So I must sign each and every one."
68 "Don't you read them?" asked the boy.
69 "I read every one," answered Gray Boar, "sort out any I question,
then sign those I do not. See? Each one has an appeal with
it, from the person's Law Speaker. These two here I question, and will
investigate further, before I make my decision. These, however, there
is little doubt of the person's guilt. There's eight today, some days
there's only two or three."
70 "What did they do?" asked the boy as his father finished signing the
papers. Gray Boar picked them up. "This one killed his sister to get her inheritance," he
explained, "this one sank a boat to get the insurance, and two people
drowned. These two were brothers and were selling drugs, but would not
confess. This woman drowned her baby, this man killed his neighbor
because he wanted his mate."
71 "What about these two," he asked , "the two you kept out?"
72 "This man killed his son, beat him to death with a brick in the
middle of the street. But I think he may have been justified. He found
his son selling drugs to children in a schoolyard, and the boy laughed
at him and called him a fool, told him that he wasn't going to be poor
all his life, but was going to be rich any way he could. It was too
much for the man to bear. His family had been poor, but had always been
honorable.
73 I may reduce his sentence to five or ten years in Punishment. The
man should have gone to the Guardian so his son's accomplices could
have been found. Otherwise than that, I don't think he's guilty.
74 This boy killed his father, but his father constantly beat his
mother and sisters, and had, on more than one occasion, known both the
daughters and, the son. The local Guardian was a friend of
the father, and refused to believe the children's complaints when they