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“Judge Gaxx was so intimidating up on that platform, in his velvet robes,” Tally said. “My mother broke down and cried. They had to lift her off the floor. She was so ashamed. And yet, any of them could have looked at us and seen our predicament.”
“These things should not happen on civilized planets,” Rafe murmured.
“The judge must have agreed with you,” Tally told Rafe. “He called her failed attempt to pickpocket a public nuisance rather than a crime, and threw us in the local lock-up, saying we could be freed if someone paid our fine.”
Jade frowned, knowing they had no means to pay a fine.
“Then he paid it himself,” Tally said, his voice deep with emotion. “And he gave us a place to live - a small apartment he had been renting out as an investment. He bought us food and clothing, and sent a tutor to teach me to read, so that I could go to school with the other children once I caught up.”
“Wonderful,” Jade murmured.
“But he slipped up,” Tally said. “My mother was anxious to earn our keep, so the judge offered my mother’s services as a cleaning lady to a friend of his. She went on the interview and told the friend how kind the judge had been to us. She didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret. The friend had a loose tongue. Suddenly, Judge Gaxx was disbarred for failing to act impartially. It was even implied that there was something romantic happening between him and my mother. But there wasn’t anything like that. At least, not yet.”
Jade frowned and nodded.
“So, we came here,” Tally said. “By then I was nine standard years old. The judge’s home had belonged to the Maltaffian government. So, while he had been paid fairly, we didn’t come here with much. He built a little house for us to share. Importing the lumber cost him most of his savings. The local government decided to reinstate him here, since there was no one better suited to be judge on Sigg-3, and he began to work again, which made him happy.”
Jade smiled at that.
“My mother tended a vegetable garden,” Tally said. “It’s cold here, with little water, but she managed to coax so much food out of the hard ground. And she shared her bounty with any hungry being she came across. I think that was what made him fall in love with her.”
“The judge?” Jade asked.
“Yes,” Tally said, nodding. “I noticed the way he would look at her, like he couldn’t understand how they were both standing on the same moon. When he asked her to marry him, she was so happy that she looked like she would float away. He told me that he needed my blessing too, because he wanted to adopt me and make me his own son to love.”
Jade swallowed over the lump in her throat.
“Of course, I was really glad to be his son,” Tally said, biting his lip hard. “He was always kind to me. He was stern about my schooling though. He told me that the most important thing in the world was for me to learn all I could. He said that knowledge would make me happy and help me to provide for myself and my family one day.”
Rafe was nodding. He liked this story. That warmed Jade’s heart.
“In the end, it was my mother’s kind heart that made him love her,” Tally said. “But it was also her kind heart that cost her life. She heard someone crying in the night and she ventured outside. She knew better. It’s not safe on the tundra after dark. But I know her. I know how she was. If she thought someone was hungry, there was no way she would ever ignore it.”
Jade bit her lip.
“They found bits and pieces of her clothing,” Tally said. “And the remains of the basket she used to carry her vegetables in. There’s an animal, that makes cries like a baby and then attacks when someone comes to help. If we’d been here a little longer, or lived further out of town where they’re more common, someone might have warned her.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jade murmured.
“Thanks,” Tally said, meeting her eyes for a moment. “Anyway, losing her broke my father. He was despondent for months. We both were. When he finally started to come out of the fog of misery, he focused all his love and attention on me. It was his dream that I would be able to go to school wherever I wanted and do whatever made me happy. And I just wanted to make him proud. I’d been spending every day studying for the exams to get into university. But now…”
Tally broke off, his face stricken.
“You can still make him proud,” Rafe said. “Keep on studying. And if you want, you can help us find his killer, too. But you have to understand that the goal is to find them and bring them to justice, not try to kill them.”
Jade nodded. If the kid’s first reaction to seeing Rafe had been to attack, he could be a liability to himself and to them.
“I have to avenge my father,” Tally said, his voice steely.
“Well, avenge him with jail time,” Rafe said. “There will be no attempts at violence of any kind as long as you’re with us.”
Sassy, the waitress, sailed over with three glasses of ale and three bowls of stew before Tally had a chance to answer.
The food smelled incredible. Jade smoothed a napkin on her lap.
By the time she looked up, Tally had already wolfed down half his stew. He was eating as if he hadn’t had a meal in a day or more.
It suddenly occurred to her that he probably hadn’t. Though whether that was because he wasn’t able to access his father’s house any longer, or because he hadn’t eaten from sadness, she couldn’t guess. She hoped Sigg-3 was not the kind of place where a man’s assets would be seized at his death.
