Or so I guessed. Sonder had been the one to dig all that information up, and he hadn’t been able to find hard proof, but it had been suggestive. Sonder had been expecting me to tell everyone, and I could have done just that, but for a variety of reasons that seemed good at the time, I’d decided instead to force Jagadev into an uneasy truce. He’d leave Anne and Variam alone, or I’d go to the Council. It had worked, more or less—to the best of my knowledge Jagadev had cut all contact with Variam and Anne, and they’d been left to finish growing up in peace. But Sonder hadn’t been all that happy with my decision, and over the years, I’d become increasingly uncomfortable with it too.
I’d thought about telling Vari and Anne several times, but I hadn’t, and a big reason had been the likely consequences. There was a one hundred percent chance that the first thing Variam would do would be to go after Jagadev in a white-hot fury, and if he did, Anne would be right there with him. Their chances would be a lot better now, but no matter how the fight turned out, I couldn’t see any of the consequences being good. Maybe Jagadev would kill them; more likely he’d run away and resume his secret war from the shadows, in which case he’d certainly do his best to screw up Anne’s and Vari’s lives out of sheer spite. And even if they took vengeance, what would it get them?
But if I was being honest, a bigger reason had been that I was afraid of how it would make them see me. I could imagine the first question—why didn’t you tell us?—and the second—so all these years you’ve been keeping it a secret? Telling Vari would be bad, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the look in Anne’s eyes. Anne trusts me, and she’s not one of those people who trusts easily or often. I hated the idea of letting her down.
But this wasn’t going to get any easier if I kept putting it off. Back then, Sonder had looked up to me. Maybe that had been the point where he’d started mistrusting me. After all, if I’d keep that kind of secret, I might keep others. If I cleared that up, could it be a way to mend fences?
It might be worth a try.
The sound of my name brought me back to the present. “. . . read Councillor Verus’s statement?” the coroner was asking.
Sonder didn’t look at me. “Yes.”
“Are your findings consistent with the evidence he’s given?”
I forced myself to stay relaxed. Timesight can let you view any past events that have occurred at a location. There are a lot of things that can block it, and the wards that the Council layers on places like San Vittore make viewing those locations difficult. But difficult isn’t the same thing as impossible, and Sonder is very good at what he does. Right now, of all the people in the room, he was the one I had most reason to fear.
Sonder hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “As I said in my initial report, the wards on San Vittore made it impossible to take a precise viewing.”
“However, you stated that you were able to trace movements.”
“Yes.”
“Are you able to conclusively confirm or disprove Councillor Verus’s account of his movements?”
“Not . . . conclusively. But everything I was able to establish tended to confirm them.”
“Could you elaborate?”
“I can confirm that he did travel directly from the facility entrance to the interview room,” Sonder said. “And he later travelled directly from the interview room to the wing containing Morden’s cell. However, I wasn’t able to clearly view the period in between.”
“Are you able to tell us why?”
“Council interview rooms have extensive ward protections. The corridors are less heavily shielded.”
“So you can’t confirm or deny Councillor Verus’s actions in the period leading immediately up to the attack.”
“No.”
“Hypothetically, could he have opened a gate in that period?”
Sonder paused. “To outside the bubble realm?”
“Yes.”
“Um . . . ,” Sonder said. “No.”
“I’m sorry?”
“There’s no possible way he could have done that.”
A stir went through the courtroom. “Didn’t you just say that you weren’t able to view the interview room?” the coroner said.
“Yes.”
“Then how can you say what did or didn’t happen inside it?”
“Because gate magic creates a signature in a wide spatio-temporal radius,” Sonder said. “I couldn’t view the interview room, but I could view the corridor it opened into, and I checked it thoroughly. So did the other two time mages brought in. We all came to the same conclusion. There’s no possible way a gate could have been opened from there.”
I heard some whispers from behind. Without turning my head, I could see Solace staring at Sonder; she looked pissed off. I guess she hadn’t seen this one coming. Then again, until only a little while ago, neither had I.
“Were you able to detect gate magic signatures from anywhere else during that period?”
“No.”
“Then do you have any other explanation for how Vihaela was able to reach Morden’s cell?”
“At the moment, our working theory is that she entered it from the outside,” Sonder said. “Somehow she was able to travel through the void surrounding the facility. Unfortunately she was using a shroud effect with sufficient power that it wasn’t possible to view her directly.”
There was a pause. I felt the coroner’s eyes flick to me, and I knew what he was thinking. If they couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation as to how I could have let “Vihaela” in, any case against me would fall apart.
The coroner cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mage Sonder. No further questions.”
Sonder nodded, glanced at me, and left. “The court will now consider the evidence,” the coroner announced.
The murmur of conversations started up around the room. The coroner was conferring with the clerks, while off to one side Solace and Barrayar were having a whispered conversation. I couldn’t make out their words, but from their body language Solace looked angry. The conversation that really mattered, though, was one I couldn’t hear at all. The three Senior Council members at the back table had their heads together and were talking, their voices silenced by a magical barrier.
The Council members sitting at the table were Sal Sarque, Druss the Red, and Alma. Druss I wasn’t worried about: he was generally an ally of mine these days. Alma was a question mark. She’s an ally of Levistus, another member of the Senior Council, and Levistus is one of my oldest and bitterest enemies. On the other hand, Alma’s pragmatic, and if she didn’t think this case had a good enough chance of success, she’d vote to drop it. She would be the swing vote.
The third person sitting at that table was more of a problem. His name was Sal Sarque, a dark-skinned unsmiling man with close-cut white hair and a scar running the length of his scalp. He’s the de facto leader of the Crusader faction among the Light mages, and as far as he and his faction are concerned, the only good Dark mage is a dead one. He’d taken Morden’s appointment to the Council as a personal insult, and though I couldn’t prove it, I was pretty sure he’d been the one who’d given the order for Anne and me to be kidnapped and tortured. The fact that his previous aide ended up dead in the process had made things worse, if possible, and given the choice, I was pretty sure that he’d rather cut out the bother of a trial and just have me straight-up killed.
But, for now at least, Sal Sarque was too busy with the war to waste resources sending assassins, which meant all I had to worry about was the political sphere. The futures were shifting too much for me to predict the decision, but I was pretty sure this case wasn’t making it to trial. Which was good, because while Solace’s claims that I’d gated in Vihaela were complete bullshit, what I had done was arguably worse. It’s like the police investigating you for drug dealing when you’ve got a dead body in the basement. Sure, they might be on the wrong track, but if one person goes looking in the wrong place . . .