RAVEN DORMANT
(a Birthright Lord High Executioner Story: 2)
by Dru Pagliassotti

Corbin barely had a chance to see her descending like a furious parrot - all shrill cries and bright colors - before she had flung herself upon him.  Long nails clawed at his eyes and a sharp knee tried to gouge him in the balls.  He staggered backwards and his boots slipped on a patch of ice.  Both of them tumbled to the ground, and nails raked the side of his face.

"What the -"

She screamed something foreign, dark eyes flashing in a veil of long black hair.  Corbin tried to shake her off, roll to one side, but she straddled him and slapped him across the face.  A heavy ring cut his lip - he tasted blood.  White teeth caught the sunlight in a fierce, predatory smile as she looked down at him.  One slim hand rose for another blow.  He twisted and caught her wrist in one gloved hand.

"Look, lady -"

Nails raked across his face again.  This time blood stung his eyes, blinding him.  Losing his temper, he struck out, catching the side of her face and knocking her off-balance.  She hissed and tried to bite the hand that was holding her arm, teeth sinking into his leather glove.  Corbin swore and grabbed a hank of her lustrous hair with his free hand, trying to yank her back.

Something cold slid into his side.

He released her hair, twisting to see what was wrong.  A sharp burst of pain shot through him as she yanked the long, narrow dagger back out.  Blood soaked his shirt, his coat, hot against his skin.

"You die, murderer!" she hissed, her words so heavily accented that he could barely understand them.  The knife rose again, point toward his chest.

Corbin tried to reach up, to stop her, but something caught in his side.  He groaned and pressed his arms against his sides, trying to stop the pain.

Another figure loomed over them.  Hands closed on the woman's wrist, shoulder.  A second later she screamed as she was lifted bodily away.  Corbin struggled to sit up, to at least prop his elbows beneath him.  More blood soaked his side, another flash of pain lanced through him.  He closed his eyes, desperately clinging to consciousness.

Had she killed him?   He groaned again and tried to concentrate.  His father had taught him a way to cheat death.  Somewhere inside, if only he could find it, was the spark of cold fire that was his family's birthright.  An evil god's gift to some treacherous ancestor; a taint in his family's blood that the Rooks had kept hidden for countless generations.  A taint too useful to give up, in times like these.

He found it, coaxed it into life.  Cold flame licked the dagger wound, stopped the bleeding.  The flesh wasn't whole - the Rooks weren't so tainted as that - but the pain subsided, became bearable.  Something inside had closed again.

"Are you all right?  Can you stand?"

Corbin opened his eyes and looked up into a crowd.  Strangers, most of them - townpeople drawn by the drama more than by any inclination to help him.  Only the speaker crouched next to him, one hand hovering over his shoulder, seemed concerned.  Corbin recognized him - Quentin Brace, the owner of the Headsman's Rest across the street.  One of the only people in Boeruine who had any interest in the Lord High Executioner's health.

"She stabbed me...." he said weakly, trying to sit up again.  This time Quentin's hand slid under his arm as the big man gently helped him to his feet.

"Somebody get a chaplain!"

"NO! - no, it's all right."  Corbin winced as the effort of standing put new pressure on the wound.  "It's not deep.  It just hurts."  He didn't dare let any priests see him now.  They might notice the unnatural healing and ask questions he couldn't afford to answer.

"You're bleeding," Quentin said flatly.  "You need help."

"I'm okay."  Corbin leaned heavily on the older man as he looked around.  Townspeople gazed curiously back at him as though this were some sort of public performance put on for their benefit.  The death of the archduke's headsman.  Today in Executioner's Square, admission free.  Sometimes he hated their smug, idiotic faces.  He looked away from them, saw the woman lying crumpled on the icy cobblestones.  She was beautiful - young, dark, dressed in ragged layers of brilliant skirts, blouses, and vests, draped in mirrored trinkets and glittering jewelry.  A gipsy.  A stranger.

