The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) by Tim Stead Page B

was no toy.
    “You’d shoot over this?” the soldier asked. He eyed the crossbow.
    “In a moment,” Ulric said. “That is Arla’s bow. She would not be easily separated from it. You will tell me what has happened.”
    The king’s man shrugged. “I’ll tell you,” he said, and he did. He was one of the four who had been waiting for Arla, so he told the story as what he had heard and seen, and Ulric listened. “So you see,” the man finished, “she is unharmed and held in the citadel at the king’s pleasure.”
    Ulric put the crossbow back under the counter. “You may go,” he said. The king’s man went. Ulric stood for a moment looking at the now empty doorway, then he turned and went back through the law house. Sam Hekman would have to be told.
    *
    The citadel was the most imposing structure in the old town. It boasted thick walls five times the height of a man, a double gate, four towers, and dozens of men on the walls. Sam had never been inside. For all his life it had been derelict, broken gates, shattered towers, a reminder of the power of the Faer Karan. Now it was rebuilt, and a reminder of the king’s weakness.
    Weakness, of course, was a relative term. The king had five hundred heavily armed men. Sam had less than a dozen, and they were scattered across the city.
    Sam came to the citadel alone. He walked right to the gate and confronted the soldiers who guarded it.
    “I am here to see the king,” he announced.
    The soldier in charge of the gate looked him up and down. He knew who Sam was and that it would not do to simply refuse him.
    “The king is not here,” he replied. “He is in the Great House.”
    Sam judged that he was telling the truth. He was undecided for a moment whether to insist on seeing Arla or going directly to the king, but he decided on the king. Arla would not benefit greatly from a visit.
    He turned away and walked towards the Great House, the home of the kings of Samara. It was another derelict that had been rebuilt, at least in part. The place had been home to the Tarnell line for centuries before the Faer Karan, and now again.
    It was a journey of a few hundred paces, but the nature of the city changed in that short distance. The buildings that crowded the old town allowed the king’s house a respectful distance. They stood back and admired it. It was a wishful admiration for the most part. There were traces here and there of past glories, graceful arches, slender columns, a hint of colour in a broken window, but the newer construction was solid and lacking in art.
    Sam walked across an open courtyard decorated with blue flowers to the great door and faced another soldier.
    “I am here to see the king,” he said.
    “Have you been summoned?” the soldier asked.
    “In a way,” Sam replied. “He has had one of my officers arrested.”
    “Your business is with the council, lawkeeper,” the soldier said.
    “Today it is with the king.”
    They looked at each other. Time passed. The soldier turned inside. “Take a message to the king,” he said. “Tell him the chief lawkeeper of Samara seeks audience.”
    “Thank you.”
    “The king may not be pleased with you, lawkeeper,” the soldier said.
    “Indeed?”
    “You knew where Fasthand was for days.”
    Sam didn’t reply. His business, as he had said, was with the king. Nothing would be served by engaging a soldier in conversation. The soldier seemed to resent his silence, and they waited uncomfortably until the messenger returned. Sam leaned against the stone work of the door and looked out at the city, not really seeing the buildings or the people, or even the sky and the sea. Instead he saw a man driving a spike into the head of a child. He saw it over and over again. Twenty years and more. That is what he ought to be doing, stopping that. But he needed Arla. He sensed in her the sort of mind that saw the same way Sam saw. She grasped things more quickly than others, and she showed courage. More importantly she