The Reformer

then?'

'No, I think I have an idea,' Adrian said slowly. 'But I need some time for it to work.'

One of Lady Redvers' maids came back into the alcove where the brothers sat. 'Oh, Esmond, I was so frightened-' she began, speaking a pure upper-class Emerald.

Then she saw Adrian, and froze. Esmond went defiantly to her side and took her hand. 'Brother, this is Nanya. Formerly of a citizen family of Penburg.'

Adrian bowed gravely; Penburg had been sacked after a revolt six years ago, while Wilder Redvers had been governor of Solinga Province. Every adult male sent to the pole, the rest sold into slavery. His eyebrow lifted: Do you know the risks you're taking? it signaled. If Lady Redvers found out. . being flogged to death was the best Nanya could expect. Killing a free resident of Solinga like Esmond wouldn't be legal. . but that wouldn't stop the lady, and she'd get away with it, too.

'And, when the gods allow, my wife,' Esmond went on.

Nanya looked up at him with adoration, her large brown eyes going soft. Adrian closed his eyes. Give me strength.

We will, son, Raj's voice spoke silently.

* * *

Vanbert's law courts had grown with the city. The highest of them-the Assembly Courts of Appeal-were housed in a new marble complex not far from the Temple of the Dual God, on the Spring Hill. The building was in an exaggerated form of the classic Emerald style, adapted to the needs of Confederate legal institutions. Two square blocks on either side held long halls where advocates, clients and hangers-on could walk and speak and deal; they were plain as Emerald temples, surrounded by giant columns supporting a Confederate invention, a barrel-vaulted roof. That was coffered and gilded, and tall windows ran around the eaves just below it. Even on a cloudy winter's day like this the light diffused off the hammered gold leaf in a shadowless glow, lighting the pale marble of walls and column and floor.

Joining the two halls to make a square C-shape was a connecting bar, with a covered amphitheater in its center. Juries in Confederate cases were huge-in theory any citizen could sit, although the requirement for a purifying sacrifice excluded the poor-and they sat below the advocates and judges, like spectators at a games fight. Adrian had often thought that the comparison had merit on more levels than one; though more subtle, the clash of wit and quotation below was just as savage as sword and spear, or tusk and fang. The expressions on the jurors were similar too. Except that nobody was paid to attend the games, while jurors received a stipend, not counting bribes of money or patronage.

An important case could be almost as expensive as a municipal election.

Adrian gathered his plain white mantle around him and strode towards the low symbolic metal fence that surrounded the sun disk inlaid in mosaic on the floor of the court. The acoustics were wonderful; he could hear whispered conversations on the top benches, and even sleepy belches from the inevitable seedy hangers-on taking a nap.

A man with a ceremonial whip and axe stopped him at the entrance. 'If you come to speak, proclaim your citizenship,' he said in a bored voice; his equipment was meant to indicate the magistrates' power to punish and kill, but it had been a long time since they were used on the spot.

'I come not to speak, but to speak the words of another,' Adrian said, pitching his voice in the way Center had trained him to do. The computer had also eliminated the last trace of the soft Emerald accent; now his voice had the slow, crisp vowels of a native Confederate-the upper-class city dialect, at that.

'Pass, then,' the usher said.

Adrian advanced, his soft kidskin sandals noiseless, and made a deep bow before the panel of judges. They were all older men today, he saw, seamed hard faces with tufts of chinbeard and disapproving eyes.

'This seems to be in order,' the senior magistrate said, examining the scroll which deputized Adrian to speak for a citizen advocate. 'I suppose we have to let the little Emerald speak. I don't know what Vanbert is coming to. A girl costs more than a sword, a pretty boy more than a tract of land, a jug of imported fish sauce more than a good plow team, and they let foreigners speak in the courts of law where Confederate gentlemen once showed their mettle. They'll be allowing them into the army next. Go on, Emerald, go on.'

His voice rolled heavy with disapproval. Adrian bowed again.

'We are faced,' he began, 'with a case which runs on all fours with the notable-'

He spoke easily, his voice conversational at first. That itself was daring-the usual mode was Oratorical, one hand outstretched, the other gripping the front fold of your mantle, right foot advanced, voice booming. He was using a rather daringly avant-garde style, at least for the introduction.

Center's prompting flowed through his mind. Precedent, allegory, snippets of verse, or the doggerel that passed for poetry in this land. He could feel the coldness of the jury turning, men leaning forward in interest.

'A pretty tissue of words to hide the plain truth,' the other side's advocate said at last. 'Yet Dessin and Chrosis clearly establishes that provincial corporate bodies have no standing for a petition for and through in this esteemed court. Citizens! Such appeals are your prerogative!'

An appeal to Confederate pride rarely fails, Adrian noted. He'd expected that.

'Citizens!' he replied. 'Citizens. . what pride, what glory, what power resides in that simple word. Citizens of the Confederacy of Vanbert! Yours is the power to bind and loose; yours the hand that wields the assegai of justice. It is beyond dispute. The esteemed advocate for the Smellton Tax Farmer's Syndicate is entirely correct. A mere assembly of provincials-without standing in this court-cannot assume the right to present a petition 'for and through' in strict form.'

'Eh?' The chief magistrate's mouth moved, as if he was chewing toothlessly. 'Are you conceding the case, Emerald? Is that what your 'principal'-' the scorn was back, this time for the legal fiction '-has set you to read?'

'By no means, excellent magistrates, do I concede. For indeed-' he moved into Formal Mode '-even as my humble self is but a mouthpiece for my principal, who is a citizen of the noble Confederacy, so this petition is launched in the name of the following indisputable citizens, their names on the ten- yearly roll: I speak of Jusin Sambert, Augin Melton-'

He rolled on, his voice booming up to the eaves. Faces along the rows of jurors' benches began to nod; heads leant together with murmurs of agreement.

'Justice! That strict Goddess with axe and flail in hand, terrible in aspect, unbending in righteousness, watches us even now!'

Adrian launched himself into the conclusion of his speech. When he halted, head bowed, hands outstretched, the jurors rose to their feet and applauded, the noise ringing back from the dome overhead. The mantled heads of the magistrates huddled together, mouths working beneath the sound.

'Petition accepted for examination,' the senior said, looking down on Adrian from the high seat. 'Jurors and panel of magistrates in accordance.' Which virtually guaranteed that the petition would be reviewed favorably. . which meant that the Smellton Tax Farmer's Syndicate would face a swingeing fine. 'Dismissed.'

Adrian left slowly, despite an overwhelming impulse to bolt for the hall and get a glass of lemonade, or watered wine; you needed a throat of brass and a bladder the size of a wine jug to work the courts. Instead he strolled, smiling and bowing and exchanging a few deferential words with some of the long-established advocates and their clients.

You can see how surprised they are, he thought ironically. How does an Emerald do so well in a place where real men are supposed to shine?

If ever the Confederacy was destroyed, he suspected it was going to be because somebody simply couldn't refuse the temptation to smash a lead-weighted fist into the face of that bland, complacent assumption of superiority. You could only swallow the sour bile at the back of your throat for so long.

'Ah, young Adrian,' a voice said.

He felt the cold clutch of fear, the sort that makes the stomach clench and the scrotum try to draw itself up into the abdomen. This is exactly what I had planned, he told himself.

'My lord,' he said, turning and bowing. Wilder Redvers in the life, his ample form looking impressive in the