“But this is absurd!” I cried. “The only evidence against me is protected by the sanctity of the godhouse! How can Jidd place a complaint against me based on what I’ve drained to him? I’ll have him up on charges for violation of contract!”
“There is other evidence,” the Marquis of Woyn said sadly.
“There is?”
“Using what he heard from your own lips,” the Marquis said, “Jidd was able to guide your enemies into channels of investigation. They have found a certain woman who admitted to them that you gave her a strange drink that opened her eyes to you—”
“The beasts.”
“They have also,” the Duke of Sumar said, “been able to link several of us to you. Not all, but several. This morning some of us were presented, by their own subordinates, with demands to resign their offices or face exposure. We met these threats firmly, and those who made them are now under detention, but there is no telling how many allies they have in high places. It is possible that by next moonrise we will all have been cast down and new men will hold our power. However, I doubt this, since, so far as we can determine, the only solid evidence so far is the confession of the slut, who has implicated only you, Kinnall. The accusations made by Jidd will of course be inadmissible, though they can do damage anyway.”
“We can destroy her credibility,” I said. “I’ll claim I never knew her. I’ll—”
“Too late,” said the Procurator-General. “Her deposition is on record. I’ve had a copy from the Grand Justiciar. It will stand up. You’re hopelessly implicated.”
“What will happen?” I asked.
“We will crush the ambitions of the blackmailers,” said the Duke of Sumar, “and send them into poverty. We will break Jidd’s prestige and drive him from the Stone Chapel. We will deny all of the charges of selfbaring that may be brought against us. You, however, must leave Manneran.”
“Why?” I looked at the duke in perplexity. “I’m not without influence. If you can withstand the charges, why not I?”
“Your guilt is on record,” the Duke of Mannerangu Smor said. “If you flee, it can be claimed that you alone, and this girl you corrupted, were the only ones involved, and the rest is merely the fabrication of self-serving underlings trying to overthrow their masters. If you stay and try to fight a hopeless case, you’ll eventually bring us all down, as your interrogation proceeds.”
It was wholly plain to me now.
I was dangerous to them. My strength might be broken in court and their guilt thus exposed. Thus far I was the only one indicted, and I was the only one vulnerable to the processes of Mannerangi justice. They were vulnerable solely through me, and if I went, there was no way of getting at them. The safety of the majority required my departure. Moreover: my naive faith in the godhouse, which had led me rashly to confess to Jidd, had led to this tempest, which otherwise might have been avoided. I had caused all this; I was the one who must go. The Duke of Sumar said, “You will remain with us until the dark hours of night, and then my private groundcar, escorted by bodyguards as though it were I who was traveling, will take you to the estate of the Marquis of Woyn. A riverboat will be waiting there. By dawn you will be across the Woyn and into your homeland of Salla, and may the gods journey at your side.”
59
Once more a refugee. In a single day all the power I had accumulated in fifteen years in Manneran was lost. Neither high birth nor high connections could save me: I might have ties of marriage or love or politics to half the masters of Manneran, yet they were helpless in helping me. I have made it seem as if they had forced me into exile to save their own skins, but it was not like that. My going was necessary, and it brought as much sorrow to them as to me.
I had nothing with me but the clothes I wore. My wardrobe, my weapons, my ornaments, my wealth itself, must remain behind in Manneran. As a boy-prince fleeing from Salla to Glin, I had had the prudence to transfer funds ahead of myself, but now I was cut off. My assets would be sequestered; my sons would be paupered. There had been no time for preparations.
Here at least my friends were of service. The Procurator-General, who was nearly of a size with me, had brought several changes of handsome clothing. The Commissioner of the Treasury had obtained for me a fair fortune in Sallan currency. The Duke of Mannerangu Smor pulled two rings and a pendant from his own body, so that I should not go unadorned into my native province. The Marquis of Woyn pressed on me a ceremonial dagger and his heat-rod, with a hilt worked with precious gems. Mihan promised to speak with Segvord Helalam, and tell him the details of my downfall; Segvord would be sympathetic, Mihan believed, and would protect my sons with all his influence, and keep them untainted by their father’s indictment.
Lastly, the Duke of Sumar came to me at the deepest time of the night, when I sat alone sourly eating the dinner I had had no time for earlier, and handed me a small jeweled case of bright gold, of the sort one might carry medicine in. “Open it carefully,” he said. I did, and found it brimming with white powder. In amazement I asked him where he had obtained this; he had lately sent agents secretly to Sumara Borthan, he replied, who had returned with a small supply of the drug. He claimed to have more, but I believe he gave me all he had.
“In an hour’s time you will leave,” said the duke, to smother my gush of gratitude.
I asked to be allowed to make a call first.
“Segvord will explain matters to your wife,” the duke said.
“One did not mean one’s wife. One meant one’s bondsister.” In speaking of Halum I could not drop easily into the rough grammar we selfbarers affected. “One has had no chance to make one’s farewell to her.”
The duke understood my anguish, for he had been within my soul. But he would not grant me the call. Lines might be tapped; he could not risk having my voice go forth from his home this night. I realized then how delicate a position even he must be in, and I did not force the issue. I could call Halum tomorrow, when I had crossed the Woyn and was safe in Salla.
Shortly it was time for me to depart. My friends had already gone, some hours since; the duke alone led me from the house. His majestic groundcar waited, and a corps of bodyguards on individual powercycles. The duke embraced me. I climbed into the car and settled back against the cushions. The driver opaqued the windows, hiding me from view though not interfering with my own vision. The car rolled silently forward, picked up speed, plunged into the night, with my outriders, six of them, hovering about it like insects. It seemed that hours went by before we came even to the main gate of the duke’s estate. Then we were on the highway. I sat like a man carved of ice, scarcely thinking of what had befallen me. Northward lay our route, and we went at such a rate that the sun was not yet up when we reached the margin of the Marquis of Woyn’s estate, on the border between Manneran and Salla. The gate opened; we shot through; the road cut across a dense forest, in which, by moonlight, I could see sinister parasitic growths like hairy ropes tangling tree to tree. Suddenly we erupted into a clearing and I beheld the banks of the River Woyn. The car halted. Someone in dark robes helped me out, as though I were a dodderer, and escorted me down the spongy bank to a long narrow pier, barely visible in the thick mist rising off the breast of the river. A boat was tied up, no great craft, hardly more than a dinghy. Yet it traveled at great speed across the broad and turbulent Woyn. Still I felt no inner response to my banishment from Manneran. I was like one who has gone forth in battle and had his right leg sliced off at the thigh by a fire-bolt, and who now lies in a tumbled heap, staring calmly at his stump and sensing no pain. The pain would come, in time.