Thinly veiled mechanical exposition Pt 1

===81 Spring 1382==========

“Victim’s body can’t be identified in the first twenty-four hours and description matches no missing persons alerts,” Curry read aloud from the study sheet he was using to quiz me on watch guard recall policies, swinging one leg idly off the side of the bed I wasn’t pacing back and forth in front of.

“Sorry, was this one foul play, or misadventure?”

“Foul play. The clue is the word victim. All the exam scenarios for misadventure use more neutral language or say something like the decedent.” He reached into the waxed paper shortbread packet sitting on my bed, withdrew one of the biscuits, and bit into it. I wanted to tell him not to get crumbs on my bed, but since he was doing me a favor, decided to keep my mouth shut. “And I won’t leave crumbs,” he added.

“I didn’t say anything!” I protested.

“I saw you thinking it. Foul play.”

“If they can’t identify the victim, the Rooks are supposed to… attempt a provisional recall ritual to try and identify the person. So they can look up whether there's a DNR order on file.”

“Hmm,” Curry said, in a way that meant I hadn’t quite given him what he wanted, but he went on anyway. “In what circumstances would recall not be attempted for this scenario?”

“Um, if the body is too badly damaged to be viable?”

“Or?” he prompted.

“Or if… it’s too old.”

“More specifically?” he asked, through a mouthful of shortbread.

“If there’s reasonable cause to think the person died more than nine days ago?”

“Seven days,” he corrected me. “Eight days is the maximum recommended delay for a recall rite generally, and Watch Guard policy says we’ll wait up to six days for an unidentified person, to give a bit of buffer respecting that window.”

“Fuck,” I complained. “Why can't I remember that? I’m so fucked.”

“No you’re not,” he said. “Just remember, at first you couldn’t hang on to how long it takes the recall clock to run out, because you didn’t like it when I eight shortbread on your bed. Shortbread is two crumbly for eating in bed. Eight less two is how six you are right now of these dumb homonym puns.”

This made me laugh despite my anxiety about tomorrow’s examination.

“Use that,” he urged me. “I’m serious. It’s so stupid you can’t help remember it. Magnus ate shortbread on my bed. Eight days. Two crumbly. Six of my jokes.”

I made a face, because I was in truth a bit six of the gag. “Fine, ask me again in half an hour and we’ll see. Give me the next one?”

“Let’s finish out this one. What’s the significance of the six days to this scenario?”

“I don’t know!”

Curry decided to let the number-of-days thing go. “All right. They perform provisional recall and it’s successful, permitting identification. Victim has Do-Not-Recall order on file. What are the legal implications?”

“The release ritual has to be administered within six hours.”

“Good. Unless?”

“Uh.” I paused to think. “Unless a city magistrate issues a special edict under the public weal exception, and a priest of Rava ratifies the order.”

“Right. See? You’ll get there,” Curry said, taking another bite of shortbread with exaggerated care not to get crumbs all over my bed. “Remind me, how many days before recall is off the table?” he asked, flashing me a broad grin before starting to chew.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Six. To allow for the eight days.”

“Yup,” he said around his mouthful of shortbread. “Same scenario, provisional recall is successful but the priest can’t get any information good enough to identify them. What then?”

“Proceed with full recall.”

“Almost.”

“Proceed with full recall but pause the ritual if before completion the person can be identified enough to look up whether an order exists.”

“Not quite…”

I shook my head.

“Proceed with full recall—that part’s right. They don’t interrupt the rites, though—they send a courier and continue with the ritual. They only stop if the courier returns with news of a positive order.”

“Why are they testing this shit by oral examination?” I burst out. “I know I know this stuff—only I have to have a pencil and paper to get it straight enough in my head to picture the whole chart from the text. I just can’t do it out loud like this!”

“They know it’s harder by oral exam,” Curry said patiently. “That’s why stuff like remembering the six days precisely isn’t going to be as important. They want to see that you grasp the substance of the reasoning behind when people get brought back and when they don’t. And you do grasp it.”

“Not that this shines through with all the wrong shit that comes out of my mouth!”

“Should we take a break?” he suggested.

“No! I have to at least get through the sheet again,” I pleaded.

Two seasons ago, I had found this subject extremely interesting, and now I was tired unto **** of it. At the academy no one had ever gotten into such specific semantics as to how judgments about recall were made, and I had never really considered the legal implications of recall decision-making. They had mostly left it at telling us that **** was a serious charge whether the victim stayed dead or not, since the intent was the same either way, such that the main difference between **** in the temporary versus the permanent degree was in the sentencing and eventual eligibility for release.

“All right,” Curry agreed. “Let’s pull back and just talk about the concepts. It’ll prove to you that you do get this stuff even if you’re panicking over the scenario problems.”

