“Then why all the effort on our behalf?”
He hadn’t really expected an answer, but this was a day of surprises, though not all pleasant ones.
“Marthe,” said the lawyer in a dispassionate voice quite at odds with his words, “is one of the true heroines of the war. I owe her too much to stand aside and let her present treatment continue. You, however, I would be very happy to see in the dock.”
“Which won’t happen. Sorry to disappoint you.”
The lawyer shrugged, but there was a tense set to his mouth. “Did you know that I also lost a brother in the holding action? He was in the same squad as Bendin asn Castre. My father died in the mines. I nearly lost my wife there, too. In childbirth. Marthe saved her and the baby and smuggled us all out to a safer location. No, Terran, I would be only too happy to see you pay for your crimes; but I would lay down my life for Marthe.”
The evenness of the man’s tone didn’t fool Hamon. The man meant every word he said and was hating having to talk to him, but tonight Hamon needed answers. “If you still feel like that after having met me, then why do you think my appearance at the trial will help Marthe? I would have thought you’d rather have me tossed off this planet and out of her life.”
“Don’t tempt me. Unfortunately, I remember too well how she suffered during your recent estrangement. No, you will attend her trial, and testify. If for nothing else, so that you can learn just what kind of woman you married—and how much it has cost her,” Yurin an Begum added bitterly. He left soon after. Before departing, he handed a disc to Hamon.
“Watch this later … all of it.” He spoke quietly so that Marthe couldn’t hear. “Technically, we’ll win this case, but that’s all she’ll win. It won’t make any real difference.”
Puzzled, Hamon watched him leave then activated his screen and settled back to view the disc. He nearly snapped it off as he realized what it was—a newscast of the Heroes of the Resistance being granted the highest honor on Hathe, the Medal of Valor. He was even more disgusted to see des Trurain amongst the small coterie. It had obviously been an important public ceremony, judging by the number of uniformed VIPs and the large crowd applauding at the end. He was about to switch the nauseating thing off, when he noticed there was more. It was an amateur recording, set in a small, private room containing what looked to be the senior members of the Hathian Council and a few military leaders. Including, he saw, the resistance field commander, Gof deln Crantz and, yet again, the accursed des Trurain. Then he noticed Marthe.
This, too, was an award ceremony, but what a contrast to the previous occasion. Although the personnel attending were as high ranking, this one was private, almost secretive—no crowd, no public acclamation. It was, he soon saw, to honor Marthe. She, too, was the recipient of the Medal of Valor, with bar—the only resistance fighter to be so honored, said the proclamation. He watched as she came forward. It was during the last weeks of her pregnancy, her face drawn and her steps slow. The respect and esteem of these, her erstwhile colleagues, were obvious. He listened to the citation:
‘For continuous and unremitting service, in the face of danger, persecution and extreme hardship, to the people and culture of this planet’
and, at the end, a barely audible apology from the chairman that she could not have been publicly honored alongside her fellow recipients, due to the ‘delicate legal position’ she at present occupied, and the regretfully expressed hope that one day her people would accord her the position in history owed to her. The tone of the speaker was not optimistic, and Hamon recognized the bitterly amused cynicism on his love’s face.
The recording finished then, but he stayed seated a long time, staring at the screen. He was still there when Marthe returned. To her query, he switched on the disc. At the end, he said in a bitter, sad voice, “Congratulations. You never told me.”
“You always knew what our love cost me,” she replied to his unspoken thought. “As I always knew what it cost you.”
“We’re so alike, you and I. It’s ironic that we ended up on opposing sides.”
“Don’t you dare say ‘if only’,” she warned. “Just love me.”
“Always.” His arms reached out for her, his mouth blindly seeking the harbor of her lips then slowly exploring her warm body, as gently, then increasingly urgently, they renewed the binding promise between them.
The following days fled by. Frighteningly soon, Marthe found herself seated in a courtroom, vainly attempting to ignore the hostile crowd packed into every available seat. These were only those who’d passed the strict security checks needed to get a seat. All over the planet, millions more were watching proceedings via the vid channels—an unusual concession from the pathologically private Hathian justice system in response to the high level of public interest. The dictates of diplomacy may have denied the people their revenge, but here at least their anger could be vented against one who had broken that oldest of tribal edicts: thou shalt not fall in love with the enemy.
She sat rigid through the first day—inside a secure box and surrounded by the paraphernalia required for her safety—as the prosecution began its damning indictment. She couldn’t even rely on the comfort of Hamon’s presence. It would have been too inflammatory, a security nightmare. Instead, she drew on every last nanogram of the training she’d so hardily acquired over the previous five years, striving endlessly for the freedom of those who now vilified her. Would she have changed anything, even knowing it would end like this? No, her heart said. Hathian culture was too precious, had too much to offer. This time was but a painful hiatus; her wonderful world would be reborn.
The prosecution built its case slowly. The first witnesses barely knew her—operatives who’d worked in various, menial positions in and out of the fortress and who gave evidence of seeing Hamon and herself together, happy and affectionate in appearance, as well as of her seeming arrogance towards the peasants. Such tales were easily dismissed by Yurin as the expected behavior of an agent playing a part, but the suspicions planted could not be wholly eradicated—particularly as the affection was known to be all too real.
