Chapter 14
When Minna and her escort started their meal, the common room was nearly empty as it had been for seven days. The Varlet could hear the rumbling of a crowd well before anybody came through the door; it sounded like the distant roar of a huge swarm of bees accompanied by thunder. The first people through the door casually swiped dust from their clothes and picked out their tables. Within minutes, the Inn’s common room was as crowded and noisy as any Minna had seen.
“It looks like the caravan is in,” Cadlius said.
“Caravan?” asked Minna.
Shoveling bread into his mouth, Cadlius answered, “Yes. All the merchants come to K’non in one huge caravan—under one common guard to discourage road bandits. They schedule their trip so that they arrive the evening before Merchanday and they will leave the morning following. I have been thinking that Jeffers and I should leave with them.”
In the swelling crowd, Cadlius did not even hint at their plans for Minna to leave shortly after that.
“Good, more people to attend my sermon tomorrow,” said Jeffers through a subtle groan.
Minna looked doubtful. “A lot of these people, hopefully, already agree with us. They are not from here.”
“And they probably don’t have time to visit the temple,” added Cadlius. “From what I hear, Merchanday is almost a carnival. No merchant is going to waste a bell’s chance to make a profit by going to the Temple.”
Jeffers poorly hid his relief.
Two large inn workers removed the large conference table from the stage and carried it out the back; others pushed the chairs onto the main floor. Immediately, a young man and woman jumped onto the stage with a flourish of oversized robes, drawing a roar from the crowd already filling the room with tobacco smoke and the smell of sweat. “I’m Chera Muse,” announced the lady on the stage. That alone brought a cheer. “And my brother Ty accompanies me.” The young man paused from rummaging through a large bundle he carried to give a bow, then drew a fiddle seemingly out of nowhere and snapped a rapid string of notes. When Chara started singing her voice easily outmatched that of the crowd, even as she got them to sing along with her.
“How about continuing our conversation in my room?” Minna had to shout to be heard above the noise. Cadlius and Jeffers picked up their plates and headed for the stairs. Immediately, a flock of caravaneers took possession of their table; the crowd had already grown to where many were forced to stand.
The Guardsman assigned to watch over the Varlet climbed out of the common room as well, only five steps behind them.
Speaking so the noise of the crowd would hide her words, Minna said, “Maybe, with all the confusion, this would be a good time to get out of here.”
“No doubt the Matron thinks the same thing,” Cadlius answered. “But, during Caravan, the Guard calls up extra militia and has told all of them to keep an eye out for you. When the Caravaneers get ready to leave tomorrow night, I bet there will be at least four Guardsmen or militia watching you, though you probably won’t be able to see them all. After the Caravan leaves, and with you having made no attempt to leave with them, and with me and Jeffers gone, the Matron will discharge the extra militia and the Guard will relax. That will be the best time for you to leave.”
Minna took a furtive glance at the Guardsman following her.
“Better if you never do that again,” Cadlius rumbled. “If he catches you glancing at him.Any good fighter knows that the eyes often betray a person’s thoughts.”
Minna fixed her eyes forward and did not say another word until the three of them were inside her room and the door closed. Jeffers went straight to the desk and the book he had sitting there.
“Nervous?” Minna asked.
“Do pegasi have wings?” Jeffers answered. He wrapped his arms across his stomach and folded his body around them; the plate he had carried up from the dining room lay untouched. “I feel like I’m about to throw up.”
“You’ll do fine,” said Minna. Jeffers did not bother to state how little he believed that, or how little it mattered. The Varlet winced and added, “Jeffers, now that the Matron has ruled against our confronting Justice and Will’s Power before the Council, there’s no reason for you to give your sermon. Refuse her invitation. You can even say that you do so as a way of protesting this ruling.”
“I lived through a day of questioning in the Earl’s court, I can live through this,” Jeffers answered. He straightened up, took a deep breath to calm himself, then folded his arms on the desk and collapsed into them.
