Paragaea

by Chris Roberson

  “Are you awaiting trial, too?” Leena called to the woman opposite, her tone enraged. She slammed a fist against the wall, and shot a sharp glance at Hieronymus. “Or are you already judged unfairly in absentia and awaiting punishment?”

  “Relax yourself, little sister,” Balam said soothingly. “You've nothing to gain from injuring yourself.”

  “Is this what passes for justice in Masjid Empor?!” Leena leapt to her feet and began to pace. “Grabbing innocents off the street and locking them away in some gulag, awaiting who knows what tortures?”

  “Silentio!” shouted the woman in the opposite cell in some foreign tongue, rubbing her temples. “Caput meum doleo.”

  Hieronymus stood, and crossed to stand beside Leena, his expression unreadable. “Justice,” he said in a harsh whisper, taking Leena's hand and leading her back to the shelf, “in Masjid Empor, is a severe thing. A man caught stealing a fish has his hands cut off at the wrists. A man caught with another man's wife has his generative organs cut off. A man caught trading in forbidden knowledge has his ears cut off.” He paused, and with his eyes lowered, answered, “A convicted murder is publicly executed in the square.”

  “What, then,” Leena asked, her eyes narrowed, “is the crime of which you are accused, the blame for which appears to extend to the rest of our company?”

  “It had better not be adultery with another's mate,” Balam growled, cupping his groin protectively, “or you and I will have words, Hero.”

  “No.” Hieronymus shook his head, and turned his back to his companions, looking up at the small window overhead. “Your organs will remain intact, of that I am sure.”

  Balam breathed a sigh of relief, and patted his groin appreciatively.

  “When they bury you,” Hieronymus went on, “I'm sure none of your constituent elements will be missing.”

  Hieronymus turned, and Leena could see tears pooling in his eyes.

  “The charge, I am ashamed to say, is murder.”

  Leena, Balam, and Benu sat in stunned silence, regarding their weeping companion. Hieronymus, his shoulders hunched, collapsed onto the shelf at the far corner of the cell and leaned to one side, resting his head on the ironwood bars.

  “Hero, I…” Balam left off, unsure how to continue.

  “I'm not sure I understand,” Benu said, filling up the silence. “I take it the charge is a valid one, and that you feel some remorse over the incident. Which would be understandable, if I'd not seen you on previous occasions end another being's life without suffering the slightest effects. Those two in the canteen on the river Pison, for example. Did you shed a tear over them?”

  “They deserved what came to them,” Hieronymus said in a ragged voice, “as do any who raise their hands in violence. I've killed many others in my days, and none that didn't deserve killing, in one form or fashion. You could argue that, when my number is up and someone gets the better of me, I'll deserve it just as much, considering how many I've sent to their graves. But this one of whose murder I stand convicted deserved no such thing. It was no righteous killing, but murder, pure and simple. And for my sins, the blood is on my hands still.”

  His name was William Greenslade, Hieronymus said, and he was an Englishman, like me. He was also a sailing man, though a marine and not a naval officer, as I'd been. He'd sailed from Plymouth in 1768 aboard Captain James Cook's HMS Endeavour, thirteen years before I first squalled bloody on my mother's sheets. But with the vagaries of the passage of time between Earth and this world, he was but a boy of twenty-one years when first he set foot on Paragaea, while I was already approaching the end of my third decade when we met.

  The way Greenslade told the story, the Endeavour was three months out of Tierra del Fuego, in the southern seas in search of the mythical Terra Australis Incognita. Holding the rank of private, it was Greenslade's turn on sentry duty rotation, and so he stood guard outside one of the ship's cabins, keeping watch over the ship's supplies. A sailor was working amongst the supplies that night, cutting pieces of sealskin to make tobacco pouches. Greenslade asked the sailor if he could have one of the pouches for himself, and the sailor refused. With the weakness of character that one often finds in the young, Greenslade resolved that he would have one of the pouches, come hell or high water, and when the sailor's back was turned, he stole a piece of the sealskin. The theft was discovered shortly after Greenslade went off duty, and came quickly to the attention of his superior, a Sergeant Edgecombe. While the sergeant conferred with the captain, Greenslade began to reconsider his decision to purloin the sealskin, and slunk off to the forecastle to try to think a way clear of his fix.

