Irona 700 by Dave Duncan Read Free Book Online Page B

until she was elected, she must be the toughest of the tough. The Seventy would not want a milksop chit of a girl in the judiciary, Juvenile Court or not.
    The third case was tougher yet. The accused looked no more than twelve and had admitted to being a prostitute, but not to drugging and robbing a client.
    â€œThis is her second appearance on this charge?” Mofe inquired, although again he must know the answer.
    â€œIt is, Your Honor.”
    Mofe glanced inquiringly at Irona. She frowned and raised an eyebrow, wanting to be sure she understood.
    He whispered, “So she hasn’t eaten in four days. Not many of them hold out that long.”
    Perhaps not in his world, but down in the gutters, food came less reliably, so people grew up with hunger. Starvation was a standard technique to force a guilty plea and save the court’s time.
    Dilivost leaned closer. “Remand for two more days?” he whispered.
    â€œCan we hear the evidence?” Irona asked, having missed the accused’s first appearance before the court.
    â€œWe heard the plaintiff and told him he need not come back,” Mofe said. “They had agreed to a fee of two copper fish. The idiot accepted a cup of wine first and woke up in an alley bare, um … totally naked.”
    â€œA fix?”
    â€œWe considered that, but decided not to press the matter.”
    A fix was any magical device, and its use or possession was punishable by the sea death, the harshest sentence the court could impose. At least this waif was not threatened with that.
    â€œYour turn, 700,” Mofe persisted.
    Irona had spent long hours studying the penal code and she knew the standard penalty would be a branding and at least twenty lashes. A girl so scarred would be trapped in the gutter forevermore, unable to obtain a husband or even honest work.
    â€œSlavery,” she said. White side up.
    The two men exchanged a very brief glance and concurred. The scarecrow tyke was led away to be sold. Her owner might still use her as a prostitute, although that was illegal, but she might be put to work in a sweatshop or food market. At least she would not be tied naked to the whipping post and half flayed; from now on someone would see that she had food and shelter. While Irona felt sick to her stomach at what she had done, she was sure that she had seen a flash of relief on the child’s face when the sentence was announced.
    â€œNext case. …”
    When the court adjourned at noon, Irona had been accessory to eight executions, nine floggings, and three enslavements. So far as she could tell, she had not made anything worse and might have reduced a couple of sentences. Moreover, her fellow judges were not dismissing her as a bleeding heart.
    â€œI approve of your advancement of slavery,” Dilivost proclaimed as he congratulated her. “We tend to overlook that option.”
    â€œIt brings in revenue,” Irona announced with a straight face. To the rich, slaves were tools, ranking so far below their owners’ status that normally only servants would even give them orders, but she had known quite a few slaves in Brackish and most of them had not been conspicuously less happy than the free.
    Music, history, and rhetoric classes took care of the afternoon.
    That night, the evening meal at Trodelat’s house went better than Irona had expected. Her morning adventure had not come to her tutor’s ears, so Irona was able to break the news herself. By not mentioning her previous attendances at the court, she could make today’s participation sound like a pure accident.
    Even so, Trodelat was suspicious. Her pupil was starting to slip out of her control. “You enjoy slaughtering children?”
    â€œBy no means, but I gather that every Chosen gets appointed to the Juvenile Court at least once, and the extra money would mean more to me now than it might twenty years from now.”
    Her tutor could only approve of this