"I, uh, hit her," Quentin explained, following the executioner's gaze.  He sounded abashed.  "Maybe a little too hard."

"Bracken?"  All he wanted to do was to get home and sit down, and he knew he would never make it back by himself.

"I sent my boy for the guards."  The bartender steadied him.  "You've got to get some help, milord!"

He wanted to laugh, but it would hurt too much.  The Rooks weren't nobility, although people forgot that.  Mostly.

"Just get me home," he said tightly.  His fingers dug into Quentin's forearm.  "I'll be all right.  Just help me get there."

"Okay, okay."  The big man looked concerned and turned to one of the townspeople, somebody Corbin didn't recognize.  "Rufus, you stay here and keep an eye on her until the guards come, eh?  I'll serve you up a free lunch at the Rest."

"Whatever you say, Quentin."  The stranger looked from the bartender to the executioner, then looked away, stared at the girl.  "You go on ahead."

Bastard, Corbin thought, leaning against Quentin as they slowly started off.  They're all bastards.  He could count on one hand the number of people in town who cared about the Rooks, who might pause to mourn an executioner's death.

Some days he thought that he'd happily see them all march across his gallows platform to hang.

***

"That's not nice," his mother chided him, holding the edges of the dagger wound together as she ran the needle through again.  Corbin flinched, staring away from her, at the fire.  "They just don't understand, dear.  They forget that we have a duty to the archduke."

"They hate us.  They always have."  He heard the bitterness in his own voice and was ashamed of it.  The shock was taking its toll, making his self-control slip.  The needle dug into his skin, and he flinched again.

"That's no reason to hate them back."  Mhairi was always so calm, so comforting.  With his father dead, she was the only one left to remind him of who he was, of the responsibility of his office.  "No more than you'd hate a mule for being stubborn.  They're just foolish, and you can't hate a fool."

"I could have died while they stood there and watched."

"Quentin helped you, didn't he?"  Fingers brushed the edges of his wound as she deftly knotted the silk thread.  "He's a good man, just like his father."

"I suppose," he said, reluctantly.  There were only a few people in town - in the entire realm - who deigned to treat the Rooks like equals.  Quentin.  The Coffins - and the family of gravediggers was no more respected than he.  Misfits always stuck together.  Bracken.

Someone knocked at the door.  Corbin looked at his mother, then down at the wound.  She was wiping fresh blood away from the stitches, which were as neat and evenly spaced as her embroidery.  The rag was already soaked with his blood, and his stained shirt, trousers, and coat were on the floor, leaving him in nothing but a blanket.

"There.  Let me get the door, and I'll bind that up."  She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.  "It's probably the captain."

She was right.  Bracken brought the winter's chill in with him, and Corbin shivered as the old soldier pulled off his gloves and gave him a critical once-over.

"That doesn't look as bad as it could," the captain said at last.  "You got lucky.  Your face is a mess, though."

Corbin felt embarassed.  His mother patted his leg, a silent accomplice, and began winding bandages around his stomach and side, covering the wound.  She knew what he'd done, of course.  She knew more about the family's secrets, he thought, than even he.

"Did you find out why she attacked me?" he asked.  Bracken nodded, shifting slightly to stand closer to the fire.

"You should have been able to defend yourself better.  I mean, stabbed by a girl?"  The soldier shook his head.  "I swear, Rook, sometimes I wonder if you'll ever learn how to protect yourself."

"She surprised me!"  Corbin's face was red.  The captain had spent months trying to teach him how to wrestle, to box, to swing a sword.  He was learning - slowly.

"If you're ever going to make a halfway decent constable, son, you're going to have to learn how to deal with surprise.  She nearly got you."  Bracken shifted and gestured with his cane toward the bandages around Corbin's chest.  "A few inches to the right and that could have been a stomach wound.  A few inches up from there and she'd have gotten a lung, or maybe even your heart.  As it is, you're lucky she didn't sink her knife in up to the hilt.  Could have ruptured something inside."

