Chapter 4
The bath, and the privacy Minna had while enjoying it, gave her a chance to calmly think about the situation she had fallen into. Her first thoughts did little more than add depth to her despair. Cadlius’s insistence on a bloodless escape and an advance decision to surrender rather than fight sounded like a recipe for failure.
She reminded herself that darkening her own mood would do her no good. There were many in the dungeons of Malikii who came there seeing no hope or future for themselves. With them, her first duty was to build a willingness to make a plan and carry it out—to pull them out of a lethargy that could otherwise keep them locked in the dungeons until their death. Some never made it; they died, if not by their own hands, than by a wasting away of their spirit until all that remained breathing but otherwise lifeless shell, moving like flesh golems to the commands of others.
As soon as she turned her mind away from dreaming of reasons for imminent defeat, she came up with a long list of things to do. To sort them out she classified them by certainty. She would need to convince those who watched her that she fully expected to be in K’non on the day of the hearing. Otherwise, they would remain diligent in watching for her escape.
If I fully expected to be here on the day of the hearing, what would I be doing? She could not ask the question out loud; the Inn had provided her with an attendant for her bath. In her thoughts, the answer came immediately; she would be preparing arguments to present to the Council. If she could convince them that Zin lacked access to Will’s Power, and that they were better off allowing her to take him back to Malikii than undergoing the expense of keeping him in their dungeons, she could actually leave peacefully. This new course looked clear and right; she should have no difficulty convincing the Council to allow Zin to leave with her because that was what she was going to try.
Twice during her bath she suffered interruptions. The first knock came when she had just gotten into the tub. Her attendant answered, and returned with a note from Fint. Since Fint could not write, somebody else had placed his words on the paper. They announced that Fint had been granted permission to leave.
“Bring me a writer’s tray,” she commanded the attendant. An instant later a board lay across her tub, and paper and ink sat on it. After drying her arms she wrote quickly, then sealed the message with the signet from her ring. On the outside she wrote that the bearer of this message was due ten thousand xearmarx from the Earl’s treasury; doubling the payment she offered Fint earlier in hopes that the enticement would overpower his aversion to cities.
“Have somebody read this to Fint before they hand it to him,” Minna commanded as she handed the letter to the attendant.
The second interruption came only moments later. The note was tied with a white silk ribbon bearing the symbol of the Temple of Sif.
Varlet Minna:
Lieutenant Trib has informed me that you have postponed your meal until after you bathed. It is my hope that you would accept my request to join you as you dine. I suspect that you are starved for a civilized meal, so I have asked Ben Tillman to have a table for six set up at sixth bell.
Unless you wish otherwise, I will ask Lady Terrance and the magician Spek to join us. Lady Terrance owns the inn where you reside and several other businesses in town. Spek is a magician who has honored our town with his citizenship. Though male, he often provides our Council with advice and guidance. Fint, as I trust you are aware, intends to leave town before sixth bell.
Please respond at your earliest convenience.
Matron Deonta.
After giving the message a second read to make sure she missed no important details she handed it back to the servant. “Give this to Cadlius and Jeffers, then inform Matron Deonta that we accept her invitation.”
Anticipation lifted her out of her bath early. While she dried herself she considered the dinner ahead, drawing confidence from the fact that, if there was to be a verbal battle, it would be on ground she knew well. The Matron had guessed correctly when she said that the dungeons of Malikii held a number of believers in Justice and Will. Most could not tolerate the Earl’s refusal to carry out Justice’s demands and acted on their own to do His bidding.
Minna suffered no delusions that she could reform the city of K’non or its leaders over a meal. As wardmaster, she had a system of rewards and punishments available to assist reason in convincing her subjects of their errors. Even then, the process took years. Here, she would have to rely on reason alone, and reason had only two weeks to force its conclusions on the unwilling.
She had lost her clothes to the Inn when they had taken them away for cleaning, but she had been given a fresh, clean white robe in their place. Putting it on, she knocked on the door that separated her room from Cadlius’s. It opened immediately. He, too, was dressed in one of the Inn’s robes; however, he tied his closed with his own belt, from which hung his weapons.
