The Dreaming Void (77 page)

The court was convened in Makkathran's Parliament House, which dominated the Majate district. Technically it was one building, but its component structures had amalgamated into a village of huge halls, assembly rooms, auditoriums, and offices, with cloisters instead of streets. Right at the center was the elaborate Democracy Chamber where the Grand Council met to debate policy and laws. Wrapped protectively around that were tiers of offices for the Guild of Clerks, which worked to administer the city's regulations and collect taxes. A whole wing contained well-appointed offices for all the district representatives where they could be lobbied by their constituents about every perceived and actual injustice. Somewhere inside—underground it was rumored—were the treasury vaults, containing mountains of gold and silver, where the coins were minted. The Chief Constable also was based in one of the five conical towers, along with a modest staff. For centuries, the outermost tower, closest to the City Gate, used to house the militia barracks, but they had long departed, the serving soldiers to several barracks within the city, while the general and senior officers had taken up residence in the Orchard Palace next door. The vacated barracks had been taken over eagerly by the ever-expanding Lawyer's Guild.

Although it was democratically open to anyone, it was the interconnecting domes that ran alongside the Center Circle Canal with which the average Makkathran citizen was most likely to be familiar. They housed the courts of justice as well as the constabulary's main holding cells. Edeard and the rest of the squad had been shown around by Master Solarin, who had explained the history of every corridor and room at inordinate and boring length. Part of their training was to attend trials so they could accustom themselves to the procedures and listen to the verbal sparring of the lawyers. Edeard had been looking forward to that part, but in all the trials they had watched, the lawyers had confined themselves to simple questions to those in the witness stand. There had been an obscure argument about interpreting a precedent established four hundred years earlier to settle a dispute between two fishmongers and their supplier about who got priority on the catch based on the length of the contract. Edeard barely understood the words they used, let alone followed the logic involved. The only criminal trial they'd seen had been one in which the constables had arrested a bunch of minor family sons during an altercation in a theater late one night. The young men had all been sheepish, never challenged the senior squad sergeant's account, pleaded guilty to all charges, and accepted the fine without question.

As far as preparation and experience went, Edeard was beginning to realize how useless it had all been.

Two middle court judges and a Mayor's Council judge had been appointed to preside over the case against the trio of thieves they had arrested. They sat together behind a raised wooden podium that ran along the back of the oval courtroom, clad in flowing scarlet-and-black robes, with fur-lined hoods hanging over their right shoulders. The Mayor's Counsel also wore a golden chain, signifying his high status.

Arrayed in the dock on their left, the thieves stood with two court constables in dress uniform standing guard. They finally had given their names. Arminel was what the hooded leader called himself. He was no more than forty, with a drawn pale face and thick sandy hair that he wore long to cover large ears. At no time did he look worried; if anything, his expression indicated ennui. His accomplices were Omasis and Harri. Harri, still in his teens, was the one they had told to stand guard in the alley. He'd been charged only with complicity to steal. Arminel and Omasis both were charged with theft and aggravated trespass, while Arminel had to face the additional charge of assaulting a constable. The jewelry shop owner had swiftly identified the contents of the two bottles Arminel had smashed together as a highly volatile spirit-based cleaning fluid and acid. Edeard had shivered at the thought of what could have happened if his shield had not been strong enough to ward off the fireball. He had wanted Arminel to be charged with the attack on Kavine in the Silvarum market, but Master Vosbol, the lawyer Captain Ronark had retained to prosecute the case, had said no. It was too long ago for witnesses to be considered reliable.

“But I recognized him immediately,” Edeard had cried.

“You saw someone behaving suspiciously,” Master Vosbol had said. “You believed him to be the participant in the previous crime.”

“Kavine will identify him.”

“Kavine was stabbed, quite badly. The defense will argue that that makes him unreliable. Let's just go with these charges, shall we.”

Edeard had sighed and shook his head.

