Hour of Judgement (5 page)

“Garol — ”

Oh. He’d pushed too hard, then. Finally. He was in for it now, and only himself to blame. Yes, he knew that he and Jils trained well together, and that was eighty-seven parts of an intel spec’s survival in an uncertain world. The Danzilar prince was going to wonder about the bruises, even so.

“Okay. Okay. I’m coming. Don’t hurt me. I take back what I said about the mind-sifter, You’re a good psychotech. You don’t need a mind-sifter. I’m coming.”

Vogel knew how good Jils really was at what she did. His respect for her professional ability was deep and sincere, and she had saved his life — not to speak of what he laughingly referred to as his career — on more than one occasion. So he didn’t really want to push her too far on this.

And the last thing he wanted to do to a friend was bring her in on a bad Warrant, if bad it turned out to be.

Chapter Two

It got dark early at this time of the year, but the curfew for Nurail hadn’t been shifted yet. Hanner had plenty of time to have his payday treat and get back to his garden before the Port Authority would be patrolling. The Port Authority was generally just as willing to beat a Nurail as look at him, and they didn’t need to justify their actions as long as there were no bones broken.

Hanner was prudent.

He would be back to his garden in good time.

The Tavart had got a residence-chit for him, and had suffered him to make a modest habitable place in one of the garden’s outbuildings so that he could live there without charge to lodgings and save his wage. The Tavart was a good maistress. She always paid full earnings on the contracted day, and there’d been a nice bit of extra this time, too, that had come into his hand with a vague mention of the winter coming on. He had a new coat of the extra. A new coat, a secure lodging, leave to take his prunings and trimmings in and out as he wished: life was not half bad, just at the present, as long as a man could manage not to mind about Danzilar and the Judicial order.

He had it better than Megh did, for a fact. And here she was, coming through the back way from the service-house into this little hire-kitchen, where even a Nurail could sit and have a bit of meat and not be molested.

Megh.

Taller than he was, shaped very becomingly, and if her lip had got set a little thin over the years of slavery she’d served her eyes were dark and glittering with life and even laughter sometimes yet.

“Hullo, there, cousin Hanner, I was afraid that I’d mistook the day. How do you go?”

She slid into the booth beside him, setting a bottle of ale down between them on the table as she did. Criminal Megh was in the eyes of the Bench, sentenced to thirty years of involuntary servitude for supposed crimes against the Judicial order. But still she was allowed a surplus ration, now that she had passed the first third of her sentence.

Service bond-involuntaries past their first third got a surplus ration of food and drink and more administrative than personal chores assigned. Security bond-involuntaries were issued a more serviceable grade of boots and better fabric for their uniforms.

“I’m a rising young man in the affairs of state, here, Megh, I’ll have you know. My maistress has called up a whole field of botanicals, I’m to discover how they thrive in the salt air, see?”

He was not a slave in the same sense as Megh; he wore no implanted governor to monitor his internal states and punish an infraction. He could think treason all he liked, so long as he did none.

He set his little posy to the Megh side of the bottle, keeping his eyes on his plate. It gave her pleasure to have a little bit of flowering straw, and a bloom that was not too unlike a golden ice-flower. Skelern felt it prudent nonetheless to wait until she had had a moment to master the pain that it also brought her before he could evaluate the success of his gift.

“Skelern, I’ve heard something.”

Startled, he looked up at her before time. She sat very still, very quiet, turning the stem of a piece of sheep-fern between her fingers. It had been for a joke, the sheep-fern; it was fodder for the animals, nothing more, but Maistress Tavart had seemed to find it rare and exotic.

“What’s the matter, Megh, nothing to grieve you?”

He should have known better than to make such a joke. He was a gardener’s son, a gardener. He knew little about the high windy, nor cared to. But Megh had come from the high windy, on her own world. Megh was a herder’s daughter.

“Nothing to grieve over, no, cousin. Maybe nothing at all but just the accident of a name.” There was a little frown between her honest eyes, an uncertainty between pleasure and fear. “There was a patron, here, these few days past. I served her her meal. And she wanted to ask about the pattern-weave.”

Megh put her hand up to the shawl across her right shoulder, a little uncomfortably. It was a cruelty to make her wear it at all, even if it was no honest weave. They liked to remind people that they could do anything they wanted,
and you’ll accept it and be grateful, my girl
.

