Chapter 13
You’re turning into a cynic, Minna thought to herself as she sipped tea in Lady Strykler’s garden. The conversation had not gone well; mostly, Minna felt, because the Lady did not care to put much effort into defending the arguments the Advocate had told Minna to expect.
When Strykler ran out of questions, she said, “Actually, I’ve been thinking recently that we should do away with this law of possession, charm, and insanity entirely. Frankly, I’m a bit tired of people coming before the council for some crime or another, protecting ‘It’s not my fault. Some evil force of nature made me do it!’. I see it happen over and over again; the Advocate comes before the council with some wild concoction about how the poor defendant was manipulated or ‘caused’ to do something, always trying to expand the meaning of these statutes far beyond their true and intended scope. As far as I can see, Justice can be served best by cutting these excuses out of our law entirely.”
The words drove Minna into a long, shocked silence. Her first thought was to answer that this sounded like the words of a person who was insisting that nothing was going to stand against her and revenge. Minna thought of how primitive tribes would look for someone in their community to blame for every natural disaster; claiming that somebody had to have displeased the gods and, ultimately, taking out their frustrations on the least liked.
Thoughts crowded each other, preventing Minna from speaking and, instead, filling the room with an awkward silence. She recalled the Advocate’s warning about how Lady Strykler’s vote was needed in order to free Zin. Spite, generated from a misspoken comment, could very well decide whether Zin would live or die, and whether Minna herself would be allowed to leave with her freedom intact or made a prisoner. The absurdity drove a nervous chuckle out of the Varlet.
“Did I say something funny?” Lady Stryklia asked.
“No,” Minna answered, her voice and face quickly transforming to show no hint of humor. “No, far from it. I take your words seriously, but I hardly know how to answer them.” She felt hands the muscles squeezing the air out of her chest as she spoke.
“It doesn’t matter how you answer them. I’m sick of people using the law of madness, possession, and charm to avoid responsibility for their actions. So sick, in fact, I fear that if I hear another argument along those lines I might embarrass myself.”
“So, a magician casts a simple charm on somebody and tells them to commit a crime. He does violence, and you will have him thrown into the dungeons, while the magician walks free.”
“No, the magician pays too.”
“Cast the net as wide as possible. A thief grabs a purse and heads off into a crowd. How would you feel toward the magician who cast a fireball into the crowd to kill the thief? A few dozen others also die, but at least the thief didn’t get away. A victory for Justice, wouldn’t you say?” She knew she was winning no favors from Strykler. The words forced themselves out anyway, and once started she could do nothing to stop them.
Lady Strykler answered calmly. “Once people know that you will stop at nothing to get them to pay for their crime, then there will be fewer pick pockets and cutpurses making any kind of attempt. People will be better off in the end.”
Her views were like Terrence’s, Minna realized, making no fundamental assumptions about Justice and Will. She would thwart Justice without hesitation if she felt it necessary. Minna doubted that people would be better off in the end, and wondered if Strykler’s opinion came from a careful study of the facts, or just a wish that it were so.
“Show me that these things are necessary and I may side with you, though always regretful for whatever harms any being must suffer.” Minna said. Your lack of apparent sympathy for those who will be made to suffer, however, shows a harshness and cruelty I can not sanction. It shows you to be evil, Minna thought to herself. Her final words rode a wave of worry; such judgments were never to be made lightly.
“It is not my job to show you anything, Varlet.” Lady Stryker said with a sign. She took a sip of her wine and set the glass down gently. “It is the Advocate’s duty to show us the facts on which we will base our judgment. And, in case you worry that I would abolish the law of insanity, charm, and possession if I could, rest assured that it is still law and I must, regretfully, make my judgments according to that law.”
Minna tried not to be noticed as she rubbed sweat from her palms.
“Which brings up another issue for us to discuss, Varlet. I have heard that, when asked to present evidence that Zin had the capacity to draw upon Will’s Power, you are going to claim that our questions cannot be answered honestly. By doing so, you hope to ease a conscience that prevents you from participating in a blood sacrifice to a non-existent god. That is how the Matron explained things to me.”
“That’s essentially correct,” Minna said, trying to preserve maneuvering room.
“For example,” the Lady continued, “there’s this analogy the Advocate made to people in your friend Jeffers’ homeland who burned alive women who floated in water. Floating implied that the person was infested by an evil force, rejected by the water, as I understand it. Answering that the woman floated would be a lie, your friend said, because the term ‘float’ in this context is tied in with a theory which makes wrong assumptions about the physical nature of water and of corrupted people.”
Minna stared silently, hoping the Lady would add enough to give her a hint of where these questions were going.
Strykler dropped a splinter of wood into her wine. “Is this wood floating or not?” the Lady asked.
“It’s floating.”
“But if it were a man rather than a splinter of wood, you would say you cannot answer the question?”
