The Fall of Chance (21 page)

Few people would know Unt and, if asked to describe him, they’d struggle for remarkable features. Somewhere along the line though, a connection would be made and then Unt’s name would be out there.

For now though, it was surreally quiet. The sun beat down gloriously, completely at odds with the little melodrama that engulfed Unt. It could almost have been a gentle summer stroll. Everyone Tulk spoke to seemed in high spirits. Unt felt like a little float of despair, bobbing around in a sea of good humour.

*              *              *              *

Unt knew the cells well enough when he saw them. He’d never been inside but he’d passed often enough and noted how shabby they were. The building was little more than a glorified hut. The remains of a coat of black tar was chipped with a battered white edge. Its rotten timbers were as old as the town and its wear had been fixed with ad-hoc repairs. Those repairs were patches of random armour fixed to an exhausted shell.

The community wasn’t without crime but there was rarely anything major. The cells were mostly used for holding drunks and brawlers and it was enough to do just that. Even with the more serious offenders, attempts at escape were rare. Because of that, the cells got by and that did nothing to raise the odds for funding of repairs.

When Unt got close, he could see the results of years without maintenance. There were bars on the windows but the wood they were set in was so rotten a serious effort would rip them from the walls. Even someone like Unt, without much strength to boast of, could break out if they tried.

Old Tulk, watching Unt, seemed to follow his thinking. “Aye, she’s not much to look at, that’s for sure,” he said and spat into the road. Whether that was to emphasise the point or just out of habit, Unt couldn’t tell.

“But you needn’t think of making a run for it, if that’s your thinking,” Tulk warned. “First off, when there’s folk in the tank, this is where I sleep and I’ll raise merry hell before you’ve gone ten yards, no bother.

“Second of all, you likely look at me and reckon I’m a broken old thing but I’m a mean son of a bitch and I’ll beat you bloody raw if it turns out you’re thinkin’ to give me trouble.

“And last of all - and this is the real killer - if you do manage to run, there’s nowhere to go. Hell, the worst thing they could do to you is give you liberty out there. Might as well be a death sentence. You’ve never seen the world beyond these few valleys but I have and I’ll tell you, there’s nowhere got the civilization of this place.”

Unt was a bit alarmed at Tulk’s ferocious way of speaking. “I’m not thinking of running,” he said.

The beadle gave him a side-long glance as though weighing him up. “Aye, you’re a good boy, I think,” he said at last. “I can’t imagine what it is you’ve got yourself into but it’s no business of mine. I don’t judge folk, I only hold ‘em. Judging’s the business of some other fool. Anyway, let’s get inside.”

With that, he waved Unt up. It was like he was inviting a guest into his home, not a prisoner to his pen. The step creaked alarmingly as their joint weight went down on it and Unt felt the timber bend. The door opened easily on loose hinges and Tulk shut it behind them with a flick of his heel.

Inside was slightly better than the outside. The wood on the walls and floors was shiny with successive layers of varnish, the white-washed ceiling was bright and clean and so were the red-brick walls that split the cells. Even the paint on the bars was black and glossy and new.

Each cell had a neatly-made cot with clean red blankets. A fourth cot lay behind the desk with its single chair. A polished mirror sat above a small wash basin with a little stove to the right of that. A few other knick-knacks placed carefully around the room were the only other objects. This was a much-loved place, the home-from-home Tulk implied when he’d said he slept here.

“I’ll put you in Three,” said the beadle, indicating the cell on the left. “I mostly use One and Two for the drunks who shit and piss themselves or the scrappers who deserve to sleep in it. I keep Three for the people who I think deserve better and you’re one, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Thank you,” said Unt, grateful for the small mercy.

The beadle rooted in his pocket and came out with a great key. He opened the door and waved Unt in. It struck Unt that there was nothing forcing him to submit. Despite his bluster, Unt reckoned he could take the old man, or at least knock him down long enough to escape.

But Tulk was right, there was nowhere to run and besides, he didn’t want to. He’d been dreading this day for so long it was a relief he’d no longer need to fear it. If nothing else, it had cleared his conscience.

He stepped inside and Tulk locked the door behind him. Unt turned and looked at the beadle, wondering what to do with himself.

“What now, eh?” laughed Tulk, reading his mind again. “My advice would be to try and relax. Easier said than done, I know, but right now there’s nothing else for it. The Council will send your Defender once they’ve determined one but until then, you might as well put your feet up.”

