by V. St. Clair
“Magdalene, I really think we should reconsider whether Hayden’s crime quite qualifies—” Calahan began desperately. For some reason he was acting like he was the one who had been tricked here and was about to be sentenced to die.
“You want to show leniency to a boy you just hinted might have malicious intent against the Nine Lands? If he means so much to his father’s plans, let’s remove him from the equation once and for all.” There was no trace of warmth or emotion in her voice. It was like she had never met Hayden before in her life, cared nothing for him, and relished the thought of seeing him die.
How has it come to this? Hayden wondered hopelessly, mouth as dry as ashes.
“I agree,” came the sixth and condemning vote from the Council, and just like that, Hayden was suddenly on trial for his life.
He was too numb with disbelief to even speak, but Calahan apparently didn’t have that problem. The Chief Mage looked like he personally had been charged with high treason against the Nine Lands, standing up and glaring at Magdalene Trout like he finally saw her for the enemy that she was.
The setting and the large audience prevented him from venting his true feelings onto her, so he turned them towards the audience instead.
“Come now, this can’t stand,” he insisted. “The public will be outraged if we consider the death penalty for a boy who was their hero not two months ago. He still has higher approval ratings than this Council, despite everything.”
Hayden felt a faint glimmer of hope. If the people really did support him more than they did the Council of Mages, even after all the slander Calahan had been spreading against him…maybe they would back off on their charges.
For a long moment no one in the audience spoke. Hayden wasn’t even sure whether they were allowed to speak, or if Calahan was just appealing to anyone’s common decency, since all of his colleagues seemed to be lacking it.
Wow, the day has really gone downhill when Calahan is my only ally.
“Normally his legal guardian would have the chance to dispute the charges and speak on his behalf,” Magdalene explained lightly. “Since Hayden’s mother is deceased and his father doesn’t qualify for obvious reasons, he should be allowed to choose a guardian in this instance, and they may argue on his behalf if they elect to.” Her tone suggested that she expected Hayden to jump out of his seat and praise her for her charitable consideration.
“Asher,” he said without even needing to think about it, as soon as Calahan turned towards him. He doubted that anyone in the room would be surprised by his choice, as the Prism Master had been a teacher, mentor, friend, and father-substitute to him since he arrived at Mizzenwald.
Calahan grimaced but turned towards the group of seated Masters.
“Well, Asher Masters? Do you intend to contest the charge of high treason against Hayden?”
Looking perfectly relaxed, Asher opened his mouth and said, “No, I don’t. Let the charges stand as they are.”
“WHAT?!” This time Hayden did jump out of his seat and shout. He knew that the Prism Master enjoyed making people uncomfortable by being eccentric, but this hardly seemed like the time and place for it, not when Hayden’s life was on the line.
Calahan looked similarly dismayed, clenching his fists tightly and not even bothering to tell Hayden to sit down and shut up. In fact, the only thing he said at all was, “This hearing is in recess,” before storming out of the room.
Hayden walked towards the group of Masters during the general noise and movement while everyone prepared to break, but before he had closed half the distance between them, a guard grabbed him forcefully by the arm and steered him out of the room.
“Where are you taking me?” Hayden demanded, beyond caring about niceties.
He must have looked like he meant business, because the man answered his question for the first time since he was brought here.
“To a holding room until the trial resumes.”
The holding room, as it turned out, was only a few doors down the hall, and it was much nicer than his first detainment cell. The room was almost entirely empty, save for a cot on the floor against one wall and a chair facing it.
As soon as the guard locked him inside and assumed his post outside the door, Hayden began to pace the room in a tearing fury. He had no idea what had changed in the short time he was locked up in the Crystal Tower, but it must have been something terrible in order to cause all of his allies to turn on him like this. They could have at least had the decency to warn him ahead of time so that he didn’t go in there looking like a fool.
Hayden was so outraged with the lot of them that he kicked the wall as hard as he could, which did nothing but make his foot hurt.
I can’t let them keep me here. I have to escape before they try to send me back up to the twentieth floor, or before they can officially sentence me to die.
He was determined on that much at least. He wouldn’t sit here like a sheep, waiting to be led to the slaughter. He would die fighting if worse came to worse; at least then he would have his dignity.
Just as he began assessing the room he was in for weak points, he heard the click of the lock and the door swung open to reveal Master Willow. For once, he was thankful that it wasn’t Asher coming to visit him. He might not possess the self-restraint to keep from attacking his mentor right now.
The door shut behind the Master of Wands and the lock clicked once more. Hayden immediately registered that the man was unarmed, as was Asher on the night he’d come to visit. It seemed that no one was allowed to bring weapons into Hayden’s presence, on the off-chance Hayden could overpower them and make a break for it.
That’s probably a smart move on Calahan’s part, given what I’m currently planning…
“Hayden, I know how you must be feeling,” Willow greeted him calmly. “Let me explain…”
“Explain what?” Hayden interrupted hotly, jaw clenched in fury. “Are you going to explain how the people who were supposed to be on my side just sold me out when I needed them the most? Even Asher is going to just let them convict me of treason!”
