by R. Lee Smith
Arug hesitated, his smile fading before he forced it broadly back. “House Arug is honored to care for the mother of her champion’s son.”
“I will return to see the child placed at the appropriate time.” Meoraq inclined his head toward heaven. “If Sheul wills that I should return. If not, I suppose I must trust you.” His gaze shifted to the bailiff. “I require a witness.”
The bailiff bent his neck briefly and produced a tablet and stylus.
“I want the woman’s rooms inspected,” said Meoraq, his eyes back on Arug. “Regularly. She is owed the respect of a Sheulteb’s wife. She is also owed a widow’s stipend. See that it is not misplaced into her father’s coffers.”
Lord Arug kept smiling, but his spines were very low, visibly shaking with the effort not to flatten them completely. “She shall be kept as one of my greatest treasures,” he said. “You may see her chambers for yourself, if you like.”
“I prefer to stay in the Temple,” he said. Which was true enough, and also more tactful then commenting aloud on the man’s perceived willingness to turn his daughter into a common dip for the first Sheulek who came along.
Arug bowed to conceal his obvious disappointment—that’s rather a flat head as well—and withdrew with Tem. She looked back once, shyly seeking his eye until her father hissed and yanked her hood down. Then they were gone.
“You may show me to my room,” said Meoraq, prodding at his wound. The edges had sealed beneath his scales, but it still ached abysmally and would probably swell and bleed again by morning if it were not properly cleaned and tended. He was tempted to neglect it. Shuiv had seemed a good man and a brave warrior; Meoraq was not ashamed to wear his last scar.
The bailiff merely bowed, rather than walking ahead of him down the hall. “Forgive me, honored one, there is a dispute awaiting your judgment.”
Of course there was. Tothax was not the most remote city in the world, but it was easily the most remote on Meoraq’s circuit. On his last visit, there had been four disputes awaiting his judgment, one of them half a year old and so entirely irrelevant by the day of Meoraq’s arrival that he had been divinely compelled to slap both parties across their petty-minded faces before walking into the arena. But however many disputes there might be awaiting him, it was customary to separate them over the course of many days. To judge two trials in a single night, so soon after his long journey, bordered on insult.
His temper flared, but six breaths brought him reason. Just because the first of their disputes had been a paltry one did not mean they were all so. And besides that, Meoraq’s blood was still warmed by battle and a second fight had its appeal (as well as the promise of a second conquest once the fight was done, perhaps even with a pretty woman, or at least one who had a properly-shaped head). In either case, he was Sheulek, and it was his duty and his privilege to serve Sheul, no matter the hour or the inconvenience to his mortal clay.
“Then I will hear it,” he told the waiting bailiff, but he took six more slow breaths before he followed. He loved God and would never question His commands, but there were times he wished he was not quite so often in His eye.
* * *
Back they went to the mediation chamber, which was again filled with spectators disguising themselves as witnesses. One of the galleys was curiously empty, he saw. The other was occupied by another man dressed as a warlord and the kneeling figure of yet another woman. The man was only vaguely familiar, although Meoraq noted that his lordly garb was, unlike that of Arug, functional rather than ceremonial, and he carried several admirable scars prominently across his powerful body. The woman, however, he recognized at once despite her bent back and ducked head.
Meoraq glanced again at the empty galley and snorted. He folded his arms, resting his hands close to the hilts of his sabks. “Where is the baby?” he asked, interrupting the high judge mid-prayer.
“If you had come when I first sent word to you, you could have seen it born,” the lord said, also interrupting the judge, who was attempting to both apologize and reprimand Meoraq at the same time.
“Why would I want to?”
“Honored one, please!” snapped the high judge. “This is a formal matter!”
“I am not in the mood for formalities,” said Meoraq.
“So be it.” The lord stepped forward, beckoning behind him to one of his many men. “I am House Saluuk,” he said, for the benefit of the court’s scribe. “Once Saluuk Tzugul and a Sword of Sheul. This is my daughter.”