“Please get Jeffers,” Minna commanded. “I would like to prepare things with him before dinner.”
With a nod, Cadlius left. She waited on the balcony, slowly brushing her hair as the sun and the warm breeze flowed through.
Cadlius returned quickly, followed by Jeffers. Instead of wearing one of the Inn’s robes, Jeffers wore a shirt and pants from his pack. Though probably the cleanest he owned, trail dust coated them. Again, Jeffers took a seat at the desk and opened his book. Cadlius returned to his post at the front door.
“To put it briefly,” Minna began, “I believe our plans need me to give every indication that I am not leaving. I will work as if I am not going anywhere. If I can come up with a convincing argument, we may even find ourselves riding through the front gate with Zin and the Council’s blessing.”
Jeffers grimaced and shook his head. Minna knew his thoughts, but still she asked, “What’s the problem?”
“Nothing,” Jeffers answered. The expression on Jeffers’s face showed mostly sadness. “I think you’re right. We should try to reason with these people first. Then, when that fails, get out of here the best way we can.”
“Please see if you can be a little more optimistic,” said Minna. “Our chances would be better with you emitting confidence rather than gloom.”
“If you want me to believe that our chances are good, then show me the evidence. I’ve seen reason fail too often to believe its chances here are more than minimal. The only hope I find is in our getting out of here. They can’t possibly know what we are capable of.”
“Unless they bring somebody in who can read minds or who can foresee the future,” said Cadlius.
“Now don’t you start,” Minna warned.
There was silence for a moment, then Minna continued. “You both know that you can make it difficult for somebody to read your mind if you get some song or poem stuck in your head. As for fortune-tellers, they have to deal with the Seer’s Paradox. If they see us escaping and tell the authorities, the authorities then prevent us from escaping, which means that the seer could not have actually foreseen us escaping. All forecasts are clouded by this uncertainty.”
Jeffers asked, “What about magical scrying?” They could be listening to us right now.”
“Not likely.” answered Minna. “This is not a wicked society. They are simply misguided on some matters. I am sure they will grant us our privacy so long as we give them no good reason to invade it. The same goes for mind-reading, by the way. Our thoughts, too, will be left alone unless we give them reason to expect that we are planning something illegal by their laws. If I’m wrong in thinking that these people are at least that civilized, then they will know our plans as quickly as we make them. However, there is nothing we can do about it.”
Jeffers seemed struck by a sudden idea, and scribed a thought quickly into his book before the idea left him. In that book, he had told her, he kept all his notes on his struggles over the differences between right and wrong, good and evil. She had always been curious about what he wrote, and once she even snuck a peek, but he wrote in the language of his home world — a language only he knew.
Minna had seen Jeffers enter writing fits that lasted for bells. She did not have time to grant him that luxury. “Jeffers, I expect that the conversation around the table will get a little heated. Here are the conclusions that we will need to defend. First, the Matron has no right to hold Zin and should release him to us so that we may take him back to Malikii. Second, they have no right to force us to testify against Zin. Third, even if we lose the first two points they still have no right to execute Zin.”
A cloud washed across Jeffers face as he looked back at her. “And what if none of those conclusions are true, m’lady? Do we seek to defend them anyway?”
The question shocked Minna, who answered only with a stare.
Jeffers continued, “I don’t think it’s right to assume that what you want to prove is true and then go and search only for that evidence which supports it. Instead, you start with a proposition that you test by determining what it implies and then seeking to find out whether those implications are true. Your second proposition, m’lady, may well fail that test. A tribunal’s job would be sorely hampered if it could not compel people to provide it with evidence it needs.”
The words brought a new surge of fear through Minna. “Do you think I should testify?”
“Well, I think you could answer it honestly and not give them what they want,” Jeffers answered, closing his book and leaning forward in his chair. “The question you are being asked is what people in my home world called a ‘complex question;’ a question which rests on a false assumption and which, because of that, can not be answered honestly. A famous example is the question, ‘Do you still abuse your children?’ Whether you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ your answer implies that there was once a time when you abused your children. If that hidden assumption is false, neither answer can be true. So, you could answer that their questions are unanswerable, in the same was that ‘do you still abuse your children’ is unanswerable.”