“But she was polite, Skelern, thoughtful-like. As if she really cared to know. And she kept looking at me as though I reminded her.”

She was an exotic in a public house, was Megh. The most part of her job was parrying the constant curious questions of customers eager to be titillated with a bit of genuine Nurail folklore. Skelern opened the bottle, pouring two glasses full without comment. It was Megh expected to keep quiet, and let other people talk. He wasn’t about to stop her words in the small space of time that she had in which she could speak at her will. He was a gardener. He knew the value of letting well enough alone.

“She seemed kind enough. I’m not forbidden to say only so much as where and from whom. And so I told. The truth, not this rag of lies I wear, and I’m from Marleborne, you know that, Skelern.”

And her father’s people had once held a famous war-weave. The Narrow Pass, he thought it had been, though he had always tried hard not to brood upon the matter, keeping his mind on his own garden for prudence’s sake. If it hadn’t been for the war-weaves and the warlike fury they aroused in Nurail hearts the Bench might not have seen them for a threat, all of those years ago. He might have been a free man, then, and his family yet living in decent comfort here in Burkhayden.

“And she interrupted me, Skelern, startled-like. And your mother’s people hold the Ice Traverse, she said. As if she knew, cousin, but how could she know the weave, and still say my mother’s people?”

The faint hint of outraged modesty made him want to smile. “Most improper it is, cousin. Surely she meant no harm.”

Picking up her glass Megh stared at the surface of the beer, tilted back as it was, as though to see her reflection in its surface. Skelern realized with a mild concerned shock that she was blushing. “Skelern, you’ll grant me your sweet pardon, but I have to say this. My
. . .
my father’s wife
. . .
my brothers’ mother, her people, they — ”

Oh. Skelern made a smoothing gesture, fearful that she would say the taboo thing. “So how did she know of the weave in Marleborne, do you think? And yet not know the rest of it?”

“I asked her that, I did.” There was the swallowed sob of anguished hope in Megh’s quiet voice; it made him want to weep. “I couldn’t help it.” Nor would he have been able to resist the same impulse if he’d been the one ripped from his native place, with no news ever of his family. “She couldn’t think of why she thought of it, and we spoke no further on that reckoning. But she sent word a day or so after that, and it was a Security chit, so they let it through to me still as it left her.”

Else everyone would know what Megh had learned. Whatever that was. No Nurail had a right to privacy, not here in Port Burkhayden.

The glass was empty, now, but Megh hadn’t set it back down for a refill in friendship and in courtesy. She held the glass to her instead with both hands wrapped fiercely around it at its middle.

“She had met once a Security troop, and had some cause or another to have remembered him. Bond-involuntary, Nurail. And she didn’t remember what his slave-name was.” Not as if that would have told Megh anything. Other bond-involuntaries took slave-names from the Judiciary where they’d been condemned, and carried the identification of the place that defined their shame until their Day was past. To Nurail alone even that much identity was denied.

“But what she had called to her mind was a trial that she was at, a talking-drug, something. I don’t know. Being tested on a Nurail bond-involuntary. It’s what she remembered him telling, that his name was Robin, from Marleborne. And that his mother’s people held the Ice Traverse.”

There was no missing the significance. Skelern chewed on a bit of the meat from his stew-bowl thoughtfully, not wanting to intrude on the intensity of her feeling. She worried at the fringe of the shawl that she wore; after a moment he felt it might be safe to speak to her. “Your brother, then, Maistress Megh. Do you think it could be?”

Megh had thought that problem up one side of the hill and down the next, so much was obvious. “I saw him last taken away by Jurisdiction, and they were merciful to us, cousin, they let us see each other alive and whole before we were to be parted. Wanted to fight, he did, but it was kindness to let me kiss my brother, with the rest of us — all dead — ”

“Hush, now,” Skelern warned, hastily, alarmed. “Hush, now, Megh, you’ll give yourself such a headache, please, be gentle.”

She turned her head and wiped her face with his napkin, crumpling it in her hand. “Look you aren’t late for curfew, young Skelern,” she said, with a certain weight of tears to drape her admonitory tone. “I believe you are the same age that my brother would be, of course not so tall. It is to hope, that’s all.”

