Soarer's Choice

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Not at all likely…unless the soarers were involved. But why would they do something to Iron Stem? He frowned. It wasn’t Iron Stem; it was the ironworks.

  He looked to the south, where the glow of the fires around the ironworks diffused through the snow. He couldn’t do any more by riding out, but he would have liked to. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a battalion commander. Or…he hadn’t gotten used to delegating.

  He shook his head. That wasn’t it at all. He knew he could do a better job than any of the officers under him—except perhaps Rhystan—and Mykel didn’t like the idea of things not being done well.

  A crooked smile twisted across his face. He could imagine what Rhystan would say about that—that it was Mykel’s job to make sure his officers did learn how to handle things in the best possible fashion. Rhystan was right about that, too.

  68

  Dainyl had taken the Table back to Elcien early on Sexdi to spend some time going over the procedures for the petitioners’ hearings. As a senior Myrmidon he was familiar with the Code and knew where to find most sections, but what he did not know was how often the hearings changed things and on what basis. After less than a glass of studying the records of previous hearings, the answer was clear. Very seldom had the High Alector, or his designee, changed sentences. The most usual change was a reduction in the penalty. Very occasionally, a sentence was voided.

  Dainyl snorted to himself as he stood and adjusted his tunic and the purple robe used by the High Alector at the hearings. It wouldn’t be difficult to show some mercy, although from what he’d read, he had the feeling few of those who appealed deserved it.

  “Sir?” Patrylon stood in the study door. He would sit below Dainyl to document the decisions handed down by the new High Alector and handle the details.

  “I’m ready.” Dainyl picked up the symbolic Mace of Justice. Unlike the one used in the administration of justice, this one had no power.

  As he left the study and began to walk toward the steps up to the receiving hall, he felt a distant flash of unseen green. He frowned.

  “Sir?” asked Patrylon.

  “Something…we’ll have to check on it later.”

  A line of petitioners had already filled the hall when Dainyl followed Patrylon to the dais. On the raised green marble platform were two stone tables, one on the lower level, with a stool behind it, and a wider one on the next level, half a yard higher, with a stone chair set behind it. Dainyl was gratified to see that there was a thick cushion, if in green that matched the marble.

  He stood behind the upper stone table, holding the Mace of Justice, while Patrylon declaimed. “Petitions will be received. Justice will be done, in the name of the High Alector and the will of the Duarches.”

  Dainyl sat down in the cushioned stone chair, setting the Mace to his right on the table.

  “Highest and Most High.” A heavyset man stepped forward and handed his petition to Patrylon.

  In turn, after reading it, and jotting down some notes, Patrylon handed it to Dainyl. There were two parts to it. The first was a decision handed down by the local alector in Arwyn, and the second was a single written sheet appealing the decision. The local alector had fined one Doveilt five golds for overgrazing his pastures and for allowing the waste products of his sheep to foul the stream. The decision noted that previous fines of three silvers and a gold had failed to encourage Doveilt to rectify the situation. Doveilt had written that he was a poor man, and that five golds was more than he made in a year.

  Dainyl understood that five golds was the yearly pay for a starting indigen laborer, but if Doveilt had enough sheep that fouling a stream was a problem, he was making more than five golds. More than a gold and a half in fines already paid suggested something else entirely.

  Dainyl looked down from the dais at the beefy man. “You’re Doveilt?”

  “Yes, sir, Your Highest.”

  “How many sheep do you have?”

  “Ah…I have a flock, sir.”

  “How many are in the flock?”

  The man shifted his weight, his eyes not meeting Dainyl’s. “Mayhap fifteen, sir.”

  The man was lying about that.

  “How much do you get for each one when you sell them, a ewe, that is? And for those you keep, how much wool do you get?”

  “I don’t sell them, sir. Just shear them.”

  Dainyl waited.

  “A good year I get a quarter stone a head in raw wool.”

  “What’s the price range for that?”

