A Time of Changes

27

Meanwhile in my office at the Port Justiciary I struggled to do the job my bondfather had given me. Each day a formidable stack of reports and memoranda reached my desk; each day I tried to decide which must go before the High Justice and which were to be ignored. At first, naturally, I had no grounds for judgment. Segvord helped me, though, as did several of the senior officials of the Justiciary, who rightly saw that they had more to gain by serving me than by trying to block my inevitable rise. I took readily to the nature of my work, and before the full heat of summer was upon Manneran I was operating confidently, as if I had spent the last twenty years at this task.

Most of the material submitted for the guidance of the High Justice was nonsense. I learned swiftly to detect that sort by a quick scanning, often by looking at just a single page. The style in which it was written told me much: I found that a man who cannot phrase his thoughts cleanly on paper probably has no thoughts worth notice. The style is the man. If the prose is heavy-footed and sluggish, so too, in all likelihood, is the mind of its author, and then what are his insights into the operations of the Port Justiciary worth? A coarse and common mind offers coarse and common perceptions. I had to do a great deal of writing myself, summarizing and condensing the reports of middling value, and whatever I have learned of the literary art may be traced to my years in the service of the High Justice. My style too reflects the man, for I know myself to be earnest, solemn, fond of courtly gestures, and given to communicating more perhaps than others really want to know; all these traits I find in my own prose. It has its faults, yet am I pleased with it: I have my faults, yet am I pleased with me.

Before long I realized that the most powerful man in Manneran was a puppet whose strings I controlled. I decided which cases the High Justice should handle, I chose the applications for special favor that he would read, I gave him the capsuled commentaries on which his verdicts were based. Segvord had not accidentally allowed me to attain such power. It was necessary for someone to perform the screening duties I now handled, and until my coming to Manneran the job had been done by a committee of three, all ambitious to hold Segvord’s title some day. Fearing those men, Segvord had arranged to promote them to positions of greater splendor but lesser responsibilities. Then he slid me into their place. His only son had died in boyhood; all his patronage therefore fell upon me. Out of love of Halum he had coolly chosen to make a homeless Sallan prince one of the dominant figures of Manneran.

It was widely understood, by others long before by me, how important I was going to be. Those princes at my wedding had not been there out of respect for Loimel’s family, but to curry favor with me. The soft words from Stirron were meant to insure I would show no hostility to Salla in my decision-making. Doubtless my royal cousin Truis of Glin now was wondering uneasily if I knew that it was his doing that the doors of his province had closed in my face; he too sent a fine gift for my marriage-day. Nor did the flow of gifts cease with the nuptial ceremony. Constantly there came to me handsome things from those whose interests were bound up in the doings of the Port Justiciary. In Salla we would call such gifts by their rightful name, which is bribes; but Segvord assured me that in Manneran there was no harm in accepting them, so long as I did not let them interfere with my objectivity of judgment. Now I realized how, on the modest salary of a judge, Segvord had come to live in such princely style. In truth I did try to put all this bribery from my mind while at my official duties, and weigh each case on its merits alone.

So I found my place in Manneran. I mastered the secrets of the Port Justiciary, developed a feel for the rhythms of maritime commerce, and served the High Justice ably. I moved among princes and judges and men of wealth. I purchased a small but sumptuous house close by Segvord’s, and soon had the builders out to increase its size. I worshipped, as only the mighty do, at the Stone Chapel itself, and went to the celebrated Jidd for my drainings. I was taken into a select athletic society, and displayed my skills with the feathered shaft in Manneran Stadium. When I visited Salla with my bride the springtime after our wedding, Stirron received me as if I were a Mannerangi septarch, parading me through the capital before a cheering multitude and feasting me royally at the palace. He said not a word to me about my flight from Salla, but was wholly amiable in a reserved and distant fashion. My first son, who was born that autumn, I named for him.

Two other sons followed, Noim and Kinnall, and daughters named Halum and Loimel. The boys were straightbodied and strong; the girls promised to show the beauty of their namesakes. I took great pleasure in heading a family. I longed for the time when I could have my sons with me hunting in the Burnt Lowlands, or shooting the rapids of the River Woyn; meanwhile I went hunting without them, and the spears of many hornfowl came to decorate my home.

Loimel, as I have said, remained a stranger to me. One does not expect to penetrate the soul of one’s wife as deeply as that of one’s bondsister, but nevertheless, despite the customs of self-containment we observe, one expects to develop a certain communion with someone one lives with. I never penetrated anything of Loimel’s except her body. The warmth and openness she had showed me at our first meeting vanished swiftly, and she became as aloof as any coldbelly wife of Glin. Once in the heat of lovemaking I used “I” to her, as I sometimes did with whores, and she slapped me and twisted her hips to cast me from her loins. We drifted apart. She had her life, I mine; after a time we made no attempt to reach across the gulf to one another. She spent her time at music, bathing, sunsleeping, and piety, and I at hunting, gaming, rearing my sons, and doing my work. She took lovers and I took mistresses. It was a frosty marriage. We scarcely ever quarreled; we were not close enough even for that.

Noim and Halum were with me much of the time. They were great comforts to me.

At the Justiciary my authority and responsibility grew year by year. I was not promoted from my position as clerk to the High Justice, nor did my salary increase by any large extent; yet all of Manneran knew that I was the one who governed Segvord’s decisions, and I enjoyed a lordly income of “gifts.” Gradually Segvord withdrew from most of his duties, leaving them to me. He spent weeks at a time on his island retreat in the Gulf of Sumar, while I initialed and stamped documents in his name. In my twenty-fourth year, which was his fiftieth, he gave up his office altogether. Since I was not a Mannerangi by birth, it was impossible for me to become High Justice in his place; but Segvord arranged for the appointment of an amiable nonentity as his successor, one Noldo Kalimol, with the understanding that Kalimol would retain me in my place of power.

You would be right to assume that my life in Manneran was one of ease and security, of wealth and authority. Week flowed serenely into week, and, though perfect happiness is given to no man, I had few reasons for discontent. The failings of my marriage I accepted placidly, since deep love between man and wife is not often encountered in our kind of society; as for my other sorrow, my hopeless love for Halum, I kept it buried deep within me, and when it rose painfully close to the surface of my soul I soothed myself by a visit to the drainer Jidd. I might have gone on uneventfully in that fashion to the end of my days, but for the arrival in my life of Schweiz the Earthman.