Corbin felt a little nauseous.  She probably had.  If it hadn't been for the family curse, the taint of Azrai....

"She distracted you, scratching your face like that.  Got you protecting your eyes, then stabbed you while your arms were up.  Old trick - some men do the same thing by throwing dirt in your face, or feinting at your eyes.  Your first instinct is to cover your face, and then your midsection is unprotected. Wham! - they have you."

"Captain," Mhairi said gently, "Corbin isn't feeling well."

The ex-soldier gave her a startled look, then looked at Corbin and had the decency to flush.

"I'm sorry, ma'am.  Habit."  He looked uncomfortable.  "Don't like to see my men hurt, you know.  It's important that they learn what they did wrong, avoid the mistake in the future."

"Well, tell him what he did wrong later."  She stood.  "Would you like some tea?"

"Er, yes, thank you, ma'am."

She smiled affectionately at the two of them and moved off, leaving them alone to talk.  Corbin pulled his blanket closer, feeling the winter's chill even this close to the fire.

"Did you find out why she attacked me?" he repeated.  Bracken set his walking stick against the wall and began peeling off his scarf and coat, finally warming up.

"Can't you guess?"

"No.  I -" Corbin paused, catching the captain's sharp gaze, and fell silent.  He was obviously expected to know.  The captain liked to play these games with him.  He thought back, tried to recall her face.  "She's a gipsy.  The guards just brought a gipsy in for killing Count Llaehed's youngest son.  The gipsy broke his leg, didn't he?"

"Good.  So...."

"So, she probably thinks I'm going to kill him."  Corbin's lips tightened.  "He hasn't even been judged, yet.  She must think he's guilty."

"Gipsies are hot-tempered, and they don't usually stop to think before they act," Bracken said, with a trace of disapproval in his voice.  "Their women, especially.  Well, I've got her locked up in a cell with her friend, on charges of attempted murder.  You may get to hang them both, at this rate."

Corbin made a face, leaning back in his chair and gazing into the fire.  He didn't like hanging women.  He'd done it before, but it was never pleasant.  Besides -

She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.  Even unconscious.  Even after trying to kill him.

"The other gipsy, the one they say killed the count's son.  Do you think he did it?"

"Well, he was found going through the boy's pockets.  The boy'd been strangled, rope around his neck.  The gipsy says he found the kid dangling from a branch and untied him.  More likely, he strangled the kid from behind.  Ran off when my guards chanced on him - that's how he broke his leg.  Slipped on an icy branch and took a bad fall.  Must have been guilty of something."  Bracken frowned.  "Or else my guards roughed him up and faked the report."

"You don't trust them?"

"I don't trust anybody, Rook.  It's a survival trait."

"Oh."  Corbin gave the older man a dubious look.  "Not even me?"

Bracken smiled.

"Oh, I trust you - for now.  You don't know enough to be dangerous yet."

"Oh."  Corbin absorbed that in silence, not sure whether the captain was joking or not.  "What happened to the body?"

"Whose?"

"Count Llaehed's son."

"Interred in the family tomb, I suppose."

"Is there -"  Corbin was interrupted by his mother's return.  She put a kettle of tea over the fire to warm and set a larger pot of water next to the hearth.

"Don't let me bother you," she said, bundling up Corbin's bloodstained clothing and dropping it into the pot.  She let the clothes soak and settled down in her chair with some embroidery, carefully cleaning the blood off her needle before rethreading it.

"Is there any chance I could look at the body?"

Bracken picked up his cane and sat down in the last chair in the house, the one that had once belonged to Rook's father and was now available for their very occasional guest.

"I can ask the count.  The priests usually frown on disturbing a sealed tomb, though.  Do you really think it'll help?"

