The Crime of Insolence
"Hello."
Chris made his voice deliberately bright.
"You're tall. Second-tallest person I've ever seen."
The man took pride in his height. At the word second, a brow twitched.
"Who's the first?"
He opened his eyes as he asked. The light in them was so fierce that, for an instant, it seemed lightning had flashed.
"Charles is taller than you."
"Ah. Charles."
Chris was glad of the reaction.
"You know Charles well?"
He was about to add that the two of them were close when the man spoke ill of him instead.
"Annoying bastard."
Chris shoved the words back down his throat and tried another.
"Where is this?"
"A prison."
"A prison?"
"You came in without knowing?"
"Yes."
"Empty-headed fool."
He looked Chris up and down.
"Clothes say you're no mage. Not even Spirit Awakening. What are you?"
"Chris. I work at the smithy."
"What's a laborer doing here?"
"I wonder that myself."
"What did you do?"
"I did kill Juan... but it was self-defense."
The man unfolded his legs, came down from his seat, and strode up beside Chris. The height of him pressed in like a wall.
"You killed Juan?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"It would take a while to tell."
"Would it? Then forget it."
Chris had expected him to say he had time to spare. The man cut him off at once.
"Right. In you go."
"Where?"
"You came to a prison. Of course you go in a cell."
Chris glanced around.
"Is that black iron door a cell door?"
"Entrance to the prison. Plenty of cells in there."
He shoved Chris toward the iron door. Chris protested as he was driven at it.
"You can just lock me in without a trial?"
"Want me to kill you instead?"
"What?"
"You killed Juan, didn't you? Be grateful you weren't executed."
"Is murder a death sentence?"
"Yes."
"The tower's mages kill innocent people whenever they please. Why are they left alone?"
"They're mages."
As if that had answered everything, the giant took no further questions.
"What kind of law is that?"
The thick bolt across the iron door was drawn back, and the door opened.
It screeched. No one had oiled it; the sound was foul. A single mana-lamp, hung at the farthest reach, labored to push the dark aside.
"In we go."
Beyond the iron door a dozen cells stood in a row. They had no brick walls, only bars, so everything inside lay exposed. Birdcages. No privacy, then.
"Pick a room you like."
Chris was peering in when a face suddenly thrust out through the bars.
"Hhk—"
He sucked in a startled breath that did him no good.
"New arrival?"
Chris looked at him. Wild hair, a beard gone to thicket: a man washed up on a deserted island.
"Yes. Well. Something like that."
"Strange answer."
The prisoner went on, eyeing the jailer.
"Hey, Jake. This one a little dense?"
So the giant jailer's name was Jake. Jake answered.
"Yeah. A little dense."
Chris tapped his own chest with a finger.
"Me?"
"Killed a man in the magic tower. That's dense."
The prisoner's beard shook every time he spoke.
"Aigoo, a murder? Won't be bored for a while, then."
He stuck a hand out between the bars.
"Jake, put the new blood in my cell."
"No."
He pressed his palms together.
"Please. I'm begging you."
"I said no."
"This about last time? I was just too hungry then."
Chris flinched. Too hungry?
"Surely... surely not. Right?"
"Not what?"
"You didn't eat another prisoner."
"I did."
"You crazy son of a bitch!"
"That was all Jake's fault."
He protested, indignant.
"Jake wouldn't feed me."
Chris looked at the giant jailer.
"You don't feed them?"
"I do."
He added it as if it hardly mattered.
"A man forgets sometimes."
"Is there another jailer?"
"No. Just me."
Jake gave a thin grin, and Chris thought, Wrong man.
"Picked a room?"
Chris nodded.
"The one as far from the cannibal as you can manage, please."
"Too far from the door and it's a bother for me."
Jake assigned him the cell opposite the cannibal.
"Live here."
He put Chris inside and locked the door. The lock caught with a dull, dismal clack.
"When can I get out?"
"Up to the mages."
As the man turned to go, Chris thrust an arm through the bars.
"Usually, how long before someone who comes in here gets out?"
"Short end, ten years. Long end, three hundred."
Chris listened to the iron door shut and grumbled after it.
"Three hundred years! If you don't want to answer, then don't. Don't stand there woofing nonsense."
The prisoner across the way barked.
"Woof. Woof."
Then, without warning, a voice came from the cell on the right.
"It isn't nonsense."
"Hhk."
Chris hadn't known there was anyone in here besides the cannibal in front of him, and he swallowed another startled breath. In a corner of the black cell, the darkness stirred. It was dim enough already, and a black blanket wrapped the figure besides, so he was harder still to see.
The blanket was thrown back. Out came a face as wildly maned as the cannibal's: an old man, wrinkles packed so tight he looked a hundred.
"Are you human?"
"Do I look like a corpse?"
Wrinkles gathered at his mouth with every word.
"Yes."
"Keh keh keh."
