~ IAN ~
No man had ever been as angry as Mark Bradshaw was today. He’d arrived for the session red-faced, with rims of even brighter scarlet around his eyes. Tearmarks. Bradshaw had been absent for the past week, alone to his grief.
He was never going to miss this day. The agenda was dominated by the events at the church. Justice for Molly Bradshaw, imprisonment for Lightness Skerrett, criticism for the Lord Constable’s handling of the riots that broken out in the aftermath. Master Dombric had arrived with a black eye and two missing teeth, having become embroiled in a brawl. His wife’s leg had been broken, apparently, and things had escalated from there.
The Hookbill, in his usual position chairing proceedings, opened the meeting with a few perfunctory comments before handing over to Bradshaw, who by then was practically glowing.
He’d not stopped talking since. An hour had passed already, and Ian was starting to get restless. He was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one.
“It’s not right that this can happen,” Bradshaw was saying. “It’s an embarrassment. It’s a disgrace. How many soldiers were there? How many members of this council? The witnesses were in their hundreds. And—” He hesitated briefly. His hands were balled into quivering fists. “And my little girl is dead. My little fréa. How is that fair?” For a while his words hung in the air, unchallenged. The silence was absolute. And then, at last, Bradshaw sat down.
“We didn’t know this would happen,” said Chris, rising to talk. It was his first appearance since Caroline’s death, and he’d been sat solemn and silent in his seat. “Nobody would have allowed the ceremony to go ahead if we’d known.”
“We should have known.” Oliver Wrack shouted across from his seat.
“And how can we know what a madman will do?” Chris replied.
“No.” Wrack shook his head slowly, pointedly. “No, we don’t get to excuse ourselves. The ceremony is well-documented, every action, in sources we have here.” He slid a heavy-set leather tome across the table before him. It came to a halt in front of Doug Stockton, who picked it up. “This book is explicit about the Cleansing and what it entails,” Wrack continued. “If any one of us had thought to read this, we’d have known what Skerrett planned. We took him at his word. We didn’t do the research. The blame is on our shoulders equally.”
At once, Bradshaw was back to his feet. “You take that back. Retract it. My daughter is dead. I will not take the blame for that.”
“It’s the truth. We’re all guilty, by our failure to see if not by our actions.” Wrack was resolute.
Master Holden was next to raise a hand. When the Hookbill noticed him, he stood. “Perhaps we do indeed share the blame, in a technical sense.” (“Not all of us,” yelled Bradshaw.) “But it’s clear to me that for some the blame is more than for others. The Governor, for instance. Was it not the Governor who brought Skerrett’s demands before the council? Was it not the Governor who argued the case for this ceremony to be legitimised? And was it not the Governor who vouched personally for the character of this Lightness Skerrett?”
“Ask the Governor where he was,” Bradshaw interjected.
“You can ask him yourself,” said Holden. “The fact is he wasn’t there. A tragedy has taken place at a ceremony the Governor specifically argued for, and he didn’t show up. He left it to his deputy—who, by the way, is far from blameless here.”
Ian had wondered when his name would be brought up. The fact was that he had been duped. Skerrett was more skilled and duplicitous than he’d imagined, and he’d been caught hook, line and sinker. To a certain extent, the buck stopped with him.
Chris had stood again, and was trying to argue his defence. “I was absent, yes,” he said. “And perhaps that was wrong. But am I not entitled to my bereavement, as Master Bradshaw is?”
“Why did you foist this ceremony to us? You met with Lightness Skerrett personally, did you not?” Holden, apparently, had briefly practiced law before he answered the call of the Unity. Here, it showed, as he peppered Chris with questions.
Chris nodded. “I met Lightness Skerrett. He gave me no reason to think anything bad might happen.”
“Then are you really fit to be the Governor? Is it not a prerequisite for the role that you are a good judge of character?”