  When first I heard Greenslade's story, I wasn't sure how much of it to credit, and in later days, I was given cause to reconsider my assessment of the man. But I think, in retrospect, that my first impressions of him had been correct, and that he was, at heart, a decent man, led astray by impulses which his strength of character was not sufficient to suppress.

  In any event, it is impossible to say whether Greenslade would have stood before the mast like a man and taken his punishment, for circumstances contrived to keep him from that fate. Standing in the forecastle, the South Seas stretching out before him and the starry sky arching overhead, Greenslade was startled to discover that a star seemed to have fallen from the sky, and hovered just before him. It was a small, silvery sphere, like a mirror curved into a ball, that hung in midair just a few feet in front of him.

  All of us, of course, know precisely the import of this mirrored sphere, but young Greenslade had no conception, any more than Leena or I did when first we saw one. So he reached out a tremulous hand, touched the surface of the sphere, and was immediately translated to a world not his own.

  I was, at that point, living amongst the people of Drift, the floating city of the Inner Sea. This was some time before Balam and I met, and I had been in Paragaea but a short number of years. I had learned enough of the local dialects to make myself understood in Sakrian, Sabaean, and the language of Drift, and had seen much of the shores of the Inner Sea at all points of the compass. I was eager to see what the land had to offer, and so bid my farewells to my adopted kin of Drift, and went ashore in Bacharia. That proved as disastrous a choice as you might expect, but it was fortuitous in at least one regard, for it was during the unpleasantness with the Bacharian Polity that I first encountered Greenslade.

  He'd arrived in Paragaea only a few days previous, and had not weathered the experience well. Knowing nothing of the local language or customs, with no currency in his purse, and no earthly notion where he might be, he was literally at wit's end. He was like a crazed thing, more mad animal than man, and had I not chanced upon him, he'd have ended his days as a gibbering lunatic, haunting the back alleys of Bacharia until starvation or violence took him, whichever did first.

  As it was, I heard his maddened cries, and recognized immediately the sound of a fellow Englishman in distress. I ran to his aid, and with my saber fended off the locals with whom he was embroiled. Greenslade was understandably relieved to meet a countryman, and when I suggested we make a hasty retreat from the city-state into more hospitable climes, he quickly assented.

  We stowed away on a freighter bound for Masjid Kirkos, and managed to remain undetected until we reached the southern port. Hidden there in the hold, I told Greenslade what I knew of Paragaea, and instructed him in the rudiments of the local languages and customs, while he familiarized me with his origins, relating to me the story I've just retold.

  Jumping ship in Masjid Kirkos, Greenslade and I clasped hands and resolved to travel together, seeking adventure where we might. In the months that followed, more than a year all told, we ranged across the eastern reaches of the Paragaean continent, from Parousia to far Croatoan, until our journeys led us finally to Masjid Empor.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, Greenslade and I had plied the trade of the thief, working our way through desert emirates and the coastal cities and towns, stealing gems and crowns and
scepters, fencing them, and then carousing on the proceeds. Even at the time, I knew it was wrong, but it was an exciting, adventure-filled pursuit, and so suited my cast of mind in those days. Besides, Greenslade and I never stole anything from anyone who could not afford the loss, and so in that regard we were more involved in the redistribution of wealth than in anything that might properly be termed thievery.