Witness followed witness. Gradually, the noose tightened, now pulling in ever closer friends and colleagues. There had been so many near misses and unavoidable slips over the years, all now recalled in damning isolation. Many gave her a half-embarrassed smile before entering the witness stand. Her cousin Griffith, she was touched to hear, protested that requiring a close relative of the accused to give evidence was highly irregular and demanded that he be recorded as a hostile witness. Never had she thought to find herself grateful for his pompous sense of integrity.
He wasn’t alone but, despite the obvious reluctance of many of her supporters to give evidence, the case against her strengthened inexorably. She knew she had let slip the odd comment during her captivity, harmless enough in themselves but informative gems to a suspicious Hamon. It had always been a tradeoff between what the Terrans must learn from her and what she learned from them. Her superiors knew that, and understood it, but whether they could convey this to the jury was increasingly doubtful.
Now it was the turn of Gof deln Crantz. Truly the professional, as always, his smooth, erudite tones never hinted that this was other than a routine analysis of an operative’s performance.
“Initially you lost contact with Agent an Castre for how long?” asked Prosecutor an Koth.
“Day one to day four of her incarceration.”
“During which time the Terrans seized a number of our agents and took away their communitabs?”
“Yes.”
“An inconvenience, surely?”
“Not really. We had anticipated something similar happening if ever an agent should be discovered. The appropriate plan was put into action and only a few, specified agents were seized.”
“But you did lose the services of some of our people. They were, in fact, imprisoned and interrogated?”
“Only those we expected to lose. If none had been found, it would
have appeared too suspicious.”
The minute analysis continued.
“You had worked closely with the accused throughout the period of the occupation?”
“No. Only on this mission, and as an indirect liaison on other missions.”
“Yet you were, at the time, the area commander of the desert sector,” the prosecutor pointed out.
“Yes, but Madame an Castre had, until then, acted independently of the regional commanders, being one of an elite group of agents answerable directly to the Council. She and des Trurain were called in specifically for this mission. None of the local agents could match the breadth of their experience, and we needed agents able to recognize the subtle changes that would indicate the Terrans were beginning to suspect us.”
An annoyed twitch marred the straight line of the prosecutor’s mouth and he quickly turned the talk away from this inconvenient hint of praise for the accused.
“She was under your control at the time in question, though?”
“Only to a limited extent,” replied an unruffled deln Crantz. “Agents of the caliber of an Castre and des Trurain generally worked free of specific direction, as they needed to be able to change their approach depending on circumstances, and often with little time available to make a decision. All they had from me was the required end point, not how to get there. I had quite enough to do already without wasting time drawing up detailed battle plans for agents who knew how to do their own jobs rather better than I.”
“How could you know of the accused's expertise, if you had never worked with her before?” shot back the unfortunately rather persistent prosecutor.
“Not directly, as I said. However, on numerous occasions my officers had benefited from the results of Madame an Castre’s expertise, and I was a member of the selection panel involved in her initial recruitment. Also, like all the other regional commanders, I kept an eye on the career of the independents. It helped to know when an outsider could do the job better than one of your own, and which one to use. In this case, we needed an ability to analyze both technical and social data, plus we wanted an in-depth assessment of certain key Terran personnel who were causing us concern. The combination of des Trurain, with a background in history, and an Castre, with the human experience of a physician, seemed ideal.”
“So you requested their postings personally?”
“You might say that,” replied deln Crantz dryly.
“How would you put it then?”
“I merely suggested that they would be the most appropriate people for the job. I was, however, aware that there were a number of other requests for their services. Fortunately, the Council was also seriously concerned with the activities of some of the Terran officers. In particular, the persistent attempts of their security agents to penetrate our so-called peasant society. At the time, success was still far from certain. If the Terrans had once gained proof of our existence, they could have destroyed everything.”
“Which would make any discovery of Hathian agents spying on the Terrans very dangerous, surely?” exclaimed the prosecutor, unable to resist a triumphant smirk.
“Every mission included that risk and our agents had been trained accordingly. They knew that in such a situation they would have to take action based on their own reading of the circumstances. The mission in question held a particularly high risk of this. It was why Agent an Castre was pulled off maid’s duties when Major Radcliff’s attentions became personal.”
“Unsuccessfully, as it happened. Due, I understand, to the accused’s own carelessness with her disguise?”
“Her hair, you mean?” said deln Crantz, having assumed the wearied impatience of one lecturing a troublesome junior. “Agent an Castre had not dulled and braided her hair for most of her service period. She was quite good enough to allow the odd quirk, and it had certainly never been a problem before.”
“Except that this time it led to her discovery and worse, recognition, with all the complications that ensued.”
“Unfortunately, our data base on Terran personnel was incomplete.” Deln Crantz’ voice made it clear what he thought of that failure. “No one in Planning knew that the Major had once, briefly, met the family of Councilor an Castre, let alone that he had cause to remember them. Our ignorance of such detail was one of the main reasons we chose to send in operatives of the caliber of des Trurain and an Castre. However, there is always the risk of an unfortunate coincidence in this line of work, and in this case it happened,” finished deln Crantz, eyeing the prosecutor sternly.
