CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

COURT-MARTIAL

They woke me early on the day of my trial. I was given a basin of warm water and a rag to wash myself. When I thanked the guard, he told me gruffly, “It’s for the benefit of the court, not you!”

The water was filthy long before I finished. Just the caked blood from the side of my head had turned it a rusty brown. I wished for a mirror, then was glad I didn’t have one. My hair and my whiskers had grown out. I hadn’t changed my clothing since the day I’d awakened in the cell. Grave earth still smudged my knees, and my own blood stained my shirt and jacket. The cuffs of my trousers seemed to have picked up some very real burrs and thorns on my dreamwalk. I’d lost weight, but not in the way of a man who had worked it off. My flesh hung slack on my body; my face sagged. I suspected that many people would flock to my trial expecting to see a monster. Thanks to my confinement, I would look the part.

The last two days had been an agony of suspense. No one had come to talk with me. I didn’t know if Spink was too furious or too busy trying to collect evidence in my favor. In the long lonely hours that had passed since I had “returned” to my cell, my emotions had peaked and fallen in an endless series of waves. Lisana had said that if I did what the magic wished, I’d be saved. I’d promised to do anything. But the magic had not asked anything of me. I’d sat, idle and hopeless, waiting for something to happen. I tried to feel some spark, some turmoil in my blood to suggest that the magic had not abandoned me. There had been nothing. If the magic had given me a task, I didn’t know what it was. Nothing and no one could save me now. It was time to meet my fate like a soldier.

Spink arrived by midmorning. When I heard his step in the corridor, I went to the window of my cell. Over one arm, he carried my spare uniform, freshly mended, washed, and pressed. The glint in his eyes warned me that he was still angry over my earlier comments about Epiny.

What I had to say to him today would please him even less, I thought. I might have only one chance to bring up that topic.

So I greeted him with, “Epiny plans to use explosives to stop the road crews from cutting the Specks’ ancestor trees.”

He stopped dead and stared at me. Then he turned to the guard who had been outside my range of vision. “Bring this man more water and a razor!

He cannot be presented to the court this way. We have the dignity of these proceedings to consider.”

“Sir, he may do himself an injury with a razor.”

“And how much would the court care about that? Less, I think, then having an unshaven bumpkin presented to them as a soldier facing trial.