Six: The Anvil of Business

Pietry stood arrested in the doorway of his office, terrified that the moment would pass if he made the least movement or sound. His visitor had his back to the door, mulling over the tempest-tossed state of the desk. Pietry could not recall when he last had the opportunity to observe Pirrun unguarded. His silhouette against the midday glow of the room had the misted look of an object on the horizon, that same aerial gauze of distances. Pirrun passed a lock of hair behind his ear and ran his fingertips along the edge of the desk. He was the last echo of a man that Pietry once knew. Seeming to sense someone watching, Pirrun turned just slightly and bowed.

“My humblest apologies for the intrusion.” It was not an intrusion but Pietry knew better than to suggest as much.



“Of course. Won’t you have a seat?” Pirrun hesitated. Pietry could almost hear the wheels turning in his head-- Was he meant to sit at His Grace's bidding or wait until His Grace was seated? Pietry pulled a chair as he sailed past the desk, thereby solving Pirrun's conundrum. When both men were settled, Pirrun rolled his sleeves back from his wrists and rested his arms on top of the mess.



Thirty springs had come and gone since they were last alone together, but this was business. The brief white of Pirrun’s canines, the strained skin of his knuckles said business. He bore his father’s colors upon his shoulder where military-issued pelts once rested their weight. Business. Pirrun Irojah did not feel so suited to business as he did to the hilt, to the pit, to the shield. Pietry could see it. What Pirrun’s face and hands did not betray, his posture always did. At the moment, he was shrinking beneath his robes with the same uncertainty that he had shown as a young man being fitted for his wedding serica. They could not have claimed to know each other after spending so many years as nodding acquaintances, but this one constant remained—even the subtlest of Pirrun’s gestures was legible to Pietry. Perhaps neither man had changed, though whole empires had risen around them.



“You look to be the bearer of bad news, Lord Irojah.” Water dripped from urn to urn, marking the half instants. The correction that Pietry had hoped to hear never came. Pirrun. It would have been deceptively simple: two syllables, one heartbeat. Pirrun.  Instead, Pirrun chose a different set of syllables, uncomplicated by the heart.

“Perhaps,” he said, “though it depends.”  Pirrun placed something onto the desk between them and drew his hand back, as though it might turn and bite. The object hit the desk with a metallic and bouncing thud, thud, thud. Pietry stared at it quizzically as it rolled. “Do you recognize that?” Pirrun asked, gesturing at it with a nod of his head. Pietry scooped the thing up. It was a little silver toggle of some kind. A beast was printed at its center.



“If I said that I did, I’d be lying. What is it?”

“It’s a button. Michi’s.” Pietry raised an eyebrow. This was either illuminating and disconcerting or confusing and trivial, but he could not decide which.

“Austerity forbids my nephew from wearing finery. Now, if you are here to tell me that he goes about the street disguised as a secular man—” His speech was cut off by Pirrun, whose expression was ranging from serious to deadly somber. The gravity of it took Pietry aback. Pirrun leaned in closer across the desk. His sleeve nearly brushed against Pietry’s fingertips.



“That may very well be, but it isn’t my objective. This button is being presented as evidence in the investigation of a serious crime.” Pietry drew his torso upward, poised for defense.

“What sort of crime?” Pirrun exhaled through his nose and kept his voice down.

“This isn't an accusation. I am, however, giving you the courtesy of this discussion before any further inquest is performed.”

“What sort of crime, Pirrun?” He had not meant to address Pirrun by a familiar but he did not take it back. Moreover, this was a correction that Pirrun did not have the authority to make. Pietry outranked him. Pirrun glared but did not admonish.

“Assault, rapine, compromising a lord's bondsman, perhaps breach of household. I wasn't certain of whether or not you'd heard. A young man had his tongue severed, and his sister was forced. It happened in west quarter just a few days ago.” Pietry scoffed. It was almost funny, or would have been if Pirrun had a sense of humor.



“Michi?”

“I repeat that this is not an accusation.” Pietry raised his hands and dropped them at his sides.

“Well that's a relief because for a moment there, I believed you said that my nephew of but sixteen summers is a brute and a ravisher!” Perhaps it was the hypnotic pull of their old familiarity, but Pietry dropped his cordial tone of voice. Pirrun responded by tensing in the way that people who are accustomed to diffusing situations always tense.

