He had eyes that shone with the light of wisdom, stature that held a great countenance, and a clear spoken voice heavy in gravitas. He was wielding the rifle Gahre had confiscated from the bandits, and which was the source of half the charges against him.
Gahre stood up at once. “Honored One!”
Indulu quietly seated himself, laid the rifle on the table between them, and nodded his indication that Gahre be seated as well.
Indulu put his hands on the rifle and pulled back the bolt. “I'm glad you brought this to us,” he said. “We've seen this maker’s work before. It's highly refined. Just look at this bolt, the stock, the trigger mechanism.... all machine rendered and of advanced design.”
“You've seen its like before, Honored One?”
“Aye, but never here in the eastern realms. Our intelligence service is still trying to track down the workshop that produces them, no doubt run under the auspices of some warlord or another. They continually thwart our best efforts to locate it.”
“I think it is a fine tool, ideal for safely clearing away both predators and hostile men alike. If it were up to me, I'd have every ranger in the realms armed with one.”
“They are forbidden by law so that we may control their proliferation. Legalizing their issuance to any group will invariably lead to that in the long run.”
“Yes, well, if the bandits have them, our lawmen ought to also, else you leave them at a distinct disadvantage.”
“Son, imagine if you will the evolution of this technology if men were free to develop it. There would be magazines of bullets, self-loading, and the weapon could fire automatically, many rounds every second. In the hands of a madman, it would give him the power to slay dozens of people.”
Gahre contemplated what he was hearing and was a bit astonished by it. “Honored One, if such technology has existed or ever could again, you would be now in violation of the Law to impart it to me as you are.”
“Ah yes...” Indulu seemed to be reminded, “The Law. It seems, since you used this weapon, fired and reloaded it, that you were possessed of unlawful knowledge of its operation, and that's a good portion of what all this fuss is about.”
Gahre sighed. “I refuse to discuss the case further, I've made my statements and I stand on them. There is nothing more to add.”
“Yes, I know. I understand, bright one. You have to draw the line somewhere, don't you? I mean, you say all there is to say, yet still they're compelled to clamor on. They'll talk and talk and talk themselves right unto their death. And fleshless years into the grave their jawbones still be clacking.”
Gahre smiled at this, in spite of his dour mood.
“I get barrages and onslaughts of it daily, mercilessly upon my ears. Such is the burden of governance,” Indulu continued. “I intend to retire one day in quiet solitude when this world allows me.”
“So you arrive here for the Spring Conference of the Realms, Godfather? It is still a half a moon away.”
“There is another matter in the region that requires my personal attention.”
“And what be that?”
“This matter, young one. You.”
Gahre displayed a look of mildly indifferent suspicion. “I hardly believe I'm worthy of that much concern.”
“Perhaps not entirely worthy, but I do owe a great debt to your father. And I would've come regardless of who you were to deal with any such debacle of justice as this. You have to understand, my son, the minds of these men...”
Gahre scoffed. “I understand already more than I care to, Honored One, and I refuse to play their games or legitimize a single one of their perverse conflations.”
“Good,” agreed Indulu. “Then you realize the real issue here is that you frighten them. They don't know how to handle one as exceptional as you. No ordinary man would have done what you did, ambushing armed bandits solo like that, head on and without hesitation. I doubt I could've mustered such courage. But you didn't muster it, did you? You are.... you are fearless?”
“It was all calculated, Honored One. I understood the risks and my own capabilities. Morally, I was obligated to accept those risks for the sake of their potential victims. I felt fear surely, but it was more the voice of caution than any debilitating force or voice urging me to flee. I am not brave. The brave overcome their fears. I simply process differently than others.”
“However you manage it, a man who cannot be dissuaded by fear, is also a man who cannot be controlled. So although your actions were righteous, you present a danger in their minds. And the question now is: what do we do with you?”
“I'm waiting on the same answer. It's not what they do with me, as much as it is to me. As you say, others cannot control my mind. I only wish to expedite this process and to receive verdict, so I can decide how to handle things from there. I reject this charade of justice and will grant it no legitimacy by recognizing their authority. I will not answer one question, sign one document, or participate in this sham in any way, no matter what threats they make. I know.... I know they can't keep me locked up long here when public opinion is so strongly on my side. All I'm doing now, Honored One, is waiting for them to resolve this for themselves, because, in my mind, all is already resolved.”
Indulu laughed at his grandstanding. “And that kind of attitude isn't making it any easier on them. Putting you on public trial for this, while you refuse representation and talk like that.... it would be a debacle for them. And they know it.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, son, that you've won.” Indulu laid a document and pen on the table before Gahre. “From the moment I stepped off the carriage this morning to the start of this meeting, I've been up to my eyeballs with them, negotiating this thing. And I'm pleased to tell you, you're free to leave, as soon as you sign this statement confessing to your unlawful knowledge of firearm operation. All other charges of assault and vigilantism have been dropped. The unlawful knowledge charge will be reduced to a minor violation for which you will pay a fine of a 4 silver and receive my personal reprimand.”
