Imager’s Intrigue by Jr. L. E. Modesitt Page A

enough.
    The law sets rules for the people of Solidar. That is so that all of them know what to do. The Civic Patrol is required to enforce that law. Patrol Captains must make sure that their patrollers carry out the law. The law is not flexible, and there are times when applying the law would not be just. When a Patrol Captain comes across a case like this, he must find a way to apply the law without punishing too much the person who breaks the law. If possible, he should warn the person, but not charge them if they have not broken any laws before…

    In essence, what young Shault was suggesting was letting the offender know that he’d broken the law and not charging him when possible, and then asking the courts for mercy when there was no way to avoid the charging the offender. Where he was weak in logic was explaining why, and we’d have to discuss that, because imagers needed both to understand and to able to explain the reasons for their actions.
    Once I got to the station, I went over the logs with Huensyn, who had the duty desk, then checked the holding cells, which held two disorderlies, whom we’d forget to charge once they sobered up, since they hadn’t done much besides sing far too loudly in far too public a place, and a theft and assault case. He’d tried to take a knife to the patroller who’d arrested him, and had suffered broken fingers and a lump on the head from a Patrol truncheon as a result. The brand on his hip marked him as a previous offender, and that meant he’d be spending the rest of his life in the work house or on a penal road crew, and that life wasn’t likely to be all that long.
    I was debating which patrollers I should accompany on their rounds when a patroller first hurried through the station doors. “Captain! We’ve got a problem over on Sleago!” The patroller was Yherlyt, a dark-skinned and seasoned veteran of nearly fifteen years, who was the son of Tiempran immigrants.
    “Do we need reinforcements?”
    “It’s not that kind of problem, sir.”
    Translated loosely, they needed me, and Yherlyt didn’t want to explain in the station.
    I grabbed my cloak and visored hat and hurried to join him. Outside the wind was brisk and chill. Occasional white puffy clouds scudded across a sky that might have been clear and crisp, except too many people in L’Excelsis had lit fires or stoves, and a low smoky haze hung over the city. I didn’t speak until we were headed down Fuosta toward Quierca and well away from anyone else.
    “What is it?”
    “A pair of elveweed runners, sir. One’s dead, and the other’s wounded. He’ll probably make it. There’s a young elver. He’s dead. There’s a woman, too. The mother of the dead elver. Her name is Ismelda. She’s cut up a bit. Maybe more than that.”
    I had an idea, but I just said, “I’d like a little more detail, Yherlyt.”
    “The runners came to deliver to the dead elver…or to collect. They didn’t know he was dead. The mother killed the collector with a big iron fry pan. She didn’t know he had a partner. The partner took a knife to her, but she broke his nose and jaw with the pan. He tried to run and came out of the house and dropped unconscious on the sidewalk. A pair of kids tried to drag the partner off the sidewalk, but Mhort has good eyes, and we caught them.”
    “Do you know why all this happened?”
    “The dead taudis-kid, the elver, couldn’t have been more than fourteen. He was still in school. I’m guessing he was a runner, too.”
    “So he either stole or bought the elveweed, and smoked too much of the new stuff.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    When we reached the dingy narrow house, the fourth up from Quierca on Sleago, two other patrollers waited on the front porch that was barely more than a stoop under wide and sagging eaves. They had cuffed the surviving runner. His entire face was bruised and bloody, and his jaw on the left side was crooked and turning purple.
    “Sir?” asked Mhort.
    “Take him in. Book