The morning of the trial, I couldn’t sleep. Too much depended on the day, and I had too little control of it. Once it was clear sleep wasn’t coming, I decided I should instead be productive, and I retired to the library. Tomes of arcane law were stacked so high around me that I didn’t notice my ghostly maid until she was nearly on top of me.
Staring.
I set down my pen. She had never looked me in the eye before, or done anything that directly indicated she was aware of me. Now, I was being studied—my short hair, my modern clothes—as if none of it made any sense. When finally she had had enough, she dropped to a crouch behind me, like something feral. I turned in my chair and faced her. She wasn’t angry. She was sad. I think she knew something bad was going to happen. She was also confused. Were we not the same? Was I not afraid?
“Don’t worry,” I joked. “It won’t be my first death sentence.”
But my humor fell flat. One cannot jest with a ghost. My visitor turned only her head and waited.
“All right.” I took a long breath and straightened the cloth of my pants. “Where to begin?”
But of course my maid didn’t care. I wasn’t even sure she would understand my words. Like dogs and horses, ghosts are known to respond to what we mean rather than what we say. It merely had to be the truth.
“By the time I was 13,” I explained stiffly, “I had already noticed how men looked at me. What had bothered me the year before—that they dared be so presumptuous as to cast their gaze on me in that manner—suddenly became the reason I dabbed color on my lips and replaced the ribbons in my hair with pins of gold. I started pestering my father for the latest fashion—dresses from Vienna and Paris.”
I paused.
“When I was 15, I lost my virginity to a hussar nearly twice my age. He was not especially handsome, but he was cocky and brave. I didn’t want a nice boy, someone who might in the moment be too noble or timid. Nor did I choose a man of my station, who might spread rumors about me. I chose a young officer, the son of a tradesman, who was garrisoned on my father’s estate. I observed his habits, and finding that he was an early riser, I woke before dawn to bathe in the pond near the stables, as I had when I was a little girl. If I were caught, I decided I was just young enough to claim I had no idea why I shouldn’t do such things anymore. I would let my father fluster and fumble for an explanation, and then I would agree never to do it again, kiss him on the cheek, and waltz away humming some innocent tune.
“I was not caught. But I was foolish. We were too close to the servants’ quarters. I splashed about and called to my hussar from the water, pretending to be a girl at play, but he only glanced back to the windows and quickened his pace at the sight of my folded clothes on the bank. I stepped out, naked, to stop him. But instead of dropping the wood he was carrying, he only bowed and backed away.
“I was shocked. In my folly, I hadn’t once imagined he would refuse. No one ever had before. I was also terrified. My God, what if he told my father what I had done? I began to imagine how I could discredit him. Pacing in my room, I concocted countless scenarios, but being new to politics, I had no confidence in any of them. I decided instead to threaten him, to let him know the cost of betrayal. The cavalry used the rolling fields near the far border of my father’s land for training, and that afternoon, I found him practicing sword maneuvers—slicing the air, turning his horse this way and that. He looked altogether dashing in his navy-blue coat with white embroidery, and I hesitated. I slowed my mount to a trot so there would be time for my courage to build. But I was noticed. My officer stopped his maneuvers and trotted toward me. In a panic, I fled. I was a girl, so I did what the girls in my storybooks did: I pretended to lose control of my horse. I did it so convincingly, however, that before long, I truly had. The animal careened wildly down a cart path that ran for a stretch along the border of the forest. My hussar whipped his mount and charged after me. I was exhilarated. Hooves pounded the earth.
“The cart path turned into the forest, and my horse followed. Immediately, the canopy closed over us in brilliant orange. It was a bright fall day, and the wild grove was clad in its finest yellows and crimsons. My horse slowed as it ascended a steep rise and my heart slowed with it. In moments, my hussar would grab the reins and I would collapse, first into his arms, and then to the earth, and he would descend his mount to catch me, and we would be alone and out of sight among the trees.
“Or so I imagined. But we were not alone. At the top of the rise, my runaway steed whinnied and rose on his back feet. I clung to his neck for dear life as his front hooves flailed in fear. Something had startled him, and I heard his foot strike it with a crack.
“Then everything was calm.
“My hussar came up behind me and stopped, his mount breathing hard. His face was wrapped in horror. Turning my head, I saw a child lying still among the leaves. There was a scattering of sticks around him, as if he’d been gathering firewood. An old man appeared then. But he was not a man. He had leaves and twigs in his scraggly beard, and his skin was so tanned and wrinkled that, motionless, it looked of tree bark. He cast his own gathered wood to the ground and collapsed over the boy.