“You negotiated this bargain for me?”
“Yes, and at no small measure of personal risk to my reputation I might add. As the head of nations, to directly intervene in a local legal matter on behalf of my own godson, it reeks of nepotism, you know.”
“So if I were previously unknown to you and not your godson, you would not defend me as you have?”
Indulu didn't take well to the question, and his tone became abruptly defensive. “No... no in a case as important and exceptional as this, I would still have stepped in and with the same favor. At worst, my timing might have been slower.”
Gahre did not know if he believed that, but figured he had little choice but to take it at face value. “Then you've done your duty and have no need to tread lightly around it. But as for this bargain you've brokered, I flat out reject it.”
And why shouldn't he?
Indulu seemed struck with mix of agitation and pleading desperation. “Please, please hear me out son. By signing that document, by throwing them that one little bone, this tiny bit of face, you will come out of here a hero, and by their own acknowledgment. I will even forego the reprimand. I will pay the fine for you. And what's more...”
“Save your breath, Honored One. I said I rejected it once, now I tell you twice.”
“And what's more...” Indulu persisted, “is that the western nation of Scythe, where Har Darox carried out some of his most sinister deeds, has held on him a bounty for years of an entire chest filled with gold. That fortune, my boy shall go to you in full.”
Gahre had never known wealth. Uncle was not the hardest working of men and his estate was adequate but meager by comparison to his peers. Through his hunting pursuits, Gahre had always managed to earn whatever coin he needed selling to furriers, taxidermists, butchers, and the like, or clearing predators away for the ranchers. As such an avid outdoorsman, he had trouble even imagining a life of wealth and found little appeal in it. Wha
t did a man need beyond his gear? He wanted to get new boots crafted, maybe buy a lighter hatchet... but these were not exorbitant expenses requiring some immense reserve of wealth. He could have just as easily earned as much trapping in this week he'd been here held in this bloody jail.
“I refuse that as well,” he decided.
“Son, think twice. It is no small fortune.”
“I fully understand what's being offered me. And I'm twice again telling you in no uncertain terms I want no part of it.”
Indulu was on the verge of exasperation. “Yes, yes... ok. That's virtuous I suppose. You performed a brave and noble deed for its own sake, and you don't feel right about accepting the gold. We can have that money donated to worthy charities in your name. That will play well all around.”
Play well? Indulu still seemed to be under the delusion that Gahre was concerned about perceptions. He was not. “The Scythian government can donate any sum to any charity they like, but they shall not do so in my name. I don't know how much clearer I can make myself to you. There is no form in which I will accept that reward.”
With a great sigh Indulu laid his face down into his hands. “Boy, you are as pig-headed as you are ungrateful. Don't you understand I am trying to help you here?”
Gahre supposed that in his mind, that was true. “Honored One,” he began, “I have some notion of your status and your great works, but you do not serve my cause now. I think it's absurd that after apprehending a criminal who has reigned violence upon the innocent and eluded your capture for years that matters get so distorted that I am jailed and expected to bear blame for not honoring you with gratitude and my oppressors with face, as though that is the crux of the problem here!”
Indulu considered this, and it was clear that it didn't sit well with him at all. “You know, I envy this position you're in, your moral clarity. I was similarly young and idealistic once. I no longer have that luxury. The wheels of society turn in a certain amount of filth, and were I to take a hard line against every minor evil within it, their functions would cease.”
“Like the evils in the Far West? I've been reading of their origins. The sects rooted in wicked doctrines that promote no virtue, but rather the greeds and lusts of men, manifesting in slavery, torture, prostitution, and unbridled killing. A land without law or justice. Are these acceptable evils for the greater good?”
Indulu's eyes sank. “Tis true, we've failed in the Far West. Our order was expelled from there generations ago. If it be the fault of the sects, there is no helping that. All peoples of the realms are granted freedom of religion, but therein also lies my point and please hear it. These petty and self-serving ills of our eastern lands pale in comparison to the anarchy and violence of the Far West. It's a struggle as old as mankind, and we do our best to work within it for the common good of the people.”
“The ills of the Far West plague the near western provinces across the Mountains of Immutability, and now they spill over here to the East. Why do you not raise an army to march in there and restore order?”
“Their lords would cast us as invaders, and rightly. All we'd get out of that is a series of long, bloody wars. And what of such an army, would you fight in it?”
“Yes. I would slay a slave lord, gladly.”
“And do you think it would be those lords you fight on the battlefield? No, it would be a force of conscripted commoners, like the young man of Karnica for whom you penned a plea to our courts for leniency. Would you be willing to slay such a man?”
Indulu had him here. Perhaps his view was a bit simplistic. “Then we assassinate their lords...”
“And thus create a power vacuum begetting more civil strife and bloodshed among the factions, until that seat of power is once again filled by the will-to-power, a will which has no morality beyond what serves its own ends and desires.”
“And yet by means of your rationalized ambivalence, wickedness is allowed to flourish... and encroach ever more upon the surrounding realms.”
