"Aren't you going to finish your story?"
"I did." She walked to the door; the guard opened it for her. Didul stood in the sputtering torchlight as the door closed. The guard finally spoke to him. "Are you from out of the city, sir? Do you need directions somewhere?"
"No, no ... I know the way."
"Then you'd better set out-your torch won't burn forever, unless you plan to let the flame run right down your arm."
Didul thanked him with a smile and set off for the public house where he was staying. Akmaro and Chebeya invited him for dinner, but never to stay the night. It would not do for him to be there, even sleeping, should Akma choose to come home.
Luet stopped loving Mon, but Edhadeya never grew out of that childish love for Akma. That must be a difficult situation for her. At least the man that Luet loved was loyal to the cause of the Keeper. Edhadeya, a dreamer of true dreams, the daughter of the king, loved a man who disbelieved in the Keeper and despised the Kept.
Maybe I'm not the worst possible husband. Maybe I do have something to offer Luet, besides poverty and the fury of her brother and a memory of my cruelty to her when she was little. Maybe she should be given the choice, at least. Didn't he owe it to her, to give her the chance to hear him talk of his love for her and ask for her to be his wife, so she could refuse him and cause him a small fraction of the humiliation and pain he had once caused her?
He despised himself at once even for thinking this. Didn't he know Luet at all, to think she would want to hurt him or anyone else? Edhadeya said she loved him. And he knew that he loved her. Akmaro had made it plain that he would give his approval. So had Chebeya, in a thousand small ways, talking about how much a part of the family he was.
I will speak to her, he decided. I will speak to her tomorrow.
He doused his dying torch in the pail at the door of the public house and went inside to spend a few hours wishing he could sleep instead of rehearsing over and over in his mind the words he would say to Luet, imagining over and over the way she might smile and embrace him, or weep and run from him, or stare at him in horror and whisper, How could you? How could you?
At last he did sleep. And in his dream, he saw himself and Luet standing beneath a tree. It was heavy with a white fruit, but it was just out of reach-neither of them was tall enough to reach it. "Lift me up," she said. "Lift me up, and I can pick enough for both of us."
So he lifted her, and she filled her hands, and when he lowered her back to the ground she took a bite and wept at the sharp sweetness of it. "Didul," she whispered. "I can't bear it if you don't have a bite-here, from this place right beside where I bit, so you can taste exactly what I tasted."
But in his dream he didn't bite from the fruit at all. Instead he kissed her, and from her own lips tasted exactly what she had tasted, and yes, it was sweet.
The trial was so well-known that even before Didul was asleep, people were gathering in the large open court. At dawn, when the guards arrived, they had to herd the early arrivals to the front rows overlooking the court. The judge's seat was, of course, in shadow, and would be throughout the day. Some thought this was for the judge's comfort protecting him from the summer heat, but in winter it could be bitterly cold in the shade, with no scrap of sun to warm him. No, the shade was to help keep the judge more or less anonymous. People could see most clearly where the light was; the complainants and the accused were in light continuously, and if either of them had brought a lawyer in to speak for them, he would strut the length and breadth of the sunlit area. No lawyer, however, would step within the judge's shadow. Some thought this was out of respect for the king's honor as embodied in his deputy, the judge. But the lawyers all knew that to step out of the light made them appear clumsy, weak, unaware, and would dispose the people against them. Not that the people had any voice in the decision, officially-though there had been notorious trials in the past where it seemed the judge had made his decision based solely on which outcome would be most likely to allow him to leave the court alive. But the lawyers knew that their reputation, their likelihood of being hired for other cases, depended on how the onlookers perceived them.
The sun was halfway to noon when the accusers arrived, along with their lawyer, a loquacious angel named kRo. It was forbidden for an angel to fly in the court, but kRo had a way of opening his wings and sort of gliding as he walked back and forth, building up passion in himself and in the audience. It made him seem at once larger and more graceful than his opponent, and many human lawyers refused to take on cases that might put them head to head with kRo.
With the accusers in place and the gallery completely full, with hundreds more clamoring outside, pleading for imaginary spaces-"I'm not large! There's room for me!"-Pabul entered, with a guard on either side. In the event of a mob action against the judge, these guards would hardly be much protection, though perhaps they might buy just enough time for the judge to flee into his chamber. Rather they were there to defend against the lone assassin. It had been a hundred years since a judge was murdered in open court, and longer than that since one was mobbed, but the protections remained in place. No one expected that this case would turn to violence, but it was more heated than most, and the controversy made the onlookers view the guards in a different light. Not just a formality, no. They were armed; they were large, strong humans.
No one from the king's family was present. It had long been a tradition that if a royal person were present, he or she would sit beside the judge and, presumably, tell the judge the will of the king in the case. Thus from a trial attended by a royal person there could be no appeal. To preserve the rights of the accused, therefore, Ba-Jamim, Motiak's father, had begun the tradition of having no family member present at any lower trials, so that the right of all parties to appeal a decision could be preserved. It also had the happy effect of increasing the independence and therefore the prestige of the judges.
Akma, however, came to watch, and his sister Luet came with him. They had arrived late enough that they secured seats only in the back, behind the accused where they could see no faces. But two close supporters of the accusers, who had seats on the front row where they could see everyone's face, recognized Akma and insisted that he and his sister come down and take their places. Akma pretended to be surprised and honored, but Luet remembered how he had remained standing at the back until he was noticed, he knew that seats were being held for him. And by supporters of the accusers. Akma had definitely taken sides.
Well, why not? So had Luet.
"Have you met her?" she asked.
"Met whom?" asked Akma.
"Shedemei. The accused."
"Oh. No. Should I have?"
"A brilliant, remarkable woman," said Luet.
"Well, I don't suppose anyone would have noticed her if she was a fool," he answered mildly.
"You know I was at her school with Mother and Edhadeya when the book of charges was delivered," said Luet.
"Yes, I'd heard."
"She already knew the charges. Isn't that funny? She recited them to Husu before he could read them off."
"I heard that, too," said Akma. "I imagine kRo will make something of that. Proof that she was aware of her lawbreaking, that sort of thing."
"I daresay he will," said Luet. "Imagine charging her with treason for running a school."
"Oh, I'm sure that charge was just to make the whole thing more notorious. I don't think Father's little puppet judge will even allow that charge to be heard, do you?"
Luet cringed at the malice in Akma's voice. "Pabul is no one's puppet, Akma."
"Oh, really? So what he did to our people back in Chelem, that was of his own free will?"
"He was his father's puppet then. He was a child. Younger than we are now."
"But we've both passed through that age, haven't we? He was seventeen. When I was seventeen, I was no man's puppet." Akma grinned. "So don't tell me Pabul wasn't responsible for his own actions."