“I told them you would take this poorly, but it wasn’t possible for us to warn you in advance or else Calahan wouldn’t have played things the way he did just now and this would never have worked to our advantage.”
Confused, Hayden stopped pacing and said, “What do you mean? This was somehow part of the plan?”
Master Willow nodded, and Hayden felt suddenly deflated, as if all of the energy had rushed out of him in a single moment. He felt relieved, drained, and more confused than ever in its wake.
He sat down shakily in the lone chair and said, “Okay, now you can explain.”
10
The Midnight Visitor
Obviously relieved that he had settled down, Master Willow leaned back against the wall and said, “I’m sure you remember your last group meeting as well as I do, on the eve of your removal from the Trout estate.”
“What, you mean the one where Laris said that maybe I was wrong about my father and he’s actually a cool guy who we should get to share his magic with us?” He asked, surprised by the question.
“In a nutshell, yes,” Willow confirmed. “You left the meeting before it came to its conclusion, but since we are short on time I’ll just summarize and tell you that by the end of it, the rest of us were worried that Laris was about to switch sides.”
“What do you mean?”
Master Willow frowned and said, “There was some concern that he would return to Calahan and tell him he found you at Magdalene’s house, presenting himself as the hero who had no idea where you were all this time. He could name everyone who was involved in our planning, as well as alert Calahan that Magdalene was after his job and attempting to dethrone him.”
Alarmed, Hayden looked around the room and said, “Aren’t we being monitored in here, sir? Asher wouldn’t speak plainly during his visit up in the Boxes because he said we were being spied on.”
Willow shook his h
ead, looking supremely unconcerned.
“The situation has changed. This room is not being monitored, though your cell upstairs certainly would have been.”
Hayden would just have to take his word for it, though he was nowhere near as assured that their level of privacy was sufficient as Master Willow. Perhaps he was just becoming paranoid after two weeks in the topmost floor of the Crystal Tower.
“But why would Laris sell us all out to Calahan just because he wants to become buddies with my father and learn cool new magic that may or may not be a sin against nature?”
“Because Laris also wants to be the Chief Mage, and if he can get Magdalene and all the rest of us out of the way, there is much less competition. Learning that he’d been betrayed from one of his own Council members might have been the catalyst that drove Calahan to folly and ultimately got him deposed, and then Laris would be conveniently poised to rise to power. With him in charge, he could lift the manhunt for your father and request an open meeting to begin working with him—assuming Aleric was amenable and not on a killing spree by then.”
“That would be a disaster,” Hayden said in stunned disbelief, imagining how bad things would be if Laris’s plans came to fruition.
“Indeed. We weren’t sure if or when he was going to take action, so we needed to plan quickly in order to preempt him. We asked Kirius to stage an abduction that night, since he has been carefully avoiding any of our meetings at the Trout estate or with Laris.”
“You mean Sark was actually doing me a favor by hauling me out of there in my pajamas?” he winced at the memory of how cold his feet were and how afraid he was. He still wasn’t sorry for punching the man in the nose.
“We figured he would be the most convincing with Calahan, who would have been very suspicious of trickery if any of the rest of us had brought you to him; fortunately it is well known that you and Kirius haven’t gotten along well in the past, to put it mildly.”
I never thought my bad relationship with Master Sark would come in handy.
It was nice to know that four years of solid dislike was finally paying dividends for him.
“Why didn’t he just explain himself as he was dragging me through the snow and into the Tower? Then I wouldn’t have fought him so hard and I wouldn’t have been going nuts for the past two weeks in that stupid Box upstairs, thinking you all had forgotten about me.”
“We collectively agreed that in order to be convincing to Calahan, you also had to be kept in the dark for a period of time. If you didn’t appear concerned with your fate, or if you didn’t ask the right questions of him, he would have suspected something was amiss. Asher and Kilgore wanted to abandon the plan entirely and raid the Crystal Tower to liberate you when they heard where you were being kept.”
That made Hayden feel slightly better about everything, knowing that he hadn’t just been forgotten for those two miserable weeks.
“So it worked? Laris wasn’t able to sell us out?”
“No, we managed to beat him to the punch. If he had come forward after the fact and claimed to know where you had been all this time, Calahan would have seen him ruined, even if he swore he was getting ready to bring you in and that he had only been a part of our group to gather information and act as a spy.”
“Okay, so I guess I see why you all had me brought here without telling me anything ahead of time…but explain to me why me being charged with high treason is a good thing. I could have sworn that Mrs. Trout suddenly decided she hated me and was trying to get rid of me for good, except Calahan looked as angry as I was about it. You’d think he’d be thrilled for the chance to murder me legally, since there’s no love lost between the two of us these days.”
Master Willow frowned and said, “Magdalene showed her hand today when she upped the charges against you, though there was no getting around it at this point. Calahan now knows that she has betrayed him and is making a move against him, though it should be too late for him to do anything about it—or so we hope.”
“I still don’t get it,” Hayden said bluntly.
