Forest Mage

“I already thought of that. I have it safe at my house. No one will know your secrets, Nevare.”

“I wasn’t worried about betraying secrets. I was hoping that it might be accepted as evidence. Surely if a man keeps a journal faithfully, he records what is true. There is a lot in there that I wouldn’t want widely known, of course, but there is also much that will prove me an i

“Or a crazy man, Nevare. I don’t think they’d let you pick and choose what your judge saw. Would you really want the whole thing bared to him?”

I thought of everything that was in there. My true name, among other things. The shame a court-martial would heap on my father. My unvarnished opinion of my father, hard things I’d said about Yaril, and my trafficking with the Specks. No. “Burn it,” I suddenly decided. “I’d rather hang than have my journal become fodder for the yellow press.”

“I wouldn’t let that happen,” he assured me.

Silence fell between us. The utter hopelessness of my position washed through me. “Why are you here?” I asked miserably.

He shut his eyes for a moment. “Epiny demanded that I come. She did something, Nevare. She did it for a friend, a deathbed favor. She had no idea what it would mean. Sergeant Hoster entrusted a letter to her. She promised that if Hoster died, she would deliver it to the commanding officer of the regiment and demand that the letter be opened and read in her presence, and the contents acted upon. Nevare, I swear she had no idea what was in it! When Major Helford read it out loud, she fainted there in his office. They came to get me, and I had to carry her home. She’s been distraught ever since.”

I didn’t have to ask what it was. Epiny, my own cousin, had unwittingly delivered Sergeant Hoster’s damning evidence against me. I spoke the heavy words slowly. “The letter accused me of Fala’s murder. And it told where to find Clove’s harness, with the one mismatched strap.”

He stared at me. Then, “Yes,” he said softly. His eyes were sad. I tried not to see the question in them.

“Hitch did it,” I told him. “He confessed it all to me that night he walked.”

Spink glanced away from me. His eyes did not come back to meet mine.

“Spink, I’m telling the truth. He told me he took the strap from Clove’s harness and that he killed Fala with it because the magic forced him to do it. He’d set the whole thing up. He was the one who took me to Sarla Moggam’s brothel in the first place.” I suddenly stopped talking, as I recalled that no one there had seen us together. He’d entered before I had, and I’d probably left after he’d gone. Oh, so neatly done, Hitch. You served the magic well.

Spink spoke hesitantly. “I’m sorry, Nevare. I believe you. I do. But it all sounds so, well, so desperate. What possible reason could Scout Hitch have for killing that whore? You’re accusing a dead man whom almost everyone on the post respected. He was a bit of a rogue, that’s true, but I don’t think anyone is going to believe that he killed Fala because Speck magic made him do it.”

“But they’ll believe that I did it for pleasure,” I said heavily.

He closed his eyes before he spoke. “I am afraid that they will.”

I turned and walked away from the door. I sat down on the bunk. The wood frame made a cracking sound. I ignored it. “Go away, Spink. Save your reputation. I don’t think there’s anything that anyone can do for me now. Go away.”

“I do have to go. But I’ll be back, Nevare. I don’t believe the things they’ve said about you. Neither does Epiny. For what it’s worth, most of her women are angry at her now, because although she gave Major Helford the letter, she has tried to say that it’s all a huge mistake, that Sergeant Hoster didn’t have the truth of it. But they found Clove’s harness hidden in the stable, with the one odd bit of strap, and the strap they found around Fala’s neck matches the harness perfectly.”

“So, in addition to knocking myself out with a bucket in the midst of dishonoring the dead, I’m now stupid enough to have strangled a whore with a strap from my own horse’s harness? Think about it, Spink! Can you honestly picture any man pla

The muscles stood out on the side of his jaw. He forced himself to speak. “Nevare. These acts you are accused of are so hateful that given even a scrap of evidence, they’ll find you guilty. The whistle brigade is demanding that someone be punished, and the only someone in custody is you.”

My mind jumped back to what he had been telling me. “Epiny took my part? Publicly?”

He nodded grimly.

“Tell her to renounce it. Tell her to say that she has changed her mind.”

“Oh, and of course she would do that if her husband commanded it.” Spink’s voice was dryly sarcastic, but I saw something else in his tight smile. Pride. He knew Epiny would not back down. And he took pride in the fact that she would stand behind her convictions regardless of the consequences.

“Oh, Spink, I am so sorry. She will lose all her friends over this, won’t she?”

“Not quite. Amzil has come forward to stand beside her. She has told everyone that you lived with her for nearly a month in Dead Town and never put a hand on her or demonstrated any sort of temper. Of course, as a former whore, her word counts for less, but she gave it nonetheless.”

I winced. “Go home, Spink. You’ve done all you can and I need to think. There has to be some compelling evidence I can offer that I’m i

“You’ll have to come up with it soon,” he warned me.

“Surely they won’t try to hold a court-martial while the plague is still raging?”

“The plague has stopped. Just as if someone blew a lamp out. Some are hailing it as a miracle. I’ve heard at least one person say that it’s the good god showing his pleasure that a vile criminal like yourself has been captured.”

“It stopped?”

“Like magic.” He smiled grimly. “Fevers went down. People rallied on their deathbeds. There hasn’t been a death since you were brought here, Nevare.”

“Like magic,” I agreed sourly. I lay back on my protesting pallet and looked at the cobwebbed ceiling. “Go home, Spink. Tell Epiny I love her and tell her to stop defending me in public. Tell Amzil the same.”

“That you love her?” He seemed incredulous.

“Why not?” I replied recklessly. “I can scarcely lose anything by saying it now.”

“I’ll do it, then,” he said, and seemed almost pleased at the prospect.

As he turned to go, I called after him, “I’ll be sent some sort of counsel, won’t I? Someone who will help me present my defense?”

“They’re trying to find someone willing to represent you,” he said. If he meant the words to be reassuring, they were not. I wondered if they would still hold the court-martial if I had no representative.

If I had remained at the academy, I should have eventually had to complete a course that covered martial law and how it was administered. What little I had heard of that course convinced me it would have been a dry study. Little had I ever thought that any of it would apply to me. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried once more to be the boy who had set off so joyfully for the academy, so full of anticipation of a glorious career and a golden future. That future was to have included an obedient and doting wife, a woman raised in the traditions of being a cavalla officer’s wife. Carsina. What had we done to one another? Then I clenched my jaw and admitted that she was little to blame for all that had happened.

If I wanted to parcel out blame, I had only to look at myself. Hitch had warned me that using the magic for my own ends would always extract a harsh price. If I had not put Carsina under a command to apologize to me before she died, she might have died quietly of the plague. I had sealed my own fate. At least hanging would be a swift end for a man of my girth. The physics of such an execution probably meant that my head would be torn completely from my body. Grisly, but much swifter than dangling and strangling. I shook my head and tried to rattle such thoughts away. I could not think of that just now.