“We make ourselves instruments! Anyone we kill asinstruments, we deliver to a judgment infinitely wiser than our own. If the removal be a sin, it weighs upon the client who commands it, not those who act under the bond of obedience!”
“Well put, Speaker.” Archedama Foresight is unable to suppress a smile; the sun has risen while Falconer has made his arguments, and the chamber is flush with a soft golden glow. “I call to my fellow arch-magi for binding. We have no time for the diversion of philosophy. The subject of a specific contract divided us this morning. It divides us now. One way or another, we should end that division, working firmly within the context of the law.”
“Agreed,” says Temperance. “Binding.”
“Reluctantly agreed,” says Providence. “Binding.”
Jean/Patience feels a warm glow of gratitude. Providence has bent a point of etiquette, speaking his judgment before that of the more senior Patience, but in so doing he has confirmed the verdict, three out of four. Patience, whatever her actual thoughts on the subject, is now free to conceal them and do a small kindness to Navigator.
“Abstain,” Jean/Patience says.
“Binding,” says Foresight.
“Bound, then,” says Temperance. “All further discussion outside the Mandates is set aside.”
Navigator pulls her hood up, bows, and sits. The assembly is restored to its previous stalemate. Providence has refused to sanction the proposed contract, while Foresight has endorsed it. Temperance and Patience have yet to express their opinions.
“You have more for us, Speaker?” Temperance directs his question at the Falconer, who remains standing.
“I do,” says the young man, “if I don’t strain your patiencein continuing.”
Jean is struck by the ambiguity of his insight into this affair. Is it possible to make puns in thought-speech? Was that the Falconer’s design? Or is Patience, in translation, highlighting nuances her son didn’t intend? Whatever the truth, none of the arch-magi take exception.
“I bear no particular love for the people of Camorr. Neither do I bear them any particular ill-will,” says the Falconer. “The proposed contract is drastic, yes. It will require deftness and discretion, and the removal of many people. It will have consequences, but I would argue that none of them are relevant to us.
“Let us look to the first Mandate, the question of self-harm. Do we have any particular attachment to the current rulers of Camorr? No. Do we have any properties or investments in the city we can’t protect? No! Do we invite trouble for Karthain by causing upheaval two thousand miles away? Please … as if our presence here couldn’t protect the interests of Karthain, even were Camorr two miles down the road!”
“You talk of investments.” Archedon Providence speaks now, a disarmingly mild man about Patience’s age, a staunch ally of hers. “Anatolius casts a wide net with this scheme. Any feast at Raven’s Reach will command the presence of the city’s money, including Meraggio himself. We domaintain accounts at his house, and others.”
“I’ve researched them,” says Falconer. “But do these people run countinghouses or trade syndicates by themselves? Any one of them will have family, advisors, lieutenants. Capable and ambitious inheritors. The money in the vaults won’t go anywhere. The letters of credit won’t vanish. The organizations will continue operating under new authorities. At least that’s my conclusion. Do you find it to be in error, Archedon?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Nor I,” says Foresight. “Our few ties to Camorr are secure, our obligations to it nonexistent. Who can name a single concrete injury we would do ourselves if we accepted the Anatolius contract?”
The chamber is silent.
“I trust we may consider the first Mandate dispensed with,” says the Falconer. “Let’s give due airing to the second. What Anatolius proposes—and offers to pay a fair, which is to say, exorbitant price for—is that we engineer an opportunityfor him to work his revenge against the nobility of Camorr and against its foremost criminal family. Now, I am merely being exact. I’m not attempting to disguise the magnitude of his intentions.
“With our aid, Anatolius will likely succeed, and hundreds of the most powerful men and women in Camorr will be Gentled. Our sister Navigator is correct to point out the foolishness of dancing around this point. These men and women will never again have a single meaningful thought. They won’t be able to wipe the filth from their own asses. Their fate will be tantamount to murder.
“I would certainly not wish that on anyone I knew or cared for, but then, we are here to consider, as the Archedama put it, the concrete injuries of our actions, not to hone our sympathy for distant persons. We must measure whether the disruption this would inflict could be so widespread as to compromise our own interests, and our freedom of action.”
“Forgive my suspicion,” says Jean/Patience, “that the Speaker has come to this assembly well-armed with conclusions to aid us in that measurement.”
“Archedama, I would be a poor advocate indeed if I dared to speak extemporaneously on such a crucial matter. I’ve given this contract a great deal of thought since it was first proposed.”
“If it were carried out,” says Archedama Foresight, “what would happen to Camorr?”
“I think it impossible,” says Falconer, “that literally every noble in Camorr could be caught in this trap. There must inevitably be those too ill to attend, those out of favor at court, and those traveling abroad. There will also be those that leave too early or arrive too late. Dozens of them are sure to survive. Anatolius understands this. His point is made regardless.
“Camorr possesses a standing army of several companies, along with a rather infamous constabulary. At the end of the night, the survivors would retain a disciplined force to keep the peace.”
“That’s what they’d be used for, then?” Archedon Providence adopts a tone of mock surprise. “Certainly not to settle old scores? Camorri are so famous for their deep sense of restraint where lingering grudges are concerned.”
“I’m not trying to be fatuous, Archedon,” says the Falconer, “or unduly optimistic. But our information—and our information is better than the duke of Camorr’s—is that the duke’s standing forces are reasonably loyal to the throne and to Camorr itself. Of course there’d be blood on the walls. Doors kicked in, alley fights, that personal Camorri touch. Yet I think it likely the army and constabulary would stand aside from these affairs until the strongest survivors restored a legitimate chain of command.”
“Are you seriously arguing,” says Providence, “that Camorr would, after a few knife-fights in the dark, suffer no further instability from the sudden and rather horrific subtraction of several hundred nobles?”
“Of course not. Archedon, you do me a rhetorical injustice. Camorr will lose much—its present ambitions, its particular relations with other city-states, its high culture. If Anatolius has his way, he’ll wipe out most of the old dogs who won the Thousand Days and put down the Mad Count’s rebellion.
“Camorr will be severely tested. Tal Verrar, we must assume, will poke every visible wound. But will Camorr collapse? Will there be riots in the streets? Will its soldiers throw down their pikes and run to the wilds? Gods be gracious, no. And will it lash out? At whom? Anatolius intends to make it generally known, if his plan is successful, that what took place was an act of vengeance by Camorri, upon Camorri. There’ll be no foreign phantoms to chase.”
“They will try,” says Temperance, musingly. “And they’ll hunt Anatolius to the ends of creation. Assassins will be lined up at the city gates for work.”
“I agree,” says Falconer. “But that would be Anatolius’ problem, and he’s eager to have it. He knows how to reach our agents if he wishes to discuss the price of making himself vanish.”