Editing Bleeding Out (Warhammer High) (section)

===Confession of Guilt===

Grant finished his checklist, exhaustion pulling at his eyes.  His shift was nearly over, and he was ready to go home.  The last (and in fact only) patient on the floor was Morticia, and after the confrontation between him and her father the shift before, he was in little mood for any distractions.  Opening her door, he noted with relief that she was feeling well.  She was busily reading a holomag when he walked in, and immediately looked up and smiled as he walked in.  “Hi, Grant.  Sorry my father put the fear in you, before.”

“I understand his concerns, Morticia, fear not,” Grant said.  “Trust me, he wasn’t the first jealous parent I’ve had to deal with.”

Morticia’s eyes sparkled with some hidden mischief, which she kept to herself.  “Really.  Well, I may be having another guest later tonight, sorry.”

“That’ll be somewhat difficult, since the hospital’s now closed,” Grant said.  He unhooked the last IV bag on the tree and placed it on his cart, completing his tasks.

“That didn’t stop him, I see,” Morticia said happily, gesturing over Grant’s shoulder.  He glanced over to the waiting room, where a group of three men were discussing something with the Death Guard serf.

“I’m done, now, actually, so I’ll leave you to it,” Grant said, wheeling the cart out.  “See you tonight.”

“See you then,” she said, putting the holomag down and feeling a tremor of nerves race through her stomach.

Grant wheeled the cart past the cluster of men in the middle of the room, noting that they stopped their discussion as he went by.  One rather gaunt man stopped him with a question.  “Nurse, is she comfortable enough to speak?”

“She should be, sir, but she’s quite tired,” Grant said, wondering which branch of the Royal Family this one represented.

“Of course.  I won’t be long, I suspect,” he said, bowing his head for a moment.

“As you will, sir,” Grant said wearily, wheeling the cart to the hallway and starting down towards the elevator.

“That’s the one Lord Mortarion told me to watch, Sire,” the serf told the Emperor and his Companions.  “They’re entirely too close.”

“I’ll see to it,” the Emperor promised, letting his sorcerous disguise dissolve.  In a moment, the aura of power that surrounded him flooded the room, lighting its corners and banishing the shadows from the window.  His true appearance restored, the serf began to take a knee, before a gesture stopped him.  “I will be as discreet as possible.  Please do not allow anyone else in behind me.”

“As you so command it, my Liege,” the serf said reverently.  The two Custodes Librarians behind him, sans their more visible accoutrements of office, quietly stood to the sides of the door into the isolation room.

Morticia grinned widely as the Emperor walked into the isolation room.  “Grandpa!  I hoped you would make it!”

“I would have come the instant I heard, had the Arbites not needed me to hold their hands throughout the ordeal,” the Emperor groused.  “I assure you, I would not have delayed otherwise.  Are you feeling better?”

“Yep,” Morticia said, overlooking the weakness of his statement.  “I can walk now, and the IVs come out tonight.”

“Excellent,” the Emperor said, smiling fondly.  He stopped at the foot of the bed, shaking his head at the state of things.  “My dear child.  I can not tell you how much it pains me to see you hurt so gravely.”

“Grandpa, believe me, it’s worse on this end,” she said, smiling gamely.  The Emperor returned the smile despite himself, coming around to half-sit on the edge of the bed.

“I would imagine so.  It’s not a fun experience, is it?”

“You’ve been shot too?” Morticia asked.

The Emperor laughed shortly, rolling his left sleeve back to reveal a circular scar on the back of his hand.  “A few times.”

“Oh wow.”

“Still, my child, I’m built for it, and you aren’t.  Is there anything I can do to help?  Perhaps that nurse Mortarion dislikes so much must be replaced?”

Morticia huffed impatiently.  “Graaaandpa, he’s a great guy, and he’s been completely professional!”

“I should sincerely hope so,” the Emperor said sternly.  “I put him through the most rigorous background check of any position I’ve tried to fill since I appointed the High General of the TPDF.”

