“Very true, Admiral. Tell me, what suddenly caused you to forego Admiral Krispin’s battle orders? You appear to have found no fault with them until shortly before the fight.”
Gilhame understood the implication of the Adjudicator’s question. Had he been a party to the conspiracy in some way? And, of course, he was not about to mention his var-created knowledge. “The Admiral’s plan was eminently suitable if our strength had been greater than our enemy’s. As soon as I learned that this was not the case, that the data we had about their numbers was in error, I scrapped the plan. Let us say I saw a trap and chose to avoid it.”
“I see. Commander E-varit, have you anything to add?”
“I believe that Admiral Krispin was fully aware of my Armada strength, Magistrate.”
“Krispin!” The Adjudicator nearly barked.
“I knew the number of the Coalchee force. ” He sounded weary.
“For what reason were you willing to sacrifice the lives and arms of the Emperor?”
“Fear? Ambition? Envy? I don’t know any longer. I have long had a sense that ur Fagon would be my downfall. I appear to have been correct. He was rising too fast. I couldn’t stand the thought of serving under the brute. And, if I were His Majesty, I would be concerned at the success of men like ur Fagon.”
“The seeds of our own destruction are within us, Admiral.”
The side door of the hall opened, and the clerks returned with Krispin’s microtapes. For the next ten minutes the Adjudicator listened intently to them. He was about to speak, when there was a heavy thud against the great doors of the audience hall. It was repeated. He said, “What is that infernal racket?”
Four Imperial Marines trotted down the length of the hall and opened the inward-swinging-doors. A second later, three young women, carried forward by the momentum of the large piece of drainage pipe they bore, tumbled in and fell to the floor.
Chapter IV
Gilhame knew her even before she had leapt to her feet. He thought that he would have known her anywhere, anytime, not by her red hair and swan throat, not by her green eyes and strong nose, but by the proud spirit which seemed to shine out of her, always. Throughout every lifetime he had lived, “she” had been the light of his eyes. But who was she now? Certainly, the original Gilhame did not know her.
Once on her feet, she was magnificent. She was tall and white-skinned, and she carried herself with great pride. Then he looked at the two women with her and for a moment wondered if he was having a hallucination, for the three were so like in form and countenance that they might have been triplets. Was it “she”? For a moment, he was unsure. Then he watched her sweep down the hall, ignoring the filth on the hem of her gown and the dirt on her face, to fling her arms around Admiral Krispin. The older man was gray now and looked as if he had been kicked in the groin.
Still breathless and very white with anger, she swept the assemblage with a contemptuous glare of her wide green eyes. “What is the meaning of this outrage!?” she shouted when her gaze came to rest on the Adjudicator. Fan Talba was listening to something being said by one of the clerks
who had gone to Admiral Krispin’s house.
“You will moderate your voice instantly, Halba Krispin! You cannot come bursting in here, interrupting the business of the court. Get those blasted doors closed!” The Adjudicator was suddenly tired of the whole matter. He hated this great barrack of an audience hall, he hated all the people in the room and he hated his job. Although he was aware that the emotions he was experiencing were really just indigestion, he took a moment to savor them in full before motioning to a clerk to give him a stomach dose.
Gilhame watched the three women. The two who had not spoken touched the arms of their sister and drew her away from their father. The three stood together, and now he could see that one had hair of a darker red and one was shorter than the others. They did not speak to the magnificent creature who had shouted at fan Talba, but the expression on her face changed slowly. It was a tremendously mobile face, with a soft mouth and wide eyes. The chiseled nose might be deemed a little strong for real beauty, and the square jaw certainly so, but to Gilhame she was and always would be the only woman in the cosmos. He was so taken with admiring her that it took him a moment to realize that the three women were almost surely communicating mind-to-mind.
Quite suddenly, she gave her father a look of such violent dislike that it was almost palpable. Halba Mordell walked over to the girls and drew them to her one by one, kissing them lightly on the brow and smoothing their hair. Their likeness to their aunt was quite striking.
