Dilana explained. “If she couldn’t have his love while he was alive, she can at least have his goods now that he is dead.”
“And now that I think of it, he left most of his belongings to the younger sister, and only a few to the older! Fool that I am, I thought it was because the elder’s husband was richer than the younger’s!” Then he frowned. “Still, how does that help me. judge between them? I can’t give one cow to two women! I’ve already suggested that they sell the beast and split the money, but both raised a howl at that.”
“Of course,” Dilana said softly, “if wealth isn’t really what each wants.”
“Yes, certainly,” Gorlin agreed. Then he grinned, thumping the arm of his chair in delight. “We’ll give them each something of their father’s! He already left his bull to the younger, I’ll insist it be bred to the cow, then hold the beast in escrow until the calf is born! The elder sister shall have the cow, and the younger shall have the calf bred from both her father’s beasts!”
“That won’t content either one of them,” Dilana warned. “Each wants her father all to herself, and if she can’t have him, at least she can have what belonged to him.”
“Then I shall decree the calf to be his, since it came from both his beasts, and they shall have to be content with my judgment, or go to the reeve!” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they both start claiming the calf, saying that the other sister can have the older animal!”
“Why, so they shall!” Dilana exclaimed in surprise. “Then neither of them can complain if you give the cow to the other!”
“No, they can’t, can they?” Gorlin turned to her, his eyes warm with ardor. “What a gem you are, to see so easily into their hearts!”
Dilana blushed and lowered her gaze. “I’m only remembering what I’ve seen happen all my life, Your Honor.” “Then I must have that memory by me, or I’ll misjudge again and again!” Gorlin rose from his chair, towering over her, reaching down to take her hand.
Dilana gazed up at him, letting her hand follow his willingly, her heart thumping.
Gorlin sank to one knee and spoke deep in his throat. “I knew I would have to ask this again, but I never thought to really want it—yet I do, and more than ever! Fair lady, will you marry me?”
“Oh, yes, Your Honor,” Dilana answered, her voice faint, then fainter still as his lips came to her own. “Yes, William, yes.”
One by one, the real magistrates were kidnapped away to the Lost City and the care of Bade, the Guardian, and its skeleton staff, who kept them soundly caged and explained why their imprisonment was necessary. Of course, they had the free run of a whole city, even if it was in need of a bit of maintenance, and most of them were more than ready for an extended vacation anyway. Indoors, at least, they had genuine luxury, more than they had ever known, complete with gourmet food and fine wines, so they recovered from their initial indignation pretty quickly, and only one or two made any attempt to escape.
The rest bent their efforts to studying the new system the rebels were trying to put into place, and to figuring out how to use it to their own advantage.
In their places, false magistrates frantically learned all the details of their new jobs, then settled in to doing their best as administrators, and to gradually swaying their guardsmen to their new beliefs in individual rights and personal freedom. Year by year, more and more of the magistrates and reeves were really cured madmen.
There weren’t enough of them for all the positions, of course—so the cured madwomen spread throughout every province, working their way into the affections of real magistrates, as Bess and Dilana had done. In Voyagend, they had learned from the Guardian how to make conversation and to carry themselves as real women of the upper class; they had learned to speak in cultured tones, to walk and move with grace and style. After being cured, they had learned history, politics, literature, the arts, and the sciences from the Guardian. Plain or not, they had huge advantages over village lassies when it came to catching the attention of educated men.
Most of them married magistrates and reeves new to their assignments. The others became servants in official households and gradually came to know their employers better and better. A reassigned magistrate couldn’t take his wife and children along, but no rule said he couldn’t take along a female servant whom he had found especially useful—and when he settled into his new village, he was quite likely to choose a woman he already knew and whose company he enjoyed, for his next wife.
The inspectors-general were more difficult, for the obvious reason—nobody knew who they were. Still, it was possible to make guesses, possible to assign teams of men to follow travelers and join merchants’ caravans, and one inspector-general after another went to the Lost City. Bade and the Guardian found that they were much less likely to accept their imprisonment willingly, though; or to be swayed to the ideas and ideals of the New Order. After all, they had given up more to gain their current rank in the Old, and that rank was very high; each of them. had very real hopes of becoming Protector, or at least a minister. They had labored all their lives to achieve it, and weren’t about to throw it away by eliminating the Protector and his office, nor the system in which they held so much power.
Miles conferred with the Guardian, and finally sent the inspectors-general to a separate ruined city, one guarded much more closely by its computer and robots. For them, at least, the imprisonment was real—still luxurious, but nonetheless real. Women came to join them, though—women who weren’t very pretty, but knew how to use cosmetics to make the most of the looks they had; women who walked gracefully and spoke in cultured tones, women who knew the arts and the sciences, who could talk with the exiled inspectors-general about history and politics. Gradually, even these hardcase adherents of the Old Order began to think there might be something to be said for the New.
“Your Honor, come quickly!” The butler appeared in the doorway, looking harried for once. “Magistrate Plurible is coming! He’s sent a runner ahead; he’s only a mile away!”
Magistrate Athellen—formerly Lord Llewellyn in delusion—looked up from his desk, face ashen. Usually visiting magistrates sent word ahead, and he had plenty of time to prepare, but this surprise visit scared him thoroughly. In desperation, he fell back on the stratagem he had used before. “Tell Constable Garrick and Watchman Porry to come into my study, quickly! Tell Mistress Paysan to prepare a quick tea! I’ll hurry and change into my formal robe!”
“I must assist Your Honor!”
“There’s no time! You set the preparations in motion!” Athellen bolted from his desk.
The formal robe still held the blackjack and dagger hidden in its folds from its last such use—in fact, Athellen had begun to take comfort from knowing they were always there. He shaved quickly, ducked back into the empty study to prepare the teacups, and was out in front of the courthouse five minutes before the coach rattled around the curve of the road.
The horses stopped, and the footman jumped down to open the door. Magistrate Plurible stepped down and toward Athellen, arms spread wide, a smile of greeting on his face, a smile that froze, then died as he saw who was waiting for him.
Athellen’s worst fears had come true—but he remembered what Miles had told them all to do if this happened. After all, sooner or later, some of them were bound to meet people who knew the man they were pretending to be. It was just Athellen’s bad luck that it had been sooner.
He stepped forward with a broad smile. “Magistrate Plurible! You do me great honor!” Then, close enough for Plurible to hear a whisper, Athellen hissed, “Yes, I know I’m not who you expected to see, but there’s an excellent reason, and no one else must know of it!” Aloud, he fairly trumpeted, “Come into my study; and take refreshment!”