Dexter at Dawn
Chapter 13
by Technomad
The first day of Rita's trial in Charleston was coming up soon. I got permission from my employers to attend, and permission from her school to let Arya come along. Much to my surprise, Deb also volunteered to accompany us. "I've seen a lot of these," she explained. "If the prosecution makes a mistake, I may be able to point it out to the defense. And I don't want you and Arya to be up there all alone." Her superiors were quite willing to give her a few days' leave, and even paid her for the time.
Although, as a monster, I don't have normal feelings, I was very touched by this. Sometimes Deb irritates me, and I know she's not comfortable with what I am at all, but she and I have always had each other's backs. I'd throw myself in front of a bullet aimed at her, and I know she'd do as much for me. My co-workers were very supportive, even offering to take Arya in if needful, but Deb was my sister.
In Charleston, Arya roomed with Deb, and as usual, I slept alone in my own room. We had a day or so before the trial, so Arya and I took Deb on a quick tour around town. Deb turned out to be surprisingly knowledgable about the history. "Blackbeard blockaded Charleston in the early 1700s, back when it was called 'Charles' Town,'" she told us. "Among other things, he wanted medicine for some of his men." She gave me a grin. "They had 'Cupid's Measles,' and he wanted mercury to treat it."
"What is a 'Blackbeard?' What are 'Cupid's Measles?'" asked Arya. "A girl does not understand what you are talking about."
Deb smiled at Arya. "Sometimes I do forget about how far from here you came from," she said. "You've fit in so well, you could fool a lot of people into thinking you're native-born." At Arya's slightly exasperated look, she explained: "Blackbeard was a pirate, about three hundred or so years ago. He operated mostly along the coast here, although he was sometimes found farther south. He was a big, scary man and wore a huge black beard. Back then, almost all men were clean-shaven like Dex here is, so his beard made him even scarier."
"He sounds like he would fit in in a girl's old home," Arya said. "What is 'Cupid's Measles?' A girl does not know what that means."
"'Cupid's Measles,' Arya, is a slang term for several diseases a man or woman can get by having sex with an infected person," I said. "You'll be covering this in your health class, if you haven't already."
"Ah! You mean gonorrhea and syphilis!" Arya nodded. "Yes. The teacher was very explicit about how horrible they are. A girl thinks she was trying to scare a girl and a girl's classmates off having sex at all. Not that a girl had any plans along that line, at least till she is older," she hastened to assure us.
"Excellent idea," Deb said. I nodded. While I trusted Arya, and knew she was far more mature than one would think, she was still very young to be doing any such things.
We walked along the harbor, and Deb pointed out to Fort Sumter. "That was where the Civil War began, Arya," she said. I smiled to myself. I hadn't thought that Deb had such a streak of "teacher" in her makeup, and I wondered whether, if she had been prevented from going into police work, she might have gone into education instead. She seemed to enjoy mentoring Astor, and now here she was, happily improving Arya's education. For her part, Arya was absorbing everything Deb said with her usual solemn intensity.
"A girl has read about that," Arya said. "A girl thinks the Civil War was bad, but not as bad as the war that engulfed the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, where she comes from."
"How so?" Deb was curious. Arya had told me a bit about the chaos that had apparently taken over her homeland, but I wanted to know more, too."
"This Civil War was only between two sides. The war that took a girl's family and home from her had several sides. Besides the King at Kings Landing..." a scowl crossed her face; she was thinking of the spoiled, murderous brat she had described... "there were at least three, and maybe four, other sides. A girl's brother led one of those sides, two of them were led by brothers of the late king who disputed the legitimacy of the King at Kings Landing, and then you had the Ironborn."
"The Ironborn?"
"The Ironborn are the people of the Iron Isles, off the west coast of Westeros. They were once pirates and marauders, and saw the opportunity to re-establish themselves. They took a girl's home...Winterfell Castle...and would have killed a girl's younger brothers. A girl's brothers escaped them, but others were not so lucky."
"Sounds like an awful mess," Deb said. I had to agree with her. Arya had opened up to me on occasion, when it was just the two of us. What she described reminded me of episodes like the Thirty Years' War in Europe, or the war between Stephen and Matilda in England. I'd studied those in European history electives I took at college, to round out my degree.
"Here in the East, the Civil War was fairly clear-cut. Farther West, though, things were a lot hairier. The farther West you got, the worse it was, Arya. Not as bad as you describe, but bad enough." Deb's not much of a history buff herself, but quite a few police are, and she'd listened to enough of their talk among themselves to know what she was talking about.
As it happened, they were selling tickets to a ferry to go out and tour the fort. We all got tickets, and spent several happy hours roaming over the fortifications, listening to tour guides explaining everything that had happened there. By the time we were done, it was time for dinner, and one big barbeque meal later, we were ready for bed. Rita's trial started the next day.
We got to the courtroom in plenty of time to get some good seats. To most people, this was a routine matter. Other than some reporters, the only other spectators were some people I figured were inveterate courthouse hang-arounds, who got into every trial. I'd seen them in Miami, at times when I'd been called in to testify about blood spatter patterns in murder cases.
