Shadows and Light

  Liam shifted again. Ignored the sour look from the old baron sitting in the chair on his right. The man reeked of cologne, adding another stink to the body odor and brandy that had been generously imbibed during the midday break. If this was all the barons’ council did, why make the effort of the journey?

  Because you and the people who matter to you have to live with whatever decrees are made here. Why else would the western barons travel so far twice a year?

  Gritting his teeth, he sat up straight and forced himself to pay attention. Not that he hadn’t been hearing the same thing all day yesterday as well as this morning. Kill the witches, acquire the Old Places for your own profit, strip all the other women in your county of the right to be anything but a man’s property, and the men in your county will prosper. And since they were all men here, they had everything to gain and nothing to lose.

  Nothing except their honor, their sense of what was right and wrong, and the trust of the women who were a part of their lives.

  The baron finished his speech and returned to his seat in the council chamber. A smattering of applause came from the part of the chamber where the eastern barons sat. There was nothing but stony silence from the rest of the room.

  Liam raised his hand, as he’d done over and over again yesterday afternoon and this morning, indicating he wanted a chance to speak.

  The Baron of Durham, who presided over the council meetings, looked straight at him before calling on Baron Hirstun to speak.

  Another eastern baron. More verbal puke about the dangers of the Evil One and the need to exterminate all the witches in Sylvalan so that the people who look to the barons to keep them safe will not fall prey to the cruel magic these terrible females spawn.

  “I am pleased to report that all paintings and books that have been deemed unsuitable have been properly destroyed so that they no longer create unhealthy thoughts in those whose minds are too delicate to shoulder the burdens of keeping our counties — and our country — prosperous,” Hirstun said. “I am also pleased to report that the procedure the esteemed physicians in our communities have learned recently to curb female hysteria has been entirely successful.”

  Procedure? Liam wondered, noticing how many of the eastern barons were nodding their heads in agreement. What procedure? If the eastern barons were going to try to push through a decree that all the barons would be expected to follow, they could damn well be more specific about what they were ordering done — and why. They’d spent the past day and a half filling the room with words and saying nothing. When a vote was finally called, how was anyone supposed to know what he was agreeing to?

  Straining to hold his temper, he tugged at his collar, felt a trickle of sweat roll down his neck. Mother’s tits! Why did they have to make the chamber room so warm?

  When Baron Hirstun finished and returned to his seat, Liam wasn’t the only one to raise his hand to speak. He noticed several of the barons from the north and midlands now wanted a chance to take the floor — and not all of them were younger men.

  The Baron of Durham didn’t give any of them so much as the courtesy of looking their way before calling on another eastern baron.

  Heat flooded through Liam, the kind of heat that usually presaged a spectacular loss of temper. Unable to remain seated, he leaped to his feet, pushed past the two other barons who were on his left, and found himself standing in the aisle with his fists clenched, almost panting with the effort to draw in enough air.

  “We have heard from the eastern barons,” Liam said loudly. “We have heard the same things over and over again — words with plenty of fat and no meat. It’s time to let others speak.”

  “You are newly come to your title, and this is your first time in the council,” the Baron of Durham said coldly. “It is customary for the senior members of the council to speak first. And it is a measure of wisdom that those who are so junior they haven’t even learned how to properly address the council should just listen and heed the words of those who have far more experience in ruling the land and the people who live there.”

  “Then let the senior members from the north or south or midlands speak,” Liam insisted.

  “You, sir, are out of order,” the Baron of Durham shouted. “You will be seated!”

  “No, sir, I will not” Liam strode down the aisle. When he reached the front of the room, he turned to face the other barons. Grim faces. Furious faces. He was burning up. With anger. With fever. He couldn’t tell. Didn’t care.

  “It’s true that I’ve newly come to the title,” Liam said, struggling to hold his temper. Ranting would only kill any sympathy he might find in the barons beyond the east. “And it’s true that this is my first time attending the barons’ council. But becoming a baron doesn’t mean I relinquished my sense of what is decent, of what is right. I didn’t relinquish my education or my understanding of the world I live in and the people who live in it with me. I’ve listened to what has been said here in the past two days. I don’t have any answers, but I do have one question that I think needs to be answered.” He held out one hand in appeal. “What has happened to us? What has happened to our pride in our country and our pride in our people? We’re being told that women are too weak-minded to entertain ideas. We’re being told that the only creative things they are suited for are the embroideries to decorate their homes. No. Not even their homes. Their fathers’ homes. Their husbands’ homes. We’re being told that their writings are emotional scribbles that cause unhealthy feelings in others. We’re being told that girls should not be permitted to attend school for more than three years — just long enough to learn their sums and to read and write so that they don’t have to impose on the males in their families to keep the household accounts or write the invitations for a dinner party. We’re being told that women don’t have the intellect to run a business. We’re being told that the only purpose women have is to provide a comfortable home for their fathers and brothers or their husbands once they marry. This is what we’ve been told in these chambers over and over again.”

