Blindfold

“To the unraveling of society’s moral fiber,” Troy picked up the thread. “It could lead to chaos, civil war, and universal Armageddon!”

Dama’s alarm escalated with the interchange, as if she had finally realized the magnitude of her son’s circumstances. “Oh, you two!” she said stoically. “Stop being so pessimistic. It’s not over yet. We’ll see this thing through.”

Troy slumped onto his bunk, still looking at them through the security field. “Don’t worry, Mother. It’ll all be over in a couple of days. I didn’t do this. Trust me.”

“We’ll be there watching you when you face the Truthsayer,” Leisa said. “Promise.”

Troy swallowed the lump in his throat. “I’ll try to find you in the crowd but … my mind will probably be occupied with other things.”

“It better be,” Rambra said.

“Afterward,” Troy said confidently, “we can all go out and celebrate.”

With a clatter of thick red boots on the deck plates, the sol-pol elite guards returned to his holding cell. “Time,” one guard said, gesturing with his weapon for the visitors to leave.

As his family filed out, Troy found that he was more shaken now than he had been before their visit.

CHAPTER (#ulink_4c8037c7-daa9-56bd-8402-0857b49a5aaa)

9 (#ulink_4c8037c7-daa9-56bd-8402-0857b49a5aaa)

i

After several days of respite, another storm front approached across the continent, bringing a vanguard of ragged clouds over First Landing. Kalliana stood in her quarters, staring out the window up at the sky and fixing her attention away from the gathered crowds that waited again for her in the central plaza. Just like before.

The storm clouds were brooding gray mounds near the horizon, but here the day was merely overcast and cold. A wind sprang up, whipping the fronds of stunted palm trees along the streets, their roots sprawled out in a broad mat to suck nourishment from the heavily fertilized topsoil.

Kalliana stared through the transparent portion of her window, which was surrounded by a sunburst of triangular wedges in green, crimson, and royal blue glass, distorting the view to symbolize the uncertain nature of truth. The central transparent pane was a metaphor for how Truthsayers saw clearly, while others were doomed to see the colors of lies.

Another accused murderer waited for her in the plaza. Kalliana would have to dig into his mind, witness the truth in his own thoughts, and make her judgment.

Truth Holds No Secrets.

The Truthsayers’ code decreed that the accused was innocent until she read his guilt. But she already knew through grim experience that very few people were truly innocent. She swallowed hard.

Kalliana feared more vivid nightmares that were not her own—but even more she dreaded being transferred from the Guild, being forced to leave her comfortable, familiar existence. With Veritas she had witnessed secondhand the difficult existence the other colonists endured. She didn’t want a pointless life outside the Guild. She wondered if it could truly be as unpleasant as she imagined it … out there. She would rather face another murderer.

Only she and the accused could ever know for certain what had actually happened. A Truthsayer had to wear a blindfold to any repercussions of the verdict, decreeing only whether the man was guilty or innocent.

The truth would come out, but Kalliana had to show it the way.

ii

Down in the detention levels, Troy Boren lay motionless on his hard bunk. He kept his eyes closed, willing himself to sleep so that the time might pass more quickly. But his stomach roiled with anxiety, his dry throat burned, and thoughts whirled behind his eyelids, making him squirm with the possibilities of a worst-case scenario. But it wouldn’t happen. Truthsayers didn’t make mistakes.

He had no idea how many days had passed since his arrest. The guards had taken his personal chronometer; apparently they were afraid he might attempt some sort of bizarre high-tech sabotage with its tiny components….

Though hunger gnawed at his stomach, he felt no real appetite, doubting he could keep anything down if he bothered to eat. The sol-pols had given him only a limited amount of time to pick at his food, then they had taken it away.

When the elite guard switched off the confinement field, Troy was startled to find that he had indeed dozed off, despite his anxiety. He sat up, blinking bleary eyes. His shoulders and back crackled with stiffness from the uncomfortable pallet.

“Got your thoughts in order?” the guard said gruffly, his eyes hidden behind the uniform’s tough goggles.

“I’m ready,” Troy said, hauling himself off the bunk.

“Do you have a guilty conscience?” the helmeted guard asked with a slight smile in his voice.

Troy couldn’t tell if the guard was mocking him or not. “I don’t have anything to worry about.” He smoothed down his formless prison outfit.

This time the uniformed man did laugh. “If you say so.”

Troy followed him numbly out of his cell. The metal deck plates were cold against his bare feet, and he longed to be standing under the warmth of the sun again. At least he could look forward to that part.

iii

“Sit next to me,” Tharion said, gesturing for Qrista to take a place on one of the flecked granite benches at the center of the plaza. “I won’t be performing for this one. A Guild chanter is announcing the crime.”

Most of the audience stood on the open flagstones, waiting for the show. The crowd was smaller than it had been for Strone’s trial. This single murder was not as titillating.

Qrista flashed a hurriedly covered frown and fixed him with her ice-blue eyes. Her pale hair was braided again and wound around the top of her head. Angular bones gave her face a finely chiseled beauty that her smile enhanced … but now, troubled, Qrista appeared harsh and sharp. Tharion didn’t have to ask why.

“This is a sham, and you shouldn’t have allowed it,” she said quietly, but sat down beside him with a rustle of her white robes, tightening her crimson sash. Because they had shared their thoughts completely, she knew her husband’s reasoning, but that didn’t mean she came to the same conclusions.

“I know,” he answered. “But it’s my decision as Guild Master and I have to live with it. We can’t announce that we know what the outcome will be, because that would open up a thousand new questions. We must proceed and get this behind us. Let him be declared innocent in open court.”

Qrista looked at him uncertainly. “So the damage to our ethics can heal? What if it leaves scars?”

Tharion knew she was right, but he had determined that this path was the best resolution to the complex and uncomfortable situation the Truthsayers Guild had stumbled into.

For a moment he wished that Troy Boren were guilty, so they could drain more information about the black market Veritas from him. But since the young man was simply a clumsy bystander, Tharion knew they could get nothing else from him.

He reached out to hold Qrista’s cold, pale hand as they sat looking up at the empty podium. “Nothing is ever certain,” Tharion said. “We’ll need to ride this out, and I need your help and support.”

She pressed her lips together. “Of course you have my support,” she said. “I don’t make your decisions for you. I just abide by them.”

“This will all turn out all right,” he said.

Qrista raised her white eyebrows, allowing him a small smile. “Oh? You can see into the future now as well as reading minds?”

“I wish that were so,” he said with a forced smile. “A new kind of drug developed up on the Platform.”

He looked up to see the great ship doors opening in the Headquarters building. The Truthsayer Kalliana and the prisoner would be brought forward momentarily.

iv

Quietly anonymous, Franz Dokken stood in the middle of the crowd. He wore sturdy cotton slacks and a warm woolen jacket: expensive clothes but not showy. His ragged hair whipped in long strands in the gusting breeze.

Judging from the cloud bank on the horizon, he guessed it must be raining hard at his holding—good. They needed the water in the dwindling rivers that powered his hydroelectric plant.