“Well, he’s been really nice, and he doesn’t treat me like I’m made of acid-laden ceramic cups, so Dad can deal with it,” Morticia said primly.  The Emperor grinned.

“I’m glad.”  His smile faded as his trans-human eyes followed the grotesque map of scars on her body.  “Morticia, my dear girl, I am sorry.”

“Stop it.  Neither you, nor the Treasury, nor the Custodes, nor the Arbites, nor Dad, nor the army of Praetors and Enforcers that I’ve seen since I got shot are remotely responsible for this.  One asshole with more ideology than common sense did this,” Morticia said firmly.

“He worships me as a god, Morticia,” the Emperor said softly.  “I have never felt such shame.”

Morticia’s eyes softened, and her shoulders slumped.  “Please stop.  Okay?  For me?”

“I will try.”  The Emperor went silent, his eyes inscrutable.  “Do you know why your Uncle Konrad and his ally Ahriman went into the depths of the city last night?”

“Because Uncle Konrad is paranoid?” Morticia sighed.

“Well…that’s true, yes.  But they are convinced that there is more to Keiter’s motivations than ideological blindness,” the Emperor said.

“I don’t know,” Morticia said, shifting her shoulders.  “I think I’d be more comfortable with there being nothing more to it than one psycho.”

The Emperor nodded.  “It would be disingenuous of me to say that I have not harbored similar doubts.  But their investigation, if you can call it that, turned up nothing.  For now, I shall continue to view the Arbites’ theory as accurate.”

Morticia shrugged uncomfortably.  “Your call, Grandpa.  Do I have to attend the trial?”

“Technically, you must do so only if you are healed enough to make it safely.  So…yes, you do,” the Emperor regretfully replied.

“Okay.”  Morticia peered up at him with her odd grey eyes.  “You look like you have something else to say.”

“I do.”  The Emperor, for the first time in a long while, found himself struggling for his words.  After a moment’s internal debate – rather more of a literal concept than it was for most people – he decided the story needed to be told in full.  “Morticia, do you know the true reason I created you and your sisters?”

“The ‘true reason?’” Morticia asked, with the sense of creeping dread that had haunted her lately wending its way back through her stomach.  “Uh…I guess not.  Unless there’s more to you wanting our fathers to have something to come back to?”

“Oh, that was entirely factual, make no mistake of it.”  The Emperor thought back to those chaotic, trying days of ceaseless conflict.  “Your father…all the Primarchs, in fact, whether they saw it or not…were exhausted.  I had driven them and their Legions to conquer as much space as the bounds of the Astronomican allowed.  Millions of planets, well over one point two million stars.  The Imperium was much, much larger than I had originally thought it would be.  Our Alliance with the Eldar helped.  Our brave Houses of the Navigators helped.  But…there were supposed to be twenty one of them.  Twenty one super soldiers, all guiding humanity to its rightful, glorious future.”

“Then my uncles died,” Morticia supplied.

“Yes.  Then your uncles did something so…monumentally stupid, so unforgivably foul, that your uncles Leman and Roboute had to…put paid to them.”  The Emperor closed his eyes in remorse.  “I may never forgive myself for allowing their weakness to persist as long as it did.  But the survivors, those of your uncles who remained, and your father…they had to divide the responsibility of governing the Imperium up amongst themselves.  Had they received the tutelage I had planned for them when I began…it does not matter.  We found ways.”  The Emperor tilted his head back and stared into space.  “We created councils and councilors, and counselors too, and Admirals and Lord Commanders, and we divided up space like a puzzle.  As the Warp Storms receded, more and more worlds came back into the fold.  We conquered them too, and the Legions expanded alongside the Army, and the Navy, and all the branches of my military.”

