The Last Hour of Gann (19 page)

They were waiting in the hall and all made the appropriate sounds of subdued respect to see the mark upon the girl’s shoulder. Her father took her back with pride and perhaps even a gleam of avarice, and why not?
If she did nothing else in her life, still she had received Sheul’s fires and her womb would be strengthened immeasurably. In fact, it was not impossible that she might conceive of Meoraq, even from just this one encounter. And if the child opened up male and Meoraq had no wife, Arug had every reason to expect his daughter to be taken in, flat head and all, and installed in House Uyane where she would give glorious birth to the sons of one who would be that bloodline’s steward in his own time. If the father of such a woman were the doting sort, he certainly had the right to visit her in her husband’s House…where he could expect rooms and servants and other such amenities…for however long he chose to stay…for years, if the lord of the House were not so vulgar as to throw him out.

Meoraq was not a vulgar man, but he did have every
intention of dying long before he was made to assume his father’s place. Ha. Let Arug call on his House all he pleased. Rasozul would throw him out on his snout without a moment’s regret.

“House Arug thanks you for your service, honored one. Let me extend the humblest and most sincere invitation of hospitality. Please, come to my House tonight,” said the steward, actually patting at his daughter’s bent back as he made the offer. Meoraq thought it very likely that if he accepted, he would find Tem tucked away in his cupboard like a spare cushion. Perhaps she had been a virgin—maidenly panic could be
contrived and he was experienced enough in the ways of women to know that he had surely been deceived before—but her virginity had served its purpose and now it seemed Lord Arug was eager to see it well and truly rubbed away.

“I understand Ni’ichok Shuiv leaves his woman and a child to your House,”
Meoraq said bluntly. “You will keep them.”

Arug hesitated, his smile fading before he forced it broadly back.
“House Arug is honored to care for the mother of her champion’s son.”

“I will return to see the child placed at the appropriate time.” Meoraq inclined his head toward heaven. “If Sheul wills that I should return. If not, I suppose I must trust
you.” His gaze shifted to the bailiff. “I require a witness.”

The bailiff bent his neck briefly and produced a tablet and stylus.

“I want the woman’s rooms inspected,” said Meoraq, his eyes back on Arug. “Regularly. She is owed the respect of a Sheulteb’s wife. She is also owed a widow’s stipend. See that it is not misplaced into her father’s coffers.”

Lord Arug kept smiling, but his spines were very low, visibly shaking with the effort not to flatten them completely.
“She shall be kept as one of my greatest treasures,” he said. “You may see her chambers for yourself, if you like.”

“I prefer to stay in the Temple
,” he said. Which was true enough, and also more tactful then commenting aloud on the man’s perceived willingness to turn his daughter into a common dip for the first Sheulek who came along.

Arug bowed to conceal his obvious disappointment—
that’s rather a flat head as well
—and withdrew with Tem. She looked back once, shyly seeking his eye until her father hissed and yanked her hood down. Then they were gone.

“You may show me to my room
,” said Meoraq, prodding at his wound. The edges had sealed beneath his scales, but it still ached abysmally and would probably swell and bleed again by morning if it were not properly cleaned and tended. He was tempted to neglect it. Shuiv had seemed a good man and a brave warrior; Meoraq was not ashamed to wear his last scar.

The
bailiff merely bowed, rather than walking ahead of him down the hall. “Forgive me, honored one, there is a dispute awaiting your judgment.”

Of course there was. Tothax was not the most remote city in the world, but it was easily the most remote on Meoraq’s circuit. On his last visit, there had been four disputes awaiting his judgment, one of them half a year old and so entirely irrelevant by the day of Meoraq’s arrival that he had been divinely compelled to slap both parties across their petty-minded faces before walking into the arena. But however many disputes there might be awaiting him, it was customary to separate them over the course of many days. To
judge two trials in a single night, so soon after his long journey, bordered on insult.

His temper flared, but six breaths brought him reason.
Just because the first of their disputes had been a paltry one did not mean they were all so. And besides that, Meoraq’s blood was still warmed by battle and a second fight had its appeal (as well as the promise of a second conquest once the fight was done, perhaps even with a pretty woman, or at least one who had a properly-shaped head). In either case, he was Sheulek, and it was his duty and his privilege to serve Sheul, no matter the hour or the inconvenience to his mortal clay.

“Then I will hear it,”
he told the waiting bailiff, but he took six more slow breaths before he followed. He loved God and would never question His commands, but there were times he wished he was not quite so often in His eye.

* * *

Back they went to the mediation chamber, which was again filled with spectators disguising themselves as witnesses. One of the galleys was curiously empty, he saw. The other was occupied by another man dressed as a warlord and the kneeling figure of yet another woman. The man was only vaguely familiar, although Meoraq noted that his lordly garb was, unlike that of Arug, functional rather than ceremonial, and he carried several admirable scars prominently across his powerful body. The woman, however, he recognized at once despite her bent back and ducked head.

Meoraq glanced again at the empty galley and snorted. He folded his arms, resting his hands close to the hilts of his
sabks. “Where is the baby?” he asked, interrupting the high judge mid-prayer.

“If you had come when I first sent word to you, you could have seen it born,” the lord said, also interrupting the judge, who was attempting to both apologize and reprimand Meoraq at the same time.

“Why would I want to?”

“Honored one, please!” snapped the high judge. “This is a formal matter!”

“I am not in the mood for formalities,” said Meoraq.

“So be it.”
The lord stepped forward, beckoning behind him to one of his many men. “I am House Saluuk,” he said, for the benefit of the court’s scribe. “Once Saluuk Tzugul and a Sword of Sheul. This is my daughter.”

