by G. Howell
The chairwoman let this little byplay go on while she sat back. Her fingers were laced, one claw tapping on the knuckles of her other hand. That was unusual: a Mediator with a tic. Was that agitation? Or she was so unconcerned as to not care. But she sat quietly while one after the other they went around the room with their questions. More questions about situations and problems and issues that were possibly hypothetical, but probably not: queries covering the gamut from hardware and physical products to things that were less tangible.
I answered where I could as best I could. To a certain extent all the questions were predictable. These Mediators were intelligent individuals and well educated, by their standards, but they were fixated on what they could comprehend and I could see they were trying to foresee the future by just expanding on what they were familiar with. Much like humans they weren’t comfortable at including things beyond their experience and on some level simply didn’t want to think about what they didn’t know. In the same way that eighteenth and nineteenth century human visionaries foretold a future filled with amazing steam-propelled conveyances, riveted brass and copper velocipedes and personal dirigibles, they tended to miss the fact that the future contains things that are just completely unexpected.
However, they weren’t so foolish as to ask about only toys and gimmicks that did interesting things.
“And how does your knowledge work when applied to fields that aren’t so... concrete?” one of them – the one with glasses - asked. “If we were to ask you about [something], or [something], perhaps political theory, then what would you tell us? Would you tell us our ways are wrong? The monarchs should be removed and the lands managed in some other fashion?”
“I think I would say I don’t enough of your language to tell you,” I said. “Those are... delicate areas. I don’t know if my vocabulary is... bendable? Enough to deal with sensitive topics. Ideas like that can be… they can cause upset for reasons I’m not sure I can understand. I don’t know how Rris deal with that sort of thing, but my kind have had wars over smaller things, and I am certainly not proficient enough with your language to try and relate those ideas.”
“You suggest there are better ways of government than the [something] kingdom?”
“There was a word there I don’t understand,” I said. “But there are other ways. Not necessarily better, but other ways. I really can’t say how they would apply to your kind. Systems that work for us might be simply impossible here.”
“Why is that?”
“I said before, your kind doesn’t think like mine. I’m not saying we are better – in some regards I believe the opposite, but just... different. You see the world through different eyes, hear through different ears. All that influences the way you think. The way I think. We can talk with one another, but sometimes it’s obvious we don’t mean the same thing.” I sighed and waved a hand. “It’s a complicated issue.”
“And a matter to be explored some other time, if possible,” the chairwoman interjected and then leaned forward a bit.
“Do you think,” she asked me directly, meeting my eyes with an amber stare that meant challenge and authority, “that what you are is worth it? Can what you offer us be better than the problems it may cause?”
I shrugged, human style. Let them make what they wanted of that. “I can tell you things. I can help with some problems such as illness and such. Perhaps make suggestions and give you ideas. How you use them, well, that will always be up to you. As you just said, they may cause problems. And then again, they may not. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t get rid of me. But then again,” I felt my face twitch in a quick uncontrollable grin that was three parts nerves and one part humor, “I’m biased.”
She huffed a quick exhalation and said, “Really? Then in that regard perhaps we do share the same thoughts.”
I think transient smiles flicked across a couple of visages, but she just leveled that feline stare at me. “For now, though, I think we’re done with you. Constable!”
The guard opened the door and stood waiting.
“We’ll be sending for you again,” she told me. “Don’t do anything... unpredictable. Now, please return him to holding. Make sure he’s comfortable, but keep a watch on him. That will be all.”
------v------
Sometime near dawn they sent for me again. Then again some hours after that. Then again and again.
During the following couple of days they must have called for me a dozen times. Through the day and through the dark they called me, and each of those times I was taken back to that room where more questions were asked: about my past, about my intentions, about ideas and inventions and solutions... enough variations and convolutions that they all ran together into an amorphous slurry. When they were done with that session the guards would walk me back to my cell where I could close my eyes for a couple of hours before the guards returned to shake me awake and we did it all over again. That was almost certainly deliberate: they were asking a dizzying array of questions and variations on those questions and noting my responses. Towards the end of those sessions I was so strung out and muzzy I was barely capable of processing what they were asking, let alone make up and keep track of fictions. I just answered as best I could.
There were a couple of times when I saw Escheri, but she didn’t seem herself. A couple of times she just came into the cell to look at me, but didn’t say anything about what was happening when I asked and left shortly after. Once she crouched and took my hands in hers, first one and then the other. When I saw she was staring at the old scars across my wrists I yanked my hand back and she stared at me with that cold Mediator look, then looked around the cell as if searching for something. When at last I shouted at her to say something she gave me another kind of look and then turned and left. The guards closed the door behind her.
I returned to huddle in the corner, trying not to gnaw my nails.