"It might."  Corbin shrugged, then winced.  In the past few months, Bracken had sometimes asked him to look at a corpse, to try to determine how and when the person had been killed.  Corbin had a knack for the task.  His job had long since inured him to the sight, smell, and feel of dead bodies, and he knew a lot about killing people.  Sometimes he saw things that other, more squeamish examiners missed.

"I'll ask, then," the captain promised.

***

"Mother, what are you doing?"

"Taking these old blankets up to the prison, dear."

Corbin struggled to sit up in bed, wincing at both the catch in his side and the cold air.  His mother was pulling things out of the huge old linen chest by the foot of his narrow bed.

"Mother!  Don't be ridiculous.  We hardly have enough blankets for ourselves -"

"Don't be silly."  Mhairi calmly continued folding the crocheted blanket.  "These have been in here for years - moths got to them and they were unraveling.  I took them off our beds two winters ago."

"But Mother -"

"Those cells are cold, dear.  One of your prisoners has a broken leg and the other's just a girl.  It won't do the Rook reputation any good if the criminals die of cold before you get a chance to hang them."

Corbin rolled his eyes.

"Well, I'm not going to let you go down there alone."  He painfully pushed off his covers and got out of bed, shivering in his trousers and bandages.  His mother tsked and left her folding to grab his other, much-mended shirt.  Between the two of them, they managed to get it on and tied without causing him too much pain.

"I don't need your protection," Mhairi scolded him, as he slowly pulled on his only other uniform jerkin, the one they usually kept aside for special occasions.  He hoped he didn't bleed on it.  "I'm just going to drop these off and come right back."

"Mother, somebody stabbed me this morning.  I'm not letting you go there by yourself - there might be other gipsies out for revenge."

"Well, why on earth would they bother me?"

Corbin sighed impatiently as she brushed his hands aside and buttoned up his jerkin for him.

"They might have followed me home.  They could use you against me."

"Now, you're being silly.  Sweet, but silly."  She kissed him on the cheek.  "You shouldn't be up, dear.  You'll just make it worse."

"You're not going to stop me, Mother."

"I wouldn't even try," she said amicably, going back to her pile of blankets.  "I learned that much from your father."

The evening was even colder, and Corbin had to stop every ten or fifteen paces to rest, feeling faint.  Both the wound in his side and the scratches on his face ached in the bitter chill.   His mother, bundled up in an oversized sailor's coat taken years ago from a convicted criminal, set down her bundle to support him once when he nearly slipped.

Some protection I'll be, Corbin thought wryly, straightening and biting back a groan.  He was almost sorry that his mother hadn't argued with him and made him stay in bed - but she never did.  All his life, Corbin had watched her let his father and him do whatever they wanted, no matter how foolish or shortsighted it was.  She only offered her advice when they asked for it.  They'd both finally learned to rely on her quiet judgments and to depend on her steady, calming presence when things went wrong.  His father had valued her above everything else in his life.  Corbin had learned to do the same.

He probably should have asked her if it was a good idea to get out of bed.

They finally made it up the steep incline of Castleroad to the walls of Seaharrow.  The guards recognized his uniform - at least he could do that much for his mother, spare her any questioning - and let them inside.

The air was almost as cold in the commoner's section of the dungeons as it was outside.  Corbin could see his breath as they walked.  When they reached the cells he grabbed the rickety visitor's chair and sank into it, one arm pressed against his side.  His mother began unpacking the bundle.

The gipsy girl flew to the cell bars, staring at Corbin and spitting something in a language he couldn't understand.  The other prisoner - an older gipsy, sitting with his leg roughly splinted and bound - replied in a deeper, calmer voice, then grinned at Corbin.

"She doesn't like you," he said cheerfully, in heavily accented Anuirean.

"I guessed that when she tried to kill me," Corbin replied, trying to match the gipsy's light tone of voice.  It took some effort, but the gipsy's smile widened.  His mother sniffed.  She was pulling more out of the bundle - some fresh bread, it looked like, and dried fish.  Corbin bit back a protest.  Arguing that they barely made it through the winters themselves, without feeding prisoners probably slated to die anyway, wasn't going to be any use.  She had her own agenda, always.  If she didn't interfere in her husband's or son's activities, they'd learned in turn that it was pointless to interfere in hers.

