Tales from Kalgachia - 10
The city of Oktavyan was not one of the world's great capitals, nor would it ever aspire to be. Nonetheless it had a certain charm of its own.
Unlike most capitals it was not the easiest place to reach; only a couple of precarious mountain roads and a single-track railway threaded their way to its sloping streets, located on the steepest buildable land to the snow-blasted summit of Mount Octavian some thirty kilometres to the southeast. Although that summit could be seen from the city on a clear day, clear days were scarce in these parts; the heights of the Octavian mountain range marked the point where the last balmy weather fronts rolling in off the Cosimo Sea collided with the arctic blasts of the Amokolian tundra, condensing the air's moisture into wave after endless wave of surging cloud banks that enveloped the city most of the time, depositing a constant coating of dew or frost depending on the season.
Being located just on the leeward side of the mountain range overall, Oktavyan was spared the worst of the howling gales which occasionally cleared the skies, although the edifice of Mount Octavian and its companions meant the city never got direct sunlight until the middle of the day - and even then, the warming disc of Atos did little but hug the sloping horizon all afternoon before plunging the city once more into cold and darkness. Small wonder, then, that most inhabitants preferred to remain in the city's underground quarters or at least confined within the surface structures - grey affairs of granite brick, topped by equilateral roofs and spires in the Upper Lywall style. The austerity of the architecture was broken in places by polished granite facades with golden plaques, indicating the Directorates which were administered Kalgachia's national affairs. Their small surface structures were mere informational interfaces, halls of kiosks and interview rooms for the petitioning public which belied the sheer size of their main operations below ground level. In this they were joined by the city overall, each building having some form of basement whose floor space equalled the surface structure at a minimum and usually exceeded it. The deeper basements were linked by a sprawling network of pedestrian tunnels, elevators and rail subways to dwellings, workplaces and venues of leisure which existed entirely underground. Many inhabitants of Oktavyan spent their whole daily lives beneath the surface world, especially the Nezeni whose burrow-dwelling ancestors had originated much of the tunnelling expertise required to make Kalgachia's underground development possible.
Certain quarters of Oktavyan's underground sprawl were better-appointed than others, becoming broadly better toward the southeast where most of the Directorates were located - linked by tunnel, it was said, to a chamber deep beneath Mount Octavian itself where Kalgachia's ruling Council of Perfecti were rumoured to engage in their meditations.
For Stigmund Xet, however, Oktavyan's more elegant vaults may as well have been a different city. He resided in the northwest, in a quarter of tunnels and chambers known to all as the Deferment. Quite what was being deferred when the quarter was originally built, Xet was not entirely sure - but these days it was an apt metaphor for the menial workers, invalids and vagabonds who gravitated to this corner of the city. Theirs were lives deferred from anything greater, if not eliminated entirely. Most of Oktavyan's local governance was undertaken by the Church of Kalgachia from the Cathedral of Heaven's Conquest, Kalgachia's principal place of worship and one of Oktavyan's more interesting surface structures, linked to an enormous underground labyrinthe of administrative offices by a staircase in its vestry. The cathedral administration had delegated the governance of certain fringes of the city to subordinate parishes, ostensibly to provide chapels of ease for distant pockets of inhabitants although they also performed an admirable function in keeping the semi-migrant rabble from assailing Oktyavyan's more gentrified quarters with their spiritual and bureaucratic petitions. The Deferment was one such sanitarily-detached parish and Stigmund Xet had been installed as its Credent - even now, a few years into the job, he wondered what he had done to incur such a punishment.