“I remember,” said Meoraq. And he did, although the fires had burned hot in him that day. He remembered her not because she was pretty, which she was, rather, but also because she had been particularly tiresome in conquest—breaking the ritual after only a few stammered lines and then trying to flee the arena hold. He’d been forced to pursue and to hold her down, neither of which he minded much in the burn of Sheul’s fires, but she’d also screamed all the way through the sex, and afterwards, just lay there in a heap, sobbing. A bad night, and one that had a way of slipping back into his thoughts when he was alone and his mind unquiet. A Sword of Sheul knew no remorse for the things he did in the grip of holy fire, and yet…she had been so small beneath him, so small as she lay weeping on the floor…
And now there she knelt, and there indeed was the infant, carried in a servant’s arms to be displayed before the court. It was the right size; he wondered whether she had been corrupted after his conquest or before.
To think he’d lain awake so many nights, haunted by her tears.
“I remember,” Meoraq said again, coldly. “And I remember that Sheul’s blessing was for myself alone. I do not acknowledge that child. Its blood is the blood of Gann.”
Shocked gasps met this accusation and then whispers flew. Lord Saluuk’s throat began to pale in streaks of color, but he betrayed no other sign of emotion as he reached down, took a fist-hold of his daughter’s wrap and yanked it open, revealing her scarred shoulder as she twisted her face away.
Meoraq had been many years a Sheulek and knew it had made him cynical. He was used to expecting the worst of people, but this, he never anticipated.
“Lies!” he roared, at once full in the grip of Sheul’s killing fires. It was his training alone that kept his blades in their sheaths; every bone of him wanted to draw and paint every damned wall of this room with blood.
Breathe. A Sheulek is a master of every impulse.
“Lies,” he said again, hissing but at least not shouting. “She may have been virgin—I will not say otherwise—but she did not burn and that is not my mark!”
“I stand before you, judges, in the sight of Sheul.” The steward released his daughter to her huddle and faced the tribunal. “Every servant of my household is present and able to swear that this woman has been in proper confinement every hour of her life, save that when she was last in this arena.” He swung to stab at Meoraq with his stare, saying, “Or do you say House Saluuk allows its daughters to rut wild in the alleys?”
“I do not,” said Meoraq, just as coldly. “Whether she goes out or her bulls sneak in should concern House Saluuk, but it is no matter to me.”
“You come very near to making a personal insult, honored one,” one of the judges said with a respectful nod.
“I do not come near,” snapped Meoraq. “I make it boldly! Your daughter has gone to Gann and that is not my mark upon her.”
Before Lord Saluuk could make his snarling reply, the woman flung out her bare hands and cried, “I have been with no man but you!”
The whole of the tribunal stared at her.
Her father was first to recover. In two swift strides, he had returned to her side and slapped her to the ground.
“Oh yes, she knows her place well,” another judge remarked, but Meoraq killed what little humor that stirred up with a glance. The woman’s tears as she knelt at Lord Saluuk’s feet were too much as they had been a year ago when she had been huddling at his own feet. The sound woke the infant, who added its own wails un
til the servant holding it was ordered to take it into the hall. Meoraq found himself scowling suddenly into its little face as it was carried past him; it flinched away as from Gann Himself, clutching at the servant and renewing its cries, now with terror.
As soon as it was gone and the door shut against its noise, the high judge rose and raised his hand. “Stand the girl up.”
Lord Saluuk obeyed, and none too gently. The girl sent a wet-eyed, imploring gaze at Meoraq, who folded his arms against her and refused to look away. She was a good one for heart-stirring looks, it seemed.
“Steward, it is your duty to make those of your House aware that what is said before this tribunal is said in the sight of Sheul. A lie spoken to Him is a wound to one’s very soul.”
“She knows,” said Saluuk, giving his daughter a glance as hard as a second slap.
“So be it. Girl.” The high judge leaned sternly over the tribune wall, addressing himself to her directly while the lesser judges struggled not to react. “Before Sheul, who do you name as the father of that child?”
“Before Sheul, I swear that I have been with no man but Sheulek Uyane.”
