Chapter I

“There were judges in the village,” Gerech said, his voice uneven. He was panting, dripping with sweat, and covered in little cuts and bruises from his dash through the forest.

His father’s brush didn’t stop or slow. It moved with its customary methodical intensity. Gerech, even through his panic and fear, knew that his father wouldn’t be rushed.

He waited and did not repeat himself. Even if it didn’t seem so, his father always heard him.

After another minute, the brushstrokes slowed, and then, after a crowning stroke, which wavered at the end with an artistic flourish, they stopped. His father blew lightly on the page, not to dry it, but to announce its completion.

It was difficult to see his father’s face in the candlelight. Gerech couldn’t tell whether or not he was fearful, or even concerned. It would be like him to react with absolutely placid unconcern.

There were judges in the village—judges with gleaming bronze masks and sparkling vials and cold watchful eyes--and they were searching for his father. Gerech had seen them before, singularly, and on other business or just passing through. Never in such numbers, and never bearing the justiciar’s crest.

Their orders were explicit, and they would be dauntless in carrying them out.

“How many?” Gerade asked. His father, rather than being fearful, or concerned, sounded curious. As if it was some academic question, and not a question of their lives.

“I’m not sure. I ran before they could see me. There were at least a dozen horses at the inn though. And there was one...with a silver mask,” Gerech said.

Gerech heard his father hum. Then, with deliberate slowness, his father picked up the long roll of paper that he had been writing on, so long that it covered the length of his desk, and he wrapped it around a hollow wooden tube that had been sitting by the feet of his desk.

Even though he had watched his father write on it, and knew that he had been taught the language that the words were written in, they seemed to blur before his eyes, like they were resisting his attempt to read them. Intentional, no doubt.

The paper was stiff, and Gerech thought it would crack into pieces, but it wrapped around the tube’s length three times. Then, with a hiss, it affixed itself like a hot wax, as if it had been soldered into place. There was no visible seam.

“Take this to the fourth drop spot on the river. Make sure you’re not followed. Cover it well, and don’t go back for it. Once you’re done, go to the Shurr’s house. They will watch over you until I come back.”

“Where are you going?” Gerech asked, almost afraid to hear an answer. It was the finality in his father’s voice that impelled him to ask.

“The judges will detain me, and attempt to extract answers from me,” Gerade said. “They will fail. However, they will not release me until they’ve exhausted every avenue. It may be some time.”

“We can run! They’re not here yet. If we’re quick we can get away. Bede has horses. We can take them and run away,” Gerech said.

“If you believe that we will escape from them now then you’ve wasted my lessons. How many common passive exegeses are there for hunting and tracking?” his father asked, dropping into his tone as a lecturer.

“Four for hunting human or animal, two for specifically tracking suspects or criminals,” Gerech said, speaking calmly and slowly but itching to move, to grab his father’s hand and run before those cold masks came for them.

“And which would be most effective for hunting a suspected, but unconfirmed, fugitive?”

“Leopold’s Solution; it can be prepared on paper or a compass and activated by the addition of any byproduct of the subject. The greater the sympathetic connection, the more precise the tracking.”

“Precisely, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that they have a genuinely capable judge with them. Any silver mask will be more than capable of extemporizing. Given that we don’t have time to comb the house for every stray hair it should be obvious that there isn’t any escape for me here.”

“We could burn the house,” Gerech said. It was a thought made more out of desperation than anything.

His father slapped him. Gerech’s world spun and he toppled backward, hitting the floor. It took him a moment to reorient, and by that time his father was standing, shoving supplies into a pack that was as tall as Gerech’s torso.

“Burning books is a greater evil than burning another person,” Gerade said. “With each passing year, more knowledge is taken from the north. My son will not add to its passing. No, I will be taken, but I will return. They lack sufficient evidence to convict me.”

Tears prickled at the corner’s of Gerech’s eyes. He tried not to cry--his father had never respected tears--but he couldn’t stop them. They trickled down his cheeks in long tracks. For a few seconds, his sniffling was the only sound in the house.

The brass tube was the last item to be placed into the pack. His father treated it reverently, as if it was a sanctified object, and then, with a suddenness that was disorienting, he tied the bag closed and shoved it into Gerech’s arms.

