Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (100 page)

The challenger then raised his hands and closed his eyes. He mumbled something to himself, and Wendra thought she saw the word “Charter” on his lips. Eyes still closed, he went on. “Let’s start simply. You have, in the city of Recityv and the nation of Vohnce, a law known as the Civilization Order, which holds that any Sheason who renders the Will, or any citizen who
seeks
a Sheason to render the Will, are guilty of a crime. This crime is punishable in many ways, including death.”

Assent came with the nodding of heads.

“So,” the challenger submitted, “if the leagueman did not ask or conspire with this Sheason to render the Will, then he is not guilty and does not deserve death. And if he was spared the punishment of a false charge by this Archer and his friend, then these melura you’ve condemned did what any men of conscience should.”

“Your logic is sound,” the first counselor admitted with a tone of reservation. “But someone should have informed you—and spared us all a lot of time—that the accused confessed to this crime. He chose to not even speak in his own defense.” The counselor then paced away, deliberately turning his back toward the challenger in a show of contempt. “Something you’d have done well to choose in your own trial many years ago.”

Wendra recoiled at the dark look that gripped the challenger’s features. Just then, she feared for the first counselor’s life. Mira actually sat forward in her chair, as though preparing for a physical outburst. But the challenger did not move. All the chamber fell silent. Penit reached over and took Wendra’s hand.

The challenger stared blankly at the counselor’s back, then turned to face the council in their crimson robes. “Mark me,” he began, and Wendra fought a chill spreading down her back. “You hold three men accountable for crimes they did not commit. You’ve sentenced them to death, or will see them die as you deliberate their fates. I will answer for my own transgressions … will you?”

No one spoke for several moments. The first counselor finally retook his seat and attempted to look busy reviewing parchments lying on the table. His hands shook as he did so. Finally, the challenger turned and nodded at Mira, who stood and went to another door near her own chair. The Far went through the door, and promptly returned with a young girl adorned in sooty rags, her hair pulled back in a frayed band to keep matted strands from falling in her eyes. At the urging of the Far, she hesitantly came forward. The challenger went to her; Mira passed the girl’s hand to him, and gently the challenger led her to the center of the circle. He whispered into her ear. The girl cowered, then stared at the floor as she gave witness, the challenger standing behind her with a supportive hand on her shoulder.

“My name is Leia,” she began. “It wasn’t my father who went to get the Sheason … it was me.”

The gallery erupted in shock and shouts. For a full minute the regent could not restore order. Finally, the pounding of her cane against the marble floor brought silence to the court. “Go on, child,” the regent said.

“I know Rolen,” Leia continued, “because I help him give out food to the poor on beggar’s row. I’ve done it for months because it makes me feel fortunate for what
my
family has. And Rolen always gives me a loaf of bread for my help. When my little sister, Illia, got sick, and Mother couldn’t help her and we had no money for a healer…”

“Go on,” the challenger urged.

“I thought of Rolen, because I know Sheason can use the Will to make people better. I knew mother and father would never go to Rolen because of the law. Or, at least, I didn’t think so. But I couldn’t just let Illia die. And Rolen is so good to me—”

Before the girl or the challenger could say more, another of the counselors at the other table stood. This one wore the emblem of the League below his epaulets. He steepled his fingers under his chin and showed the girl a fatherly smile. “Are we to reverse the dignified resolution of this council on the words of a child? It is notable that she would lie to preserve her father, but hardly admissible.”

“And why not admissible?” the challenger demanded. “Why are you so eager to execute a member of your own fraternity when I am here to tell you he is innocent? That he did what any father would, accepting the blame for a sin to save his child?”

The league counselor fumed a moment before a retort occurred to him. “Let me answer with a question: Why are you so eager to substitute the fatherly valor you speak of with the life of the girl here to answer for this crime?”

Again the gallery murmured with the turn of logic. And Wendra found herself in agreement. This challenger sitting with Vendanj seemed to be arguing that the lawbreaker who should hang was a young girl, maybe twelve years old. She looked down at Penit, realizing again how fragile safety really was.

The man with the deep brown skin standing behind the girl put his other hand on her empty shoulder. He stood as a father might, in full support of what the girl was about to say. “You have not heard the end of it,” he announced, and waited patiently for Leia to resume.

The girl trembled; she could look only at the floor, terrified of what must come next.

With a voice cracking with emotion, she spoke. “Mother has tended us many times when we’ve gotten sick. She’s not a healer or a sodalist, but she knows about sickness. She asked us if any of our friends had been ill, or if any of the beggars on beggars’ row had looked sick when I went to help Rolen pass out bread. She says you can get sick by being around them. But Illia and I told her no. It wasn’t until after they took Rolen away that I remembered Mother telling us that eating too many sweets and fruits could give us stomach pain … that, and the gifts Illia and I had gotten that morning.”

The challenger turned, then, to look at the league counselor, who’d gotten to his feet yet again. Wendra thought the man appeared a shade paler. He addressed the regent, “Your Law, the child is emotional and should never have been forced to come here. And, despite her love for her father, this is a waste of the Court of Judicature’s time. We should—”

“Sit down,” the challenger interrupted. “The girl will say what she has come to say.” He did not ask the regent for leave to say it, nor did he look to her for assent. He merely gave the girl a reassuring pat on the shoulder to continue.

“Illia and I were behind our home, playing. Some of Father’s fellow leaguemen came into the yard. It didn’t really startle me, since they often came by for supper or just to gather Father on their way to a watch. But that morning, they brought Illia and me each a gift. They gave me a sheaf of flowers and told me I was growing into a fine woman. And to Illia they gave a box of sugared sweets…”

The challenger gave Leia another paternal pat on the shoulder, this time whispering something to her so low that it could not be heard. Then he raised his head to the robed council. “The trial record of the Sheason Rolen states that he testified of a poison in the body of child Illia—”

“Don’t you dare suggest it!” The league counsel shot to his feet a third time. It was his turn to point a savage finger, thrusting his hand at the challenger.

