The Feather of Many Colors

A sage tests a new king's ability to make tough decisions.

"The king before you, King Sargon, the last king before the apocalypse, could be ruthless, though often unknowingly."

"Unknowingly ruthless?" The new king considered this. "I'm not sure I understand."

Ridley, the scribe known as the Great Sage, tilted his head toward the sky, and after a moment said, "I shall give you an example. But only under certain conditions."

"What conditions?"

"I will speak of these events only this once, and only in your presence, and I shall never speak of them again. You will promise to forever hold your peace when this conversation is ended."

The regent saw no issues with the conditions, and so said, "You have my word."

"Very well. Five decades ago, in the middle of the twentieth century, we had within our kingdom a serial killer. He killed both nobility and peasants. The peasant killings would have probably been overlooked, of course, but the killings of the nobility were unacceptable. The victims were primarily young women, as is too often the case. With each body the killer left a beautiful feather of many colors " we never understood why. Which is to say, we knew he wished to claim the killings as his own, but we never learned the meaning of the feather. Perhaps there wasn't one."

"How many killings were there?"

"Forty-three, at the point I entered the picture.  They were gruesome," said the sage, his voice an octave lower. "We had the killer profiled " we are quite proficient at such things, as you can imagine " and our profiling experts were very certain, given what we knew, that the killer would continue killing until he was stopped.  This might have meant dozens more deaths, or even hundreds."

"Did you catch him? Perhaps I'm being presumptuous - was it a man?"

The sage said, "The killer was a man.  We could say that with certainty.  And our kingdom’s forces caught a highly suspect man in the proximity of one of the killings.  The evidence against him was strong but not overwhelming by any measure."

"What happened?"

"The suspect was a noble in another powerful kingdom and his many supporters protested that he must be innocent. He was, they said, a victim of circumstance. It proved to be a very delicate matter, politically.  The debates went on for months, and King Sargon grew restless. "

"Were there other murders while the suspect was held?"

"No. But the accused man's allies said that was because the true killer was wise and wished for the suspect to be found guilty and executed."

"How was the issue resolved, then?"

The sage breathed out and said, "At length, King Sargon summoned me to the Great Hall. He was alone there, except for the accused man, who was chained to column, and gagged. In the middle of the room was a table, upon which sat an hourglass and a small mechanical device I had not seen before.

"The king told me that the device could be used to compare DNA. Some hairs had been found at the sites of several of the murders that must be those of the killer, for the woman were completely unassociated with one another, and the presence of these hairs could not be a coincidence."

The new king said, "But this was fifty years ago. We didn't have tools available for DNA analysis and comparisons back then."

Shaking his head, Ridley said, "The peasants did not, but we, the ancient masters of humanity, did.  Yet the technology was primitive, and so the device could only give us a probability that two DNA samples matched. Even a reading of 100%, which was exceedingly rare, could not be construed to mean 100%.  One had always to keep in mind that the device was imperfect.”

The sage restlessly raked his ancient hands across his knees. "The king told me that the Council of Ten had decided to leave the disposition of the accused in my hands, I being considered the wisest of the sages of all the kingdoms. The king said that my decision was to be final and would be unchallenged. If I were to wrongly convict an innocent man, none would blame me, and if I were to let a killer go free, I would be similarly blameless.

"But with regard to the latter scenario, an odd form of double jeopardy was to be instituted, which was that, even if I found the man innocent, and he was later found to be the killer, he would remain free to ply his hideous trade, unhindered."

The regent held up a hand. "You mean, if you found the man innocent, and he was later proved to be the killer, he was going to be allowed to continue killing, anyway?"

"Exactly. In that way, my finding was to be absolute. If I proclaimed him innocent, he was forever innocent.  And I remind you that our profilers were certain that the killer would continue killing, forever, which meant that if I let the killer go free, I was signing the death warrants of an untold number of individuals."

The king pondered this and asked, "What was the purpose of the hour glass that was on the table?"

"Ah yes, that.  Though called an hourglass, in fact, the sands would run from top to bottom in only ten minutes. I was to make my decision within that ten minutes, because the king was to sign a treaty with the accused killer's kingdom that very day, and that treaty could not be signed until a verdict had been rendered. Despite the protests of his subjects, the suspect's monarch did not really care whether the man were executed or set free - he simply wanted the matter laid to rest.  My king was of the same mind.