“Take this to the river, then make haste to the Shurr’s house. Do not tarry, and do not return,” his father said.

The bag was too heavy. Gerech’s arms sagged under the weight, and even putting his arms through the straps and hoisting it onto his back didn’t do much to alleviate the strain. From the sound coming from inside the bag as its contents shifted and shuddered, there were at least a dozen books inside, each one thick and bound in rough hide.

His father had never taken to the newly printed books. For some reason, that thought seemed especially sad to him.

Gerech turned back to his father, but found that he was looking away, through the cracks in the shuttered window. He waited for a moment, half-expecting his father to turn back to him and offer more words, some consolation, but as he waited he knew that he was waiting in vain.

His father had given his parting gift, and his last instructions. He was to do as he was told.

The door to the study didn’t make a sound as it closed behind him, in sharp contrast to the front door, which whistled shrilly as he pushed it open and peeked outside.

From there it was only a short dash to the treeline. Gerech didn’t see the distinctive masks of any judges.

He had thought, naively, when he was younger, that his father had picked a secluded cabin because he liked the quiet. It was only as he gradually became aware of the work that his father did that he realized they lived nearly a mile from their closest neighbor because to court closeness was to invite danger.

On another day the dying light that the sun cast over the forest might have seemed charming, like it was something out of a fairy tale. Now all Gerech could see was the nightmare of judges in every nook and cranny, waiting with twisted weapons for him and for the treasures he carried.

The trip to the river normally took less than five minutes from the house. It took Gerech nearly twenty.

Too long, he berated himself, wondering if his father had already been clasped in irons. Was he already being marched down the street, like just another common criminal?

The river, if it could be called that, was hardly a dozen feet wide, but it ran deep. On days with heavy rain the water would rush and churn, potent enough to drag the unwary downstream. It resembled, more than anything else, a deep moat that had been unevenly carved through the land.

Bede liked to tell him about how giants had carved the land so that generations later they would be able to fish from the river and wash their feet. His father liked to tell him that was nonsense.

Where the river met its banks, smooth rocks accumulated in tall piles, tumbling over one another and growing in number after each storm. At the peak of its fury, the river would fling forth stones like a maddened attack, striking anyone foolish enough to stand close.

There were dozens of such cairns all along the river, with nothing to distinguish between one another unless one was exceedingly careful and attentive.

When they were younger, he and Bede had hidden trinkets in the rock piles along the river, testing one another to see how long it took to find them. Bede always won; she was able to hide them so well that even Gerech, who had an obsessive familiarity with the river, couldn’t tell where she had shifted the mounds.

There was a trick to it all, born of years of observation; the river washed up rocks in certain patterns at certain times of the year, and after a certain volume of rainfall. Bede had picked up on it first. That summer, Gerech hadn’t won a single game.

Strangely, his father had encouraged their game. Now Gerech was using it to hide his most treasured possession.

Despite his hurry and borderline panic, Gerech didn’t throw the rocks aside. He forced himself to act like he was playing a game with Bede--a game that he absolutely couldn’t let her win.

Gerech shifted and nudged and prodded the rocks out of his way, making it look like the natural shift of time. Then, once the hole was just large enough, he slid the wooden tube inside, before shifting the pile so that the tube was hidden by a dozen rocks on the sides and on top.

He had no fear that the tube would be crushed. His father’s exegeses would keep it from harm or decay.

At last, Gerech sat back and surveyed his work. His father wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than perfection. Bede would be able to find anything less than perfection.

The silver judge would find anything less than perfection.

The rockpile maintained its casual lumpiness, like it had been brought together by natural forces rather than a pair of human hands, and it was neither taller nor shorter than any of the others nearby. Most importantly, not even a hint of the wooden tube poked through the sides of the rocks.

For whatever reason, when Gerech stood up, his pack felt immeasurably lighter. The books were still there; his pack was still heavy and ungainly. However, now that his task was complete, Gerech felt as if he could stop and take a breath.

Even if he was caught it couldn’t be all that bad, he thought. They might even keep him together with his father.

As long as he had done the task he had been given, his father couldn’t be that upset with him if he was caught. The manuscript, his father’s magnum opus, was safely hidden.

