I brought the stone down staring at it. Indigo?
The men saw a purple light. I saw a contradiction. I flashed back to the poem, the translation I had agonized over.
Then **Indigo** reveals ????, ???? shown,
A moderate ????, for the ???? they've known.
The lexicon was missing these critical words. I had guessed _Remorse_ and _Repentance_ in my notes, but they didn't fit.
I looked at Titan. He was a beast of burden. He ran on instinct. He could feel fear or rage, but _remorse_? Repentance was a concept animals did not appear capable of. It required a conscience.
"A useless rock," one of the men muttered, refocusing his aim on the beast's neck. "Let's finish it."
"No!" I shouted. "Just a minute!" I needed time. I closed my eyes for a second and forced my mind back to the poem. And more importantly, the lexicon that Elias left.
_Repentance_ wasn't in the lexicon, but the root could be deduced by other words. _Penal_ related to punishment. _Penitentiary_ was a place for penance. _Penitent_ was one who suffers for wrong doing. The missing word belonged to the family of _pen-_ words.
It wasn't about an apology. It was about punishment. It was about the state of undergoing suffering for an act.
I had deduced _Remorse_ too. The root was _mord-_. _Morsel_ was a bite, _Mordant_ meant biting or sharp. _Mordacious_ was caustic. The word clearly related to biting. Not so much feeling sad, but biting again, a gnawing feeling.
It wasn't a beast sorry for its sins, it was a beast with mitigating circumstances. Like it was being bitten.
The next line was:
A moderate... ???... for the ??? they've known.
The missing words were a blank. But I looked at the root patterns again.
The first missing word—the verdict. If it wasn't a simple "guilt," what was it? The root vic- appeared in related legal terms. Evict—to conquer out. Victor—conqueror. A binding force. A Conviction. Not just a belief, but a binding.
And the crime. Wrongs? The root wring meant to twist. Wrong meant twisted or crooked.
If I put it together: A moderate binding... for the twisting they've known.
Then **Indigo** reveals remorse, repentance shown,
A moderate conviction, for the wrongs they've known.
The stone wasn't detecting a moral failing. It was detecting a physical sensation. A gnawing pain. A reaction to punishment. A physical binding or twisting that was familiar.
"He's preparing to charge!" Olen yelled. Titan lowered his gigantic head.
"He is not mad!" I yelled back. "There is something else going on. Something is biting him!"
I turned my back on the men and walked toward the mountain of heaving flesh. My heart hammered. I was betting my life on this linguistic analysis.
"Elyan!" Bastien protested. They all knew I was walking into the kill zone.
I ignored him and approached Titan. He rumbled and his eyes were rolling wide. He didn't look aggressive, he looked pained.
He shifted his weight and I saw it. His harness was pulled way too tight.
"What do you have in there?" I asked quietly.
I reached out as Titan jerked reflexively away.
My fingers reached the underside of the main strap. Fresh blood slicked the leather. I forced the heavy strap aside.
Stuck between the strap and the gray skin was a cluster of Iron Nut burrs. The oil rich kernels were a staple of Heliqar, but the spikes were hard enough to deter herbivores as well as puncturing boot soles. Somehow one had worked its way under the harness. Each step was driving the spikes deeper into Titan's soft underbelly. It was literally biting him.
"Bastien!" I yelled. "Get me a knife! Now!"
Bastien tossed me a blade. I caught it by the sheath and sawed through the heavy strap. Titan let out a long, shuddering breath and his knees buckled slightly. The madness left his eyes and he began nudging my shoulder with his beak.
I pried the bloody seed from the leather and held the evidence high.
"He wasn't malicious!" I shouted, tossing it into the sand. "He was being tortured. He was trying to escape the pain."
The men looked at the seed and the calm beast. They were no longer angry. They were silent and ashamed.
Olen broke the silence first. "You have sharp eyes, my Prince," he said flatly. "You saw him flinch."
He was offering a rational explanation. Obviously a skilled man reading a tell in the animal rather than a wizard consulting a rock that glowed.
"Must have spotted the blood on the strap," another said, relaxing the grip on his spear. Heliqari's were a rational lot. Probably my parents' influence over the culture of the city.
"Get the beast some water!" I ordered a handler. "Load the injured into a wagon for recovery. We'll resume in an hour."
The men dispersed, treating Titan with sudden gentleness. Olen's gaze lingered a moment longer on me. He was questioning his own explanation. I couldn't have seen the burr from so far away.
Eventually even Olen left. I had proved my hypothesis and gained a better understanding of the poem. But as I looked at the backs of my crew, I realized I had made myself an anomaly. And in the Red Sand Sea, anomalies are usually dangerous.
While the men settled back into the routine of the march, I climbed into the back of my wagon, away from their prying eyes. My hands were still shaking, not from fear of the beast, but from the thrill of the discovery.
I pulled out my journal and turned to the page where I had sketched the theoretical grid for the Justice Stone.
The hypothesis had been simple: Brightness equals Certainty, Color equals Verdict. Today, the desert had given me the data to confirm it.
I dipped my quill and wrote:
Test Subject: Titan (Tuspak). Charge: Malicious Assault. Result: Dim Indigo.
I looked at the Dim value on my Y-axis. Brightness = Certainty. The light had been weak and almost murky. Why? Because the stone was answering the question of malice. It was unsure of malice because there was no intent to harm. There was only a reaction to pain. A dim light didn't mean the stone failed. It meant the premise of the question was flawed.
Then I looked at the X-axis. Color = Culpability/Nature of the Act. I wrote Indigo in the column for Mitigating Factors / External Cause.
The stone had seen the violence. It saw the smashed crate and the broken leg. But it had assigned it a color that meant reaction to suffering. It had weighed the act against the cause and delivered a verdict of moderate conviction. The beast did cause harm, but with a massive mitigating factor. It was being tortured.
The system worked. It was elegant, precise, and literal. It wasn't magic. It was a diagnostic engine for truth.
I closed the journal. A profound sense of satisfaction settled over me. I had reverse-engineered the logic of the device. I didn't know if it truly was a relic of the First Empire or something else entirely, but the logic of the poem held true. It was a machine that followed rules.
But then I looked out the back of the wagon. I saw Bastien riding drag, his eyes on the horizon, but his posture stiff. I saw the men glancing toward my wagon, their whispers dying away whenever I looked at them.
I had proved my hypothesis. But as I looked at the backs of my crew, I realized I had introduced a variable I couldn't control. To them, I wasn't just their prince anymore. I was an anomaly. And in the Red Sand Sea, anomalies are usually dangerous.