"She says you're the hangman.  Have you come to kill me, then?  So late at night?"

"No."  Corbin glanced at his mother.  "I'm just keeping an eye on her."

"Ah."  The gypsy turned his smile on Mhairi.  "Forgive me, pretty lady, but I cannot stand and bow to you.  I am Stanko.  My little friend here, she is Yanna."

"I'm Mhairi Rook, and this is my son, Corbin."  Mhairi ignored Corbin's exasperated growl.  "It's cold down here, so I brought you some blankets.  And some food, too - not much, I'm afraid, but it's all we can spare."

The girl hissed something, and Stanko replied sharply before turning back to them.

"She thinks you are poisoning us," he said, apologetically.

Mhairi drew herself up and gave the gipsy girl an affronted look.

"Poisoning you?  The Rooks don't use poison - we're honest executioners.  Besides, you haven't been convicted yet, and even if you had, killing you would be my son's job, not mine."

Stanko laughed, and even Yanna looked taken aback.  After a second, she smiled at Mhairi.

"Sorry," she said in bad Anuirean.  "I not hate you.  Hate son, murderer."

"No, dear, he's not a murderer, he's an executioner."  Mhairi handed the blankets and food through the cell bars to Yanna, who stared curiously at her.  "Your sentence is passed by the judges, not by Corbin.  I wish you'd thought of that before you'd attacked him."  She gave the gipsy girl a sharp look.  "If you'd killed him, I would have hung you myself."

Corbin flushed.  He couldn't tell if his mother was being protective or simply stating a fact.  The Rooks had been the archduke's executioners for six generations.  If he died, she'd be the only one left to carry on the tradition.

"Archduke's judges," Yanna scoffed. "They no love gipsies."

"Don't you worry about it," Mhairi assured her.  "Corbin's looking into the case, himself.  He'll find out what really happened."

Yanna frowned, and Stanko gave Corbin a sharp look.

"What do you mean, `looking into'?"

Corbin pulled himself up in the chair.

"I'm going to examine the corpse of the boy they say you killed.  To see if he was murdered or not."

"He killed himself," Stanko said, voice urgent.  "You look and see!  I just found him when I walked by."

"You were going through his pockets," the executioner said drily.  Stanko shrugged.

"What use is money to a dead man?  He was not buried, eh?  It was not grave-robbing."

"That's for the judges to decide."  Corbin saw that his mother was done, and slowly stood up, gripping the back of the chair for support.  "I'm only concerned if you're a killer.  They don't usually execute thieves."

"Archduke's judges," Yanna repeated, with bitterness.  Corbin stared at her as his mother turned to leave.  The scratches on his face felt raw in the cold.  He touched them, winced, and followed his mother out.

***

Corbin turned the boy's head, apparently unaffected by the smell of rotting flesh that reeked beneath the heavy incenses that burned in braziers set around the body.  His gloved fingers were light against the greenish-red flesh of the corpse.

"I don't think the gipsy hung him," he said at last, looking up.  Bracken, holding a vinegar-soaked handkerchief over his nose and mouth, lifted his eyebrows.  Corbin pointed at the loose flesh along the boy's neck.

"See, this bruise is V-shaped, not straight.  That means he was hung, not strangled.  The pressure on the rope was up and down, not front to back.  And there aren't any bruises on his arms or wrists, so he wasn't tied up.  I don't see any signs that he'd been in a fight, either - no cuts, no tears in his clothes, nothing."

Bracken nodded, then turned and left the room for the clear, fresh winter air.  Corbin followed, and Bracken noted that for all his young friend's sangfroid in the cell, he still took a deep breath when he got outside.  And then winced and gingerly pressed one arm to his side.  The short ride out to the count's estate had been hard for him, even though they'd taken it slowly and gently, and Bracken was concerned.