Indulu stood up, angrily. He fell just short of pounding his fist on the table. “I didn't create this world and its iniquities, I inherited it! I have dedicated my life to working within its systems to the greater good. You sit there as though you know anything, as a child, and presume to instruct me on right and wrong with barely any sense of the intricacies involved. I tell you boy, evil is always in the world and always will be. Yes, the Far West festers and the Near West chafes... but our great efforts have held it in the fold. And here, in the eastern world there is peace and prosperity, because of The Law and our enforcement of it, because of men who still cling to virtue while immersed in The World of Lies. What are you boy, but a loner? We talked of bringing you into The Order, but it's clear you won't follow orders, you won't operate under any hierarchy. The Master Ranger feels the same way. You pontificate as one whose mind is an island...”
“My mind is a fortress!”
“Yes, that sounds about right. You cannot separate yourself from society, boy. I'm here to help you. Be smart and take it. We can send you to any university in the realms, start you in any trade you fancy. Just tell me what you want.”
“What I want?! What I want is to walk out that door. I want out of this unjust captivity. That is all I want from you right now, Honored One.”
“Then sign the confession and be off!”
Gahre held Indulu's gaze. They were both angry. In slow deliberate motions he lifted the document from the table, tore it several times and let the pieces flutter down to the floor.
“That door is not locked,” he remarked in a challenging tone. “You say you are here to help me, yet you tell me I am not free til I do as you bid. Thus you are my captor.”
Both men stood intently and silently fixed upon the other for some tense moments. At last Indulu's eyes closed, and he yielded.
“Fine. We will drop the unlawful knowledge charge -although you know, you are completely guilty of it, right?”
This was the one thing Gahre had indeed lied about. Rifles were well known from the tales of the Far West, and being the charge of a tinker it was not hard to imagine he could have deduced its operation. In truth, he had discussed their parts and function with uncle. As a tinker, uncle lived under the most stringent scrutiny of The Order, so at the start of this he had told uncle to deny the truth so that he might not himself be implicated. It was a lie, but a necessary one. He would not implicate kin, especially over an “unlawful knowledge” charge.
“I see no guilt in knowledge, and no law that forbids it can be called just. It's widely known that The Order, which you represent and that rules over all the realms, deals in nothing but secrets, and repressing that knowledge among the common folk. I will not be so restricted. I will take it as my right, and I will discover your secrets!”
“Be careful boy. I've tried to explain to you why Forbidden Knowledge is necessary for the greater good. If you start snooping into the secrets of The Order, it will not be like this week you've had. It will be far more severe and there will be no regard for due process. I may not be able to help you if you go down that road.”
“So I'm free to leave then?”
“Yes. Might I inquire where you be destined?”
“I'm off to a journey, to clear my mind of this nonsense.”
“Let me buy you a horse then.”
“Thank you, Honored One, but a horse is a burden that requires feeding and rest and suitable terrain to trod over. In my time here I've read a treatise on the rare herbs of the southland wilds, where many rare and valuable medicinals spawn. I think I shall explore there and forage for them.”
“So this is your career path then, wandering the world?”
“Why not? It suits me.”
“Please, allow me to help in some way then… on your terms.”
“Well, I do require new boots, and I've been eyeing a hatchet at the traders. Much of the gear I possess is cumbersome, and I should like to reequip myself with lighter, sturdier wears. But those are costl
y and I am short of coin...”
Indulu reached into his bag and produced a parchment and a stamp. In swift bureaucratic order he drew up a document and emblazoned it with his personal seal.
“Take this to the traders and purchase with it all the equipment and provisions you require.”
Gahre accepted the document. Through all of this Indulu had sworn he was there on Gahre’s behalf, unable to see how the opposite was true. He failed to realize the extent of it, how that as a result of this obscene display of false justice, Gahre now considered himself at nothing less than war with the governing bodies, and there were none higher than the governance of The Order. But this particular offer was useful, and as his godfather Indulu was duty bound to provide such material assistance, so Gahre would not deny him that.
“Thank you Honored One,” he said exiting the interrogation room and striding his way out through the town hall to freedom.
In his wake he heard a buzzing of yapping voices, surrounding and pestering Indulu, asking if Gahre had signed the confession and expressing their indignation that he had not, and how it was not as Indulu had agreed before... Above it all he heard the Honored One's commanding voice break through theirs and declare impatiently, “Just... just... let him go.”
The Lower Depths
Commander Li Meiyang stared futilely into a terminal display of empty sensor data waiting for the Kinetic to emerge from the erupting surface flare that encompassed them. The thermal readings and voltages were nearly as high as they had been during the transcoronal descent. Magnetic shields were at full capacity protecting them in the pocket of its polar rhombus. As expected there were no incoming signals from any of the probes. She questioned whether any of the fore and aft tracking probes that were also passing through this event would emerge from it intact. Their smaller mass and energy shield conduits did not afford them the same level of protection as the Kinetic. They could not afford to lose many, especially after having taken the gamble to dedicate the bulk of them to create a hyper-relay network between the upper and lower chromosphere.
DUALITY: The World of Lies Page 7