He looked down at his granddaughter and smiled.  “I knew that even the super men I had created would need a reason to stop fighting some day.  Some…reward.  Some motivation.  Not just to lay down the swords, but to want to never pick them up again.  So I gathered my scientists, a fresh batch this time.  I repaired my long-neglected genelabs on Luna and Terra, and I got to work.  In the interim, I sent my sons to the edges of space, to take and fortify the systems at the outermost reaches of the Astronomican’s light.  I even added more seats to the Choir of the Beacon, at the heart of the Astronomican, so that its range would be increased, beyond its point of diminishing returns.  Until the Imperium was as physically large as it could be.  And while they fought…I worked.”

Morticia shifted on her mattress, a little uncomfortable, but listening enrapt.  The Emperor stood, started pacing.  “My…confidant…Eldrad Ultran, perhaps the one person left in the galaxy at that point whose powers of foresight eclipsed mine, warned me against my initial plan to tap the Webway and turn it into a teleportation network for the Legions.  He saw the device I had reclaimed to serve as its core, and found its flaws.  Instead of relying on it to become a psychic gateway for me, we turned it into the core of the project we dubbed the Carpe Noctum Experiment.”

“That’s High Gothic for Seize the Night, isn’t it?” Morticia asked.

“It is.  Four Eldar Farseers and myself…we journeyed to the very, very edge of the Astronomican, where several Eldar Craftworlds were looking to establish permanent colonies for their people.  There, we interred the Golden Orb, the device that would have powered my Webway portal, and used it to create a psychic bridge between the core of the resurgent Eldar Empire and Terra, such that Webway or no, all travel on that pathway would be orders of magnitude faster.”

“Wow.  What went wrong?” Morticia asked, wide-eyed.

The Emperor blinked, his speech interrupted.  “Nothing.  Nothing went wrong, it’s there now, still fully operational.”

Morticia winced in chagrin.  “Oh.  I thought you were building up to something.”

“I am,” the Emperor said with a grin.  He sat back down, looked his granddaughter in the eye, and continued.  “You see, the Primarchs thought that that signaled the end of the Crusade.  It wasn’t, of course.  I had much more in mind.  As soon as the bridge was declared safe, I returned to Terra, and I instructed my scientists to begin work on…well, you.  I sent the Primarchs to their Legionary worlds, and to recruit their numbers back up to full.  When you, and the other Royal daughters were completed, I sent word for your fathers to come to Terra, and receive their reward for completing the work I had set out for them.”

“‘Reward,’” Morticia echoed, stone-faced.

“Well, not in so many words.  But I will not deny that I was proud of them.”  The Emperor’s face lifted slightly at the memory.  “You can not imagine the glory we felt.  A million star systems, more, united by our force of arms, our technology, our creed, our species.”

“Well, how did the Primarchs take it?” Morticia asked.

The Emperor’s good spirits vanished.  “Well, to be fair, I didn’t really use your life, the lives of your sisters, as collateral.  I can see that you’re thinking along those lines.”

“Kinda hard not to,” Morticia said, distantly offended.

“I see.”  The Emperor sighed heavily.  “Then I will be frank.  When I recalled them and declared, at that private ceremony, that the Crusade was over, several were relieved, even before I said anything else.  They knew.  They’re bright lads, you know.”

“Some more than others, sure,” Morticia joked.  The Emperor smiled, quite involuntarily.

“I would never say that,” he chided gently.  “Anyway.  Your uncle Roboute, for instance, had had enough of killing.  He wanted to govern.  Perturabo…less so, but he did as well.  Rogal, and Fulgrim, and even Lorgar, they wanted to lead people, to be teachers and princes, not just Generals.  Vulkan…he was happy at war.  He found comforts in it.  But had just wed, anticipating my recall, and took to it gladly.  Leman wanted to start a family, too, I think.  So did Corax.  But the other Primarchs…including your father, I am sorry to say…did not.  They wanted to keep fighting.  Forever, if need be.  Or, at least, they could not think of themselves as anything but fighters.”