Services in his underground church were permeated by the whining transformers of the geothermal power plant next door, and by the thick defensive blast doors stationed throughout Oktavyan's underground levels which automatically slammed shut in response to a sufficiently strong pressure wave. The centrifugal latch on the set directly outside Xet's church was a little loose, causing the great metal doors to clank and rattle with the slightest variation in airflow through the tunnel walkway outside. Despite this, and the fact that the Deferment rarely saw the indentured Froyalanish labourers tasked with litter clearance elsewhere in the city, Xet had succeeded in making his church as inviting as possible. Within its modest vault the damp-streaked tunnel walls abruptly gave way to polished carvings, gilded sconces, painted murals and a thick carpet of forest green which took the edge off the noise from outside.
One happy consequence of Xet's administrative detachment was the greater freedom he enjoyed in tailoring the Ketherist liturgy to his congregation - a large number of whom spoke only Laqi, or were social outcasts afflicted by various mental deficiencies, or else were habitual criminals who required special moral instruction. As their appointed Credent, it was Xet's task to imbue them with the redemptive gnosis which resulted from an understanding and acceptance of the Ketherist creed. Like all other Credents of the Church, he had to do it without undue emphasis on intermediate deities - the relatable anthropomorphic Shrub Minarbor could no longer be relied upon to inspire the instinctive affection of the common people. Nor was it easy to explain why the Garden Ketheric had seen fit to withdraw the power of the Shrub from the realm of mortals - the finest theologians of the Church were still struggling with that one, let alone the gaggle of downcast ghetto-dwellers who filled Xet's pews every Byeday. Ultimately he could only cook up variations on a simple message: their state of misfortune was the result of material vices, the neurochemical yoke by which the archons of irredeemable corruption suppressed the divine spark within every person. To understand these dark processes, he said, was the first step in being liberated from them. He would have gone further, denouncing each act of procreation as the forcible theft of a soul from the Garden Ketheric and their imprisonment in the tainted physical world, but the Perfecti had decreed that particular revelation suspended from public promotion to avoid compromising the Kalgachi labour force. Still, thought Xet, the Deferment was a little overpopulated so he might get away with subtly re-introducing the idea of chastity to his congregation. The physical world was doing these people few favours, after all.
The downside of Xet's freedom was the Church's obligation to govern its parishes, with any headache in the administration of the Deferment ultimately ending up on Xet's desk. He had been lucky enough to have good mentors at seminary, who instructed him on the formation of an administrative cadre from his subject population and their training in such a way that only the most intractable problems ended up being referred to him. Such folk had been hard to find in the Deferment, but Xet glowed with a quiet sense of achievement in getting together as many reliable minions as he had. He had to turn a blind eye to their graft on occasion, but he made sure to give any abusers of power a dose of coded censure during his sermons.
One bureaucratic duty he could not avoid was the Credent's Inquisition, the ritual which made up the bulk of Kalgachia's judicial activity. The miscreants of Xet's parish - and there were many - were obliged to face trial by him personally. Such trials were complicated by the traditional Kalgachi attitude to statute law, namely that it was a regressive Froyalanish vice whose chief effect was to inspire spurious barratry and should be limited to the most essential precepts of the Oktavyan Code and the Perfecti's decrees, with any act not covered by them judged solely against the optimal good of the Garden as perceived by the presiding party, with little assistance except for the accumulated body of previous such rulings. The latter practice, at least, had been honed to perfection by the Ketherised Yehudi of Bergburg who could pull thousands of historical cases from ancestral memory and arrive at a judgement which was not too divergent from their precedent. Lacking such mental alacrity, Xet had nonetheless been greatly assisted during his inquisitions by a dog-eared almanac of cases heard by various courts in Ashkenatza, through Minarboria and into the Kalgachi present. At any rate the range of crimes committed by Xet's congregation was predictably narrow, and allowed for a reasonable degree of confidence in passing the appropriate sentence from the desk he placed in front of his altar for such proceedings.