It really should have served a warning about the methodology of Makkathran's legal affairs. Instead, the first inkling that their case was not as watertight as they imagined came when the defendants all entered a plea of not guilty.

“They can't be serious,” Edeard hissed as Master Cherix, the defense lawyer, stood before the judges and entered the plea. The squad was sitting along the rear wall, all in their dress uniforms, waiting to be called by the prosecution. Captain Ronark sat on one side of them, with Sergeant Chae on the other.

Almost all of the seats were empty. Edeard didn't know if he was pleased about that. He wanted the city's citizens to see that his squad had helped bring a small part of their troubles to justice, show them that the law had not deserted them.

Master Cherix raised a surprised eyebrow at Edeard's exclamation and turned to look at the squad. Master Vosbol shot them a furious look. “Be silent,” his longtalk ordered.

It was, Master Cherix explained, a terrible misunderstanding. His clients were honest citizens going about their business when they perceived the blast in the alley. It had blown open a small door, and, full of the concern for human life, they had ventured into a storeroom filled with smoke and flames—at great personal risk—to make sure there were no injured people inside. At that point the constables had stumbled upon them and received a totally false impression.

One by one the three accused took the stand and swore under oath that they had been acting selflessly. As they did so, their unshielded minds radiated sincerity, along with a modicum of injured innocence that their good deed had been misinterpreted. Master Cherix shook his head in sympathy, woebegone that the constables had acted so wrongly. “A sign of the times,” he told the judges. “These constables are well-meaning young folk, rushed through their training by a city desperate to reach staffing targets for the sake of politics. But in truth they were far out of their depth on that sad day. They, too, need to make arrests to prove themselves to their notoriously harsh station captain. In such circumstances it is only understandable why they chose to interpret events in the way they did.”

Edeard met Arminel's stare.
He tried to kill me, and his lawyer's making out it was all a misunderstanding? That we're in the wrong.
It was so outrageous, he almost laughed. Then Arminel's expression twitched just for an instant. That condescending sneer burned itself into Edeard's memory. He knew then that this was not the end, nowhere near.

After two hours of listening to the defendants, Edeard finally was called to the stand.
About time, I can soon set this straight.

“Constable Edeard.” Cherix smiled warmly. He was nothing like Master Solarin but a young man dressed like the son of a trading family. “You're not from the city, are you?”

“What's that got to do with this?”

Master Cherix put on a pained expression and turned to the judges. “My lords?”

“Answer the questions directly,” the Mayor's Counsel instructed.

“Sir.” Edeard reddened. “No. I was born in the Rulan province.”

“And you've been here for what? Half a year?”

“A little over that, yes.”

“So it would be fair to say that you're not entirely familiar with the city.”

“I know my way around.”

“I was thinking more in terms of the way our citizens behave. So why don't you tell me what you believe happened?”

Edeard launched into his rehearsed explanation: how Arminel tried to avoid the ge-eagle, the squad tracking them along Sonral Street, arranging themselves in an encircling formation while standing back and observing through farsight, sensing Arminel picking the locks.

“At which point we closed in, and I witnessed the accused stealing gold wire from the storeroom.”

“I'm curious about this aspect,” Master Cherix said. “You told your squad to wait in Sonral Street by the entrance to the alley. Yet you went down into the storeroom. But I thought you said Harri had been left ‘on guard duty' in the alley. How did you get past him?”

“I was lucky. I found another entrance through the shop which backed onto the jeweler's.”

Master Cherix nodded in admiration. “So it was hardly a secure storeroom, then? If you could just walk in.”

“It was difficult,” Edeard admitted, praying to the Lady to help him rein in his guilt. But this was not a lie, just a slight rearrangement of his true route into the storeroom. “I just managed to get there in time.”

“In time for what?”

“To see Arminel stealing the gold wire. He was doing that before he flung flaming acid at me.”

“Indeed. I'd like you to clarify another point, Constable. When you emerged after this alleged event to join up with your squad, did Arminel have any of this supposed ‘gold wire' on him?”

