A Gamer's Guide 381

They found him in the lounge, as expected, seated besides the fire together with the young goblin he had brought in, a bowl of soup cradled in the goblin’s hands. Wrapped up in blankets and furs, Ester almost couldn’t see his red-nosed face at first. 

She noted with some curiosity that although the good chair she liked had been moved from its usual spot, Kitty wasn’t sitting in it. Instead, it was next to the one he was sitting in, almost as though he was expecting company. Her own friends were nowhere to be seen, but she had good reason to assume that they had simply returned to their posts guarding the city and all that. Once this whole business was done and over with, she’d go and join them, even though the weather was really bad right now it would still be nice, because she liked them.

Her thoughts couldn’t go any further though, because the instant they entered the roomy lounge, Kitty’s head swivelled around with abnormal speed and range, his eyes falling on them with some wild, animal look to them. Though she had no idea why, she knew for a fact that he hadn’t heard them coming, because they’d been very quiet. His back had been on them too, so seeing them was out of the question. How, then…?

“Oh, Hum!” Kitty called from across the room, waving her over. To ensure that this was okay, she turned to look at Mr Judge. He seemed to have chosen this moment to do one of those living statue routines that the people on the street did, so she decided to take it as an affirmative and go join Kitty by the fire. “Thanks again for letting us stay here for a little while.”

“Thank you,” the little goblin muttered at her, bowing very politely. It wasn’t something she liked to admit, but she found goblins very cute. Even before coming to Purgatory, there was something about the little bald heads and big dorito ears that charmed her deeply. 

She would have liked to respond, but she was beginning to feel very aware of the fact that Mr Judge was still standing in the doorway heading in, unmoving. Turning to Kitty, painfully looking away from the very cute kid, she said, “Um, Kitty, Mr Judge wants to talk to you?”

Prompted by the direction she was looking in earlier, Kitty threw a glance over at Mr Judge, clearly uncertain whether or not Ester was calling the random guy over there the judge or if she meant someone else. To confirm his line of thinking, she gave a single resolute nod. 

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

Right as they were about to leave the sanctity of the warm comfortable fireplace, Mr Judge (satisfied with his performance as living statue) decided to join them instead, sitting down beside the little goblin. Ruefully lacking in manners, the little goblin didn’t even greet him, only continuing to absently slurp at his soup. Though, going by the smell, it was probably the soup Mrs Cook had made yesterday, which was very delicious and not filled with any weird bits or textures. In that case, his lack of manners was entirely attributed to rational obsession and not defective upbringing. She chose to forgive him. 

Kitty, on the other hand, was good enough to lower his head, though he did so while sitting, not standing up. His excuse was that he was human, and possibly also a deity. She wasn’t sure about that last one though. Either way, he was nice, so she had no reason to correct him. 

“Thank you for this gracious hospitality,” he told Mr Judge. “If not for this, it is very possible that my entrusted friend Lett would have succumbed. I owe you a great debt.”

Mr Judge was clearly not listening.

“Um, Mr Judge?” Ester said, waving a hand in front of his face like they did in the movies. “Mr Judge, is everything okay?”

He shook back into existence. “Huh? Ah, yes, that is…” And then he puffed himself up like an angry pufferfish, which was a very ridiculous thing for him to do, since he didn’t have the face for it at all, something even Kitty could tell. “A great debt indeed. Do you often con your way into the houses of good and respected judges to curry favor and steal food?”

Each word made Kitty sink in more and more on himself, like an accordion in a hydraulic press. In the end his head had fallen to the point where it was level with his chest, straining the fabric of his shirt and making Ester cringe a little because it looked so awfully painful. “No, sir,” came Kitty’s tiny voice, pained and pathetic.

“And yet, here you are, doing just that. Have you no shame as human? Or have I been misled to believe that your kind has a spine?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you truly so naive as to believe that—” Something caught up with Mr Judge’s brain because he went dead silent without any warning and started staring ahead almost like he didn’t know who he was anymore. Shaking returned to his limbs and she could count the drops of sweat as they began to form on his forehead—one, two, three… “Are—are you…” Mr Judge swallowed hard. She’d never seen him like this before and it was starting to scare her a little. But soon the hardness he’d mustered to pretend with melted out of him and she started to see him in his eyes again. “...Are you sorry for what you did?”

Eyes on the floor, back hunched, Kitty certainly couldn’t have seen the change that she’d just witnessed in Mr Judge. But he still said, “I am.”

“From now on, will you strive to do the right thing, no matter what?”