"I obediently placed two hairs in the DNA device, one from the man chained to the column and another that was found at the site of one of the murders. Within seconds, a digital meter that was integral to the device came to life. It read, '50%', which was to say, there was a 50% possibility that the two hairs came from the same individual. But that was merely the starting point.

"At this point, the king stepped down from his throne and flipped the hourglass, so that the sands began to run from top to bottom. 'Ten minutes,' he proclaimed. 'I want your answer in ten minutes.' Even as he spoke, the glowing red numbers on the device flickered, and read 60%, and a minute later, 70%, and then a minute later, 79%..."

The Great Sage looked toward a nearby field, where the two queens, Lilian and Fiela, were collecting flowers and placing them in wicker baskets. The women were laughing.

"Soon," said the sage, "so very soon, the sands were almost gone from the top cone. At that point, the device read 92%, but then it dropped, to 91%, and then to 85%, and then 77%."

A very long moment passed between the men. The sage was lost in another world and the new king did not know what to say. A warm wind blew in from the south.

"And then the last grain of sand dropped," said the sage, shrugging. "The king said, 'What is your decision, Great Sage? Is this man innocent, or guilty? Shall we kill him here and now, or set him loose, forever?  If you say nothing, he will be executed.'  So you see, in that way, even no decision was, in fact, a decision. I was in a trap I could not escape. The device read 68% at that moment."

He turned to the new king.  "Tell me, Anax, what would you have done?  What would have been your verdict?"

The new king said, "I could not have reached one.”

“What if the little numbers had displayed 0%?  Or  100%?  Could you have then reached a verdict?”

The king considered this.  “Yes, I think so.  Either would greatly simplify the matter.  But you said the device read 68%”

The sage ignored the comment. “What of 1%, or 99%?  Could you have reached a verdict then?”

The king shrugged. “Yes, though not as easily.”

“And what of 2%, or 98%?”

The king frowned.  “Sage, you are toying with me.  Your intention is evident enough.  You wish to know at what percentage I would condemn a man who might be innocent, or free a man who might be guilty.  But what man could say that with certainty?  I can say that 68% is a very difficult number to work with.”

The other man shook his head.  “But king, you forget that you have no choice but to reach a verdict.  A failure to declare the man innocent is a de facto declaration that he is guilty.  You cannot say ‘this is too difficult and so I choose to abstain.’  At least, I could not.  And I remind you, also, that a failure to condemn the man to death would mean that, if he were guilty, you would be granting him the right to murder for the remainder of his life, unhindered and unprosecuted, and that our profilers were certain that a great many deaths would follow if the killer was not brought to justice.”

The regent did not like the question, nor the pronouncement.  He struggled with both for a long time before saying,  "It does not matter what I might have done.  What matters is what you did."

"Yes, that is what mattered," said the other man, his eyes fixed on some unknown, distant point.

Impatient, the kind said, "And so, sage?  What happened?"

The old man smiled bitterly. "A month after King Sargon summoned me to the Great Hall to decide the matter, the killings began again. The many-colored and beautiful feathers returned.  In time, the crimes numbered in the hundreds.  The brutality was…unspeakable. But eventually the killings did end."

At that moment, they heard a woman’s voice overhead. "There you two are! Fiela and I had thought you'd retired back to the castle." It was Lilian, with Fiela standing behind her, holding the basket of flowers.

"Husband," said Fiela, "the skies are growing dark. A storm is coming. Let us return to our home and seek shelter."

Even as she spoke, the sage began to stand, saying, "I agree. A storm is coming. Let's go inside."

"Were you discussing anything important?" asked Lilian.

"No at all," said Ridley.  "We are done."

Still sitting, the new king said, "But sage, you must tell me-"

"Our conversation is at an end," the ancient man said, looking down at him. "I remind you of your oath."

The regent stared at the man until Lilian stretched out her hand and said, "Come, new king.  I, too, have matters to discuss with you, and need your decision on many things of import."

So the man stood, and the four walked back to the castle known as Steepleguard, and the rain began.

 

Author's Note

Two characters I frequently use in my short stories are the "new king" and the "great sage," which are based on two characters from my first novel. As background, these stories are set in a post-apocalyptic world in which the Nisirtu, a secret society that has controlled man's fate for thousands of years, has purposely destroyed modern civilization. The Nisirtu consists of numerous secret and invisible kingdoms around the globe, and so elected to rebuild civilization using a feudal model. Thus the references to kings, queens, kingdoms, etc., both pre- and post-apocalypse.