“We’re stronger together than scattered across the country, even if we have to deal with Piers,” Montague said. “There is still nowhere else I’d rather be right now.”
“I hope you can compel him not to notice we left for the weekend,” Daisy said. “Otherwise, this is going to suck.”
Chapter Thirty
Charlotte
“You are all coming with me.”
Piers looked mad. He was surrounded by like, ten guards. They also looked mad.
This was going to suck.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “Please, get my cousin. He should see this as well,” he told one of the guards. “Daisy…you can go back to your room. This doesn’t involve you.”
“I’ll stay,” Daisy said, crossing her arms. “If you’re going to traumatize my friends, Piers, then you might as well traumatize me too.”
“Well…you are a loyal friend, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Fine, come along. Maybe that is a good idea, actually. You all need a better understanding of procedure.”
Procedure. Is there any word in the English language sexier than ‘procedure’? Besides most of them? I prayed that whatever he was going to do to punish us would be boring.
Piers took us to a small chamber in the basement of the main hall and opened a big glowy portal with one circular swish of his wand. “You must be silent,” he said. “I am bringing you here to observe. If you interfere, you will be painfully zapped and dragged from the room, which will only cause more distress, I’m sure.”
“We’re going to Etherium?” Harris asked.
“Where else?”
“Why?”
“To witness the trial of Amelia Halt.”
Ignatius.
Oh no.
We were urged through the portal by Piers, who looked like he wasn’t really enjoying this either, but was doing his sworn duty or something. He tried to give Daisy a vaguely apologetic look, but she wasn’t interested.
We stepped into a hall with soaring ceilings. Light fell through tall windows with stained glass panes at the top. The floors were marble or something marble-like, and there were a lot of people and some animals walking around, which was the big tip off that we were in Etherium.
“Come, let’s get seated before it begins,” Piers said, waving his hand.
We settled into this court room that smelled pleasant in the most unfeeling way and the vibe was definitely procedural. We probably only had to wait for ten minutes before stuff started happening, but it was a long, excruciating ten minutes.
The judge entered and took his place behind the big table with the gavel. Standard court stuff. He was wearing a long white wig and everything. Then, the councils filed in, both witches and the warlocks, at the same time as Ignatius was brought to the stand, escorted by a businesslike young witch. Piers had joined them down there, and he seemed stiff, and was trying not to look at us.
Ignatius looked like he had lost weight and sleep in considerable quantities. He had the cheekbones of a supermodel. And…he was wearing a plain black dress.
This embarrassed him tremendously. That was obvious, even though he was holding his head high, which made me cringe. As prison uniforms went, it wasn’t even ugly. It didn’t look that different from my prom dress, which was black and very classic, bordering on boring.
But they made him wear it to shame him, and that made me want to look away, even though he was attractively androgynous and could have worn absolutely anything.
“So—,” Daisy started.
“Shh.” Harris was sharp.
Ignatius didn’t seem to notice us yet, which wasn’t a surprise, because the lights on us were dim, and more people had filed in to witness the trial. I didn’t see an obvious jury, so I assumed the councils were the jury.
Ignatius slowly rolled his shoulders back, let out his breath, and put his hands on the stand like he was bracing himself.
Madame Solano stood up, squinting her old eyes at a piece of paper before looking up at him. “Amelia Halt,” she said. “You will be judged this day by the council of witches, as all witches are, but as you see, in light of your situation, some of the warlock council is present as witnesses.”
“If that is what you decided,” Ignatius said, his fingers twitching. I could see how nervous he was, but two of his fingers were the only tell.
“Miss Halt, you say that when you were a child, your mother said, and I quote from the witness account, you wanted to be a boy, and your mother said, why not be a boy. Can you elaborate on whether or not she performed a spell on you to physically alter your gender?”
“My mother is dead,” Ignatius said. “So am I on trial for her spell? Or is her spirit on trial?”
Catherine said, “We need to know your charges. Did you physically alter yourself? Or are you using illusions?”
“I am aware of the law. It has no bearing on my charges. I understand the charges. I was born a witch and therefore, attending a warlock school without explicit permission is illegal. I also understand that gender swapping spells have been illegal for hundreds of years, but in that case, the law only says that the caster is to be held accountable. The caster is dead.”
“How could your mother have known you wanted to be a boy when you were only four or five years old? What sort of mother follows the whims and babblings of a child? When Samuel was a child he said he wanted to be a dragon and I didn’t try to find some spell to turn him into one.”
The council members laughed.
“What kind of mother doesn’t follow her instincts to know what is best for her own child?” Ignatius countered. “Did your son live out his entire young life as a dragon? I lived mine as a boy. She wasn’t wrong.”
Catherine very quietly simmered for one long beat. “Miss Halt, did my daughter believe you to be a warlock when she was seeing you?”
“Where is that law?” Ignatius said. “Lying to a girlfriend isn’t illegal and neither is one woman dating another.”
“So she didn’t know.”
“She did know,” he fired back.
