This choice: Go see what's happening in the basement • Go Back...Chapter #94Two Trials by: imaj   You slip down into the basement just in time to see the first of the two - Well, you’re not sure if "trial" is the right word, but it seems the best fit. The first is drawing to a close.
The basement makes for an odd courtroom. The undressed stone floor is covered with old rugs with unfashionable patterns. At the centre, lit by the narrow windows near the roof, is the first of the cultists, the one that saw you in the antechamber yesterday. His hands are bound in front of him, but his hood has been removed.
Fyodor sits before him in a wooden chair that seems far too small for his bulk. They are looking at each other, and the contrast of attitudes is striking. The cultist glares hard and belligerently, but Fyodor stares back with an expression of open and friendly curiosity. He has one great leg crossed over the other, and cups his chin in one hand; there is a twinkle in his eye, but his smile is just a little sad.
Margaret sits in a wheelchair to one side, hunched with her eyes closed, breathing heavily. She might be asleep, but you have the impression that she's actually concentrating very hard. Kali is by her side, one hand resting on the back of her wheelchair.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all is the thing in the corner: a stout, wooden wardrobe with faded varnish. Its doors open into an inky blackness. Bizarrely, there's a small ramp in front of it, such that one could push Margaret’s wheelchair up and inside it.
You sit on the steps to watch. Fyodor gives you a silent wink, then looks back at the prisoner. "What about the girls?" he asks in an almost off-hand manner.
The air thickens, and if you weren't already sitting the pressure might have forced you to your haunches.
But the cultist doesn't buckle. “What about them?” he sneers. “They weren’t important. Waifs, foreigners and undesirables.” He glares around the room, daring anyone to contradict him. That no one does takes him by surprise, but it doesn’t stop him from continuing. “So what if we killed them, it’s not like they amounted to anything. But if it would help me? A word in the right ear, meeting the right people, a little bit of extra stamina where it mattered out on the river, that’s all that’s important. It wouldn’t have been the first time I did it and I would have kept on doing it until it took me to the very top.”
You are shocked at the naked confession. Then you realise that’s what Margaret is doing here, and that perhaps this is what all Lurgae, are capable of: crushing people under the weight of their burdens until they admit them.
“He was teaching me, you know,” continues the cultist. “Rob. Let me kill one of the girls myself last year. The little dyke would have felt my blade last night if you hadn’t stopped us. I learnt a few workings from Rob, nothing big, just a couple of words that could make a room stand up and pay attention to me--”
"And this is your defense!" Fyodor laughs as though it's a tremendous joke, but fixes the other with a keen eye.
The cultist flushes. "You have no authority over me! I don't recognize this as a legitimate court! I call upon the power of--!"
There is an inaudible thunderclap, and his mouth shuts hard. Fyodor leans forward with a sigh. "It is my judgment that you be taken from this court to a place of sleep, where you will rest until such time as you can take up the labour of repairing your soul." His expression is grave but not unfriendly as he gestures at the wardrobe.
The cultist looks between him and it. "Don’t you know who I am? When my father finds out about this there will be trouble!" he snaps, screaming ineffectual curses and abuse at Fyodor.
Fyodor snorts a soft laugh, and the cultist folds up and falls to the ground. Fyodor rises, and bends to pick him up. He suddenly seems very small in the great bear's arms.
"So unrepentant," Kali murmurs.
"He is only a child, Kali," Fyodor murmurs back. "He doesn't know the meaning of the word."
Nothing further is said. Fyodor carries his burden into the wardrobe; Kali and Margaret follow, the former pushing the latter's chair up the ramp and into the darkness.
Alone, you sit on the step for what seems like an age, too terrified to follow them. Eventually, they return, but the cultist is no longer with them.
Fyodor catches your eye. “We should put a lamppost in there, eh, Margaret,” he laughs loudly. The comment prompts the first little burst of emotion you have ever seen on her face: a flash of ire, and she gives the huge man a very pointed look. He just laughs again, and passes you on the steps, vanishing into the rooms above.