“A crow, who had witnessed the encounter, laughed from the branches and flew away as the old man with the leaves in his beard looked up at me. There was blood on his hands. But it was his eyes I remember. They shone blue as the sky. And they saw me. They saw me the way my old nursemaid saw me, the way my mother would’ve seen me, I’m sure, had she survived. I could hide nothing. But rather than suffer the indignity of shame, I raised my head and said it was the boy’s own fault for gathering wood on the path. Did he not hear the approach of riders?
“The old man pulled a flint knife then, chipped from use but polished to a shine. My hussar moved forward to protect me, but it was unnecessary. With a flash, the old man slashed his own throat. The blade was sharp, and at first all I could see was the faintest line in his barklike skin. Then drops of blood formed. He squeezed his neck until it ran over his hand, and he cast the blood into the leaves with a splatter that sounded like raindrops. He began muttering, blue eyes fixed on me. He squeezed again and cast again and muttered. He squeezed and cast a third time and the crow laughed longer. It swooped by as the old man finally collapsed over the child in the leaves.
“That night, I had sex for the first time. It was the farthest thing from my mind as I led my horse from that terrible scene. I thought only of getting help. But by the time we reached the manor, without so much as a word spoken between us, my hussar and I realized that what was done was done and nothing could alter it, and that if we reported the incident, there would be questions—questions neither of us wanted asked. My father and his officers were not fools. They would understand what had been meant to happen. The hussar would be sent away, his career forever tarnished, and I would be locked in the house to save my father from scandal until such time as a suitable husband could be found. Neither of us would be free again. We couldn’t bring the old man and the child back from the dead. What good would admitting it do?
“I galloped ahead and stabled my horse alone. After watching me leave, my hussar cut across the field and rode around the pond to converse with some colleagues camped on the far bank, thereby making sure we returned separately and from different directions. I went to the house and took a hot bath. As the hours passed and I realized we would not be caught, a certain glee overtook me. The young men of the regiment liked to gather after dark by the old oak on the lawn to smoke their pipes and trade stories. I made sure I was seen walking to the stables to check on my horse, which would be expected after a hard day’s ride. The hussar found me in the barn some twenty minutes later. He grabbed from behind, and I gasped. As he nuzzled my hair, I could tell he was just as confused and aroused by the day’s events. He kissed my neck and felt my body in ways no man ever had and I opened my gown and gave myself to him.
“He took me twice more before we parted, once in the kitchen while my father and his officers laughed in the parlor overhead. I fixed my dress after, the new dress from Paris that I had pestered my father to buy, and walked up the stairs and past the parlor to casually gauge whether or not we’d been heard. And also to tempt fate, I suppose. I lingered by the door until my father saw me and called me forward, his face flushed with wine. Only he and one very old man were seated. The others stood around the room or near the fire with pipes and glasses in their hands. They grew quiet and he boasted to them that I had mastered Latin by age 11 and played the piano and rode like a soldier, and he praised my beauty and my goodness. Then his face grew long and my heart quickened. My father touched my cheek and looked in my eyes, drunk, and told me in a whisper that my mother would’ve been very proud.
“My heart shrunk to a raisin. If I hadn’t been surrounded by the adoring eyes of so many old men, the rest of me would have done the same. I thanked my father in a meek voice and told the gentleman I was tired and they bowed and I stepped out the door. They hadn’t wanted me to stay long anyway. None of them could have me, which meant I was nothing but a distraction. As soon as I stepped from the parlor door, I ran to the library, which was shut and dark and offered many places to hide. There I cried, although I knew not why. And while I sat there, hiding behind a hobby horse I had ridden as a child, I saw a picture on the dark oak wall. It was one of many, hung side-by-side in that old house. Who knew how many times I had seen it? But I had never seen it. It was a watercolor on tan paper. Three very official-looking fellows in tights and ruffles and buckled shoes traded paper with an old man standing before a cluster of trees. He appeared to be naked. His skin was like bark. There were leaves in his beard. And I understood then why my family’s estate stopped at the border of the old forest and why the line of trees there was always neatly cropped. There had been a conflict and then a truce in the time of my great-great-grandfather. And I had transgressed it.
“The next morning, I sent my hussar away. I told my father at breakfast that the young officer had spoken to me familiarly and made certain suggestions and he was gone by the afternoon. I never saw him again. Later that year, just before Christmas, at a grand ball held every year by the cousin of the Czar, I entered the world of courtesans and courtiers, already a journeyman, and excelled.
“It was another fifteen years before I understood what had happened to me that—”
Doors overhead creaked open. I looked up to see librarians appear. When my gaze returned, my maid was gone.