“I will.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

Mr Judge wouldn’t stop looking at Kitty, even though Kitty’s eyes remained on the floor. He raised a hand and it went right through Kitty’s shoulder. At that, Kitty finally looked up, eyes wide and panicked. “Oh, ah, that’s—”

“Why did you do it?” Mr Judge asked, balling his hands into trembling fists. But his face was clear and stoic. It was a strange mixture of certainty and frustration that Ester couldn’t recall seeing in any of the emotion graphs she’d studied. She didn’t like not knowing what it was he felt. But Kitty was even worse. His face was all open, all honest, yet dumb and stupid all the while. Like an ant witnessing a bar brawl. 

“What?”

Mr Judge took a deep breath and flexed his hands, opening them, closing them, all according to some unsaid, unknown ritual. For a moment, only one, she felt certain that Mr Judge was about to attack Kitty. He was about to roll up his arms and fly across the room and then Kitty would go on the floor and there’d be a great big tussle that no one could break up. It was a terrifying thought, because she didn’t know how she’d handle it. So when Mr Judge raised his index finger and pointed it to Kitty’s chest, she felt a jolt of electric fright shoot through her, which soon melted into simple confusion when nothing else happened.

Kitty had the opposite reaction. He was confused at first, but then his whole face morphed into textbook panic. “Wait,” he said, weakly. “Wait, no, you don’t—”

“That brand,” Mr Judge said, “was given to you for a reason. I was there. I remember it well. Do you?”

Kitty’s jaw began working robotically, like a run-down automaton designed to look as though it’s eating, but with nothing left to eat. “Don’t,” he said, and his eyes flashed to Ester, who met them unwillingly only to find a look of pathetic kindness shining in them, brighter than any love. “Don’t do this.”

Mr Judge followed Kitty’s gaze over to Ester. “She knows,” he said, “but she doesn’t understand.” He returned his full, undivided attention back to Kitty. Except that there was something hollow in his voice now, as though speaking off-script. “Tell me. Why did you do it?”

“I said it at the trial, didn’t I?”

“No. You lied at the trial. Which means you committed perjury.”

“That’s stupid. What’s a count of perjury going to add? I was going to get executed anyway. With what I did, intentions don’t matter. Aren’t you supposed to be a judge? You should know better than anyone that intentions stop mattering by the point it takes a whole room full of judges to sort everything out.”

At this, Ester felt the need to pipe in, saying, “If you were going to get executed anyways, why lie?” 

Kitty’s jaws clamped together with an audible clack. “That isn’t…”

Across from both her and Kitty, the little goblin, Lett, watched them with innocent attention.

“All I want to know,” Mr Judge said, “is whether or not I should condemn you as a crazy insane human who wants mayhem and death. I’m not a fool, Fennrick. Had that truly been the case in the full legal power it holds, this town would be aflame. You would not have risked discovery by a judge if you did not value the life of this child beside me. What am I to trust, then? Are you a paradox or a man?”

Nobody said anything. After ten seconds had passed, Ester would have done anything to break it, even if by force. But she couldn’t. Only one man could undo the curse that had come upon them, and he was busy inspecting the make and weave of the carpet. Twenty seconds. Mr Judge was beginning to lose patience. Thirty, and—

“...A man,” Kitty whispered. “I’m a man.”

“Tell me, then,” Mr Judge said. “Why did you do it?”

“I thought—” And here Kitty’s voice raised itself, only to be filled with a great sob, splashing down into his chest with a whimper, and even though Ester was young, she could tell that he was young, too. For all his years, he was young. “I thought,” he said, again, this time trying, really trying to make it work, to make his voice function like it was supposed to, “that I was doing the right thing.” The words came out of him like a big sigh that seemed to empty his lungs entirely. Tears swam in his eyes but refused to fall even though he seemed so sad and confused and lost in the great oddness of the world and everything it contained. “That’s it. All of it, because I thought it was right. In hindsight it was so, so stupid, but it really felt like it at the time. That’s my crime, in the end: foolishness. A crime I’m bound to repeat, of course.”

“I see,” Mr Judge said.

“I’m wicked,” Kitty said, but she could tell he didn’t really think so. “I’ve surrounded myself with people who also thought they did the right thing and ended up hurting people.”

Ester felt so bad about how pitiful he was that she said, hoping to be nice, “That’s life.”

“It’s death, too,” Kitty hissed. “Everyone dies for stupid reasons. That’s what they never tell you.” Sneering, trying to look scary but failing because even now she could tell that he was being kind (so, so kind) he turned to Mr Judge, upper lip furled like a growling dog to show his fangs. To him, he said, “Your death can be extra stupid. I’ve got a million tricks for making people die in stupid ways.”