There was far from enough room in the court to let everyone in, but bearing in mind the importance of the trial, the magistrate graciously allowed the townspeople to occupy the space between the doors, as well as the corridor leading outside and the steps of the building, and in the end the spacious courtroom was connected to the square by a wide ribbon of humanity. People reported what they heard from ear to ear like water is delivered from hand to hand during a fire, and everything that was said in the court became the talk of the square within a matter of minutes. The beginning of the hearing kept being delayed; sitting on a long, rickety bench, Egert watched impassively as the acolytes of Lash talked behind the empty judgment seat, as a clerk sharpened his quills, as the bench opposite him was slowly filled with frightened shopkeepers: they were also witness, witnesses of the Plague. Everything must go according to the rules. What a pity that it was impossible to summon to court those unfortunates whose bodies reposed under the hill; what a pity that it was impossible to summon Dean Luayan. He could not rise to his feet from under the earth, not even to help his beloved daughter.
Turning his head toward the hall, Egert saw the fringed caps of the students and instantly averted his eyes.
Two scribes were fidgeting behind a long table. Egert overheard one of them ask the other in a low voice, “Do you have a nail file? My nail broke, damn it!”
The crowd fidgeted, jostled one another, whispered to one another, and examined with equal curiosity the somber decorations of the hall, the scribes, Egert, the guards, the judgment seat, and the toylike gibbet on the table in front of it. It was an exact copy of the one that overlooked the entrance. The prisoner’s dock was empty, but right next to it, perched on a stool, was the short man of unprepossessing appearance dressed in a shapeless smock. A canvas bag rested on his knees, and by its contours Egert’s eyes effortlessly divined the nature of the object concealed inside.
The long-handled pliers.
Ten minutes passed, then another ten. The spectators finally began to look around excitedly, and Egert saw the magistrate striding toward the dais. A man in a hood accompanied him; Egert knew who he was. Treading with difficulty, the magistrate climbed the velvet-pleated steps and sat down heavily in the judgment seat. Fagirra stood next to him without raising his hood, but Egert still felt his observant gaze rest on him. The magistrate sighed something in a strained voice, and the clerk took up his words like a resonant echo.
“Bring in the accused!”
Egert mired his head deep into his shoulders, riveting his eyes to the gray fissures in the stone floor. The noise in the hall dimmed, steel clanged, and then Egert’s ability to feel others’ suffering returned to him.
His head still lowered, Egert’s skin sensed Toria entering the court. She was a solid lump of pain and fear, constricted by her obstinate will. He felt how with her very first glance, covetous, full of hope, she searched the hall for him and how that glance warmed as it settled on him. He realized that she already knew everything. She knew about the role that had been prepared for Egert, but all the same she rejoiced at the opportunity of seeing him; all the same she hoped as devoutly as a child. She placed her hope in this man, most precious to her.
Then he raised his head.
The days of interrogation had not been kind to her. Meeting Egert’s eyes, she tried to smile: almost guiltily because her bitten lips had no desire to obey her. Her black hair was pulled back with unusual precision; it was smoother than usual. Her bloodshot eyes were dry. The guard sat Toria down in the prisoner’s dock. With an obvious display of disgust, she moved away from the touch of his hand and once again looked at Egert. He tried to answer her look with a small smile of his own, but he could not bear it and turned his eyes away, right into the gaze of Fagirra.
The executioner sighed loudly, and his sigh echoed over the entire hall because just at that moment a breathless hush had settled over the crowd. The prosecutor stood up and flung off his hood with an abrupt movement.
Egert felt Toria’s horror. She even flinched when Fagirra looked at her. At the thought that the man had tortured her with his own hand, Egert’s jaw clenched with the desire to kill him, but fear soon overrode that desire and returned everything in his soul to its accustomed place.
Fagirra began to recite the prosecution’s charges, and from the very first word Egert understood that it was hopeless, that Toria was doomed and that no mercy would be given.
Fagirra spoke simply and plainly. The people listened to him with bated breath, and only in the back rows was there any whispering: the words of the prosecutor were being transmitted along the chain to the square. From his words, as considered and precise as the work of a jeweler, it incontestably followed that the dean had long planned to blight the city and that his daughter, of course, helped him. Fagirra mentioned such details and produced such proofs that Egert’s heart began to ache: either a spy of the Order had been hidden in the university for a long time or Toria, under torture, had told Fagirra about the most private, most secret details of her father’s life. The crowd became indignant; Egert felt how their righteous anger spread along the chain beyond the walls of the court, how the human sea on the square was filled with wild rancor and the thirst for retribution.
Toria listened, cringing internally. Egert felt how she tried to gather together her scattered thoughts, how she flinched from the accusation as if from blows. Her hope, which had flared up at the sight of Egert, now gradually faded like a smoldering coal.
Glancing intently at Egert, Fagirra finished his speech, flipped his hood back over his head, and approached the judgment seat. One by one the witnesses were called to the stand at a sign from the magistrate.
The first, a fleshy merchant, had the most difficulty: he did not know what to say, and so he simply lamented his losses, somewhat inarticulately. He was listened to with sympathy, for every man in the crowd could say the exact same words in his place. Everyone who was called up to the witness stand after the merchant behaved similarly; the lamentations were repeated; women cried, enumerating their losses. The crowd hushed, borne away into grief.
Finally the flood of witnesses of the Plague dried up. Some lad from the crowd started yelling out his own experiences, but he was quickly admonished to keep quiet. As if it were a single entity, the gaze of the crowd, stern and sour, lunged at the accused. Egert felt a slap of hatred strike Toria. Groaning noiselessly, he jerked on his bench, wishing to shelter and defend her, but he remained seated while the magistrate coughed something and the clerk repeated that now the prosecutor would question the defendant.
Toria stood up, and that single movement cost her agonizing effort. Egert felt how every nerve, every sore muscle quaked. Taking the stand, she quickly glanced at Egert, who leaned forward, silently supporting, embracing, and reassuring her. Fagirra walked close to the stand. A convulsion passed over Toria’s entire body, as if the intimate presence of the robed man was unbearable to her.
“Is it true that Dean Luayan was your father?” Fagirra asked loudly.
Toria—Egert knew what effort it cost her—turned her head and looked him straight in the eye. “Dean Luayan is my father,” she replied brusquely, but loudly and steadily. “He is dead, but he still exists in the memory of the thousands who knew him.”