by Dave Duncan
Four black disks appeared, so it was unanimous.
The First, two Sevens, and two other Chosen: Irona had just completed her third term as a Seven and was therefore a “Six.” The other green tunic on the board enclosed the brawny form of Vakat 716, barely a year out of tutelage himself, a junior to balance all the elders.
“Request denied,” the First announced. “The accused will rise. …”
The Treason Court convened rarely, most often in secret, and always in secret when the Chosen had to judge one of their own. In this case, the verdict was a foregone conclusion, and that evening it was read out by the First at a special meeting of the Seventy in the Assembly Hall. Irona had joined in the unanimous decision. She was present when the verdict was announced, sitting in the front row, which was her right as a Six, but that evening she placed herself at the extreme end.
First Rudakov’s face bore an expression of extreme distaste as he rose to address the congregation.
“Pavouk 708 … Vakat 716 … step forward, please.”
The men named had been forewarned and they looked as grim as First Rudakov as they advanced to the front.
“You have been appointed bailiffs to enforce the orders that the court issued in the name of the goddess. You will not fail.”
They shook their heads in glum silence.
“Chosen 711, come forward.”
Swinging her hips, Puchuldiza sashayed out from the shadows at the far side of the hall from Irona. It would be blasphemy to hint that Caprice had made a mistake when she chose 711, but the thought was very hard to shake. During her trial, Puchuldiza had dressed as a demure, wronged maiden, none of which she was. That evening, either because she still expected to be acquitted or just to show defiance, she was playing the tramp to absurdity, with her hair dyed scarlet, her face painted, and flashing half her weight in gold and gems.
Ledacos whispered, very softly, “At least she has the courage of her conviction.” For once, Irona agreed with one of his sneers.
“Chosen Puchuldiza 711, on the First Count, namely that you have deliberately and on numerous occasions failed to perform duties assigned to you by way of absenting yourself from meetings and failing to prepare for meetings, the Court found you: Guilty.
“On the Second Count, namely that you have on numerous occasions appeared in public in an inebriated condition and have in diverse other ways failed to maintain a standard of conduct befitting a Chosen of the goddess, the Court found you: Guilty.
“On the Third Count, namely that you have sold or pawned property of the state, namely jewelry and other valuable items entrusted to you by the Property Commission for your personal use, the Court found you: Guilty.
“The Court therefore sentenced you, firstly, to forfeiture of all property presently entrusted to you other than a necessary minimum of clothing, secondly, to two years’ exile on the island of Maasok, and thirdly, to the sea death if you fail to remain in that place until your sentence is completed. Sergeants, remove the prisoner.”
Pavouk and Vakat moved in on her. She tried to back away from their menace, but Vakat seized her and held her as Pavouk methodically unpinned her finery, dropping it on the floor as if it were trash. When he took the jeweled combs from her hair and her coiffure collapsed, she began to scream.
By then Irona had risen and headed out of the Assembly Hall; the rest of the Chosen followed.
A chair scraped on the tiles in the dark, and a male voice made noises appropriate for a man who has just stubbed a toe. Irona rolled over on her back. She had grave doubts about that chair. How often could a man who remembered everything he ever saw down to the tiniest detail keep stubbing that long-suffering toe on that same chair every time he came home late and horny? But what he wanted was probably about what she needed.
“You’re very late.”
“Sorry to waken you.” Having lied to her, he scrambled in to lie beside her. In the process, he managed to kick her leg and bang her breast with his elbow. Veer seemed to have no idea of how much space he occupied, and she adored him anyway. They argued sometimes, but never fought. She sometimes wondered how much longer she could have tolerated the unquestioning doggy loyalty of Vlyplatin Lavice.
“I wasn’t asleep. Did you get the commission?”
Veer had been negotiating to paint murals for the temple. He had insisted that Irona not meddle, so she hadn’t. Much.
“Eventually. Those baldies are crazy. Why are you still awake?”
“Had a bad day,” she said. “What are you going to do about it?”
He wrapped thick arms around her. “In a moment. Tell me what’s wrong.”
A second Treason Court case in two days was part of it. A band of drunken juveniles had been caught shouting out seditious lies about the Chosen being tyrants. Standard practice was to flog their fathers. In a doomed quest for mercy, Irona had pointed out that their fathers were all marines and absent from home a lot, serving the goddess. The rest of the court had then voted to whip their mothers instead. Sometimes she thought that being governor of Maasok would be preferable to being a Chosen in Benign.
“Podakan has been beating up Kao Bukit again.”
Veer sighed. “Kao is more than a year older.”
“Pod is bigger.”
“Why tell me? You’re his mother.”
But she was no more successful as Podakan’s mother than she had been as a tutor for Puchuldiza 711. And it was not hard to imagine Podakan in a gang of blaspheming rebels within a very few years. He would probably be the ringleader.
“I want you to talk to him. You’re his foster father.”
“Not if you mean that I put the food on his plate. You do that and he knows it. He had you all to himself until you brought him to Benign and promptly disappeared from his life. Then I came on the scene and he has to share your love with me. I can’t talk to him. He hates me.”