“She did know? She knew she was dating a woman?”
“She was dating Ignatius Blair.”
“Ina was a good girl.”
“She was a wonderful girl,” Ignatius said, his voice getting a little softer. “Is…a wonderful woman.”
“She is in the Haven and she’s not the girl I knew,” Catherine said. “My daughter died when a demon killed her. I’m sure something like that would never have happened if Samuel never met you.”
This upset Ignatius too, clearly. He had to look away from her. “None of us knew that would happen.”
One of the other witches cleared her throat. “You attended warlock schools throughout your entire education, all of grade school and university, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone at school know your secret?”
“Yes. Samuel Caruthers and Stuart Jablonsky.”
“No one else?”
“No.”
“The entire time?”
“There was no need to tell anyone,” Ignatius said.
“What spells did you use to maintain this lie?”
“It wasn’t a lie,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“It didn’t feel like a lie,” he said. “As you noted, I went through school including a master’s degree and then went on to teach and become the dean of a warlock university and no one ever knew or guessed, that entire time, except my two best friends, because I told them. The purpose of this law is…what? Please explain it to me.”
“You clearly know the law.”
“And I clearly don’t understand its purpose.”
Montague smiled a little. “He’s good at pissing them off.”
“The purpose? Men and women are different and have different roles in our community. This system has worked for thousands of years and the vast majority of witches and warlocks thrive within it. When wizards try to use magic that doesn’t
suit their role, it becomes very dangerous,” Madame Solano said.
“Who wrote the rules?” Ignatius said. “The official document, the laws of the Ethereal Councils?”
“They were written, as I’m sure you know, by the councils of their day.”
“At which point the majority was from the Holy Roman Empire. How comforting to know we have seen no need to update the document since then; clearly they had it right. When was the last time you actually tried it?” Ignatius asked.
“Tried what?”
“Letting women learn elementals and conjuring. Letting men practice enchantment and divination.”
The warlocks laughed and a few of the women shuddered. “We don’t want men learning enchantment,” one of them snapped, standing up. She was slight, with a faint purple tint to her black hair. “It was wise and right that they were banned from it. They used to use it to control women. You are doing us no favors.”
“That doesn’t make sense!” Ignatius said. “We’re all magic users here; a woman should be able to defend herself from a man with her elemental magic as easily as he could enchant her.”
“So you want witches and warlocks to battle each other?”
Ignatius sighed. “All I wanted was to live my life as a man, and I never tried to deceive anyone who would be affected—namely, Ina. I know you don’t want to hear it, Catherine, but Ina loved me and I loved her.”
Catherine got a look in her eyes like she was out for blood now. “You ruined her life. You corrupted her. I lost both of my children and I blame you and I blame Emily and no one else! They were good children and you brought them in league with a demon because you were trying to open up a path to a realm that is forbidden to you! You were power-hungry, Miss Halt, and you enjoyed fooling everyone around you with your perversion.”
“Why do you have such a problem with women’s magic?” Purple Hair asked. “It is every bit as powerful. We are proud of our magic and we don’t want to share it with them. How is it our fault that you ‘wanted to live as a man’?”
“There is no place for questions in this world,” Ignatius said. “All the rules are set and woe to anyone who wonders why they exist. I knew many boys at my magic school who struggled with the elemental arts or were afraid of conjuring higher spirits. They might have thrived if they could learn enchantment or healing instead. Not everyone thinks the same. In the Fixed Plane, all over the free world,” Ignatius said heatedly, “they are grappling with these same issues and things are changing rapidly there. Women are gaining more power in the male sphere, and men are also gaining the ability to be softer. To be healers and nurturers. To love who they want to love, in every way.”
A black warlock scoffed loudly. “You are going to lecture us about the Fixed Plane? When the Americans were bringing slaves from Africa and slaughtering the natives of their land, we were rescuing our own and giving them the dignity they deserved. My great-grandfather was working on a plantation when my great-grandmother rescued him, married him, helped him learned to read, and he went on to start the first magical library in the midwest.”
“That’s a wonderful story,” Ignatius said. “But…getting some things right doesn’t mean you’re just done thinking, does it? I won’t even get into how European witches set down the rules globally.”
“I think you already touched on that, Miss Halt,” Madame Solano said primly. “It is clear to me, your position. You think you are smarter than the rest of us and all these rules were made just to oppress you. Good heavens, usually by the time a witch is as old as you are, she is past this sort of nonsense. Let’s move on to the most troubling part of this. Your teaching career. You have spent your life guiding warlocks into adulthood and teaching them about magic under the pretense that you are also a warlock, which you are not, however you may protest. Hundreds of boys have been exposed to your views.”
“Not really,” he said. “I learned to keep them to myself.”
“Oh yes. Because you had a motive,” Catherine said.
“A motive?”
“I would like to call Charlotte Caruthers Byrne to the stand,” she said, looking back at me.
I had actually settled my head onto Montague’s shoulder and now I jerked upward. “No one told me I was…going to be a witness,” I said.
