Elayne, who had never found such questions worthy of meditation, did not reply.
Their carriage drew to a halt amid a jangle of tack and bit and a creaking of wheels. Denovo opened the carriage door, and Elayne saw the marble columns and blind statuary of the Temple of Justice. Leaping to the pavement, he offered her a hand, which she accepted.
“Shall we?”
*
The accused stand before us, said a voice several octaves too deep and too high at once to be human. Reverberating from the skin of the eyeless statue and the flesh of the rapt Blacksuits alike, it nearly bore Tara to the ground. The gargoyles, whose hearing was more acute than her own, quaked where they knelt.
The accused stand before us, charged with abetting the murder of a Judge of Alt Coulumb.
The air about struggling Shale glowed with corpse-light, casting him in sickly green.
This one is charged with murder. Above the prisoners, shining motes of dust danced and rearranged themselves into a picture, three-dimensional and vivid: Judge Cabot’s rooftop garden picked out in neon, rotating in empty space. The Judge lay as Tara had found him, dismembered in a pool of his own blood. David let out a choked sound, sobbing or retching. Shale reared over Cabot’s body, blood slick on his stone hands and talons and chest. Tara saw pain in his snarl, but to someone burdened with years of hate, the gargoyle’s expression would look like a roar of bestial triumph.
How do the defendants plead?
This was all wrong. There should be a chance for the accused to present evidence and consider the evidence presented against them before entering a plea. This was no trial. They were at the mercy of an arrogant, crippled goddess.
The bonds about Aev’s mouth slackened. She rose to her feet. The sound of her weight settling on the stone floor echoed through the hall. She looked up at the holes where the statue’s eyes should have been, and spat gravel and dust at its feet. The bonds tightened about her again, but she did not kneel.
The gargoyles would be executed, or worse, for murdering Cabot. Tara remembered Ms. Kevarian’s words as they flew away from Edgemont: “We stay one step ahead of the mob.” Justice might claim she was blind, but she saw through her Blacksuits. She was the mob, given a single voice.
But she believed she was fair. Tara could use that belief to save the gargoyles, and Abelard, and herself.
All she had to do in return was give up her advantage over Denovo. She had no illusions about her chances of defeating him if they were on an even footing. Denovo was the stronger and cannier Craftsman, even without his lab.
What was more important? Assuring her own victory, or protecting these people, whose city had betrayed them and cast them out? Whose own countrymen thought them monsters?
As the defendants have refused to enter a plea, they are subject to confinement—
“No.”
It was a single word, but Tara put all her Craft into it. Justice fell silent. A vast mind settled its attention on her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Abelard hissed.
“Making things up as I go along,” she replied in a harsh whisper. She stepped forward, summoning her composure and her technique and her reserves of voice. “Lady,” she said to Justice, “I enter myself as counselor for the accused, and register a plea of not guilty.”
*
Crimson robes flapped about Cardinal Gustave like a vulture’s wings as he flew toward the Temple of Justice. The sky pressed against him, trying to force him back to earth. He thought of Lady Kevarian’s assurances, and of the demon Denovo, encouraging, pricking, convincing with his teeth bared in mockery of a smile.
The lights of a passing train lit the Cardinal from below. An idle Crier paced the business district, singing listlessly to empty streets. The city had deserted him.
As it had deserted the Church.
Rounding a skyscraper, Cardinal Gustave saw the Doric and gleaming Temple of Justice. Beneath the glass dome of its inner Sanctum, tiny figures moved at the blind goddess’s feet. Even from this height, Gustave could identify Abelard among them, and Lady Kevarian’s apprentice.
He descended, watching.
*
Tara advanced between bowed figures and Abelard followed. As she neared the statue of Justice, a Blacksuit barred her path. Tara recognized Cat, and the crystal dagger in her grip.
Justice spoke again. What do you intend to prove, Counselor?
“Lady, the accused did not murder Alphonse Cabot. The Judge was assassinated by a third party, who wished to prevent him from serving the god who until three days ago watched over this city and its people. Nor was Judge Cabot the sole victim of assassination in Alt Coulumb this week. There has been one other.
“Kos Everburning.”
*
Cat watched, astonished, from within her Blacksuit as Tara spoke. A silent war waged through Justice’s mind over whether to recognize the Craftswoman’s right to argue her case. Some parts of Justice were intrigued; others felt this was not Tara’s city, nor her affair. Strike her down, they said, and proceed with the trial.
Tara indicated with one hand Raz Pelham’s body on the floor nearby.
“Three days ago, a trap was sprung against the nation of Iskar. A mercenary armada attacked the Iskari treasure fleet. Iskar used Kos’s power to defend itself, and Kos died as he honored his obligation to them. But the defense contract was clear and carefully wrought: Iskar could not have drawn enough power through it to kill Kos, unless he was far weaker than his Church knew.”
*
How did you learn of these attacks?
“I have eyewitness testimony,” Tara said. No backing out now. “If Raz Pelham will rise?”
Raz did not twitch. His wounds had long since healed, bones fused, skin and flesh knit together, but he remained still, no doubt hoping to preserve the element of surprise. Calling him as a witness played one of Tara’s few hole cards, but if Justice didn’t believe her argument, the gargoyles wouldn’t survive long enough to benefit from any other scheme.
“Raz,” she said, softly. “Please get up.”
A Blacksuit approached the Captain’s body, but Raz stood on his own, brushing grime off the front of his shirt. Shadows flowed on the face of the Justice statue as it fixed him with its broken stare.
Identify yourself.
“Captain Rasophilius Pelham,” Raz said, “of the Kell’s Bounty.”
A pirate.
“An entrepreneur and occasional mercenary. I was hired to attack the Iskari treasure fleet. I vouch that everything Tara has said is true.”
Who hired you?
“I can’t give you that information.”
You must.
He raised his chin and bared his teeth. “With all due respect”—though his tone did not imply much—“I am willing to identify my employer, but unable to do so. My employer destroyed my memories of his—or her”—with a nod to Tara—“identity after I fulfilled my contract.”
Half of Justice objected in a voice that issued from the Blacksuits to the hall’s right. Tara Abernathy strays from the question before Us. Are the accused guilty of murder? A second later, other Blacksuits echoed and emphasized the theme. How is an attack on Iskar connected to the death of a Judge in Alt Coulumb?
Tara’s throat was dry, her chest tight, her muscles sore, but she’d be damned if she let herself look weak. “The Judge’s death fits into a larger story in which the accused appear as victims, not aggressors.”