The Admonishments of Kherishdar
M.C.A. Hogarth

CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE

mesiln [ meh SEELN ], (verb) — to submit

      My Regal hadn't allowed me to attend the funerals though the preparations had consumed the entire district. I'd been mewed in my manor, the threnodies seeping through the casing like fragments of a nightmare. And then He came and brought me here... to the box cut, yawing black. I glanced at his stern profile, then at the Guardians arranged behind us, silhouettes on the hill.
      I knew then he wouldn't force me.
      I went into the mine.
      The dank decline dwarfed me so effortlessly the echoes of my footsteps were lost to its maw. After the first spiral, I couldn't see... only feel the rock beneath my fingertips as I dragged my hand over the wall. I was carefully not thinking... just... experiencing.
      The utter dark.
      The complete isolation.
      My stomach tightened and then my ribs, until my fluttering heart felt compressed in a cage made of bone. My robe dragged through the cold slime, pulling at my hips and back.
      Oh, gods and ancestors.
      I slid down, feeling my way to the floor. I couldn't even see my own hands. I had no sense of direction. I didn't know which way led in and which out.
      Somewhere in this bleak abyss, my negligence—my impatience, my callousness—had caused thirty people to die. Because I hadn't had the shafts reinforced. Because I hadn't ordered the ventilation shafts widened to serve as escape routes. Because I'd left the decisions to subordinates and then criticized them for over-running our budget.
      I hadn't taken the time to understand my duties. And so I had entombed my own people in this ugly place and left their relatives to mourn over empty biers.
      I clawed my way upright and wandered, flushed with the beginnings of fever.
      When I heard footsteps, I paused. And then I backed away from them. Ghosts? Derelicts? Someone sent to rescue me? I didn't care. I walked, and behind me the steps shuffled, and I shook and clutched my arms and consumed myself. There was no way out of this labyrinth. What had I done? What had I done?
      Killer, the steps seemed to hiss against the wet ground, dogging me. Killer. Steward-turned-murderer.
      I didn't want to see the light again. But avoiding the footsteps put me on the spiral winding up until I emerged, squinting, into the afternoon. When at last my eyes stopped watering, Shame was beside me.
      "Please," I whispered, shaking with fever. "Do away with me."
      He looked at me then, his face unreadable.
      "I know what it means," I said and slid to my knees, filthy robe crumpling around me. Like a slave out of stories, I rested my head against his leg. I couldn't weep.
      "The Bleak," he said.
      "Yes," I whispered.
      "And re-conditioning," he said.
      "Yes."
      "And then, when you are ready, release to begin anew. But not again a Noble."
      "Please," I whispered. "Anything."
      He offered his palm. I set my cheek in it.


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© 2007, M. C. A. Hogarth