Ally of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  32

  Fiona’s guide, who to her surprise was not Veriboldan, but a stout fair-haired Tremontanan born in Barony Daxtry, led her from the bridge to the palace and then through long, narrow corridors to a door that seemed out of place in its stark plainness. “The Zorion, milady,” he’d said in the same reverent whisper with which he’d greeted her. “It is the judgment hall where the most important criminal cases are heard and adjudicated on. Today the challenge of wisdom is held there as a reminder to all that the ruler of Veribold must be a just and wise ruler.”

  He opened the door and bowed Fiona into a balcony overlooking a high-ceilinged room paneled in expensive mahogany. A row of plain wooden chairs lined the balcony, with a few people seated there. One of them was Sebastian.

  He glanced her way when the door opened. A smile lit his face when he realized it was her. It was a look of such happiness it prompted a smile from her in return. She made her way along the row of chairs, passing Morten and Venelda, the latter of whom gave her a pleasant smile. Morten grunted and made no move to get out of Fiona’s way. Fiona ignored him and sat beside Sebastian. “They told me you had business in Haizea,” she said, feeling shy at how tenderly he smiled at her.

  “Nothing serious,” Sebastian said. “Though I didn’t realize how used I was to seeing you every morning, spending the day with you…” He cleared his throat and glanced away. “Did you have a good morning? Not too bored?”

  “No. I talked with Ambassador Emory. I—”

  The door opened again, admitting the Dekerians. They and, Fiona realized, Morten and Venelda were all dressed much as Fiona and Sebastian, in robes matching the colors of their houses. Someone had put a lot of effort into either honoring the foreign envoys or making them readily identifiable. Dekerian Salena sat on Fiona’s other side. “Yet another incomprehensible challenge, at least for you, your Highness,” she told Sebastian with a half-smile.

  “I’m used to it,” Sebastian said, smiling back. “Fiona is an excellent translator.”

  “I think this will test your abilities,” Nikani said. “I find their legal reasoning difficult to follow.”

  “Fiona is an expert on Veriboldan law,” Sebastian said. “She’ll have no trouble.”

  Nikani raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. You will have to tell me later how you came by such rarefied knowledge.”

  Fiona was about to respond when Stannin pushed past, apologizing in broken Veriboldan. He took a seat on Sebastian’s other side and clapped him on the shoulder, knocking him forward. “Many talks,” he boomed, “many hears. Listens. I think is much—” He broke off and addressed Morten in that guttural language Fiona assumed was Ruskeldin.

  “Boring,” Morten said.

  Stannin let out a great guffaw. “Boring! That is boring! I not boring at home, am keep busy with riding.”

  Fiona was about to ask him about his horse, a subject all the Kirkellan could talk on for days, when a hush fell over the room. She leaned on the balcony rail and looked around as she had not when she entered.

  Beneath the balcony were rows of pews that looked as hard as the chair she was sitting in. Noble Veriboldans dressed the way the envoys were, though with less elaborately decorated robes, filled every inch of the pews except for the first one. That was abnormal for the Veriboldan upper classes, who normally kept a safe distance of about a foot from any of their peers. It might explain why they looked so uncomfortable, or maybe it was just that they were genuinely crammed together. It didn’t explain the empty pew, though Fiona guessed it was reserved for someone else, possibly the candidates.

  Facing the pews was an unadorned mahogany desk some ten feet long. No one sat there, but it gave the impression that it was staring at the Veriboldans. If that was where a judge usually sat, anyone defending herself would be at a severe disadvantage, being glared at by more than just human eyes.

  Fiona leaned out farther. There were doors at each end of the desk, uncarved slabs of wood Fiona might have expected to see in a kitchen. In fact, the whole room was peculiarly un-Veriboldan in its plainness. If not for the richness of the mahogany, which filled the room with a pleasant resinous scent, she would have thought herself in some provincial Tremontanan justice house, waiting for the judge to roll himself out of whatever bar he’d been drinking in.

