57 - Justice is done

I headed straight from the chair out to the courtyard. My family and friends who were here closed in around me in such a way that I knew they’d planned it, tender hands on my shoulders and my back. Still, there were smiles. “I knew you’d spit fire, and you did some,” Krero said. “The last thing I expected was that you’d make us laugh.”

“You even got some of the jurors,” Artira whispered, “and they’re supposed to show absolutely nothing.”

Yet the courtyard seemed like the Earthsphere, as if the courtroom had been distant from it. “Did that really happen?” I asked myself inwardly. “Was I really standing there, facing a Yeoli who wanted, who still wants me dead, enough to do it by her own hand? Was that real?” I remembered the feel of the wood of the arms of the chair of testimony under my hands, the perfect edges of the crystal as I swore, a stray lock of Sharaina’s hair that she pushed back brusquely, unthinking, as was her habit. The words all seemed gone, though.

She was done, as was Akana; her trial was essentially over and the jury must make their decision. When we came back it was Bartelao’s turn. I didn’t have to be there as neither Akana nor Bartelao’s advocate, Kalosera Chisa, had questions for me; I could have started flying back to Arko. But I felt I should stay, for some reason, to see it through to the end.

Bartelao’s defense was in effect feeble-mindedness, in that he had been swayed into it by Sharaina’s. I won’t detail his trial. He wept all the way through, and it became very clear he was so easily swayed by anyone he considered an authority that he would do and say whatever he was told to by one. He broke down in tears almost with every question, so Kalosora interrupted to request breaks and the judge granted them, very frequently. What struck me was that the only person who would follow when Bartelao fled sobbing into the corridor was his advocate. His kin would only look at him icily impassive, or with contempt. Of course they were embarrassed that he was here; but he was still kin.

The fifth or sixth time it happened, I got up as he was about to scurry past me, and touched his arm. He froze, his green eyes white all around, when he saw who’d touched him. I brought my lips close to his ear; this was no one’s business but his. Everyone else would see enough in a moment. “I cannot know whether the jurors or the judges will believe you,” I said. “But I can say this, whatever it may mean to you: I do. It’s very plain and clear to me; if they see it too, you have nothing to worry about.”

He stood rooted and stock-still for a moment, then flung himself into my arms, and bawled on my shoulder like a baby, except for the deep voice; he was taller than me and had to bend. We were in recess but I’d done it fast enough that the judges and the jurors were still mostly in the room, and couldn’t help but turn to look. When I’d held him for a time I peered past his shoulder at his parents, and raised my brows; a flash of shame crossed his mother’s face, and she got up, and put an arm around his back. I passed him to her.

Next I went to Kalosora and whispered into his ear, “Call as a witness Surya Chaelaecha. You’re arguing he’s crazy, but you’ve got no psych-healer; I’m going to guess it’s because you’re thinking you don’t have time. What most psyche healers need beads or days to understand, he can see in a moment, right here.”

“What are you doing, Chevenga?” he whispered back. “The kid was going to kill you. I’d have thought you’d be trying to make sure he’d become a red smear on the courthouse steps, or at least a beggar in Bravhniki… what are you asking in return?”

“If you think that’s what he deserves, you should recuse yourself as his advocate,” I said. I guess cynicism makes me snappish. “I don’t. That’s all.”

He pursed his lips and said, “Surya Chaelaecha… Hearthstone Independent?”

“He’s here.” I introduced them.

Of course bringing in an unscheduled witness requires the other advocate’s agreement, but Akana, who by my reading pitied Bartelao as I did, agreed, and for his own part Bartelao agreed to have his aura seen. It was strange, seeing Surya do it before the Arch-Arbitrate of Yeola-e, but, as I expected, he wasn’t even slightly fazed. He judged that Bartelao had indeed been swayed and had been too blinded by fear of Sharaina to fully understand what he’d agreed to. His recommendation was a long course of psyche-healing, and he felt it would be best done away from home, preferably on Haiu Menshir.

The jury went off to their room to decide. I had a feeling it wouldn’t take long, so I held off dinner, though it was close to that time. I had not noticed before, but everywhere except in the court, Sharaina, respectable as she looked, had two guards sticking close as spit on either side of her. No doubt Krero, when he’d truth-drugged her, had asked her if she would try to escape during the trial, and she was in no bonds because she’d said no. But he knew well that someone in her place could easily, and suddenly, change her mind.

If she was afraid—and I can’t imagine how she could not be—she did not show it at all. Of course I did not look at her when I knew she was looking at me. Nor had I anything to say to her. What could it be?