“Barely,” said Cadlius.
Jeffers stood and headed for the door. “Excuse me, but I need to pay another brief visit to the potty chamber.”
When the door closed behind him, Cadlius’s amused smile abruptly ended. “Varlet Minna, if you’re going to draw a knife on a guard you are going to have to be ready for anything he might do to answer your challenge. You no longer have any excuses for not learning at least a little about handling a man in combat.”
Reluctantly, Minna agreed. Cadlius bolted the door, and the Varlet joined him in the center of the floor.
Jeffers went to his room when he found the door to Minna’s room locked. Not being able to do much else, he lay down. With the nervousness knotting his stomach, combined with the noise rising up three floors from the crowded bar below, he was certain he would be awake all night and be giving his sermon through the foggy haze of half-sleep. The brightness of the pre-dawn sky through the window surprised him with the news that he had slept. It told him as well that he had a comfortable span of time before he was due at the Temple.
The night had chilled his wash water. He rubbed his chin; shaving was a much more dangerous, painful, and less successful task here than in his home world, but it was a habit he had not been able to shake for long. Even though the people in this culture cared little for how clean-shaven a man was, he knew that he would feel better with his stubble removed. He drew a straight edge from the drawer, gave it a few passes over his whetstone, and lathered up his face.
The knots, which had retied his stomach only seconds after waking, told him to bypass breakfast this morning. He went over his speech again, making changes that marred the clean copy he had written from his notes yesterday. Just staring at the words tightened the muscles in his chest to where it was hard to breathe. A worry that he would find something needing significant change prompted him to stuff the paper in his pocket to thwart the temptation of further proofing.
Taking a few deep breaths, and telling the tension to leave the muscles in his shoulders and arms as he exhaled, did him no good. He felt a need to use the potty chamber; perhaps to camp there for the rest of the morning.
Jeffers refused to be late for anything; a legacy that a childhood friend had left him. “Being late, and making somebody else wait for you, is like telling them that their time — their life, and the things they want to accomplish and could use that time doing — are of no importance to you. There are few acts so selfish.” The lecture made tardiness sound like a close relative to murder; both acts robbed a person of the time to do what they wanted. Jeffers doubted the severity of the crime, but he was never late.
The common room was already packed with caravaneers enjoying breakfast and getting an early start on haggling with local merchants. The smell of morningcakes, syrup, and sausage turned Jeffers’ stomach. When Minna and Cadlius hailed him from their table, he pretended to ignore them. It was better to wait for them outside, if they wanted to go with him, then to suffer through those smells of breakfast foods.
The Varlet and Cadlius followed, chewing their last bites of breakfast as they ran out the door. They slid to a stop when they saw that Jeffers was waiting for them.
Swallowing, Minna asked, “Why the rush?”
“Just wanted to get there early,” Jeffers answered, starting off for the Temple.
“Still nervous?”
“Not a bit,” Jeffers answered; the question did not merit an honest answer.
The area of desecration remained; children sat around staring at the bugs making their home there. The ceremony to resanctify the church would take place after Justice had been appeased with the corrupter’s life.
During the night, Temple attendees had rearranged the interior of the idol room. They had placed an array of benches on the open floor, and raised the platform before Sif’s image so that the speaker would stand between Sif’s outstretched arms. A half-dozen attendees waited patiently near the door. One approached Jeffers as he entered; another came up to Varlet Minna and Cadlius to show them to their seats.
The dryness in Jeffers’ mouth thwarted his first attempt to speak. He tried again. “They’re with me.” The ushers returned to wait for guests as an Attendee escorted Jeffers to a section of darkness behind the idol which had been curtained off for privacy.
A padded chair invited him to sit; on a stand next to it a pitcher of iced water called to him even more loudly. He finished his second glass before he felt it possible to make an attempt to relax.
“Where’s the Matron?” Jeffers asked, seeing that there was nobody in the room but the four of them.
“She will be up in time to introduce you,” the Attendee answered.
