Free An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews

student into the waddler-pond for luck before final exams commenced? Andrej decided to test it, distracted from his private conflicts by the obvious absurdity of the situation.
    “Describe the value of the flour sweepings you have confessed to having misappropriated.” Which would in turn define the degree to which the Bench had been defrauded, so that he could form a better idea of the severity of this crime.
    “We used to have a saucer-cake for the chilties’ morning meal from them. A good eighth in Standard scrip, your Excellency. Sometimes as much as four-eighths, and my Balma would eat, too.”
    Ridiculous.
    He’d have to revise his mental comparison. To prosecute defrauding the Jurisdiction Bench at this level was like selling the gardener’s children into prostitution because the gardener had inhaled too deeply of the jessamine fragrance on three consecutive warm mornings, thereby defrauding the House in concept of some minute amount and unrecoverable amount of the essential oil.
    “Oh, fine,” Andrej said — to the monitor as much as to the prisoner. He felt completely at ease now, his sense of the ridiculous having overpowered his self-pitying introspection. “Very good indeed. You are a very great sinner, Abbas Hakun.” He couldn’t tell whether Security’s sudden twitchiness behind him was affront or the giggles; he didn’t care. He had half a mind to walk out on this farce of a confession right now. “What impelled you to confess your crime to the authorities so that the Judicial order might be preserved?”
    Or else he would continue with the questions as they were written, which had the potential for becoming really rather hilarious in the absurdity of applying them to the theft of a handful of flour.
    “My wife developed an allergic reaction to one of the flours. They’re not available as rations to the mill staff . . . ” It was the first trace of real emotion Andrej had heard from his prisoner; and the desperation he read underneath that neutral statement was too honest to be amusing.
    Perhaps it wasn’t funny.
    But it was no less absurd.
    “She was at risk of being accused for trade on illegal markets, so I turned myself in. It’s true that she ate, but it was me who stole, your Excellency. It is for this reason that I asked to be allowed to make this confession.”
    Torn as he was between his inability to take the crime seriously and his appreciation for the prisoner’s obviously sincere desire to protect his wife, Andrej was unsure as to his next move. Azanry was too rich a world; no one lacked for a handful of flour, at Rogubarachno . . .
    He decided to complete the forms.
    Tutor Chonis would explain the joke — if joke there was — when he and Tutor Chonis went over the tape of this session for critique.
    “Very good. There was no question in your mind at any time that your violation of procedure constituted willful fraud, then.”
    There just had to be a joke in here someplace.

Chapter Three

    Tutor Chonis was not actually angry. Perhaps a little annoyed. Koscuisko’s scorn had been rather sharp, and as Koscuisko’s Tutor, Chonis took that personally. Annoyed, yes, but not enraged, and that meant that he had to make a conscious effort to compose his face for the desired dismaying effect as he keyed the office’s admit with unnecessary force, making noticeable show of fighting with imperfectly suppressed disgust while awaiting the tiresome membrane to slide slowly apart to allow him entry.
    “Can you really imagine that we’re that stupid?”
    Choosing the blunt unreasonable words carefully, Tutor Chonis all but spat them into Koscuisko’s face before continuing past his startled pupil to take his seat behind his desk. Noycannir was startled as well, of course — but not without a subtle under-shadowing of gratification in her flat, shining hazel eyes. Tutor Chonis wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was his business to set Students at each others’ throats and make