It was only the idea of Bede finding out that he had been taken away that convinced him to maintain his stealth. Gerech took the roundabout way to her house, passing through the forest into the tall fields until the familiar thatched roof of her family’s farmhouse came into view.

Bede was sitting on the front porch, staring out toward the town. Nothing was visible through the trees, but Gerech could tell that there was an unusual hush in the air--the town didn’t have any of the usual shouts, or wagons rumbling, or animals bleating. It was as if its vivacity had been stolen away.

Gerech let the squeaky board on the third stair announce his arrival. Bede whirled to face him.

“You’re ok!” she cried, jumping up and rushing over to him.

“Of course I’m ok,” Gerech said, trying not to show how pleased he was by Bede’s concern, or the way she threw her arms around him.

“Papa came home from work early today,” Bede said. “He told us that there were judges in town. He said that they’re looking for someone, and that they brought some terrible machine.”

He could read her too well. Her expression told him everything. She knew who they were there for. She had been worried for that very reason.

“Did he...did your dad, say anything about me?” Gerech asked.

It was the only polite way of asking the question that he could think of. Was he allowed to be there?

He wouldn’t blame them if they wanted to send him away. He didn’t want to be a danger to Bede.

“Don’t be an idiot. Papa would never send you away,” Bede said firmly.

“I wouldn’t blame him if he did. A man has to do what’s right by his family,” Gerech said, trying to adopt the same tone that he had heard from men in the village.

“People have to do what’s right,” Bede said, her arm raised to cuff him.

“That’s what the judges say,” Gerech said.

They both turned to look at the town. Something about it drew the eye. It wasn’t as if the town was on fire, yet there was something unnatural in the air; a stillness that didn’t belong. If he listened, Gerech thought that he could make out a faint trilling on the air, like a sort of music, but too unnatural to qualify.

Gerech shook his head to clear it. He couldn’t be afford to be distracted.

“What’s going to happen now?” Bede asked.

“They’re going to take my father away,” Gerech said. The words conjured up an image on their own; one of his father in chains, thrown into some smelly, disgusting, dank cell to suffer and rot until they were satisfied, or couldn’t be bothered to think of another reason to keep him there.

“He’ll be alright. The two of you are the smartest people I know,” Bede said.

“What good are brains in a cell?” Gerech said, unhappy despite the praise.

“You might be surprised. All the stories I’ve heard are about prisoners using their wits and their smarts to get by.”

“Stories aren’t going to do him any good now.”

Bede didn’t respond to that, but Gerech hadn't expected her to. She wouldn’t play the foil to him wallowing.

The sound of something heavy and metal broke through the silence. It was a low rumbling that was interrupted by occasional staccato notes as what could only be metal wheels bounced up and down in the town’s potholes.

“I want to see it,” Gerech said, suddenly. As terrible as it would be to watch his father get dragged away, it was even more terrible to imagine it, as it cycled through a thousand permutations while his mind struggled to settle on one firm image, careening from terrible to unthinkable.

“That’s the opposite of what your father wants,” Bede said. Her hand snapped to Gerech’s arm, latching on, as if she could restrain him from running off.

“I already did what he asked. It’s not like I’ll do anything stupid. I just need to see him off. I need to make sure that he’s...alright,” Gerech said. His words were failing him. His tongue fumbled and failed him. He looked plaintively at Bede.

She paused, then said: “My family will notice if we’re gone too long. They didn’t even want me to wait out here. It’s dangerous right now.”

“They won’t be looking for anyone else once they have my father.”

“If they think that you’re an accomplice they’ll take you away too. They don’t care how old you are.”

“Has anyone ever caught us when we didn’t want them to?” Gerech asked, with a spark of his usual playfulness.

For some reason Bede flushed and looked away. Her head turned back to town, where the rumbling of the metal contraption had stopped.

“We won’t go into town,” she said. “We’ll stay on the edges. Even if we can’t see anything we’ll turn back without going any farther.”

“I promise we’ll be safe,” Gerech said. He set his pack on the porch, as if the conversation was already settled.

Bede gave him an unhappy look but she didn’t say anything. Gerech took that as a concession. She glanced back into the house before they left, and they listened to the low murmuring of her parents in the kitchen. Talking about him or his father, Gerech suspected.