“What are we here so early for?” asked Minna. “What do you plan to do for the next twenty minutes beside sit here and make yourself even more nervous?”
“I would make myself nervous no matter where I sat,” Jeffers answered, dropping into the chair. “Less so here, in fact. Rather than coming into this room cold when it is full of people, I am here, and the people will come to me. It may be foolish to your eyes, but I’ve found that for my mind I can handle things better this way.”
“As you say,” said Minna.
The Attendee brought chairs for the Varlet and Cadlius, and refilled the pitcher of water, and stirred in some more ice.
Curiosity drove Jeffers to peek often through the curtains. The view disheartened him and relaxed him at the same time. He could not measure time by the growing crowd in the main room; with the time for the sermon only minutes away there were only a couple dozen people in the audience.
“I feared this would happen,” Advocate Pienna said as she stepped through the curtain. “Merchanday morning—not many people will be wanting to spend time at a sermon today.” She climbed the ladder to the speaker’s platform for another peek. “We do have Lady Strykler and Lady Paig out there though. Maybe we can accomplish something. And Matron Deonta should stay for the sermon. It would be rude for her to leave.”
“I’m surprised that she would manipulate things like this, to ensure that I have no large audience. It would seem that Justice would demand that my voice be heard. His principle servant in K’non should be ashamed to thwart Him like this.”
Climbing back down the ladder, Pienna said, “It’s not exactly clear what Justice demands from us. Generally, words in themselves cannot do harm. However, they can cause other things to cause harm. Most believe that Justice prohibits us from using violence against those who merely speak, but He does not compel us to listen either. We may, without fear of violating any obligation, refuse to be a part of any audience. We certainly have no obligation to provide all potential speakers with an podium on which to speak.”
“Who can tell what a fictional being would command if it was real?” asked Jeffers. “But if one can infer from the fiction created up to this point, it seems Justice thwarts himself by not commanding people to seek out different opinions, particularly with respect to ideas relevant on how we should treat others. Then again, it is hard to argue that Justice, with his love of suffering, is being inconsistent when he blinds himself to ways of reducing suffering.”
“Those are harsh words,” answered Advocate Pienna.
“I’m sorry,” Jeffers said, almost at the same moment the Advocate spoke. “My nerves are getting to me.”
“It’s not entirely true that Justice does not demand that people listen. He demanded the creation of my position”
“Right, so how many people are out there now? Do you think there might be three dozen yet?”
“A person could spend their entire life learning, becoming an expert, on any one issue; no person has the time to become an expert on every issue they must decide, and even becoming an expert on one issue does not pay as well as becoming an expert farmer, or blacksmith, or wood cutter.”
Jeffers found himself pacing again. His body would not stand still. He tried to tell himself that it was for the better that so few people were showing up. He tried to tell himself that he had less reason to be nervous. But the size of the crowd was already an embarrassment; he could imagine Matron Deonta’s glee and even the laughter on the street as news got out.
That’s stupid, he told himself. His fear of people, he knew, was filled with fanciful beliefs about how others saw him and of imagined laughter behind his back. The ideas came to him as the product of an immature mind that followed him into adulthood.
The church bell rang twice. Still, Matron Deonta was not there.
“These things usually get started late,” the Advocate said. “People expect that. I would bet that most of your audience will arrive late. Delaying the sermon a short while will allow them to hear all of it.”
Jeffers’ concern over how many people would be present was fading against a desire merely to get back to his room and pretend the day did not happen. For an instant he considered making an announcement that, since so few people came, he will give no sermon; but even if there were only one person to listen, he could do more good by speaking to that one person than by sitting in his room.
Matron Deonta appeared to walk out of solid stone as she stepped through the shaded back door. She approached Jeffers directly and asked in a voice that made him shiver in spite of the heat, “Are you ready?”
He nodded, and Deonta climbed the ladder to the platform without another word.