Xet's golden Nezeni eyes widened with curiosity when an unusual defendant was presented before him one day, by the armed partisans who had apprehended and charged him - instead of the usual shambolic clothes or the plain gymnasterka of the Laqi, this man was dressed in a black court tunic of the kind once issued to the Minarborian civil service. He was advancing in years and his hair would have been well-greying, if it had not been dyed a lurid shade of ginger. The combination of that and an unsightly mole on his right cheek presented an unsettling visage to Xet, who spoke to the leader of the accompanying partisans:
"And who is this fellow?"
The partisan leader, a burly Laqi, opened his mouth to speak but he was interrupted by the jolly tones of the defendant himself:
"...William Fitzlyfaber! Lord in abeyance of Woodshire, gracefully retired Presiding Officer of the Twelfth Special Directorate of the Hall of Tendrils of Minarboria. Pleased to make your acquaintance, brother Credent!"
Xet's brow wrinkled in disdain. "Mister Fitzlyfaber, I was addressing my partisan commander. You will speak only when I bid you to do so."
"Forgive me, brother Credent, but it's LORD Fitzlyfaber..." Fitzlyfaber blurted with a plastic smile, seemingly against his own will. Xet sighed and nodded to the partisan leader, who swung the butt of his carbine sufficiently hard into the Fitzlyfaber's paunchy gut that he doubled over in a fit of wheezing agony, only to be wrenched immediately upright again by the partisan's thick hand around his collar.
"Mister Fitzlyfaber," said Xet, "remember you stand in a church, at the gates of the Garden Ketheric. Your titles are of no consequence here, and you defile this church by attempting to invoke them. Now, mister Gimatov, before you were so rudely interrupted...?"
Gimatov released Fitzlyfaber's collar with a flourish, almost knocking the man off his feet. "This is indeed one William Fitzlyfaber, brother Credent," he said with a reassuring Laqi bark. "Detained last night during a disturbance in Bolthole Row. Myself and my men were summoned by his neighbours. Upon our arrival, Fitzlyfaber's wife approached us with many facial injuries and wished to make a complaint against him."
"Is she willing to testify?" said Xet.
"Unfortunately not, brother Credent. Shortly after the defendant's detention in the Deferment stockade, she approched us there and asked to withdraw the complaint, then asked to visit the defendant. I denied both requests on account of her injuries."
Fitzlyfaber's chest swelled. "There you have it!" he blurted again. "She's thought better of complaining. A waste of your time and mine, brother Credent, I'm sure you'll agr-" The butt of Gimatov's carbine came smashing into his jaw and he recoiled backwards, coming to rest against a pillar and spitting two broken teeth into his hand with a splash of bright red blood.
"You did the right thing, Gimatov," said Xet. "Sounds like the defendant has a case to answer, regardless of his wife's position. Do the Fitzlyfabers live locally?"
"Three vaults away, brother Credent," said Gimatov.
"Send one of your men to fetch the wife... I'd like to see her battered face for myself. Perhaps you can get the defendant's face to match it, if he remains in contempt of these proceedings."
Fitzlyfaber, his sleeve soaking up the congealing trickle of blood from his ruptured gums, visibly resisted the urge to speak again as Gimatov detailed one of the partisan escorts to fetch his wife.
"Fitzlyfaber... Fitzlyfaber..." muttered Xet. "I've heard that name before. Weren't you some kind of diplomat, back in the Shrub's day?"
Fitzlyfaber's toothless, bloody maw was instantly warped into a smile. "I was indeed, brother Credent!" he chirped. "Minarborian ambassador to Jingdao, no less! I don't like to talk about it unless it comes up in conversation... which it always does, you know. The Third State Arbor said I was the only man suitable to go up in front of the Sheng Emperor! Quite the hazardous assignment, said I, but I wasn't going to back out. A Fitzlyfaber never backs out. We've been not backing out ever since my ancestors rode in battle alongside Kaiser Raynor and helpted him establish Shireroth. Our loyalty is what got us our estate in Woodshire, and-"
"Yes, yes, enough of that," said Xet. "Mow the lawn ethereal, one can only imagine the disappointment in the Shrubbery when you came back alive..."
