Dragonback 05 Dragon and Judge (10 page)

After breakfast, he went back into the bedroom, took off his other
clothes, and dressed in the robe, sash, duster, and boots of his new
office.

Despite the Golvin's concerns, the clothes seemed to fit
reasonably well. The boots were a shade too big, but not enough to be a
problem. "How do I look?" he asked, holding his arms out to his sides.

"Very noble," Draycos said.

Jack looked sharply at him. But if there had been any sarcasm in
the comment, it wasn't visible in the K'da's face or posture.

In fact, the odd thought crossed Jack's mind that it was just the
opposite. It was almost as if Draycos was seeing him for the first time.

Jack looked down his front at the strange clothing, a flurry of
not entirely pleasant emotions chasing across his mind. Maybe he was
seeing himself for the first time, too.

Or maybe not. "Kind of hard to move, though," he commented,
swinging his arms experimentally from the shoulders. He could play all
the dress-up he wanted, he reminded himself firmly, but underneath it
all he was still only Jack Morgan, fourteen-year-old former thief.

"You look fine," Draycos assured him. "Shall I get your hat?"

"I'll do it." Crossing to the nightstand, Jack picked up the hat
and set it carefully on his head. He took a deep breath, again forcing
back the swirl of emotions, and held his hand out to Draycos. "Okay,"
he said. "Let's you and me go dispense some justice."

Two male Golvins and a female were waiting on the ground as he
emerged from the apartment and made his way down the bridge. "Good
morning to you, Jupa Jack," the female said gravely, touching the
fingertips of both hands to her forehead, the gesture briefly covering
her eyes. "I am Three-One-Six-Five Among Many. I will be your assistant
and reader-of-records."

"I will be pleased to have your service, Thonsifi," Jack said.
Briefly, he wondered if he should repeat her gesture, decided against
it.

"I am honored to be of such service." Thonsifi waved a hand toward
the Great Hall. "Your Seat of Judgment is prepared. Shall we go?"

She headed off along the narrow path that led to the Great Hall.
One of the males walked behind her, with Jack and the other male
bringing up the rear.

Many of the canyon's residents were already hard at work, Jack
saw. Most were tending the cropland, while others arranged cloth and
leather and metal goods on small tables around the bases of some of the
pillars. From somewhere in the distance came the rhythmical clank of
metal on metal.

About thirty Golvins were waiting inside the north end of the
Great Hall. As promised, a chair had been set up for Jack in front of
and to the right of the One's own Seat of Decision. "Jupa Jack," the
One greeted him gravely from his chair as Jack stepped in front of him.
"You are ready to begin?"

"I am," Jack said, eyeing the chair with fresh trepidation as he
walked over to it. What in the world did he know about judging other
people? For that matter, what gave him the right to even try?

But he was here, and there was nothing for it but do his best.
Bracing himself, he gathered the skirts of his robe and duster around
him and sat down.

Thonsifi stepped to the right side of the chair. "The first
dispute lies between Three-Seven-Seven and Six-Nine-Naught," she said.
"It is a question of irrigation and water rights."

Two older Golvins stepped forward out of the group, one of them
glowering, the other practically radiating pride and
self-righteousness. "Describe the situation," Jack said, studying them.

"The wall of the irrigation channel that separates their croplands
has become chipped on Thsese's side," Thonsifi explained. "Some of the
water that might otherwise go to Sinina's land is thus going instead to
Thsese's land."

Jack frowned. This was a legal problem? "Why can't the chipped
area simply be fixed?" he asked.

"It can," Thonsifi said. "But as I said, it is on Thsese's side."

"And?"

"It is on Thsese's side," Thonsifi repeated, starting to sound a
little flustered.

Jack nodded as he finally got it. A Golvin whose name started with
Three clearly outranked a simple Six, which probably meant no one could
come onto his property to fix the channel wall without his permission.

And since he was getting more than his fair share of water as a
result, he had no reason to fix the channel himself. "What about the
people downstream?" he asked.

"They are all lesser numbers," Thonsifi said.

