Ison of the Isles

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  “I cannot speculate as to what Governor Tiarch was aware of,” Joffrey said.

  He was a slippery one, more intelligent than all of the Innings and their pedigrees combined. “What was the nature of your work for Admiral Talley?”

  “I provided him with information.”

  “Is that the same as spying?”

  Talley interrupted, “Stop badgering the witness and get to the point.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harg said. “Governor, would you say that your job required you to be an expert at deceit?”

  Before Talley could interrupt again, Joffrey replied smoothly, “Every job that involves the management of people requires a certain amount of judicious deceit.”

  “So you could, for example, deceive these people?” Harg gestured to the audience.

  “Not in court,” Joffrey answered. “I have far too much respect for the sanctity of the law.”

  This was going nowhere. Joffrey was too clever.

  Harg abruptly changed the subject. “What is the definition of treason?”

  Joffrey looked wary. “I am not a lawyer; I couldn’t give you a legal definition.”

  “Can you give us your definition as the Governor of the Forsakens, sworn to enforce the laws of Inning?”

  Flushing slightly, Joffrey said, “I believe it refers to illegal actions aimed at overthrowing one’s government.”

  “Could a Rothur be charged with treason against Inning?” Harg was genuinely fishing for information now, and it wasn’t Joffrey he wanted it from. He glanced at Bartelso, who had understood, and was subtly shaking his head.

  “I don’t believe so,” Joffrey said. “Rothurs are not subjects of Inning.”

  Talley said, “Mr. Bartelso, is something troubling you?”

  Bartelso stood and said, “It’s a tic, your honour. Very troubling. Affects my head.” There was a ripple of laughter through the audience as he sat down.

  “Keep it under control,” Talley said.

  Harg turned back to Joffrey. “Are you a citizen of Inning, Governor?”

  “No,” Joffrey replied, “but I hope to achieve that honour someday soon.”

  “How is it that, despite such faithful service, you are not a citizen?”

  “Citizenship is granted to non-natives only by the High Court.”

  Feigning surprise, Harg gestured to the audience. “Then what are all these people?”

  Joffrey shifted in his seat. “Technically, wards of the court.” There was a buzz of comment from the audience.

  “And if one of them disagrees with an Inning citizen in authority, what recourse does he have?”

  “He can sue in regional court.”

  “Represented, as I am, by an Inning lawyer?” Harg gestured to his inert advocate. There was a wry laugh from the audience.

  Coldly, Joffrey replied, “That would be to his advantage.”

  “And the Adaina of the South Chain? What rights do they have?”

  “The same, until they achieve a level of civilization consistent with citizenship.”

  “So I am not a citizen of Inning?”

  “No, not technically.”

  “If I’m not a citizen, how can I be accused of treason? Isn’t that like accusing a Rothur of treason?”

  Talley interrupted impatiently, “The appropriateness of the charges is to be decided by the judges, who are learned in the law.”

  “Oh, so the law need not make common sense?” Harg shot back. There was an audible gasp from the audience.

  “That is an insubordinate question,” Talley snapped.

  “Then I withdraw it,” Harg said mildly. “I am just a savage trying to understand the subtleties of Inning civilization.” A nervous laugh bubbled up around the room. Harg could tell the audience was his now.

  Talley said tensely, “I am tolerating you, prisoner, in hopes of demonstrating our fairness. Your questions are irrelevant and are wasting this court’s time. Only matters of fact are being judged here. Please confine your questions to them.”

  “Yes, sir. I have no more questions.”

  As Joffrey left the room, over the animated hum of conversation, there was a loud hiss from the back of the audience. Talley heard it and rose to his feet, trying to locate the perpetrator. He has lost them, Harg thought, and he knows it. For a moment Talley looked down at Harg, a virulence in his eyes that almost shook Harg’s nerve. Then Talley announced loudly, “This court is adjourned. We will reconvene at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  A strategic retreat, Harg thought. Then the guards were hustling him away before any more ground could be lost.

  That evening, from the window of his cell, Harg could see firelight reflected on the low undersides of the clouds. When the guard came to give him dinner, he asked, “There’s no rioting in the city, is there?”

  The guards’ discipline must have relaxed a little, because the young man actually answered, “No. Those are just bonfires in the Gallowmarket. People are camping out for good seats tomorrow.”

  For the first time in weeks, Harg slept soundly that night.

  *

  If the courtroom had seemed full the first day, it was nothing compared to the second. People were not only packed into every inch of space; they were on the window ledges and massed in the square outside. Talley had increased security, but not enough to match the increase in the crowd. Harg felt a volatile tang in the air.

  The day started with more testimony, this time from Minicleer, covering the attack on Tornabay. The substance of it was incriminating enough, but the Inning spoke in a condescending sneer that set Harg’s teeth on edge. Scanning the audience, he saw he was not the only one.

  When it came his turn to speak, Harg paused a long time, looking out at the audience, trying to catch as many eyes as he could. They must feel like participants, he thought. They cannot feel this is someone else’s business, someone else’s responsibility.