“Identify yourselves for the court,” said the Principal Clerk.
“Halba Armanda Krispin,” said the one with darker hair.
“Halba Derissa Krispin,” the shorter one answered.
“Halba Alvellaina Curly-Krispin.” Gilhame noticed that she had a good voice when she wasn’t shouting, and then realized that her additional name meant she was the eldest daughter and an heiress through her mother.
“The court did not require your presence. Why have you burst in here like a bunch of . . .” Fan Talba’s reedy voice failed as he searched for an elusive metaphor.
Derissa Krispin bowed. “We beg the court’s indulgence. We had just arisen from the table when your clerk demanded entrance. He informed us that our father was before the Imperial Tribunal. Naturally, we came here straightaway but found the door closed against us. I regret that our natural filial anxiety overcame us, Magistrate, and we acted without thought.” As she ended her speech, two of the Marines put the drainage pipe the women had carried into the hall down against the wail with a hollow thump that echoed around the room.
Gilhame silently applauded Derissa’s diplomacy. It was almost a shame that she was not the one. But, no, Alvellaina, red-headed termagant that she was, was the only woman he desired. There had been a time, long before, so long that he could not remember a name for the place, when he had wed all three sisters. Not this time. He suspected that one would be almost more than he could handle.
He glanced over his shoulder and found Buschard also staring at the women with undisguised admiration. He felt a pang of anger and then realized that Buschard’s attention seemed to be fixed on Derissa. Would that prevent the final betrayal? Could he alter the pattern even that much? He hoped so. Perhaps, just this once, his domestic life might be tranquil, though looking at Alvellaina’s now stony face, he doubted it.
The proceedings of the court continued, but Gilhame was almost unaware of them. He answered such questions as were put to him with half a mind, the rest being occupied with the problem of how he could get close enough to Alvellaina to secure her attention. He was impatient for the Tribunal to be done.
“Admiral ur Fagon, before the court makes its final disposition, have you any requests or recommendations to make, other than those in your original suit?”
“What?” As principal plaintiff, he had the right of personal recompense as well as the privilege of setting the basic terms of the general one. “Oh, yes. I do not feel it excessive, sir, that personnel be drawn from the levies of the estates of Governor Mordell and Admiral Krispin to replace not only the more than two thousand of my people who died at Vardar Straits, but those of the Coalchee dead as well. I leave the division of the matter to the Magistrate’s discretion. And, since it seems to me a dreadful waste that such lovely females should languish upon the exile world, through no fault of their own, I would accept one of the Admiral’s daughters—the noisy one, there, Alvellaina, I think—as personal recompense for the attempt to terminate my existence.” There. He had done it. Not gracefully, but there was no charming way to demand the enslavement of another creature. If she followed her father into exile, it would be the devil to get her out again.
Alvellaina made a faint croak. “Please, no!”
“May I inquire why, Admiral?” fan Talba sounded curious.
“Any woman who would try to batter down the door of this mausoleum is just to my ta
ste, Magistrate. Besides, I believe she might just be worth the five cruisers I lost.” A ripple of laughter tinkled around the hall.
“A five-cruiser woman! You insolent, underbred bastard.” Alvellaina pulled herself from her sisters’ embrace. “How dare you!”
“Is it too little? I can add the rest of my lost ships, if you like. Let me see, there were . .
“I am not some country lass to be bartered for cows or ships or anything. Please, please, stop this.”
“Control yourself, Halba. Your wishes are of no interest to the court. The Admiral is quite within his rights. A little tactless in his speech, perhaps ...” Fan Talba was having some difficulty in restraining his smile.
“Tactless? Arrogant and unmannered is more the truth!” she shouted, her breast rising and falling in anger and a faint flush of red coloring her cheeks. She looked splendid.
“Commander Buschard, do you wish to speak?” The
Adjudicator ignored Alvellaina’s outburst.