“We should be able to see everything from the hill,” Bede said. She took off at a dash and was able to make her scampering path over fallen logs and enormous rocks look graceful. Gerech was hard pressed to match her. It was something that he was used to, but which still stung his pride.

Sodder’s Hill loomed high over the town and cast a long shadow in the morning. It had a thick copse of trees growing at the top and none on the sides, giving it a topheavy appearance, as if it would one day break in half and crash down on the town below.

The two of them had always used Sodder’s Hill to meet, or eat, or spy on the interesting going-ons in town, or just to pass the time.

Now it was the perfect vantage point to watch his father get dragged away in chains.

Bede took the steep slope up the hill at full tilt, moving through tall grass like it was air. Gerech was breathing heavily by the time he made it to the top. She slapped a hand over his mouth to quiet him. He glared, but didn’t dare say anything out loud.

The trees on the top were so thick and numerous that they had to move to the edge just to get a glimpse of the town below. Bede fell into a crawl and Gerech followed her lead.

At first glance, the armored monstrosity in the center of town stole his attention. Bede stared as well, equally slack jawed. It was shaped almost like a snail, or an old noble’s carriage, with a crudely forged and misshapen shell stretching overtop it which tapered down in the front and the back. It had three sets of paired wheels on either side, and they sagged to the ground under the weight of the vehicle.

On the top of the machine, where the shell crested, was a crossbow--like the arcuballista that Gerech’s father had shown him in one of his books--but larger, and on a rotating metal stand. It had a trio of thick bolts already set into place and was manned by a bronze masked judge.

Three more stood near the machine, as if guarding it, while a few more patrolled in the vicinity. Without even looking further, Gerech counted seven of them.

He was scanning the rest of the town when Bede elbowed him sharply. She gestured with a flick of her chin toward the road leading into town.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The silver masked judge, mounted on a white horse with compatriots in tow, led a figure into town. The man had a blank mask over his face, and his hands were bound together by steel manacles. A small steel ball, covered in scripture, was shackled to his right leg. It wouldn’t be heavy enough to impede his walking but would be more than enough to prevent any attempt at a speedy escape.

Gerech was horrified by the sight of his father. Not even in prison yet and he was already chained and bound like any other common criminal; treated like a man who had stolen riches or murdered a noble when his only crime was to seek a truth that differed from what the justiciar preached.

It wasn’t until Bede put a comforting arm on his shoulder that Gerech realized he was growling, lowly but audibly. He calmed himself.

Realistically, they were too far from town to be heard, but everyone had heard rumors about the superhuman capabilities of the judges. From what Gerech had been taught, not only were the rumors true, but they understated the capabilities of certain judges. He refused to be on the receiving end of that.

His father followed the judges at a sedate pace, like he thought that being imprisoned by an entire team of judges was nothing but a slight inconvenience.

Gerech didn’t see any faces in the windows in town, but he imagined that they were there, watching his father, already judging and hating him for imagined crimes.

Bede looked at him, and mouthed: “Enough?”

Gerech shook his head. He wanted to watch until the end. He couldn’t be satisfied unless he bore witness to the whole affair.

It seemed to take forever for his father to reach the strange machine. Gerech was tense the whole time. Once the judges got to the side of the machine, one of the judges who had been guarding it went over to his father and removed the mask from his face.

Gerech was proud of the stoic demeanor his father showed. He didn’t shake his head from side to side, or look disoriented, or even check to see if anyone was watching--he simply looked in the face of the judge in front of him, as if to inquire politely whether there was to be anything else before they would be on their way.

The silver masked judge dismounted and rapped on the carapace of the machine, which sent a ringing echo through town and up Sodder’s Hill. The side hatch opened, slowly, revealing the door to be thicker than Gerech’s arm, reinforced the whole way with plated steel.

A distant part of him wondered how the contraption could even move under its own weight. Then his father was being moved inside it, swallowed by the great beast. For a moment he paused, standing perfectly still, and Gerech imagined, perhaps fancifully, that his father was pausing before his triumphant, and inevitable, escape.

A judge put a warning arm on his father’s shoulder. He bent over and entered inside.

The small weight dangled in the frame of the hatch for a few seconds, and then it vanished inside as well. The door shut behind his father with an ominous clang.