“An unfortunate coincidence?” scoffed an Koth.
“Yes,” was the final, composed reply.
Marthe smiled to herself, grateful for the unsought loyalty of the small but charismatic figure in the witness box. Admittedly, much of what he said could be used against her, but she hoped that the jury would still remember his cool, non-partisan approval of her actions. In this post-occupation world, he was one of the new heroes, proclaimed as a man of wisdom and courage. Surely they would listen to him, she hoped, suddenly weary and decidedly thankful to see the clerk, bringing her a message. It was from Ruthie to say that, trial or no trial, Riardan would like a feed—now, thank you very much. With a feeling of escape, she slipped out quietly to the small, side room set aside for her to suckle her voracious offspring.
Here she could, if she wished, continue to follow the trial by vidscreen. More and more, though, she found herself switching it off, a welcome respite from the endless barrage of the rights and wrongs of her actions. Stars above, even she was beginning to question her guilt. War was such a crazy time and her contribution so chaotical that the line between good luck and good management had always been decidedly fuzzy. And never more than now, she sighed, drifting off instead to thoughts of arriving home and feeling Hamon’s arms around her again.
Forgetting the trial all too readily, she consciously brought his face to mind: his hair, curling strongly into the nape of his neck and springing to life under her fingers; the straight mouth and the special smile that would suddenly lift it; clearest of all images, his eyes, with their ever shifting, green and brown patterns of true hazel. From the cold hardness of emerald to the gentle brown of shared love.
Anger still lurked—at circumstance, at the choices they must yet face—but under the anger was the love they had discovered in that most unlikely of times. Love that could not be denied and without which neither could be whole. He had come home.
For an instant, she felt truly blessed, gazing upon the now contented face of little Riardan. Then the voice of Ruthie broke into her solitude. She gave a quiet sigh, before rising to place the sleeping baby back in his crib and return to the bitter ashes of the courtroom.
Two more interminable days were taken up by the prosecution vilifying and questioning all her actions until her head rang. Hamon was to be the last of the prosecution’s witnesses—left, in a special departure allowed by the judge, until the end of the trial. ‘For security reasons’, they were told, but Marthe could just see the triumphant grin of an Koth at managing to pull off such a spectacular finale.
Each night, she would return to the an Castre villa weary and dispirited, to fall into Hamon’s arms. Here alone she could let down the proud shield she showed the world.
Tonight was different. Tomorrow, the defense would start to put her case and, Mathe help her, she was so looking forward to seeing the unctuous smile wiped off the face of Prosecutor an Koth.
“Let him be the one having to wriggle out of a sticky corner,” she crowed to Hamon and Yurin, who had joined her in a mid-trial celebration.
“You’re not supposed to be quite so pleased at the prospect, young lady,” adjured the mock-stern voice of her legal counsel. “This trial is meant to be a considered legal analysis of the appropriateness of your actions during the recent conflict, not a personal feud between them and us.”
“‘Considered legal analysis’, my eye,” was her quick retort. “He’s a weasely little clodpole who was
safely ensconced in some bureaucratic bolt hole throughout the occupation, and now thinks to cover himself in belated glory by bringing down someone who took real risks. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes, but don’t go around saying it outside this room,” Yurin grinned back, unabashed by her volatile temper.
Hamon laughed and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “What a spitfire.”
“Well, I knew Yurin would agree with me. He, at least, was actively involved in the resistance, not skulking away somewhere. “
“Someone had to ‘skulk away’, if you wonder-type heroes were to have any backup,” Yurin reminded her, jabbing a finger playfully in her direction.
“All very well, but there’s a difference between serving in support staff because that’s what you were best suited to or had family commitments and making flaming sure to be assigned there, well out of the way of any danger.”
“Particularly if you’re then to have the gall to point the finger at those who were in danger,” growled Hamon, sharing Marthe’s view of the prosecutor wholeheartedly.
“Since you aren’t that fond of Hathians anyway, your opinion doesn’t count,” proclaimed Marthe, grinning and snuggling into his side.
“Don’t know about that. There is the odd one I could bear.” He shot her a quick, intimate smile and his fingers began to tell a secret, slow dance of seduction in the palm of her hand.
But they were not alone. The suddenly serious voice of Yurin broke upon them. “Now that is one thing I don’t understand, Radcliff.” he said. “To put it bluntly, you hate both Hathe and Hathians. Why?”
They were ensconced around a low table in the library of the an Castre villa, Marthe and Hamon relaxing together on the couch, Marthe’s feet tucked under her as she lay contentedly in her husband’s arms. Yurin was sprawled at ease in a nearby chair, his long legs stretching out to the table as he lay back, slowly sipping his wine, then paused to throw a considering glance at Radcliff.
Hamon had heard his question and seen the look, but chose not to answer, gazing instead into the depths of his glass, a half-bitter grimace touching his lips.
Pay the Piper: Hathe Book Two Page 11