The door creaked open and Fitzlyfaber's wife was brought in. She was a slim, ratty-looking woman, more of a girl as she appeared to be half Fitzlyfaber's age. Her dead eyes were blackened by blunt trauma and gazed permanently floorward past lacerated cheekbones and enough missing teeth that her mouth resembled the keys of a piano.
"Are you the wife of William Fitzlyfaber?" said Xet.
"Yes, brother Irrigator," she said, almost whispering, with traces of a Mishalanski accent.
Mr. Fitzlyfaber's eyes flashed with anger. "Credent, you idiot!" he snapped. "They're called Credents now! Can't you get anything righ-" His throat was closed by the chenched hand of Gimatov, who indicated silence with a dour shake of the head.
"Mrs. Fitzlyfaber," said Xet, "can you confirm that the injuries to your face were sustained by the hand of your husband?"
"No, brother Irri... uh, Credent." said Mrs. Fitzlyfaber. "They were not."
"How did you sustain them, then?"
Mrs. Fitzlyfaber's eyes remained fixed on the floor's verdant carpet, and she uttered a disjointed stream of mumbling.
"Please speak up," said Xet.
Mrs. Fitzlyfaber's eyes darted nervously toward her husband, then at Xet. She took a deep breath. "I... ran into a frying pan by accident. It's just that he was holding it at the time. Just an accident is what it was. He would never mean to attack me. I love him."
"And how many times did you run into his frying pan by accident?" Xet fixed her with an incredulous squint.
"Perhaps... four or five times," said Mrs. Fitzlyfaber. "But I am a clumsy woman. So clumsy. I have many accidents..."
"And how long have you been married?"
"About... one year?"
"First marriage?"
"Yes. But my husband has been married befo-" she stopped when she caught her husband's eyes fixing her with an infuriated glare.
"How many previous marriages, mister Fitzlyfaber?" said Xet.
Mr. Fitzlyfaber shrugged. "Eh, a few. Over many years, I hasten to add. I'm a man of discerning standards, you know. Can I be blamed for encountering women who don't live up to them? My current darling wife is the one, though, I'm sure enough of that. She's not perfect, far from it... but she's willing to be put in her place when necessary."
"And that's where the frying pan comes in?"
"Please, brother Credent, the very thought disgusts me! I have never once laid a heavy hand on my wife!"
"And your previous wives... were they accident-prone too?"
"Every one of them! I suppose it's just a thing with women. Except for the second wife... she was a feisty one. Dead now, alas... fell off a cliff while we were out on a walk. Terribly sad, but one learns to get over these things."
"You seem to be able to get over things easily, Mister Fitzlyfaber. Your wife's injuries, for instance."
"She's had worse."
"Oh?" said Xet. "How much worse?"
Mr. Fitzlyfaber laughed, causing a lump of clotted blood to fall off his chin. "Well the silly mare fell over and broke both her legs once. That's what you get for racing to walk ahead of your husband all the time. A woman's place is behind! She was confined to bed for weeks... but that had certain advantages, if you know what I mean." He flashed his eyebrows and grinned.
Xet involuntarily swallowed, pre-empting the vomit which threatened to rise up his throat. "I don't know if your wife would see it that way," he said.
"She should be grateful!" said Mr. Fitzlyfaber. "We've finally got a baby on the way, after all."
Xet's eyes widened. He looked at Mrs. Fitzlyfaber, who was looking down at her own belly. To Xet's relief her pregnancy was not visible yet - just as well, considering the sentence which was rapidly assembling itself in his mind. "For the sake of my sanity," he said, "I think I've heard enough. Gimatov, I know you're ready to turn this fellow into a carcass but I'm afraid there are procedures to be followed. You'll take the defendant back to the stockade, and detain his wife in a seperate cell for her own safety. You will call on Doctor Zwemmer to visit them both and have him submit a report to me. Understood?"
