The First Expedtion (Part 4)
The trial began two days later. In accordance with the rules of procedure passed by the Second Debate---the most liberal in all of Cherne---neither the accused nor his accusers were put to the nightmare beforehand. In addition, both sides were allowed free access to all of Ruuda's laws: in the absence of an established nobility (and in the face of bitter opposition from those who wished to take on that role), the Second Debate had also decided against Regimental-style rental of laws.
The confusion and contradiction of the proceedings highlighted the immature state of Ruuda's young judicial system. K.'s Taavi argued that he had followed orders by bringing the Sun's Vengeance into harbor at night. He had not put armed marines on the ship's deck, "...for what purpose one may only surmise," he added darkly, alluding to the claims flying through the streets that U.'s Yrjö had been organizing a mutiny, or (more preposterous still) planning to steal the Sun's Vengeance and raise the red flag of piracy.
Ah, came the response, but if his excuse was that he was only following orders, then was he not acknowledging that U.'s Yrjö was in fact his commander, even when the ship was under way? In which case, was not his earlier mutiny the incident's true cause? But then, if U.'s Yrjö was in fact K.'s Taavi's commander, then the apprentices' deaths were his fault after all, were they not?
At this point, three days into the proceedings, the hapless judge [9] suspended the trial. "As public order is put at risk by these proceedings," he wrote:
...and as both parties have evidenced the essential weakness of their arguments by stooping to the indignity of rhetorical questioning, this matter shall be placed in abeyance until the laws pertaining thereunto shall be clarified.
In effect, the judge had ruled that the Recurrent Debate (as Ruuda-in-Ruuda's governing body now styled itself) would have to decide what exactly what division of powers it had intended. Since the Debate had already recessed for the long Ruudian winter, that left K.'s Taavi, U.'s Yrjö, and their respective supporters in limbo for five months.
They were the busiest of Perguuran's life. All his political credit was in the holds of the Sun's Vengeance and her sister ships; if the expedition sank (physically or metaphorically), so would his career. He therefore spent the winter in a virtuoso whirlwind of lobbying, cajoling, threatening, blustering, begging, and bargaining. He tightened his grip on the capitol's chapter of Pure Light, which in effect became little more than a mount for his political will. With that secure, he temporarily set aside its longstanding opposition to Vaardian autonomy in exchange for its delegation's support for a military academy on Regimental lines. None but the naive were surprised when U.'s Yrjö was appointed its first superintendent, a post which automatically gave him a lectern in the Debate.
The fifth session of Ruuda's Recurrent Debate opened on Peridot 7, 1109, a rainy, wind-lashed Redsday. With the cries of fishmongers faintly audible in the distance, two hundred and seventy three [10] solemn gens ascended the Sunlit Steps and entered the country's newly refurbished debating chamber for the first time. Once a theater, it still smelled of the pine scaffolding that had been cleared away the night before.
Wearing a pure white wool coat and kilt, knee-high leather boots polished to a mirror-like gleam, and a rich bearskin cloak, A.'s Perguuran took his place at the principal lectern and welcomed the assembled debaters. His opening speech was rousing, and occasionally ribald; several of those present recorded in diaries that while he didn't actually say anything, he did so in great style.
He most particularly didn't say anything about resuming the trial of K.'s Taavi, because by this point there was no need. A month before, three seagens had risen in front of a carefully picked judge and testified that their vessels had been attacked by the Circular Key between YS 1093 and 1095. The ship's name was important: she had been K.'s Taavi's. So too was the fact that the attacks had happened after the start of the Fifth Rebellion, when (according to the judge) "...all patriotic persons should have felt a duty to rally to the cause of the living." A literal interpretation of that ruling would make most Ruudians over the age of thirty traitors, but that was unimportant: all that mattered was that it made K.'s Taavi a pirate in the eyes of the law.
"A captain's first responsibility is to give orders," K.'s Taavi wrote in a letter published later. "Gar second is to know which way the wind is blowing, and stay off the rocks." No warrant had yet been issued for him, but it would clearly not be long in coming. Some time in Chrysoprase, he slipped out of the city on board a west-bound laiva to return to the village of his birth. Wisely, A.'s Perguuran did not pursue, or even proclaim that where there was flight, there must be guilt. With the expedition firmly back under his control, he could afford to be magnanimous.
[9] The Ld. Jaarko Villems, who was no doubt aware that he had been chosen in part because his mixed ancestry would allow either side to dress him as a villain. Nearly bankrupt in the wake of the trial, and unable to find other cases to try, Villems left Ruuda-in-Ruuda for Derway, where, more than thirty years later, he was was arrested for urinating on the dock where the Unshadowed Land was berthed.
[10] Three hundred and seven were supposed to be there, but several debaters from outlying islands and mountain maatilaso had been delayed by bad weather. Several of these later paid to have themselves added to official portraits of the Debate's first session.