Jeffers expected the Matron to use the introduction to fire the first shot. The silence in the room grew thick as the attendees recognized Matron Deonta on the platform.
“It is my tradition to begin events such as these with a prayer; a request to Justice that we find in our hearts his true will, and that he guide us not to be unjust in our actions. Today, I’m afraid that our guest may find such a prayer to be prejudiced against the position he wants to take. Prophet Jeffers of Malikii denies Justice.”
Echoes amplified the hiss of those few who attended as they made clear their disapproval of such beliefs.
“People of K’non, those who are here today have reason to be proud. You have shown yourself better than most of our citizens, who would rather blind themselves to new ideas than expose their minds and their hearts to the possibility that beliefs long cherished are false.” At her words, the audience returned to silence.
Hiding behind his curtain, Jeffers counted the audience. Forty-four; a couple more came through the door as he finished.
“It is always worthwhile to consider that we, in our quest for Justice, may do evil. No worthy judge sits before any accused and renders a verdict without first confronting whatever arguments can be raised in the accused’s defense. However fanciful, Prophet Jeffers wishes to provide us with such an argument. Many in this town abdicate their responsibility this day to listen. As good judges must, I ask you to listen. I present to you, Prophet Jeffers.”
When the Matron turned around, Jeffers was not waiting for her to welcome up onto the platform. He stepped up onto a bench below, level with his listeners, and shouted, “People of K’non, I would feel foolish standing up there, so far away, to address a room so empty. Come, gather around. Let us take a step at being a little more neighborly.” He lowered his voice as people came nearer. “I had a sermon prepared for today, filled with grand gestures and strong words, as much aimed at entertaining as informing you. I find that I’m not really the kind of being to give such a flashy presentation. Instead, I have always found myself more comfortable chatting quietly with friends, before a small fire, drinking tea while my guests often satisfy themselves with whatever brew best satisfies their taste.”
With a waive of his hand, Jeffers created a small fire without logs and directed his listeners to circle their benches around it. Part of the audience took advantage of the shuffling to move silently out the door.
“I can say nothing about why I think Justice and Will’s Power are fictions without first saying how I decide whether something is a fiction.” Jeffers described Occam’s Razor, then used it to attack Will’s Power with the argument that every human action can be adequately explained using only beliefs and desires; Will’s Power was superfluous. Punishing behavior, he argued, as well as the sentiments aroused in those who punish, could also be explained without ever talking about Justice, he argued. His plan, when he invited the attendees into a smaller and more intimate huddle, was to have a discussion of the issues he came to speak about rather than a lecture or a sermon, but until the basics points were laid out he had to dismiss questions with a short, “I’ll get to that later.”
Others left as he spoke; it angered him and he spent a moment plotting what he could do to embarrass the next person who stood. Revenge; a quick thought of what he was planning drove that plan from his mind.
A man near the back of the group grumbled about nearly everything Jeffers said, but not too loudly until he said bluntly, “I think you’re problem, prophet Jeffers, is that everything you have to say is against there being a person, a servant to Sif, who has made it good that we punish the wicked. Who’s to say that Justice is a person at all?”
“I believe my arguments strike at retributive justice no matter what form it takes. Can you think of a form for justice to take that survives Occam’s Razor?”
“I’m a wood cutter. I can identify two dozen different types of trees from their smell alone, that’s my business. And reckon I know a just act from an unjust act the same way I know a hickory from an elm. Evil just smells bad; it has a stink about it. And what is good, that smells sweet.”
“You’ve confused two issues, sir.” Jeffers said. “One is the issue of what Justice is; is it a person, or is it something else? The other is the question of how we know — do we sense it directly with use of a moral sense, or do we infer like we infer the presence of an animal in the forest from its tracks? You say that you know Justice because it smells sweet. But I say it smells sweet not because it satisfies Justice, but because it satisfies a desire. I do not deny the sweetness of the smell, I deny your account of where the aroma comes from. And, mind you, not all things that smell sweet are good.