“Come here, Charlotte,” Catherine said. “You’re not in trouble.”
Now Ignatius saw us seated there and I saw the look of humiliation reappear on his face. I guess he didn’t want us to see him forced into a dress and referred to as ‘Miss Halt’, but I tried to give him an encouraging look. He was holding his own.
“Piers,” Harris said. “You lied to her.”
Spots of faint pink shame appeared on Piers’ pale cheeks. “Well, I didn’t really know how it would unfold.”
Shakily, I went down the stairs until I reached the spot where Catherine was pointing her wand. I was now one step below the council. There were about fifteen of them, men and women, most of them very old, not that the younger ones were any better, all of them looking down at me. Ignatius was looking down at me too, and he seemed anguished.
She tapped her wand to the back of my hand. “Do you swear to speak nothing but the whole truth as long as you are before this council?”
“Errr…” I was terrified, on multiple levels. I feared they might ask me about Ignatius but also Firian, Alec, Professor McGuinness and Stuart. What danger could I cause to my friends?
“What are you hiding, Charlotte, that you are afraid to speak?” Catherine pressed.
“I…nothing, I’m—”
“Speak, Charlotte, or we will force you to speak.”
“I did have a motive,” Ignatius said. “Stop. I know what you want to know. You want me to tell you that I conspired—along with Samuel—to send Charlotte to Merlin College. We planned this from the time of her birth when we sensed she had strong potentials. We bided our time, behaving ourselves. Samuel helped me fake her application and I allowed her to attend. We had long planned for Charlotte to follow in Samuel’s footsteps, and acquire a Wyrd wand, and everything was going according to plan.”
“I see.” Catherine whirled on me. “He used you. He controlled your destiny for you. He tore you from your father and put you in great danger.”
There is some truth to that.
A part of me had always been suspicious of Ignatius.
Ignatius looked at me. “I believed you could be the first Wyrd sans-pareil. Maybe I did use you. Then I tried to send you home, but you returned. I guess the question is, do you believe in my fight?”
I gave the tiniest nod as Catherine said, “Now we can all see you trying to corrupt innocents in real time! This is the sort of thing you whispered to Ina, I bet! And you seem to be unrepentant.”
“Oh yes. I am wholly unrepentant,” Ignatius said, gripping the stand with both hands now. “Just leave her out of it. Charlotte should not be put in this position.”
“She confessed,” Catherine said.
“Miss Halt, you have the right for your lawyer to speak on your behalf before we decide your sentence.”
“I already know there is nothing he can say,” Ignatius said.
“Charlotte, thank you, you can return to your friends.” Catherine dismissed me with a look of feigned concern and I ran back up to the balcony, but I felt just…icky. Like when you clean up an overflowed toilet and how everything just feels toilet-y for a while afterward, but emotionally. A toilet had overflowed inside my head, and that toilet was my great-aunt.
The witch council huddled to discuss, but they seemed to decide quickly. Madame Solano stood again and said, “Amelia Halt, you and your familiar are hereby banished from Etherium. Present your hand.”
He was breathing a little raggedly now, facing down his fate. I saw him swallow down his fear. He held out his palm and Madame Solano traced a mark upon it.
“Ahh…” He winced, curling his fingers up, as the symbol seemed to burn, and then some invisible force shoved him out of
the realm right before our eyes, leaving a weird flash in its wake before that also faded.
Harris was almost on his feet. “It’s dangerous for him there,” he said.
“He can’t just stay in the Fixed Plane?” I said.
“He will be banned from all Ethereal parallels now,” Montague said. “His familiar will be in danger in Sinistral. And he won’t be able to use Ethereal magic. It’s a very precarious position for any wizard. Especially with…”
“With what? My heart can’t take any hesitation, Montague!”
“The Withered Lord is probably going to target him,” Harris said. “I know what we need to do.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Charlotte
We met over dinner after a really awful day of trying to keep it together, because Piers told Daisy she was forbidden from entering our dorm. Not gonna lie, I skipped my last class and called Firian to tell him what happened. I was so shaken by everything, and I wanted him with me.
Daisy sat down at our table. She looked over her shoulder. “This is out of control. Girl, you look awful. But I do like your llama socks. I was skeptical but now that I see them I get it.”
Harris came up to us with some books and notebooks tucked under his arm. “Make room,” he said to Daisy, who had one half of a booth to herself.
“Is that how you talk to a princess?”
“You aren’t a princess,” Harris said.
“I have to do important magic for other people thanks to my bloodline and marry someone I don’t want to marry. Sounds like a princess to me.” She stirred her stew tensely. “Did you spend your whole day locked in a dark room under orders to do magic for Piers?”
“My cousin’s actions are unconscionable,” Harris said, giving up on sitting down and leaning against the booth instead, tossing the books in front of us among our sad gray bowls of barley stew. “We need to shame him out of his position and save Alec and Master Blair.”
A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set Page 69