administrative complex, fully five floors down from the Second Judge’s personal quarters — and put his cloth pack down to one side of the door, pulling off the jacket he wore when he wasn’t being official. Old campaign jacket, and from a really obscure planetary fleet; the cut and color offered few clues as to the identity of the wearer.
No clues whatever, in fact. Any branch-of-service markers that might once have decorated that old worn jacket had long since eroded with wear to the point of indecipherability, and Garol liked it that way.
He locked the door and turned on the desk lights, started some bean tea, sent the courtesy notifications to First Secretary Verlaine — the Second Judge’s senior administrative official — and another message down to the media watch in Intelligence Analysis asking for the current situation report from Port Charid.
There were dockets on his desk he hadn’t looked at, but he was in no hurry. He was here to brief the Second Judge about Port Charid and the Langsariks. Anything else Chilleau Judiciary got out of him this visit would be gravy for them, and since Jils had sent him a briefing packet on some of Verlaine’s recent moves, Garol was not in a particularly gravy-ladling mood.
Putting his feet up on the dockets stacked on the desk, Garol meditated over a cup of hot bean tea, waiting for the runner from Intelligence Analysis.
He was halfway through the cup of tea when the signal came, and he had to get up and open the door. He could have left it unlocked, he supposed, but he didn’t like being interrupted by well-wishers poking their heads in to attempt to cultivate his acquaintance.
Unlatching the door, Garol pulled it open. “Oh, hello. You’ve got the report I asked for? Thanks.”
He knew the Clerk of Court who’d brought the report down, though.
Mergau Noycannir.
The rabid Inquisitor-without-portfolio that Verlaine had made as an experiment in shifting control of Inquiry from Fleet to the Bench — an experiment which had failed with Noycannir. The whole point of Inquiry was the use of judicial torture as an instrument of statecraft, and for torture to have the looked-for deterrent effect, it had to be perceived as something to be afraid of, something that could be used to obtain evidence against one’s friends and family, something that could be used to render entire communities vulnerable to sanctions at the discretion of the Judge.
Noycannir just killed people.
That wasn’t an enjoyable experience, at least not from any near-miss accounts that Garol had heard and fully acknowledging the lack of any real firsthand recitation from the dead concerning their feelings about the whole thing. But a threat that only endangered one’s own self had nothing like the emotional impact of one that could be used to condemn one’s near and dear based on one’s own testimony.
Other Inquisitors could obtain incriminating evidence, and some of them actually found things out — Andrej Koscuisko, for one, the rash young Inquisitor who had cried Failure of Writ at the Domitt Prison, and set the wheels in motion of a scandal from which Chilleau Judiciary still reeled.
But not Noycannir.
Nor was she wearing the uniform of an Inquisitor, but the more plain and humble dress of a senior Clerk of Court; and she had come from Intelligence Analysis?
Garol took an almost involuntary step backward; he hadn’t been prepared for this apparition at all, let alone its mind-boggling implications.
It was a mistake.
Noycannir lowered her head and followed him, as though she’d been invited in.
“I’ve been reviewing this information since word came you were in, Specialist Vogel,” Noycannir said, and walked right past him to open the documents case she’d brought and lay it out flat on the desk surface. “You’ll find this interesting, I’m sure. Here. Have a look at these transport minutes.”
Garol could only stand and stare in genuine admiration. She had nerve. No
No clues whatever, in fact. Any branch-of-service markers that might once have decorated that old worn jacket had long since eroded with wear to the point of indecipherability, and Garol liked it that way.
He locked the door and turned on the desk lights, started some bean tea, sent the courtesy notifications to First Secretary Verlaine — the Second Judge’s senior administrative official — and another message down to the media watch in Intelligence Analysis asking for the current situation report from Port Charid.
There were dockets on his desk he hadn’t looked at, but he was in no hurry. He was here to brief the Second Judge about Port Charid and the Langsariks. Anything else Chilleau Judiciary got out of him this visit would be gravy for them, and since Jils had sent him a briefing packet on some of Verlaine’s recent moves, Garol was not in a particularly gravy-ladling mood.
Putting his feet up on the dockets stacked on the desk, Garol meditated over a cup of hot bean tea, waiting for the runner from Intelligence Analysis.
He was halfway through the cup of tea when the signal came, and he had to get up and open the door. He could have left it unlocked, he supposed, but he didn’t like being interrupted by well-wishers poking their heads in to attempt to cultivate his acquaintance.
Unlatching the door, Garol pulled it open. “Oh, hello. You’ve got the report I asked for? Thanks.”
He knew the Clerk of Court who’d brought the report down, though.
Mergau Noycannir.
The rabid Inquisitor-without-portfolio that Verlaine had made as an experiment in shifting control of Inquiry from Fleet to the Bench — an experiment which had failed with Noycannir. The whole point of Inquiry was the use of judicial torture as an instrument of statecraft, and for torture to have the looked-for deterrent effect, it had to be perceived as something to be afraid of, something that could be used to obtain evidence against one’s friends and family, something that could be used to render entire communities vulnerable to sanctions at the discretion of the Judge.
Noycannir just killed people.
That wasn’t an enjoyable experience, at least not from any near-miss accounts that Garol had heard and fully acknowledging the lack of any real firsthand recitation from the dead concerning their feelings about the whole thing. But a threat that only endangered one’s own self had nothing like the emotional impact of one that could be used to condemn one’s near and dear based on one’s own testimony.
Other Inquisitors could obtain incriminating evidence, and some of them actually found things out — Andrej Koscuisko, for one, the rash young Inquisitor who had cried Failure of Writ at the Domitt Prison, and set the wheels in motion of a scandal from which Chilleau Judiciary still reeled.
But not Noycannir.
Nor was she wearing the uniform of an Inquisitor, but the more plain and humble dress of a senior Clerk of Court; and she had come from Intelligence Analysis?
Garol took an almost involuntary step backward; he hadn’t been prepared for this apparition at all, let alone its mind-boggling implications.
It was a mistake.
Noycannir lowered her head and followed him, as though she’d been invited in.
“I’ve been reviewing this information since word came you were in, Specialist Vogel,” Noycannir said, and walked right past him to open the documents case she’d brought and lay it out flat on the desk surface. “You’ll find this interesting, I’m sure. Here. Have a look at these transport minutes.”
Garol could only stand and stare in genuine admiration. She had nerve. No
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