  Liam paused, took a deep breath, then continued before the Baron of Durham could start demanding that he take his seat. “My question to all of you is this: When did we change? Women are weak-minded? How many of our schools are well run by women who have studied and trained to teach the children? Women are weak? Tell that to the farmers’ wives who tend their houses and children and still go out to help their men with the planting and harvesting. A year ago, we had women novelists and poets and playwrights. We had musicians. We had painters whom we hailed as brilliant, remarkable talents. A year ago, we had women successfully running their own shops. Can you actually sit there and tell me that those women lost all of that talent, lost all of those skills in the past year? That women have changed so much they can no longer do what they’ve been doing for generations?”

  He shook his head. The anger was draining out of him, sorrow taking its place. “They haven’t changed. But I’m afraid to think what we’ll become if we agree to the eastern barons’ solution for prosperity. If women are no more than a body in bed to use and breed, are men really any different from the rutting bull that covers the cows? Will we really feel more like men if we see fear instead of affection in the eyes of our mothers and sisters and wives? Will we really go home in a few days, look at the women in our villages and in our family, and suddenly see weak creatures incapable of making a decision without first getting our approval? I don’t think so. So I ask you again: When did we change? Why did we change? And if we continue to do these things that will tear our people and our families apart, will we truly be able to look in the mirror and not see something monstrous and evil looking back at us?”

  He looked at the barons. Grim faces. Thoughtful faces. Uneasy faces.

  “I never heard of the Evil One until I took my seat in these chambers yesterday morning,” he said quietly, “but I’d like you to think about one last thing. If there really is such a creature, where did it come from? What if these ideas
about women and the things that are being done in the villages in the eastern part of Sylvalan are the work of this …thing? What if it’s like a plague that buries itself in a man’s mind and makes something terrible seem right? If that is the case…” Liam swallowed hard. “If that is the case, then the ones who died were the victims of this madness, and the ones who did the killing, or ordered the killing to be done …they are the Evil One’s servants. They are the ones we should be on guard against.”

  The heat inside him was gone, leaving him feeling sick and shaky.

  Silence.

  Finally, the Baron of Durham said, “This meeting is adjourned until tomorrow morning when the votes will be taken on the decrees that have been proposed.”

  His legs shaking, Liam walked up the aisle toward the chamber’s door. Alone. No one else rose from their chairs; no one spoke. But his eyes briefly met those of an acquaintance, a baron about his age who had wed at Midsummer last year. Donovan gave him a barely perceptible nod. Encouraged, he glanced at the far end of the room where the western barons sat. None of them were looking his way — except Padrick, the Baron of Breton, who held his eyes for a moment before looking away.

  As he reached the chamber door, Liam noticed the blondhaired, blue-eyed man staring at him with brutal intensity. It was the same man he’d seen in the bookseller’s shop.

  You’d have no trouble using a scold’s bridle on a woman and claiming you were doing it for her welfare, Liam thought. You’d enjoy using your fists on her even more.

  He opened the chamber door and quickly walked through the corridors until he reached the doors that would take him out of the building.

  Perhaps he was becoming ill. He had no reason to think those things about a man he didn’t know. But there was something about the man that made him uneasy, something that didn’t feel right.

  He saw a hackney cab draw up a couple of buildings away to let out a fare. He ran to catch it before the driver turned the horse back into the flow of carts and carriages. As he opened the door and climbed inside, he thought he heard someone call his name. But he didn’t turn to look, and he didn’t hear the hail again. Just as well. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to think. He just wanted to get back to his town house and rest until this shaky feeling went away.

  Ubel stared at the closed door long after the Baron of Willowsbrook had left the room. Finally, he turned to study the remaining barons, his blue eyes assessing the damage that had been done by Baron Liam’s passionate speech.

  The eastern barons were protesting to everyone around them that just because they’d only recently been able to put a name to the source of trouble that plagued Sylvalan didn’t mean it hadn’t always been there.

  Fools. They were spilling oil on a small fire, encouraging it to turn into an inferno. If any of them had thought to say the obvious — that it was Liam who was under the influence of the Evil One — and had expressed concern for his family and the people he ruled, they may not have sufficiently persuaded any of the other barons to their side, but they wouldn’t seem to be the very thing Liam had accused them of being: men who were so greedy that they’d sanctioned killings for their own financial gain.

  Of course, he could understand their fear. If they couldn’t sway enough barons to vote with them tomorrow to pass the decrees that would assure that the restrictions they’d placed on the women in their control would be carried out throughout Sylvalan, they would be standing alone. That would be bad enough. But if the other barons became incensed enough because of that bastard’s speech to demand that all rights and property that had been taken from women be restored .

  A few short months ago, the eastern barons might have grudgingly given in to avoid the censure that could have proved troublesome to their purses. But since those barons had ordered the new procedure done on the females in the counties they ruled .