“I remember,” said Meoraq. And he did, although the fires had burned hot in him that day. He remembered her not because she was pretty, which she was, rather, but also because she had been particularly tiresome in conquest—breaking the ritual after only a few stammered lines and then trying to flee the are
na hold. He’d been forced to pursue and to hold her down, neither of which he minded much in the burn of Sheul’s fires, but she’d also screamed all the way through the sex, and afterwards, just lay there in a heap, sobbing. A bad night, and one that had a way of slipping back into his thoughts when he was alone and his mind unquiet. A Sword of Sheul knew no remorse for the things he did in the grip of holy fire, and yet…she had been so small beneath him, so small as she lay weeping on the floor…

And now there she knelt, and there indeed was the infant, carried in a servant’s arms to be displayed before the
court. It was the right size; he wondered whether she had been corrupted after his conquest or before.

To think he’d lain awake so many nights, haunted by her tears.

“I remember,” Meoraq said again, coldly. “And I remember that Sheul’s blessing was for myself alone. I do not acknowledge that child. Its blood is the blood of Gann.”

Shocked gasps met this accusat
ion and then whispers flew. Lord Saluuk’s throat began to pale in streaks of color, but he betrayed no other sign of emotion as he reached down, took a fist-hold of his daughter’s wrap and yanked it open, revealing her scarred shoulder as she twisted her face away.

Meoraq ha
d been many years a Sheulek and knew it had made him cynical. He was used to expecting the worst of people, but this, he never anticipated.

“Lies!” he roared, at once full in the grip of Sheul’s killing fires. It was his training alone that kept his blades in their sheaths; every bone of him wanted to draw and paint every damned wall of this room with blood.

Breathe. A Sheulek is a master of every impulse.

“Lies,” he said again, hissing but at least not shouting. “She may have been virgin—I will not say otherwise—but she did
not
burn and that is
not
my mark!”

“I stand before you, judges, in the sight of Sheul
.” The steward released his daughter to her huddle and faced the tribunal. “Every servant of my household is present and able to swear that this woman has been in proper confinement every hour of her life, save that when she was last in this arena.” He swung to stab at Meoraq with his stare, saying, “Or do you say House Saluuk allows its daughters to rut wild in the alleys?”

“I do not,” said Meoraq, just as coldly. “Whether she goes out or her bulls sneak in should concern House Saluuk, but it is no matter to me.”

“You come very near to making a personal insult, honored one,” one of the judges said with a respectful nod.

“I do not come near,”
snapped Meoraq. “I make it boldly! Your daughter has gone to Gann and that is not my mark upon her.”

Before Lord Saluuk could make his snarling reply, the woman flung out her bare hands and cried, “I have been with no man but you!”

The whole of the tribunal stared at her.

Her father was first to recover. In two swift strides, he had returned to her side and slapped her to the ground.

“Oh yes, she knows her place well,” another judge remarked, but Meoraq killed what little humor that stirred up with a glance. The woman’s tears as she knelt at Lord Saluuk’s feet were too much as they had been a year ago when she had been huddling at his own feet. The sound woke the infant, who added its own wails until the servant holding it was ordered to take it into the hall. Meoraq found himself scowling suddenly into its little face as it was carried past him; it flinched away as from Gann Himself, clutching at the servant and renewing its cries, now with terror.

As soon as it was gone and the door shut agains
t its noise, the high judge rose and raised his hand. “Stand the girl up.”

Lord Saluuk obeyed, and none too gently. The girl sent a wet-eyed, imploring gaze at Meoraq, who folded his arms against her and refused to look away. She was a good one for heart-stirring looks, it seemed.

“Steward, it is your duty to make those of your House aware that what is said before this tribunal is said in the sight of Sheul. A lie spoken to Him is a wound to one’s very soul.”

“She knows,” said Saluuk,
giving his daughter a glance as hard as a second slap.

“So b
e it. Girl.” The high judge leaned sternly over the tribune wall, addressing himself to her directly while the lesser judges struggled not to react. “Before Sheul, who do you name as the father of that child?”

“Before Sheul, I swear that I have been with no man but
Sheulek Uyane.”

Meoraq flared his spines, but that was all. One embarrassing outburst was enough for this tribunal and it would be hers.

“Before Sheul,” the high judge went on, narrowing his eyes, “who put that mark of conquest upon your flesh?”

Meoraq’s spines flared again as his hands drew into fists upon his biceps in anticipation of the lie he must endure…but the lie never came.

The girl bent her neck and did not answer.

The high judge
leaned back in his chair and stroked at his throat.

“Why do you waste our time interrogating a woman?” Lord Saluuk demanded. He unsheathed his
sabks in a swift hiss. “If this man will not acknowledge his seed as the Word itself demands, I will challenge him and let Sheul be our judge!”

“This man,” said Meoraq with contempt, “will meet you, steward, and
Sheul will end your lying bloodline.”

“Enough! How dare you draw a bladed weapon in this hall!” T
he high judge struck his hammer on the tribune wall, and again, until Lord Saluuk grudgingly resheathed. “There is no need for bloodshed! You! Fetch a wax tablet from the archivist’s stores! If the honored one will make his mark, a simple comparison shall be enough to determine the truth here.”

Meoraq grunted approval, eyeing Lord Saluuk, whose expression had taken on a narrow, calculating stare. The servant was dispatched to the stores,
but he had been gone only a moment when the steward suddenly turned and caught his daughter by the throat.

“Will the marks match?” he demanded. “Answer, girl!”

His grip made any verbal reply impossible, but her choked wails held such hopeless despair that no words were necessary. Lord Saluuk released her with a shove and said, “I have been deceived and so wasted this tribunal’s time. I shall pay whatever fine you deem appropriate.”