He opened his mouth wide to laugh. Not many teeth were left in it.
"What's your name?"
"Chris."
"A good name. I'm Tom."
The cannibal cut in.
"I'm Joe. Among my friends, they call me Dandy Joe."
From the look of him now, madman would have suited him better than dandy.
"Is Jake really the only jailer?"
Tom answered.
"At present, yes."
"It was different before?"
"Ten years ago there were two."
"You were in prison ten years ago?"
"Far longer than that."
"Must have been a serious crime."
"You could call it that."
"What crime?"
Chris swallowed, waiting.
"Insolence."
Chris stared, at a loss.
"What's that?"
"Depending on the moment, insolence becomes the greatest crime in the world."
A keen light flickered in the old man's eyes as he murmured it. Startled, Chris looked again. The light was gone. Only a blurred gaze remained, like the eyes of a fish gone bad.
"Old man, your eyes..."
Even as he spoke, the old man drew back and pulled the blanket around himself once more.
"Not old man. Call me Tom."
A low voice drifted out, and then it was quiet. Chris looked over the small space that was his. Toward the inner floor there was a place with a lid. He opened it and heard water running.
Joe spoke.
"That's where you relieve yourself. See the pipe sticking out above it? Twist that open and a little water comes."
"Is there no blanket?"
"No."
"I'll freeze to death at this rate."
"Lie down."
Chris lay down as he was told. Bare earth in the dead of winter ought to be cold as a sheet of ice, but the cell floor was not.
"They heat the place."
"Not heating."
"It's warm, though."
"We're underground. It doesn't drop the way it does outside."
"David said it would be cold."
"Don't know who David is, but he hasn't lived in a cell. What would an outsider know?"
Chris tilted his head.
"I don't think it's warm just because we're underground."
Tom answered from under the blanket.
"There's a magic circle the tower set underneath."
"They heat with magic circles too?"
"Heating circles exist. What lies below isn't that kind."
"Then what kind is it?"
"A magic-disruption circle. Run it, and heat comes off as a side effect. Not enough to be cozy. Enough that you won't freeze to death."
Joe shouted.
"What? There was such a thing? Damn it, I thought they dosed the water, and that was why I couldn't use magic."
Tom laughed.
"They do dose the water. Not with anything that blocks magic."
Chris looked at Joe.
"You were a mage?"
"Obviously."
"Is it obvious?"
"If they don't lock mages in a tower prison, who are they locking? Farmers? Merchants? Blacksmiths? Hunters? Dense as they come, this one."
Joe dressed him down without shame, then pressed himself to the bars and seized them in both hands.
"Wait. You're saying you're not a mage?"
"That's right. I'm not."
"Killed a man in the magic tower, and you're not even a mage? Not dense. Mad."
Being called mad by a madman put him in a foul mood. Chris lay down against the inner wall.
"Why'd you kill him?"
Chris didn't answer. The questions kept coming anyway. When he gave no reaction for a long while, the man swore, and then he went quiet.
Randal went before Richard, one of the Three Great Elders of Mickclonia Magic Tower. Richard's eyes were half-open, as they had been the last time they met.
"The kingdom's investigators cut off Alex's arm."
"Why?"
"They took issue with his rudeness toward the prince."
"So he is no murderer."
"Yes. That is correct."
"One arm is no excessive punishment. It is enough that he lives."
Richard closed his half-lidded eyes completely. The meaning was plain enough: leave. Randal stayed.
"Have you something more to say?"
"When the arm was cut off, David says he felt something strange."
"David. Your disciple."
"Yes. A keen boy."
"What feeling did he claim?"
"The knight hacked the arm apart so it could not be set back on Alex. He felt the blood answer to aura."
Richard's eyes flew open.
"It seems possible."
"Bring him. At once."
At the screech of the iron door, Chris opened his eyes. The racket of it opening and shutting was so loud that sleep had already fled far off. Too loud to slip out unseen.
Jake tossed three loaves through the bars of Joe's cell.
"Give me one more."
"No."
He put three loaves in for the other prisoners as well.
"See you tomorrow."
Chris split one loaf. There were vegetables inside. He put it in his mouth, and the taste was decent enough—far better than the bread he had eaten back on the estate. One of the others even had meat in it. Chewing that, he thought a man might stand prison life after all.
He ate two and picked up the third. This one was hard as brick. He would have to worry it apart a little at a time.
He spoke to Tom, who was working at his own bread.
"Does the food here always come out this well?"
Tom's voice went sly.
"Suits your mouth, does it?"
"Yes. It's good."
"Eat it every day and it won't be."
"The menu never changes?"
Joe answered.
"Not in the seven years I've been here."
He spat.
"Shit. Now just looking at it turns my stomach."
He said so, and still brought the bread to his mouth.
Chris looked down at the loaf.
He took back the thought that prison might be bearable.