"Yes, brother Credent," barked Gimatov, turning to his junior partisans. "Frolov, Jiggs, you will escort the wife. Gently! She is not under charge." He wrenched Mr. Fitzlyfaber round by the shoulder. "As for you, you snivelling sack of-"
The church doors swung open, filling the place with the clanking and buzzing of the outside tunnel as the detainees were escorted out. When Xet was alone, his head sunk onto his desk for a moment before he rose to his feet, consumed by the sudden urge to take a shower.
Doctor Solomon Zwemmer, duty psychiatrist of the Deferment's hard-pressed medical clinic, was as mystified as Credent Xet about the apparently punitive nature of his posting to Oktavyan's underground ghetto. Nonetheless, forensic consultation for Church inquisitions was an interesting interlude in his daily work, a welcome excuse to escape the chaos of the overflowing clinic. He had gladly scrubbed the rest of his day's appointments when Gimatov's partisans called him away to assess the Fitzlyfabers. Domestic violence cases were full of subtle nuance which could take days to analyse and condense for a Credent's inquisition - but it was to Xet's surprise that Zwemmer entered his church a mere two hours after the Fitzlyfabers had left it. His eyes bore an unusually glazed appearance as he entered the little vestry.
"Are you alright, Solly?" said Xet as he rose from his desk. "You look like you've seen a creature of the Wastes."
"Oy, but I think I have," said Zwemmer. "So I spoke to both of your Fitzly-folks. In all my years of... well, let's just say I'm ready to submit my evidence. Normally I enjoy these little excursions, Stig, but today I'd rather just get it out of the way. I don't know where you get these people from."
"Sorry to put you through it," said Xet. "But the defendant looks like the type that'll appeal to the Abbot's Tribunal if he doesn't think we have a firm body of evidence. He's got more than enough glib charm to get himself off the hook with them. I've seen it before. And with the wife pregnant and all, the last thing I need is... an outbreak. We've got a diseased leaf that needs to be snipped at the bud, Solly. Here and now. But to do that, the defendant must be certified as beyond help."
"He's beyond help alright," said Zwemmer. "The guy's positively Haraldian! We're talking weaponised chutzpah here. Maybe even implications for national security! If you can't deal with him, it'll need the Prefects. Maybe even the Trogs. The kinda hassle we don't need in the Deferment, you and I know that. Listen... before you begin, do you have a shower here? I gotta take a shower..."
Zwemmer's testimony to Xet's re-assembled inquisition was as professional as he could muster after a brush with Mr. Fitzlyfaber, whose dark presence rivalled a trickster deity in archonic gravitas and seemed able to smell human weakness with the acuity of a shark finding a drop of blood in the ocean. Now he fixed Xet with a knowing glare, daring him to make a stand and have it inexplicably backfire. He had weathered Gimatov's beatings with a defiant jollity, flush with confidence that the dark luck of the corrupted was ultimately on his side. Both he and Xet sensed, in different ways, that his was a power on the brink of escalating into full-blown invincibility, a flawless and mocking subversion of the social and political structures of his world, optimised to inflict the greatest and most prolonged pain possible in the souls of all he encountered; the ecstatic imposition of pure and unadulterated helplessness, unyielding and unending.
"William Fitzlyfaber," began Xet, "this inquisition has found you tainted in blood with a state of psychopathy sufficient to preclude all redemption in the light of the Garden Ketheric. In itself this a crime considerably more serious than the assaults you have committed, extending as it does to the very essence of your being. It is my mandate as a Credent of the Church to effect the eradication of such bloodlines from the Garden Physical, and this will be done in the case of both yourself and your unborn child. I hereby sentence the latter to be liquidated in utero, and commit your wife to a period of indefinite treatment at the Lord Lieutenant's Asylum for Oktavyan in order to effect the parallel abortion of the memetic control structures you have implanted at all levels of her consciousness during the course of your marriage." He looked over at Mrs. Fitzlyfaber. "I trust, madam, that you will understand this is no punitive action upon yourself but a necessary act of assistance to a redeemable citizen of Kalgachia, and I would urge you to engage fully with the help that is offered to you."