Weapons are not allowed in Assembly Palace, of course, except for those of guards, but when I went out to the courtyard I felt a crowd of blades on the steps outside the front doors. Mostly knives and daggers, small and hidden, but the odd short and even longsword, and even one spear, in readiness for a sentence of exile without safe conduct. I felt sick. They do this at least in part in love for me, I thought. It made me feel even sicker.

The jury did not take long. We all assembled again, the spectators too crowded even to sit now, jammed in among the chairs. After a glance around the room, the Presiding Judge, ever wise, said, “Bartelao Shae-Ima first.”

I whispered to Surya and Krero, “The moment the crystal hits the bell to adjourn, I go like an arrow off the string out the back and around to the Independent, eat dinner as fast as I can cram it down and then harness up on the relay-wing, so Surya, if we’re flying together, you’ve got to keep up with me. Unless…” I swallowed. “…you think that I need to see her killed as part of my healing.”

He glanced at my aura, and signed charcoal. “It’s all right, you will not deny to yourself, overly, that she’s dead.” Overly? So I would some, then. I heaved a sigh.

Bartelao was acquitted by reason of his stated defense, but the jurors asked if they could, along with that, require healing. In the end the Arbitrate ruled him free and in good legal standing again, but on the condition that he go to Haiu Menshir for psyche-healing, if he and his family could pay for it; if not, the ruling would be reviewed. The threat was clear there; scrape up the ankaryel or your child might end up dead or thrown out of the country. The family acceded.

Then it was Sharaina, and there was a silence like in a crypt, except for the involuntary click of a crystal against another pendant or a faint rustle. As the one the jury chosen to speak for them began, many eyes turned to me. I made my face stone.

She asked whether they were permitted to declare Sharaina insane and commend her to healing, to a spitting scoff from her. “No,” the Presiding Judge answered patiently. “By her plea the defendant allows you only two choices: guilty or guiltless by reason of justification.”

“Guilty, then,” the chosen juror said; they’d clearly had a first and second plan. In Yeoli law, a jury may not rule a sentence, as that’s the place of the judge or judges, but they can certainly state what they feel is fitting. “We urge exile without safe conduct.”

I kept my face stone. Sharaina might have done likewise; she was facing away from me. All over the room people let out their breath, enough with cries and comments that the Presiding Judge had to call order. The two guards suddenly ghosted in very close beside her. The seven judges of the Arbitrate deliberated just with gestures to each other behind their bench, all but momentarily. They ruled the sentence the jury had recommended, and the bell was struck.

What seemed like a hundred writers all yelled my name at once as I leapt up from my chair. “Justice is done, I have nothing else to say, that’s all!” I battle-bellowed over the din as I dashed for the same door the judges were using to exit, Surya shadowing me. “I’m sorry, Honoured Judges, I beg forgiveness, it’s the only way I’m going to get out of here in a timely way...” Behind me more people shouted, “Chevenga! Chevenga, come, you’ve got to see this! You need to see this!” and added some detail about what they meant to do to Sharaina, which I will spare the reader. “No matter, semanakraseye,” said the Presiding Judge. “Go on.”

Surya, fortunately, is not a bad runner, and most of the writers wanted to see the end, so they did not catch us. I didn’t look back. I read later, though, that as they took Sharaina out onto the steps, she called for silence so she could speak. Out of a contemptuous curiosity more than mercy, the crowd allowed it, and she began grandly declaiming the names of those who gave their lives so as to safeguard Yeola-e throughout our history, implying that she would now take her place among them. She’d barely got out two or three before her voice was lost in a din of rage, and a hundred hands seized her.

The dining hall of the Independent is deep enough inside it, fortunately, that yelling at the Palace can’t be heard. My dinner still tasted like ashes; I couldn’t get it down fast enough. I considered downing a few cups of wine so I’d be drunk beyond caring when we flew, but decided against. Flying itself, I hoped, would be enough of a balm.

The late summer sun was westering orange over purple ridges as I harnessed up and ran through the relay mnemonic, first for Surya then for myself. The thermal updrafts would be mostly dead, but there was still enough of a wind sent upwards by Haranin, a breeze that touched my cheeks tenderly with valley warmth and my nose with the cooking scents of Terera. It was a slow and smooth ascent. I cast my eyes toward Arko, trying not to see or hear or know that my people were still killing Sharaina Anina, former Servant of the Assembly of Yeola-e, on the courthouse steps.




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