Dragon and Judge

CHAPTER 5

The stone bridge was just steep enough that Jack decided he didn't want to try walking down it face first. Instead, he backed his way down, wondering whether this was the sort of thing a grand exalted Jupa would do.

By the time he reached the ground, a half-dozen Golvins had gathered at the foot of the bridge. One of them, who Jack tentatively identified as the one who had first accosted him at the spaceport, was clutching a handful of small notebooks. "Jupa Jack," he said, his eyes bright. "I bring you the lists."

"Thanks," Jack said, eyeing the notebooks with a sinking feeling. Specs and records from the mine Draycos had spotted upstairs? "Just, uh, just put them in my apartment, will you?"

"As you wish, Honored Jupa," the other said, selecting one of the notebooks and handing it to him. "I thought you might wish to study the list of uprights right away."

"Good idea," Jack said, opening it to a page at random. There was nothing but lists of numbers down the left-hand side of each page, along with some sort of chicken scratchings beside them that was probably the local writing.

"We have not yet had time to translate them into Broad-speak," the Golvin said apologetically. "But rest assured that all those listed are uprights. And the lists themselves have all been done in Broadspeak, as the Jupa Stuart taught us to do."

"That's good," Jack said. He eyed the list of numbers again, a sneaking suspicion beginning to tug at him. If the head man here was called the One . . . "What's your name, by the way?"

"I am One-Four-Seven Among Many," the Golvin said proudly. "But if your wisdom shows the path, I may soon be raised to a higher—"

"Onfose!" one of the others cut him off, clearly shocked. "How dare you suggest such a thing?"

One-Four-Seven—Onfose?—cringed. "I meant nothing, Nionei," he said hastily. "I merely meant—"

"You will allow Jupa Jack to make his own decisions, at his own time, in his own way," Nionei said firmly. "And not with you and he alone, but with all present and sided."

"Of course," Onfose said. "My most abject apologies, Jupa Jack."

"He really does mean no harm," the critic said, still looking a little cross as he glared at Onfose. "But you will note his name does not appear among the uprights."

Jack flipped a few pages over. Sure enough, between 135 and 177 there were no entries. "I'll keep that in mind," he said. "If you'll take the rest of the notes to my apartment as I asked, I'd like to walk around a little. Get a feel for the place."

"As you desire, Honored Jupa," Onfose said. "Do you wish an escort?"

"So that you can try again to speak your side?" one of the other Golvins asked dryly.

"I don't think I'll get lost," Jack assured him. Picking a direction at random, he set off, making sure to stay on the paths and off the crop plants. The Golvins, to his quiet relief, made no move to follow.

"Interesting," Draycos murmured from his shoulder as Jack reached one of the narrow irrigation channels and took a long step over it. "Did you notice how they form their names?"

"What names?" Jack countered. "They're nothing but a bunch of numbers."

"Though the listing is apparently not simply by birth order or any such random assignment," Draycos pointed out. "Recall that Onfose appeared to think a decision by you could change his number."

Jack thought back to the conversation. "Okay, I guess I can buy that," he said. "So they're ranked by status or position or nearness to the throne. Or whatever the One sits on."

"Note too how they simplify the awkwardness of long numbers," Draycos went on. "They take the first two letters of each number and form a name from them."

"The two-letter abbreviation thing is actually pretty common across the Orion Arm," Jack said, thinking back again. The critic who'd jumped all over One-Four-Seven had called him Onfose. So that made Nionei—"So Nionei is Nine-One-Eight?"

"That would appear to be the pattern," Draycos agreed.

On a hunch, Jack flipped open his notebook again. "Looks like our friend Nionei is an upright," he said. "I wonder what they are."

"I don't know," Draycos said. "But the direction I was going with this—"

"Jupa," Jack said as it suddenly hit him.

"Exactly," Draycos said. "If they're following their usual pattern, Jupa is likely a contraction of two words: Ju something and Pa something."

Jack ran the two syllables through his mind. But nothing leaped out at him. "Sorry," he said. "But I already told you I don't know the first thing about mining."

"Jupa Jack?" a voice called.

Jack turned to see another Golvin hurrying toward him, a paper-wrapped bundle clutched in his hands. "I have brought you your attire," he said, panting a little as he trotted to a halt. "I do not know if it will fit—Jupa Stuart was somewhat taller than you. I will adjust it later if it does not."

"Thank you," Jack said, frowning as he unwrapped the paper and pulled out the items one by one. On top was a light gray robe with vertical pleats equipped with a wide black sash fastened with a brushed silver clasp. Next came a black sleeveless duster with angled royal blue stripes on the shoulders and sleeves. Tall gray boots of some soft material were wrapped in a package of their own; and between them, also in its own paper wrapping—

Jack's breath froze in his lungs as he stared down at the black-and-royal-blue hat folded neatly in its packaging. Part tricorne and part biretta, the old description ran through his numbed mind. Part tricorne and part biretta . . .

"Jupa Jack?" the Golvin asked into his thoughts.

"Yes," Jack managed, forcing his mind back to the present. "Yes. Go ahead and take the—take everything back to my apartment. Except this," he added, snatching the hat as the Golvin started to close up the paper.

"As you wish, Jupa Jack," the Golvin said. "There will be a dinner in your honor at the twelfth hour, two hours from now, at the Great Assembly Hall."

Jack forced moisture into his suddenly dry mouth. "Fine."

The Golvin made as if to say something else, apparently thought better of it, and headed back toward the pillars.

"Jack?" Draycos asked quietly, his voice anxious.

"I'm all right," Jack said, gazing down at the hat cupped in his hands. "I just . . ." He took a deep breath. "This is it, Draycos. This is the hat I remember my parents wearing."