“When will they send my Defender?” asked Unt.

The beadle chuckled and rasped his teeth, “You tell me how long it takes the Council to act. I’d not expect anything this afternoon anyway, I should say.”

“I have a wife,” said Unt, his thoughts leading to Crystal.

“And doubtless a lovely thing she is too,” said Tulk, “Sure as Seven, in this town, someone’ll let her know and I dare say she’ll be here to see you soon after.”

Unt doubted that. It was the opposite he feared.

“Again,” Tulk went on, “The best advice I can give is to lie down and try not to dwell on it.”

No, Crystal wouldn’t be rushing to see him. She’d be rushing to Rob. That was especially certain once she heard what Unt was charged with and worked out that it was him who had kept her from her lover.

“If you like, I can give you a book to read,” Tulk interrupted his thoughts, “Most folks, though, decide to sleep it out.”

Unt threw his dice on the bed. Five. “Thank you, but I’m fine,” he said.

“Load of rubbish these lot write anyway,” said Tulk. “Will Ogle slay the dragon? Odds say he does, evens say he doesn’t. Whatever happened to just telling a story?”

Unt blinked in confusion.

“Course, you know no different, do you? Poor mite,” said Tulk, “Never mind. Maybe you’d like a drink instead?”

Unt rolled and got an eight. “No thank you,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” said Tulk, “but it’s good stuff, this. If there’s one thing that’ll help you relax it’s a nice stiff drink.”

With that, he sauntered toward his desk, took out a tin cup, a large flask and started to pour.

“Actually,” said Unt, “I’ll have that drink, if I may.”

The beadle smiled a gap-toothed smile. “Good choice.”

10. A Plea

Dusk was falling when Unt’s Defender finally arrived. It wasn’t quite the next morning like Tulk had joked but Unt was worried by the delay. If they’d had the foresight to summon a beadle, why hadn’t they arranged a Defender for him? He looked at the neighbouring empty cells: it wasn’t like they had a heavy case-load.

Tulk was sleeping in his chair when the knock came. Unt was sat on the cot, thinking and had to shout to wake the old man. So much for waking up if he tried to smash his way out of the cell.

“What? Yes, I’m coming, I’m coming,” said the beadle, stirring at the third time of asking.

He opened the door to admit a small, nervous-looking man with a sickly-grey sheen to his skin and forehead. Unt looked at the extent that his brown hair had gone to grey and the square, styleless shape of his glasses and placed him somewhere in his forties.

Appearances could be deceiving but Unt didn’t think this was one of those times. He watched the Defender cling a satchel of papers to his chest like they were a life-preserving part of him. He looked like a man with a fever, dragged from his sickbed because there was no other choice.

“Ostin!” said Tulk. “As I live and breathe!” The welcome put a name to this unimpressive specimen. “It’s been a long time since you darkened my doorstep. Come on in, come on in.”

“You know I try to darken your door as little as possible, Tulk,” Ostin heaved a wet laugh at his own joke.

“True enough,” said Tulk. “Well, anyhow, let me introduce you to the young man who’s fallen into your charge.”

“Ostin,” said Tulk, “this is your client, Mr Unt. Unt: your Defender of twenty-three years’ service, Mr Ostin.”

Ostin shook Unt’s hand through the bars. The grip was stronger than Unt had expected.

“A pleasure,” said Ostin. “Probably not mutual though, heh, heh,” he added, rambling. “But let’s see if we can’t put this right for you. Tulk, would you be so kind?”

Tulk took out his big key and let Ostin into the cell. He didn’t bother to lock it after him. Ostin looked around briefly then realised there was no other chair. He perched himself on the edge of the cot beside Unt.

Putting his pouch on his lap, he carefully peeled out a single sheet like it was some secret document. He sighed. “Ok, Unt, let’s get down to business. First of all, the charges against you…”

He started to summarise from the sheet. “An unnamed witness has come forward to the Council and asserted that you allowed another person to take credit for a rescue performed by yourself.

“The alleged false statement you gave about that incident affected the Talent Rating of yourself and the other party. This, in turn, altered the result of your Fall. This is being construed as deliberate tampering which is a class-A offence: the most serious charge allowed in law.”

“Ok,” said Unt.

“You understand the charges?”

“Yes”.

“And you’re not denying them?”

“No.” The word was out before he’d properly considered.