Which meant that although they were probably getting cheated as
well, none of them had the rank to go fix the channel either. "And this
damage occurred when?"

"Six seasons ago," Thonsifi said.

Jack blinked at her. "Six
seasons
?" he echoed, turning to
look up at the One.

The One held his gaze steadily. "I rendered a decision," he said.
"Thsese appealed to the higher authority of the Jupas."

"And the last time a Jupa was here . . .?"

"The last were Jupa Stuart and Jupa Ariel," the One said.

Jack grimaced. Eleven years with no Judge-Paladins in sight. No
wonder Thsese had felt safe appealing his case.

Well, at least the game was over now. He'd simply order Thsese to
let Sinina come over and fix the channel, and that would be the end of
it.

But even as he opened his mouth to say so, he took another look at
Thsese's expression.
Radiating pride
. . .

And suddenly he saw the trap he'd nearly walked into. These people
had built their whole society on status and position, and on who could
do what and with whom. Throw in their dependence on their limited crop
area, and there was the potential here for long-term trouble. If he
casually brushed their cultural legs out from under them, it would
leave scars and resentment that would linger long after he was gone.

Still, even in places where status was king, greed was always
queen. And if there was one thing Uncle Virgil had taught him, it was
how to deal with both of those.

"Very well," he said, turning back to the complainants. "It's
clear that through the extra water obtained for his crops, Thsese has
been taking unfair profit from his neighbors."

"Yet I did not cause the rupture," Thsese put in stiffly.

"I understand that," Jack agreed. "Nevertheless, you did profit
from it. I therefore decree that until the channel wall has been
returned to its proper condition, twenty percent of your crops will be
forfeit, to be divided between Sinina and the—"

"What?" Thsese all but screeched. He started forward, stopping
only when one of the two silent males who had accompanied Jack stepped
into his path. "This is outrageous!"

"To be divided between Sinina and the other landowners
downstream," Jack continued. He gestured to his right. "The choosing
and distribution of that twenty percent will be handled by my
assistant, Thonsifi."

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Thonsifi stiffen with
surprise. Apparently, she wasn't looking forward to invading Thsese's
territory any more than Sinina was.

But most of Jack's attention was on Thsese, and the resulting show
was well worth it. The older Golvin's eyes widened, his skin wrinkling
violently at this casual piling of insult onto injury. For a Three to
have to allow a Thirty-One onto his land for the purpose of
confiscating some of his crops—

"The channel will be fixed," he ground out.

"By sundown today?" Jack suggested.

Thsese sent a glare at the One. But he was stuck, and he knew it.
"By sundown today," he agreed blackly.

"Good," Jack said. "Then I declare this case settled. Next?"

He spent the rest of the morning handling more water cases, a few
land disputes, and one involving crops that had migrated from one plot
to another. Most of them were quickly and more or less easily handled.
A couple of them took a little more thought, and one was tricky enough
that he decided to postpone it to the next day.

As the group in the Great Hall thinned, runners quietly left and
rounded up the next batch of complainants.

There didn't seem to be any particular pattern to the cases. Jack
wasn't being given the oldest complaints first, or those involving the
highest-ranking Golvins. Certainly they weren't dealing with the most
urgently pressing. His only guess was that Thonsifi had put some of the
easier ones up front so that she and the One could see whether their
kidnapped Jupa actually knew what he was doing.

Finally, thankfully, they broke for the midday meal.

"You're doing well," Draycos murmured from Jack's shoulder as the
boy wandered along the edge of the Great Hall munching on a stalk of
something sweet and crunchy he'd snared from the buffet table
Thonsifi's people had set up.

"Thanks," Jack murmured back, glancing down at his shoulder before
he remembered that the Judge-Paladin robe ran right up to his neck. "I
hope you'll still be saying that when they start throwing the tricky
stuff at me."

"Some of this morning's cases have been tricky enough," Draycos
said. "You've had to deal not only with legal questions, but social and
political ones as well."

"Actually, I don't think I'm doing much legal work at all," Jack
said. "Mostly I'm just getting everyone to do what they should have
done months or years ago on their own."