“That’s absurd! He doesn’t even remember Vult. He doesn’t hate you.”
“He certainly doesn’t listen to me, except to do the opposite. I should tell him to keep after Kao and batter the little shit every chance he gets. He might leave him alone then.”
“That’s ridiculous. Stop talking and do something. Give him a baby brother.”
“Then he’d really get homicidal.”
“Just do it.”
The following morning Daun Bukit announced that he and Kanaga were moving to a home of their own, and of course taking their children with them. That was hardly surprising, but it was an inconvenience. Forced to admit that her son was practically running her household, Irona made an appointment to meet with the Heritage Committee.
Heritage was one of the most obscure arms of the government. Its members were appointed by the First instead of being elected and reported only to him; few Chosen outside the Sevens and Sixes even knew that the committee existed, because its sole function was to keep an eye on the next generation. The Chosen prided themselves on being incorruptible, but almost all of them had families, and pressure might be brought to bear on them through their children. Evil seeks out your weakest point.
It had been the Heritage Committee that had arranged for Podnelbi 681’s son, Vlyplatin Lavice, to be articled to a lawyer in the city. It might well have arranged other employment for him when that fell through after his father’s early death. Had Vly or his mother even known such a body existed, Ledacos might not have intervened and so brought Vly and Irona together.
The only current member of the committee, Irona discovered, was Azalka 660, who had arranged for her to lease Sebrat House so long ago. The old harpy had never made the inner circle and could barely conceal her delight at having a Six come calling on her in her poky office, nor her contempt for a mother who could not control a ten-year-old boy. She didn’t say she had been expecting Irona, but she had probably heard tell of the hellion son and had certainly made Ir
ona wait a few days for the privilege of a consultation.
Having accepted that she must seek help or at least advice, Irona was willing to bare all. “Just this morning,” she said, “we discovered he had somehow broken into Veer’s studio and trashed it. He had tipped out boxes of dye powder, so the floor was covered. He had ribbed gouges in completed paintings and smeared them with red ochre. He had even urinated on the mess. Veer estimated the damage, just to the paintings, must be six or seven hundred dolphins.”
Azalka blinked at that news. “The boy admits it?”
“Of course not. He blames the slaves. But his footprints were on the floor and he had wax under his nails. In that sense, he was caught red handed and red footed. Now I am worried that someone may tell him about the latest Treason Court decision, in which case Podakan will start running through the streets shouting antigovernment slogans in order to get me flogged.”
Worse even than that was the possibility that Pod, having managed to drive Kao and his parents away, would succeed in getting rid of Veer also.
Now Azalka looked more sympathetic. “I do see that you have a problem. Of course there are many tutors and schools …”
“I have tried them all,” Irona said, and reeled off a dozen names. “The longest any of them stood him was three weeks.”
“The boy was born in Vult, wasn’t he?”
“Just what has that got to do with it? Are you suggesting that I send him back there?”
For a moment the old hag looked as if she might, but then she said, “Of course not. There are two other men who come to mind. Fagatele Fiucha has had some success with hard cases. You could see if he’s available. He does not come cheap, because he acts as day-and-night jailer, never letting his charge out of his sight—chaining him to the bedpost at night, going to the privy together, and so on. Usually, a few weeks of that will bring them to their senses. Failing Fagatele, there is always Akhtang Korovin, but his methods …” She looked up in annoyance as the door opened unbidden.
One of the First’s heralds bowed.
“Begging your pardon, Your Honors, but the Seven are in session and request that Irona 700 attend them.”
“It never stops.” Irona sighed. “Thank you, Azalka. I will follow up on your suggestions. Pray excuse me.” Whatever problems that Sevens’ meeting was going to pose, Irona was quite relieved to leave this one.
Two Sevens had left town, leading a punitive expedition against Genodesa, which had been skimping on its manpower levy again, so only six of the eight chairs were occupied as Irona was ushered in to the Sevens’ room. First Rudakov motioned her to take one of the others. The mood, she saw right away, was grim.
“Welcome back, 700,” he said. “I know you haven’t been gone long enough to catch up on your grocery shopping, but it seems we have a job for you, as I am sure you have already guessed. What do you know about Achelone?”
“I can see its name written all over this table,” she said, regarding the doodles on the slate. “Apart from that, nothing. I’ve never been that far inland.”
“Achelone is farther from the sea than any of our other allies.”
Irona nodded. An ally was a client state, and Benign’s power depended on its navy. A Six was a tried and trusted, all-purpose emissary.
“We depend heavily on Achelone as our main supplier of timber,” the First continued. “And now Achelone is having trouble with raiders from the deserts to the east of it. It claims they are not human and has appealed for our aid.”
As it was entitled to do by the treaty, but at the moment the navy was not available. Irona did not point out that she had strongly opposed the Genodesan mission just before her term among the Seven ended.
“Which you can’t supply.”