The judges didn’t wait. There was no triumphant celebration, no elaborate giving of orders. They just moved into formation around the machine, as if they were an ceremonial guard, and it shifted into motion.

A cacophonous roar announced the machine starting up. The wheels began to spin, fruitlessly for a moment, before they picked up traction and began to carry the swollen beast forward. The road trembled against the earth underneath it.

“Gerech,” Bede said imploringly, tugging on his shoulder. She had been calling his name for a while, he realized.

He nodded, letting her pull him to his feet. They made their way back to her house.

Gerech was in a daze, hardly even aware of where he was. The faint trilling was back, beating at the edges of his mind, circling like a mad tribal band before flitting away whenever he focused on it.

It was all too horrible. There was too much finality when his father was taken away.

He said that he would be back. He had promised. Or was Gerech just wishing that he had promised? What had his parting words been?

His father would never lie to him. His father didn’t lie to anyone. He could cross that off of the list of possibilities without hesitation.

There were only two options then; either his father had been wrong, and Gerech would never see him again, or he had to trust that his father had known what he was talking about. How the judges operated was a closely guarded mystery. Maybe that sort of convoy was standard.

He wanted to run through all of the possibilities with Bede. She was too clever by half, a perfect sounding board, able to follow his train of thought and intercept it at the most critical moments, offering her own thoughts and analysis. But one look at her, at the fright and unease on her face, and Gerech knew that he couldn’t mention it to her.

For her, this was an episode to be forgotten. He, however, could never allow himself to forget.

Bede’s father was waiting on the porch for them when they got back. He looked frustrated, even angry, which wasn’t something Gerech had ever seen before, but he didn’t say anything as they shuffled inside the house like chastened children.

No doubt it had taken all of his self-restrain to resist. Gerech knew that he had likely already upset the head of the family that was to take him in, but he couldn’t regret going to see his father’s imprisonment.

In retrospect, he wished that he had left Bede behind. It may have felt natural to include her but it was dangerous.

They sat down in the parlor, Bede on the couch and Gerech in a faded plush chair. Her mother had put out refreshments; two glasses of her signature spiced apple juice, normally reserved for quaint summer afternoons.

Gerech couldn’t bring himself to drink his. Bede downed hers in a moment, like the taste could wash away what she had seen.

He felt like he had to say something. Silence between them had never been uncomfortable before, never worth thinking about. Now it was like a monster of its own, and to break it was to slay it. But he couldn’t find the words.

What could he say? Something about the judges, or the monstrous machine that had swallowed up his father, or about the fact that he would be sponging off of them until his father came back

If he ever came back, Gerech’s mind unhelpfully supplied.

They stewed in silence, lost in their own unutterable thoughts, until he couldn’t take it anymore. The house, the chair, Bede’s sullen expression—all of it made him feel like he was being swallowed up as well.

“I’m going to go get some of my things,” Gerech said.

Bede roused herself and looked at him as if just remembering that he was there. “You might need help.”

She didn’t say it like it was an offer, but more as an observation.

“I’ll be alright. I’m just grabbing a few things. Most of the stuff there isn’t important,” Gerech said.

His father would tell him that all of the book were important, and that he was a fool if he didn’t properly value knowledge.

Gerech waited for Bede to say something else, hoped for it, but she was silent, already looking off again. He would’ve said something more, even reached out to her for mutual comfort, but the trilling was like a fly in his thoughts, irritating and distracting and making even the idea of talking more to Bede seem impossible.

Her father wasn’t on the porch anymore. Gerech noted that his bag was already gone as well, perhaps moved inside to the room he would be staying in.

Nobody stopped him from walking off. He had expected someone to.

It felt like he shouldn’t be allowed that freedom to just walk wherever he wanted. Not while his father was chained inside a steel monster.

Sound had started to return to the forest. There was even some noise coming from town, horses clattering and doors being slammed without a care, though that faded gradually as Gerech started on the path back to his house.

His house. He braced himself for the worst. A still burning husk, or a ransacked shell; a damaged, broken remainder that would reflect what had been done to them. His father wouldn’t have resisted the judges, but Gerech didn’t doubt that they would have done anything to find incriminating evidence. Books torn apart in the search for hidden sections, chests broken to ensure there weren’t false bottoms; probably even boards torn out of the floor, just on the off chance that they were hiding a cellar stocked with forbidden texts.