Jeffers continued, almost as if he were making oral notes in his book. “So, how is the question that the Council asks a ‘complex question?’ Back in my home world there was a time when people thought it possible to test whether an individual was possessed by a demon. They would bind the person and throw her into water. Pure water, they thought, would reject anything that was contaminated by evil forces, so the possessed person would float. The innocent person, on the other hand, would be accepted by the water and would sink. This test, of course, was utter nonsense, just like the test the people here use to judge Zin’s capacity to draw upon Will’s Power is nonsense…
“If I were asked to measure whether the accused floats or sinks, how could I answer? I can not say that she floats because this, to them, means that she is corrupted, and that is false. I can not answer that she sinks; that means that she has a pure and untainted soul, which is also false. There is only one truth that I can tell this tribunal; their test is nonsense. If they then wish to punish me for speaking the truth, then let them do to me as they wish.
Minna had no doubt that Jeffers would do exactly as he said. She first heard of him when he appeared before the Earl’s court to answer charges that he advocated a false morality. Before the Earl and all her officers, he stated that there was no evil in transferring blood from one person to another, and that he — going under a different name, knowingly transferred blood from healthy soldiers to wounded soldiers during the second siege of Nighthawk’s Castle. That was bad enough, but Jeffers used his opportunity to add that, just as he did nothing wrong at Nighthawk’s Castle, no vampire does wrong when he drinks the blood of his victim; so long as the victim volunteered. On his way to the dungeons, he managed to escape. The Overseer of the Dungeons himself, Thane Tiempko, introduced him to Minna and secured her aide in helping him escape.
“You would tell them that their test, such that it was, was nonsense,” Minna repeated.
“Not exactly. I would tell them that the proposition that there is a problem with their test seems true in light of the evidence, and I would be happy to go over the evidence with them in detail. I would not assume that I must be right. Yet, when the time came to act, I would act on the best information I had. If the evidence still suggested that their questions contain a false assumption, then I would give answers consistent with that belief.”
The sound of the church chime cut short their discussion; sixth bell had started and Minna was too hungry to think of postponing dinner any longer than necessary. Cadlius took the lead, opening the door and nodding to the Guardsmen on his way by.
A glance over the railing showed Minna that the common room now held over a dozen people, most in the uniform of the Temple Guards.
“They want a few more people to see what we look like,” Cadlius whispered as he started down the steps. “So that they can identify us, if they need to.”
Minna easily picked out Matron Deonta, dressed in her formal clerical vestments, standing in the center of the room. She talked with the aged Ben Tillman and two others. The tall lady, Minna guessed, was Terrence; the older male was the magician Spek.
Terrence wore long, brown hair wrapped in a tight bun. She was of average height and weight for a human. When Minna reached the main floor she saw further that Terrence’s robe was velvet, and that a necklace of gold made four laps around her neck. Her rings, a broach, and her sleeve clasps all sparkled with precious stones. Spek barely matched Terrence for height, but had a head full of white hair combed straight back and braided. From a distance of a few paces, Minna saw that a little bit of extra weight had smoothed the wrinkles on Spek’s face — a face covered with short, white whiskers that indicated he had found a reason to shave a couple of days ago, and not since then.
“Our guests,” Matron Deonta announced. “Lady Terrance, Mage Spek, I would like for you to welcome into our town Varlet Minna of Malikii Province. Varlet Minna, it is my pleasure to introduce you to two of our town’s outstanding citizens. Lady Terrance and the Mage Spek.”
Though Minna was in no mood for pleasantries, she reminded herself that she had just met these two and had no reason to abstain from being courteous to them. She gave a formal nod to Terrence and a more subdued nod towards the mage, then assured Terrence that she was being well cared for and complimented her on the fine inn.
Almost as an afterthought, Deonta made a gesture towards Ben. “This is Ben Tillman, the Lady Terrence’s chosen and the manager of the Welcome Inn. He will be our server.”