Mrs. Fitzlyfaber said nothing, only stared into space while a tear began to roll down her cheek.
"Mister Fitzlyfaber," continued Xet, "You will doubtless take pride in the distinction, but in the course of my entire life I have never encountered a material being as throroughly corrupted or perverted as yourself. It is my resolute conclusion that the good of the Garden, in the cause of which I make all my rulings, will be insufficiently served by your sterilisation as you will continue to represent a memetic pathogen of the most virulent order to everyone you encounter. Nor have you been found in any way reformable."
Now, for very first time in his career, Xet produced a skullcap of deep black velvet and placed it upon his head.
"I therefore have no option but to confer upon you a sentence of liquidation by hanging, forsaking long drop or any other indulgence of brevity. May the Garden rejoice in your dying agonies, and may your soul forfeit all mercy in the realms beyond."
Mr. Fitzlyfaber faced all of this with an infantile smirk, taking one step forward to address Xet. "Brother Credent, I wish to appeal your sentence to the Abbot's Tribunal of Oktavyan City, as is my right in accordance with the established precedent of your noble church."
Xet visibly slumped in his seat. "Very well," he said. "Your appeal will be duly filed." Gimatov and Zwemmer hissed with disappointment, while a flicker of renewed fear showed in Mrs. Fitzlyfaber's eyes. The face of her husband was now contorted by a clownish grin. All had proceeded according to his plan.
"Get him out of here," said Xet. Gimatov spun Fitzlyfaber around and walked him up the aisle of the church. Xet let the defendant swagger contentedly until he had almost reached the entrance. "Although..." came Xet's voice from the altar. Mr. Fitzlyfaber's escort stopped him by the entrance and spun him again to face Xet, whose face was acquiring an inexplicable smile.
"Well...it's just a dull technicality, mister Fitzlyfaber, but let me tell you something about the established precedent you speak of. It appars to have escaped your notice that appealed sentences can only be amended. Precedent holds that they cannot be held in suspension or overturned. Garden versus Shapkin, year one forty... in case you're interested. Your sentence may well be downgraded by the Abbot's Tribunal, but it will take some weeks for the paperwork to go through. In the meantime, I am under no obligation to suspend my decision. Gimatov!"
Gimatov snapped to attention. "Yes, brother Credent!"
"You will carry out the sentence immediately."
A rare smile crept along Gimatov's boorish visage, matched by a wave of horror descending over Mr. Fitzlyfaber's whitening face. "But that's absurd!" he cried as he was wrestled toward the door. "It's a clear breach of protocol! The Abbot will have you excommunicated!"
"The Abbot will thank me for lightening his workload," said Xet, closing his trusty old book of case law. "He gets enough crap from this parish already."
With his howls of protest quietened by repeated applications of Gimatov's fists, Mr. Fitzlyfaber disappeared beyond the church doors. Behind him, his suddenly frail-looking wife was led away in bewildered silence.
Zwemmer, the only man remaining in the church, fiddled awkwardly with his bow tie. "Oy," he muttered. "You keep it together pretty well for someone condemning a guy to death."
"The Garden decides, Solly," said Xet. "I'm just the conduit. I think the Trogs call it the Mandate of Heaven... when the Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption find their servant beyond any use and withdraw their protection. I guess I'm their conduit too, in a way."
"Oh don't go hitting me with the theology, Stig," said Zwemmer, "I'm already wound up like a spring after all that. How about we both head down to the Tipple Tube for a bottle of Schlepogorskaya? Get out of this ghetto for a few hours?"
"Done."
Above their heads, the church's vaulted ceiling echoed to the stroke of Xet's gavel.