They wouldn’t have found anything. His father didn’t keep any banned books, or have hidden treasures, or even indulge in frowned-upon vices. Their house might have been the cleanest in the whole town.

The only piece of evidence that could have incriminated his father was the manuscript that Gerech had hidden away.

It had always been a point of pride to his father that he didn’t need to rely on the contributions of others to advance his work. To hear him talk about it, his book would be a wholly original contribution to philosophy.

Gerech had to resist the urge to double back and make sure that it was still there. The manuscript was safe. He had to trust that his father knew what he was talking about. Trust that his father would come back. Even though it was hard, with that insufferable trilling, he had to trust his father. That was one thought he knew, deep down, that he absolutely had to hold on to.

The house was still standing, no worse for wear. There were bootprints on the grass, and the door was still ajar, but other than that there was little to mark the judges’ passing.

Even the inside had barely been touched. The books had clearly been searched, and things were out of their natural place, but if someone had told Gerech that it had been examined by a careful appraiser, rather than a bunch of zealous judges, he would have believed them.

His father’s study was the only exception. The desk had been roughly treated, with two of the drawers sitting clean on the floor, and his sheets of scrap paper were laying on the floor, scattered and trampled on.

Gerech put a hand on his father’s desk. He almost expected to be reprimanded for doing so, or to feel a slight rattling as his father’s brush commandingly struck the paper. Instead, the desk was silent, refusing to give up whatever secrets it yet kept.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice the brush of air on his back. It was gentle, like a caress, and it made him feel a fear that he had never known before.

The trilling stopped.

Gerech turned. The silver-masked judge was standing in the doorway. They held a twisted flute, which had elaborately carved inscriptions snaking their way from top to bottom.

There wasn’t time to think. He dashed for the study window, hoping to push it open and leap through into the bushes below, but somehow the judge was already next to him, so fast that Gerech hadn’t even seen them move.

The judge’s hand was on his shoulder. Their grip was tight and unyielding. It seemed to promise terrible things if he resisted, but despite that Gerech struggled and flailed and shook, as if he could do anything to someone with such unimaginable powers.

“You are the philosopher’s son?” the judge said. It wasn’t a question--really, it was more of a quizzical observation.

If he had been thinking through his panic, Gerech might have been insulted.

He kept his mouth shut, resolving not to say anything that might make the situation worse. His father had always counseled silence in uncertain situations.

Slowly a fog started to lift from his mind. He glanced down at the flute. It was held loosely, almost carelessly, in the judge’s grip.

The judge didn’t seem much interested in his thoughts. He kept speaking, his voice hard to decipher through the strange warping effect the mask had on it.

“There are two bedrooms, both of which are clearly occupied. One is for an adult, one a child. Gerade Storrisch isn’t registered as having a child, yet here you are. Very interesting. He never struck me as that sort of man...”

The judge pulled the desk chair around to the middle of the room, then pressed him down into it, almost gently.

Gerech was incensed by the pretense of care that the judge took. He had just seen his father in chains. He wouldn’t be taken in by false kindness.

“I am Judge Liene, of the Fifth Imperative, charged with finding and destroying works proposing heretical philosophies—works that run contrary to axiomatic principles of Justice. In carrying out my duties, I am able and willing to demand assistance from any involved citizen. In this case, I demand your assistance. You will give me information on the heretical philosopher Gerade Storrisch. You will tell me where to find his missing notes and manuscript.”

Gerech tensed at the mention of his father’s work. He doubted that the judge missed it. His mask made him unreadable, but Gerech got the impression that the man behind it didn’t miss anything.

His father had told him that hunting down heretical philosophers was the most sacred duty of the judges. Only the best were chosen to join those expeditions.

To be leading one meant that Liene was, without a doubt, extraordinary.

“If you assist me, clemency will be granted, both to your father and to the people that are sheltering you,” Liene said.

Panic gripped Gerech. He didn’t fear for himself; self-interest seemed was distant and hard to comprehend after he had watched his father get taken away.

But to condemn Bede? To let her suffer for his carelessness? That made him fearful.

“We didn’t do anything,” Gerech said, like obvious lies could save him. He needed to buy enough time to think of a way out of it.

