‘It was an accident. He was not aware of his abilities at that time.’
‘So the deaths of a million souls was nothing more than a mere accident.’
‘That isn’t what I said. The outcome of that particular war has been hotly debated by many of us.’ He turned to the Founder. ‘Even my lord has been known to favour this particular scenario over the alternatives.’
There was a muttering from the crowd, mostly over the presumptuousness of declaring the founder’s views in open court.
‘The opinions of the founder are not under scrutiny here,’ the inquisitor reminded him. ‘Let us turn to the first charge, that he did endanger life in direct breach of the limitations placed upon him — by removing himself and Miss Makepiece to a time beyond the datum.’
The colonel drew a large breath and let it out slowly. ‘I cannot answer for that one. I wasn’t in charge of him at that point.’
‘No? Then can you call on another to support his defence?’
The colonel turned solemnly towards Caitlin and said: ‘I secede the defence to Miss Caitlin Makepiece.’
There was a ripple of whispers as Caitlin stood up and walked out on to the floor. The colonel walked off with his head down and slumped into his seat like a defeated man.
‘Ms Makepiece, for the record, please state your name and rank,’ Batrass the Scribe said without looking up from his parchment.
‘Caitlin Verity Indomitable Makepiece, Scriptorian of the fourteenth,’ she spoke clearly and confidently, looking directly at the council.
Ravana Eckhart stepped in front of her. ‘Caitlin — may I call you Caitlin? Yes? Good. I believe you were left to tutor the accused. Is that correct?’
‘No. He was placed in the care of the House of the Hundred. Methuselah de Freis was charged with his mentorship,’ she corrected Dalton’s mother, whose arrogance dissolved as Caitlin spoke.
She coughed and rephrased the question. ‘How would you describe your relationship with the accused?’
‘He’s a friend.’
‘And yet he endangered both of your lives?’
‘There was no real danger.’
‘According to the Draconian team that found you —’ she made a dramatic point of waving at a stack of papers — ‘you had gone back into the Mesolithic, over two thousand years beyond the limitation. Can you explain how that happened?’
‘We were testing his range.’
‘I believe that the standard tests are usually no more than a millennium? Can you explain how you came to be so far beyond the normal procedure?’
It was evident Caitlin was becoming uncomfortable with the inquisitor’s line of questioning. Josh could see her confidence was beginning to evaporate.
‘I used an ancient artefact to rescue her from a bad situation,’ Josh intervened.
‘Silence!’ shouted the council in unison.
‘The accused will be advised to remain silent until his time,’ said the Founder in a monotone.
‘Ms Makepiece please continue.’
‘We were playing a game, Captain’s Table, and we’d gone back to collect something from Vlad Dracul II when we encountered a monad.’ She stared directly at Dalton. ‘Which I now believe had been released by another team. Josh grabbed the first thing that came to hand and used it to escape. I know it sounds unlikely, but —’
‘Indeed it does, Ms Makepiece. I believe that it took forty years before they found you.’
‘But, we survived, we raised a family, a tribe in fact — we survived long enough to be located. He was the one that did all of that,’ Caitlin shouted as she pointed directly at Josh. ‘If it had been down to me, we would be dead in some cave!’
Josh watched her in awe. The passion in her voice set his heart alight. The Draconians had refused to tell him what had happened after they’d rescued them; he knew they must have survived long enough to have been picked up. It was odd to think that in some other timeline they’d been together — part of him was beginning to wish he could have stayed there. It would have been a lot less complicated.
‘Thank you, Ms Makepiece. You may step down,’ said one of the council.
Caitlin turned and went back to her seat without looking at Josh. He could see there were tears running down her burning cheeks.
‘Turning now to the matter of the interdiction,’ continued the chief inquisitor, raising her voice above the chatter of the crowd.
‘The prosecution calls upon Stochastic Professor Eddington to bear expert witness to this most serious of crimes.’
Professor Eddington rose from his seat and walked slowly out on to the floor.
‘Professor, would you please be so kind as to enlighten us to the actions of the accused.’
Eddington looked round the circle at each of the council members and then folded his arms behind his back, cleared his throat and spoke: ‘I have studied all aspects of the recent altercation and it is my considered opinion that the accused was in a Nyman Paradox, meaning that his options were so limited that any action would have caused the demise of one, if not more of his party.’
Josh could see that the inquisitor was less than happy with this answer.
‘But is it not true to say that the accused abused his powers by taking direct restorative action? Are you condoning the personal motivation behind the outcomes? Were any of them for the greater good of the continuum?’
There were shouts from the gallery of ‘No!’ and ‘Bad judgement!’ as the inquisitor appealed to them directly.
Eddington remained calm and spoke quietly. ‘Yes, the accused was acting in his own interest, I concur, but the possible outcomes were, as I say, limited.’
‘And, further to that point, you confirm he actually chose to allow the death of a boy he’d saved from a terrible end only a few days before?’
Josh looked at Caitlin, who had her head buried in her hands. Alixia was stroking her shoulders. Sim looked grey and ashen.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.’
