Orson Card - Hart's Hope

Not even Belfeva failed to recall that the Little King had been plucked from that court to wive the Queen; but why not go there, after all? If the Little King wished to remember how low he had been in order to appreciate better where he was now, who were they to try to dissuade him? So they left the Palace—the back way, as usual, through Kitchen Street, and made their way afoot to the Coal House, where the masked judges spent their days deciding which unfortunates would be dismembered and which be merely killed.

Weasel Sootmouth, knowing what havoc the Little King's arrival unannounced might cause, instructed a servant to go ahead and warn the judges of their coming. Of course they all pretended to be surprised; of course the pretense was unconvincing. Orem had seen the place from the wrong point of view to be fooled by any show they might put on for him now. And yet he was not vindictive. He refrained from reminding them how they had met before. Indeed, he stayed aloof, showing little interest in the Coal House court itself. That was not what he had come for. It was the Gaols he meant to see.

Quickly enough the silence reminded him that the Little King had been just such a common criminal. The guards led them out. They tried to steer the Little King away from the Steer Pit, but he knew his way. They came to an awkward moment: the cutter was getting his tools ready to do the job. A new victim was ready, so the one in the clamps had to be cut and sent on his way.

"Of all the reliefs on the palace walls, I think this is most lifelike," said Orem.

"What will they do?" asked Belfeva. Not that it had been kept a secret from her; the great houses simply never bothered to discuss the cruelty that kept the city safe for them.

"They'll make a steer of him," Orem said. He did not realize that she would have no notion of the difference between steers and bulls.

It was Weasel who explained to her. Belfeva turned away, aghast.

In the pit the cutter waited, wondering what his spectators expected him to do. Orem could not relieve his anxiety. He himself didn't know. The victim himself had chosen—better castration than slavery. Unless Orem meant to change the law itself, what could he do but go along with the man's decision? And changing the law was beyond his reach. He could make no lasting changes, only little meddlings that would not reshape the working of Inwit, that would go unnoticed by the Queen.

At last Orem turned away, having said nothing. The cutter wasted no time after that—they were only a little way from the Steer Pit when they heard the piteous cries of the cut man. The Gaols were as they had been, except that now it was spring. The prisoners did not freeze now. Instead they lived in the stench and flies of their own excrement on the ground below. The upmost prisoners, as always, had it better, for the flies were not so thick where they were. It was plain that many of the prisoners were ill.

"This one's new," Orem said quietly as they walked past the cages. "And this one's been here days. He'll die before trial." They did not ask him how he knew. He knew. He showed no feelings to his companions, but they could taste his quiet, knew that this place had broken something in him, and created something else, something that had made him not the rustic that even the Queen believed he was. Weasel took his hand. He let her, but gave no sign it mattered, and soon she let go of him again. She did not mind; it was enough to see something that the Queen did not see. There was hope in that.

Up and down the rows, up and down, as if each prisoner were not identical to all the others. At last Belfeva grew sick and lagged behind, and Timias rebuked the Little King. "Haven't we seen enough of this!" he demanded. "Why did you bring us here?"

Orem had no answer for him. Hadn't he asked the same question of Flea after the death at the snake fight? I brought you here because there were two free hours. I brought you here to understand Queen's Town as it truly is, and not as it seems to you to be. I brought you here because in the criss-cross shadow of the cages, strangers saved my life. "They spat on me to wake me in the snow."

"Orem! Lad, remember me, remember me! The favor, lad!"

Immediately the guards were thick between Orem and the shouter's cage. "Quiet up there!" shouted one, and several archers readied their bows for quick restoration of quiet.

Orem knew the man before he could decide whether he wanted to know him or not. "Braisy," he said.

It was enough to stop the archers. The commander of the guards came to the Little King to explain. "He's a common swindler, and not only that, he passes people back and forth illegally into the city. We were finally able to catch him within the walls, passless. Death for sure, for this one, my lord Little King."

Have you ever, Palicrovol, heard the inconvenient plea of one to whom you are in debt? And have you known that a moment's inaction would release you from his demands? But not his debt, no, there is only one release for debt. Orem stripped the place of Beauty's Searching Eye. "Free him," Orem said softly.

The guard went red. "My lord Little King, I can't."

"I confess to you, sir," Orem said, "that I took part in this man's crimes, and I insist that it is your duty to punish me exactly as you punish him. Open a cage for me at once."

"But you are the—the Little—"

"Free him," Orem said again.

Timias stepped in, spoke softly to the commander of the guards. "You heard him say the words. If she minded, would he have been permitted to say it? If she minded, would you be permitted to do it? But I assure you that if you don't do it, then it will be minded."

So Timias became the Little King's conspirator in a hundred little undoings of the harsh justice of the laws of Inwit. Orem's reason for working against the laws is plain: he himself had been a victim of those laws. Timias, however, had all his life been sustained by those laws. He maintained his wealth only because the guards kept the poor of Inwit too terrified to take it from him. Why, then, did Timias help undo what made him safe? Because Timias was no sycophant, as you have called him. Timias was that rare thing—a man who can genuinely grieve for suffering he has never felt.

This was the beginning of the small set of doings, the small Acts of the Little King of Burland. It is not a large chronicle: I will tell it all to you here in only a few hundred breaths. Yet at the end he had no reason, I think, to be ashamed.

The commander brought Braisy from the cage. Such an obsequious creature, so eager to lick the feet of the Little King. But Orem did not spurn him, and in fact spoke a few words kindly to him, and told the guards to give the man a pass.

"In the pass name him servant of Gallowglass, a man of private means who is without servants at the moment. If he quits Gallowglass, he quits his pass."

Braisy's eyes went wide, but he swallowed and nodded. "Good enough for me, that's right, that's fair, that's a true favor it is."

The guards did it, and the ripple this made in the city was small enough that Beauty did not even notice it. But it was a ripple all the same, and changed forever the city you would return to, Palicrovol.

Perhaps the taste of power was heady as brandywine; but I think that Orem wasn't drunken on so small a draught. I think Orem went on to other exercise of power because he resented having done a mercy for a man that he despised, when there were others who deserved better of him who were not helped.

He began then to use the guard for his own small purposes. Find for me these two—they were my friends:

A boy called Flea, Flea Buzz, perhaps ten or so, lives in Swamptown. But put no fear in him, treat him kindly, find out where he is and tell me.

A man named Rainer Carpenter lives in Beggarstown in hope of finding work some day on a pauper's pass. Find out where he is and tell me.