“We can send Irona 700,” Rudakov retorted, “who is mightier than a thousand marines. Navy?”
“Three galleys only,” said Seven Ranau. “All we can spare at short notice. Small ones, I’m afraid, but they’ll have less trouble in the river. Low water in summer.”
Did they think she was Caprice herself, able to work miracles? “How many men does that mean?”
“Less than two hundred.”
That was barely more than a personal bodyguard. Irona wondered if Ledacos had suggested her for this impossible job. On the surface he was her friend and colleague, but any debt he had owed her for his first election to the Seven had long ago been paid off and forgotten. Some day they would be rivals for the top office, and neither could ever forget that.
She even thought briefly of refusing. It seemed that all the threads of her life—her profession, her son, her lover, even her performance as a tutor and a judge—had become hopelessly knotted. She needed time to get them untangled, but if she let down the system by refusing, she might find herself shut out of the inner circle forever.
“They can’t be ready before sunset,” the First said, “so we’ll run it by the Seventy tonight, and you can sail at dawn.”
“And my commission?”
“Carte blanche. The report hints that these Gren, as they’re called, may be open to peaceful trading. Promise them the world now and we’ll hang their hides on the wall next year. In other words, do or say whatever it takes.”
“You cannot,” remarked Ledacos 692, “do much damage with less than two hundred men.”
The others, all at least twenty years older than he, frowned at his unseemly levity. Irona smiled with a confidence she was very far from feeling.
“Just watch me,” she said.
Irona left the room graciously enough, but she was practically running by the time she reached the stairs. Sazen Hostin was caring for his dying mother. Daun was moving house, and his wife was close to term with their third child. It looked as if she would have to make this journey without her usual support.
She stuck her head in the door of the Geographical Section. “I want to be briefed on Achelone in my office an hour before the Seventy meet.”
The clerk on duty began to say they were ready for that now, but she was already gone.
Likewise at her own office. “Find a tutor called Fagatele Fiucha and have him come to Sebrat House right away. I am going home to pack, leaving town at dawn.”
At home, she found Veer Machin morosely trying to clean up the shambles that one hateful child had made of his studio. It had never been tidy since the day he moved in, but disorder was a long way from deliberate devastation. Veer’s emotions ran very deep, yet he never let them escape his control. A lesser man might have given way to rage and hurt; Veer would suppress those feelings until they emerged in a portrait. There was one such portrait prominently displayed on an easel in the center of the room now. Irona had never seen it before, but she knew it was no spur-of-the-moment creation; it must have taken many days of work.
The first thing she said was, “When did you make that?”
He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “About a year ago. After the dead-cat-in-the-bed incident.”
It was an incredible three-quarter likeness of Podakan. The background was dark, inchoate, and menacing, but the brilliantly lit child in the foreground was more lifelike than any other artist could ever hope to achieve. The image almost seemed to lean out of the panel to her. It captured Pod’s angelic good looks perfectly, but his smile was predatory, pure serpentine evil. His teeth were not portrayed as pointed, yet they were fangs. So that was how her lover saw her son? She had never seen him that way herself, or had never admitted to herself that she did.
“Didn’t show you,” Veer said. “Didn’t think you’d like it.”
“I hate it. But it’s horribly, horribly true to life!” She tore her eyes away from it to explain why she had come home some hours earlier than usual. “I have to go out of town.”
What she had been dreading since she learned that news herself was that Veer would say it didn’t matter, because he was l
eaving too. He didn’t.
“Sorry. How long?”
She could breathe easy again. “Six, eight weeks.”
He pouted. “I may strangle …” He gestured at the portrait. “Before you get back.”
“I’m going to take him with me. I can’t trust him out of my sight now.”
“Watch you don’t strangle him yourself then.” Veer dropped the spatula he had been holding and closed in on her. “I will miss you.” Then he administered one of his all-consuming panacean embraces that banished all the troubles of the world except the hours to wait until bedtime.
Irona’s next priority had to be the terror himself, who had been locked in his room all morning. He had been staring out through the bars on the window, but looked around as she entered, and she searched in vain for any sign of guilt or apprehension in his expression. He was big, more like a teenager than a ten-year-old. He stayed where he was while she went to sit on the bed.
“Well? Are you ready to tell Citizen Machin that you’re sorry?”
“You always tell me not to tell lies.”
“Why aren’t you sorry for what you did?”
Pause. He was still young enough that she could see him considering whether to continue denying that he’d done the damage. But he said, “’Cos I don’t like him.”
“Why? He’s a very kind, clever man. He would be your friend if you would let him.”
“He hates me.”
“Not surprising, considering how you treat him. He’ll be in charge of the house for the next eight or nine weeks. I’m going away to the mainland.”
That did produce a hint of alarm. He was old enough to know that she was his only defender. “Why?”
“To try to stop a war.”
“Why can’t I come with you?”
“Because I can’t trust you to do as you’re told.”
“I promise I’ll behave.”
“You’ve told me that a hundred times before.”
“But this time I really mean it.” He probably did—just then.