Chris shook his head. “Like I said, Skerrett gave me no reason to distrust him. I can’t see the future, and nor should I be expected to.”
“Your wife can,” said Bradshaw. “Or could, I suppose. She isn’t seeing much anymore. When you have access to a Foresleeper, would it not make sense to utilise that?”
Chris had paled at the mention of Caro. Ian rose with blood rushing to his head. “Caroline was not a Foresleeper. Don’t slander her memory.”
“That Caroline Ballard was in possession of the dreams of foresight is not in question,” said the Hookbill. “She admitted as much to me on more than one occasion. But she was in the hospital, grievously ill, before the Governor ever met with Lightness Skerrett.”
Caro’s replacement was a stocky blonde, Emmeline Maynard. Today was her first time sitting at the council, and up until now she’d been quiet. For the first time, she spoke. “The hospital was on lockdown,” she said. “Doctor Caerlin gave the order. There were armed guards at every entrance, night and day, to keep people out.”
“And that could be bypassed, by somebody with sufficient clearances,” said Doug Stockton. “I myself entered the hospital during its lockdown, with some of my scientists. The Governor visited his wife on at least two occasions.”
Ian coughed loudly to make himself known. “I visited Caroline as well,” he said. “But I don’t believe the Governor ever went to the hospital after the doors were locked.”
“Doctor Caerlin made no mention of the Governor having visited to me,” said Stockton.
Arthur Mannion scratched his nose. “Do not forget that quarantine procedures were in place. The Governor would have been absent for several days had he visited his wife, yet—Master Dombric will correct me if I’m wrong here—I don’t believe the Governor missed a single session of council until after poor Caroline died.”
“He did not,” Dombric confirmed.
Oliver Wrack tutted loudly. “I hardly see the point of this. Was Caroline Ballard a Foresleeper? Could she have been visited by her husband? It’s neither here nor there. The Foresleeper cannot look into the future at will. His sight comes at random, often in the form of dreams. There’s no reason to think Caroline ever saw a thing connected to the church. And this debate will not bring justice to Molly Bradshaw.”
Bradshaw stood. “Master Wrack is right. I’m not... I wasn’t the biggest fan of Caroline Ballard. I make no bones about that. But she isn’t on trial here. I shouldn’t have brought her into this. I apologise, Governor.” He looked at Chris, waiting on a response.
Soon, every eye was looking to Chris, who said nothing. Instead he was sitting with eyes narrowed to slits, glaring at Bradshaw. “We’ll move past this,” he said, at last. “The real issue here is Lightness Skerrett. He’s the only person who’s committed a crime.”
“He hasn’t, though,” said Ben Holden. “What happened in that church was a vile act. A cowardly act. But by the letter of the law it wasn’t a crime. Our votes specifically allowed his ceremony to take place. I don’t see how he can be brought to justice for it.”
“He will be,” said Bradshaw. “If we can’t pin murder on him, I’ll send some soldiers up to his little church.”
Chris rose. “That would do you little good, General. Lightness Skerrett is in custody for his own safety, until such a time as we decide what to do with him. Since you’ve decided to bandy about vigilante killings as an option, he’s probably better remaining there.”
Bradshaw sniffed. “You mustn’t take any threats I make seriously, Governor. Anything I say is out of grief.”
Edward Ruddingshaw was sat quietly in the corner, Ian noticed, and shaking his head. Nobody else seemed to have spotted. “Master Ruddingshaw,” he interjected, cutting Chris off mid-sentence. “What’s your take?”
Ruddingshaw was far and away the oldest member of the council. Grizzled and grey, he was a distinguished veteran before any of the others had been born. It wasn’t often that he had something to say, but when he did, it was usually worth hearing. “Thank-you, Master Fitzhenry. It’s nice to know that somebody is still cognizant of the older generation among us. I must say, the preoccupation with the word of law is concerning. Laws are not infallible texts.”
“You’re wrong, Ed,” Holden shouted.