With a deep bow, Ben backed away silently.
“My escort,” Minna said, gesturing to the two men behind her. “Cadlius D’Bourne and Jeffers Benson.”
Ben returned quickly and handed Minna and Cadlius goblets of wine; Jeffers was served iced water.
She turned to Spek and said, “Minna told me you constructed the window-wall in her office. It’s quite impressive. What type of magic is that?”
“The wall is nothing more than a magic mirror focused on the lower half of the city. Fixing its focus allowed me to make it much larger than a normal mirror.”
Minna could not help but share a worried glance with Cadlius and start planning the questions she would work into the conversation about how much K’nonites respected the privacy of others.
Terrence spoke into the pause. “By my understanding, Varlet, you came here in pursuit of a man who is now our prisoner.”
“Yes,” Minna answered, surprised at Terrence’s bluntness.
Spek trumpeted, “Well, I’m sure the people of both our lands will be happy to hear that he will never be allowed to do his evil again.” Even Terrence thought his comment rude, judging from the look she gave the magician.
“He wasn’t allowed to do evil the first time,” Minna answered. “He did it anyway.”
Spek began to answer, but Deonta took a firm hold of his elbow, gave it a squeeze, and lead him to a seat at the end of the table. She then continued without pause to direct everybody to their assigned seats, thwarting Spek’s chance for rebuttal. The Matron’s own place was at the head of the table, with Minna at her right and Terrence at her left. Cadlius sat at Minna’s right, and Jeffers sat across from Cadlius.
“You should still be here, Varlet, when the Caravan comes in,” said Terrence. “This platform is cleared to serve as a stage. You would be surprised, I’m sure, to see the quality of performer that comes to a wilderness city like this. Just last month Kareene Ferrier stood upon this very stage.”
“I didn’t care for her,” Spek grumbled. “Too obvious; she’s almost preachy — no offense, Matron — not that there’s anything wrong with preaching. It has its place, but not on a stage. If a performer’s got a message to tell, she should keep it subtle.”
“Subtle,” said the Varlet as she took her seat, “And risk that the message goes unrecognized. With most things worth saying, it’s hard enough getting others to understand you completely when you say it as clearly as you know how. You want to insist that people veil their ideas inside metaphore and allusion. The only preaching likely to survive that kind of smothering is that which the people already believe; but, then, I suspect that this is exactly what those who insist on subtlety in public performances really want.”
“I said that preaching has its place. Stand on the street corner and shout to those who walk by if you wish to preach. If you wish to entertain, then entertain.”
Deonta added quickly, “Obviousness and subtlety each has its place. Certainly, in giving a sermon, I should not strive to be subtle. No leader is well served, including Sif, if her words and deeds are hidden behind obscure metaphors. No law should be vague; people should know exactly what is expected of them. But just as no law or sermon should be vague, no entertainment should be too obvious. That is where you find the art of poetry; in having such a mastery of language that you can say the most profound things with elegance and grace.”
“You’re absolutely right, Matron,” said Minna.”And the greatest artist of all is one whose message is so subtle that nobody ever finds out what it is.”
“You’re being silly,” answered the Matron, signaling Ben that they were ready to eat. “I’m ready for a change of subject, Varlet. May I have your permission to address a question to your escort?”
Though curious and suspicious, Minna nodded her consent.
“You both look the right age to have been in Thane Tiempko’s War,” Deonta said. “We are in the midst of a new conflict ourselves. Hobgoblins have always been a menace, but recently trolls have returned. I would be remiss in my duties to K’non if I did not inquire whether either of you have skills you would be inclined to offer us.”
Cadlius answered first. “I served in the Army of Yellow Troute; I fought at Yellow Troute Pass and later in the battles to recapture the lower Ravenflower Valley.”
“In what capacity?” pressed Deonta.
“In the scouts, as a scouts leader.”
With a wave of her wine glass Deonta saluted Cadlius and gave a look of unexpected surprise to Terrence. “Your skills, then, are just what we could use here. In the forest, small units fight much more effectively than mass formations. We must talk about this further.”
“I am at your service.”
