The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [15]
Impulsively I tried to read him, but like Jes, he had a natural shield.
“Aren’t you afraid to be seen talking to a Misfit?” I asked at last.
“Where I come from, they say Misfits are people who have been punished by Lud. I don’t see how that is anything to fear. In truth it seems to me there are worse things than being a Misfit.”
“Oh yes?” I asked sarcastically. “What could be worse?”
“These people, for one. This Luddamned Council,” he said in a low, intense voice. I stared, for what he was saying was sedition. He was either mad or insanely careless.
Seeing my expression, he only shrugged. “These fools believe everyone who doesn’t think and act as they do is evil. As for Obernewtyn, you need not fear it. It is merely a large mansion with farms. Not those labor camps the Council calls a farm. Real farms, with animals and crops and sowing and reaping. You might like it,” he said reassuringly.
“Have you been there?” I asked.
His eyes were suddenly evasive, and though I did not press him, his unexpected reluctance angered me. “I might escape,” I told him coldly, more for effect than because I meant it.
But he gave me a measured look. “If ever you do run away, you might seek out the Druid in the highlands. I have heard he lives still in hiding. He has no love for Misfits, but you need not tell him—”
He broke off his words at the sound of footsteps, and we both looked up to see his uncle reenter the room. “Come, Daffyd,” the older man said, his eyes skidding over me.
Daffyd rose at once. He said nothing to me, but as they moved to the door, he smiled over his shoulder.
I watched them go thoughtfully. Henry Druid had been a Herder, forced to flee with some of his followers after defying a Council directive to burn his precious collection of Oldtime books. That had been long years past, and rumor was that he had died. Yet this boy implied otherwise.
I shrugged. The boy had surely been defective. He had been careless in talking to me at all.
A soldierguard stepped from one of the doors and waved impatiently for me to enter. I went slowly, playing the part of a dull wit.
The trial room was quite small. At the very front was a Councilman seated at a high bench, facing the rest of the room. Beside him at a lower table were two Herders. The rows of seats facing the front were occupied only by a few lounging soldierguards in their telltale yellow cloaks. The seats were theoretically meant for interested members of the community, but I could not imagine anyone would be curious enough to risk being associated with whoever was on trial. No one paid the slightest bit of attention as I was prodded to the front by the soldierguard on duty. I looked up at the Councilman, wondering bitterly what would happen to the daughter of such a person if she were judged Misfit.
“Well, now,” said the Councilman in a brisk voice. His eyes passed over me with disinterest, reminding me that I was less than nothing to him. “I understand this is a routine affair with no defense,” he said to a tall man in black who rose and nodded languidly.
The Councilman turned his attention to me. “You are Elspeth Gordie?”
I nodded.
“Very well. You have been accused of being a Misfit by Madam Vega of Obernewtyn. If so judged, you will be unfit ever to receive a Normalcy Certificate or to become part of the community of true humans. Corsak, you will speak for Stephen Seraphim, the Master of Obernewtyn?”
The man in black did not look at me as he spoke. “This orphan has been exposed as a Misfit by the Obernewtyn head keeper. She was also denounced by another orphan, who claims that she fell in tainted water and has from that time had unnatural dreams and fainting fits. This would normally mark her a Misfit by mischance, but there are several other points. May I expand?”
The Councilman nodded.
“In her first home, the girl was accused of giving an evil eye. Naturally we do not place too much credibility on these reports, but they do point to the possibility that she had Misfit tendencies