Memory ripped Merek out of sleep.
The trains' muted nighttime whistles more than memory.
But memory.
His mother's single-bedroom was built beneath a train line.
Corbin slid out of his bunk, and leaned over the balcony. He felt the wind play in his curls. He stared out at the dark ocean, its twinkling stars all that the deep black would let him see.
His eyes drifted down, onto the twinkling stars of the three Scindreux blades discarded like trash.
It wasn't his intention to stay in the Encampment for long.
Merek Corbin had studied law at the ancient Universitas Harensis in his native Hämmhurst. A Haren University graduate from a poor family in the country's urban rookeries.
Consumption got his father.
His older brother thieved until the local judge hanged him— Seventeen.
His mother sold her sole asset to anyone who would buy. Syphilis.
In those days his blonde hair was black with soot from the smokestacks and dirt from his bed. His matted bangs grew almost over his eyes, and he was a twig of a kid. All the clothes in Hämmhurst always sat more like a robe than a shirt on him.
Maybe that, more than Haren, taught him to make a sift of his mind to pick out all life's details, and conscript them to his service.
He watched those bright swords twinkle in the stone.
* * *
Merek took Faraji's path down the Barracks.
The Orosian stopped at the bath in the center, little lines of honeypot ants marching across it. They'd take the water back to their beloved big-bellied repletes. Back to their infinite barracks of soil and rock, to have plenty and joy in their buried homes.
He watched the rot swirl in the black water.
The pollution from the sewers and the factories swam down the Dunmere River. Twice a month it was scooped up in a pan and rubbed across young Merek's face as his mother bathed him.
The water was sour.
He could not stay in the Encampment for long.
Even though the Barracks' ground floor was all mold and dark shadow, he knew which exit led to the Scindreux. He could hear it, in his bones more than in his ears; anyone could.
He obeyed.
There. One lay at the bottom of a long slit, carved down the lower wall as it fell. Another laid flat and perfect, and the third stabbed into the ground a centimeter or two from the second's body.
Merek chuckled a little. With a breath of wind, they might've hit. He took one of the blades.
He almost dropped it; it was light like wood, and its chittering laughter chilled his skin.
He turned it carefully and cut three slow lines into the rock— a triangle. He added a slit across each side: The Mother, The Father, and The Daughter.
He got on his knees. Merek folded his hands and touched their point to three places on his face, down a line.
He prayed,
"Lord God, Heavenly Father, Arbiter of Law and Punishment, hear my prayer.
"In the creation you commanded the first Nara— 'Be fruitful and multiply.' You commanded your children to survive.
"Your faithful servant Garran Talbot, son of your late servant Edric Talbot, never refused a command from the Lord God.
"In his path of fulfillment, your faithful servant Garran Talbot beseeches— Read his heart as you did Pashhur. Judge his soul in place of his actions, as you did Pashhur.
"For all time, you have recognized that in your grand design Cernunnos is much stronger than man, and man I am.
"Lord God, Heavenly Father, watch over Faraji Ngubane and protect his family.
"He is a good man.
"Amen."
It was the same prayer he uttered the night he slashed the legs of that boy's horses.
His family never recovered.
The next morning, as the boy took his lame or dead horses to the meathouse, Garran snuck into his room.
It was folded up in his only drawer, a letter of acceptance into Haren University addressed to Merek Corbin.
Garran left his grandfather's name in the rookery.
Merek wiped his face and started collecting the swords.
In one hand he held a single blade. In the other he was forced to juggle two. His hands ran cold with sweat across the smooth crystal. He laid two atop each other gently as he'd cut into a heart, and lifted them slowly in one hand.
They slid around with every step.
Historically, Les Adorants' most sacred and volatile Scindreux crystals were never cut into weapons in those icy mountains. The gift had higher callings, and a poor sword is one that erupts upon its twin.
Well, Les Adorants' cultish rituals no longer had dominion.
