"The Law Giver's holy command is that such a man be punished by his caste-lord in kind, for the disciplining of children is a private matter, to be carried out in the domain of the family line, the privacy of the home. To beat children in public shows lack of judgment, lack of patience, and lack of sufficiently wise instruction of the young entrusted to the family line. These things bring shame to the family line and to the caste."
He was parroting the words by rote, without the slightest understanding of their meaning, mul Gurthak thought disgustedly.
"Under caste law?true caste law, not the bastardized, compromised version forced upon Mythal when the Union formed?what were a family's garthan?"
"Its property."
"A narrow reading. Give me the ancient reading of that law?its full meaning."
mul Gurthak could practically see vos Hoven's mind searching through the texts memorized by rote, repeated recitations spanning one's entire childhood.
"The oldest text I have heard mentioned, although I was never shown a copy of it, Mightiest Lord, mentioned garthan as our … children… ."
vos Hoven's voice trailed off, and he gulped.
"But I didn't discipline the garthan in public!" he protested. "I was careful to do it in private! Away from the eyes of others."
"And that is precisely why you are a fool!" mul Gurthak hissed. "Because you understand nothing. You can parrot back the words, but your brain is full of sand and your yurha is as avoid of understanding as the gulfs between the stars. The words have no meaning in your emptiness, and so you make mistakes?stupid mistakes. Costly ones. Mithanan's balls, do you have any idea of the cost of this mistake? Out here, outside the borders of the homeland, we are all under scrutiny?we are all in public, fool! Is it so impossible for you to understand that there is no privacy?! Now, because of what you've done, every Andaran officer will watch every shakira in uniform, looking for evidence of garthan abuse! And what will any evidence of the 'abuse' of garthan do? It will taint all of us. It will cause these honorbound Andarans to watch our every move. And what will that do to the cause you and I are here to serve? What will that do to our mission?"
The prisoner whimpered, and mul Gurthak sneered.
"Oh, you see it now, do you? A shakira who's watched too closely can't function as we need him to function, can't acquire the seniority we need. You've jeopardized everything the Council of Twelve has spent the last thirty years putting into place. Our whole timetable must come to a screeching halt while we try to make certain that no one's stumbled across what we're doing because of the way you've made all of them look so much more closely at all of us. I'll have to send messages, you utter, cursed moron, warning others to stop. To lie low. Messages that will put me at risk of exposure!"
vos Hoven trembled violently, whimpering once more. mul Gurthak was so angry he wanted to kick the idiots ribs until something broke, but he couldn't?not without risking even more probing questions than vos Hoven had already set in motion. Yet his fury was too great not to do something, so he crouched beside the other shakira, seized his hair, jerked his head up off the floor by the long braids. Dark eyes rolled in abject terror, and mul Gurthak leaned close to hiss into his face.
"I've worked too hard, swallowed too many insults from socially and spiritually inferior louts, to attain my present position. I've gone without too many creature comforts to see everything I've struggled to achieve come crashing down in ruins. And why is it falling apart? Because you used your fists to bruise a garthan for not licking the mud off your feet! I should feed your worthless carcass to the dragons."
vos Hoven shuddered violently. No court in Arcana had actually ordered that court-martialed soldiers or other prisoners be fed to dragons in the last two centuries. But the actual law had never been repealed, and there were a handful of shakira lords in Mythal who did still feed the damned to their dragons. In strict and careful privacy, of course …
mul Gurthak straightened, letting let the stupid worm stew in his own juices for long, silent moments, and the stink of vos Hoven's sweat was sharp and foul, the smell of terror.
"I had plans for you," the two thousand said at last, coldly. "Plans that must now be scrapped. Why do you think I transferred you to Jasak Olderhan's company in the first place? Or is your memory so short you've already forgotten the private mission I assigned you to carry out?"
"Mightiest Lord, I-I tried! But I couldn't. He never comes right out and says it, but he hates us?hates shakira. You should have seen him fawning over that garthan. Praising him?recommending him for promotions. But he hated the rest of us Mythalans, the shakira in the Company. He shunned and loathed us. You could see it in his eyes whenever he looked at us."
"He hated shakira?" mul Gurthak asked softly. "Even Halathyn vos Dulainah?"
"vos Dulainah," vos Hoven all but spat the dead magister's name, "was a filthy traitor. He abandoned his caste, even his wife and son. Yes, Olderhan doted on the old man. And why? Precisely because vos Dulainah had shunned and betrayed the rest of us. The rest of the shakira."
"So you say he treated the shakira in his company badly?" mul Gurthak glared sternly at vos Hoven. "Be certain of your answer, fool. If you lie, I'll know, and I do not tolerate lies from a subordinate. Not in my command, and not in my caste."
vos Hoven gulped. For several seconds, he kept his face pressed firmly into the floor, silent. But then, finally, he answered in a low, reluctant voice.
"No. He didn't treat us badly. If a shakira kowtowed and obeyed like a good little garthan, Olderhan treated him like anyone else. It was a double insult. First he demanded that we act like garthan, and when we did, he treated us equally, as if he were just as good as we."
mul Gurthak was genuinely appalled.
"How in Mithanan's name did someone with your awe-inspiring stupidity get chosen for the great cause?" he demanded.
"My family line is one of the oldest and greatest in Mythal." Pride had crept back into vos Hoven's voice, despite his plight. "My mother's brother is a caste-lord. My father's father is a caste-lord. That's two caste-lords in the near-kin family!"
Nepotism. mul Gurthak wanted to rend something?preferably Bok vos Hoven?into very small, bleeding pieces. This fool had been sent out on a mission that called for guile and dissimulation, the acting skills of a professional stage player, not because he was fit for it, but because his relatives were politically powerful!
"So you're superior to Olderhan, are you?"
"Of course I am!"
"Did it never occur to you that you'd joined the Army? That in an army, officers give orders to men of lower military rank?regardless of their respective birth ranks? That you are required to give your commanding officer your respect, your instant obedience, be he ever so low-born? Even if that man were a garthan from your own family's fields, you would still be required to obey him and show him respect!"
"Never!" vos Hoven gasped, fiery rebellion burning in his eyes, and mul Gurthak slapped him. Jerked his head up off the floor and slammed a backhanded blow across his mouth.
"Silence!"
Rebellion fled. vos Hoven stared wide-eyed at mul Gurthak, unable to believe even now that he'd just been struck.
"You were supposed to get close to Olderhan. To win his confidence, his trust. To learn things from him?about his father. Things we can't find out any other way. To become the one who could deliver him to us at the proper time, in the proper place. You say he didn't trust you, but he doted on vos Dulainah. Did it never occur to you that the way to win his confidence would be to act the way vos Dulainah did? To mimic his attitudes, his professed beliefs? No matter what you really felt about them?