The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [32]
And Tycho treated her as if nothing were out of the ordinary. The more he saw of the ways of Spandeliyon, the less he liked the town.
The stairs led into another short corridor, from which a door let them all into a large room filled with the dazzle of sunlight. After so long in the dim shadows of the cell, the light was almost blinding. They were marched a short distance and stopped. "Prisoners Tychoben Arisaenn and Kangli Shen, magistrate," said the lead guard, completely mangling Li's name.
"Blessed Tyr," came a wheezing voice out of the glare, "nobody said he was elf-blood."
Li squinted against the light and looked around. They were in a vaulted chamber dominated by tall windows in one wall and an imposing raised dais on another. On the dais was a very large and heavy chair. Seated in it was a very tall and thin old man in severe robes. Li fixed him with a frustrated glare. "I am not an elf!"
In the shadow of the great chair, another man rapped a heavy rod against the floor. "Respect for the magistrate!" Li immediately received two hard pokes in the side, one from the guard who stood on his left and one from Tycho on his right. The singer also gave him a scowl and a short hiss for silence.
Up on the dais, the old man winced at the banging. "Thank you, Dorth. Why have they been arrested?"
The man with the rod glanced at a parchment. "For brawling, sir. Assault on the Captain of the Guard. Kuang Li Chien-" He pronounced the name carefully and with a haughty glance at the lead guard. "-is also arrested for forcibly entering a private residence and for impersonating an official of a foreign government. Tychoben Arisaenn also for moral corruption of Laera Dantakain."
"Moral corruption?" The magistrate sat up a little. "I haven't heard that one in a while."
There was a slight snicker from the guards present. Bang! went the rod. "Respect for the magistrate! Captain of the Guard Mard Dantakain will present his case!"
Mard Dantakain stepped up from behind them. He was dressed in a full and ornate guard uniform, immaculately clean. He related the events of the morning in a blunt, matter-of-fact tone, leaving nothing out and neither exaggerating nor diminishing anything. Li felt his heart sink.
Considered in hindsight and with a cooler head, what he had done was nothing short of stupid. Barging into Mard Dantakain's house wearing clothes stolen from a drunk, trying to pass himself off as an ambassador of Shou Lung when half the population of Spandeliyon apparently couldn't distinguish a Shou from an elf it was, he realized, lucky they were getting any kind of trial at all. If Li had been in the magistrate's place, he probably would have left them down in the darkness of their cell!
By the time Mard had finished speaking, he felt sick.
"Prisoners Tychoben Arisaenn and Kuang Li Chien will respond!"
Li swallowed and stepped forward, ready to confess to everything. Tycho, however, was faster. He took two steps forward, poking Li again on the way past, and made a graceful bow that hardly seemed hampered at all by his bonds. "Magistrate Vanyan," he said in a very grand voice.
The magistrate gave a thin, slightly confused smile. "Have we met before?"
"Your name precedes you, sir. Your wisdom is well known in dockside. If it please you, I will speak for both myself and this esteemed gentleman of Shou." He gestured toward Li. "During our imprisonment, we discovered that we share a common tongue and I was able to discuss the situation with him. This is all really a terrible mistake stemming from his imperfect understanding of our language."
"Wait," protested Mard Dantakain, "he understood Common perfectly well when I spoke to him. He spoke it back to me!" Tycho glanced at him and raised his eyebrows.
"Did he, Captain Dantakain?