"Suicide, then."

"I think so.  You should look into it, at least."

"I will.  We'll keep the gipsy in his cell until the judges decide, though, just to be sure.  Innocent or not, he'd skip town given a second's chance.  You know what their kind is like."

"What's going to happen to the girl?"

"She tried to kill you, Rook."  Bracken stuffed his handkerchief into a coat pocket.  "You're the archduke's liege man, and there were plenty of witnesses.  She'll hang, no doubt about that."

"What if I don't want her to hang?"

Bracken gave the executioner a sharp look.

"Careful, Rook. You’re thinking about how pretty she is, aren’t you?  You’re thinking that you don’t want to be the one who wraps a rope around her neck.  Those are not healthy thoughts, boy.  She almost killed you – and may still kill you, if you don’t get your ass in bed and keep it there for a while."

"I had to come -"

"I know," Bracken interrupted him.  "And if I hadn't thought it was necessary, I wouldn't have let you do it.  But as soon as we get back to town, you're staying in bed until that wound knits up."

"The girl -"

"How many women have you hung so far?"

"Two, sir."

"And men?"

"About, oh, fifty, I guess."

" So you’re not used to hanging women.  That’s all right – I’m not used to fighting them, even though I’ve had to hunt down a few female bandits and murderers in my time.  Frankly, a man shouldn’t get used to hurting women.  But he’s still got to do his job, even if he doesn’t like it ."

"You sound like Mother."

"Your mother's a smart woman.  I read my predecessor's report on her.  He was lucky to have caught her."

Corbin shrugged.

Bracken glanced at him again.

"You’re thinking about making the girl the offer.  That’s stupid, Rook.  She hates you.  And she’s a gipsy – she’ll never settle down.  As soon as she’s out of that cell, she’ll be on the road, leaving you behind.  And then you’ll have a reputation as an idiot and never find yourself an honest wife."

The youth blushed, the double set of scratches on his face and the cut on his lip standing out in sharp relief.

"Hmph. You agree that it’s stupid, don’t you?  You understand that?"

"Yes."  Corbin couldn't meet Bracken's eyes, embarrassed.  "I know.  I just -"

"You just noticed that she's the prettiest thing to come to Seasedge in about five years."  Bracken shrugged irritably.  "Everyone's noticed.  But take my advice and forget it.  Gipsies are hellions."

Corbin sighed and nodded.  Bracken patted him on the arm and went back inside to snuff out all the braziers before they let the count's vicar seal the tomb again.

***

The top of his writing desk had three objects on it: a leatherbound journal, an inkpot, and a quill.  They were dusty.  Corbin eased himself into the chair, carefully blew off the dust, and opened the journal.  Stanko the Gipsy, he wrote, in a painstakingly neat hand.  Found innocent and released.  He carefully dated the entry, blotted the ink, cleaned off the quill, and laid it back on the desktop.

"Here you are, sir."  The guard dropped a sack on his desk and the quill pen skittered off to the floor.  Corbin frowned.  The guard swiftly picked up the errant quill and put it back in its proper spot.

"Thank you."

The guard nodded and walked off as Corbin picked at the sack's drawstrings.

His side still ached and bandages were still wrapped firmly around his midsection, pressing a poultice of spiderwebs, axle grease, hearth soot, and other mysterious ingredients against the stitched wound.  He couldn't heal it any more than he already had; the tainted magic never worked twice on the same wound.  All he could do now was wait.

This was the first time he'd left the house in two weeks.  His mother had carefully mended his uniform until the tear was hardly visible.  The bloodstains had mostly washed out of the jerkin, which was black anyway precisely because his job was sometimes messy.  The shirt was a loss, but at least its stains were hidden.  He'd have to have a new one made - maybe next summer, when the highway robbers became active again and his work picked up.

