“See,” He gestured, “here they stand.”
Yes, reader, there I followed, at His command, behind Him. My wrists itched beneath the crowd’s stare, my ankles too, my flesh insisting I should be bound still in my coffin-cage, as when the world first watched proud Papadelias parade his captive monster—long years ago in your experience, reader, but always yesterday in mine. I could not conceive of a billion people watching. In my mind the thousands blurred into one great eye which pierced through me, like the Great Judge’s eye in those dreams I used to have, which others would call nightmares, recurrent the last year before my crime, when I previewed in my sleep the trial which would never come.
“Mycroft Canner…” Tully seems to lose the present as easily as I do. On that platform, as close to sacred as a secular thing can be, my presence was as horrific in his eye as his in mine. “Tribune Mason, you saved Mycroft Canner?”
Jehovah’s voice, soft always as if wary of waking some sleeping child, seemed weak and intimate over the sound system designed for rabble-rousers. “Thirteen years ago the public asked the law to take a life in anger. Those who witnessed Mycroft Canner’s crimes could imagine no lesser punishment, but you also recognized the tragedy: there was genius in Canner, which could have achieved great things if set on a course to help, not harm. I asked MASON and Chair Kosala to make Mycroft Canner a Servicer. Thanks to their mercy, that genius has helped the world, served others, even saved lives. Death is infinite loss and I will not cheapen it by saying whether Mycroft Canner has yet saved as many lives as they took, but, even if they saved only one, that is a life we would have thrown away if we had fallen back into the old lie that death can undo death.”
“But you lied. Tribune, all of you lied to everyone, making us think Canner was dead.”
Jehovah seemed the dead one now, as still as stone between Tully and me as we both shook. “The public in its wisdom did not ask My Imperial father what happened to Mycroft Canner. All these years you trusted them to have dispatched justice. I hope you will not now feel that they, or I, betrayed you by substituting mercy. Is My hope wrong?”
My other guilty patrons, Caesar and Kosala, mounted the platform of the Rostra now, the Cousin Chair sharing the Emperor’s security on this most tumultuous of days. Caesar’s stone poise never changes. As for Kosala, her dark Indian hair worn loose hid most of her expression, but one could guess her feelings well enough from her husband, Censor Vivien Ancelet, who followed a cold and careful distance from his wife. He fidgeted with his dreadlocks, not daring to look at her, nor at the human sea summoned here by the Senate session he had been forced to call. The mob he had predicted, even minimized through careful calculation of the best moments to freeze the market and announce the session, but he had not predicted Tully.
“What Jed says is true,” Chair Kosala confirmed. “The Servicer Program—”
“Get off the Rostra, puppet!”
“Charlatan!” Shouts rippled through the crowd.
“We all know what J.E.D.D. Mason’s about to report!”
“The CFB is a lie!”
“The Anonymous controls the CFB, and you, Kosala!”
“Why don’t you send Brody DeLupa up here, have them tell us what the Cousins think they think!”
The Emperor moved to intervene, but Kosala stopped him with a glance, harsh-seeming from a distance, in which only we beside her could see the glint of tears. “The Servicer Program,” she continued, “exists to keep the potential good that convicts can do from being thrown away. There has never been a better use of it than sparing Mycroft Canner. Over the past thirteen years Mycroft has served as rescuer, laborer, translator, guard, continued what could be continued of their victims’ works, helped with Brillist studies, the Censor’s calculations, research, they even helped Papadelias and Guildbreaker uncover the Saneer-Weeksbooth conspiracy, saving who knows how many hundreds or thousands of people who would have been assassinated in the future. Surely everyone here can agree this is better, not just for Mycroft but for the world, than execution.” She opened her arm toward me, the long trail of her Cousin’s wrap sweeping out like a robe. “Mycroft, do you have anything to add?”
The gathered masses had surprising patience. I would have expected shouts and curses, but they waited, distant, like parents watching their infant take its first unaided steps, as the strength to speak gathered slowly in my shaking frame. I did shake, though I did not know it at the time. The video shows me, a sickly pale skeleton, digging my fingers into the tired brown hat that I clutched, as if by squeezing it enough I could shrink myself and disappear.
“H-hello. I’m M-Mycroft Canner.” The microphones had trouble catching my first words, stifled in my throat as in a dream. “I know I don’t deserve to live. I don’t ask you to accept what’s been done—I wouldn’t. All I ask is this: please, blame only me. If the Emperor, Chair Kosala, and Tribune Mason deceived you, they only did it because they believe human beings are better than most of us do. Please don’t punish them for having hope. And please don’t punish my fellow Servicers either. Three days ago rumors started spreading that I was one of them, and since then six have been killed and hundreds injured by attacks which should have hurt only me, not them. In future if one of you finds me in the street, and asks if I am Mycroft Canner, I swear to you I will not lie, or run, I’ll answer honestly, and take whatever punishment your anger wants to give, I deserve it all. But if you find a Servicer who says they aren’t me, please believe them. Please don’t attack the others. They have no more involvement in this than the bad luck of wearing the same uniform I do.”
“Enough, Mycroft,” the Emperor ordered. “Encouraging violence against one of my Familiares is a crime, even if it is against yourself. And you know you will not walk the streets again.”
“Yes, Caesar.” The command of silence was as welcome as a shield.
The Enemy stepped forward, or rather lurched forward on the crutches which helped him battle gravity. “Why are you protecting Mycroft Canner, MASON?”
Caesar did not grant Tully a glance. “The Emperor does not discuss the sentencing of Familiares.”
“But in this case—”
“That is the Lex Familiaris, Hiveless,” the Emperor snapped. “I will not break it. I will say only that, from now on, I shall never again let Mycroft Canner free to wander in public. Those of you who would use Canner as an excuse to vent on Servicers these violent instincts you’re so expert on will find their target lacking, and yourselves prosecuted for your assaults with the full strictness of Cousin’s law, and the harshness of my own. Now, leave here, Tully Mardi. The world’s eyes, like mine, should be on the Senate and my son’s report right now, not you and your vendetta. The Tribune would be within their rights to have you arrested for inciting riot. Go.”
Tully smiled, as if he had not felt comfortable upon the Rostra until someone tried to kick him off. “I will not go, MASON, not while you’re still hiding the real reason Mycroft Canner targeted my bash’. We predicted that this war was coming all those years ago, and Canner tried to silence us so we couldn’t prepare the world for it, just like you’re trying to silence me now!”