“Yes, Magistrate. It seems to me that these sisters are very close, women of a single mind almost. It would be cruel to separate them. There has been enough unkindness in the matter already. Therefore, I would request that I be permitted to take the one called Derissa. I am unbound and would be glad of some companion. The other ...”
“Yes, Captain . . . Culmeni?”
“I also . . . would rather see these sisters . . . remain together.”
“Is that an offer to undertake the responsibility of Halba Armanda Krispin?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. Well, you do have the right of secondary plaintiffs to make these requests, unusual as they are. Commander E-varit, you lost a son, did vou not?”
“I did.”
“Then you have recompense before the others. What will you?”
“These daughters of the Admiral’s are very handsome women by the standards of your race, but they are . . . rather mammoth to my taste, sir.” Laughter followed his statement. The shortest of the Krispin girls was more than a head taller than the Coalchee.
“I see. Governor Mordell has sons, if a son is your desire.”
“Nothing can take the place of Furtlar, but to have a young man near me would be a comfort.”
“Halba Mordell?”
“Yes, Magistrate.” Her voice shook.
“Ennumerate your offspring.”
“I have two sons and two daughters. My oldest son, Behar, is at the Academy on Darin, and my second son is six years old. His name is Kurwen. My girls are twelve and eleven, Mirra and Falga. The younger children are here on Vardura.”
“It is very hard for you to bear the brunt of your husband’s folly. I must admit that the laws concerning matters of recompense seemed very unjust to me when I entered my profession. Why should the innocent suffer for the actions of the guilty? I have asked myself that question many times. I will ask it many times more.
“Throughout our history we have tried many methods to discourage crime—particularly crime against the state. Death used to be the punishment for such crimes and many others. Before the Ten Nations Compact brought us a uniform legal code, it was possible to be executed for stealing a bit of string, and yet to retire in great comfort to one’s estates, if one had money. This is one inequity we have removed.
“But we are a culture with strong bonds of family. We now hold that the suffering of the guilty party’s family is a deterrent to crime. Few persons are so dead to family feeling that they would wish to endanger their innocent wives or husbands or children. This, at least, is the theory.” He gave Mordell and Krispin a quick, sharp glance as he continued to speak. That too was part of his job, to remind the populace of the nature of the law.
As fan Talba’s voice fluted on, Gilhame thought of all the times and all the places where people had been a mere commodity, little different from kine or wheat. It was a harsh system, one which discounted the individual, but individuality was often an extravagant fashion for a culture. How far back did the practice go, he wondered? To the home world, to the times when if one was responsible for the death or crippling of a son, one took his place. Not for murder, of course, but accident. As systems went, it worked as well as any, and the victim was at least not ignored. It would bring him Alvellaina, unwilling prize of war, but she had been that many times before. He forced his eyes away from her proud profile and back to the Adjudicator.
“It is not the desire of the court to create further victims. The Empire will take whatever is not used to itself, which will leave you very much alone, Halba Mordell, unless you choose to go into exile with your ...”
“Certainly not.” Armanda Mordell snapped the words out, then flushed with embarrassment. “I find the Commander’s request for my son ... a reasonable one, for 1 am sure he will treat him well.” She was terribly pale now.
“Then the child Kurwen Mordell shall be given into the care of Commander E-varit Gnargol.” Governor Mordell made a sound like a man being strangled, but fan Talba went on inexorably. “As Admiral Krispin is a widower, and we have settled the matter of his issue, there remains yourself, Halba Mordell, and your two daughters.” He gazed at her, then glanced around the room at the audience.
She looked across to her husband, her face unreadable. “I shall go wherever my girls do. My place is with my children. Is it permitted that I return to my mother’s people?”
“I hardly think you would be welcome there,” fan Talba said dryly. That was the worst part of the system, the part over which the court had no control, the behavior of the families of wrongdoers.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Commander E-varit.”