The judge needed to be satisfied. He had to keep Bede safe, but he couldn’t betray his father. He needed to be clever enough to find a solution; every problem had a solution if you thought about it long enough.

“I have no doubt that you were the one to hide your father’s manuscript. You have aided and abetted a known dissident. Because of this, and because of her family’s willingness to shelter you, your friend will be charged with the crime of knowingly aiding criminal elements. Unless you give up the location of Storrisch’s manuscript, these charges will be taken before a High Judge and your friend, and her family, will be prosecuted.”

Listening to Liene speak made Gerech furious. He talked like there was nothing personal about any of it, as if he was just another emotionless part of a faceless monolith that could bury all of them without the slightest trouble.

The worst part was that it was all true.

Gerech was trapped. He would have to betray someone that he loved—the only question was who.

The judge kneeled down in front of his chair. For a moment, Gerech wondered if he was going to be hit. Then, with a fluid motion, the judge removed his mask.

Or, Gerech corrected, her mask. Without the mask covering her face and obscuring her voice, Gerech was able to see that the judge was a young woman, with short dark hair and a narrow, strict face.

“I won’t talk down to you,” she said, “because I know that you’re too clever by half to be taken in by any nonsense. Your father has been a known heretical philosopher for years, and it's only the frequent moves, lack of hard evidence, and the fact that he wasn’t distributing his ideas that kept us from taking steps to apprehend him. But now we know that he was working on a book, and that he was close to finishing it. We know what the book is about, and it’s not something we can risk getting to the public or to dissenting factions. I’m sure that right now you think of us as the bad guys. I understand that. But all we’re trying to do is keep the peace, to keep everyone safe, and happy, and make sure that justice is carried out for everyone, equally.”

Even though Gerech was looking away, had turned his head away in revulsion, she kept talking, her face so close to his that he could feel her breath on his cheek.

“I don’t want to get your friend and her family involved, even if it is the right thing to do, because I understand that they were just trying to look out for you. The urge to take care of the people you love is strong, even if it isn’t the perfectly just thing to do. If you help me then I won’t have to bring them in. I can make sure that you’re kept safe. After a few years in a state school you’d be free to do whatever you want with your life. I’m sure that with your mind you’d be able to get a job as a dialectician without any problems, if you wanted.”

“You’re trying to tell me that the right thing to do is to betray family. That’s so stupid I don’t understand how you can say it with a straight face,” Gerech said. It was petty, but he wanted her to feel even a fraction of what he was feeling.

He didn’t want her sympathy, or understanding. He wanted an enemy. He wanted to spit in her calm, assured, self-righteous face.

He wanted her focused on his vitriolic mouth, and not on the hand that was twitching, ready to snatch that flute from her.

Gerech wasn’t gratified by any particular response on Liene’s part. The mask, he decided, hadn’t even been needed to keep her reactions hidden. She had such perfect control over her expression that it made her face seem like nothing more than another mask itself.

“From our perspective, your father betrayed you first. Not only did he make your very existence a crime by never having you registered, he continued to keep you with him as an accomplice while he worked on a book that he knew was both seditious and immoral. If that isn’t wrong then I don’t know what is. Loyalty is admirable, and does you credit as a son, but right now it’s being used against you.”

There was a rushing in Gerech’s ears. His fingers wavered.

Her words were so soft, so unnaturally persuasive, that he almost just wanted to agree with her, to do what she told him.

It was for Bede, he could tell himself. He would never do anything to hurt Bede. She trusted him. Just the idea of betraying Bede made him want to cry out in torment.

It would be so much easier than protecting his father--his father who had, he knew, lied to him. His father who he would never see again.

His father, who had sent him away with the one thing he loved most in the world.

It wasn't him. It had never been him.

It was always the manuscript. His work. His magnum opus. The revelation that would silence a just nation and cut to the core of a Concept.

There was something to Liene’s words. If he was someone else, and if his father had been someone else, perhaps he would have been taken in by them. But he understood that the sway her words suddenly had over him wasn’t natural. He knew about the strange powers that judges had. He knew that his father was magnificent, and that his dreams were magnificent.

His fingers tightened, reached out, and tore the flute from Liene’s grasp. He took a split second to relish the shock that overtook her, the shattering of her perfectly assured persona, and then he blew on the flute as hard as he could.