‘Were you not aware that the accused had been involved in changing his own timeline no more than thirty-six hours before the interdiction? A crime that is still being investigated and I believe involves other members of the defence?’
Eddington’s eyes narrowed. He was being out-manoeuvred. Josh couldn’t understand how the prosecution could know something that a senior member of the Copernicans didn’t. That was until he looked back towards Dalton and then it became clear; there was a smug grin plastered across his face. He put his arm round the girl sitting next to him, Josh hardly recognised Elena without all the make-up and piercings. She smiled wickedly at Josh when their eyes met.
‘No, I did not,’ muttered Eddington, staring at his shoes. ‘My department is overworked and understaffed as you well know!’
‘Thank you, Professor, that will be all,’ said the founder in a tone that was not one to be challenged.
The professor walked slowly back to his seat, his face set in stone.
‘The prosecution calls their first and only witness, the accused himself.’
The eyes of the entire chamber fell on Josh. He felt the weight of a thousand accusing stares press down on him and knew that there was no talking his way out of this one. He thought about his mother, how she would be without him in her life. He wondered if she would be happier. Would she still get ill? What kind of life would she have without the pressure of raising a kid on her own? Josh had made her life so difficult, he knew that. He was the one who’d done everything his own way, no matter what the cost to her. She was the one who’d waited patiently every night worrying about whether he was safe — if nothing else, he would save her that pain.
‘Joshua Jones, you stand accused on three counts, each of which comes with the severest of sentences. Do you have anything to say in your defence?’ the shrill voice of the chief inquisitor echoed around the silent chamber.
As Josh heard the words ‘in your defence’, it triggered something deep in his memory
. A fragment of a forgotten thought awoke in his mind — like a whale surfacing from the depths.
It was from the incident in the baths with Lyra when she’d kissed him, a forgotten moment triggered by those three words. Her voice was inside his head saying: ‘When you hear the phrase “in your defence”, you reply: “I claim the Rite of Scrying.”’
Josh had no idea what the Rite of Scrying was, but he had little choice. He could see from the stern expressions on the faces of the Council that none of the defence witnesses had made an ounce of difference to his case.
‘Do you have anything to add?’ asked the inquisitor again as if Josh were a little slow.
Josh took a deep breath and said, ‘I claim the Rite of Scrying,’ as confidently as he could.
There was a collective intake of breath from the audience followed by an outburst of outrage on all sides. The inquisitor lost all the colour from her face and shrank back. The council turned to one another in confusion. Whatever the Rite of Scrying was, Josh liked it just for the uproar it caused.
‘Silence!’ came the booming voice of the founder. ‘The boy has invoked the rite. Call for the Grand Seer.’
Lyra was sitting quietly in the corner of the bench, trying not to look at anyone, when Caitlin came and sat beside her. The court was adjourned while they waited for the seer to arrive, and everyone was busy discussing the accused’s unusual request.
‘You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you, sister?’
‘It was his only option, Cat. I looked at all the other ways,’ Lyra replied, flicking through her notebook. ‘I have them all here somewhere if you want to see?’
‘No, Lyra, that’s fine, but the rite is a very dangerous route to take. He will see everything.’
‘He will see what you see.’ Lyra looked directly into her eyes. ‘He’s a good man, yet there is more to him than you think.’
‘More of what exactly?’
Lyra’s eyes flashed. ‘Wait and see . . .’
The colonel walked out to see Josh on the pretence of giving him a glass of water. A couple of court attendants had dragged a dusty old wooden rack into the centre of the floor and were busy trying to remember how to assemble it.
‘So this Rite of Scrying, it’s not some kind of medieval torture, is it?’
The colonel smiled.
‘I did wonder if you knew what it was when you asked for it. Not many have ever heard of it — let alone used it. I think you have confounded the prosecution.’ He looked over to Dalton and his mother, who were in the middle of a heated argument. ‘What an earth made you choose it?’
‘Just something Lyra told me once.’
‘Ah. Do you remember talking about it or did it just pop into your head at a certain moment?’
‘Just popped in — like I’d forgotten it.’
‘Implanted memory. Very smart young seer that Lyra. She apparently thought it was your best chance of escaping this farce.’
‘What will they do to me?’
The colonel scratched his beard, mulling over the answer. ‘Edward Kelly is the founder’s chief scryer, basically a very powerful seer — Lyra is one of his pupils. He’s more than a little mad, believes he can commune with angels. Too much reaving, if you ask me.’ The colonel waggled his finger near his temple.
‘And this rite is going to show him I’m innocent?’
‘Oh no. He’s going to read your entire timeline from beginning to end. It’s a rare talent. Not something many of us have ever seen, to be honest. Although I have read reports that it can be quite uncomfortable for the patient.’
‘Shit.’
‘Still better than being non-existent.’
‘You think? Will everyone else know?’
‘No. It’s just you and him. At the end, he’ll declare you innocent or guilty. It’s a pretty medieval approach, as you say.’
The attendants came over and escorted Josh towards the wooden frame.
‘So why the need for this?’
‘Stop you from hurting yourself — that and he likes his subjects to be inverted.’