“On the question of what values are, a famous philosopher where I came from pointed out how people often started by making claims about the world — that there is a deity who looks after us, or that animals in nature behave in such-and-such a way, or that humans have the capacity to reason — go from there to making claims about how the world ought to be. These people generally fail to explain how this claim of what ought to be follows logically from what is. As important and meaningful as Hume’s question is, I think the opposite question is even more interesting. How does one derive facts about the world from ought judgements? Admittedly, the implications I have in mind here are causal, not logical; how do values cause arms to bend, words to be spoken? To do this, they have to describe, not just prescribe, the world. They have to be real, physical things — things that are. And there is no mystery in deriving ‘is’ claims from other ‘is’ claims. To insist that values — ‘ought’ statements — must describe a distinct type of thing is to presuppose a type of dualism that there is no evidence for.
“But what type of thing is Justice that it can cause these physical events in the real world? How does Justice turn the hand of the jailer holding the key or cause the executioner to release the blade that ends a prisoner’s life? These are physical events; what type of physical force is Justice that it can alter the flow of physical events? This is where every theory of what Justice is fails, except those that reduce Justice to some combination of facts about beliefs and desires. But, if Justice is reduced such a set, then there is a problem justifying behavior which, ultimately, is done only to fulfill a desire to do harm.
“Kindness and cruelty do exist; they are real. Kindness is a desire to fulfill the desires of others; cruelty is a desire to thwart their desires. Goodness, in any sense of the term that describes something real rather than mythical, refers to kindness; evil to cruelty. On that scale, the desire for retribution must fall with every other desire that some other person suffer — a desire to rape, or to torture, or to battery another person. It can be counted as nothing other than an evil.”
A woman sitting in the front row, wearing a fine cut of clothes that showed she had some status in the town, stood. She turned to face the rest of the audience. “This desire for retribution you speak of is as natural to use as eating and sleeping. You do not ask us to give up food because it will save us money, or sleep because it is a waste of our time. Retribution, like eating and sleep, becomes wicked in its extreme, like gluttony and lazyness. But when not carried to excess, it is as necessary to a healthy society as food and sleep is to a healthy person.”
“If I were to say to you, my lady, that the urge to rape is a natural urge, and that the Temple must find some way for a more controlled expression of this urge, how would you answer me? With trolls and hobgoblins, the urge to see humans suffer is as natural to them as retribution may be to us; does this yield an obligation on our part to sacrifice ourselves to the fulfillment of their desires?”
“You’re talking of trolls and hobgoblins. I’m talking of humans.”
“If they were human, or if these were human needs, would it follow that the Temple neglects its citizens if it did not provide the means for fulfilling them? Would you count it good for the Temple to have a daily ceremony where a citizen, picked at random, is tortured on the temple steps to its citizens’ delight?”
“Humans aren’t like that.”
“Aren’t they? Just like trolls enjoy the suffering of humans, you have admitted yourself that humans need to inflict suffering on others of their kind. And you have said it is the Temple’s duty to see that their need is fulfilled.”
“That’s not what I said!”
Jeffers ended her rebuttal by pointing to another lady sitting in the middle of the audience.
“Everything I heard you say so far sounds real good,” the second lady said. “It is all wonderful in theory and I think you might be right. At least, I can’t think of an argument that I can use against you. But it won’t work in the real world.”
Jeffers struggled to keep from smiling. “Theories, if they are any good at all, are theories about the real world. If you can have a reason why my theory does not fit the real world, then you have an argument to use against me.”
“Well, I heard a bard’s tale recently about the Uniting, when Elbin conquered all of the other human nations and brought them under his control. On his first invasion he marched into Pier, where the citizens were in civil war over the succession of a new king. Elbin told his soldiers that he would hang any man who took any property without paying for it, or who molested any citizen of Pier not wielding a weapon or magic against them. He needed to be seen as somebody who upheld justice. If he wasn’t, then the people in the nations he moved against would have fought him all the stronger, and they would have been right to do so.”