Ostin looked relieved. “That’s good,” he said. “A Guilty plea will keep things nice and simple.”

“Hold on,” said Unt, “I thought you were asking me as my Defender. I didn’t say that was my plea.”

Ostin groaned in disappointment and wiped his sickly brow. “All right,” he said, “so you want to claim that you’re innocent.”

“I want to explore my options,” said Unt.

“Well, start by taking a look at this” said Ostin. He rooted about in his satchel and removed a slip of paper. “This is the
Sheet of Sentencing
. This tells you what punishments you get depending on your crime and your plea.”

Unt looked at the sheet. It was a table with letters across the top and punishments down the side. Numbers filled the spaces in the middle. Some numbers were in brackets and some were not.

“If the judging Councillors find you guilty, they each roll a dice and take the average as your punishment,” Ostin explained. “The numbers not in brackets are your sentence if you plead guilty. The bracketed numbers are if you plead innocent and fail to prove it. You’ll note that the bracketed numbers carry a more severe penalty.”

Unt studied the sheet carefully. He knew the letters rated the seriousness of the crime with A being the most-serious and E being the least. The punishments ranged from “Censure”, to “Stocks”, through different terms of imprisonment to “Exile”. Right at the very bottom was “Death”

“Death?” he asked, horrified. He’d no idea the town had a death-sentence.

“Yes, death,” said Ostin as though he’d proven a point. “You are accused of a class-A crime, the most serious we have and unless you plead guilty, you leave yourself open to that possibility.”

Unt didn’t take his eyes from the chart. “But the highest penalty that can be rolled is for exile,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” said Ostin, “But if you have to be proven guilty, the judges can add a further modifier. They can increase the penalty by one.”

“Wait,” said Unt. “If I plead guilty, I’m guaranteed to get a prison term.” The lowest score of one lay against the punishment of three month’s imprisonment. The prison lay outside town and was filled with the colony’s worst offenders.

Unt was terrified of the prospect of even a short spell in there. Not many people got sent to prison and the ones that returned came back affected in one of two ways: they either looked galvanised by their experience or destroyed.

“What do you expect?” said Ostin. “It’s a serious crime that you’re accused of.”

No
, Unt wanted to shout.
No!
“What do they need to do to prove their case against me?”

Ostin shook his head. “Nobody will be trying to prove you guilty,” he said. “There is no
case
. If there’s a case, there’s an agenda and that’s something we avoid in our community.”

“Fine,” said Unt, “But how does it all work?”

Ostin looked impatient. “First the charges are read out and we make a plea. Unless you plead guilty, the causes of the charges are heard and then we hear witness statements. The judges take turns to ask questions and then I get to cross-examine. If the judges want to ask more questions they can do and then we can respond once more.

“Once every question’s been asked, the next witness is summoned and we work through each one until they’re all finished with. You’re then questioned and then the decision is made.”

“Who are the judges?” asked Unt.

“Five of the seven Councillors,” said Ostin. “Normally, they’re drawn at random but given your relationship, Brooker will probably exclude himself. Kelly might stand down too if he thinks it proper.”

That decided the other five then. Lasper would be among them and he’d get to write his own ticket to convict Unt.

“How do they reach a verdict?” he asked.

Ostin looked at his watch. “After all the evidence is heard, each judge declares a personal verdict and these are added together to give your Verdict Modifier.

“Each then makes a roll of two dice to decide if you’re guilty or innocent: if it’s higher than seven, that’s an innocent verdict. If it’s lower than seven, it’s a guilty verdict.”

“And seven?”

“Inconclusive. When they’re done, they add up the five judgements in what we call the Verdict of Fate. Whichever result is in the majority is final verdict made on you.”

“So what if the number of innocent and guilty rolls is equal?” asked Unt.

“Then they go with the direction of the Verdict Modifier.”

Unt thought that over. Lasper might be out to get him but he’d got the impression that the other four were reasonable men. If he could persuade them he was innocent then the Verdict of Fate should fall in his favour. It depended how well Lasper attacked him.

“One of the Councillors has a vendetta against me,” he voiced his concern, “How can I be sure he won’t make a case against me?”

Ostin made no effort to hide his condescension. “If one of your judges does have a vendetta against you it makes little odds. Before they come out, they all sit down and for every witness, they come up with a particular line of questioning for each of them. They then pick one of the five topics at random and explore those questions to their fullest.”

