by G. Howell
And that’s what I found myself facing: lambent orange, slit-pupil eyes set in a face that was never designed as the signaling device that the human face is. There were emotions there that I could read: wariness, concern, perhaps annoyance... and certainly many other nuances that I couldn’t.
“Just calm down, a?” the Mediator growled softly. “I told you, there are things I can’t say.”
I swallowed, then carefully waved an affirmative. The point pressing into my skin pulled back slightly, then slowly slid down my throat, tickling as it traced my skin. She watched my eyes as her fingertip and claw drew a tickling line down my chest. I froze, not sure what was happening. Was this… was it intimidation? Intended to be sexual? Rape? Simple curiosity? Teasing? Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. When she pulled her hand away I swallowed, then carefully said, “I’m supposed to be a... a witness?”
“A witness,” she echoed and cocked her head as if mulling something over in her head. Then her ears flicked. “No. Not a witness. I think a better word would be evidence.”
“Evidence?! What the hell does that...” I squeaked, cut off as she raised her finger again.
“A,” she said. “An important piece, mind you. That is why we are taking all this... care with you.”
“I’m truly touched,” I forced out from between clenched teeth and carefully rubbed my throat, my manacles rattling.
She blinked, “Just be calm, be good. And behave, A?”
I tried not to look at the guards behind her as I just nodded, “A.”
“Good,” she said and her furry hand came up for a quick bat at my cheek with claws not quite entirely pulled. “Then I think we’re done here.”
------v------
It was raining outside. Thunder rolled in from off across the lake. Through the slit of a window in my cell I could smell the tang of ozone; could hear the hiss of a steady downpour sheeting straight down onto bricks outside. As it’d been doing all night long.
Waiting. That was the worst bit. I waited on the little cot, finding myself shivering uncontrollably even though the night wasn’t that cold. Jangling nerves and numbing boredom kept see-sawing. Tedium dragged the hours out and I slept fitfully, snapped wide awake every time there was a noise. A couple of times it’d been guards bringing me food or just checking on me. They didn’t speak, didn’t offer any information or respond to questions, they just carried out their duties with impersonal Mediator efficiency.
I’d been on trial before. Once. When I’d first come here. Out in that little town of Westwater the locals and a Mediator tried me for murder. It’d been a confused affair that hadn’t gone well. The verdict had been not guilty, but it’d been a nightmare for me. I dreaded it happening again.
Idle time gave other concerns time to boil and fester. Chihirae, what about her? Was she all right? There were no immediate communications between Shattered Water and Open Fields, so unless a courier had specifically informed her she probably had no idea what was going on, so she wouldn’t be worrying. Thank god she wasn’t here, but that wasn’t any guarantee that she wouldn’t be dragged down into this whole morass. Shyia knew I was... fond of her. He had once warned me about that; that there were those individuals who might use that sort of attachment against me. Now, he was in a position where he might be one of those individuals.
At some time before dawn I again woke blinking into the glow of a lantern. This time there were more Rris figures behind the light. One stepped forward, eclipsing the light and becoming an unearthly silhouette haloed in a fringe of backlit fur. Metal glittered.
“Come on,” Escheri said, fiddling with her grooming kit as she stepped forward. “They’ll be ready soon. We have to make you look civilized.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost too late. Rot, you do look a mess. Well, we’ll see what we can do with that fur of yours,” she said as she knelt beside me and pulled a metal comb from her kit. Mediators at the door watched on, their eyes like copper coins gleaming at the bottom of a well in the light.
“Now you’re worried about my hair?”
“It might help if you look like an intelligent being, not some animal dragged in from a field somewhere. Rot, grooming is important if you want to be taken seriously. Now hold still.”
I winced as she raked the comb through knots, ripping a few out by the roots. “Don’t you take care of this?” she grumbled.
“Sorry, but my groomer had another appointment today,” I growled and flinched again as Escheri flicked me with a claw.
“Don’t do that,” she chided and I gritted my teeth, my whole head being yanked to and fro as she raked at my hair.
There was movement in the doorway as another Mediator entered and laid cloth down on the table. I recognized the material.
“A,” Escheri must’ve caught my glance. “Your clothing. Shyia wants you to wear it.”
“And that’s all you’re telling me? He wants me to wear clothes. Anything else you’d like me to do? Perhaps balance a ball on my nose? Ow!”
“I warned you. Rot it, Mikah, I can’t tell you any more. If you said the wrong thing at the wrong time then perhaps our decision could have charges of [bias? Corruption?] lowered against it. Not likely, but this... this is serious. He’s being careful. He’s juggling gunpowder and torches,” she said simply. “I really think you have no idea.”
“Don’t worry,” I grumbled. “I don’t.”
A soft snort escaped Escheri and she set to working at my hair again. “You’ve been on trial before, I know that. This shouldn’t be entirely new to you.”
I stiffened and swallowed hard. “It will be like that?”
“It will be a Tribunal,” she huffed. “Not a backwoods court. A position will be defended and assailed. It will be civilized. There will be no physical assaults this time.”