“I have testimony that he bought this button, only,” he said.

“A button that was worn by an assailant?”

“A button that was found in the house where an assault was committed, yes.” Pietry wiped his hands over his face then stood abruptly. This was yet another conundrum easily solved. He threw open the office door.

“Norro!” Pietry's tow-headed assistant peeked at him from around the corner, then stood.



“Yes, Your Grace?”

“Fetch Michilav here. Tell him that it is urgent.” Norro dropped his quill on the desk and hurried off. Pietry closed the door behind himself. Pirrun looked on without comment as Pietry returned to the desk.

Silence fell between them. Pirrun stared down at his square hands, which lay flat upon Pietry's correspondence.



Pirrun had been a pikeman in the war, and the unwieldy nature of the weapon still displayed its signs upon his body, from the weight of his hands to the width of his shoulders. Pietry longed to take those hands in his and test the softness of their palms against his lips. He remembered Pirrun's hands to be solid, warm, comforting. He had only known them through casual exchanges--a passed loaf of bread, a playful jab, help to his feet after a fall--but it had been enough. Sometimes Pietry lay awake at night thinking that he would give anything to have that much again. Anything--

A knock at the door broke into his meanderings so abruptly that Pietry nearly jumped. He pried his attention away from Pirrun and shouted his permission to enter. The door cracked open just wide enough to accommodate a young man walking sideways through the gap.

Michi shuffled into the room, his nose and cheeks flushed bright red. He had been on the exposed stairways that lead to the bell tower, standing in the frozen trail of monks that communicated the time from the water clock all the way up to the bell ringers. Michi smiled at the pair of them but quickly reigned in his enthusiasm, reading the climate of the room.



“Good day, uncle, lordship.” They each greeted Michi in turn as he strode in to meet them. Not bothering to stand on ceremony, the boy plunked down into the chair next to Pirrun when he caught sight of the button and froze. Pietry's stomach plummeted. For an instant, he felt as sick as Michi looked.

“Is this yours?” Pirrun spoke gently. Pietry had to remind himself that Pirrun was too close to this family to think Michi capable of any serious wrongdoing. Michi could not settle on an emotion.

“Am I in trouble?” Dear thing, with his runny nose and disheveled hair! Was this the face of an evil man?

“Of course not,” Pirrun hastened. Michi fixed his stare on Pietry then, at once defiant.

“You cannot fault me for this,” he said. Pietry exchanged concerned glances with Pirrun, acknowledging that they had not been mistaken in what they heard.



“Sorry, fault you for what, exactly,” Pietry asked. Michi looked back and forth between them then slumped in his chair.

“Nevermind,” Michi grumbled. He drummed his fingers against the desk. “And no, it isn’t mine.” Pietry closed his eyes, wordlessly thanking the gods.

“But you did order the work done?” Pirrun was pressing but he did not seem skeptical. Michi shrugged at him.

“I did. They were a gift.”

“For whom,” Pirrun asked. Both men were closing in on Michi, inching towards him as he shrank away.

“Lectro Sholde. My reasons are my own.” Pietry felt as though he'd bitten down on something sour. He pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed his eyes shut. Michi's father had forbidden him from cavorting with General Maran's cat-eyed son some years ago, and Pietry had supported the decision for precisely this reason. Lectro Sholde was a calamity. He would drag Michi down with him if given the chance.



“Thank you, Michi. That will be all.” Pietry dismissed the boy with a wave of his hand. Michi ignored him.

“Where did you get this, anyway?” Pietry gritted his teeth, having said the last that he would say to Michi for at least a few hours. When Michi refused to take the hint, Pirrun inclined his head toward the door with a look on his face that warned Michi against measuring his uncle’s patience. Michi took his leave in a huff. The second the door closed, Pirrun crossed his legs and folded his hands upon his knee.



“You know, I remember a young monk who, despite the protests of his well-meaning family, befriended a contemptible little shit from a military household.” Pietry dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

“You can't seriously compare yourself to Lectro Sholde, not if the suspicion rings true,” Pietry said. Nor could he compare what had motivated a young Pietry to what motivated his nephew—which as far as Pietry could tell was simply a desire to toady after a bigger, meaner boy. Pirrun sighed.