“You spent two years as a paralegal, Master Holden” Ruddingshaw replied. “I served for twelve years on the Commissionary Judicial Council. It behoves you to listen to what I have to say.”
The Hookbill spoke up, actually doing his job as mediator for a change. “Master Ruddingshaw has the right to be heard,” he confirmed.
Ruddingshaw nodded. “I remember a case concerning a man who, while walking his dogs, saw a woman aflame in the grounds of a Unity facility. Being a good citizen, he jumped the fence and put her out. Were it not for his actions, the woman would have undoubtedly died. Thanks to him, she was saved, and went on to live a long and happy life. By all good moral codes, he did nothing wrong. Indeed, he should be commended for what he did.
“But in Vascelia, where this took place, there were laws in place prohibiting the act of trespassing on Unity property. There were also laws in place prohibiting unwanted sexual contact. While putting out the flames, this man happened to place his hand across the woman’s breast. By the word of the law, he had committed two crimes. That’s a decade of hard time in an open-air cell. I ask you, what kind of person would arrest him for these crimes?”
There was silence for a few seconds. Stockton was the first to speak up. “You’d have to be mad to lock a man up for that.”
“He did the right thing,” said Dombric. “Why should he be sent to jail?”
“If he was found guilty, he would have faced worse than jail,” said Ruddingshaw. “There have been some barbarous punishments on the statute books in the past. Human beings excel at hurting those they feel have done wrong. But the man was not sentenced. The Council, myself included, judged that—while technically he may have broken them—he acted in the spirit of the laws. He was acquitted.”
“What point are you making?” Holden yelled.
“The same applies in reverse. Lightness Skerrett might not have violated any of our laws as they are written, but it’s hard to argue that he went contrary to the spirit of the law. The fact is that he repeatedly stabbed an unarmed woman—a girl, really—who had made no transgression against him or anybody else. Murder, in other words.”
The word whipped everybody up into a state of excitement. The Hookbill raised his hand in a call for silence, but nobody heeded it.
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Oliver Wrack stood and spoke over the crowd. “Master Ruddingshaw is right, of course. I would even go so far as to call it a religiously-motivated murder. Funny, they have been few and far between in the last several centuries. Our laws on the subject are in need of some updating.”
“What laws?” Bradshaw snarled.
“When the Unity was founded, it inherited the laws of Belaboras in full. Obviously, a good deal has changed since then—lots of things have been added, or repealed. But the framework is the same.”
“Tell us something we don’t already know,” said Bradshaw. He had a point, Ian conceded. There were plenty of people even on the Essegena mission who wouldn’t be familiar with the Unity’s legal history even in its broader strokes, but these people were unlikely to be found in the ranks of the Foundational Council. Nothing Wrack had said yet was new.
Wrack, for his part, nodded. “The Punishment of Heretics act has never been repealed,” he said. “That dates back two thousand years. In all that time, it’s only been relevant once, and the Cook’s Hold incident angered people enough that they were happy to follow precedent.” At the mention of Cook’s Hold, the Hookbill gripped the arm of his chair, so tightly his knuckles turned white.
Bradshaw bashed his fist on the table. “Get to the point.”
“I will. Don’t worry.” Wrack looked directly at Chris. “Governor, far be it from me to undermine your role as arbiter of justice, but in this instance our decision should be clear. The Punishment of Heretics act mandates that any person found guilty of an unjustified killing, with religious motivation, should be executed—” He was drowned out by cheers of approval from Bradshaw. Wrack glanced at the Hookbill, who shouted Bradshaw to silence. “As I was saying,” Wrack continued, when quiet was restored, “any person found guilty should be executed by burning. It’s written into law.”
There was quiet for a time when he was finished. People, no doubt, were processing this new information. For his part, Ian was dubious. Lightness Skerrett deserved punishment, there was no doubt about that. And the fitting punishment was probably death. After all, he had been rather savage in the way he executed Molly Bradshaw, and Molly was just a child. But burning struck Ian as an extreme option. They always said it hurt to burn. Much more than it hurt to drown, they said—the most unimaginable agony, until the nerves were melted away.
