. He could not have blocked it. He could not have dodged it. He was fifteen years old and three days out of a whip.
  • And the jade pendant at his neck went warm.
  • It was not a shield. It was a hand, or the memory of a hand, closing around the blow and holding it, and the sound the hall heard was like a bell struck once in a closed room.
  • Kun Martin's palm stopped three inches from the boy's skull. His arm shook. Something pushed him back, one step, two, and his heel caught on the stone pillar and he sat down hard.
  • David Bishop stood where he was, breathing, with the pendant burning against his chest like a live coal.
  • And in the back of his mind, where no one else could hear, something laughed. It was an old laugh, dry as a hinge.
  • "So," the voice said. "A soul with two lives in it. At last."