Free Sunset Mantle by Alter S. Reiss Page A

For now, it was just a matter of law, read during the morning services. It was a warning, and it would keep Cete and Marelle alive for a day or two, at least.
    Unless Cete could find some way to force Radan to lose control. Cete had felt it slipping during the morning service. There was a man there, wearing the mantle of the General of the Reach, and that man had been frustrated and embarrassed, he had lost when he had expected to win, and then lost again. If Cete could push him just a little further, find some other way to speak to his soul rather than to his mind, Radan would crack, and they would fight man to man, madding to madding.
    Marelle was of the same mind when Cete returned and told her what had passed, but neither of them could find a way that would draw Radan in, when he would have set his mind towards keeping away. Cete pulled the boards from the window, shifted the bar from the door. If they did not need to fear the arrow by day or the knife at night, it was better to have some air than not.
    After a time, three men wearing the white robes of judgment came, to remove the bodies from the dungheap. When he had set them there, Cete had thought to bar the court access to the remains. They had come by night, and sought his death; let their families come, and ask a ransom for the meat their men had left behind—if the butchery had not crossed the line of the law, that might have. But now, he let them in, gave them leave to search the orchard for pieces of the dead men that had been carried away by owls and crows. Now he was sheltering beneath the wings of the Irimin school, and he could commit no sacrilege.
    “The Antach could have our murder done,” said Marelle, when Cete returned. “What one man tells the soldiers of the Reach, another can just as well, and the court would not view Radan’s pleas with any great favor.”
    “Mm,” said Cete, and considered the possibility. “It would be a dangerous move,” he said, finally. “What one man says, another hears. It would be difficult for him to do that, and wake in the morning without the weight of blackmailers resting upon his shoulders, and informers to the Termith buzzing in his ears.”
    “We could do it,” said Marelle. “And free him from the weight.”
    It was a hell of a thing to suggest. To kill his wife of less than a week, and then himself, in the hopes that it would do more damage than they could alive. “If you wish this,” he started, and then stopped. No, he would not turn the decision over to Marelle, act as though he had no voice. “No,” he said.
    She was silent.
    “No, even if it would mean that we would triumph where otherwise there is only defeat, and not because our lives are too sweet to leave behind. Until this point, I have been true, and I will not end my life with a lie.”
    Marelle had stopped her embroidering when she made the suggestion, and now she started again. “I understand,” she said. “I will not suggest it again.”
    Cete walked over, kissed her lightly on the forehead. “You are clearer about this fight than I am,” he said. “And braver than any man I have known. But we have not yet lost.”
    “Of course,” said Marelle. “What will you do next?”
    “There is work to be done in the orchard,” said Cete. “Some of the trees could use pruning.”
    “Of course,” said Marelle, again. “I hope it does not prove as difficult as seeing to the tree-gutters.”
    Cete shrugged his shoulders; they still hurt, though they were not so ready to bleed. “I hope so as well,” he said. All the same, he took a spear with him as he went out, and kept his axe close by in his belt.
    From within the walls of the orchard, he could see the men from the Antach clan army up by the gate, and the neighbors on the slope above working their own fields. It seemed unlikely that Radan would attempt anything, and if he did, there would be some warning. So, for a time, Cete put aside his spear, and worked in the orchard.
    It