“Dad didn’t want me?” Morticia asked, stunned.

“Please, never say that.  Not to me, not to him, not to anyone, not even yourself,” the Emperor said, his face darkening.  “I said that I wanted them to start families before I said I had already created them.  Or parts of them.  He had no idea you existed when he said he did not want a family.”

“But…” Morticia said weakly.  The Emperor was devastated, the girl was clearly crestfallen.

“Please, PLEASE, let me finish, Morticia,” he asked, his voice rising.  “Your father…was quiet.  He said little, it was…certain others of your uncles who objected.  I will not say which.  But they did, and they said that they would be horrible parents, and horrible husbands, and so on.  I let them voice their opinions, and I did listen to them.  Then, those who had said nothing were asked their opinions.”  The Emperor lifted his hand, palm open.  “When Horus asked Magnus what he thought of fatherhood, he surprised us all.  He said he couldn’t wait.  Vulkan and Lorgar chimed in.  Lion too.  They had thus far been quiet.”  The Emperor closed his hand, letting a tiny bead of golden light play along it.  “We were all a little stunned.  When asked why, each said the same thing.  They wanted LEGACY.”  The Emperor clenched his fist, extinguishing the light.  His eyes pierced Morticia’s.  She recoiled, surprised by his fervor.

“Your father, he came to think of you not as a burden, to restrain him from doing his role as a leader of the Imperium, but as a model.  He wanted to make the best Imperium he could, for you to live in.  And Vulkan, and Lorgar, and Lion, and all of them, they were told, by me, by their own consciences, by their old cultures, by whatever they listened to, to make the best Imperium to live in.”

He stood, his eyes ablaze.  “I had instructed them, Morticia, and carefully too, to create the best Imperium in which the species could survive.  Now, I wanted it to THRIVE!  I wanted the leaders of the Imperium to find their company, of noble wives and brilliant, beautiful daughters, and to find in you contentment.  I made them ambitious, Morticia, so ambitious, because they had to be.  Because I wanted them to be driven by a desire to conquer.  But now there were no conquests left.  Not unless I wanted to rip open the Warp or the Webway and send them in after the monsters that reside therein, which I will never do.  I wanted their instincts to be honed and focused, on you, on making the best worlds they could build.”

“And…how is that different from what I had already been told?” Morticia asked, resentment fading into genuine confusion.  Aside from the thing about her uncles taking it poorly, it wasn’t anything she had not already known.

The Emperor sank back down into the bedside, his eyes losing their fire.  “Because, Morticia, there is more.  When I created the Primarchs, I made…mistakes.  I committed errors.  I built flaws.  You know them, they know them, I shall not list them here.  But they are there.”  He took up her hand, squeezing her cold flesh in his own hand.  “Morticia…when I created the Primarchs, and the Custodes, and the Legions…the very first geneseed was contaminated.  Those flaws are not supposed to be there.  And three thousand, six hundred years is a very, very long time.  The end of the Crusade came upon us slowly, but come it did.  I no longer had the luxury of rooting out old errors.  When I created you, and your dear sisters…I simply reused a modified version of the original geneseed, methods and all.”  He stood, still holding her hand, and crouched by the bedside, bringing his eyes down to hers.  Her face was locked in a mask of complete astonishment.

“Morticia, my dear girl…I must ask your forgiveness for three things here.”  He closed his eyes, finding his words.  “The first mistake…is not preventing the sort of ideologues that spawn vermin like Keiter from existing.  I have the power, you know.  If I felt the need, I could send an army without limit into the hives, scour them down to metal and stone, and start over.  Erase every single mention of me as anything other than a politician.  You know why I do not.  Beyond common human decency, I know what that could trigger.  I know what I would become.  But I have the power to keep people like Keiter from existing, and I do not use it.  Will you forgive me?”

Morticia stared.  “Forgive you…for what?  Not being a bloodthirsty, tyrannical, despotic, genocidal executioner?  Why would you even ask?  Of course!”