Slowly, I nodded. “Ah, that kind of civilized. Ah!”
After a while she’d yanked the worst of the birds’ nests out and it wasn’t an uncontrolled mat anymore. The comb was running smoothly and she sat back, proclaiming it, “Better. Like I remembered. A little more civilized, a? Now, we just have to get you dressed. I’m going to remove those manacles. You will behave?”
Uh-oh. I grimaced and then slowly held out my hands. She produced a clunky key and barely just touched them to the locks and the black iron manacles fell open, clattering to the floor. She flinched, stared at them and then her muzzle snapped up as she glared at me. I could only shrug, “I was bored.”
“Those locks...”
“...aren’t very good,” I shrugged again.
She grinned at me, an expression that bared only needle teeth and exasperation. I quickly ducked my head and she cuffed me with claws not quite pulled. “Get dressed, rot you.”
They’d bought me my jeans, my Eldritch t-shirt, one halfway-respectable button shirt, boots and a single sock. I held up the pants and looked at Escheri. “Ah, I can’t dress with the shackles on.”
She hesitated, eyeing me. “You’re not trying games. If you try to run…”
I gave her a pretty watery smile. “No. No games. I can hardly even walk.”
So she knelt and undid the metal bands and chains around my ankles and took the clanking iron away and then she and the other Mediators watched as I dressed, pulling on the jeans and t-shirt. She turned one of my boots over and over, stretching out the ankle support and watching it snap back again.
“How does it do that?”
They didn’t have elastic. They didn’t have rubber or spidersilk or even common silk. I just said, “It’s simple when you know how.”
She snorted and held the boot out. “You need this?”
“Ah, I’d prefer not to. My feet... I think they’re still too swollen.”
“A,” she said simply and watched as I also
took the other shirt. I could always lose it if needed.
“Done?” Escheri asked. “Then we’d best go.”
“Hai,” she observed as we left, “you’re limping. Your feet or your leg?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’ll have to look at that,” she said. “Later, though. Now, come along.”
I didn’t know what time it was. It was still dark out, still drizzling hard enough to set my escorts’ ears twitching as our way took us outside across that courtyard. I had a chance to look up, past dark windows. Overhead, the cloud cover was a lid over the city that blotted out any sight of the sky. Back home the underbelly of that cloud would be glowing sodium red, lit from below by city lights. Here, in this world, those city lights were too few and too feeble. The night remained black and wet.
The building they took me to was one of the older ones, constructed from blocks of pale stone that must’ve been shipped in from a long ways off. The halls were big and dark and echoing. There was a dreamlike feel to the whole experience as we moved along in the small pools of light cast by my escorts’ lamps. That light didn’t reach the upper reaches of the corridors and was barely enough to let me see where I was going. With their night vision I knew the Rris didn’t really need them at all, so I supposed they’d only brought them along for my sake. Thoughtful of them. At least the shackles were gone, although there were still some bruises where the metal had chafed and dug in.
And through those halls I didn’t see a single ornamental embellishment. There were no statues, no extraneous paintings or decoration, just clean functionality rendered in proportions that were decorative in their own alien intricacies. There were undertones of power and authority that came through beneath even that starkness, like something sleek and deadly coursing beneath smooth water. It wasn’t like the authority totems such as ornate materials and decorations and oversized spaces that were so prevalent back home - it was after all aimed at a different psyche - but I was still able to notice it. I wondered if it was supposed to intimidate me.
In truth, it did.
Rris were moving around those dark corridors. Mediators, almost to a one. Some in their quilted uniform, some in well-worn roadcoats, other young-looking ones in simple garb that screamed ‘apprentice’ sweeping. They looked up as we passed and their ears went flat. I could feel their eyes on me as we passed.
When we halted it was at a door that literally glowed in the light of the lamps. It wasn’t big - no larger than normal - but the entire surface was hammered copper. It hadn’t been planished after being beaten flat; it’d been polished, but not smooth, keeping every hammer bowl intact. Those metal dimples glowed in my escorts’ lamp light, blurrily reflecting us in a galaxy of tiny beaten dishes. I was a pale form, flanked by shorter blurs. One of them stepped up to my side.
“Here,” Escheri said, “We’ll take you in. You sit where we tell you. You know what to do.”
I stared down at her, my heart hammering. “Escheri, I... I haven’t got the faintest idea.”
Her tufted ears laid back. “Look, be quiet. Just answer direct questions and that’s all. Be respectful; be honest,” the Mediator muttered and patted at my shirt, trying to straighten the alien garb out a little. “You’re shivering. You’re still cold?” She sniffed at me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t help it. Nervous.”
“Huh, do your best, a?” she said and patted my arm, then – fleetingly – reached up to stroke my cheek. “Good fortune.”
One of the other Mediators flicked an ear, but swung that copper door open on a lot of darkness.
Two of the others closed up behind me, not quite pushing but making it clear that I was to move.
I stepped through.
My imagination had been presenting me with images like a courtroom I was familiar with from back home: a large room with lots of polished wood, a judges bench and jurors stand. Of course the reality was different.