That sounded hopeful. “So they only ask the questions they’ve been given?”

Ostin’s reluctance to talk was trumped by his enthusiasm for his profession. “Not exactly, no,” he said. “If a Councillor has ideas about a particular line of questioning, he may ask to swap with a colleague. They can also go off their given topic too. But don’t worry; if the chairman of the panel thinks someone’s making a case against you, he’ll shut him down.”

“Who’s the chairman?” Unt pressed.

Ostin answered instantly. “Erk, assuming he’s among the five. As Councillor responsible for security, it’s his patch.”

That sounded hopeful. Erk was a hard man to read but he seemed fair. If he could keep Lasper in check, Unt should get a fair hearing.

Ostin seemed to realise he’d given Unt hope. “If you’re thinking of pleading your innocence, you can go ahead and do that,” he said, “but you’re going to have a hard time making it stick.”

“But there’s no evidence,” protested Unt.

“No physical evidence, yes,” said Ostin. “So it’s just your word against theirs. But you just admitted to me that you did it, so what you’d be doing is pitting a lie against the truth. If you think you can do that, fine, but I’ve not seen many young people with the guts to carry it off.”

That was a crushing blow to Unt. All the while he’d been sat there he’d been trusting that the lack of evidence would keep him safe. Ostin’s unenthusiastic assessment had shown a flaw in the plan that he hadn’t considered and would surely undo him.

Ostin pressed his advantage. “If you try and lie to them directly and they catch you out, they’ll want to make an example out of you,” he said. “They’ll likely vote to increase your sentence and that brings this into play.” He stamped his finger on the word “Death.”

Unt closed his eyes. “If I admit it, I’ll go to prison.”

“Most likely for less than two years,” said Ostin. “That’s nothing in the span of your life. Even if you got the very worst and got eight years, you’d still be a young man when you came out.”

“It would ruin my life,” said Unt.

“Not as surely as a noose,” said Ostin.

It was harsh but true.

“Look,” said Ostin, “I’ll leave you to think about it overnight and I’ll call by in the morning. Just keep looking at that chart.” He rose to leave.

“Wait,” said Unt. “You haven’t said when the trial is.”

Ostin looked surprised. “Well, tomorrow, of course.”

“Tomorrow?” Unt was stunned.

“What did you expect? A serious crime like this, the Council will want to deal with it swiftly and with no evidence to gather, there’s no reason for delay.”

Ostin looked at Unt like he couldn’t understand his reaction. He patted his shoulder awkwardly, from as far away as was possible. “Don’t worry, it’ll all be sorted in the morning,” he said. “Tulk, could you let me out, here?”

“It ain’t locked,” said Tulk from behind a book he was reading.

“Yes, of course,” said Ostin and slipped out smoothly. He turned at the door and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Unt.”

When he was gone, Tulk stretched and sauntered over to lock the door. “You’ve landed some real sour cream there,” he said. “That there’s a slippery one and not in a way that’ll be any use to you.”

Unt was just staring at the chart but he looked up as Tulk turned the key. “Do you cook, Unt?” he asked.

“Cook?” Unt was confused.

“You know, get some ingredients together and make a meal.”

“Yes.”

“Then you must have cracked eggs into a bowl. Our Mr Ostin’s that little bit of shell that ends up in there and no matter how you try to pin it down, you can never get your fingers round it to fish it out.

“I must have seen that man handle a hundred clients over twenty-three years and the only ones I ever saw get off did so in spite of him, not because of him.”

“You think I should ignore him?”

“I think you’ve got a Defender who wants the easiest possible result,” said Tulk, “That’s all.” He went over to the stove and set about lighting it.

“My wife didn’t come,” said Unt, randomly.

“Say what?” Tulk didn’t look up from his work.

“This afternoon, while you were sleeping. I listened for her coming but she didn’t.”

Tulk stopped what he was doing and turned to look at Unt. Squatting there, all old and wizened, he looked like some kind of goblin.

“Didn’t come, eh? And you thought she would?”

“I hoped,” said Unt. “I mean, we haven’t been married all that long and we’re just getting to know each other but I didn’t think she’d abandon me.”

“Hmm. What did you say she does for a living?”

“She’s a Medic.”

“There you go then. Busy job is a Medic. She’s probably not been home all day. Like as not, she’ll be getting home right now wondering where that blasted beau of hers is.”