It was to his utter dismay that nothing happened.

“The flute, while itself the host to many powerful exegeses, requires extemporization to function. It’s a tool for a select few, not a weapon that can be picked up any wielded by anyone,” Liene said. She almost sounded disappointed.

With surprising gentleness, she pried the flute from his sweaty grasp.

“I’m not a rat,” Gerech said, his voice flat and emotionless.

He turned to look Liene directly in the eyes. She still seemed sad, and he had the sudden thought that she was showing him how she really felt, but then her eyes hardened again and the moment was gone.

Liene grabbed the underside of his chain with a gloved hand, forcing him to stare directly into her eyes, and Gerech felt the rushing in his head intensify, and then press even harder, more than he had ever felt before until it felt like his mind was collapsing in on itself.

Her lips were moving, but he couldn’t hear. She was extemporizing, and he was being pushed and pulled and twisted into a small mental box, only ever to be let out at her leisure.

It was almost a comforting thought. One that he could cling to. She had been in his head the entire time. Those poisonous, treasonous thoughts hadn’t been his. He could trust in his father.

Gerech embraced the silence that unconsciousness brought.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was the rough shaking that brought him back to consciousness. He had enough familiarity with horses to find their trot calming, even if his situation was anything but.

He was behind Liene on a horse. They moved at a slow pace, like she had been considerate enough to let him rest. As if he wasn’t unconscious because of her in the first place.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said, without turning back to look at him.

“Where are we?” Gerech asked. The trees surrounding the dirt road were just like the ones around his town, but he couldn’t be sure of how far they had traveled. His father always said that the only part of the country that wasn’t a carbon copy of the rest was the frozen far north.

He thought about running. It would, ultimately, be fruitless. He had no supplies, no idea where he was, and no chance of outpacing her even if she hadn’t been on horseback. She was the sole arbiter of his fate.

“We’re about an hour from Camp Gedank. It’s part of the reeducation family of camps, specifically tailored to deal with victims of rogue philosophers and other seditious elements. More than anything else, it’s a school for people without other places to turn.”

“Another brainwashing camp then. That’s not going to work on me,” Gerech said. He hoped that his words showed a bravery that he didn’t feel. Everyone knew about the reeducation camps that criminals were sent to.

The stories about those camps, or at least the reliable ones, were not pleasant. They spoke of harsh conditions, long and tedious lessons, and cruel punishments for anyone that didn’t conform.

In the end, people said, you lost the will to resist anymore. When you left it was as a husk of your former self.

His father usually dismissed the town gossip that Gerech brought him but he was always silent when the subject of camps came up.

Gerech realized he must have flinched, or reacted in some other way, because Liene said: “It’s not a bad place. The people here understand that you’re a victim in this. They want to help you, and they were chosen for this camp because they have the skills to do so.”

“Generous,” Gerech said. It sounded like childish insolence, but he refused to be grateful to Liene. She was probably lying to him anyway. Her definition of bad conditions were definitely nothing like his. She seemed like she wouldn’t mind having her freedom taken away. She had already sold hers, after all.

“Keep an open mind. If your philosophy, your father’s philosophy, is so superior to the justiciar’s, then you have nothing to fear from facing it in full and without reservation,” Liene said.

“Is Bede going to get the same chance?” Gerech asked, more quietly.

It felt like a long time before Liene answered. “Your circumstances are different. The opportunities that are available to her are different.”

If his camp was designed to brainwash, then Gerech had no doubt that Bede’s would be something even more terrible. Forced labor? Indentured servitude?

His father was a philosopher, so he would be reeducated.

Bede’s parents were weavers, so she would be put to work.

It was his fault. He had failed his father by being captured and had failed Bede by choosing his father over her. He had cost her more than he could ever hope to repay, and more than she would ever be able to forgive.

The guilt made it easy to face what was ahead. What sort of man was he, if he shied away from his own hell after condemning Bede to hers?

Gerech didn’t shy away from the high walls of Gedank, or flinch at the masked judges that led him by the arm into long and shadowy corridors. For Bede’s sake, he had to survive Gedank, and whatever came after it.

After all, he had to win his own freedom before he could win back hers.