It couldn’t happen. Nobody would go for it. How could they?
“Let him burn,” said Bradshaw. “Nobody forced him to hurt my Molly. That was his choice. He can burn for it.”
Holden brought up the chant. “Let him burn!”
“That isn’t right,” said Ian. “Are we no more than our ancestors? We’re supposed to be better. If he must die, then do it with kindness.”
“The kindness he showed my Molly?” Bradshaw’s face had never been so red.
“Somebody has to face justice,” said Dombric, his face hard. “If not Skerrett than perhaps it should be you.”
“Governor, what say you?” Bradshaw leaned across the table to get a better view of Chris. “Should Lightness Skerrett burn?”
Ian turned, in unison with everybody else, to face Chris. The Governor paused, breathed in, and nodded. “If that’s the will of the council. Lightness Skerrett will go to the flames.”
In a rare scene, Bradshaw actually applauded Chris. “I didn’t think you had it in you, but that was the right call, Governor. My Molly will be avenged.”
Ian looked around. Half the council looked disquieted. Ruddingshaw, Mannion, Stockton—all had uncertain looks on their faces. The Hookbill seemed lost in a daze. Wrack was staring off into the distance as though he regretted bringing the law up in the first place. It was too late. The mob had spoken.
And the worst part was, it wasn’t even a mob. It was only three people.
The anger of three people had brought savagery to Essegena.
He stood automatically, a passenger in his own body. “If that matter’s decided,” he heard himself say, “I’d like to tender my resignation. I won’t see anybody burned, and I won’t be part of a government that condones it.” He fixed Bradshaw with his most angered stare. “You’re a monster, General, if this is what you want. Vengeance isn’t going to bring your daughter back, no matter how much you turn up the heat. The dead don’t stop being dead when the killer is sufficiently punished. I’m out.”
Only after he’d left the council chamber did he process his own words.
Then he chuckled.
For the rest of the day, he wandered, lost in thought. Briefly he spoke with Millie. He’d have stayed longer, but Mary Snyder needed her to work—and anyway, seeing Ian made her think of what had happened, and that made her sad. So he left Millie, and went off alone. He sat for a time by the edge of the Clearwater, cooling his feet in the river. Dani wasn’t with him today. For so long he’d wished for her to leave, but now he wanted her ghost back. It might serve as a welcome distraction. But day faded into evening, and Dani never appeared. Nobody did, dead or otherwise.
Ian stood with the setting sun, his mind still numb, and let his feet carry him where they wanted him to go. Yellowing as it entered the waning phase, the beige moon mocked Ian from up high. The streets were quiet tonight. They had been ever since the incident. Those small handfuls of people who felt like going out and about were congregating in the Tavern, or on the plaza, or else they walked in silence. It meant that Ian was able to get very easily to the Lord Constable’s Tower.
A bearded man with a sergeant’s patch on his kepi stood at the tower doorway to greet Ian. “Fitzhenry. The Governor said you’d be along. With me.”
Instead of going into the tower, the sergeant led Ian around the back. Behind the tower, a set of shallow steps had been cut into the ground, marbled and lined by seedling trees. Below them there was something of a garden. It was a little grove, walled by trees that reached to the sky and joined their canopies together to block off the sky. Paper lanterns hung from the trees mitigated the problem of darkness. From their light, everything was cast in a warm glow.
At the centre of the grotto, the lanterns were reflected in the stagnant greens of a small pool, verged with whitewashed rocks. A huge willow tree rose above the pool. The tree was the very heart of the grove; its canopy reached and enveloped all of the others.
The man sat watching his own image in the pool was none other than David, smartly dressed in a pressed uniform. He gave Ian a cursory glance before returning his attention to the water.
