19 #3
The gnome fell onto his back with a yelp of terror.
Astarion’s blow went high, the weighted pommel clenched in his fist.
His knuckles cracked against bone with a satisfying crunch.
The recipient’s cry of pain as he slammed her hand into the stone wall was even more satisfying.
The knife she’d held clattered to the ground.
“Dear Violet,” he said, dragging her out of the shadows. “I was wondering when you’d join us.”
* * *
Astarion had fallen in love several times in his life—with his first teacher, with Bajia, with a particularly handsome stable lad a year older than he was who had taught him some fascinating things in the empty stalls behind the manor house.
But when Lazlo handed him his first law book—Introduction to Legal Procedures, Twelfth Edition, by Frankwilliam and Kiva—and told him to familiarize himself with the basics, something clicked inside Astarion’s brain,
and he fell in love so deeply and profoundly that he would bear the scars for the rest of his life.
There are people with minds like corkscrews.
Astarion was not one of them. He had a mind like a lockpick, always trying to open up a rule and find the loophole, or the exact combination of clauses that would turn it into something that applied to other people.
But here, here was not just a set of rules but an entire framework dedicated to rules and loopholes and clauses.
The games he used to play to amuse himself, where he would obey the letter of his father’s orders while stomping the spirit into dust, suddenly seemed small and petty. You could use the law to tie the whole world in a knot.
His legal career started, bizarrely enough, with the flowerpots.
Alustriel Silverhand, ruler of Silverymoon, liked gardens. She liked flowers and parks and civic green spaces. The city government paid out quite a lot of money in contracts to maintain those gardens, and some of those contracts were very valuable.
“And the bastards with the contract for the Miller park—the one on the east side, near the water wheels?—got what they said was a bad batch of fertilizer.”
Lazlo flung himself back in his chair, eyes closed, an expression of irritated amusement on his face.
“It was a ground-up troll. The thing reassembled itself out of eleven separate raised flower beds and ate a visiting dignitary. And uprooted the begonias. The Silver Lady is not pleased.”
Astarion had already seen the broadsheets, which featured lurid drawings of a rampaging troll with flowers growing out of its ears. “Get them under the suitable materials clause,” he suggested.
“They say that they were sold it as blood meal, which is listed as a suitable material, and that they’re the injured party.”
“Nonsense,” Astarion said. “That much blood meal would lead to excess leaf growth and reduce flowering. If they’re not crooked, they’re incompetent.”
Lazlo opened his eyes and sat up. “Are you serious? How do you know that?”
Astarion, who had never mentioned his parents or the vineyard and didn’t intend to start now, said, “I…err…had a brief interest in botany…many years ago. Many, many years ago.”
Lazlo, who was nearly two hundred, said something under his breath about Astarion having been a precocious toddler, but he opened a file. “Their contract does list blood meal as a suitable material…”
Astarion leaned over his cousin’s shoulder. “But this line here says, ‘Provide maintenance as seasonally appropriate.’ That was not seasonally appropriate, regardless of whether it was a powdered troll.”
“We generally only use that line to go after people who aren’t weeding or are leaving dead plants in the flower beds, and only after they’ve been given a warning.”
“It’s still in the contract. Get a farmer to testify, or better yet, a druid.”
“They’ll argue we have to issue them a written warning and give them suitable time to fix the issue before canceling the contract.”
Astarion frowned, then went to the shelf and pulled down another volume, flipping pages. After a moment, he said, “Would you consider a troll to be an agricultural pest?”
“That one was an agricultural menace.”
“Under the Agricultural Safety Act of 1196 DR, in the event of blight or infestation, a crop may be destroyed upon the recommendation of an agricultural official, at any time, if required to secure the safety of Silverymoon or its food supply.”
Astarion looked up. “Does preventing trolls count as securing the safety of Silverymoon?”
“It damn well ought to. Do we have to pay them afterward?”
“Ah, let’s see…The owner of the crop is entitled to compensation equal to the market value of said crop. It is forbidden to plant the same crop in the same field, orchard, pasture, garden,
or other designated agricultural area for at least three years or until certified safe by agricultural officials, upon pain of eviction and forfeiture.”
Astarion grinned abruptly. “Tell me, did these people replant begonias?”
Lazlo stared at him for a moment, then began to laugh. “You’re mad,” he said. “Brilliant, but utterly mad. Write it up, and I’ll take it to the judge tomorrow.”
* * *