  “For a quarter stone, could be two silvers, three in a good year.” Doveilt was clearly puzzled at the questions, as was Patrylon.

  “That means that from your flock you’d make between five and ten golds each year, and you lied about the number of sheep in the flock. How many do you really have, Doveilt?”

  The herder swallowed. “Sixty-two, when I left, sir.”

  “Consider yourself fortunate that I don’t have you flogged for lying. I will charge you a gold for wasting my time and that of those who have had to wait. Pay it to my assistant now.”

  The herder swallowed, but placed five silvers on the stone table before Patrylon.

  “Next petitioner,” Patrylon called out, then handed the petition up to Dainyl.

  Dainyl scanned the papers. Mylesh had been sentenced to five years in the gravel quarries for adulterating spirits in a tavern he owned. The tavern-keeper had used hempseed, pepper, soot, and salt, as well as powered acidstone, to adulterate the ale, and powdered lead to sweeten spoiled wine.

  “You’re not Mylesh.” Dainyl studied the round-faced and mid-aged indigen woman.

  “No, Most High. Mylesh is my husband. He is working in the gravel quarries. For what he did, that is too much. I know he was wrong, but to condemn a man to die crushing rocks for such a little thing. I beg you for mercy, Most High.”

  “Enough powdered lead in wine will kill a man’s brains,” Dainyl said mildly. “As a tavern-keeper, your husband knew that. If he did not, he should have. How long was he a tavern-keeper?”

  “All his life, as was his father before him.”

  “I cannot grant mercy to a man who granted none to his patrons, and should have known better. Dismissed.” Dainyl only hoped someone in the hall had a petition worth considering.

  “Next petitioner.”

  A haggard and thin-faced woman stepped up. Behind her, Dainyl noticed several men who eased away from the line of those waiting.

  Patrylon glanced over the sheets she handed to him, and then passed them up to Dainyl.

  He read through them quickly. Quiona was a widow whose husband had been a fuller’s assistant in Tempre. He had been killed when the Alector’s Guard had chased a thief from the market and the thief had grabbed him from where he had been washing the front window of the shop and thrown him in front of the horses to slow pursuit. The thief had been caught and executed for the murder and for his thefts. But since the thief had no legal property, the widow could not make a death claim. She had appealed to the regional alector—Fahylt—for a widow’s pension. Fahylt had denied it because there was no provision for a pension in such a case, citing the fact that the Guard was only doing its duty.

  Dainyl looked down at the sad-eyed woman. “You are Quiona?”

  “Yes, Highest.” Her voice trembled.

  “I know your husband died under the horses of the Guard, but you are not that old. Why do you need a pension?”

  She turned slightly and, with her left hand, drew back a scarf to reveal a withered right arm. “No one will offer me a job that will feed my children.”

  “How many children do you have?”

  “Only two, Highest. They are three and six. Gabraal said that a man should only father those children he could feed…but I cannot…”

  “Patrylon,” Dainyl said quietly.

  The assistant looked up.

  “I hereby grant Quiona of Tempre the standard widow’s pension for a woman whose husband has been wrongfully killed
by the acts of those carrying out the will of the Duarches…”

  Dainyl could sense the confusion from the assistant.

  “The Regional Alector Fahylt had created the Alector’s Guard in contravention of the will of the Duarches. Therefore, any death of an innocent man created by their direct actions is in fact wrongful and requires compensation.”

  “Thank you…Highest…thank you.” Tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks.

  “Next.”

  Joronyl was appealing a finding that had fined his factoring establishment five golds for false measures on a shipment of cotton. His carefully written petition claimed that he had not known that the measures were off, and that even so, the difference was slight, so slight that other factors who had bought from the same lot had not been cited and fined by the trade inspectors.

  Dainyl looked down at the factor. “How do you compare in size to the other cloth factors in Elcien?” As he finished the question, Dainyl could sense the puzzlement from both Joronyl and Patrylon.