The Emperor nodded once, acknowledging her statement.  “Thank you.  The second thing I have erred in is…more personal.  I viewed your creation as necessary.  I still do.  I do not regret it, and by and large, neither do your uncles.  You know your father doesn’t.  So…the problem of your core geneseed remains.  When I created you, I used geneseed from which the taint had not, COULD not be completely erased.  If I had not, you would not exist as you are, do not mistake it.  If I had used pure geneseed, you would be nothing more or less than a female Custodian.  But you would be whole.  No scarred lungs.  No wings.  No third eyes.  No burning visage and endless flames under the skin.  You would not be cursed with the same mutancy that the contamination forced on your fathers.  So...will you forgive me?”

Morticia leaned back in her bed, a sense of absolutely surreal disconnection filling her.  “Grandpa…I’m no more or less perfect than any other human.  And I think, if you had gotten clones of yourself, you would have resented it later.  Of course I forgive you.”
He nodded again.  Then, he felt his breath catch in his throat a little.  The first two mistakes, he had suspected she would forgive, but…the last was much more personal.

“Morticia…the last mistake is one of which I do not yet think I deserve to be absolved.  When I created your fathers…some of their flaws ran deep.  I do not speak of mutancy, nor madness, nor overambition, nor any other affliction of mind or body.  I speak of something subconscious, something between the soul and the mind.  Flaws of personality, of perception.  They are intrinsic parts of who they are, and I have come to know them better for it.  Some of them overcame their scattered, piecemeal youths and became better people for it.  Others…did not.  I do not hide it, neither do they.  And do not assume that I assign such flaws or lack thereof to any specific Primarch, either, for I’ve known them far longer than you.  But…at some level, Morticia, I allowed my own personal experiences to cloud my judgment.”

“How?” Morticia asked, confused.

“I allowed my expectations, my desires, to alter and distort what I could perceive of their expectations, their desires.  Morticia…the addition of the geneseed in your creation occurred before I spoke to your fathers.  To this day, I do not fully understand my own reasoning.  Perhaps I wanted to ensure that they did not say no.  Perhaps I wanted to make sure the process was well under way before they were committed.  But, Morticia…I think that I also wanted a chance to correct those flaws.  Your sister Kelly is not plagued by uncontrollable psychic torment, your sister Venus is not harmful to the touch…you can breathe without a mask.  But the flaws of the mind, I sought to cure those as well.  Rather than let your fathers choose, rather than let you choose…I chose for you.”

“Is that any different from random genetics playing dice with normal people?  Isn’t that really better?” Morticia asked, that sense of numbness spreading.

“It is not, Morticia.  I saw in you more than a chance to anchor your fathers.  More than a chance to provide them, and indirectly myself, with a legacy.  I saw in you, to some extent…a means of starting over,” the Emperor confessed, regret tightening his throat again.  “I owed your fathers more than seeing them as a failed experiment.  And…I certainly, undeniably, owed you more too.  You should be princesses, Morticia, the Royal Daughters of the species, and the pinnacles of humanity…but my greed, my self-pity, robbed you of that.  Your futures will not only be marred by the flaws your fathers could not escape, but will be restrained by my own inability to let a poor result stand.  I used geneseed I knew to be flawed because I had to know whether I could do better, regarding my ability to guide my offspring to a greater future.”  He closed his eyes, not to stifle tears, but so that he could not see the tears in her own eyes.

“I have regretted that decision since the moment Isis looked at me, at a mere ten months, and spoke her first word.  I missed the childhoods of each and every one of the Primarchs; they were robbed from me by the machinations of a force beyond my control and your reckoning.  But yours…your formative years, the years that imprinted within you the behaviors and personalities that will create your entire lives, they were here, on Terra, within my reach and protection, and even then I did not do enough to ensure that your lives could be safe, could be healthy, could be productive, and most importantly of all, could be filled with the love and the stability that were so uniformly and permanently taken from your fathers.”

