Old Habits

3 - Justice

The judge had called Mrs. Tabun to the stand. When that didn't work, he'd called Miss Tabun to the stand. Finally, he'd called Ms. Tabun to the stand.

That had been the nature of the trial. The number of times the record had had to be amended, or scrapped outright and replaced, had itself formed a new record. Justice Deems had been doing his job for years, and he was very good at it. He, his father before him, his father's father before him, and his father's father's father before all of them, had seen thousands of criminals put behind bars.

His father's father's father, his great great grandfather, had been a cat-burglar, and had left the family with a burning desire to improve their damaged reputation. In addition, of course, to a lot of stolen cats.

Neverthless, Deems' words had power. He'd silenced murderers, startled terrorists, and stolen thieves' breath away. Kaida Tabun, however, had left him baffled.

He wouldn't say that she was touchy, but only because there was a chance she'd overhear and get angry. People had to be careful around her. The judge had met difficult customers before, of course; defendants often tried to argue back, attack court officials, or storm out.

Kaida was different in many ways, but mostly in that she wasn't a defendant. She was a witness to this trial. If you believed the prosecution, the defence, and all of the other witnesses, in fact, she was the victim. Kaida was different because she disagreed with all of this. If you believed Kaida, then she was the culprit.

Lydelia's love of protest was legendary, of course, but every so often a protester came along for whom shouting and waving banners just wasn't enough. That was Kaida. She'd been painting on the monastery walls when a guard had tackled her to the ground. Now he was on trial, and her act of defiance had gone forgotten. Any normal criminal would have been delighted by this turn of events. Kaida, despite what she claimed, was no normal criminal.

"Don't you see?" She finished her explanation. "I wanted him to catch me. I wanted to be caught!"

"But.. why?" One prosecutor, who was slow to catch on, continued to argue. The officials around him collectively sighed. They argued difficult cases for a profession, but they'd quickly learnt that Kaida Tabun was a lost cause. 

"What's the point in protesting, after all, if you get away with it? I wanted to make a disturbance! I wanted to stand here, and I wanted you to crucify me. I should have been a martyr!"

"You do realise that the most you would have got is a couple of weeks' community service, right?" The same lawyer continued, to groans from his colleagues.

"I'd have still suffered for a cause! And now I can't, and it's all thanks to him!" Kaida pointed at the terrified defendant, who had been trying to plead guilty.

"Does this mean that you want to-"

"Order!" ordered Justice Deems. The naive prosecutor began to speak, and the other lawyers had to drag him to his seat. "Ms Tabun; you have an issue with the way this court operates?"

"Yes!" Kaida flew into the spotlight like an angry moth. "It's sexist. You're all sexist. You think that just because I'm a woman, I have to be the victim. Why does the man always get to be prosecuted? It's not fair!"

The judge thought about this for a moment. It was true that the court had faced accusations of gender discrimination. Only this morning, in fact, a protester had been shouting that men were disproportionately convicted for the same crimes. However, Deems had never even imagined the complaint from this angle.

"So... you're saying that Mr. Blan is somehow privileged to be standing trial?" He could have sworn the man had started crying.

"Of course he is. If I was a man, and he was a woman, I'd still be the villain. I'd be prosecuted, and I'd have made a statement. You just don't respect me because I'm female. Why else wouldn't you charge me?"

Justice Deems considered pointing out that she was making a statement now, then considered not doing so, and decided that he preferred the latter. Instead, he explained that he'd given another vandal a clean slate only last week. The prosecution had questioned the logic of that at the time, but now the judge was glad that he had.

"At least he had a trial! I'm not just a vandal, anyway. I staged a topless protest."

It was true, that she'd begun undressing when the guard, now definitely sobbing, had pulled her away from the wall, but that had just put him under suspicion of sexual harassment. Besides, indecent exposure wasn't actually covered by the law. Justice Deems wondered if anybody else saw the irony in that.

"He'd done lasting damage, but your paint was washed away in minutes. There is no comparison. If protests were a crime, the whole city would be in this courthouse. Those not already arrested would be caught protesting the arrests of the others. You know that."

The indubitable truth of this fazed Kaida for a moment, but she rallied quickly. "I knew you were sexist. First you won't allow me to stand trial, because women are seen as weak and non-threatening. Now you're not even taking my protest against the sexism of the monastery seriously. I was protesting because they don't allow female priests."

Deems looked through his notes. It soon became apparent that most of Tabun's activities were related to fighting perceived 'sexism' in one way or another, even if the discrimination in question - as with this trial - didn't negatively affect her in any way. This case was similarly confusing.

"Is it not correct," he checked, "that you were complaining just last month that the monastery was inherently misogynistic?"

"It is," confirmed Kaida. "Woman should avoid it. But they should have the right to avoid it on their own terms."

This seemed to the judge that Kaida was less interested in women's freedom to choose for themselves, and more interested in being the one who told them what to do. But he didn't mention that. Partly because it wouldn't help the case, but mostly because he was too scared. Feeling vulnerable, he moved to defend against her previous accusation. 

"I'm sexist because I'm allowing you to protest about sexism?"

"Exactly."

It had been a long day. Justice Deems was a moral, religious, family man. He'd always been as fair as he could with the people in this room, and given both defendants and victims the justice he felt they deserved. He did not feel that he deserved this. Surely even judges had a right to just treatment? Slumping in his chair, he closed his eyes, and desperately appealed to a higher power. 

He got one, but not the one he was hoping for.

Because that was the moment the King walked in.