  “Provost, before you were appointed to your present position, what was your profession?” Harg asked Minicleer.

  “I was an officer of the Inning Navy,” Minicleer said, as if it irked him to have to answer.

  “Tell me, have you ever been responsible for men being killed in battle?”

  Minicleer glared at him. “Yes.”

  “Are you concerned that you will be tried in court for it?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  With an air of surprise, Harg said, “Oh, is it not a crime in Inning law to kill a man in combat?”

  “No.”

  “Is it a crime to fire a gun on the enemy?”

  “No.”

  “Is it a crime to liberate a city occupied by the enemy?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why do you think I am standing here, and you are not?”

  At last Minicleer saw where Harg’s questions had been leading. He flushed angrily and looked to Talley for support. Impatiently, the Admiral said, “Prisoner, there is a difference between war and insurrection. You owed allegiance to Inning, both as an officer and as a subject. We were your rightful and legally constituted rulers.”

  “Pardon my confusion, Admiral,” Harg said. “No one has ever explained that to me clearly before.”

  He turned back to Minicleer. “Tell me, Provost, by what right did Inning assume rule over the Forsaken Islands?”

  Minicleer said in a venomous voice, “By right of conquest.”

  “Did the people of the Isles give their consent?”

  “I don’t know how we could have found that out. You can’t visit every flea-ridden hovel.”

  There was a stir in the audience. Harg wondered why Talley wasn’t breaking in. It came to him in a flash, that Talley was giving them both enough rope to hang themselves. Well,
best to sail while the wind was blowing.

  “Did your authorities ever consult the existing government of the Forsakens?” Harg pressed on.

  With a slight laugh, Minicleer said, “There was none.”

  “Have you ever heard the word ‘Ison’?”

  “I heard it when you started going by that name.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Heir of Gilgen?”

  “I’ve heard some myths and legends.”

  Raising his voice, Harg said, “Is it possible these offices constitute a government you did not consult before invading and waging war on us? Is it possible we were a nation with a right to our own sovereignty?”

  The courtroom had been buzzing, and this question threw it into a tumult. Talley rose and gestured the guards to restore order. In a red and black line they passed into the crowd and began to wrestle some of the louder members out the door. Harg heard clubs come down on flesh.

  Talley’s voice rang out over the hubbub, “Prisoner, you are perverting the privilege of question which we have generously granted you. You are using this court as a forum for sedition and rebellion. You only make the blackness of your guilt more apparent.”

  Harg shouted, “What’s apparent is the sham you call ‘justice.’”

  “Put him on the block,” Talley ordered. The guards seized Harg’s arms and nearly dragged him off his feet as they hurried him roughly to the centre of the floor. They forced him down on the block, face up, and wrenched his arms back to chain him down.

  New shouts of protest went up. At last, Harg thought, they see that I am them. Shouts of “Ison! Ison!” had started up at the back of the room, where the Adaina were. The guard clamped a metal collar around Harg’s neck, choking tight. He struggled to breathe.

  The noise did not die down. There was a sound of scuffling, and a woman’s angry cry. Harg heard Talley giving some hasty orders, then suddenly the guards were releasing him again. Before he could look around, they were dragging him at a near-run from the courtroom. Two more guards followed; Harg saw that they had guns.

  They rushed him down the corridor, past some soldiers running the other way, and down the stairs into his basement cell again. Outside the tiny window, in the Gallowmarket, there was shouting and the sound of marching troops. Harg tried to climb on the cot to see out, but the window was too high. He sat there listening, half excited, half terrified by what he had done.

  Not the Mundua nor all the lawyers in the world could save him now.

  *

  A bird was singing in the garden outside Spaeth’s window. The sound ripped through her brain like a saw, its teeth shredding nerve fibres as if they were so much soft wood.

  After they had taken Harg away, the guards had come back to move her to a new room, plainly furnished but above ground. For the first few hours she had paced restlessly, as if by moving she could stay ahead of the pain. By noon her eye had swollen shut and the whole side of her face was purple-bruised. A knife was stabbing her side with every breath. At last her joints became so painful she could no longer move, though the bed felt uncomfortable as a rocky beach, every crease in the fabric digging into her flesh.

  By the next morning she was drifting deliriously in and out of this circle, in and out of the past. She kept seeing Harg asleep in the bed beside her, newly cured. His skin was warm and dry against her body, gently shifting with his breath.

  How whole he was! She felt intensely proud. It was as if she had reknit him with her own tendons, filled him with her blood, created him anew. He was perfect now, a masterpiece; and yet, the instant he went out into the world something new would harm him. She wanted to spend the rest of her life as they had spent the one night, trying to get closer than the barriers of skin would permit—one person, and yet miraculously two. But in the intervals when she came awake, and found herself alone, she knew she had seen him for the last time.

  At other times it seemed to her that Ridwit crouched at the foot of her bed, black fur sleek, the tip of her tail wrapped around her feet, twitching.