“No, I don't expect that I can.” Pietry knitted his brow, staring down at the desk but not seeing it. He picked up the button, investigating its grooves and ridges. It was such a tiny thing to have caused so much confusion. Pirrun brought the tips of his index fingers together and tipped them towards the button like the spout of a teapot. “Riven-Sholde sent this button to Kolhue by way of a messenger,” he said. This revelation made Pietry's spine stiffen.

“Say again,” he breathed. Pietry did not know what he had assumed up until this point. Perhaps a one of Baron Corrin’s bailiffs recovered the thing. He did not know. But the fact that this button was sent by any member of the Sholde family mounted a tally of doubt over the accusation, and Pirrun knew it too. The Sholdes were a cutthroat lot and frankly, Ynav could have gotten this button from Lectro anywhere, at any time. The corners of Pirrun's mouth turned downward.

“What does this mean?” Pirrun's voice was fragile. Pietry felt himself in the grip of some overwhelming tragedy then, and it had nothing to do with Michi or the Sholdes. He too remembered a contemptible little shit from a military household, one who could on occasion exhibit the capacity for great wells of empathy, and who would turn his trusting gaze on Pietry when he most needed someone to make sense of things. Pietry stole himself, channeling that ever-looming anvil of business. 



“I think it most likely that Riven-Sholde knows something for certain and is too afraid to come forward himself. I don't know. How can I?” An alternative explanation would have made the young Riven-Sholde much more than a traitor to his family. Calling a nobleman to justice was no small matter, but framing a nobleman for a violent crime was an act of treason against the crown that leant that lord his legitimacy. Pietry was fumbling with the button upon his knee. He glanced at the empty chair next to Pirrun, and an unrelated tendril of bitterness took root. “My cousin is conspicuous by her absence,” he muttered. 

Pirrun shot him a look of mild disdain. Pietry had spoken carelessly, he knew, but Kolhue Aebeny and Pirrun Irojah were the worst kept secret in Udlan Tower. The frequency with which they were spotted together was not doing them any social favors. Even Pietry had noticed their complicit smiles and clandestine whisperings. Pirrun loved his wife and was, as far as Pietry knew, an exemplary husband but he was only a man. Further, he was only a man who spent a decent portion of his time holed-up in a room with an attractive twenty-something who was not only a woman but a force of nature. No, Pirrun did not have the gall to betray his wife. He did not even believe in concubinage, an institution that he thought of as “that mysterious reverse-alchemy that turns our finest noblewomen into slaves”. Pietry was thus not accusing him of infidelity by pointing out the obvious. It was only that after all of this time, Pietry himself had been replaced. Pirrun shut his eyes and cooled down. Maybe he too was mentally hammering away a little anvil called business.



“I'll tell you where she is,” he said, “but I expect that you'll keep it confidential.”

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“I ain't never seen no noblewoman gut a fish like that.” Kolhue looked up from her work, startled. Her blade was planted in the hollow notch where a fishy anus used to be, and she was drawing it along curvature of the abdomen, towards the fishy head. Of all the things to rouse Keda from her silence. Kolhue wiped her brow with the back of her hand. That morning, she had milked the goats, bathed the baby, scrubbed the floors, cleaned the sheets, shucked the maize and dissected a mackerel. If it was true that Michi had a role in what happened to this girl, then Kolhue would give anything that she had to spare--her time, her effort, her money--anything to ease that familial guilt. And she would give these before Michi's name was exposed. Doubtless, this family would accept nothing from her ever after.

Kolhue tossed a sightless head into the wicker garbage pail and instantly regretted it. The pail tipped over, crunching to the floor. She was glad that she had chosen the wicker pail over the wooden barrel that Goodwife Gomohov had intially suggested. Had she done as she was asked, that fall would have been loud enough for the man convalescing upstairs to have heard.



Kolhue had not yet seen him, though she had heard him groaning. It was a plaintive and unnerving sound, reminiscent of a cow being slaughtered. Kolhue's decision to stay away from his room had been deliberate. She had tended to her father after his physical ruin, and it was an experience that she did not have the courage to relive for a stranger. Keda was watching her, head cocked to the side. Kolhue sat the garbage upright and dropped the fish head back into it, then wiped her hands on her apron.

“My sisters and I had to fend for ourselves early on. My mother was very ill when she carried me. Papa spent every last copper we had on healers and chemists to make her well again. It was an illness of the liver , they said. Nothing gave her relief. She died the night I was born and by then, my father was nearly destitute,” Kolhue left it at that. Keda stood up from her chair to stir the coals.