I was given breakfast and a change of clothes, both spartan, and told to be ready within the hour, although three passed before I was led to a small stone room just off the grand hall at the center of the fortress. Through a solid oak door was a hexagonal stone room, where I was to wait. Directly across from the ingress were a set of ornate double doors. Marble benches jutted from the walls. Above them were painted frescoes in the colorful Byzantine style. In the center of the space was a gurgling font whose clear water fell in several streams from the high cistern to the lower. The door was shut and locked behind me and I took a seat. I was sure that during our confinement, evidence against Etude and I had been gathered and organized. Discussions were held, both legal and otherwise. Long documents were drafted and rejected, edited and compiled. Perhaps even some defenses were offered. Not that we were allowed to participate in them.
After half an hour, the door opened again with a loud clatter and Etude was led inside in chains. He wore the same spartan outfit as me. We were meant to appear humbly before the High Arcane. The metal muzzle marked with the binding knot still covered his mouth. He looked terrible. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and he had lost weight. Either he hadn’t been eating or they hadn’t been feeding him. I wondered if he’d been tortured as well. One of our minders forced him to sit while another, a burly Danish woman, removed the muzzle with a key. Etude immediately stretched his jaw as if it had been days since he’d used it.
The door slammed shut and was locked. My friend hunched over, breathing heavily. His hands were still chained behind his back.
“Might I . . .” he began.
I stood. “Anything.”
He cleared his throat. “Might I trouble you for a drink of water?”
“Of course.” I helped him to his feet and to the font, where he bent with open mouth and let the water fall inside. He gulped and gulped. Then he let the clear, cool liquid run over his bare head.
He stood and nodded. ”Thank you. That is much better.” Water ran down his face in beads.
I helped him back to the bench. He stooped a little and I could see the bulbs of his spinal column through his shirt.
“What did they do to you?”
“Less than I had expected,” he joked.
“What did they ask?”
“Only of the book. And of you.”
“Me?”
“It would seem there are certain anomalies in their organization that can only be explained if a traitor walks among them.”
“Ah. That would be Mr. Morgan using me to cover his own activities. What did you tell them?”
“The truth. That you never shared your motivations with me. Or your itinerary. That seemed to satisfy them.”
“And the book? They think you hid it somewhere. And that you returned later only to disguise your guilt.”
He nodded weakly. “It is impossible for me to prove conclusively that I do not have something. I can only show empty space.”
“Do you know what you are charged with?”
“They explained it.”
“Did they ask if you want legal counsel?”
“I denied it.”
“Why?”
“Because the charges are true. That their reasoning is flawed doesn’t change the accuracy of their conclusion. It is my fault the book was taken.”
“It was not your fault.”
“I was not honest with you,” he said under his breath.
“What do you mean?”
“I told you a lie. I told you that while I spent my year in the jungle, my people were massacred, my village burned, our sacred tree cut down. It is easier to say that than the truth.”
His face contorted. Then it relaxed. Then it contorted again. Deep wrinkles cut rivers of sadness around the corners of his mouth. I had to cover my own to keep from joining him in tears. His breath whimpered through wet lips. I knelt and took his hands.
“The truth is . . .” he breathed. “They left me.”
He broke down then. Completely.
“Oh, sweetie.” I held him, and he cried.
“I told—” His lips quivered. “I told those who found me the lie. They were so eager for it, a tragedy of the burning forest. They wanted to tell the world about the massacre in the jungle.”
His people sent him into the jungle to complete his trial and left him while he was away. He was not theirs, so they abandoned him to the world. When he returned bearing the mark of the jaguar on his chest, his village had been slashed and burned. But the loggers had only come because the villagers had already left, because they had abandoned the lot that was otherwise theirs by law. The fire that was set to clear the brush erased all trace of their movement, and a bald boy of 13, taken from his mother as an infant, stood barefoot in splinters and ash, spear in one hand, mask in the other, wondering if he was a monster.
“I had to know why.” He was pleading with me. “I had to know what my master saw that day the seed snapped. So . . . When I was older, after I learned the Western magicks, I made Nebuchadnezzar’s bargain. But I did not know it at the time. I merely wanted to know the future. But I should have known better. The integrity of time is preserved by paradox. The only knowledge we can gain of what’s to come is that which brings about its necessity. In seeking the book so earnestly, I led our enemies to me, and they led me to it, and I became the very monster foretold.”
“But what else could you have done?”
He laughed. “I could have accepted my fate with virtue and equanimity.”
“Would that have changed anything?”