  There were fires outside her window that night; their light made sinister patterns against the ceiling. Now, as waves of nausea passed through her, she realized what had happened: she had taken on too much. If she had been perfectly healthy, she could have survived such a dhota. But she had been weak to begin with, and Harg had poured a whole lifetime of hurts into her. It was more than even a Lashnura body could bear.

  Someone was standing over her—a real person this time, looking down on her with a lantern. She tried to turn away to shield her eye from the light, whimpering a little; lifting her hand was too much effort.

  “What did he do, beat you?” a sharp voice said.

  She realized who it was then, on a primitive, instinctual level: her other bandhota. The thought that she might drink from him as well sent a shiver of desire through her. Though she knew it would poison her beyond cure, she still wanted him. It gave her enough energy to struggle awake.

  Corbin was holding the light to inspect her bruised face, a strange mix of emotions radiating from him, tugging at her. She reached out to touch his hand. There were little blond hairs on the back of it. He wore a uniform with starched cuffs that made him look cased in authority. She loved him deliriously.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, his hand closing over hers possessively; “he’ll pay for this.”

  “He didn’t touch me, except in love,” she said.

  His hand stiffened as if the words had stung him.

  Still clutching his hand, she said, “These are his hurts on my body. I took them so he could be free. He is cured now. There is no pain left in him. In two weeks he will have a new eye, just as good as the old one.”

  Corbin sat on the edge of the bed then, setting the lamp down. His eyes were searching her face, her body, as if it had occurred to him, against every instinct, to believe her. He reached out to touch her swollen eye, very gently. “Why did you do this?” he said.

  “Because dhota is the only solution I have,” she said. “I thought otherwise for a long time, but now I know it’s true.”

  “Dhota,” he said flatly. “You and your father.” He was looking past her now, with a haunted expression.

  She realized he was speaking of Goth. She pressed his hand against her cheek. “Is he all right?”

  “It depends on your definition,” he said.

  He looked like a man who had destroyed a thing he loved. His pain was so sharp, Spaeth said, “Let me heal you.”

  He looked down at her and said harshly, “You’re dying.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “To cure me would kill you. I’m not going to kill another of you.”

  “It would be a beautiful death,” she said, smiling crazily. Rainbows of desire were dancing before her eyes; she realized she couldn’t hold on much longer. “Please,” she said.

  “No!” he said, and meant it.

  She closed her eyes then, and despair seeped into her. It was Harg’s despair, she realized indistinctly; but now it was hers as well. Its blackness pervaded everything.

  Corbin was gathering her in his arms, picking her up. She clutched his neck, her head against his shoulder, the sharp epaulette digging into her cheek. His closeness fed her, sustained her. She savoured his texture, his smell.

  Then they were in another room. He laid her gently on a bed, and kissed her forehead, stroking back the hair. There was a whole wall of windows beside her, looking out on a garden. There was no moon.

  Orbs of light drifted before her eyes. The pain was still there, but far away. Corbin was no longer holding her hand, but someone else was. She watched the light drift before her like glowing smoke, till it formed an insubstantial face.

  “Goth,” she said. She wondered if they had entered another circle together.

  “Spaeth,” he sai
d. He looked like a man dead for centuries, just a skeleton with a little grey skin stretched over it. His voice was breathy and faint. “What has happened? Whose hurts are these you are carrying?”

  A year ago, he would have known. A year ago, he had been the Goth she had known all her life. “I was afraid you would die without me,” she said.

  “I would have,” he said, “but for unfinished business.”

  She tried to smile, but it hurt. “You can go now. I have finished it for you.”

  Wondering, Goth reached out to touch her face. Suddenly, his eyes fired. “Harg! You have cured him,” he said; then, with alarm, “Spaeth, you will die.”

  “I know,” she said, smiling.

  “Was all my teaching worthless? Couldn’t you hold back?”

  “No,” she said. “There will be no other chance. He will die before he heals.”

  Goth realized what she meant. With a terrible grief, he said, “Talley?”

  Spaeth nodded. “I couldn’t cure him. He is too devoted to his pain.”

  “I know,” Goth said. “If only . . .” He was stroking her forehead with a papery hand. “Spaeth, would you do the only thing in the world that could make me happy now?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Give me the pain you took from Harg.”

  She drew back, horrified. “No! It’s mine.”

  “Please,” he said, his voice shaking. “You don’t know how much of that pain is mine.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said.

  “Please let me set it right.”

  “But I want it!” she said weakly.

  “Please. He would never even let me touch him. Not even a touch.” His eyes were glistening with tears. Wondering that such a dry and brittle body still could weep, she reached out and touched the corner of his eye, to feel the tear on her finger.

  “I love you, Goth,” she said.

  She never had to say she had changed her mind. They both just knew it.

  It didn’t even take blood; just that one teardrop, touched to her forehead, made their minds blend seamlessly. With all the gentleness she remembered, he began to draw from her the wounds that had poisoned her body. His spine arched and his head fell back as the pain entered him; but still he stopped to savour each one, to feel it fully. He had been waiting two decades and more for some of them.