Rita was led in. She was wearing business attire and had apparently had her hair done. She saw Deb, Arya and me and gave us a smile as she was led to the defendant's table. Ms. Taliaferro was with her, and smiled at us too. I hoped it was a good sign.
A bailiff intoned: "Oyez, oyez, oyez! All rise for the Honorable Ronald Hamilton!" Obediently, we all got to our feet as Judge Hamilton came in from his chambers. Judge Hamilton looked spruce and tidy, and still looked awfully young for his job. I wondered how he'd got it. In some places, judges are elected officials, while in others they're appointed.
Judge Hamilton tapped his gavel on his bench. "Be seated," he commanded, and we all took our seats. Arya sent me a questioning look, and I gestured to her for silence. Her piping up at the wrong time could cause all sorts of trouble.
"The case before the court is South Carolina vs. Rita Ann Brandon Bennett Morgan. The charge is possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute." Judge Hamilton looked at Rita. "How do you plead?"
Rita stood up. I could see that she was frightened, but she was hiding it well. I was very proud of her as she said, in a clear, steady voice: "Not guilty."
"The defense has requested a jury trial."
"That's unusual," Deb whispered to me. "Most trials these days are settled by a plea bargain."
"What is a 'plea bargain,' Deborah?" asked Arya, in a very soft voice. "A girl does not know what that means."
"A 'plea bargain,' Arya, is when a defendant agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge, in return for a lighter sentence than would be otherwise imposed. Even many innocent defendants do that, because the practice in the courts is to come down much harder on people who plead innocent or ask for jury trials and are convicted."
Arya wasn't very expressive as a rule. She was almost as impassive as Astor or Cody were. But I had learned to read her expressions and body language in the time I had known her. This little bit of knowledge had infuriated her more than I had ever seen. Her Dark Passenger was staring out of her eyes, and if I had not known that I was not the target, I'd have been frightened of her for the first time ever.
In a low, intense voice, Arya said: "The more a girl hears about this place, the more she feels right at home. This business of coming down harder on defendants who dare to plead innocent is something that King Joffrey would have loved!" Just then, Judge Hamilton tapped his gavel warningly and gave us a dirty look, and we shut up. But I knew that Arya hated King Joffrey with all her heart, and for her to compare anything to something he would have liked was proof of pure hatred.
The prosecuting attorney got up and began his case. He told about how the police had been tipped off that a shipment of methamphetamine had been brought into the city, and that it was in a car that had been described very exactly. The make, the color, the license plate number...they were exactly what Rita had been driving.
Ms. Taliaferro rose to object. She pointed out that the car had been a rental, and that Rita had not had it for long when the police arrested her. She asked that this be suppressed, and that the jury be directed to ignore it.
"Overruled, Ms. Taliaferro," Judge Hamilton said, with a tap of his gavel. "The reasons the police had to suspect Ms. Morgan of possession are germane to the case."
It went on like this for some time. The prosecution informed the court that they had witnesses, and affadavits, that put Rita right into the middle of a large methamphetamine ring. "With the court's permission, I shall submit my list of witnesses, and we will call them tomorrow."
"Very well. Unless there are objections, we shall suspend this hearing until tomorrow." The bailiff told us to rise, and as we stood up, Judge Hamilton disappeared into his chambers.
When we were back on the street, I could see that Arya was utterly furious. "This sort of thing makes a girl wish she could deal with those people the way a girl dealt with the Freys who killed her family," she said, her voice low and intense. Deb and I both looked at her, then at each other.
"You never mentioned just what happened to those people, Arya," Deb said.
"A girl will tell you, but a girl will tell you when we are no longer going to be overheard. A girl has learned that people here tend to be upset by these things." Suddenly her expression changed. Instead of a fellow killer, she looked like the young girl she was. "In the meantime, a girl is quite hungry. Could a girl ask that we find a nice place to eat?"
Reminded, I suddenly realized that I was hungry, and I could tell that Deb was ready to eat, too. "What do you think, Deb? Do you think barbeque sounds good?"
Deb's eyes lit right up. "Barbeque sounds like a wonderful idea, Dex. It's a specialty around here, or so the children have told me."
By now, Arya and I knew where some very good places were, and we were soon seated at a table, tucking into greasy, spicy deliciousness. Deb loved barbeque just as much as Arya and I (and Astor and Cody, but they were not present) did, and for a while, all we spoke about was things like "Pass the salt."
By the time we were done eating, it was getting on toward evening, and the sky looked threatening, like it was going to rain. "Let's head back to the motel, Arya, Dex," said Deb. "I want to hear this story you were going to tell us, Arya."
When we were safely ensconced in my motel room, with cold drinks to hand, Deb and I looked expectantly at Arya. "Okay, Arya. The lodge is tyled, there's nobody here but us. Tell us your story."