“Because in that context the term ‘floating’ has a different meaning. It implies a corruption of the soul which does not exist, and anybody who answers a question is responsible for the assumptions that others draw from that answer.”
“Because ‘floating’ in that context is tied in with a false belief.”
“Precisely.”
“Varlet Minna, if you look at any beliefs deeply enough, you will find it woven into a fine tapestry of interconnected strands. No belief stands alone; all are tied in with others, and through them to still others, so that if you follow the connections long enough you will find a connection from one belief to every other belief we have. Think of the complexities involved in the simple act of translating the sounds that come from my mouth into meaningful words, and the assumptions that lie behind them.
“Assume that I take your suggestion seriously, and assume—as seems obvious—that every one of us has at least one false belief woven into the fabric of our world view. With every belief tied in with every other belief, and the meaning of each sentence dependent upon these connections, it follows that every answer we give is connected, however distantly, to a false belief. This means that every answer must be at least partially false. Your principle seems to assert that every answer one could give to any question the Council can ask would be false, at least in part.
“Language, Varlet Minna, is not a matter of natural law. It is a tool, an invention. Though imperfectly designed, this does not mean it should be left on the shelf to rust. Not even the best blacksmith insists that all of his iron must be tempered perfectly, and farmers would starve if they refused to use their plow unless it had a perfect edge or sow a field that was not perfectly suited to receive the seed, or reap the crop not perfectly ripened.”
Minna had to repeat the argument a couple of times in her own mind to see the flow of it, and when she did she could find no answer. All she saw was a contradiction between the conclusion it implied and another she was devoted to. “I have no obligation to participate in your rituals of death and violence. Zin should be made over into a different person, one without the beliefs and desires that lead him to do violence. You are not justified in harming him.” She knew that the words were harsh, and were likely to anger the Lady, but she could not think of a way to soften them that was not dishonest.
“On that matter, Varlet, believe as you will. You will find no refuge in our law. When we ask you about Zin’s capacity to choose, it does not matter whether we use the term in a way you think contains some falsehood. We will expect a direct answer. And you can expect us to take whatever actions the law allows against those who attempt to thwart Justice by thwarting our Council.”
Minna flinched at the contradiction in the Lady’s last words. The way Strykler jumped between arguments grounded on a public good independent of Justice’s concerns and a devotion to serving Justice showed that the lady was more accustomed to reciting public platitudes—and of focusing her attention only on those convenient for her present purposes—than to grounding decisions on reasoned argument.
“Then, is your mind already made up about the case of Zin Kussad?” Minna asked.
“I told you, Varlet, my opinion about what the law should say holds no weight with how I judge a case based on what the law does say. When the Council next sits in legislative session, I will argue as I have done today. But, when the Council sits in judicial session to hear the case of Zin Kussad, I must judge according to the law as written. That law still allows people to plead insanity, possession, or charm. Frankly, I’m even a little tempted to vote on your side. It will make my own argument in legislative Council more convincing if I can point to Zin’s case as an example of the absurdities that this law implies. The sooner we get rid of it, the better.”
“Then, if you have no further questions, I shall be leaving,” Minna said as she stood.
She returned to the Inn a bell short of dinner time, but found the Advocate at a table near the door with a full meal in front of her. Jeffers and Cadlius sat with her, each enjoying a light afternoon snack. All three stood as Minna entered. The Advocate kneeled and the two men, her escort, stood waiting until she sat.
“What happened?” Pierra asked, all hint of formality gone. “And leave nothing out. I need to know what I must do to convince her.”
While Minna explained, the Advocate expressed no opinions except those about the taste of her food, which was getting cold too quickly for her liking and did not have near enough salt. Minna focused on Jeffers while reciting the Lady’s argument that no answer to any question were ever entirely true. Jeffers said nothing.
“As well as can be expected,” Pierra said at the end. “She will hear us out in court, which is really all I’m hoping for. We’ll worry about winning the court battle after we’ve made sure we have a court battle to win.”
The Advocate swallowed hard and washed down her bite with wine. “Meanwhile, Matron Deonta has brought up a new argument, and I need to know how to counter it. She’s asking the other members of the Council to imagine a case where a person commits a crime he could not possibly commit again. A man who commits matricide, for example; he has only one mother. Since after performing this crime he is longer a danger to others, you, Varlet, can call for no action to be taken against him. No harm is justified because we have no reason to believe he will perform a harmful act in the future. He gets to live a happy life without the least bit of ill befalling him.”
Minna answered, “Okay, I can imagine something like that happening. And I share the want to make this person suffer for his crime.” She gave herself a moment to think. The first response to come to her was to claim that this person’s violence guaranteed a good reason to hold him in the dungeons. By his violence he showed himself to be so lacking an aversion to the death and suffering of others that he was clearly a threat to their safety. But such an answer would miss the point of Pierra’s objection. The Advocate was asking her to assume a case in which the violence did not carry such an implication. She dreamed up a new example, drawn from memories of those who had come into the Earl’s dungeon filled with hate towards a particular type of creature. There were many who considered Dwarves to be brutish creatures who should be locked away in their mines. Minna found it easy to imagine such a man in a community with only one dwarf, who kills that last member of that race in existence. In his entire life, he had never showed the slightest inclination to harm anything but dwarves. No forward-looking theory of punishment could justify harming him, and with no dwarves around there was no need to reform his mind.