“Where did you take him,” you ask Kali.
But Margaret answers. “To the banks of the Acheron,” she whispers.
“Is he… Is he dead,” you ask. You have to know.
“Merely sleeping,” Kali says, and looks at the floor. “I fear he will sleep for some time.”
You open your mouth to ask for clarification, but are distracted at Fyodor's return. He carefully guides the hooded George down the stairs until he stands in the centre of the room. Only when the cultist is in place does Fyodor gently remove the hood. George blinks a few times, accustoming himself to the light in the basement as Fyodor takes his chair again.
Nobody speaks. George looks round, taking in your faces. He has seen none of you before except Fyodor, for you are wearing your own face rather than the guises you met him previously in. His curiosity sated, he fixes his eyes firmly on his feet, an air of despair settling around him.
You feel the pressure in the room ramping up. Fyodor leans forward with that same friendly but expectant look. "Do you know why you're here?" he asks, and it sounds like a genuine question, not a pointed or leading one.
George looks up at him. He starts to answer, then thinks better of it. He stands silently for some time, on occasion looking as if he is about to speak before thinking better of it. Finally the words come, slow and thick. “All I wanted,” he says, “was for my dad to pay attention to me.”
Fyodor blinks, and his expression changes; he looks impressed by the answer. "Tell me about your father," he says, and cups his chin again in his hand.
George’s tale is a long and unhappy one, and Fyodor seems utterly absorbed in it, interrupting only at points to ask for clarifications.
It's a familiar one to you, though, because you glimpsed it yesterday when reviewing his imago. But to hear it in words ...
He lacked for nothing in his childhood, save the affection of his parents. That is the backbone of his tale of woe. On another day it might have left you sighing impatiently, but today you listen with a sort of horror to the extents that young George went to impress his father: the endless studying and hard work at expensive educations that could never quite hide his academic deficiencies. Even his scoring a raft of top grades in his final year, what he calls A-levels, and winning a place at Oxford was met with indifference at home, for he'd only met the minimum expected of him, and avoided the ignominy of being forced to attend St. Andrew’s instead.
Sport was a more natural fit for him, but his father thought football vulgar, and his mother feared that rugby would disfigure his face. Rowing had seemed like a social acceptable pursuit, though his relative lack of height disadvantaged him, and his parents seemed to enjoy the initial rush of trophies and awards. But that had only been to raise the bar, and by the time he'd reached Oxford, his natural disadvantages we’re counting against him.
“And that’s when I met Rob,” George says. “I was failing badly and he offered me an easy route to success. All it would cost were the lives of three innocent women.”
"Did it work?" Fyodor asks. His expression is rapt, as though he's been listening to a ripping yarn and can't wait to see how it turns out.
George seems not to notice. "My technique leapt up a level," he shrugs. "I was perfect, almost superhuman. I made the boat race team and my dad was proud. But by the time the trials rolled round again the following year I'd slipped back. I repeated the ritual. I would have this year too.”
"Really." Fyodor's expression is keen.
George stares directly back at him. “I think I’m glad you caught us,” he says hesitantly. “Every year most of the boys wouldn’t come back, they escaped back to normal lives. Rob kept pulling me in deeper and deeper and I kept going because I was scared of what would happen to me if I stopped. All my life I’ve lived for other people, hardly ever though about what I want.” He sighs and tries to wipe at a moist eye. His bonds prevent him. “I want that to stop.”
The pressure in the air noticeably recedes as he finishes.
“What happens now?" George asks, looking past Fyodor and at the emptiness of the wardrobe.
*****
You meet Kali in the kitchen later, just as she is preparing herself some lunch. “You’ve been through a lot in the last couple of days.” She places a thick slice of cheese on top of some bread. “And seen a lot. I know I said we would talk about clearing imago that you no longer need, but I think you should take the day off. Maybe take a walk round the town.”
It’s a tempting idea, especially since the last time you tried for a change of pace you being drugged and abducted, but this morning’s trials in the basement have left you with questions. Questions that need answers.
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