Arya took a pull at her Coke, leaned back in her chair, and began: "After many adventures, a girl finally got a chance to get back at the Freys for their ambush of a girl's family. By that time, that ambush was known as "the Red Wedding," and the Freys were in very bad odor with nearly everybody. But there were a lot of them, and they still held the Twins." She looked abstracted for a second, lost in memories. "A girl made her way to the Twins and took on the persona of a serving girl. Like other castles, the Twins had many of those, and nobody particularly noticed one more. Being able to take on a different face was a great aid."
"What do you mean?" asked Deb. Arya gave her a gamine grin for a second, then she turned away for a second. When she turned back, she looked completely different. Deb gasped, all but jumping back in shock. I had seen her doing this before, so I wasn't as shocked, but it was still unsettling.
"My God! How do you do that?" Deb finally managed to stammer. "That should be impossible!"
"A girl learned how to do this, and much else, at the House of Black and White, where she was trained by the servants of the Many-Faced God. This facilitates giving the Many-Faced God's gift to those who need to receive it." Arya turned away again, and when she turned back, she was our familiar Arya Stark again.
"I may regret asking this, Arya...but what is the 'gift of the Many-Faced God?" Deb looked at me strangely as I asked that question.
"The 'gift of the Many-Faced God' is death. All are worthy of it eventually, but some become worthy of it before their time would normally come. It is the duty of the Faceless Men to judge such cases when brought to them, and to bring the gift to those who deserve it." Arya looked reminiscent again. "The Faceless Men are the servants of the Many-Faced God. They taught a girl what they know. A girl thinks they did so because they knew a girl had debts to pay in Westeros. The Many-Faced God's temple is not in Westeros, but in the Free City of Braavos, across the Narrow Seas."
Being what I am, I have to admit that this philosophy appealed to me strongly. If I had been in her world, instead of she being in mine, I might have followed in Arya's footsteps and sought to be trained at that temple. I could see all sorts of useful purposes for the ability to change my face at will.
"To return to a girl's main story, though," Arya went on, "a girl was soon accepted as a servant, and got her chance at two of Lord Walder Frey's sons. Both had been implicated in the deaths of a girl's mother and brother, and the betrayal and murder of a girl's family and friends, so a girl had no compunction about what she did."
"What did you do, Arya?"
"A girl ambushed both of them in a lonely part of the castle, killed them, and cut them up enough to make a large meat pie with their flesh. Then a girl arranged to serve that pie to Lord Walder Frey himself, and when he asked where his 'idiot sons' were, a girl explained that they were present...in the pie. Then a girl revealed her true identity and told Lord Walder who she is. A girl said that the last thing that Lord Walder would see in life was a Stark smiling as she cut his throat. Just as Lord Walder had done to a girl's mother as she begged for the life of her son in vain."
Deb and I exchanged glances. While this was rather extreme, we had to allow that it was not unjust. We had both been very shocked when Arya told us of her family's betrayal and murder, and in a lawless medieval hellhole such as Westeros seemed to be, her vengeance was not out of place. I had heard of worse atrocities taking place in our history.
"But a girl's work was not yet done," Arya went on, as matter-of-factly as if she were telling us of her day at school. "There were still many Freys who had had a hand in the Red Wedding, and all of them needed to be repaid so that a girl's mother and brother could rest easy. So a girl took Walder Frey's face, and as Walder Frey, summoned them all to a great feast in the Great Hall of the Twins."
"How could you stab all of them there?" asked Deb. "I know, you looked like their patriarch, but having him going around stabbing people would have attracted attention."
"A girl stabbed nobody," Arya said, giving Deb a tolerant look, suitable for a promising student who had asked an unexpectedly stupid question. "What a girl did was to poison their wine with a poison called the Strangler. It closes off the throat and windpipe, and the victim suffocates and chokes to death."
Deb and I both stared at Arya. "How many of them did you do this to?" I finally managed to ask.
Arya shrugged her shoulders, pouring herself another glass of Coke. "About thirty or so. Oh, do not worry..." she gave us another of her mischievous smiles, as though she were recounting a particularly funny prank..."a girl made sure that Lord Walder's wife, and the servants, did not partake of the poisoned wine. They had no voice nor hand in the Red Wedding, and the Many-Faced God does not smile on indiscriminate murder."
For a few seconds, Deb and I sat there in silence. The Dark Passenger was as awed as we were, and I was wrapping my mind around the idea that the girl I had rescued was far more lethal, in some ways, than I had ever been. Dexter the Deadly does not normally allow that anybody is better at my activities of the night, but even I had to admit that Arya outclassed me easily.
Arya could see that we were pretty well struck speechless. She got up and took our hands. "Do not fear," she assured us. "You, and Rita, and Cody and Astor, have shown a girl nothing but kindness and goodness since she got here. A girl would never, ever hurt you, or allow you to come to harm. This, a girl swears, by the Old Gods, the Seven that are worshipped in the South, and the Many-Faced God." I felt that she was sincere, and relaxed a little. Deb also looked relieved.