“Of course I’m panicking over the scenario problems—I’m terrible at them!”

“All the same,” he said calmly. “Just explain aloud to me the broad rules of thumb for recall decisions, before any of these competing complicating factors come into it.”

I took a long breath in and tried to compose my thoughts. “If it’s an undisputed **** from natural causes and the **** guards don’t have to attend the scene, then the city doesn’t enter into things. It’s between the family and the Rooks. Orders filed with the temple by the decedent take precedence, but if there aren’t any orders then the family decides. They either let them go, or they can pay the recall deposit and request the rites as long as there aren’t any other barriers to recall like elapsed time or the body being too badly damaged. But if the person had a legally executed DNR order on file, they aren’t to be recalled and the family’s wishes don’t come into it. If there’s an Always-Recall order on file, with the deposit at least half paid, they perform the recall.”

“Good. If the recall isn’t successful, how much of the deposit gets returned to the family?”

“Half in most cases,” I said.

“Any exceptions to that?”

I gave it a moment to think. “If it comes out that the family was aware of some impediment or potential contraindication to the recall and didn’t disclose it to the Rooks during the pre-recall interview, the temple might keep a quarter of the deposit. If this results in any danger to their priest then the deposit is forfeit and there might be perjury charges against the family if it turns out any attestations were made in bad faith.”

“See? You know this, Fuzzy. And you’re clever enough to learn how to compensate for oral exams not being your strongest suit academically.” Curry reached into the packet again and tossed me a piece of shortbread.

“I like how these are shaped like little Linterland terriers,” I said, before biting the biscuit-dog’s head off. “Where’d you get them?” I asked with my mouth half full.

“Yelena’s.”

“Really? I thought they only did dumplings.”

“They bought the bakery next door. Since you like them too I’ll be sure to get them again.” Curry crammed another biscuit in his mouth, and then once we were both done chewing said, “You’ve just shown you know what usually happens when whoever finds a body doesn’t believe it to be a suspicious **** and the coroner doesn’t find any reason to dispute that. So what happens if the **** guards do get called?”

I closed my eyes to think, holding my hand out for another terrier. The paper crinkled as he got into it, then set the biscuit in my palm. I opened my eyes again, nibbled at the dog’s pointed little ears, and got my thoughts organized. “Well. When the **** guards turn up they might determine the person who called it in was mistaken. They just got scared because a body is upsetting. So if they rule non-suspicious then it’s just the same as the previous whole thing with more steps at the start of it.”

“Good.”

“If they aren’t sure yet whether it was a non-criminal accidental **** or foul play, then the default is to treat a **** as suspicious until it’s determined otherwise. And the default for suspicious **** is to recall if possible. But that’s more complicated, so I’ll do non-suspicious first.”

Curry nodded, and I stopped to take a drink from the water tumbler sitting on my bed stand.

“Non-suspicious is mostly natural causes, or misadventure by the decedent. Same rules apply generally, unless the **** guards think there’s reason to believe the **** was a result of some third party’s negligence. So there might be charges brought, even if they aren’t **** charges, or a suit of some kind from the city.”

“Give some examples of those?”

“Like if somebody gets drunk and runs somebody over with a cart. Or even, if they aren’t drunk or anything, but they just aren’t taking a reasonable standard of caution.”

“What defines a reasonable standard of caution?”

“The context. Like, at night when it’s quiet and a cart driver doesn’t ordinarily expect somebody to be in the street, they might not be faulted under the reasonable standard. But if the exact same thing happened at mid-day on a busy street, it might be negligence.”

“Good. Penalties for both types of charges if they stick?”

“For sure they’ll have to pay for the person’s recall either way. The drunk cart driver might spend some time in the citadel dungeons if the magistrate has concerns they represent a danger to the public. Mostly it’s based on whether the magistrate or the jury think there was…” I could not think of what this was called, even though I could picture the page from the handbook of city statutes where it was explained. “… gross or deliberate carelessness, basically.”

“Can you remember the legal term for that?”

I shook my head.

“It’s a kind of intent?” he prompted.

It still took me a moment to think of it. “Indifferent intent.”

“Well done.” Curry rewarded me with a smile that did a surprisingly apt job of actually not making me feel like a dull child being rewarded for her notably remedial school work. “Almost done. Keep going?”

I nodded. “Same guidelines apply as before, except that if a party is at fault, they might have to be the ones to pay the temple.”

“Does fee-return apply in fault cases?”

I shook my head. “Any return-subject deposit amount in cases like that is split between the city and the temple.”

He nodded. “That about covers negligent deaths. Let’s move to foul play.”