Sir Konrad Vonvalt is an Emperor's Justice. That means he rides the length and breadth of an empire, bringing the promise of truth, and law, to a fractious and diverse populace. It means investigating murder, it means dabbling in dark powers, and sometimes, just sometimes, it means digging into the truth behind treason. Vonvalt is someone willing to serve the law, to dive into those depths, to follow a trail of evidence wherever it might lead, confident in himself, his team, and the primacy of the law.
Vonvalt isn't the voice we hear from here though; It's his clerk, Helena, looking back on events with an eye on future triumphs and tragedies, judging herself, her employer, and his associates, through the more jaded lens of history. The Justice of Kings is one part fantasy, one part political intrigue, one part murder investigaiton, and laced through with loss, tragedy, and shared humanity. It is, in sum, a wonderfully well crafted work, and one I want to recommend before diving into some of the detail.
The world that Vonvalt seeks to keep in order is an unstable one. An Empire slowly being bound together over generations, but still at the stage where those most recently conquered are quickly pressed into conquering their neighbours. It's a patchwork of people who, a few years before, were burning each other's cities to the ground, reaching out and finding the next people ot incorporate. An expansionist machine, with a human cost. And it's an engine of religious orthodoxy, cycling in existing religions and superstitions, and capturing them in its own insitutions, for its own ends. It's driving forward a single cutlure at the point of a sword, and calling it peace.
But it's also, well, peace. Inside the borders, trade goes forward, life goes on, and people don't seme to kill each other, well, not in large numbers, usually. Religions are absorbed, not destroyed, cultures synthesised rather than obliterated. Small comfort to the recently conquered, but they can have a bath and sometimes a functional sewage system for their trouble, and be fairly sure that nobody's going to steal their things at swordpoint. At least not without a trial.
In the end, the Empire is a fascinating, complex place, a world balanced on precarious politics and progressive but troubling policies. It carries shades of early Imperial Rome in its ancestry, and shades of Rome's successors in the possibility of its decline. Still, for now, the Empire stands tall - a scintillatingly imagined tapestry of a million lights. Or, perhaps more fittingly, a rich gumbo, each flavour something new.
And swimming in that gumbo are Vonvalt and his team. Helena we come to know well. Young, incisive, with a past that's less troubled and more horrific, she provides the lens through which we see the others. But her older self, looking back, is willing to probe at her own mistakes and victories, at the trail of decisions that leads forward into her now. Helena is passionate, thoughtful, perhaps unsure of herself and who dhe wants to be. Guarded, wrapped in her own emotional armour, and not quite sure how to extricate herself from it - but also able to look through clouds of smoke to the heart of a case, or see what must be done.
Then there's Bressinger, a veteran of the wars (well, aren't they all, in one way or another), Vonvalt's hard right arm and body-man. At first glance, someone living a long life of slow decline, an attack dog occasionally let off the chain - but Bressinger's loyalties, and history, are more complex than one might expect (though I shan't spoil them here).
And of course, Vonvalt. A man who, like Bressinger, survived occupation and went on to perpetuate it. A man with a keen sword arm and a keener mind. A man with a zealotry for the law, and the intelligence to exercise that law finely. A man given absolute power of life and death, the power to issue judgments in the Emperor's name - and the ability to use other, less savoury, less natural powers to make sure those judgments are correct. Vonvalt is cultured, clever, morose, difficult, and genuinely entertaining to read. All of their choices matter, but his, perhaps, are the most impactful - as he struggles to make the law work in a society which isn't always ready to accept it, or is in fact actively hostile to the idea of anything other than naked power backed by a blade. Vonvalt has drive, and focus and determination, and a certain flexibility within his bounds, but is perhaps ill placed to believe in any serious shifts to the social order.
In any event, they are all fascinating characters, and my simple summary does them a disservice; as readers, we gain a view on all their richly textured lives a the story progresses. But at least go in knowing that these, your cor eprotagonists, are not ciphers. if they are not always likable, then nor are people. if they are prone to sympathy and empathy, blind rage and revenge, that makes them all the more human, the more like us. They are the angels and demons on their own shoulders.
The story - well, I won't spoil it. But there's a murder investigation to dig your teeth into, one that is fair to the reader in what it reveals and when. perhaps you'll guess how things happenned before it comes onto the page, but perhaps not - I was always a few delighted steps behind the revelations. There's some cracking twists and turns there, enough to keep you intrigued. Then there's the dense, low fantasy politics, with knights on the march, and questions of canon law versus secular authority, and a sense of things fraying at the edges. Where we see the less-than-normal, it has a n impact; snd ewhere we do not, the politics are still dleightfully byzantine whilst also making clear the high stakes in the game. There's blood and death aplenty if that's your thing, breakneck chases, sweeping battles that end in blood and fire, and queit moments of reflection in the eye of the storm. The story, I think, sometimes wants to show us more than it has time for, but what it does give us is an excellent read.
That's a good note to end on actually: this is an excellent read, thoroughly enjoyable, and I suggest you give it a try.
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