At night, trains ran down the spiraling tracks only every thirty minutes, hauling food, water, and fabric. Merek had tracked the pattern as he fell asleep. Seven minutes until the next. He started walking.
The import locomotives were unloaded quickly at each of the different levels. Deliveries to carved kitchen entrances or workshops embedded into the stone benches between Superior apartments. There was a lottery to get the night shift— no sun and no ravens.
It took six hundred slaves just to keep the pickaxes sharpened.
Merek could hear that the trains ran a few seconds shorter every time. He'd become certain that they were being unloaded bottom to top, at wider benches every time. He progressed along the crushed stone ballast until he was sure he'd arrived where they'd already unloaded.
Merek and his glowing swords came to a stop in front of a humble door— eight-spoked sun carved into the aged wood.
The Orosian bent down and laid the three blades carefully. He arranged those glowing prophets in rough parallel, then spun them so the hilts faced the entrance, and their blades his throat. He got on his knees, leaned forward, and knocked hard on the wood.
Then he leaned back, bowed his head, raised his hands as high as he could reach, and waited.
A great fat Superior with charming good looks and tan skin threw open the door: Tunde.
He saw the dirty slave bathed in Scindreux light, and he slammed it shut.
Tunde reached for his sheathed Scindreux sword and stopped himself. The slave had three too many. He threw his sheath down and grabbed the flintlock rifle from the lintel above his door.
Click-clack! The steel snapped into place, and the gunpowder begged to be lit. The barrel pushed open the door.
Merek felt the rust on his heart, but he did not raise his head, he did not move. An old trick. Calm makes the defendant forget there's a threat in the first place. People get messy.
Then and there, Tunde felt the cold night breeze and the distant echo of train tracks like he was the only man on earth, paranoid and stupid, playing with a rifle like an actor.
He frowned and moved his finger down from the trigger.
The Superior narrowed his eyes. Sweat ran down his back.
"One statement."
Merek finally exhaled. He shuffled backwards towards the edge of the bench, and only then lifted his face. He ran a mental check of all the informalities in his native accent. He washed his mouth out completely, and spoke in perfect University Kāpuran.
"My lord, you see three Scindreux blades before me; Is it not reasonable to assume that were I intent on doing you harm, I may have used them? What use was there in knocking if not to express civility, my lord?"
He spoke like the Superior's old language instructor at the academy. The soldier straightened his back and fixed his eye contact. He let the barrel droop a bit.
"...Why have you come?"
"These blades are gifts, my lord. From one High Magistrate Merek Albus Corbin of Hämmhurst, a fellow son of the great Dying Sun, enthroned and full of spirit— given so that all men may rise over the grave of felled divinity."
"These are the spoils of the first dawn of an open rebellion, a slave uprising at a scale hitherto unseen."
He said that part almost like a reprimand.
"Indeed?" the Superior bristled.
Another storyteller. Merek was not the first to try to buy freedom with creative stories. Tunde raised the barrel, smiled like he was going to shoot. Merek raised his chin and looked out the side of his eyes— An Orosian favorite.
Tunde pinched one eye shut like he was really going to shoot.
The Orosian's eyes went wide, and he hiccuped a gasp.
Merek tightened the muscles at the top of his cheeks and pushed out his jaw a little. It made him look rural and stupid.
The Orosian slouched and scratched his inner thigh. "Milord, see, I only meant… that the man what I got these here knives from seems to be— well, sir, a god. Or– or's tryin' to be one. Th…That's fa' true." Merek sucked his teeth with his tongue as he warred to slide out a nonexistent chunk of food.
The Superior scoffed and lowered his rifle completely.
"You—" Tunde laughed to himself. "You had convinced me, for a moment. Your accent was impressive. But next time, I should advise that you memorize more than just the opening."
"Quite right, sir, quite right!" he chortled a little. Merek scratched his hair with his knuckle. "But I'm telling yous the truth, milord, really I am!"