“As soon as he finishes his service to me,” Minna added.
“Of course,” said Deonta, turning to Jeffers. “And did you serve in the war?”
“I’m afraid so,” Jeffers answered, avoiding her stare.
“And how did you serve? In the Prophet Corps, I assume.”
“I had not studied for prophethood yet,” Jeffers answered. “It was the war, with its bloodshed and suffering, that convinced me to do what was necessary to earn for myself the power to channel Sif’s blessings to heal the wounded, cure the ill, and feed the hungry.”
“What did you do during the war, then?”
Jeffers stalled through a long draw of water. When he answered he spoke slowly and deliberately. “I and a few friends fled when Thrakutter’s army captured our village. We formed a band of raiders and attacked Thrakutter around Pacey and Redrock whenever we found an opportunity. Eventually, we hooked up with the Laurellans and Baron Softouch.”
“Baron Softouch?” Terrance sneered. “Softouch is a murdering, thieving elven half-breed. In proclaiming herself baron she mocks the Noble Order and everything Sif stands for. For Earl Noreon to purchase that scum’s help with a pardon makes her no better.”
“I’m sorry,” Jeffers responded hastily, showing all the symptoms of regret. “She insisted that we call her Baron, and the habit is hard to break. Thane Tiempko commanded it as well.”
“You were with Thane Tiempko?” Deonta asked.
“We joined his army just before the Second Battle for Silent Knight and stayed with him through the Second Siege of Nighthawk’s Castle, the flight to Mistwood, and the Battle at Rockwood Flats.”
They paused when the first course of food came and waited for the Matron to thank Sif for the gift of a meal. Jeffers post scripted a prayer of gratitude for Sif’s help in getting them safely through the wilds and a request for a peaceful end to the quest that brought them to K’non.
Talk of Thane Tiempko’s War dominated the first courses of the meal. All three hosts had countless questions about the famous Thane, the man credited with repelling Phal Thrakutter’s invasion almost singlehandedly. They found it a peculiar coincidence that all three guests had served the Thane; Varlet Minna answered to him when he was Master of the Earl’s Dungeons, Cadlius had Tiempko as a superior while the Thane was Scouts Commander, and Jeffers answered to him when he lead the invasion to retake the upper half of the Ravenflower Valley.
Spek broke in when Jeffers started talking about the Second Siege of Nighthawk’s Castle. Plucking strands of chicken from his teeth, the mage asked, “If you were at Nighthawk’s Castle then I suspect you know that perverter of magic, Chris Appleton.”
Jeffers answered in a voice that quivered slightly, “Chris was there. He kept to himself, so far as I could tell. I never met him.”
“He was a vampire,” Spek stated. “Or he was a friend to vampires, which is as bad, drawing blood from healthy soldiers to feed to his blood-thirsty friends.”
“No,” said Jeffers in a definitive tone. He softened his voice and added, “Not that I know of. He transferred blood from the healthy to those who were badly wounded in order to keep the wounded ones alive.”
Terrence returned a partially eaten piece of chicken to her plate, grimacing over food that had lost its taste. Deonta, too, put down what she had been eating.
Spek continued, “Not that he would have found anything wrong with taking life-blood to feed to vampires. If Justice ever got a hold of him, I think nothing would serve as punishment for his crimes better than hanging him upside down with a cut in his arm, and letting him watch his own life blood slowly drip away.”
Deonta added, “As if stealing the life-blood of one person, a crime that can only be compared to murder, and contaminating another’s life-blood with a life force not his own, isn’t enough to show the perverse functioning of his mind. Can you imagine what it would be like to discover that you had somebody else’s life force running through your veins? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Cut your veins open and let that other life-force free, that is what I would prescribe.”
Jeffers did not answer. Several of Chris’s ‘victims’ had done as Deonta suggested; others reported an unending mental torment that they said was the conflict between the two life-forces competing for control of the same body.
After the war, reports of Chris’s crimes stirred Malikii to a frenzy. When they discovered the Monster of Nighthawk Castle living in Malikii itself under the name Teejay, he was hauled before the Earl’s Court for questioning. There, he proclaimed in front of everybody that there was no wrongness in blood transfusions.”