‘What?’ said Josh as they began to strap him in.
‘Upside down.’
Edward Kelly was definitely the craziest-looking man Josh had ever encountered.
He walked into the courtroom wearing a long cloak made of dark feathers and a mask that resembled a long crow’s beak. He proceeded to strut round the circle drawing a thin line with salt or chalk dust around the outer rim of the star. As Kelly walked, he would randomly jump on to one foot, turn and mutter some strange incantation at an invisible entity and then return to his task. When the circle was complete, he removed the mask and shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Transit umbra, lux permanent!’ and then began mumbling some incoherent gibberish as he removed his gloves and feather cloak to reveal a sombre suit of dark velvet.
The attendants cranked the wheel and rotated Josh a hundred and eighty degrees until his head was level with the table that Kelly had placed before him. A large glass sphere was put between them so that Josh could only see a distorted view of the scryer’s face. His eyes were entirely black.
‘Relax, my young one,’ he whispered as his hands stroked the surface on the opaque globe. ‘I am the winter to your summer, the night to your day. You are but the wind, and I am a nighthawk who rises upon it.’
The words were soothing. Josh felt the man’s mind reaching into his own. It was a soft, gentle sensation, as if he were half awake, and yet he could still sense the world around him.
‘The line must be true. There is no time for dissembling. I must pierce the skein of your many-coloured mind and follow the river of memory,’ the scryer continued in a high sing-song voice.
Josh felt his memories surrender to the questing consciousness and surrendered as the man routed through his past.
Kelly worked quickly, like flicking through a book. He skipped over parts that Josh would have thought important and dwelt on the tiniest of incidents, like a naturalist studying a moth.
He stopped at one early memory, the beach holiday from which Josh had kept the photograph. There was something unusual about the memory, something in the background. He examined it from many angles, but Josh didn’t have time to work out what it was before Kelly was off again, digging deeper into his early childhood.
They reached his earliest memory and left his timeline altogether. Josh watched as Kelly moved to his mother and followed her back, through her pregnancy and all the suffering she’d endured during it. He wept as he watched his mother pull herself out of bed every day to go to work, knowing that part of her pain was the undiagnosed MS that would worsen because of him.
‘Now to the father,’ murmured Kelly.
Back still further into the first days of his conception, when she was a happy young woman, a student at the university with a bright future.
Then darkness.
‘No. That is not the way. Things do not wind thus amongst the clockwork trees,’ said Kelly, looking up from the glass and staring directly into Josh’s eyes.
‘Are you a chameleon? Jackanape? Changer of lines? We shall see . . . What doth thy future hold?’
The scryer sat down again and pulled once more at the fabric of Josh’s timeline. He separated out the strands of his life and looked into his futures. There were many loops and knots within it, and the scryer became quite frustrated at the number of dead ends and blind alleys with which he had to contend.
Finally, exhausted, he collapsed on to the table and released Josh from his mental control.
‘No more! Bring me wine and peppermint!’ he demanded, slamming his fist down on the table.
The attendants stepped forward and rotated Josh into an upright position, but didn’t remove his bindings. They handed Kelly a large cup of wine and a bowl of sugary white sweets. He popped two straight into his mouth.
‘So, seer, what is your verdict? Is he guilty?’ asked the founder.
‘As guilty as the North Wind,’ K
elly said with a hysterical chuckle. The audience laughed, enjoying the sideshow.
‘Then innocent?’
‘No more so than a virgin’s kiss,’ the madman replied, amusing the crowd again.
‘Then what say you, fool? No more of your riddles.’
‘He is the one. The strange attractor, the paradox,’ Kelly said, and slowly he put down his wine and got to his knees before Josh.
The audience went deathly silent.
The founder stood up from his chair.
‘State your case clearly!’
Kelly got to his feet and adopted the same pose of the founder: his hands on his hips, and his head held high.
‘He is of tomorrow, the forbidden country. He is from the future.’
As Kelly spoke, he began to dance a jig, singing a song to himself.
‘Please escort our learned colleague to his seat,’ the founder ordered the attendants, ‘and have the court cleared.’
There were various catcalls and protests from the benches as the crowd was ushered out of the room.
Caitlin walked over to Joshua as the attendants cranked the wheel until he was upright once more. Her face streaked with tears. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ he whispered, ‘not so sure about Kelly. He’s off his rocker.’
Caitlin laughed. ‘He just saved your life, you idiot!’
The founder threw back his hood to reveal the head of an old man with a grey beard and short white hair. His eyes were a vibrant shade of blue and shone with intelligence — Josh found it hard to hold his gaze for more than a few seconds.
The chamber was cleared of onlookers. Only the colonel, Caitlin and her extended family were allowed to remain. Dalton and his mother had to be forcibly ejected after protesting that Josh has somehow fixed the outcome and that Kelly had finally lost his mind completely.
The council of six had split up and gone their separate ways, although Josh did spot one or two of them having a quiet word with each other before disappearing into the exodus.
‘Have you any idea what has just transpired?’ asked the founder. His voice seemed less threatening now Josh could see his face.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 33