"If you can manage," Tunde mocked. "Did your mother pump you out on the assembly line? God, I've never seen someone stink so much of the rookery. I try with all my might to avoid your disgusting country, do you know that?"
Merek's blue eyes trembled for just a second. He smacked his lips and swallowed. His gaze darted to the blades for only a moment. It might have been possible to dive for one before Tunde got a shot out.
The Orosian swallowed hard, and squeezed his nostrils in his fingers a few times, snorting. "See, sir, I don't much know about any rook-a-way, I'm sorry. I, myself, am from Hämmhurst."
Tunde erupted into booming laughter. He turned his rifle to the ground and used the end of the stock like a cane. He smiled and took off his kufi to run his hands through his hair.
He always loved to attend the Circus of Fools in Oros, when he was forced to visit. This was a fine replacement.
"So, this god?"
Merek nodded happily like a dog. "Right, sir, right! But then…See, sir, this is major, major business. I must speak to the overseer, yea? See, sir, I can't speak to anybody else! Not a one, sir! Our leader should know, shouldn't he, sir?"
Tunde rolled his eyes and huffed a breath. Dumb entertainment was only fun as long as it required no investment. The Superior turned off to go to bed.
"Get back to your post, slave," he sighed.
"Sir!" Merek called, rushing forward. Tunde clutched the stock of his rifle. "See, I'd love to tell you. Honest, I would! But…the…er–chain of…command?"
Tunde laughed again and swung his rifle around. He poked the barrel into Merek's chest. "You're funny, Northman. Get back to work or I'll kill you. Good night."
As Tunde bent down to collect the Scindreux blades, Merek looked past his hunched back. From deep in the apartment, Merek could see two women leaning out from a far wall, peeking at the commotion.
One was older, maybe late forties, and the other young but buggish and uncomely. Tunde erected himself once more, and as he placed the swords carefully into his apartment, Merek scanned his tan skin and high cheekbones. The same sort that still remained in Bhekizitha, after all else had drooped off. He was Tsi'itibe, probably. At the very least Kusini, from one of the lighter-skinned tribes at the southern coasts.
Merek nodded slowly. He envisioned the old notebook he had robbed for. Full of bullet points and connections.
There.
His eye returned to the women, the leftovers.
The mudstain Superiors were always treated worse than the Western ones.
"Sir!" he called, desperate and bold. He clutched the sleeve of his dashiki. Tunde whipped around and threw the Orosian off.
"How dare—"
"One last joke, milord, I pray you."
The fire in Tunde tripped hard, and he chuckled. He sighed and shook his head, throwing out a hand to give him the stage.
Merek straightened up, secured his capotain tall hat, and cleared his throat. He made strong, wary eye-contact with Tunde. A lion and its trainer.
"My Lord Superior, at this moment two roads present themselves:
"If I am a liar, then I have killed or robbed for these rare blades. Thus, I must be punished for interfering with the grand design of Shujaa Mkubwa.
"If I am telling the truth, then I must be heard by the overseer, so as to prevent the destruction of said design by a revolt.
"There are two true statements, are they not?"
Tunde nodded; what a convoluted joke.
"Now— If you kill me where I stand, your best case scenario would be quietly killing some random and poorly-prepared lying rebel on your doorstep in the quiet of this night with no fanfare or reward. Then you'd go back inside to the life you've been living, everyday."
Tunde shifted a bit.
"Absolute best case scenario, if you strike me down.
"And of course, the worst case scenario is that you prevent a crucial warning of rebellion, a firsthand account, from reaching Mkubwa, thinking yourself wiser. And then when it comes to pass, your head will be shoved onto a pike right next to mine.
"Indulge me, My Lord— is the… 'blessing' of the best case, worth the risk of the worst case? This is your hand, if here you strike me down."
Tunde huffed and put down his rifle against the wall. He gestured for Merek to take the floor.