  All that changed one hot night in Masjid Empor, when we stole from the local calif something that could never be repaid. Greenslade had always been of a somewhat vicious temperament, I had found, and for my sins I was not much of a role model. We had come to Masjid Empor for what I then considered one last big score. The calif's signet of authority was an emerald the size of a man's fist, and Greenslade and I concocted a plan to sneak into the calif's palace and steal the gem. We had performed similar burglaries dozens of times, if not more, sneak-thieving our way into sleeping houses and making off with valuables without anyone in the residence being the wiser until morning came and we pair of thieves were far away. On rare occasions, we were forced to contend with guards and gendarmes, but those ended up concussed at worst, most of the time; and if from time to time one of the fallen guards was injured fatally, at least they had been hired for the purpose, and when their faces and dying screams haunted my restless slumber, I could at least take small comfort in that.

  On this particular occasion, though, Greenslade and I were caught in the process of stealing away by the calif's eight-year-old daughter. We were at a high window, on the verge of slipping out and over the sill, when the little girl, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, chanced upon us in her sleeping gown. Greenslade at once snatched up the girl and stifled her cries before she was able to call for help.

  “We should leave the girl,” I told him in hushed tones, “and make good our escape.”

  “We wouldn't make it a dozen steps if the bitch raises the alarm,” Greenslade answered, his eyes flashing. “We throw the girl from the window, dash her brains out on the flagstones, and then we escape.”

  The calif's palace is the tallest building in all of Masjid Empor, standing four stories tall. Diminutive compared to the towering structures of Laxaria or Hausr, but certainly tall enough that a fall from its height would do grievous injury to an eight-year-old skull.

  “Let the girl go,” I told him, bristling.

  “Have you gone mad, Bonaventure?” Greenslade spat. “It's her life or ours.”

  “I'd sooner kill you myself than let you bring harm to that child,” I said.

  “You have lost your senses!” Greenslade hissed.

  “I may only be regaining them, William,” I told him, my grip tightening on the hilt of the scabbarded saber at my side.

  Greenslade did not waste another moment in conversation, but made his move towards the window.

  I lunged forward, whipping my blade free of its scabbard and driving it into Greenslade's chest in one smooth movement, the point piercing his breast just centimeters from the girl's right ear. He was fatally wounded, my saber slicked with his blood, but it was too late. As Greenslade tumbled backwards, he dragged the doomed girl with him, and they plummeted together through the open window, the girl screaming and Greenslade's last breath rattling in his throat.

  I stood at the open window, looking down on the red ruin on the flagstones below me. I didn't think, just sheathed my sword, raced to the opposite window, and leapt from the window onto the top of a sheltering canopy only two stories below. From there I made it intact to the ground, and ran, numbly scrambling away into the hot night.

  I found myself the next morning miles outside the city, standing at the shores of the Inner Sea, tempted to throw myself into the waves. But I realized that would be the coward's way out. Nor could I conscience returning to Masjid Empor, where the executioner's blade would too quickly release me from my torment. The only just punishment for me would be to live and bear the guilt of that poor girl's death.

  I held in my hand the fabled emerald of Masjid Empor, cutting red lines into my palm. I scarcely remembered carrying it with me from the calif's palace, much less holding it all this while. With contempt, I hurled it into the surf, and it sank without a trace.

  “It was shortly afterwards, when I left the east behind and first traveled the Western Jungle, that I met you, Balam.” Hieronymus glanced at the jaguar man, a bittersweet smile playing across his lips. “I tried to look upon saving you as an act of penitence, but that didn't make the guilt any easier to bear.”

  “And you never told me,” Balam said.

  “Have you told me all the shameful secrets in your past, friend?” Hieronymus asked.

  The jaguar man averted his eyes.

  “Can you possibly be surprised that I would choose not to share the fact that my avarice and greed led an impressionable young man to a life of crime, eventuating in his death and that of a blameless girl? Having sunk to the level of a common criminal, I now had innocent blood on my hands.”