  She couldn’t see any reason for the murmur of voices below to go still, but they had apparently received some silent cue, for in unison they all rose in a whisper of silken robes like a woman’s gasp of surprise and stared straight ahead. The doors to the left side opened, and three men and two women carrying stacks of papers and books passed through the door, as perfectly spaced as beads on a string. They wore black shirts and trousers and had no robes, which made Fiona feel embarrassed for them, as if they were naked. How quickly she’d become accustomed to Veriboldan noble apparel.

  The black-clad men and women took seats on the front pew, which made them visible as little more than the backs of their heads when Fiona sat back in her chair. From that position, she couldn’t see the other Veriboldans, but she heard the hiss of silk as they all resumed their seats.

  The door to the right opened, and Gizane walked through and took a seat at the center of the long desk. She wore a crimson robe over stormcloud-gray shirt and trousers. Her large green eyes glinted like glass as she gazed at the onlooking crowd with no sign of discomfort or nervousness.

  Abruptly, the man seated at the center of the pew said, “A man comes before the justice claiming right of reparation against his neighbor. The neighbor’s bull sired a calf on the man’s cow. The man had intended to breed her elsewhere. Gizane of the Araton, how judge you?”

  Gizane said, “In such a case, damages may not be assessed, as what might have been is impossible to know. The man cannot say he would have gained more had he bred the cow as he intended. The judgment is that the calf belongs to the man, and no fee for breeding may be collected by the neighbor. So judge I.”

  Fiona whispered the translation into Sebastian’s ear, feeling as if her words carried to the far ends of the room. No one shushed her or looked up.

  “That’s a remarkably rural case,” Sebastian whispered back. “I thought they’d all be related to the upper classes.”

  “Me too,” Fiona said, then had to whisper more translations as one of the women addressed Gizane, this time with questions relating to a passage of legal code Fiona was familiar with.

  The questioning went on for a while, and Fiona had just begun to think this would be an even more boring day than the challenge of knowledge when the left-hand door opened again. A couple of guards in the fluttering black robes that sent a hiccup of fear through Fiona entered, dragging a woman dressed only in a knee-length linen shift dyed a streaky bright green. The woman’s hair was shorn close to her scalp, and she twisted desperately, trying to get away from her captors.

  The guards dragged her to a place opposite Gizane, between the black-clad questioners and the desk, and forced her to stand upright. Their complete silence made them even more frightening. The woman also said nothing, but her heavy breathing was loud enough even Fiona in the balcony could hear it.

  One of the men on the front pew stood. “The prisoner is charged with arson,” he said in a voice that echoed despite the room being full of people. “Gizane of the Araton, a judgment.”

  “Are there witnesses?” Gizane asked.

  Another of the men said, “Witnesses saw her fleeing the burning building. No one saw her light the fire.”

  Sebastian gripped Fiona’s knee. “What are they saying?”

  Fiona had been so caught up in the unexpected twist she’d forgotten her translating duties. She gabbled out a few sentences and missed what Gizane said next. Impatiently, she said, “Wait until it’s over,” and leaned forward with her arms on the rail.

  “She lived in the building and had been fighting with her husband,” one of the black-clad women was saying. “He perished in the fire along with five others.”

&n
bsp; “Making this a capital crime,” Gizane said. The prisoner gasped. Gizane turned an expressionless gaze on her and added, “Han La states that in capital cases, the burden of proof lies on the prisoner. What do you say in your defense?”

  “It wasn’t me,” the woman gasped. She still sounded as out of breath as if she’d run a mile. “It was Pala Gakoa. He wanted the property cleared out and the owner wouldn’t sell. Please. It wasn’t me.”

  “Why is Pala Gakoa not here?” Gizane said.

  The woman at the end of the pew said, “Pala Gakoa was not present when the arson was committed.”

  The woman struggled against her captors and shouted, “He was there! The woman who accused me was my enemy!”

  “Gizane of the Araton, what of the prisoner’s accusation?” the same woman asked.

  “Goh Fia says that a prisoner’s word carries less weight when it is the only evidence for an allegation,” Gizane said. “Pala Gakoa is not on trial. This prisoner has not given sufficient evidence to corroborate her story.”