"Perhaps you're not so much a judge as a mediator," Draycos
offered. "Your success here has been in bringing opposing sides
together in a compromise."

"What I'm doing is finding the right levers to use on them," Jack
corrected. "It's not a lot different from con work."

Draycos was silent a moment. "Some of the techniques may be
similar," he said. "But the intent is far different. Under Uncle
Virgil's direction, you used these methods to steal from people. Here,
you use them to bring justice and harmony."

"Maybe," Jack said reluctantly. Draycos might be right, but he
wasn't quite ready to agree that what he was doing was nearly so noble.
It still felt way too much like what he'd been doing for Uncle Virgil
all those years,

"I am concerned, though, by the fact that apparently no other
Judge-Paladins have been here in all this time," Draycos went on. "You
said they traveled in circuits through the less populated areas."

"I also said there weren't enough of them," Jack reminded him.
"Actually, this whole planet probably qualifies as a less populated
area. My guess is that any Judge-Paladin who's touched down on Semaline
has stuck to the cities and towns. I doubt most of them even know this
canyon is out here."

"I wonder how your parents found it."

"I don't know," Jack said. "Maybe we'll find out when we get a
chance to go up to that mining area. I wonder if there are any cases
that'll give us an excuse to do that."

"You believe that's where your parents died?"

"Look around," Jack said, turning around and leaning his back
against the wall. "Well, no, I guess you can't. But this seems to be
where Jupas judge, and there's no sign anywhere of any kind of
explosion."

"It
has
been eleven years," Draycos reminded him. "They
would surely have repaired any damage."

"If they did, they did a really good job of it," Jack said. "Don't
forget, I've had a pretty good look at the building. It's all the same
type of stone, and all the stone shows the same wear pattern. The floor
stones in particular fit perfectly together."

"I'll accept your analysis," Draycos said, though Jack thought he
could hear an unspoken
for now
. "But that brings up another
possibility. If they were visiting the mine, could the explosion that
killed them have been an accident after all?"

Jack chewed the inside of his cheek. That was a good point. Maybe
there
was
no real mystery here, no hidden crime to be uncovered
and avenged. "We won't know until we get up there," he decided. "Let's
put our heads together and come up with some reason to go topside."

Finishing off the sweet stalk, he turned back toward his Seat of
Judgment. "In the meantime, I've got more justice to dispense."

The afternoon's cases were pretty much a repeat of the morning's
stack. Most of them involved water and crop problems, with a few
apartment and neighbor troubles thrown in.

Most of the cases struck Jack as rather feeble, with the appeal to
a higher authority in each case probably having been made by whichever
side had been the loser under the One's original decision. Close to
half the canyon, he reflected, had probably been rather annoyed when a
new Judge-Paladin had actually shown up.

It was on the last case of the day, as the sky was beginning to
darken overhead, that the pattern suddenly changed.

"This is Four-Eight-Naught-Two," Thonsifi said as a slightly
bedraggled Golvin was brought forward. "He was discovered this morning
sleeping in the flying transport of the Many."

"Really," Jack said, noting the bruising along the right side of
Foeinatw's neck where Draycos had knocked him out. "Why didn't you
simply sleep in your apartment, Foeinatw?"

The other didn't answer, his eyes focused on the floor in front of
Jack's feet. "He claims to have been set upon by others," Thonsifi
said. "At least one, possibly more. He further claims that these others
damaged the flying transport's interior."

"I see," Jack said. Thonsifi's voice was steady and professional
enough, but he could sense contempt lurking beneath the words. From
some of the other neighbor-conflict cases he'd heard that afternoon he
gathered that accusing someone of assault was a very serious charge
among the Golvins. Doing so without proof was apparently even more so.
"Can you name these assailants?" he asked.

"I cannot," Foeinatw said, his voice low.

Jack pursed his lips. Without proof of the assault, his logical
legal course would be to assume Foeinatw was lying and come up with
some punishment for sleeping in the shuttle and some compensation for
damaging it.