Little enough to hope for, surely. Bond-involuntary Security had thirty years to serve at labor that was both hard and hazardous. And to be forced to put the tortures forward, at the order of an Inquisitor —

“I’ll dream on it with you, then, if you’ll permit.” There were Nurail here in Burkhayden who had come through the camps at Rudistal, and one of the staff at Center House who had survived the Domitt Prison itself. They said that Koscuisko for one had used his Bonds tenderly, with respect. But Skelern knew that it would never have been remarked upon unless that was unusual.

“I’m glad for all the good you care to hope me,” Megh said with plain simplicity, kissing him on the cheek as she rose to go. “Come and see me again, cousin, I’ll tell you all about our new maisters, and whether they are any different than the old ones were.”

He watched her move gracefully to the back of the shop and through, her shoulders straight beneath the mockery of the weave that Jurisdiction put to her to wear, dignity and suffering alike in the gentle movement of her head.

If it were up to him there would be an entire army of brothers for her, if only they could give her comfort.

But it wasn’t up to him.

And he had to mind the curfew.

He finished his meal and went out while he still had time to get back to his garden before curfew fell over the Port and prisoned Nurail behind doors.

###

Skelern Hanner leaned against his grubbing-hoe and rested himself, the cool still air very pleasant next to his bare skin. His shirt hung on a nail outside the shed for the saving of the garment from the sweat; which made things a little awkward, of a sudden, because here was sweet little Sylyphe come running across the blue-turves to seek him.

He watched her come with embarrassment, with fondness, and with dread. A man would prefer to be decently covered in the presence of a lady, especially when a man knew he was too skinny by half to be judged beautiful. He was fond of Sylyphe. She had a good nature. He fervently hoped that she did not want to talk to him about politics.

“Skelern, Skelern, Mother has news for you, there’s a job — the Danzilar prince’s garden, for his party, there’s a Fleet Lieutenant here, and — ”

He’d had ample moments of warning, but he hadn’t stirred himself, busy watching her come scurrying over the grass. It was a pleasure to watch her, child though she was. She stopped abruptly and drew back when she saw him, the back of her hand coming up to cover her little mouth as if she’d never seen a man without his smock on before, ever.

“Oh, Skelern, this is — surely most improper, please, go and dress yourself.”

He wanted to laugh. But he went to fetch his shirt, instead. “If my little maistress doesn’t think it seemly, I would suggest she not come looking for her mother’s gardener come spring. A man likes to work in his hip-wrap when it’s hot, sweet Sylyphe.”

She was blushing as deep as a vine-ripened acid-plum, and she did it very prettily, too. Well, perhaps not; her cheeks were blotched and blighted with embarrassment. It looked pretty enough to him.

“I shall carry bells. And call out warning. What are you doing, Skelern?”

She was interested in gardening, that was true. “I’m heading the late starchies. If you don’t trim them to the ground they waste themselves away in the winter light as though it was spring, and you lose the spring blossom.” Bending down for a clump of leaves, he shook it free of dirt to offer it to her, half-joking. “Flowers, for the little maistress of the house?”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Imagine, wearing a vegetable.” And yet she tucked the base of the leaf-bundle into her bodice, and arrayed the green leaves carefully in a symmetrical pattern upon her bosom. “There, how do I look?”

“As if you were wearing a vegetable. Of course. What were you calling to me, on your way out? A party for me, is it?”

“Um.” She was distracted by her corsage still, making further adjustments. There had been a year when such rubbish as Sylyphe’s corsage would have been his dinner. They’d eaten less likely things not so very long ago. “Gardeners for the Danzilar prince’s garden, to make ready for his party. Mother’s offered you, but you’re to be paid, of course, and to have a holiday after.”

He wasn’t quite sure that he liked being “offered,” as if he were a bundle of packaging. Still, the Tavart treated him well enough to take the sting out of any real resentment on his part. Surely the Tavart had earned the right to lend him out, with pay and bonuses. There was a good deal to be said for the contractual value of a new coat before winter, and a warm dry room safe from the weather for his bed. “Tell me about the party, Sylyphe. Am I to have a day to finish up my starchies, here?” He wasn’t going to want to let the tubers go. He needed a day or two yet in the late sun to be ready for the ice that was to come.

She dimpled at him, seeming grateful for a chance to talk about it. “It’s to be three weeks yet before the Fleet arrives. The master-gardener says a week’s worth of work, but a month’s pay is offered, Skelern, say that you aren’t cross? I mean — ”

She meant that he was prickly with her on the issue of being told where to go and how to go when he got there. “Na, there’s good to it, then. Plenty of time to finish up what’s needful.”