"Ah. Now see, if you indeed take me to the overseer…" his words were lecherous, then. He knew when he was close, talk was sex.
"Then, if I were a liar— you would be kindly rewarded by the man for delivering the killer of three Superiors and the thief of three precious Scindreux blades. You would come back promoted, or with a fine wine, and you'd probably get to kill me yourself, anyway."
He inched forward like he'd kiss the man, for the next, "Ah, but…But if I were telling the truth…" his words wafted like perfumes.
"Then you would be the arm which bore the blade, the fulcrum, which ended this slave insurrection before it started. You would be rewarded handsomely.
"...And…" he whispered that one, "You would get your pick of the slave women. You would become a governor in this project. Imagine yourself, tomorrow morning. Imagine you."
Tunde glanced back into his shared multi-apartment like it might swallow him whole before he got a chance to accept.
Merek guided him to a soft landing, "In every direction, it is in your best interest to deliver me to an overseer. Whether I'm lying or telling the truth."
Tunde bit his lip and checked behind himself to see if his roommates were still asleep. Four mudstains in that one apartment. The Magharibi got their own.
He swung the rifle against the back of Merek's head. "Let's go. I'm taking you to Obika."
* * *
In the nervous morning, Faraji and his son ran water over their face and started down the winding labyrinthine Barracks.
The aging man kept glancing down at his son.
"What, baba?"
Faraji chuckled. "I saw you sleeping with Atiena this morning."
Fortus got red and shook his head. He marched forward and past his father.
Faraji jogged up beside him again. "You know, you're a good brother." The boy rolled his eyes. Faraji grabbed his shoulder and stopped him. "You're a good boy, Fortus…"
The man pressed his lips together and smiled softly. He patted his son on the back. "I wish you knew that, mwana."
Fortus scratched at his scabs. His father pulled him in and kissed him on his dusty forehead.
The boy took his father's hand and they walked.
He wanted to say something more.
His father was good. He squeezed Faraji's hand tightly.
"Fara! Fara!" Bhek's gargling demands flew above the din of the marching slaves.
The old hunter rushed down to his son's level, shoving past the crowds with mean curses. Faraji stepped into the hall on the side. He never idled on those rickety stairs.
"Go, go play with Samir, shoo," Faraji insisted, pushing his son down the stairs towards his brother.
The man waited for his old father.
"Baba!" he whined when the crumpled Kusini arrived beside him with a huff. "What are you doing, it's your rest day!"
"Bah!" he spat. "You think I'd forget? I just need to speak with you, mtwana wami."
That was particularly warm. Placating.
Faraji narrowed his eyes and turned to face his father squarely.
"Where's Atiena?!" he blurted in a panic.
Bhekizitha smacked him on the crown. "Stop screaming! Shh! She's with Nandi, boy, hush!
"A good, strong woman that Nandi is. Has been since she was younger than Fortus, not a bad thing in her. You remember. She will take good care of Atiena."
A rope pulled hard around Faraji's throat. His stomach was hollow as a cavern.
"Baba…?" he whimpered, taking his father's hand.
Bhek laughed in his face. "You and your worrying! I am not dying, mwana!
"But…" The old man massaged his bald scalp.
"...Weeh, I gave you a bad life."
Faraji almost chuckled. Old Bhek often made mean jokes. This was not one. The bearded man knew the way his father hid under his hunch when he was scared to meet Faraji's eyes.
Bhekizitha's face was glued to the floor.
Faraji wrapped an arm around his father.
"Baba, when Mama got sick, I must have been four or five years old. If you handn't— Baba, you gave me life."
Bhekizitha almost growled and jerked out of his hold.
"And what has this life of ours been?!
"Faraji—" Bhek hobbled to the wall and leaned against it. He sighed and closed his eyes for a long moment.
"Atiena is a sweet, innocent girl. Nandi always was, too. And these days her hands are stained the same as ours. Atiena cannot stay how she is with me around her. She is good, Fara."