He opened his eyes and met his granddaughter’s, and now his tears gathered too.  “…I put the lives of nineteen innocent, eternal children into the hands of men who had told me outright that they could not be entrusted with them.  I forced fatherhood on them as I forced flaws on you, without thinking, without using the one asset I have in greater abundance than any other soul in the entire galaxy save a few: foresight.”  He tightened his grip on his granddaughter’s trembling hand, his vision tracking the exact path the frag had taken through her body, mashing her guts to pulp and pouring forth her blood.  He saw the scars already beginning to form on her lungs, not as a result of the air she breathed, but as a result of the damage to Mortarion that he didn’t – but perhaps could have come to – fix.  “Morticia, every mental and physical and psychological flaw that every single one of your sisters bears is directly, indisputably, my fault.  So…I ask now, completely beyond any hope of finding it…will you forgive me?”

Morticia sobbed, a racking cough seizing her fragile chest.  She clamped her hand her mouth, catching a few drops of blood as they escaped, and wiped her hand on the cloth at the edge of the bed without even thinking consciously.  “Grandpa…please.  Stop.  I can’t blame you for this.  This, this is NOT your fault.”

“It is.  All of it.  If I had waited but a few more years, I could have removed the flaws from the geneseeds I used to make you.  I could have taken your eternal illness.  I could have taken Venus’ fire.  I could have taken Angela’s wings and Omegan’s crippling self-doubt.  But…I did not.  And even if I had, even if their personalities had remained intact and whole after the fact, it would have remained, stark and undeniable: fully one third of your fathers wanted daughters only after I gave you to them.”

“Grandpa…how can you ask me to choose?” Morticia asked, tears soaking her cheeks.  “I can’t!  I can’t choose!  I can’t decide!  What option do I have?  I could have never had a life at all if you hadn’t done it, if I had been a different person!  And how much of who we are…” she paused to arrest the trickle of blood again, “is defined by WHAT we are?!  Do you know that?  I don’t!  Grandpa, please…don’t ask me that…”  She sank back against the pillows, her eyes clouded with anguish.  “Grandpa…stop it.  I forgive you.  How could I not?!”

The Emperor hung his head, letting a tear of his own work its way down his cheek.  “…Again, Morticia…you shame me.  And once more…I am selfish.  Thank you, my dearest child, thank you so much.”

“Grandpa…” she sobbed, squeezing her own hand back against his at last.

For a minute or two, the room was silent, save the sound of her crying, until she was all cried out, and restlessness set in.  The Emperor slowly stood, his bearing and visage regal once more.

“Thank you, Morticia.  I can see by your soul I have burdened you, here, far more than I had any right to.  A task at which I seem remarkably adept.  I can stay longer, and so I shall, because if, bucking the trend, I am to learn from this…I must do so now.”  He sat back down at the side of the bed, earning a smile of weary approval from the grey-eyed girl.  “Morticia, my dear girl…tell me more about your life, and those of your sisters.  I am far too small a part of them, for my liking.”

Morticia settled back against the pillow, thinking.  “Well…I think Venus and Freya are thinking of going to visit Nocturne and Fenris after graduation.  They want to see what their fathers’ homes were like.”

“Do they?  Interesting.  Do they know when they will go?  College commitments seem to have taken them both,” the Emperor noted.

“Well, yeah, but they won’t get another chance for a while, and it’s good timing.  I don’t want to go with them, though, even if I could.  I’m thinking of going on a bit of a vacation of my own, if I can, to see Terra a bit more.  The cities, the hives,” she said, cleaning another ribbon of blood from her mouth.

The Emperor nodded, thinking that over.  “That should prove educational, too, I would hope.”

