The Right to Die | ✓ Amby Winner 2023

25. The Right to Stand

M'yu's knees dissolved and cracked against the metal floor.

"I see the accused recognizes the next witness then?" Xten asked. 

A guard escorted his mother across the court. Her normally frizzy hair was neatly plaited back. Her skirt fell in crisp lines around her ankles. A dab of makeup brightened her red-eyed face. She looked like the snot-nosed woman who ran the glassed-in bakery down from their street. The woman was just as much a Gloamer as the rest of them, but since the Caps graced her door to pay for her bread and humble dresses and plain lipstick, she thought she was a cut above the folks who worked in the fields. His mother wouldn't meet his eye.

"Get up," Aevryn hissed.

"Witness, please state your name," Xten called.

Her hands were clamped so tightly in front of her that her knuckles turned snow-white. Her voice came out with a tremor. "Ele Dess."

"And what is your relation to the boy in front of you?"

"He was one of the boys I raised."

You stand up for the innocent, his uncle had said. He had thought his mother would stand up for him—against the Caps, at least. If not against their neighbors, at least against the Caps. But M'yu wasn't innocent. And M'yu wasn't hers. He was a kid she found in the dumpster. He was a boy she raised. M'yu staggered to his feet. She didn't owe him anything. He wiped back a cold sweat, trying to even his breath.

Whatever he got, he deserved.

"And do you know who killed Vestir M'raci?"

Karsya put a hand on his mother's shoulder, like Karsya was any daughter of hers. Karsya didn't care about anything but herself. His mother trembled. For the first time, she looked up at M'yu.

Her hair used to smell like flour. Her laugh had sounded like the wind rattling the icicles outside their house. She used to tell him fairy tales, stories of boys who rose above and saved their family, their village, their world. She used to pull him into her lap and rest her chin on his head. Someday, you won't be here anymore. The world will find out where you belong, and you won't have to be here anymore.

But maybe it'd been her saving the world all along. She'd rescued him from the trash, and Karsya from the Magnate, and all the rest from the streets. Maybe it was her turn for the world to find out where she belonged. She shouldn't have to scrounge and scrape in the dust to feed half a dozen mouths. He hoped the Caps made her the bakery lady; he hoped the Caps made her better than the bakery lady.

He hoped she got everything she'd ever wanted.

He nodded at her, a subtle, somber twitch of his head. It's okay, Mom. He bit his lip, this time not to push back the memories of her shoving his things into his hands, of telling him to run, but to remember them. He looked at them in his mind and at her with his eyes, and he nodded again. It's okay. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair, but it didn't have to be. It's okay.

Her hand trembled at her side. Her lips quivered up in that familiar way when she would lie that everything was going to be all right. He smiled back at her, his lips tight. For just a moment, they were in their home, alone, and even though they knew the world was broken, they didn't worry. They didn't have to.

Tears glimmered in her eyes. She looked up at the Tsaright. "No, my lord. I don't know who killed Mister M'raci."

Xten drew back. "You don't?"

"No, my lord."

"Miss R'vel says that your whole neighborhood witnessed the crime, that it happened in your house. Are you sure you don't know who murdered him?"