“One way that I can understand your question comes to me as something Terrence would argue, not Matron Deonta. In refusing to punish—in concentrating only on reform, we make it possible for somebody to play the system—to get something they want at another’s expense without paying for it, so long as his actions can be known to be something he could never repeat; his motives could be known to be something he could never act on again. There is a need for a society to have its institutions set up in such a way to prevent this kind of game, and that is something I have never denied.
“Other than that, and independent of it, I’ll admit that I would want to see this man punished,” Minna added. It was an understatement; the passion raged within her, and she knew the passion would be much stronger if the case was real. Where she felt resistance to ‘punishing’ the individual, she was tempted to think that the harshest types of ‘treatment’ were somehow necessary to exorcize this demonic urge, even if the person could never act on it. But, as a wardmaster, she had been warned of the dangers of allowing her urge to punish drive her into ordering brutal ‘treatment.’
“What am I feeling when I sense that this man should be ‘punished’ is nothing but a desire to see him harmed. But the desire alone does not justify whatever conduct is necessary to fulfill the desire—otherwise the rapist would be justified in committing rape, for example. That is what is missing from your argument, the justification. Your story arouses the desire, but assumes the justification. In doing so it begs the question. Desire, in turn, tempts me like it does many others to ignore the problems with the argument and to grasp whatever rationalization offers itself for seeing the harm inflicted on this man as punishment as a good and right thing. But I have seen too many rapists travel that same track, rationalizing the harms they inflict with beliefs that the women deserve what he does to them or that it actually does them some good. A willingness to ignore the problems with an argument does not make it a good argument.”
“You still deny what your senses tell you is true,”
Minna jumped at the sound of the Matron’s voice. Deonta pulled up a chair and sat down at the table as if she had been invited. “Trust your feelings, Varlet Minna. You know it is right to punish this man.”
“We don’t sense theories directly, Matron Deonta. The only thing we sense is the observations which theories are created to account for. Your notion that harming a man contains some element of Justice is a theory—one you defend as being able both an explanation for why we punish and a justification for the punishment we inflict. It’s a tempting theory because it rationalizes away the wrongness of the harms we cause others to suffer in getting what we want. But the entities that your theory postulates do not exist.”
Deonta started to answer, but Minna cut her off. “We’ve been over this ground before, Matron. Unless you have something new to add—some new observations which can not be explained fully by beliefs and desires—then we’ll simply be repaving the Gatian road.”
Jeffers interrupted. “Actually, the whole debate assumes that rehabilitation happens only in the confines of the prison. Societies have to organize themselves so their citizens make the right choices to not go into prison. If people were allowed this type of loophole, you would expect its members to look for it, and to use it. This wouldn’t work. You want to rehabilitate your citizens against looking for these types of loopholes. You do so by closing them.”
Minna did not look convinced, but answered with a shrug.
“I’m calling an end to this debate,” Deonta said. “This afternoon, Connie Trae announced that she agreed with Terrence and I. The Council has no need to discuss the existence of Justice and Will and the implications of their nonexistence on punishing Zin Kussad. There is no precedent for this line of defense, and lots of precedent against it resting in every criminal conviction that has passed the Council.”
“There is precedent,” the Advocate answered. “I have grounded my argument on the law of insanity, charm, and possession.”
“You interpret that law much too broadly, Advocate Pierra. The issue has been decided. Good evening.” She stood and headed for the door without waiting for a response.
The Advocate continued eating, though for Minna the food sitting in front of her had lost its appeal.
“Well,” Pierra said after swallowing a mouth full. “That puts you back into your old dilemma. Which will it be, Varlet. Do you cooperate with the Council, or do I start preparing for your imminent conviction for showing contempt of the Council.”
“You tell me,” Minna said. “When I go before the Council I will tell them the truth. They are asking me to point to a ghost where none exists, and I will not lie and say I see ghosts if there are none.”
“You’re guilty, Pierra said as she wiped her mouth and stood. “But there are a couple members of the Council who will like the fact that you are standing up for what you believe. I assume you will not mind if your punishment is banishment from K’non. However, both Terrence and Matron Deonta are likely to vote for imprisonment; Deonta for the crime of attempting to thwart Justice and Terrence as a warning to other visitors that while in K’non they are to follow K’non’s laws. And that pair rules the Council.”
Pierra grabbed a last bite of food, stood, gave a polite bow, and left.
“Looks like operation ‘Don’t Look Back’ is on,” Jeffers said as he returned to his meal.