The challenger turned to look directly at the man as he said, “I submit that the conspiracy in this affair is not the imprisoned leagueman’s, nor this child’s solicitation of the Sheason to heal her sister. The conspiracy belongs to the league itself, who poisoned a child to force the family of one its members to make an impossible choice: the death of a four-year-old girl, or loyalty to its immoral law.”

A torrent of speculation, rumor, shock, and jeering cascaded down on the floor of the council from the gallery. Even the jury showed concern on their customarily impassive faces. The regent appeared to have need to speak, but could find no words.

It was the league counsel who finally found words. Composed again, he stared back at the challenger. “With all due respect, we still have only the word of a young girl, one who’s emotionally distraught with the imprisonment of her father. A girl, I might add, who appears to have been
prepared
for her testimony by our esteemed challenger. A man, as we know, who has no respect for this council, and who seeks the freedom of those who tried to save the girl’s father.” He smiled. “It doesn’t take much reasoning to determine what is really going on here. And I can assure that you any league confection is not only harmless, but actually quite tasty.”

Mellow laughter rippled in the hall.

To this, the challenger whispered again in Leia’s ear. The girl reached into the pocket of her ragged smock and pulled out a small wrapped morsel. “Illia gave me one of her sweets before she ate them all. I was saving it for a special occasion.” She extended it in an open palm before the Court of Judicature.

The challenger took the sweet from her hand and walked to Pleades’s table. He held it up to the league counselor. “Do you recognize the emblem on this wrapper? Unless things have changed in the last few decades, I’m going to guess that only members of the league can procure this confection.”

The league counselor’s eyes never went to the sweet. “And anyone could have tampered with it in the weeks since the crime,” he observed.

The challenger reset his feet. “The seal is unbroken. Let’s make this even simpler. Eat this. Eat it and prove that a simple gift to a child was not the instrument of conspiracy and death.”

Whispers rushed like seeping winds. The league counselor again opened his mouth to rebut, but words failed him. The challenger had woven a trap, and his opponent had ensnared himself. Several times he started to speak, giving him the appearance of a brook trout pulling water through its mouth and past its gills. Finally, he managed to say something.

“This is an author’s tale. A child’s fancy. Aside from which, where Sheason are involved, anything with this sweet is possible.” The league counselor looked over at Vendanj.

Vendanj rose for the first time. He looked across the aisle at the leagueman. His countenance shone with a terrible frown. Wendra saw genuine concern in the faces of even the regent and Artixan. The air felt charged with an imminent threat.

The force of the words resonated in the very stone, though spoken softly. “You will not make this intimation again. The court will not consider it in its deliberation. And I will not suffer false accusations upon my character, regardless of your laws. Am I understood?”

The league counselor could only nod.

“Eat this,” the challenger repeated.

The counselor picked up the sweet and turned it over in the air before his eyes. “I will not,” he concluded. “This is all so much speculation. I think we have heard enough of this dissent for the jury to render a decision on its merits.”

“I’ll have that back,” the challenger said of the morsel. With some hesitance, the man returned it. Immediately, the challenger turned to the regent. “Your Law, what is your confidence in your league counselor? Would you risk partaking of this confection? Prove that the court’s trust in this man is justified?”

Silence crept over the entire hall.

The regent stared back at the challenger with royal disdain. “We are done here,” she announced, and tapped her cane. “Make your final argument or let this matter lie.”

The challenger motioned the girl back to Mira, and turned to look first at the regent, then at the league counselor. Into the thick stillness he said, “You have benefited by the imprisonment of the Sheason Rolen. The opinions of the people turned to your favor in the wake of his purported crime and conviction. To such as yourselves, the life of one man means less than the directives of your leadership. And with all this distraction, you have caused men to forget the threat out of the Bourne that rushes toward us.”

The league counselor ground his teeth at the challenger’s rhetoric, his jaw flexing muscles near his temples. “There is no threat—”

“Do not interrupt.” The challenger turned back to the council. “The League was worried that this family was sympathetic to the Sheason, perhaps because it knew or had heard that Leia had spent time helping Rolen distribute bread, or perhaps for other reasons. So, they devised a way to test where this family’s loyalties lay.

“Either that,” the challenger said, “or this man’s family served as pawns in a larger scheme. One to reassert the Civilization Order or to divert the people’s attention from rumors of Quiet in the land. And the reasons the League would seek such a diversion should make us all worry.

“But I am not here to expose plots. I am here because two more are now touched by this shameless ploy, two boys who freed a man innocent of the crime that nearly condemned him. It is provident that they came along. They must be set free. They may have interfered with the execution of our regent’s order. But in doing so they answered the higher law of the Charter, and for that they must be held blameless this day. Or have we forgotten the foundation that stretches back through all ages?”

“This is careful logic,” the league counselor exclaimed. “We still have only the word of a child against the conclusion of the Court of Judicature. We have a man defying the law—”

“We have,” the challenger broke back in with renewed vehemence, “one of your very own, preserved, and you stand ready to see him hanged before you’ll let me prove his innocence. What logic in this offends you?”

“No one is more pained than I at the prospect of one of my civil brothers going to his ground before he could do all that he might have done,” the league counselor said, affecting a visage taut with dismay. “But among all else we do, we stand behind the rules that give us order and peace. We do not exempt ourselves from these things, even when they affect us heavily and personally.”