  “And then you saved Balam's life,” Leena said, crossing the floor in long strides and standing before Hieronymus. “And then you saved my life. How many more must you save before you feel you've atoned? That girl's death is an unfortunate tragedy, but you can't let it haunt you for the rest of your days.” Leena's eyes fluttered closed for the briefest instant, pain flashing across her face. “It is like I told you. We all have done things of which we're not proud”—she tried not to think back to Stalingrad, but could not escape the memory, the confused expression of the young soldier looking up at her, the Mauser still smoking in her hands—“but the fact that we live now should be sufficient. It is within us to improve ourselves—”

  “'But that was in another country,'” Hieronymus interrupted, in a mocking singsong voice, “'and besides, the wench is dead.'”

  Leena shook her head, exasperated, and stomped to the far side of the cell.

  “All of this is beside the point,” Balam said, scratching behind his notched ear with an outstretched claw.

  “And what is the point then?” Hieronymus glared at him from across the cell.

  “The point is that we stand accused of murder, Hero, and will no doubt be executed in short order.”

  “Is there any chance for appeal?” Leena asked.

  “There is a definite finality to the judicial system of Masjid Empor,” Hieronymus said, shaking his head. “And besides, even if the magistrate was inclined to consider overturning the ruling, the man who recognized me in the restaurant was one of the locals whom Greenslade and I plied for information while planning the robbery. His testimony, given a decade ago or again today, would identify me as the accomplice of the dead man found with the calif's murdered daughter. So I feel quite certain any call for appeal would fall on deaf ears.”

  “So all that remains is for your sentence and punishment to be pronounced,” Benu said, “which punishment will doubtless be execution?” The artificial man had remained silent since their arrest, speaking only to question Hieronymus's tears.

  “Doubtless,” Hieronymus said.

  “In that case,” Benu answered, climbing to his feet, “for your sakes, if not for my own, might I suggest that we make a hasty retreat?”

  Hieronymus leaned over and, grabbing hold of the ironwood posts that barred their cell, rattled the gate. “And how are we to accomplish that?”

  Benu walked calmly to the cell door, placed his hands on two bars, and ripped the door off its hinges, reducing the adamantine ironwood to splinters and kindling.

  “My bodies are designed to last long centuries, remember,” Benu explained with a slight smile, “and this is not the first time I've been jailed for another man's crimes.”

  “Why didn't you do that before?” Balam's eyes goggled.

  “I wanted to see what eventuated.” Benu shrugged. “And besides, your behavior at the restaurant indicated a desire not to evade capture, and I thought it a prudent course to follow your example.”

  “Your guilt will have to cont
inue to be punishment enough, Hero,” Leena said, rushing to the corridor, “as I've no intention of watching any of us be executed in the public square.”

  “And I want to remain alive to enjoy my constituent elements as long as I'm able.” Balam followed Leena into the passageway, his claws bared but with a leonine smile on his face.

  “Very well,” Hieronymus said, leaping to his feet. He and Benu joined the other two in the corridor. “We must first retrieve our weapons and provisions.”

  Before they could take another step, they were brought up short by an angry voice from the opposite cell.

  “Attend!” shouted the fierce woman, rattling the bars of her cell. “Free me at once!”

  “Why should we?” Balam asked.

  “Because thou can.” Her brows narrowed, and her gaze burned into Benu.

  “That hardly seems a compelling argument,” Balam answered with a shrug.

  “Then mayhap thou will be compelled by the fact that I know the master of a ship currently riding at anchor in the harbor. He owes me a favor, and could bear us quickly away from the city.” She paused, sneering, as if daring Balam to dismiss her now. “Or wouldst thou prefer to flee into the deserts?”

  “Free her.” Hieronymus snapped his fingers at Benu. “And hurry.”

  The artificial man bowed slightly, miming a subservient attitude with a sardonic smile, and demolished the ironwood bars with a single swipe of his arm.

  “Follow,” the woman barked, leaping through the gap and rushing past the company. “Our arms and effects are kept in a storage locker this way.”

  Leena turned to her companions. “This does not appear the first time our new friend has run afoul of the authorities in Masjid Empor.”

  “Are you coming, or do you wait for the guards to return you to your cell?” The woman paused at the end of the corner, shouting back at them, before racing around the curve and out of sight.