There was polished wood. There was a great deal of that - it was a big room. The first impression was that of a church, but of course that wasn’t quite right. It was similar, but it was simply form following function. There was a basilica of sorts and I’d entered through a door about halfway along, standing on the edge of a broad apse. Two stories overhead the ceiling was in darkness, but just below it a faint glow that might have been wan morning light seeped through a row of dirty windows circumnavigating the white plaster walls of room. Underfoot the floor was darker-than-blood red wood, a circular stage polished to a nearly mirror finish and half of it embraced by the arc of the apse. Oil lamps hung from polished silver stands guttered, turned low, their wicks a feeble glow that was just enough to bring the shadows lurking in the corners out to play. Just enough for Rris vision: not enough for me to make out the faces of the Rris seated around the periphery of that semi circle, sitting cross-legged on floor cushions with low desks placed in front of them.
And that light didn’t reach the high ceiling where rain still thrummed against the roof. Nor did it reach to the far ends of the hall where the floor rose into gradual tiers of wood-paneled steps just like you might see in a lecture theatre. There were Rris seated on those tiers, rows and rows of ill-defined feline forms. As I moved into view those figures stirred, a susurrus of movement and conversation drifted through the hall and their eyes caught the light.
Like two hundred discs of molten aluminum flaring in the darkness. The eyes in the dark around the watering hole. A sight that made something in my hindbrain scream and my hackles stand up. I should’ve been used to it after the time I’d spent at the front of lecture halls at the university in Shattered Water, but I guess it was still a shock. I stopped dead, like a deer in headlights.
One of my escorts prodded me in the back and I flinched. Someone had said something and I’d missed it. Panicked, I looked around and from nearby a Rris voice growled, “Sit down. There.”
There was one cushion set apart from the others, out in the middle of the stage. I had a pretty good idea who that was for. My Mediator escort stayed close while I sat myself down. My gashed leg ached enough that I couldn’t sit cross-legged, instead having to adopt a less dignified posture with that leg straightened. That put me at the centre of that semi-circle of Rris and the mass of spectators at my back. My escort melted back into the shadows.
There was a pattern in there in the way the Rris around me were seated. Facing me at the rear of the apse was an arc of five Rris sitting cross-legged at their black lacquered desks. As best I could tell, they were all Mediators. Older Rris, I thought, from the hint of grey fur, although that wasn’t a reliable indicator – more than a few younger ones I’d met had salt ‘n pepper fur. One of them was wearing glasses, I could see that much: a set of small wireframe spectacles whose lenses flashed as their wearer tipped its head. The others all wore somber tones, but nothing like a uniform.
Then there were two other, smaller groups: three individuals seated to my left and three more to my right.
“He’s certainly more than I’d expected,” one of the five Rris directly before me said eventually. “Mikah ah Riehee, it was?”
That question wasn’t addressed to me. “Yes, Ma’am,” one of the group over to my left responded.
“Mikah,” the other said, “You can speak? You can understand us?”
I waved a careful affirmative. “Yes. I can speak. I am still learning... much, but I can speak.”
“Huhn, and do you understand why you’re here?”
“Not really, no.” I glanced around for Escheri, for anybody I could recognize. They were all anonymous shadows in the gloom. “Nobody has told me anything.”
I thought I saw several pairs of ears flicker at that. The one who’d spoken looked down at a sheet of paper. Lightning flared outside, strobed through that row of high windows. Spectacles caught light and flared briefly in the
shadows. “We tell you now that you’ve been summoned before this Tribunal today in response to several charges. There is a considerable list of broaches here: I see instances of evading arrest, assaulting Mediators, disobeying a Mediator’s direct orders, the murder of a Mediator, arson and property damage... you deny these?”
I felt the weight of all those eyes on my back and swallowed, “Except for the arson and murder of a Mediator, no.”
“Huhn. It was reported you set a fire to evade pursuit. There was extensive damage.”
I shook my head. “No. Not me. Some of your Mediators.”
The circles of the spectacles glowed silver. “You did kill a Mediator.”
I stared back. “No. Not a Mediator. He looked like... I thought it was a Rris I knew. He was... He shot at me then attacked me with a knife. I defended myself.”
“Knife range, yet you still couldn’t see it was a Mediator? He was closer to you than we are, yet you can see us all right, can’t you?”
I suppose that remark was intended to be sarcastic. I shrugged. There might have been a hint of morning light on the high windows, but that was all. Just the grey touch of first light filtering through the rain clouds. “No. I can’t.”
“He’s mostly blind in dim light,” came a calm voice from the Mediators seated to my left.
“But that would be Shyia,” I sighed.
There were sounds of amusement. One of the Rris in front of me made a gesture and guards shifted around the periphery of the room, turning the wicks on the oil lamps up. Flames flickered and became and brightened marginally and things became a little more defined. I could at least see who my inquisitors were. It was Shyia to my left, flanked by two others seated behind a trio of little black lacquered tables. To my right ah Richtkah and a pair of flunkies were similarly ensconced behind identical desks. I was bang in the middle between them.
