Free Hour of Judgement by Susan R. Matthews

by two of his names in the formal Dolgorukij manner. Garol had a hard time really resenting it, even though he had never liked his second name. The Danzilar prince looked so young. But looks were deceiving; the Danzilar prince was forty-seven years old, Standard. Older than Garol himself was.
    Garol took the report slate that the watch-master offered him and sat down.
    From Burkhayden, not too surprisingly. A protest against damage to property specifically included in the terms of the Contract, more or less predictable. Except that the property was a woman, not a public building or a farm utility vehicle. The whole issue of bond-involuntaries had always given Garol a raging case of the toe-cramps. And the report was brutally precise on the important issue of exactly what was meant in this case by the “damage.”
    There didn’t seem to be anything for him to say. Garol passed the report slate back to the officer.
    “Yes, your Excellency?”
    “There is nothing to be done about the vandal, I know that.” Danzilar had seated himself in a well-padded chair as Garol read; now he smoothed the broad band at his wrap-jacket’s hem carefully over his crossed knees, frowning. He meant Wyrlann, Garol guessed.
    Danzilar was right.
    There wasn’t anything that anyone could do about Wyrlann, except what Garol had been sent to do about Koscuisko. And he had yet to exercise his authority to revise a Bench warrant, regardless of the provocation. He wasn’t about to start with a warrant he could not even decide was legitimate.
    Danzilar was still talking. “But the staff of a service house is not of small importance, because comfort must be had. And the contract has been signed.”
    What was Danzilar getting at? “His Excellency will of course be compensated, once the review board has validated loss of function.” It didn’t make sense for Danzilar to be as upset about this as he seemed to be. The price of any sixteen bond-involuntaries could be easily lost in even the smallest detail of the contract’s fiscal stipulations. Yet Danzilar was not only visibly upset, he seemed not far from actually furious, rising to his feet with a ferocious if controlled gesture of rejection.
    “I do not want her price, Garol Aphon. I want her worth, as I have been promised in the contract. Her symbolic function at this point is of paramount importance. She belongs to me, Garol Aphon, and I demand her rights.”
    Of which she had none, whoever she was. Apart from the obvious, of course. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, your Excellency.”
    “Aah, it is the middle of the night. I am only — very angry.”
    Why?
    It was perhaps not inappropriate to indulge oneself in a certain degree of moral outrage, under the circumstances. But Danzilar was not a child, no matter how much like a twenty-five-year-old he looked to Garol. The Dolgorukij had defined atrocity, at least as far as the Sarvaw were concerned; and Danzilar’s second cousin thrice removed — or fourth cousin five times distant, or whatever the hell the relation was — was the self-same Andrej Koscuisko who held a Writ which authorized him to practice very much the same sorts of things that Wyrlann appeared to have done to the poor whore at his will and good pleasure, in support of the Judicial order.
    So it couldn’t be that Danzilar had simply never run into this sort of thing before.
    What was going on in Danzilar’s mind?
    Garol kept silent, and after a moment Danzilar continued. “To do this thing so casually, it shows a lack of respect. For me as well as for the holy Mother. I cannot afford to discard this woman as a piece of spoiled goods. What kind of treatment would any other expect from me, if I did that? These people are to be my people, Garol Aphon. I am responsible for their well-being.”
    Well, it was true that Dolgorukij were peculiar in that respect. As with Danzilar’s cousin Koscuisko, again; and nobody touched Koscuisko’s Security, not after what