Meoraq flared his spines, but that was all. One embarrassing outburst was enough for this tribunal and it would be hers.
“Before Sheul,” the high judge went on, narrowing his eyes, “who put that mark of conquest upon your flesh?”
Meoraq’s spines flared again as his hands drew into fists upon his biceps in anticipation of the lie he must endure…but the lie never came.
The girl bent her neck and did not answer.
The high judge leaned back in his chair and stroked at his throat.
“Why do you waste our time interrogating a woman?” Lord Saluuk demanded. He unsheathed his sabks in a swift hiss. “If this man will not acknowledge his seed as the Word itself demands, I will challenge him and let Sheul be our judge!”
“This man,” said Meoraq with contempt, “will meet you, steward, and Sheul will end your lying bloodline.”
“Enough! How dare you draw a bladed weapon in this hall!” The high judge struck his hammer on the tribune wall, and again, until Lord Saluuk grudgingly resheathed. “There is no need for bloodshed! You! Fetch a wax tablet from the archivist’s stores! If the honored one will make his mark, a simple comparison shall be enough to determine the truth here.”
Meoraq grunted approval, eyeing Lord Saluuk, whose expression had taken on a narrow, calculating stare. The servant was dispatched to the stores, but he had been gone only a moment when the steward suddenly turned and caught his daughter by the throat.
“Will the marks match?” he demanded. “Answer, girl!”
His grip made any verbal reply impossible, but her choked wails held such hopeless despair that no words were necessary. Lord Saluuk released her with a shove and said, “I have been deceived and so wasted this tribunal’s time. I shall pay whatever fine you deem appropriate.”
“I have been with no man but you!” the girl blurted. “Please, you must believe me! I did not burn, I admit that, but even without His fires, I was blessed! Oh, hear me, honored one, will you not hear me? This is your child!”
Spectators exclaimed amongst themselves in gleeful shock at this blasphemy. The high judge struck his hammer upon the wall, but silence was not forthcoming, and though Lord Saluuk seized hold of his daughter’s arm, she did not go quietly but instead increased her struggles, actually reaching out to try and catch at Meoraq’s arm.
“Everything you say is truth!” she cried. “My only lie was the mark that—”
Lord Saluuk’s arm swung and ended whatever she meant to say next, a slap no longer but a fist that broke the delicate upper bone of her narrow snout and sent her crashing to the floor. “Bridle her!” he roared, and no less than six of his servants leapt to obey. “I will hear no more lies spoken through that poison tongue! Remove her!”
Meoraq’s disapproving hiss earned him half a pulled knife before Lord Saluuk shoved it back into its sheath.
“Go on with you, sprat!” he spat. “Go back to Xeqor! I knew your father and don’t you just fill his fucking shadow! He’s bred his House nothing but lack-wits and bastard-makers since he took the blade! Be damned to him for pissing you out and be damned to you—”
The hand of Sheul touched his heart; Meoraq’s own flew out and caught Lord Saluuk by the wrist. In a moment, the warlord was on his knees with his face mashed against tiles still wet with his own daughter’s tears and Meoraq was on him, trying to think through the haze of Sheul’s fire and unsure, for an eternity of moments, whether it were an enemy beneath him or a woman.
The pounding of the judgment hammer cleared his head some. He shook himself, focused on the body twisting and hissing in his grip, then pulled his hooked kzung—a hunting blade, and still more than this particular animal deserved—and put it to Lord Saluuk’s vibrant throat.
“Hold, honored one.” The high judge struck his hammer a final, deliberate time. “This tribunal has not been concluded. If you have offense, you have the right to seek redress, but only at the proper hour.”
Truth. Meoraq closed his eyes, breathed himself calm in the cooling grip of Sheul, and then released Saluuk with a contemptuous shove and stood away.
“How do you speak, lord?”