Seeing the strain of Jeffers’s struggle for words, Minna grew fearful of what the outspoken rogue prophet might answer. In the court he spoke harshly about people blaming vampires for effects that could be more accurately blamed on society’s taboo against blood transfers. That defense would go over no better in K’non. She quickly interrupted his answer by saying, “Listen, I don’t think this is the kind of thing I want to discuss as I eat, if you don’t mind. Just thinking about it is repulsive enough.”
It was a lie. Minna had heard far worse from the inmates within the dungeons of Malikii, and she had heard Chris’s — Jeffers’ — arguments during the weeks tracking Zin.
But the lie opened up the option of setting the conversation off on a new direction. Minna asked, “Matron Deonta, Fint had said that Sir Terrion built this town after the Troll Wars. If that’s true, you have done some impressive work here in a short time.”
Deonta smiled, “Not quite true.” The Matron launched into a long-winded history of K’non. With frequent help from Terrence on the details, she told how an order of Sifian monks recognized the power of K’non’s waterfall and built their homes here. They were the ones that created the reservoir, the first lumber and flour mills, and the channels that powered them. In those early days, trolls and hobgoblins repeatedly raided the town and the caravans that served it. But the raiding bands were small and the monks’ devotion to the art of battle kept them safe.
Sir Terrion was born in K’non and could trace his ancestry to the town’s founder. As a child, he devoted himself to weapons and resolved to be among K’non’s best champions. His mother, having inherited some of the wealth generated by the mills, was able to send Terrion to Krakori for training as K’non’s first aspiring knight. His training went well, his teachers named him skilled, but knights also needed heroic deeds before they could earn the title. When Terrion returned, he went straight to the temple—an older structure no longer standing—and asked how he could best serve K’non.
Sif answered him by showing him a cat stalking a rat. The predator’s first attack left the rat bruised and bloodied, but the rat struck back furiously. To Sir Terrion’s amazement it drove the cat off. Sir Terrion saw the fight as a divine command to form a raiding party out of the best of his young warrior friends and fight the trolls and hobgoblins in their own camps. A fierce and rapid succession of raids caught the trolls and hobgoblins off guard. Sir Terrion had his heroic deed.
The troll wars that followed involved both Krakori and Malikii province; Minna had heard a lot about it from some of its veterans. Sir Terrion’s raids drove the hobgoblins and trolls into unified armies too large for Sir Terrion’s raiders. Seeing the menace that these dark armies posed to their own provinces, the Earl of Krakori and the Earl of Malikii sent armies of their own into the mountains. The war lasted two years and was bloody enough to see tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. Eventually, the trolls left and the hobgoblins sealed themselves in underground cities high in the mountains.
Deonta did not bore her guests by repeating these highlights. She concentrated her stories on smaller, lesser known incidents. There was a time when Sir Terrion raided, not hobgoblins or trolls, but Laurellans. As soon the Matron mentioned the elven nation to the south, Minna turned to Jeffers. He gave no reaction; Deonta continued with her story.
The Laurellans had sent some soldiers of their own into the forests where the hobgoblins and trolls lived. On one raid they captured some particularly brutal hobgoblin leaders, but they insisted on taking their prisoners back to their own nation. Laurella had a reputation for granting refuge to the worst kinds of monsters on the planet; even vampires and lycanthropes found a welcome among the elves. Fearing that the hobgoblins would escape Justice, Sir Terrion marched against Laurella.
He succeeded in surrounding the elves and, after a short fight, forcing them to surrender. Justice demanded the execution of the hobgoblin raiders. For the crimes of offering sanctuary to fugitives, refusing to obey the demands of a Knight of the Purity Crops, and opposing with arms the will of Sir Terrion, the elves were sentenced to the dungeons of K’non.
“They’re still there,” Deonta said.
Jeffers stared deep into his glass.
“Strange ideas, these Laurellans have, thinking they can find harmony with every type of creature under the sun, no matter how loathsome, disgusting, and violent.”