“Evening, David,” said Ian, as he passed.
David didn’t turn back to Ian. “You’ve been causing Chris some trouble, I hear. There was supposed to be a pact, Ian.” There was never a formal pact, not that Ian recalled. Years of friendship had woven some strong bonds, and with them came the unspoken agreement to support each other, but Ian had never signed anything. Nor had he meant to undermine Chris. He’d only spoken out for the sake of his conscience. That was what he had to do.
He didn’t reply to David.
Chris was to be found further on, along a winding trail through these trees that climbed and declined and meandered left and right before coming to a halt at a flat clearing. Here, looking out over a deep drop at the distant waterfall of the Clearwater, Chris stood.
“Master Fitzhenry to see you, sir,” said the sergeant.
Chris turned with a smile on his face. “Ian. I didn’t think you’d be a long time coming. Have you come to beg for your position back? It’s not too late, you know. I’ve not accepted your resignation yet.”
That wasn’t why Ian had come. After the meeting he’d gone to see Millie, to console her. Molly’s death had hit her hard. It wasn’t difficult to see why. Millie didn’t associate with anybody else. Ian aside, the life of Millie Farmer was made up of sewing for Mary Snyder and the occasional chat with Molly. Take her first and only friend away and Millie was bound to feel empty.
But Millie hadn’t cried. She’d sat sombre on her bed, her head rested in Ian’s chest, and she’d whistled an elegy.
“They say the Lightness will die for this,” she said. “Mistress Snyder reckons he’s to be burnt alive.”
“Does she?” News seemed to travel faster than Ian could walk.
Millie turned to Ian with saucers for eyes. “I told her she must have got it wrong. The Council are good people, I said. Good people wouldn’t condemn somebody like this. Would they?”
Ian sighed. “I wish you were right,” he said. “But I can’t say you are. Mistress Snyder had it correct. The Council voted to execute Lightness Skerrett, and he’ll burn a week from tomorrow. They’ve already chosen a site to erect the stake.”
“No, Ian, that isn’t right. Can’t you make them stop?”
“I’ve already resigned from the Council,” he told her. “One voice isn’t enough to rail against the majority. There’s nothing more I can do.”
She’d been so plaintive when she looked at them then, begging him to put a stop to it. “The Governor’s your friend. Can’t you talk to him?”
And here he was. “I won’t be sitting on the Council again,” he said. “I wonder if we could talk about today.”
Chris gestured towards a wooden bench in the midst of this raised clearing, one that overlooked the stars and the cliffs. “Sit,” he said. “I had this garden built for Caroline. She always did like her alone time, and I thought this would give her that time. It was meant to be a surprise. You know, next month it will be fifteen years since we were married. This was going to be my gift to her. Alas.”
“She’d have liked it here,” Ian murmured.
“I’ve been coming here a lot,” Chris continued. “To think. It’s easy to imagine her with me.” He pointed at a bed of flame-red flowers that grew in the wake of tall trees. “Look, starfire. It was always her favourite. I had a whole field of them picked from the hills behind her old house in Borrowood. I hoped it would be somewhere to make her think of home.”
“Caroline wouldn’t have stood for this,” said Ian. “Chris, how can you let Skerrett burn? I know it’s in the laws, but damn the laws. Wasn’t the whole point of the Borrowood Dynasty to get away from what the Unity says?”
“The Borrowood Dynasty was a childish dream,” Chris snapped. “This is real life. The Council has spoken—Skerrett will die.”
“You’re the Governor,” said Ian. “You’re in charge.”
“I’m not all-powerful. I’m not a god, I’m not a king. Dammit, Ian, I can only do so much.” Chris sat on the bench, beside Ian. “Why did you send me to speak to Skerrett? Things were fine before. Now Bradshaw’s baying for blood, half the valley wants to lynch the other half. Half the Constabulary’s camped outside the church to make sure those zealots don’t get shanked while they sleep. How do you thing I should fix this? Show me the easy answer.”