Faraji knew he wasn't the smartest in the world. Though sometimes he wished he knew what to say to his father. He never did.
What was there to say? Faraji was wrapping spearheads at nine.
"Baba, this is ridiculous. She will forgive you, you did nothing wrong."
Bhek laughed dryly. "I know she will. She is young and still stupid." He shook his head. "You will help Nandi take care of her, mfana wami. Please protect them. Not only from the green-backs."
Faraji stared and twisted his beard in his hands. He hunched down to trap his father's eyes in his. He nodded and patted the old man's back.
"You're a good man, Baba."
Bhekizitha mashed his gums together.
"You, a better one," he mumbled.
He turned off and marched back up the stairs.
Sheeenk! and the insectoid buzz of Gargoyle wings rushing in through the Barracks windows. Sheeenk! and they only screeched like that when they wanted attention. Sheeenk! and they were rabid, foaming, hunting dogs. Sheenk! and work was starting.
Faraji threw his gaze down the winding paths and saw Samir and his son, the Kaskazani's panicked eyes already meeting his.
The bearded Mchangan rushed down the steps to his family.
Bhekizitha turned and rushed after him.
* * *
In the calm blue of newborn morning, Tunde and Merek Corbin came upon the grand entry to the rock-hewn mansion of Overseer Obika Odegbami.
Merek recognized the grand wooden statues of The Man and The Maker flanking the Overseer's doorway from home— these were the same icons which loomed over train station entrances, the same which bounded the gates of the Encampment itself, in grand sandstone.
On the left, The Man, a massive muscular Magharibi wearing a finely embroidered kufi hat and baring his godlike torso. He clutched a graceful woman to his side, the great bulge of pregnancy at her waist and a single breast bared. She was lower than him.
On his other hand The Man raised a rack of ribs from a carcass against the sky, its antlers clutched between his fingers. The split emblem of the Dying Sun Empire was branded into his flesh, eight spokes scarred over his heart. At his feet were the bones and bodies of all manner of demon and monster, and, most prominently, the ribcage of Ayanwu the Sun Goddess.
On the right, The Maker, a mirrored massive muscular Magharibi wearing a finely embroidered dashiki and kufi. He raised the opposite hand from The Man to lift a flame towards the sky, a mechanical watch clamped over his wrist. A quiver of arrows hung at his hips, to fill the longbow strapped to his back. The man wore glasses, too, and rested his right hand on his sculptor's tools. They sat on the unworked clay from which his masterwork had been carved: a highly naturalistic bust of a Magharibi tribesman, scarification lines running like weaved fabric down his face and a headdress crowning him. Animals and plants lay destroyed and discarded at his feet.
It was these two colossi that existed in marble and bronze as the posts framing every courthouse entrance, every Obi & Zabu factory, every bank and office. Two always stood mirroring each other in the center of every major city the Sun controlled; thirty feet, every pair, and cast in bronze.
The largest structure in the world was in Arziki. In the capital, a five-hundred foot statue was erected of the pair, reflected back-to-back in the exact center of the city, a great two-faced colossus.
The maroon-wood door between Obika's pair was large and heavy, lined at its bottom with dark bronze plaques adorned with bas relief carvings of leopards and warriors.
Magharibi opulence. Arziki in a slave pit.
Tunde knocked hard using the bronze rings bolted to the door. Obika hollered something, and inside a skinny slave girl started yanking on a thick rope, pulling with her full body and leaning close to the floor as she hauled the great wood aside.
The doors opened, the stop clicked into place, and the slave girl invited the visitors in.
Merek watched her as he passed. She wasn't twenty.
He shot his eyes to the ground, where hers were planted, too.
Down the candlelit tunnel that bored into the wall, Merek could see Obika sat on a zebra-skin couch, smoke pluming up towards the great dome of his ceiling. He was lit by bronzes and fires, like a saint sat in an apse.