“I hope so,” she responded, and so it went, for over an hour, before duty called the Emperor back to his role, and sleep called Morticia to rest.  But the Emperor knew, as he walked back to his motorcade, that her forgiveness had been sincere, and for all he had left unsaid as much as he had said aloud.  And that, he supposed, was good enough.




Horus stood at the entrance to his daughter’s room, watching as she deliberately avoided his gaze.  She hadn’t come to greet him when he had returned from work the previous night.  She had avoided him while getting ready for school that morning.  Now, when he had finally cornered her, she had nothing to say.

“Isis.  I want to hear about your little excursion,” he said evenly.

“I nearly got killed by a bunch of genemodded gangers, and it was entirely my own damn fault,” Isis said quietly.  “I marched Julius into a trap and it took the goddamned Night Haunter to save my dumb ass."

Horus raised his eyebrows.  “Well, I’m glad you said it first.”

“I can’t believe it.”  Isis ground her hands into her eyes, muffling a snarl.  “Fuck it.  I was…”

“Isis.  My daughter.  I understand exactly why you did it,” Horus said, standing back in the door a little.  He didn’t want to look too imposing.  “You want there to be something more to this.  Do you understand how things have been complicated by your actions?”

Isis sighed, finally meeting her father’s eyes.  “Yes.”

Horus nodded slowly.  “Good.”  He stood quiet a moment longer, before turning to leave.

“Dad, what about Julius?” Isis asked suddenly.

“What about him?  He fired a Hellpistol in public,” Horus noted.  “Would you have me make an exemption to the law for him?”

Isis clenched her teeth, fighting back her emotions.  “I…I don’t want him to suffer for trying to do the right thing.  He was protecting us from a murder!  He was defending himself and me!”

“Yes, he was.  A situation that should have never arisen, resolved by brute force and intimidation,” Horus said.  His tone never changed.  It was driving Isis crazy.  “He will go to juvenile court and be tried, found not guilty by means of extenuating circumstances, and go about his life with a mark on his record.  A just punishment for his misbehavior.  You should feel fortunate you didn’t fire that bolter you conveniently forgot to ask to borrow.”

Isis’s face twisted, her concern for Julius overriding propriety.  “Dad, please...I don’t want Julius to suffer for my bad idea.”

“Was it your idea?” Horus asked.  “Or did he propose it?”

The question brought Isis up short.  “It…he was…he proposed it,” Isis said.  She buried her face in her hands, utterly ashamed.  “…There was no way this was going to work out well, was there?”

Horus sighed, paternal instinct tugging at his professionalism.  “Isis…I assure you that Julius is going to be found not guilty.”

“But he still has to suffer!  He has to miss the last weeks of school, he has to miss Morticia’s trial…he’s going to turn seventeen in jail, he might be tried as an adult!” Isis cried.

“And if I demand that the Arbites make an exception for him, what does that say?” Horus asked.  “What would you have me do?”

Isis thought desperately, her mind racing.  “Can…can we find an alternative?  Something that doesn’t leave him with a felony arrest on his record?  Community service?  Something?”

Horus stared at his daughter.  “Community service for Willful Assault with a Deadly Weapon?  A fine for Concealment of an Automatic Weapon?”

“Ask the Judge to take pity on him.  Dad…” Isis’s eyes welled up in tears.  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think this wasn’t fair.”

Horus inhaled deeply, let it out in a rush.  “…I will ask the Judge to remove the felony arrest from Julius’ record when he is found not guilty.  That is the extent of it.”

Isis felt a lump of tension in her stomach dissolve.  She rose, walking over to her father, and hugged him, overcome.  “Thank you Dad,” she said faintly.  “It’s the most I can ask, and I won’t forget this.  I’ll do whatever I can to make this up to you.”

“If you mean that, then do me a favor and make it abundantly clear to your friend that my patience has reached its limit,” Horus said, all business again.  “I will never stick my neck out for him again.”

“Don’t worry,” Isis said, humor gamely coloring her words.  “I’m told the Pius family never forgets their friends.”