No one from the king's family was present. It had long been a tradition that if a royal person were present, he or she would sit beside the judge and, presumably, tell the judge the will of the king in the case. Thus from a trial attended by a royal person there could be no appeal. To preserve the rights of the accused, therefore, Ba-Jamim, Motiak's father, had begun the tradition of having no family member present at any lower trials, so that the right of all parties to appeal a decision could be preserved. It also had the happy effect of increasing the independence and therefore the prestige of the judges.
Akma, however, came to watch, and his sister Luet came with him. They had arrived late enough that they secured seats only in the back, behind the accused where they could see no faces. But two close supporters of the accusers, who had seats on the front row where they could see everyone's face, recognized Akma and insisted that he and his sister come down and take their places. Akma pretended to be surprised and honored, but Luet remembered how he had remained standing at the back until he was noticed, he knew that seats were being held for him. And by supporters of the accusers. Akma had definitely taken sides.
Well, why not? So had Luet.
"Have you met her?" she asked.
"Met whom?" asked Akma.
"Shedemei. The accused."
"Oh. No. Should I have?"
"A brilliant, remarkable woman," said Luet.
"Well, I don't suppose anyone would have noticed her if she was a fool," he answered mildly.
"You know I was at her school with Mother and Edhadeya when the book of charges was delivered," said Luet.
"Yes, I'd heard."
"She already knew the charges. Isn't that funny? She recited them to Husu before he could read them off."
"I heard that, too," said Akma. "I imagine kRo will make something of that. Proof that she was aware of her lawbreaking, that sort of thing."
"I daresay he will," said Luet. "Imagine charging her with treason for running a school."
"Oh, I'm sure that charge was just to make the whole thing more notorious. I don't think Father's little puppet judge will even allow that charge to be heard, do you?"
Luet cringed at the malice in Akma's voice. "Pabul is no one's puppet, Akma."
"Oh, really? So what he did to our people back in Chelem, that was of his own free will?"
"He was his father's puppet then. He was a child. Younger than we are now."
"But we've both passed through that age, haven't we? He was seventeen. When I was seventeen, I was no man's puppet." Akma grinned. "So don't tell me Pabul wasn't responsible for his own actions."
"Very well, then," said Luet. "He was. But he changed."
"He sensed the way the wind was blowing, you mean. But let's not argue."
"No, let's do argue," said Luet. "Which way was the wind blowing back in Chelem? Who had the soldiers there?"
"As I recall, our young judge had the command of a gang of digger thugs that were always ready to whip and claw women and children."
"Pabul and the others risked their lives to stop the cruelty. And gave up their future in positions of power under their father in order to escape into the wilderness."
"And come to Darakemba where, to everyone's surprise, they once again have positions of power."
"Which they earned."
"Yes, but by doing what?" Akma grinned. "Don't try to argue with me, Luet. I was your teacher for too long. I know what you're going to say before you say it."
Luet wanted to jab him with something very hard. When they were younger and quarreled, she would pinch together her thumb and first two fingers to form a weapon hard and sharp enough for Akma to notice it when she jabbed him. But there had been playfulness in it, even when she was most furious; today she didn't touch him, because she was no longer sure she loved him enough to strike at him without wanting to cause real injury.
A sad look came across Akma's face.
"Why aren't you happy?" she said tauntingly. "Didn't I say what you expected me to say?"
"I expected you to jab me the way you used to when you were a brat."
"So I've passed out of brathood."
"Now you judge me," said Akma. "Not because I'm wrong, but because I'm not loyal to Father."
"Aren't you loyal to him?"
"Was he ever loyal to me?" asked Akma.
"And will you ever grow out of the hurts of your childhood?"
Akma got a distant look on his face. "I've grown out of all the hurts that ended."
"No one's hurting you now," said Luet. "You're the one who hurts Mother and Father."
"I'm sorry to hurt Mother," said Akma. "But she made her choice."
"Didul and Pabul and Udad and Muwu all begged for our forgiveness. I forgave them then, and I still forgive them now. They've become decent men, all of them."
"Yes, you all forgave them."
"Yes," said Luet. "You say that as if there were something wrong with it."
"You had the right to forgive them for what they did to you, Luet. But you didn't have the right to forgive them for what they did to me."
Luet remembered seeing Akma alone on a hillside, watching as Father taught the people, with the Pabulogi seated in the front row. "Is that what this is all about? That Father forgave them without waiting for your consent?"
"Father forgave them before they asked him to," whispered Akma. She could barely hear him above the roaring of the crowd, and then she could only make out his words by watching his lips. "Father loved the ones who tormented me. He loved them more than me. There has never been such a vile, perverted, filthy, unnatural injustice as that."
"It wasn't about justice," said Luet. "It was about teaching. The Pabulogi only knew the moral world their father had created for them. Before they could understand what they were doing, they had to be taught to see things as the Keeper sees them. When they did understand, then they begged forgiveness and changed their ways."
"But Father already loved them," whispered Akma. "When they were still beating you, when they were still torturing me, mocking us both, smearing us with digger feces, tripping me and kicking me, stripping me naked and holding me upside down in front of all the people while they ridiculed me-while they were still doing those things, Father already loved them."
"He saw what they could become."
"He had no right to love them more than me."
"His love for them saved all our lives," said Luet. "Yes, Luet, and look what his love has done for them. They prosper. They're happy. In his eyes, they are his sons. Better sons than I am." This was uncomfortably close to Luet's own judgment of things. "There's nothing they've achieved, nothing in their relationship with Father that wasn't available to you."
"As long as I admitted first that there was no difference in value between the tortured and the torturer."
"That's stupid, Akma," said Luet. "They had to change before Father accepted them. They had to become someone else."
"Well, I haven't changed," said Akma. "I haven't changed." It was the most personal conversation Luet had had with Akma in years, and she longed for it to continue, but at that moment a roar went up from the crowd because they were bringing in the accused, protected by eight guards. This was another old tradition, introduced after several cases in which the accused was murdered in court before the trial was even completed, or snatched away to have another sort of trial in another place. These guards still served that practical purpose-an in-court murder of an accused person had happened not ten years before, admittedly in the rather wild provincial capital of Trubi, at the high end of the valley of the Tsidorek. Not that anyone expected Shedemei to be in danger. This was a test case, a struggle for power; she herself was not regarded with particular passion by those accusing her.