Tunde went ahead, whispered and mumbled to the Overseer for a long while. Obika hissed and snapped his fingers. Tunde scampered off.
Obika raised a tired hand up high,
"Come he'a, white man," he sighed.
Merek shuffled forward. "My lord—"
"Why ah you talking? Did I tell you to talk?"
Merek swallowed. He looked around the room.
The ceiling was high, holes drilled in a pattern to let sunlight through in speckles. The savory smoke of smoldering marijuana wafted in the dim sunlight.
Banners ran across the rounded panelled walls of the chamber, green and boldly displaying the eight-spoked split sun, embroidered with real gold.
The flattened hides of cheetahs, gazelles, zebras, and kudus were strewn over the many wooden futons and seats thrown about his sitting room, each with a dirty hookah or messied robe at its side.
All around, between each banner, was the skull of some beast, like a grotesque gallery of gargoyles. The long crown of spiraling kudu horns sprouting from a narrow skull. The cycloptic pit glaring out of an elephant's bony face, its tusks swooping forward like great birds of prey. A rhinoceros and its horns, a hippopotamus and its jutting teeth.
A lion with a great mane lay spread and flatted in the center of the room with a wooden ball clamped between its teeth, to be trod upon by drunken men and hurt women.
Every animal in Mchanga to ornament Man.
Merek stitched it all together. He swallowed.
Obika laid down an ornately carved and hollowed horn stuffed with coals and cannabis onto a table just as well-crafted.
The whole place stunk of herb and perfumes.
The Overseer got up from his couch and turned to face Merek. He came around, and the Orosian's eye was caught by the glint of a revolver, steel and new. Obika cocked the gun and shoved the barrel hard into his chest. The metal beat with his heart.
Merek stared at the floor. Obika stared quietly into his brow.
A test. Corbin knew it then. He would say nothing.
Obika smiled and lowered the gun to his stomach.
"Smart, for a slave."
Overseer Obika Odegbami barked with a boyish grin, fresh breath, and a thick accent.
"Weeeh, a re-bellion, you say?" Odegbami laughed wildly.
He was mature and crisp, clean shaven on the sides and good-looking; strong cheekbones and a stronger jaw, a thick mustache folding over his lips.
"Great enemy of intelli-gence!"
He slammed a bewildered hand onto his bright white kufi, cream embroidery faintly tracing the split sun onto his cap.
"Do you think me a fish, flopping for worms?!" He waved the thick sleeves of his dashiki, white like sun on snowfall, as he spoke. They smacked Merek as the Overseer's hands flew by.
"See, now, tell me, this, man…"
Obika leaned close, and Merek could smell the oils of his hair. Obika's dire eyes were shadowed under bangs of finely spiraled curls, twisted on a stick and held in place with butter and cow fat. The rest of his hair was a helm in much the same way, stuffed into his white kufi and ending around his chin.
"...How many slaves do you think have come to me and sold their friend for freedom?"
Merek didn't say a word. He looked down.
"Now see he'a— I-magine you ah the Overseea of one of four grand projects designed by Mkubwa himself!"
Though they dropped the same R's, Obika's accent was not the same as young Atiena's. Indeed, it was a great sign of class to bear the mark of local Magharibi in one's foreign Kāpuran.
"...Is it not mo'a…say…practi-cal, for me to go afta his friend, and leave him enslaved just the same? Is it my job to huma you people or is it my job to kill Mbombo?!"
Odegbami pressed the revolver into Merek's sternum. The slave swallowed hard and focused on his warped reflection in the silver dinner-plate sized split-sun medallion waving in his face.
"You think you'a diff-e-rent because you'a Orosian?"
The Overseer wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and a few of the white dots running up his dark face in a straight line— up his bottom lip, over his nose, and between his eyes— were smeared. Odegbami sucked his teeth. "Great fool."
Still nothing.
Obika smirked. "Speak."