“Well, no. He dumped it when I challenged him.”

“I see. And your squadmates can confirm that, can they?”

“They know … yes.”

“Yes what? Constable.”

“We caught them doing it. I saw him!”

“By your own statement, you were deep underground in the poorly illuminated storeroom at the time of the alleged theft. Which of your squadmates can farsight through fifteen yards of solid city fabric?”

“Kanseen. She knew I was there.”

“Thank you, Constable. Defense would like to call Constable Kanseen.”

Kanseen passed Edeard on her way to the stand. They both had meticulously blank expressions, but he could tell how worried she was. When he sat down next to Dinlay the others all smiled sympathetically. “Good job,” Chae whispered, but Edeard was not convinced.

“You have a farsight almost as good as your squad leader's?” Master Cherix asked.

“We came out about equal in our tests.”

“So you could sense what went on in the storeroom from your position in Sonral Street?”

“Yes.”

Edeard winced. She sounded so uncertain.

“How much gold wire was in there?”

“I … er, I'm not sure.”

“An ounce? A ton?”

“A few boxes.”

“Constable Kanseen.” Master Cherix smiled winningly. “Was that a guess?”

“Not enough gold to be obvious to a casual farsight sweep.”

“I'll let that go for the moment. Constable Edeard claims you perceived him in there.”

“I did,” she replied confidently. “I sensed him appear in the back. We'd been worried when we lost track of him.”

“You sensed his mind. There's a big difference between a radiant source of thoughts and inert material, is there not?”

“Yes, of course.”

Master Cherix patted the jacket he wore under his black robe. “In one pocket I have a length of gold wire. In another pocket I have an equal length of steel wire. Which is which, Constable?”

Edeard concentrated his farsight on the lawyer. Sure enough, there was some kind of dense line of matter in each pocket, but there was no way to tell the nature of either one.

Kanseen looked straight ahead. “I don't know.”

“You don't know. Yet there is only five feet of clear air between us. So can you really say with certainty you perceived my client picking up gold wire when he was on the other side of fifteen yards of solid mass?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Constable. No more questions.”

It came down to an argument between two lawyers. Edeard found himself grinding his teeth as it was presented as his word against Arminel's.

“Acting suspiciously,” Master Vosbol ticked off on his fingers. “Gaining entry to a storeroom behind two locked doors. Seen by a constable of impeccable character stealing gold wire. Attacking that same constable. My lords, the evidence is overwhelming. They came to the storeroom with the express intent of theft, a theft which was valiantly thwarted by these fine constables at great personal danger to themselves.”

“Circumstantial evidence only,” Master Cherix pronounced. “Facts twisted by the prosecution to support a speculated sequence of events. A country boy alone in an underground city storeroom full of smoke and flame. Confused by the strange environment and regrettably unreliable, his claims unsupported by his own squadmates and friends. My clients do not deny being in the storeroom, responding to the fire as any responsible citizen would. The prosecution has offered no proof whatsoever that they ever touched the gold wire. I would draw my lords' attention to the precedent of
Makkathran versus Leaney;
hearsay is inadmissible.”

“Objection,” Master Vosbol barked. “This is testimony by a city official, not hearsay.”

“Unsubstantiated testimony,” Master Cherix countered, “must be accepted as having equal weight to my clients' account of events.”

The judges deliberated for eight minutes. “Insufficient evidence,” the Mayor's Counsel announced. “Case dismissed.” He banged his gavel on the bench.

Edeard's head dropped into his hands. He absolutely could not believe what he'd just heard. “Lady, no,” he gasped.

The defendants were cheering, slapping each other jubilantly. Edeard was disgusted to see Masters Vosbol and Cherix shake hands.

“It happens,” Captain Ronark said gravely. “You did a perfect job; nobody could do better. I'm proud of you. But this is the way it is in Makkathran these days.”