“Halba Mordell spoke quite correctly that a mother’s place is with her children. I would welcome her and her daughters too, if they would choose to come.”
“Halba?”
“Yes.” The word was a whisper. Then she spoke more clearly. “I would prefer to be with my son, even among strangers.”
Motioning his clerks to him, fan Talba conferred for a long time, occasionally waving forward one of his legal staff. Then the Principal Clerk read the decisions of the court. They were very much as set out by the plaintiffs, with the exception that the two estates were levied at two men for every one killed on both sides and the residuum of the estates was confiscated by the Empire.
After the judgments had been announced, Adjudicator fan Talba said, “This tribunal is now closed.”
He removed his cap of office and again became a very ordinary little man. The Marines took Krispin and Mordell into custody and removed them. The Adjudicator noticed that his indigestion was unimproved and knew that the
homeward journey would not make it better. He sighed, rose from his chair and broke wind audibly. ‘That,’ he thought, ‘sums it up nicely: The whole matter stinks.’
Chapter V
Gilhame twirled the stem of his wineglass and smiled, remembering the odd sorting out of parties in the audience hall after the Adjudicator’s departure. Culmeni, looking like a man shaken awake to find that his dreams had come true, had approached Halba Armanda Krispin and stood looking at her as if she had sprouted an extra head or two. The girl herself had seemed in a similar state of shock.
Culmeni, coming from a culture which believed firmly in magic, wondered if he had been enchanted. He could not, for the life of him, discern what had prompted him, a confirmed bachelor, to ask for the responsibility of this female. Finally he had asked, “Are you musical?”
“Somewhat, Commander.” She had smiled very sweetly, and Culmeni had entertained several dark thoughts about witchcraft.
“Then I suppose we will manage.”
Armanda had laughed in his solemn, worried face. Buschard, with Derissa, had been quite another matter. Quiet as Pers was, he could charm the birds from the trees—or even the devil. And he remembered E-varit, bowing gracefully before the other Armanda, Halba Mordell. She was somewhat shorter than her nieces, but still a good seven inches taller than the Coalchee. She had lef
t the hall like a magnificent ship escorted by two sturdy tugboats, E-varit and A-gurit.
Halba Alvellaina Curly-Krispin was neither charmed nor resigned. Gilhame had stood for several minutes, watching her still outraged countenance, then he had given several quiet orders to the invaluable Frikard. After that he had walked outside the hall into the pale sunlight, sat on a bench, and puzzled over the situation for a long time. He could not recall Buschard—all the faithful Buschards who had been his companions before—ever taking a wife, or even exhibiting an interest in any female except she whom the Dragon favored. Was there to be some other rival? And never, since that time so long before, had there been three. This alteration in the pattern disturbed him. Finally, he had laughed at himself and taken the shuttle back to his ship.
Now Gilhame looked up from the spinning golden liquid in his glass to his silent companion. She still wore the soiled white gown, but her hair was tidy and her face and hands had been washed. The gown, he thought, was a calculated insult, for he had ordered Frikard to have all the women’s effects brought on board. She had not eaten, drunk or spoken since her arrival thirty minutes past.
“I had no idea, looking at you, that you were quite so spoiled,” he said, remembering how she rose to the bait of being traded for five ships.
The portal slid open to reveal the empty hall, and the white pard entered. She walked daintily into the room, leapt onto the table and came to Gilhame, demanding attention. “I wish I knew how you did that trick, my pretty,” he said as he stroked the animal. “I must tell you, halba, that closed portals are as nothing to this pard. It puzzles me, for the controls are well above her reach, and yet no one is ever there except her. Besides, I doubt any of my staff would dare to open the door to my quarters to let in . . . anything. She seems to have adopted me, which I rather like. Perhaps ‘commandeered’ me is more accurate. She obviously views reality from the slave-master position— and I think I am the slave. But at least she is not completely spoiled.” He smiled at his silent companion.
Adrienne Martine-Barnes Page 5