Merek lifted his eyes to meet his, but softened them, unfocused. "I have served Shujaa Mkubwa's great Dying Sun Empire for nineteen years, my lord. So that all men shall rise over the grave of felled divinity. I am a son of the Dying Sun."
"A familia trick."
"I can prove it here, in front of your eyes."
Obika lowered his gun completely. "This, I must see. Go."
"M…My lord, do you have a copy of the registrar's book? Every governor or chief in Ihlok is given one. I'm certain at your scale and success, you have been given one as well. It ought to be a great big tome with a gold leaf cover."
Obika reset the revolver and set it down. He snapped his fingers and barked something in Mchangan. The same young slave girl hurried to him and scooped it up, running off like a frightened mouse to hide it in some other room.
The Overseer cracked his back and huffed. "Yes, yes…I think I remember. Many yeas ago. Mkubwa made me and the Overseas for the foreign Encampaments read it all the way through when we took our posi-tions, as if we'd have some borda disputes o some nonsense hea in the desert!" he scoffed. "I only skimmed it then, of course. Just a long list of names. Come, boy."
"And mine," Merek spat, antsy. "Merek Albus Corbin."
Obika gave a lazy look.
As the tall man sorted through the dusty old books of his office, he spoke, "So…how long did you say you wa this, ah… magistrate fa?"
"Nineteen years, my lord. Since I was twenty-nine. Under Judge Clayborne. Governors Stafford and Merryweather. You said it has been years since Great Mkubwa gave you the registrar's book, correct? In that case, you would better find me under Stafford."
Obika laughed to himself as he yanked up the crinkly tome. "The name… of a lo-cal magistrate?" he heaved.
Merek burned red. Redder. "Of the High Magistrate of the most populous city in Hämmhurst!" He stomped down hard on the 'Hämm'. "M…my lord," he added, fixing his hat.
"Mmm," Obika frowned.
He slammed the book onto his desk, and ran his fingers across the gold leaf of the cover. Obika traced his nail through the ancient Mchangan spiral of Ayanwu's Sun, slashed through the middle. He flipped through the dense pages of calligraphy.
"And this judge…?"
"Clayborne. C-L-"
"They teach us to spell in Arziki, as well, Northman."
Merek swallowed.
Obika took a magnifying glass from his drawer.
"Ah," he sighed. He ran the glass over the small text. "I see the man. 'The Hono-rable Thomas Clayborne.'"
"And beneath, my lord. Merek—"
"Merek Albus Corbin. Yes. But then, think this through with me— You are Orosian, yes? Then why not be sent up to slave beside Les Adorants in yo'a own land? Why Mchanga? Why slavery over the prisons, at all? No, you must have done something very bad. This is for punishment, yes? Then you musta had a big Hämmhurst tri-al. Then, you would know the name of yo'a judge, of this magistrate, too. A lie, then."
Merek breathed in. "My lord. Do you see the symbol beside Judge Stafford's name? The feather and axe?"
Obika bent close to the small drawing.
"Yes, a seal; Yo'a people use dem. What of it?"
Merek slid his dusty Trinitarian necklace off his neck, and turned it to show Obika its back. Written on the thin band of gold at the top of the highest ring, was his full name.
Merek Albus Corbin, there in gold around the man's neck.
But more.
Beside the name was stamped the seal for the office of The Lord Chief Justice of Hämmhurst, an axe and feather, burned into the thin strip of gold. It was surely stamped by Stafford's own ring, even the subtle lines of a fine signature embedded into the gold.
Obika took it in his hands. It was real gold, he could feel. And Hämmhurst was not a country where just anybody could wear gold.
The Overseer ran his thumb across the cool metal, feeling for any blemish. He whipped his face back close to the book until he was almost smelling it and frowned.
He handed it back to the High Magistrate of Hämmhurst.
"Then…what in the hell are you doin hea, Corbin?"
Merek smiled.