“Loathsome, yes. Disgusting, yes,” Jeffers answered in a low rumble. “Violent, no. Violence is the antithesis of harmony. But they take care to look for how much violence is caused by the intolerance of others before judging any creature. If you deprive a type of creature of something it, by nature, needs through the violence of law and public sanction, then you should be surprised if it tries to fulfill its needs by force.”
“You sound like you agree with these pagans.”
Minna caught her breath. Though Jeffers could hide the truth if he needed to, he did not do well with an outright lie.
“Better the pagans that worship a god of peace and harmony than the devout dedicated to a god of violence and death like Justice.”
Minna interpreted. “It’s not that he’s overly fond of the Laurellan way of thinking. Jeffers has sometimes expressed rather strong sentiments against Justice and Will.”
Inwardly, she cringed. The interpretation may save Jeffers, but only by delivering deep wounds.
The Matron, however, smiled at the insult and spoke to Jeffers. “I don’t see how you can say that Justice is opposed to peace and harmony when the very people Justice seeks to punish are those who break the peace or disturb the harmony.”
“For the sake of what?” Jeffers asked. “You can’t say that it is for the sake of peace that you punish. Justice claims that punishment is its own end, something done for its own sake, not for the sake of some other end. Justice goes so far as to say that it is wrong to punish a person for the sake of some further end, even to promote peace and harmony. That would involve using a person, treating him like a tool valued only insofar as he is useful, rather than treating him like a human.”
The Matron cocked her head. “You speak of Justice’s worship as if you were born to it. Everything you just said is true, but you say it with venom on your tongue.”
Minna felt the situation slipping out of her control. She started to answer for Jeffers again, but he spoke first. “Violence — hurting people — promoted as intrinsically good? When you say that you value peace, and that you promote violence as an end worth pursuing for its own sake, you state a flat contradiction.”
“I guess you don’t understand us as well as I first thought.”
“I’m willing to learn, if you think you might have something of value to teach me.”
“Later,” said Minna.
Jeffers, however, did not stop. “I’ve got an idea that would fit something like the Laurellan idea of harmony. All around this town you’ve got hobgoblins and trolls — creatures that, according to popular myth at least, love nothing more than to kill. Why don’t you invite them here to be your executioners and guard the prisoners in your dungeon. With proper coaching you might find that they have a special talent for serving Justice.”
Under Jeffers’ attacks, Minna’s face began to flush with anger. “My intention was to have a polite meal. What kind of guest rewards his host’s hospitality with insults and abuse like this? I had assumed you would be civilized enough to leave our differences out of things, at least for tonight. If you were a member of my order, Jeffers . . . “
Minna interrupted, “No, Matron, do not accuse Jeffers of bringing up our differences. I condemn his outburst, but you have been rubbing our noses in your beliefs since we sat down. You bragged about how Sir Terrion served Justice when he raided some Laurellans—who, for all I know, were trying to help you and succeeded in taking a group of hobgoblin leaders prisoner. Spek, did you not say that it would serve Justice to have Chris Appleton watch his life-blood drained from him one drop at a time as payment for what he did? Jeffers showed almost historic patience in passively listening to this nonsense.”
There was a long silence. Deonta said softly, “I guess we haven’t been entirely fair.”
Minna laughed. It was a contagious laugh that spread, first to Cadlius and Jeffers, then to their three hosts. All accompanied their laughter with a look of confusion.
“There you go again,” Minna explained. “‘We haven’t been entirely fair.’ you say. Isn’t that just another way of saying, ‘We have not acted so as to please Justice? I don’t condemn you for preaching the doctrine of Justice and Will in everything you say, I don’t think you can help yourself.”
For Matron Deonta, all trace of mirth left immediately. “Varlet, I have never heard such unreasoned hypocrisy. If there is no such thing as Justice, then there is no such thing as injustice. And if injustice is a myth, then by what twisted reason do you criticize us for treating you unjustly?”
It took a little while for Minna to gain enough control of herself to answer. She brushed away the last of the crumbs on the table in front of her, then looked directly at Matron Deonta and said, “I’m so glad you asked.”