  Fiona held her breath. Maybe her sympathies were with the prisoner because she hated Gizane, maybe it was her fear of being accused of arson herself, but this all felt very wrong.

  Sebastian whispered, “Fiona—”

  She waved him off. “Just wait, please?” she said without turning. She felt bound in place, unable to look away from the drama playing out below.

  “Have you any other questions?” one of the black-clad men was saying.

  “None,” Gizane said.

  Fiona could think of half a dozen questions Gizane hadn’t asked. She wasn’t sure who she was angrier with, Gizane for her carelessness or the others for not pressing the issue. She was sure those five men and women were judges or law-speakers or something.

  “Then, your judgment?” the woman on the end said.

  “The prisoner is guilty,” Gizane said.

  The woman gasped again, then burst into tears and tried once more to get away from her captors.

  “And the punishment?” said the same woman.

  Gizane once more cast a cold eye on the weeping prisoner. “Death by strangulation.”

  Fiona gripped the rail with both hands. Beside her, Salena let out a tiny gasp of surprise. It wasn’t an unusual means of execution in Veribold, but Fiona had never heard a sentence pronounced so casually, as if a woman’s life weren’t in question.

  One of the guards passed the woman off to his partner. Then he withdrew a long, slim cord from within his fluttering robes. Stunned, Fiona didn’t at first realize what it meant. The man took hold of the wooden handles at each end of the silken cord and snapped the cord taut. The sound cracked loudly, cutting across the woman’s desperate cries. The other guard forced the woman to kneel facing Gizane. The man with the cord moved to stand behind her.

  Fiona’s chest hurt with the pounding of her heart. She shot to her feet. “Stop!” she exclaimed in Veriboldan.

  Everyone below turned to look at her. Fiona didn’t look at Gizane, but at the man in the center of the pew. “This is unjust,” Fiona said.

  “You disrespect our legal system by attempting to impose your foreign morality on us?” the man shouted. “Do not believe the respect accorded you as envoy entitles you to interfere.”

  “Veribold’s laws are just,” Fiona countered, “and I’m not telling you how to punish your criminals. But I challenge the judgment passed down by Gizane of the Araton. It’s flawed.”

  The man cocked an eyebrow. Behind him, dozens of Veriboldan landholders muttered among themselves. “Bold words,” the man said. “You claim better knowledge of our laws than a candidate for Election who has studied for years to reach this point?”

  Fiona drew a deep, steadying breath. “The candidate cited Han La on the burden of proof in a capital case,” she said. “But Han La also said that a prisoner in the course of proving her innocence has the right to call witnesses, including those whom the prisoner accuses in her place. Without Pala Gakoa’s testimony, the prisoner’s case is incomplete.”

  “Pala Gakoa was elsewhere at the time of the arson,” the woman on the end said.

  “Quola of the Erbin says that the absence of proof is still proof. You can’t prove a negative. All that means is that no one saw Pala Gakoa at the scene of the crime. He has a better motive in wanting the building removed than the prisoner does. He should be questioned.”

  The woman at the end of the bench twitched, her lips quirking in an unreadable expression before her face smoothed once again into impassivity. “Why do you care?” she asked.

  “Because injustice is a blot on any nation’s character,” Fiona said, “and if I’m to be forced to watch a summary execution, I don’t want any doubts that the prisoner has been justly found guilty.”

  The woman at the end looked at her associates. The man at the center of the pew nodded. “Gizane of the Araton,” he said, “your competence has been called into question. How do you answer this charge?”

  Now Fiona looked at Gizane. She looked as calm as ever, but her green eyes blazed with fury. “I do not believe a foreigner has the right to challenge me.”

  “Your failure to cite proper precedent has already been noted by us. That it was a foreigner who made the challenge is irrelevant. Again, I ask, how do you answer this charge?”