I was waiting, I knew that. And there was a black river wending through an overcast night. There was a paddleboat festooned with lanterns chugging through a labyrinth of eddies and tributaries. Silent passengers milling on the decks were adorned in spectacular gold and scarlet finery while their features were hidden behind featureless white masks. In the wheelhouse, Shyia, dressed in the uniform of a ship’s captain from another world, stood at the helm with eyes fixed somewhere beyond the darkness ahead. I was trying to tell him something important, but he just stood staring out through the windows as he guided us to wherever he was bound. Beyond the bow, the winding river was turned to glistening black oil by a pale moon.
A dream. The realization somehow percolated through to my consciousness that that is all it was, and I didn’t want to go any deeper into that darkness. When I blinked my eyes open I was still looking at moonlight. A pale beam streaming in through the high slit of a window in the cell cast a feeble wedge of light on the opposite wall, a lopsided square of illumination on the cracked whitewash. I lay back on the thin, pillowless pallet, groaned, and then threw an arm across my face, screwing my eyes shut and grimacing into flashing phosphors. I wanted to sleep. I really needed to. I was tense enough that my muscles were twitching at random intervals and I felt I could snap. Every time I closed my eyes those dreams kept sneaking back in.
I tried to relax, tried to tell my twitching nerves to calm down as I lay and tried to breath slowly and watched that patch of light crawling almost imperceptibly across the plaster and hoped sleep would come again.
The Mediators returned first. As had happened over and over during the past days heavy keys rattled in the lock, metal rasped and the door swung open. There was the orange glow of a lantern; there were the silhouettes of Mediators. One of them beckoned curtly, as he’d done over and over again. And like the other times I hauled myself to my feet and went along with them.
It was soon apparent that this time was different. They were leading me off in anoth
er direction, down other corridors and hallways I didn’t recognize. There was the lantern the Mediators carried, probably for my sake, but the feeble glow just seemed to make the darkness blacker: it didn’t give me any idea of where we were bound. And the Mediators weren’t talking. None of that did anything to ease the tension that roiled and churned in my guts. For all I knew they were taking me out the back to put a bullet in my skull.
When they finally stopped at a vestibule I looked at the door there and said, “Oh.”
Torchlight reflected back from the myriads of dimples stippling the hammered copper plating the door. I’d been here before. I knew where this was. I swallowed – hard - and looked at my escort, from one to another. Impassive faces stared back for a short time. And then the door opened and my escorts ushered me through.
The auditorium was full. Mediators occupied the ranks of benches, the ranks of stone steps stretching up into the shadows at the back of the hall. All of the benches. I saw that as soon as I set foot on that polished expanse of wooden stage. I was painfully aware of it as I limped across those hard boards dressed in only my tattered and bloodstained jeans, headed toward that solitary cushion sitting in the middle of the stage. Once there I had to turn my back to the multitude of alien eyes glittering in the darkness, faced the tribunal and slowly folded myself down to sit. That gash in my leg was still aching angrily.
The Mediators were arrayed as before: A wide semicircle of low desks with me in the locus. Over to my left sat Shyia, his superior the Lying Scales Mediator Commissioner ah Charis and their attendants at their desks, the black-lacquered surfaces polished to mirror finishes. Directly before me were the Tribunal members. Three of them watched as I settled myself, two of them discussing something between themselves in low tones while the male with the spectacles slowly polished the lenses with a cloth. When he was done he carefully folded the cloth and set the glasses back on his broad muzzle. The lenses flashed as they caught lamplight.
They’d been present for every interrogation session I’d been taken to. And they’d doubtless been busy while I wasn’t there, so they must’ve been going nonstop for the past couple of days. When I looked for the signs I could see them: they looked tired – groomed and clean, but tired.
And at the final desk sat Lord ah Richtkah and his aides. They watched without expression as I settled myself, then turned their attention back to the Tribunal. I clenched my hands, feeling them turning damp and clammy as more sweat trickled down my arms. In contrast my mouth was suddenly dry. Was this it? Was this the judgment? If it was then what could I do? If they...
The spokeswoman coughed and the two who were whispering flickered their ears and sat up. I found myself very interested in what she was saying.
“No judgment is ever easy,” she began, leveling her voice so it reverberated, projecting out into the audience. “This time was certainly no exception. Recent events have brought with them situations that have no precedent in Guild history; they have never even been contemplated. Those of us selected for this Tribunal have done our duty for the Guild to the best of our ability and skill. Our decisions are not made lightly, and we feel that while not absolute solutions, they are what will be best for the Guild and for the people.”
It felt like something was clutching my chest even as my heart hammered away. It was the verdict. It was I swallowed hard and looked from face to face. If there was expectation there, they were hiding it well: I couldn’t see anything beyond ears perked with polite interest. My life was on the line and they showed no more emotion than if they were discussing what colors they should paint the walls.