“You’ve said a lot of different things, my lady, and I hope you will have patience as I unweave the different threads of your argument. Your main point seems to be that his decision ‘worked.’ But showing that something works is not sufficient for showing that it is good. I hear that, if one wants to inflict really severe pain, then applying a hot iron to the soles of the feet works very well. But it is not good. Before judging whether what works is good you must go further and judge whether the work it does is worth doing.
“You could answer that Elbin’s pronouncement, and his willingness to back it up, worked to prevent his people from raping and pillaging the lands he conquered. And it may have been an act of kindness, if it was done to the suffering which troops are prone to inflict on conquered lands, and if no kinder option existed. The barber, in removing a patient’s tooth, causes him suffering, but does so for the sake of the better good that results from it. The leader of state, or the judge, or the soldier may also need to cause suffering. If she does so for the pleasure that the suffering brings her or those she works for, then she is evil. If she does so for the sake of Justice, she is evil. If she does so with sincere regret for the suffering she causes, with a heart that says she would have gladly chosen another way if she knew of one that worked, and with an eye to the good she aims to bring about, then I can say nothing against her. However, if you pay attention of when people call for punishment, I think you will find that they seldom show much in the way of painful regret. Theirs is not a suffering that springs from kindness.
Jeffers gave his nod to a man in the back of the crowd who had been wildly waiving an arm for attention.
“If Justice is really something we make up, then why are the rules of justice so complicated? I mean, we’ve got all sorts of restrictions on punishment; only the guilty can be punished; a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty; the severity of the punishment must fit the severity of the crime.”
“They are complicated because we are not simple creatures with a single desire. In addition to our lust for revenge we have a fear of being punished. We fear that our slight transgressions could prompt severe retaliation from others if restraints are not written into the Justice’s rules. And our lust for revenge must compete against our compassion. For many of us, our desire for wine rests in conflict with our aversion to drunkenness, our love of food in conflict with the ugliness we see in being fat. So we proclaim temperance to be a virtue. We temper our lust for justice the same way.
“Note also that the appetite for food and drink differs among different people; there are drunks and gluttons as well as those who abstain wholly from alcohol and who eat far less then they should. Similarly, people’s appetite for the suffering of others also varies. We can measure the degree of moderation in each person’s lusts by what they say about the so called need to punish. A great many different people go into deciding the form of these institutions; it is no wonder that they are complicated.
While he spoke, Jeffers noted that the crowd had grown restless and a few more had left. One lady wrapped a shawl around her and complained loudly on her way out, “I think I’d better leave. I don’t know how much more of this I can stand before I get sick.” A rush of a half dozen others followed her.
“I would like to thank all of you for coming,” the Matron said, her voice coming from the top of the platform high above. “However, I’m afraid that we must prepare this room for other events we have planned this day. Please join me in thanking Prophet Jeffers.”
There was a murmur of thanks; none very loud. A few stepped past Jeffers with a bow; some of them sat coins on the bench in front of him. An elderly lady, stooped over and using a cane to walk with, sat silver down on the bench. “Justice took my son,” she mumbled. “He wasn’t a bad boy. I think, with kindness and love and a little patience, he could have been . . . . He hurt my son, Justice did. Well, they say the mother is always the last to give up hope.”
Soon the room was empty, except for a few attendees stacking benches and carrying them down into the temple. Jeffers scooped up the coins sitting in front of him and carried them behind the curtain.
“You did well,” Minna said.
Cadlius lay sleeping in a chair.
Jeffers stepped up to the Advocate, took her hand, and dropped the coins within. “These contributions were made by those who would see Justice thwarted, insofar as Justice seeks to have people harmed as an end in itself. I trust your office to spend it wisely.” He felt exhausted; but an adrenaline fire still roamed in his veins. Speaking in front of others had always done that to him. He turned back to the cut that served as the entrance to the curtained back section of the temple. “Come on, I’ve done my bit. It’s time to go home.”