The steward of House Saluuk fought himself to his feet and turned a perfectly murderous glare on Meoraq. After several deep breaths of his own, he pressed his empty hands together and bent his stiff back in a bow. “I have offended,” he hissed. “My accusation stands false in the sight of Sheul. I will make whatever reparation this tribunal demands for bringing her lies to this hall. My daughter—” His flat spines made a dry, scraping sound as they tried to flatten further against his skull. “—has gone to Gann. Uyane Meoraq stands acquitted of her and her bastard.”
The judge raised his hammer, but Meoraq halted him with a raised hand. He cocked his head meaningfully, waiting.
Lord Saluuk glared at him, color throbbing in his throat. One moment became many, but it finally came: “Forgive me, honored one. I have offended you and your House.”
Meoraq’s head canted further. “And the father who pissed me out?” he prompted blackly.
Lord Saluuk’s spines ticced. Breathing hard, all but stinking of hate, Lord Saluuk knelt. One knee first, then both, and then he bent to touch his head to the floor and turn his naked palm up beside Meoraq’s boot. “Forgive.” He managed this time to say it without hissing, although the effort clearly came at a high price. “It is Saluuk Tzugul before you, son of Ulhathev, son of Shagoth, son of all my fathers before him. I am my House and the bloodline of my fathers and I have offended. I bend before you, Uyane. Forgive me.”
Meoraq grunted and stepped back. He did not make an answer, but then, the law demanded that pardon be asked of him, not that he give it.
“You are perhaps too quick to remove evidence from this tribunal, Lord Saluuk,” said one of the judges after a moment. “An impression could yet be made of the girl’s scar and compared to those men of your household whom you suspect—”
“She’s gone to Gann,” the steward spat, already back on his feet and just as furious as he had been before his showing of humility, if not more so. “Why should I care who sired her bastard?”
“Forgive, lord, but it is the matter of who put a Sheulek’s mark upon her that concerns me.”
Saluuk continued to glare at Meoraq for a breath or two, but then slid his cold stare up at the tribune wall.
“The girl’s corruption may be a sin,” said the judge, “but the forging of that mark is a crime. If these witnesses you bring before us can truly account for every hour of the girl’s life, then one of them surely aided in her deceit. She did not bite her own shoulder.”
The other tribune judges grunted solemn agreement. The spectators eyed one another and whispered.
“I will hold interrogations,” Saluuk said at last, visibly struggling with his temper. “I will find the man responsible and send
him over the wall with his lying poke.”
Meoraq frowned. It was customary to exile those who had been corrupted beyond redeeming—giving to Gann those who had given themselves to him—and only after they had served a certain time of imprisonment under the Temple’s watch. Only when the priests had declared her unforgiveable would she be sent out to wander in the wildlands until Gann took her into darkness. She would never be burnt, never truly die, and Meoraq supposed she would come to this fate whether she walked out the Temple gate or fell from her father’s rooftop, but still it troubled him.
And he was not alone, for one of the lesser judges hesitantly said, “Would it not be better to place the girl in Temple custody until her guilt is proved?”
“Her guilt,” Saluuk hissed, “is biting at her teat! I will not be dishonored in my own House!”
As all the judges bowed, Meoraq said, “You have been too long within walls if you can think to preserve the honor of your bloodline only by exterminating it.”
Saluuk’s neck stiffened, the marks of his anger visibly throbbing in time with his heart. “If she cannot behave herself as a proper woman of my House, better she be dead. Her and her bastard both.”
“Honored one,” said the high judge reprovingly. “Your opinion is not asked. You stand acquitted and your part in this tribunal is done.”
Truth, and if he could not get clear of Lord Saluuk’s presence, he knew it would end in violence regardless of all the training in the world. Meoraq bent his neck briefly and received the bows and salutes of all those who shared the hall with him. The high judge beckoned to an usher and Meoraq left, feeling Saluuk Tzugul’s eyes burning on his back all the way out into the hall.
* * *
The Halls of Judgment were empty enough to echo beneath Meoraq’s feet. The sound worked on him like the hammers of a headache, adding to his black mood instead of easing it. A bad business, Saluuk, and he could have handled it better but it should have waited until the morning. He had always been too eager to see blood spilled after a battle and he knew it.