  “I’d be one of the smaller ones, Highest.”

  “How did it come that you were fined five golds?”

  “That’s the thing, Highest. I bid on the bales, and you take what you get. Maybe they were a little short, but sometimes we all get short bales. I don’t see the inspectors at Falest’s or Caturyk’s warehouses, but every time there’s a lot that goes to all of us, it’d be my place they come to first. If it’s not short for them, it oughtn’t to be short for me.”

  “If I understand you, Joronyl, you’re claiming that the cotton shippers often send short bales, and you don’t know that until you’ve bought them.”

  “Not like often, Highest. Sometimes.” A fine sheen of sweat had begun to appear on the factor’s forehead.

  “And you resold the cotton, claiming it met measure?”

  “It was only off a bit, Highest, and all the other factors been doing the same.”

  That, unfortunately, rang all too true. Still…

  “I cannot reduce your fine, Joronyl, on the grounds that others have gotten away with cheating customers and that you got caught. Dismissed.”

  Even so, that petition bothered him, because it suggested the same pattern that he’d observed in Dramur. The larger factors got away with practices not allowed for the smaller factors, and yet when alectors attempted to step in and require the same standards of everyone, the landers and indigens complained—or those with golds did.

  The first petitions were a rough indication of the way the morning went. Dainyl found that in only about one in six cases could he even consider changes to the decisions—and that was being merciful. He did reduce some fines and commute two sentences to time already served.

  By the time Patrylon announced that the time of petitions was over, Dainyl had looked at more than twenty of them, and there were still petitioners waiting. He worried about leaving them unheard, but he had the feeling that if he stayed beyond noon, word would get out, and every day would bring more petitions. Also, it had been clear that some of the petitioners had heard of a new High Alector and were hoping to get a better decision.

  Still, Dainyl took a deep breath once he was headed back to the small study beneath the Hall of Justice. He was more than glad to take off the heavy purple hearing robe as soon as he entered the study and did not fully close the study door behind him.

  Outside in the hallway, he heard voices. He used his Talent to catch their words.

  “How did it go?” murmured Adya.

  “The Highest has a very good grasp of justice,” replied Patrylon, before lowering his voice and adding, “He’s not patient with fools, either.”

  “You like that…”

  “It’s different…”

  Their voices faded as they walked farther from his door. Zelyert had clearly presented his warm voice and sympathetic demeanor to the petitioners, even while denying their petitions, seeming to do so reluctantly. That was something Dainyl could not do…and did not intend to. Justice was justice, and at times it needed to be tempered with mercy, but false sympathy was a form of corruption, no matter how politic it might be.

  He was tempted to take the coach to check on Alcyna, but that would only suggest a lack of faith in her ability. He also pondered the green flash, but did not know what he could do about it, since he did not know where it had taken place or even what it meant, except that it involved the ancients—and that could mean another problem.

  Instead, he summoned Adya.

  He waited until she was seated before he spoke. “Several matters came up this morning at the petitioners’ hearings, but one suggested that we have a much larger problem.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “One of the smaller cotton factors was fined for being short on measure. He insisted, and he clearly believes this to be true, that the larger factors are often short, but are never fined.”

  “That’s very possible, sir. The inspectors are landers and indigens. They can be bribed, and they probably are. For a time, High Alector Zelyert enforced a more stringent effort in dealing with such.” Adya shrugged. “As fast as he removed the old inspectors, and sent them to the gravel quarries, the new ones would soon end up taking bribes. Those who were honest either had great misfortunes befall them or soon left for other occupations. The High Alector attempted to raise the stipends of the inspectors, but that did little except increase the price of cotton, and many factors closed their warehouses and moved to Ludar or Southgate.”

  Dainyl said nothing for a moment. Adya believed what she said.

  “Were you here when that occurred?”

  “It was the first task I undertook for High Alector Zelyert.”