“Lord ah Richtkah’s defending argument for his proclamation was bold and most persuasive,” she continued. “He moved against what he saw as a threat to the balance of the world; a threat very few others had heeded or even noticed. It was never a simple decision: too many institutions, including our own, had serious interests in so many different corners of the situation. Thwarting those intentions could have upset many old agreements and lost the Guild a great asset, but it would have secured the world from a source of [randomness],” at least, that was how I translated it.
“With the disruptions experienced by this Guild he predicted that the changes wrought by this new influence would not be all beneficial nor would they be static and predictable. They would shift and change and grow. He saw that the changes would bring short-term solutions to many current issues. He also saw that those solutions would simply spawn new problems; new problems with a high probability of being magnitudes of order greater than the issues they solved: Livelihoods would be destroyed, Guilds would fail and fall, trade routes would wither and dry and markets would be left in disarray and with such unrest and with new weapons, war would grow and spread. His solution was to remove that influence in the first place.”
She paused then, looking down and delicately turning over a page in front of her. Over to her left the Mediator with the glasses cocked his head as he regarded me, the lenses glittering again.
“We cannot find fault with the reasons for this decision,” the chairwoman continued. “Everything was done with forethought and all due diligence.
“The challenge was raised by constable Shyia ah Ehrasai and sponsored by Commissioner ah Charis of Lying Scales and the Shattered Water, Ech’sari and Stone Trees Guild halls. The Tribunal gathered attended this claim, and we found it to be valid and sincere.
“This claim doesn’t deny that difficulties and unrest are possible. Probable, in fact. They don’t deny that this event is a disruption of unprecedented proportions.”
I looked Shyia’s way in disbelief. This was supposed to be my defense?
“The challengers say that this is also an opportunity of unprecedented proportions; that an event like this has never happened before and according to all understanding there is almost no chance of it happening again. They charge that disposing of an invaluable asset and opportunity as this would be not only negligence, but an offence against the Guild and all Rris.
“There will be issues and troubles, they don’t deny that. There will certainly be those who’re dissatisfied or displaced by something new. And there will be those who misuse new things. There always are. And - as they observed - that is why the Guild exists.
“It is our duty and our charter to protect the peace and to do everything in our power to provide for the greater good. These changing winds may bring storms, but there is also an immense potential to help people: To save lives, to bring prosperity and health, to aid growth and our own knowledge. The constable argues that to turn this down is tantamount to turning our backs on our duties.
“Ah Ehrasai observed that we have been offered gifts beyond anything we ever imagined. The point was made that these gifts weren’t thrust upon us, rather Rris did all we could to take them. And with those gifts Rris accepted choices. We have the choice whether or not to use them; and we have the choice of how we use them. He has argued that if we chose to abuse and misapply these gifts, then perhaps the blame should not be heaped upon the bearer.
“Ultimately, how does it reflect upon the Guild if we are unable to protect people from themselves?”
There was a rustling from behind me, as of a multitude of furry bodies shifting marginally. The skin on the back of my neck crawled. Oh, god. If they decided one way, the bad way, then what could I do? There was a whole room full of them. I might be able to break for that door again, but I didn’t have a whole lot of illusions about being able to make it.
From the front of the hall came a sound that was the chairwoman clearing her throat, a cough that resonated from the walls and other sounds ceased. “We have deliberated and we have decided,” she said.
“We have found no fault in his Lordship’s verdict. Taking into account events at the time, we determine that his Lordship was working in accordance with all precepts. The sentence he passed was found to be just.”
I felt my heart hammering, as if I’d been running for my life.
“However,” she said, “we also found that with the change of circumstances in the Guild he neglected to amend those judgments. His lordship’s reluctance to allow any refinement or amendment to his judgments denotes an [something] that may have be too rigid.”
His Lordship didn’t flinch. He didn’t react at all.
“His estimation of the Outsider’s influence upon society we found to be quite plausible and a strong statement in support of his argument: there is indeed a great deal of potential for disruption. But we had to balance that with the constable’s [deposition] and indeed, if the potential for disruption is unknown, then so is the potential for positive change. This Guild’s [something] for existence is to preserve the greater peace, but we also have the responsibility to preserve the lives and well-being of our charges. Deliberately removing an asset that facilitates this was not – we considered - a sound move.
“In summation: we’ve found against Lord ah Richtkah’s decree. His decision, while lacking any evidence of deliberate ill-intents, does carry scents of short-sightedness, inflexibility and misjudgment. Preliminary investigation suggests that at this time succession is required. With the backing of Guilds in Shattered Water, Open Fields, Stone trees, Red leaves, Shaesarchen, Long Trail Back and Broken Sun, Ah Charis has been nominated.”
She shuffled papers, laying another sheaf on top of the pile in front of her. There followed a list of names and places, rattled off without any consideration for my ability with their language: Guilds in support, Guilds in opposition, individuals, sponsors and other groups that meant nothing to me. I listened to all the names running together into a meaningless alien blur until she stopped and leaned forward. If she wasn’t speaking directly to me, she was looking at me.