  They couldn’t admit they were wrong. Not after that. And if the other barons didn’t vote for the decrees, there was a strong chance that the people in those counties would turn on the barons. It had happened in a few villages in Wolfram after the procedure was ordered — and in Wolfram, the people knew the Inquisitors stood behind the barons’ orders. It had required cleansing two villages of the Evil One’s presence — cleansings that had left a handful of children as the only survivors by the time the Inquisitors were done — before the people had surrendered to the next step in assuring that men would remain the strong rulers of their families, their land, and their country.

  But there weren’t enough Inquisitors here in Sylvalan to carry out such a cleansing to teach the people how pernicious the Evil One could be.

  Ubel pushed those thoughts aside and concentrated on the barons. He was Master Adolfo’s eyes and ears in these chambers, and he needed to be alert.

  Some of the northern barons — the ones who had already stripped the best timber from their lands — were listening to the eastern barons. And some of the southern barons, who had gone as far as eliminating the witches in their counties, seemed interested enough that they could be persuaded to take the next steps. But the midlands was rich farmland, and most of the barons who ruled there received a comfortable income from their estates and tenant farms. They had no incentive to change and become true men who didn’t have to pander to the females in their families. And the western barons …

  He didn’t know what to think of them. Silent men. Uncomfortable men. If there was one of them who needed to be swayed to the eastern barons’ argument, it was Padrick, the Baron of Breton. The man listened to everything and said nothing, but Ubel had seen the way the other western barons subtly deferred to Padrick, almost as if they were a little afraid of him. So there had to be something more to the man than what could be seen on the surface. Which meant it was likely that whichever way Padrick voted, the rest of the western barons would follow.

  Which meant the vote would go against the decrees the eastern barons had proposed, and the odds were good that, before the summer ended, the barons themselves would be burned at the stake by the enraged villagers they now controlled.

  But Liam had done something even worse than put the eastern barons at risk, as far as Ubel was concerned. He’d questioned the Inquisitors’ motives. He’d accused them of being the Evil One’s servants. How could the Inquisitors do their great work if they had to fear for their lives every time they rode into a village? What Liam had done was remind the barons of that song that was still being sung in taverns — the song that referred to the Inquisitors as Black Coats and users of twisted magic. It seemed every minstrel knew every word and every note of that song, even when the man couldn’t recall where or when he’d heard it. It was as if it had ridden on the air to lodge in men’s brains. Now a baron was taking up the tune in a slightly different way, but the end result was the same — all the effort that had gone into helping the eastern barons say things in just the right way to get the vote they needed was likely for nothing.

  It was fortunate that Master Adolfo had decided to use the yacht one of the Wolfram barons had put at his disposal. He had arrived in Durham yesterday afternoon, and although Adolfo refused to leave the yacht, Ubel was pleased to have the Witch’s Hammer so close at hand. There wouldn’t be any delay in conveying information or receiving orders.

  There was one thing, however, for which Ubel needed no orders. The Sylvalan barons needed to be shown before they reconvened tomorrow morning that defying the eastern barons was the same as defying the Master Inquisitor. Once they understood how costly that defiance could be, they would also understand the need to vote as they should to ensure that Sylvalan did not remain infested with witches and other kinds of female power. Yes, they needed to be taught that there was a penalty for defying the Master Inquisitor.

  And Liam, the Baron of Willowsbrook, would be that lesson.

  Your father understood the necessity for making changes that will keep Sylvalan strong.

  Liam stepped out of the club where he’d had dinner, turned
up his collar against the drizzle that had begun falling, then looked around for a hackney cab that he could take back to the town house.

  Baron Hirstun’s bitter statement had done nothing but convince Liam that opposing whatever the eastern barons were trying to do was right. As soon as Hirstun uttered those words, Liam had recalled with painful clarity the scold’s bridles his father had acquired for his mother and sister. Yes, his father would have enjoyed having a way to silence any opinion but his own — and he would have enjoyed even more being able to take control of Elinore’s inheritance to spend as he pleased. There was no doubt in Liam’s mind that his father would have voted for the changes the eastern barons were proposing. It must have been an ugly surprise to those men to discover that the son was a different kind of man from the father.

  Liam sighed. Not a hackney cab in sight.

  The sigh turned into a grimace as his belly clenched and a queer shiver went through him. Had the beef he’d eaten for dinner been a bit off? The sauce that had been poured over the beef hadn’t been to his liking, and after the first two bites he’d scraped off as much of it as he could. Not that he’d had much appetite anyway. It had taken hours for the sick, shaky feeling to go away this time. He wouldn’t have gone out at all if he hadn’t felt the need to listen to whatever comments might be dropped by the other barons in a last effort to convince their colleagues to support their side of the vote — whichever side it might be.

  There was nothing more he could do tonight, and nothing he wanted more than to return to the town house to relax for a little while before getting a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow would be a difficult day, no matter how the vote turned out.