  Dainyl had the sudden feeling that Adya had asked for the task, perhaps for the same reasons that he had been interested in the matter. “How long did the effort go on?”

  “Five years, sir. We lost a third of the cotton and wool factors, and a fifth of the other factors, and the merchants of Elcien sent a petition to the Duarch. They did not address the bribery outright, but they did say that under the conditions imposed by the High Alector, they could no longer do business in Elcien.”

  “And everything went back to the way it had been?”

  “Not quite. The worst cases disappeared. The factors know that if there are too great a number of abuses the High Alector can always make matters hard on them. It has become a tacit compromise. Minor shading of the standards and rules, if done quietly and if products are not adulterated, is occasionally accepted. More than that risks greater costs and oversight.”

  “I see. I trust we do not accept such…laxity in goods for Myrmidons and Cadmians.”

  “No, sir. That’s understood. One beef supplier provided maggoty meat. The High Alector had him flogged to death on the main wharf.”

  Yet they would cheat each other?

  “What we buy is little compared to what they sell to each other,” explained Adya, understanding his unspoken question. “They can accept our standards because we pay well and punish severely. They do not pay each other well, and they do not wish to be punished severely.”

  That was a balance of sorts, but not one of which Dainyl approved. Still…until he understood more, it would be best not to try to change matters. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, sir.”

  “I’ll doubtless have more questions, although I hope they’ll become fewer.”

  After Adya left, Dainyl looked at the schedule Patrylon had left on the Table early that morning. He had petitions the next morning as well, and a meeting with Chembryt at the second glass of the afternoon, and another meeting on Octdi afternoon with Alseryl, the High Alector of Transport. Dainyl had no doubts that Alseryl was going to complain about Alcyna’s requests for more recruits.

  Then he drafted once and rewrote twice the necessary letter to Duarch Samist, requesting a meeting to pay his respects. By the time he finished that and gave it to Patrylon for dispatch to Ludar, he was hurrying out to the coach in order no
t to be late for his meeting with the Duarch.

  When he arrived at the Palace, Bharyt conducted him immediately to the library where Khelaryt was seated behind the table desk.

  The Duarch gestured to the chairs, and Dainyl took one.

  “We have a number of items to discuss, Dainyl. First is the issue of Ruvryn.”

  Dainyl nodded. The more he’d learned about the High Alector of Engineering, the less he cared for the alector, but he wanted to hear what Khelaryt had to say.

  “Did you know that he is Paeylt’s son?”

  “No, I did not.” That explained a great deal, such as why Asulet was handicapped in dealing with Paeylt. Dainyl had always wondered why the senior alector in charge of the underground city of Lyterna had not acted more decisively against an alector who was but the senior engineer in Lyterna. The fact that Asulet had only said Paeylt and Ruvryn were “related” clearly indicated Asulet’s reluctance to admit he could not overcome such nepotism.

  “You have had some concerns about Ruvryn as well, did you not?”

  “Yes, sir. Do you know why he has taken such steps to weaken the Cadmians? I can understand why he would wish the Myrmidons weakened, especially if the Duarch Samist is considering an alliance with Brekylt against you, but why the Cadmians?”

  “You are referring to all the Cadmian rifles that have been diverted to various indigen rebels and insurgents?”

  “And to the seltyrs of Dramur as well.”

  “He has avoided discussing those matters, and since he reports directly to Samist, I cannot press him too hard. What I have observed, though, is that he feels the Cadmians create officers who are disciplined and less inclined than most indigens to seek golds at all costs. He sees this as a possible threat.”

  “They are disciplined in carrying out our requirements and tasks, and they are a threat?”

  “Upon several occasions, junior officers have improvised the equivalent of cannon. A few have suggested larger bore rifles. Explosive devices have been used against insurgents. As you are well aware, alectors are few in number. Should the Cadmians turn on us with weapons such as those, we would have great difficulties. Ruvryn believes that they should be kept understrength and that thoughtful and disciplined senior officers need to be monitored closely.”