The sack contained Stanko's possessions.  The guards sometimes stole money and small valuables, but traditionally, a convicted man's personal belongings went to his executioner.  Most of the local constables respected the Rooks' six-generation privilege.  In this case, since Stanko had been found innocent, family tradition had it that most, if not all, of his possessions would be returned to him.

A dirty handkerchief, a leather purse, some small coins, a bit of jewelry, a cup, two knives, and a long bundle.  Corbin curiously unwrapped the old shirt, revealing a beautiful rebec and its bow.  The instrument was clearly the most valuable thing in the sack, its rosy wood shining dully in the dim sunlight that filtered through the room's high, narrow window slits.  Corbin pulled off a glove and ran his fingers over the wood.  The instrument was old, nicked, and scarred, but every imperfection had been lovingly filled in with beeswax and carefully smoothed over.

"You like music, eh?"

The executioner looked up, startled.  Stanko leaned against the door frame.

"I've only heard one of these played once, years ago, by a sailor."  Corbin pulled on his glove again, feeling vaguely embarrassed.  "It's beautiful."

The gipsy limped into the room, favoring his broken leg, and sat down on a stool beside Corbin's desk.  With an inquiring glance, he gently picked up the instrument and began to tune it.  Corbin leaned back in his chair, one arm pressed against his side as much from habit as pain.

After a couple of minutes, the gipsy nodded to himself, picked up the bow, and began to play.

Music filled the tiny cell-turned-office and echoed outside, into the dungeon and even up into the courtyard.  Corbin listened, entranced, not even seeing the jailors and guards and servants who peered into the room and stared at the crippled musician and the executioner.  Stanko's teeth flashed as he swept into another tune, and then another.  Guards drifted back and forth, old ones leaving to check up on their posts, new ones drawn by the sound of the music.  Half an hour passed, and then an hour.  And finally the gipsy stopped, still smiling, and looked at Corbin.

The executioner stared back, the music still echoing in his memory.

"You like music," Stanko repeated, this time with deep satisfaction.  Corbin blinked, wondering if he'd been under a spell, some sort of gipsy magic.  He'd never heard such music before, not at temple, not at the town festivals, not even the one time he'd been in the castle during a party.

"Teach me how to do that," he demanded, surprising himself with his own words.  He glanced down at Stanko’s leg.  "You can’t go anywhere until that’s healed, anyway.  Mother wouldn’t mind a guest.  Stay with me and teach me."

Stanko cocked his head, cradling the rebec in his arms as he considered the earnest young man before him.

"Not everyone can learn."

"I can try."

"There is not enough time.  My leg will heal soon, and learning can take years."

"Just teach me what you can," Corbin pleaded.  "Please.  I want to know how to make music like that."

"I will stay at your house?  There is food, drink?"

"There'll be enough," he promised.  "Don't worry."

The gipsy gave him a sidelong glance.

"And Yanna?"

"Oh. Yanna."  Corbin looked down at his hands.  "The judges say she's a murderess.  I've asked for her sentence to be postponed.  The archduke's away until next month; I've asked them to wait until he's back, so I can ask him to pardon her."

"He will listen to you, the archduke?"  Stanko seemed surprised.

"Yes."  The Rooks had that much weight in court, after six generations.  They could ask for an audience, and the archduke would grant it.  Whether the archduke would grant them their request was another matter, but he felt reasonably confident that, as the offended party, he had sufficient say in the matter to get Yanna acquitted.

The alternative was unimaginable.

"You forgive her, this?"  The gipsy pointed to Corbin's side, although the bandages were hidden.

The executioner swallowed, embarrassed.

"Yes."

The gipsy pursed his lips, then shrugged.

"Until my leg heals, then."  He gave Corbin a quizzical look. "Or until the archduke comes, pardons Yanna, eh?"

"It's a deal."  Corbin stood, one arm braced against the desktop, and held out a gloved hand.  Stanko awkwardly got to his feet, rebec pressed against his side.  They shook.

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