(c) Nin Harris 2009

Yildie liked to visit with the rivermaiden and the kitsune, some evenings. There were times when the Caretaker’s morose moods and the continuous battles between the bogles and the domestic djinn in the hallways drove her out of her mind. Evenings like those were made for roaming, if not the vast and disorganized complex that was Domus Exsulis, then the grounds, or even the forests beyond. But her favourite evenings were with the Arbitrator.

She would climb up the narrow, wooden stairs in the South-eastern Wing that lay beyond the hastily constructed enclosure for the Gaernic Exiles. The South-Eastern Wing had been constructed out of wood and was built on thick, sturdy pillars that had been dug deep into the ground, to counter the occasional flooding of the Mishgalaveri river. Here the Arbitrator lived, a quiet, long-jawed man with black-rimmed eyeglasses, short-cropped red hair and an assortment of colorful quills. He also possessed a cellar of the finest wines on the isle. She did not know why he fascinated her, perhaps it had something to do with the daily fights he had with the notions of justice and honor.

“Is there place for justice in a world governed by magic and dreams?”

She asked him this, more than once. He would often laugh at her as they discussed the many ways justice was and was not a part of their world.

“Everyone feels injured by someone at some point.”

Then, she would ask him if he would have acted the same way as the injured parties if he were in their shoes. He would laugh, shrug and say,

“It’s a fucking nuisance to go through the paperwork I throw at them. It’s my way of providing them with a way out, make the process so tedious they change their mind. Because there is just too much to lose when my brand of arbitration doesn’t work for them. I always hope that will stop them from doing it. But no one does. If it were me, I’d give up. But I’m glad they don’t. I’d be out of a job, otherwise!”

And then he’d wink at her and pour her some more wine, and they would talk, deep into the night. And she would try not to think of the things he never talked about, like the fate that waited for the people who failed at getting what they wanted from his arbitration. Like the price extracted from them by the parties accused of various injuries. Or the price set by the Arbitrator himself. Yildie knew these were things that they would eventually talk about, but she liked him far too much right now to want to think about it.

The next morning, she would have to go back to work, more often than not, with a headache and eyes that squinted over with a hangover because she had forgotten to guzzle down enough water. The Caretaker was never happy when he knew she’d spent the night with the Arbitrator. She sometimes wondered if this was why she kept going back to the South-Eastern Wing. But this too, was something she chose not to question too deeply.