“Calahan wanted to charge you with bringing your father back to this realm unintentionally, and with evading the law when you were wanted for questioning. Unfortunately, you are guilty of both of those crimes, such as they are, and there is no way any of us could get you out from under the sentencing for them.”
Hayden narrowed his eyebrows pensively and nodded to show that he understood so far.
“If we left the charges at that, you would have certainly been convicted of them—possibly even of having malicious intent against the Council since you threatened Calahan before entering the schism. Depending on how generous the Council was feeling, you could have gotten any punishment from Binders for life to a simple prison sentence or even community service. That wasn’t something we could risk happening.”
“So she tried to up the charges against me because…”
“Because high treason happens to be a crime you are completely innocent of. They would need a mountain of evidence that I know they do not possess in order to successfully convict you, and as Calahan said, the people still love you and would never stand for it. Magdalene did an excellent job whipping her colleagues into a frenzy, and making them forget that they can’t make the charges stick until she got the votes she needed to formalize them.”
Hayden frowned thoughtfully.
“I get that they don’t have evidence against me, but I don’t think that they’re above manufacturing some, and they’ve had a while to do it. What if they pull out something that I can’t properly refute and convict me anyway? Magdalene is just one person, and you tell me we’ve lost Laris; there are eight other people besides them on the Council, and I need at least five of them to vote in my favor.”
“Ah,” Willow held up an index finger like he was about to lecture him on proper wand care. “You’ve touched upon an important point. I suppose you noticed the empty table that was opposite the Council members during the preliminary hearing?”
Not knowing where this was going, Hayden said, “Yes…”
“That table is always there but seldom used. The reason that Calahan didn’t want a high treason charge—aside from the fact that you’re innocent and you’ll ultimately be set free without punishment—is because it is very difficult to convict someone of a crime that comes with a death sentence. The Council alone does not have the authority to make such a decision.”
“Oh?”
“In the event such charges are set against a person, one representative from each of the Great Nine is called upon to participate as a voting member of the jury panel, thereby doubling the number of people that need to be convinced of your guilt—and half of them lack the Council’s bias against you.”
Hayden lifted his eyebrows in surprise at this new twist.
“That’s convenient. But still, ten Council members against nine Masters…I would need every one of you and Magdalene to vote in my favor to get a majority, and I don’t even know most of the Masters from the other schools.”
“Not ten-to-nine, nine-to-nine.” Master Willow gave him a genuinely pleased smile. “In order to prevent the Council from uniting and winning by simple majority in these matters, one member is required to excuse themselves from the proceedings. Specifically, the Chief Mage.”
“Oh!” Hayden laughed out loud, suddenly understanding why Calahan was so furious with the more severe charge. “Not only does Calahan have to convince nine people who don’t work for him that I’m guilty, but he’s not even allowed to participate as a judge anymore?” He laughed again at the brilliance of it.
“Indeed. It was the best way we could assure your success in the trial, and while you may not know all of the Masters who will be acting as judges, let us just say that they will not be volunteering at random.” He smiled again.
“You all called in some favors?” Hayden asked with a grin, hardly able to believe how much more cheerful he was than before Willow’s visit.
And to
think, I considered throwing him out of the room and refusing to hear what he had to say…or worse, attacking him for weapons and making a break for it.
“It’s useful to be well-connected,” the Master answered obscurely.
A knock on the door put an end to their candid conversation as the guard standing outside entered the room and said, “You’re to be returned to your room upstairs while the Great Nine nominate their judges and assemble here. The trial will resume tomorrow morning.”
Hayden grimaced at the prospect of spending another night in that horrible cell upstairs, even more now that there was hope of him being freed permanently in the near future.
“Okay,” was all he said, since complaining would get him nowhere with these people. He allowed himself to be led out of the holding room by the guard, who simply looked relieved that he wasn’t resisting.
“I’ll see you when the trial recommences,” Master Willow informed him, watching Hayden depart with his escort. “Try to get some rest.”
“Thanks, sir, I will.” Hayden nodded appreciatively, entering the lift ahead of the guard and watching the iron doors close in front of them. As the lift carried them rapidly up to the top floor, he made a personal vow to never enter one of these contraptions again if he ever made it out of the Crystal Tower. He had initially found them fascinating, but his stay here had rather ruined the effect.
The wrenching feeling of wrongness assailed him as soon as he entered his transparent cell, which still brought him to his knees, despite becoming accustomed to the sensation. He recovered after a few minutes and fought down a wave of nausea, fidgeting briefly with his Focus-correctors until he adjusted to the mild tingling of his wrists beneath them, as though tiny ants were crawling on his skin.
Now I just have to find a way to pass the rest of the day and night…
Lying on his back and closing his eyes, Hayden could only pray that this wouldn’t be a long trial. He was running out of things to think about.
When Hayden reentered the room where his trial was being held the following morning, the first thing he noticed was that both tables of nine were now fully occupied, so that as he took his seat in the space between them he felt surrounded by a horde of mages. The second thing he noticed was that Calahan was sitting on one of the benches that lined the perimeter of the room, having been demoted to ‘spectator’ this time around.