The K'da shifted on his skin, and Jack felt a slight pressure against his shirt as the gold-scaled head pressed against the material for a better look. "Are you certain?"

"Absolutely," Jack said, memories flashing once again across his mind. "I actually had one of them for a year or so until Uncle Virgil found it and took it away."

"And he told you it was a miner's helmet?"

"Yes," Jack said, frowning. "But it can't be, can it?"

"Unlikely," Draycos said. "The material is too soft for protection against dangerous impacts."

"Unless it's a topside boss's hat," Jack suggested.

"It does indeed look like a symbol of authority," Draycos said. "But you said Uncle Virgil had told you specifically that your parents were miners."

"Right, he did," Jack admitted. "Anyway, how could they have been killed in a mine explosion if they were topside bosses? So Uncle Virgil lied. Wouldn't be the first time. But if it's not a miner's helmet, what is it?"

"We know that the job of Jupa involves decisions of some sort," Draycos said. "As well as Golvins in a group speaking their sides. Could it be some sort of mediator or arbitrator?"

"That would fit with Onfose's ham-handed attempt to cozy up to me," Jack agreed. "And if your Golvin naming theory is right, it starts with Ju and Pa."

And for the second time in two minutes Jack felt his breath catch. He held the hat up, staring at it as if seeing it for the first time. Which, in a sense, he was. "Ju Pa, Draycos. Judge-Paladin.

"My parents were members of the highest-ranking judicial group in the entire Orion Arm."

Draycos stared out through the opening in Jack's shirt, gazing at the hat with new respect. He had always thought Jack's character was out of balance with that of the thief who had raised him. The logical solution was that his parents had instilled their values in him before their deaths.

But for Jack to have come from this kind of heritage was a twist he'd never expected. "That's incredible," he murmured. "How could Uncle Virgil have kept such a secret from you all these years?"

"Easily," Jack said, still sounding a little dazed. "All my book learning came from the Essenay's computer." Beneath his flattened body, Draycos felt the boy's muscles tighten again. "Essenay. 'S and A.' Stuart and Ariel."

"Exactly as Alison suggested back on Rho Scorvi," Draycos reminded him.

"I'm sure she'll love hearing she was right about that," Jack said. "I wonder what my real last name is. Anyway, like I was saying, everything I ever learned about the Judge-Paladins came from the Essenay's computer. It would have been easy enough for Uncle Virgil to delete any pictures from the ship's encyclopedias."

"Yes," Draycos murmured. "I know you've mentioned Judge-Paladins before, I believe in conjunction with the ongoing slave trade. But you've never told me exactly who and what they are."

"It's not a secret," Jack said, turning the hat over in his hands. "They were the Internos answer to the lack of courts and proper judges in some of the less populated worlds. Kind of like the old circuit riders they used to have back on Earth. They'd travel from planet to planet, region to region, dealing with whatever cases had accumulated since the last time they'd been there."

"What went wrong?"

Jack shrugged. "Nothing, as far as I know, except that there aren't nearly enough of them to go around. It started as just a human thing, like I said, on just the Internos worlds. But a lot of the alien governments in the rest of the Trade Association decided they liked the idea, and the Judge-Paladin project was extended to pretty much the whole Orion Arm. They fly around in these—"

He broke off with a snort. "In these really high-class ships with InterWorld transmitters and high-level P/S personality simulator computers," he went on. "Blast it all—Alison was right again. The Essenay really is way out of Uncle Virgil's class."

"Which leads to the question of how he acquired it," Draycos said.

And immediately wished he'd kept his jaws shut. There was one obvious answer as to how a thief and con man like Virgil Morgan might have done that, and at the moment it wasn't a possibility Draycos really wanted to burden Jack with.

Fortunately, Jack's own thoughts were already headed off in an entirely different direction. "Which leads me to the question of how come Alison's so smart," he growled. "Way too smart for someone who claims she's just running cons on mercenary groups."

"Perhaps there is more to her than we know," Draycos murmured.

"Bet on that, buddy." Jack looked up at the sky above them. "I just wonder what she's doing back there all alone with my ship."

"Uncle Virge answers to you, not her," Draycos reminded him. "What I don't understand is why your parents were not missed."

"I don't know," Jack said. "Maybe their schedule was random enough that no one could pin down where they'd been when they disappeared." He hissed between his teeth. "Or maybe no one tried very hard."

"You said the alien governments all approve of the program."

"The central governments do, yes," Jack said grimly. "But not all the local top hats like the idea of outsiders poking around their territories."

"Hence the Essenay's built-in weaponry?"

Jack shrugged. "I assumed that was part of the stuff Uncle Virgil added afterward, like the chameleon hull-wrap," he said. "But now; who knows?" He hunched his shoulders. "For that matter, I don't even know why I'm still alive."

The sky was growing noticeably darker, Draycos noted as he peered up through the opening in Jack's shirt. They should be heading back soon. "That poem your mother used to sing to you," he said. "The one that contained the unknown word?"

"You mean drue?" Jack asked. " 'We stand before, we stand behind, we seek the drue with heart and mind'?"

"Yes, that one," Draycos said. "I wonder if perhaps you simply remembered the word wrong."

"And you think it should be . . .?"

"Truth."

Jack looked at the hat in his hands. "We stand before," he began hesitantly. "We stand behind,

For a long moment they stood together in silence, and Draycos felt the subtle movement of Jack's shirt as a pair of teardrops hit it. "Jack?" he asked quietly. "Are you all right?"

"I hate this place, Draycos," the boy said, swiping a hand across his eyes.

"I understand," Draycos said quietly, the images of his own places of great sorrow drifting like ghosts across his memory. "After the dinner tonight, once everyone's asleep, we'll take the shuttle and go back to the spaceport."

"Good." Abruptly Jack spun around on the path. "Let's get it over with."