  Gizane shot a poisonous glance at Fiona. Fiona gazed back at her, hoping she looked calmer than she felt. Sebastian’s hand gripped hers painfully tight. Finally, Gizane looked at those on the front pew and said, “My assessment of the crime was…incomplete. I beg the adjudicators’ pardon for my inadequacy.” The words sounded as if they were being dragged out of her.

  “Return the prisoner to her cell in preparation for further investigation,” the woman on the end said. “Gizane of the Araton, your challenge of wisdom is complete. You may stand down.”

  Gizane stood and walked through the right-hand door without looking at anyone. Fiona sank into her chair, struck by unexpected trembling. “What the hell was that about?” Sebastian demanded in a low but intense voice.

  The five law-speakers, or whatever they were, had come together and were whispering in voices too low for Fiona to make out words. “Gizane made a mistake,” Fiona began.

  “Lady North,” the man at the center of the bench said. Fiona leaned over the railing again. The man had stood and was looking directly at her. “Please rise.”

  Slowly, Fiona stood. “Fiona,” Sebastian said, more loudly.

  The woman at the end of the bench rose and left the room. The man said, “What business do you have interfering in the challenge of wisdom?”

  “I told you,” Fiona said, “I didn’t want to see someone murdered because she didn’t receive true justice.”

  “The justice of the ruler of Veribold cannot be contested.” The man didn’t sound angry—didn’t sound as if this mattered at all—but Fiona’s legs continued to tremble, because the flat, emotionless look on his face scared her. It was the look of someone who’d been willing to allow a woman to die because of a flawed legal prosecution.

  “The candidates aren’t rulers yet,” she said.

  “But one eventually will be. If the ruler of Veribold passes judgment, that is de facto justice. The challenge of wisdom gives each candidate the opportunity to prove their worthiness to hold that responsibility. Your interference mars this proceeding.”

  The gallery door opened. The woman from below stood there, her face as emotionless as her peer’s. Behind her, two Jaixante guards in their fluttering robes stood, bearing polearms taller than the door.

  “Lady North,” she said. “You will come with us.”

  33

  Fiona grabbed Sebastian’s hand. “I think they want to arrest me,” she said.

  Sebastian shot to his feet. “They can’t,” he said. “The envoys have diplomatic immunity.”

  “I’m not sure they care. And even if we protest, there’s no way the embassy can protect me right this second.”

  Se
bastian swore under his breath. “Tell them anyway.”

  To her right, Dekerian Nikani stood. “What do you intend?” he asked the law-speaker.

  “Lady North will answer questions about her involvement in the challenges,” the man replied.

  “Then she is not under arrest?” Nikani asked.

  The law-speaker’s gaze flicked from Nikani to Fiona and back again. “It is a courtesy,” he said. “The envoys show respect for Veribold by cooperating in their investigations.”

  “As Veribold shows respect for its foreign guests by according them diplomatic immunity,” Dekerian Salena said from her seat next to Nikani. “If you have questions, you should ask them in public, not as if Lady North were a criminal.”

  “Fiona,” Sebastian said through gritted teeth, “tell me what they’re saying or I’m going to start shouting.”

  “That the Veriboldans have no right to treat me like a criminal,” Fiona said.

  Sebastian leaned on the railing and glared at the law-speaker. “If you’re so interested in justice,” he said, “you can bring your case before the Tremontanan embassy the way your government is legally obligated to do. But stop trying intimidation and threats to get Lady North to give up her rights.”

  Fiona translated this for him and was relieved to see the law-speaker’s face tighten as if Sebastian had struck a telling blow. “Lady North’s refusal to cooperate suggests guilt,” he said.

  Hah. Big mistake. “Not according to Veriboldan law,” Fiona shot back. “Tuyet Thien, in the Annals of Criminal Law, says it is the right of the accused not to incriminate herself, and that a lack of cooperation cannot be taken as an admission of guilt.” She couldn’t help herself; she glanced at the guards hovering in the doorway, afraid they might not care about the legalities. Nobody in the gallery was armed, and while Stannin might have been able to take on the guards bare-handed, he was following the conversation with the glazed expression of someone who didn’t fully understand what was going on and couldn’t be counted on to react properly.