though old Okko remained in his place at the minister’s right; Lord Kalthon was called upon to determine not what was true, but what was just.
Sarai listened to the tedious details, involving an unclear will, a broken business partnership, a drunken surveyor, and a temporarily dry well, with half an ear or so, while thinking about other concerns.
Bardec was suffering for his stupidity, and that was fair and just. If he had the wit to leam from his mistake, to change his attitudes, this might be the lesson he needed. If he had not, then at least this punishment might discourage him from gallivanting off with someone else’s cart from Grandgate Market next time he got drunk. The money was nothing to him, or at least to his family, but a flogging would register on anybody.
But the woman with the cart was coming out ahead. Perhaps she deserved some compensation for the inconvenience—but why should it be higher when Bardec behaved stupidly in court than if he had been contrite?
Well, it was undoubtedly more annoying for the victim to have Bardec calling her a liar—and perhaps the greater satisfaction was therefore just.
But just the flogging would have been equally satisfying, Sarai was sure.
She listened as the explanation of the property dispute wound up, and her father began asking questions.
It seemed to her that the basic uncertainty in the case derived from the lost contract between the long- dead partners, but Lord Kalthon was not asking about that, nor was he asking Okko to use his magic to determine the contents of the contract; instead he was looking at the diagram one party had provided and asking, “Your family has used the well these past twenty years, then?”
The guard captain nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, standing stiffly at attention.
“And you never had any doubt of your right to it?”
“No, sir.”
“But the new survey—do you doubt its accuracy?”
Unhappily, the soldier said, “No, sir.”
The merchant began to smile; Lord Kalthon turned to him and demanded, “Did you ever object to Captain Aldran claiming the well before this year?”
The smile vanished. “No, my lord. But my father’s will...”
“Yes, I know.” Lord Kalthon waved that away and looked at the diagram again. “Okko, lend me a pen, would you?”
Sarai watched as her father drew a line on the diagram and showed it to the two claimants. “As Minister of Justice to the city’s overlord, I hereby claim this parcel here...” He pointed with the borrowed quill. “...as city property, to be compensated for according to law and custom at the value of its last transfer of ownership, which I hereby determine to be five rounds of silver, payable in full from the city’s treasury. I also hereby direct that the city shall sell this property to Captain Aldran, in compensation for his years of faithful service to his overlord, at a price of five rounds of silver, to be paid by deduction from his salary. All interest and carrying charges are hereby waived, by order of the Minister of Justice.”
“But that well’s worth more than that!” the merchant objected.
Lord Kalthon asked him wearily, “And the rest of that land isn’t?”
“Uh...”
“In the name of Ederd the Fourth, Overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, Triumvir of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, Commander of the Holy Armies, and Defender of the Gods,” Lord Kalthon said, “let it be done.”
Sarai admired the decision.
If she had been in her father’s place, she would have had Okko determine the contents of that original contract; then either the captain or the merchant would presumably have won outright. Either the captain’s family would be left without the water source they had relied on for decades, or the merchant would be deprived of the inheritance he had depended upon and had borrowed money against. One man would have had more than he needed, the other nothing.
And making a compromise—well, neither man had been particularly interested in a compromise, surely, or the question wouldn’t have reached her father. By invoking his power as the overlord’s agent he had removed any possibility of arguing with the results or renegotiating the agreement later. Quite possibly neither man was happy— the merchant had less than he hoped, and the soldier would be paying for what he had thought he already owned —but the matter was settled, and both had come away with what they needed, if not what they wanted.
It wasn’t necessarily exactly what the law demanded, but it settled the matter.
And, it occurred to her, Bardec’s case had done the same thing. Giving the woman the extra money had helped to settle the matter. It might, perhaps, have been fairer if the overlord’s court had taken the additional payment as a fine and kept it, since in fact it was a penalty for perjury and for accusing the court, in the person of Okko, of incompetence—but that might have looked greedy.
The important thing, Sarai saw, was to settle the question, one way or another, and without leaving anyone any more angry about it than necessary. If Bardec’s money had gone to the city treasury, he could have accused Lord Kalthon of greed, of being more concerned with money than with justice; if the merchant had simply been required to sell the well to the captain, there could have been any number of delays and complications, arguments about price and interest, and so forth. Her father was avoiding all that.
She remembered something that had been said at the dinner table once, when they had had Lord Torrut, commander of the city guard, as their guest. Her father had joked about how Lord Torrut might as well be called the Minister of War, since that’s what soldiers do, they make war—but men everyone would want to get rid of him, since there hadn’t been a war for two hundred years. Lord Torrut had countered that perhaps Kalthon should be called Minister of Peace, since his job was to make peace— but there hadn’t been all that much peace in the past two hundred years, either.
Both men had laughed, and Lord Kalthon had said, “We both keep the peace, Torrut, and well you know it.”
It was true, Sarai saw—they both kept the peace. The city guard was the whip to threaten the horse, and the city courts the apple to reward it. People had to be reasonably satisfied with the results, when they took their disputes to the overlord’s courts; they didn’t really care what the laws said, only whether the disputes went away and the results looked fair.
Looked fair.
That was something she really hadn’t thought about before.
And she’d completely forgotten about the sloping floor until she looked down at the next pair, defendant and plaintiff.
Her mouth fell open in a way most unbecoming a young noblewoman as the case was described. Kallia of the Broken Hand, a demonologist, accused Heremon the Mage of stealing certain esoteric substances from her workshop; Heremon denied the charge.
A wizard, accused of theft? And no mere apprentice, but a mage?
“Very well, Okko,” Lord Kalthon said, turning to his the-urgist, “what actually happened here?”
Okko frowned, and his nervous fingers finally stopped moving.
“My lord,” he said, “I have no idea.”
Lord Kalthon stared at the theurgist.
“I’m sorry, Lord Kalthon,” Okko said, “but the differing magical auras surrounding the alleged crime are sufficient to confuse even the gods. I cannot get a plain and trustworthy answer to even the simplest question.”
“I hate these cases,” Kalthon muttered; Sarai didn’t think anyone heard him save herself and perhaps Okko. Then he sat up straighter and announced, “Let the accuser stand forth.”
Kallia of the Broken Hand strode up the long room, her long black cloak swirling behind her, her face hidden by a deep hood and her hands concealed in black suede gloves. She stopped, gathered her cloak, and stood before the Minister of Justice.
“Show your face in the overlord’s palace, magician,” Kalthon said, irritation in his tone.
Kallia flung back the hood; her face was thin and pale, her straight hair was black and worn long and unadorned. The three vivid red scratches that ran down one side of her face, from temple to jaw, stood out in