Kolhue had arrived in this house under the pretense of a noblewoman’s obligation to the poor, in light of the family’s recent misfortune. As a well-born woman only looking to fill her quota of charitable deeds, she was not expected to tend to the man upstairs. On the other hand, if her cousin Michi committed a crime here, then the man upstairs was Kolhue’s responsibility, for a lapse in the moral character of an Iyvrian man was seen as the fault of the women of his family for not having taught him otherwise as a boy. It was a form of cowardice for her to hide at the kitchen table. She could not disown the fact that Michi was her blood. Nor would she disown her king and commonweal for though her skin was fair and her hair was brown, she was Iyvrian straight through to the marrow. She would work towards justice for these people because they were her countrymen and therefore also her responsibility. All that remained for her was the hope that Michi had no role in any of this despite evidence to the contrary.



“What's the use in being a fine lady if you gotta slice off fish heads with the rest of us?” Kolhue blinked backed to life at the sound of Keda's voice. She laughed at the question.

“What indeed?” Keda looked over her shoulder at Kolhue, sending her a hesitant smile. Kolhue laid the knife down on the table. “I am honored that you chose to speak to me.” Keda shrugged then, disappearing back into herself just as a bird drapes its eyes with its wing while sleeping.

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Pirrun rested his forehead against Pietry’s door, drawing a few deep breaths. The monks sped past him in silence, comparing water levels and shooting off missives. This room was the pulse of the entire kingdom. When the bells at Udlan Tower rang, then so did the ones in Poull, in Fince, in Traice, in Zonhitha, expanding ever outward to ensure that all of Iyves operated in synch. It was no small task. Pietry had been Water Standard for thirty-three autumns following the retirement of his mentor, Lord Gamad Hoq, who was now deceased. The water clock and its administration ran very smoothly under Pietry’s leadership. He was a brilliant man. As for Pirrun himself, he was an absolute idiot.

He stood upright, peering between the cracks in the wood grain. His hand slid down the body of the door without generating so much as a whisper. Pirrun could not think of a pretense by which to re-enter Pietry’s office, yet the impulse wrung his insides. Thirty years’ worth of significant moments, and he’d thought of Pietry at every one of them. Each turn in his life could have been an entry point back into Pietry’s. The weight of those years came crashing down upon him while they waited for Michi in that office. There wasn’t a term for what they had meant to each other once. He had cared for Pietry better than he did his brothers.



“Lord Irojah?” Pirrun turned around, startled. It was only Michi. “Are you well?”

“Quite well. Thank you.”

“Are you in need of assistance?” Michi placed a hand on Pirrun's wrist.

“No.” Pirrun paused to wipe the sweat from his eyes. Udlan was on the cusp of winter, but the meeting with Pietry left Pirrun sweltering beneath his robes. He offered Michi a weak smile. “I’m fine, Michilav. It is only that when a man gets to be my age, he sometimes needs a moment to collect himself before resolving to move on.”



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Daybreak, and Jemec was awake with a start. Shadows passed by his bed assuming the varied forms of his ancestors. He held his breath to convince the specters that he was already dead, praying that they might leave him in peace. He blinked his eyes into focus. His waking reason solidified. He was alone. West Quarter was silent but for his father’s labored snoring. The sweat that beaded around Jemec’s lips was cooled by the breeze from the cracked window. He felt thirsty. He reached across his chest for the pitcher of water at his bedside, forgetting his newly set shoulder. The sudden pain shot through him, igniting areas of his body that he could not conceive as being connected to the socket of his left arm. He lay crushed against the pillows, cursing his own stupidity. As he closed his eyes to sleep until such a time as his mother or father could bring him the pitcher that rested so infuriatingly close to his broken body, his thoughts returned to a dark place that they scarcely left.



It was a place that formed around his reduction to a silent, quivering invalid and his impotence to protect Keda from harm. It was a place where his own voice echoed against the walls, accusing him with a capacity that he no longer had for getting involved in matters that extended beyond his own front door. A cock crowed in the square. Soon, Jemec would be free of his bed and then he would have business to attend to. The golden glow of the street lamps filtered through the window, washing his eyelids with light. It was a color that he had come to associate with hunger at the thought of killing.