For the first time he stared at Garth and Joseph. “Or did you think to dye your son’s hair and pass him off as Prince Maximilian?” Cavor laughed, then abruptly sobered. “The depth of your treason hurts and,” his voice dropped, “saddens me. Egalion.”
Egalion now stood to the king’s side. He held out the covered tray, but he lifted his eyes and stared at Garth and Joseph. His bearing was confident, but his eyes were troubled.
Cavor did not notice. The incident at the rear of the crowd had unnerved him, and he wished he’d kept the chamber clear of rabble. But he’d wanted to avoid the look of a secretive trial, for that would indicate secrets to hide, and had ordered the doorsmen to allow in as many as the Chamber of Justice would comfortably hold.
Now Cavor hastened on with the judgement. He indicated Egalion should step forward into clear view, facing the prisoners in the dock. He took one corner of the red velvet and lifted his eyes, staring at the Baxtors.
Both stared back at him, their calmness unsettling, almost defiant.
Cavor swallowed. “Behold my judgement,” he cried, and whipped the cloth from the tray.
Beneath lay the axe of justice, glinting in the sunlight that fell from the chamber’s high windows.
Its blade was turned towards the prisoners in the dock.
Death.
If it had been turned away then the judgement would have been in the prisoners’ favour, but neither of them had harboured any doubts that the wicked blade would face them.
Another murmur spread through the chamber.
Cavor’s face had gone a pasty white. “Death,” he whispered. “Egalion? I would have the sentence carried out immediately. See to it, if you please.”
TWENTY FIVE
CITY SQUARE
The central space of Ruen was octagonal, but had never been called anything else than City Square. Separated from the palace and court complex by a wide avenue, it was used for a number of purposes at any one time: markets (and even the bustling twice-weekly market could not fill its vast area), parade ground, meeting place and, as today, part execution ground.
Whether due to the efforts and rumours of the woodsman Alaine, perhaps aided by the Order of Persimius, or because of the unusual nature of the trial—judging as it did not only a case of high treason (and who had seen one of those in over a generation?) but also the Physician Baxtor and his son—the enormous square was filled to virtual capacity.
Despite its size, the crowd was unusually quiet. Although few knew Garth, Joseph—as were his father and grandfather before him—was fondly and kindly remembered by the ordinary folk of Ruen. All the Baxtors wielded powerful Touch, yet they did not charge high prices for their services. Indeed, on many an occasion, they would only smile and refuse to accept payment if they knew the patient or his family was in financial difficulties.
And Joseph was also closely associated with the old king and with Maximilian. How many times had Joseph Baxtor strolled through this very square with the young prince at his side, smiling and laughing with those who stopped to talk with them?
Maximilian. The crowd was tense. Expectant. Over the past few days unusual and unsettling rumours had swept the city, yet no-one knew their origin nor the full truth of them.
Maximilian. Kidnapped at fourteen. Enslaved in the Veins. Freed by his own indomitable spirit and the magic of powerful sorcerers.
Would he return to claim the throne of Escator? When? And what of Cavor? Darker rumour had it that Cavor had planned the young prince’s disappearance. Few, having heard this rumour, were prepared to repeat it save in deepest privacy.
And Cavor’s trial (if such it could be called) of the Baxtors damned him in many eyes—especially when further rumour placed Garth Baxtor at the heart of the effort to free Maximilian.
Maximilian. Where was he? Did he really exist? Or were the rumours just a cruel hoax, constructed as Cavor suggested, to foment rebellion and civil war?
No-one knew.
But surely, someone, somewhere, must have the answers.
Necks craned and feet shifted nervously. Hands clenched, and then unclenched. The crowd muttered and rustled.
Egalion, squashing his own doubts as best he could (and only he knew how far into the nights they’d kept him awake), marched at the head of the well-armoured execution detail into the square. In the heart of the detail, surrounded on each side by at least eight guards, marched Garth and Joseph.
By this time even Garth’s eternal optimism had begun to pall. He’d expected Maximilian to stand forth in the Chamber of Judgement and challenge Cavor. But nothing had happened. True, one or two men had shouted Maximilian’s name, but the prince himself had remained stubbornly absent.
And a few shouted questions from the back of the chamber had done nothing to halt Cavor damning them to death in City Square.
Garth stumbled and Joseph caught at his elbow, concerned, his own mounting horror evident in his dark eyes.
“I’m all right, father,” Garth muttered, half expecting the guards to strike him for speaking, but they kept their heads averted and their weapons to themselves. Perhaps the Baxtors were as good as dead in their eyes anyway, and a few mumbled words and goodbyes would matter neither one way nor the other.
Joseph’s hand tightened. “There is still hope, Garth. Still hope.”
Garth tried to smile for his father, but it didn’t work.
The guards marched them remorselessly on.
The crowd stirred as the execution detail moved out from the court complex into the square. Troops had kept a way clear for it, and the detail marched sternly and briskly towards the hastily assembled executioner’s platform to one side of the square. The splintered platform rose the height of two men above the heads of the crowd and there was a wide open space before it; no-one was to be denied a view.
Behind the detail came Cavor himself on a magnificent white horse, still in the blue robes of justice, but now thrown back over his shoulder to reveal more of his armour and the sword that swung at his hip. On his head sat the crown of Escator, and below it his face was implacable and showed not a shred of doubt or guilt; those who could see him wondered at the truth of the rumours—surely their king was too confident and too grave to be accounted a schemer who had cheated Prince Maximilian of the throne?
Behind Cavor marched yet more troops, their booted feet sounding an uncompromising dirge.
The execution squad had now reached the platform, and Egalion directed several guards to march the Baxtors to its top. The other guards he ranged two deep about the platform to repel any foolish rescue attempts; yet, despite the number of guards, Egalion could not stop his eyes traversing the crowd in a curious yet apprehensive sweep.
He did not yet want to admit to himself for what or for whom he looked.
Cavor waited until Joseph and Garth, their hands now bound behind their backs, were standing behind the two wooden blocks—their surfaces scarred and stained by years of use—before he spurred his horse forward, scattering several of the crowd before him.
“My people!” Cavor shouted, standing up in his stirrups. “I beg you witness the deaths of two of the most heinous traitors this realm has yet bred!” He repeated the accusations he’d mouthed in the Chamber of Justice (and he’d rehearsed them so often in his mind that he now almost believed them himself), watching the crowd’s reaction with satisfaction. When he’d heard Maximilian’s name shouted in the Chamber of Justice, Cavor had momentarily doubted the wisdom of such a public accusation and execution. But now he was pleased. If anyone else had heard these treasonous rumours of Maximilian then best they realise the consequences of believing in them.
Garth and Joseph Baxtor’s deaths would do more than silence a pair of traitors; it might well stop civil insurrection before it had a chance to breed and fester.
And once I find Maximilian, Cavor thought coldly, once I find Maximilian then there will never be an excuse for rumour again. I’ll do to him what I should have found the means to do seventeen years ago. No-one is ever going to threaten my right to this throne again. Mark or no mark, Maximilian will surely die.
“Executioner!” he shouted, swinging his horse back to face the block. “Do you stand ready?”
A black robed and masked man stepped forward from the back of the platform. “Aye, sire. I stand ready.”
Two guards nudged Garth and his father forward, forcing them to their knees before the blocks. Garth gave his father one long, last look, then looked inward, searching for the inner peace he needed to meet death.
A cold smile playing across his face, Cavor raised a gloved hand high in the air. “Then—”