Ian was silent.
“At least this puts a line under things. Skerrett dies and the matter ends.”
Ian shook his head. “But he doesn’t need to burn.”
“It’s the letter of the law. If I stick with what’s written in statute, we can proceed and get the whole thing behind us. The moment we start making amendments, the whole thing comes up for debate. Bradshaw will fight for his vengeance. It’ll drag on for months and the tensions won’t stop in the meantime. Essegena won’t move on until the matter’s settled, and the colony’s not strong enough to withstand so much division.”
Ian sighed. How could this grove be so peaceful? It didn’t seem fair, when so much was going wrong outside. Even being here felt like a lie. He looked at the starfire, blazing so brightly in the golden glint of the sun. “Don’t let him burn, Chris. For Caroline’s sake.”
“Are you sure you won’t come back? I could use your voice to back me up.” Chris looked hopefully to Ian.
But he hadn’t come here to about-face. “I resigned. I stand by it. I’ll never sit on the Council again.”
“You’ll be missed.” Chris laughed, more a snigger. “Say, Bradshaw won’t be able to complain about nepotism anymore.”
“He’ll find something else to complain about,” said Ian.
“He’s like a curse. Look, I wonder if you’d consider rescinding your resignation. Not to sit on the Council—you’ve made your views clear. But somebody needs to go to the Hive to do the link-up. It’ll be half a year there, probably a few months more while they tinker with everything. By the time you get back to Essegena, there’ll have been elections. Your position will be filled, and you can retire with some grace.” Chris patted Ian on the shoulder. “What do you say? One more favour, for a mate?”
The Hive. Now that would be a sight to see. It was the largest space station in the breadth of space—larger, some said, than half of the planets in the Unity. Without the Hive, there would be no Unity. The vast reaches of space were too huge for that. It was only through the complex technologies of the matter transporters that all the disparate systems could be kept together. Ian would be sent off in a sublight vessel, laden with files of obscure data that the boffins on the Hive would plug into their systems. And then, like magic, Essegena would be joined to the nexus.
Joined to the Unity.
“One more favour,” Ian repeated, mulling it over. “I ought to tell you where to stick it.”
“But you won’t.”
Ian shook his head. “No. I’ll go. But not until Caro’s at rest. I need to say goodbye.”
“There’s no rush,” said Chris. “Take as long as you need. Oh, but I almost forgot. There’s going to be a second contingent coming to Essegena, once we’re linked with the Hive. Before we left Belaboras I asked that Elise be among them. She’ll be coming to Essegena too.”
“Elise? My wife?” Ian rubbed his ear—perhaps he’d heard Chris wrong.
“I don’t know of any other Elise. Do you?”
Ian shook his head. “Chris, you had no right to do that.”
“She’s your wife, Ian,” said Chris. “She needs to be here with you. That’s the least she deserves.”
“This isn’t her place. I have a new life here, a new start. There’s no room for her.”
Chris was stern. “Then make room. You swore a vow, Ian, and you should uphold it.”
“You’ve done this to spite me,” said Ian. “You don’t like that I quit the Council.”
“Don’t you remember our dreams? The Borrowood Dynasty is falling apart. I need Elise. I need her here.” Chris had turned cold.
Ian breathed in the poisonous vibes. “I understand. You have her, Chris. Stick her on the Council, do whatever you need to do to get her to vote your way.” He stood, a hand clasped around the bright starfires. An umbel of them broke free with his pull. “I’ll go to the Hive, but I’ll not be returning. I’ll go to Arvila or somewhere—back home to Borrowood, maybe. Anywhere but here.” He pushed past Chris, who only stood and watched.
He didn’t let on that he was shaking as he went.
“You were always the best at running away,” Chris shouted after him. “How far are you going to run, Ian? The Gods will judge you in the end, same as the rest of us.”