“Possibly. I have spent many days contemplating whether I was ever truly free to choose another path. In the end, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t make the noble choice. I made the human one. And if the world is set, then so is the outcome of these proceedings and nothing I do will alter their outcome. If the world is not set, then by my acts I have released unspeakable evil on the innocent.” He sniffed and wiped his nose again. “Either way, I must accept punishment.”
I heard Anya’s words then, clear as a chime.
You have to stop him.
This was her charge. I had to stop him giving up.
I stood and left him hunched on the stone bench.
“I have known people who believed that everything happens for a reason,” I said. “It is a very safe way of looking at the world. It absolves one of ever having to do anything, for whatever happens has happened out of necessity.
“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think everything happens for a reason. Quite a lot of it seems to happen for no reason at all. But neither do I think nothing happens for a reason. Nihilism, too, is easy. Cowardly, even. I suspect the truth is that we have to wrestle with a world that we will never really understand. We’re thrown into it with no say as to whether or how it moves. We never know what has happened for reasons and what has simply happened. Either way, it doesn’t matter. If it’s wrong or we don’t like it, we’re the only ones who can make it different. Complaining is as effective as giving up.”
I pointed to the double doors. “The old men gathering in that room don’t want truth. Some of them are outright opposed to it, in fact. Others simply want to avoid any responsibility. The rest are only looking to profit. No other outcome genuinely interests them.
“It is true that dark forces move in the world,” I pleaded. “But . . . not only dark. However distant, however weakly, there is light here, too. And it has its own aims and plans. Mightn’t we be part of those as well?”
He leaned against the wall facing away from me. I looked at his emaciated shape, the bumps of his spine, the shackles that even then bound his hands away from each other. He looked bent. And tired. I looked down at the marks which still adorned my hands. I rubbed them together slowly.
It is a characteristic of the genius, I suppose, to place themselves in a different category from the rest of us. The conceit of youth certainly doesn’t help. Those of us who live with our flaws every day are used to such things. I wondered then if in his short life, young Etude had ever really made a mistake. He’d faced hardships, certainly—more than the average man. But none of them were of his own doing. For a young man who’d spent his entire life being smarter, faster, cleverer than everyone around him, it surely struck a terrible blow to be fallible. To be human, after all.
“During the war,” I said, “we thought we were fighting the final battle. Did you know that? We were certain that what we were doing was no less than saving mankind—that surely, no conflict would ever be greater or more important than that very one. In scale at least, it was half true. No conflict before had ever been as large. But I suspect the very first revolution, the war in which we cast off the shackles of the dark, was ultimately the more important, just as I’m sure there were numerous points since where we were in greater danger of losing everything. In absolute number, more bodies fell in the last war than ever before, but earlier crises saw a greater proportion of life lost. Who knows the future?
“Still, we told ourselves ‘this is it,’ that winning the war was a win for all time. I suspect it was a necessary fiction. I’m not sure so many would have made the requisite sacrifice otherwise.
“We tell each other ‘life is short’ and say ‘if only there were more time.’ But when you have more time, you’re not any more likely to fight. Being immortal—having more time—doesn’t make you a better person. Because it doesn’t change who you are. It only means you are the person you are for that much longer. If you’re lazy or cruel, you remain lazy or cruel. If anything, immortality amplifies what is already there, giving it infinite space to grow.
“It’s why I fear for them. Mortals. They already live longer and longer and I suspect one day, one of them will figure out how to be like me—in approximation if not in fact. Perhaps it’s better if men lived shorter lives. Perhaps it’s better if they had less time. If their candles burned briefer, they might think more on what to light with them.”
I turned to him. “This is the choice you face, the same choice we all face: what to light with our candle. I can’t choose for you and I can’t tell you you’re fighting the final battle, that the sacrifice you make will ultimately count for anything, that there won’t simply be more of the same in an endless succession of struggle and loss. But that doesn’t mean all our choices are the same, that anything you might choose to do with your time is as good as anything else.”
The font gurgled for a few moments before the ornate double doors shuddered and opened. Beyond was a long room whose ceiling was shrouded in darkness. Nine candle-filled iron chandeliers hung down from it, presumably on pulleys, but none of them were lit. Light came in from the row of tall windows along the far wall, which cast the columns in silhouette. They had been carved to resemble the great heroes of the Knights Templar, who stood solemnly bearing sword and shield. At the back was a tall stone block, like a judge’s bench—a high tribunal, behind which sat seven seats. They were empty. Above the bench, the Eye of Annemundu glinted like a great crystal star. It was much larger than I had expected. How the High Priests of Sumer had forged it, no one precisely knew. All anyone knew for sure was that it had been commissioned by Annemundu, called Naram-Sin, the first emperor of civilization, somewhere around the year 2,200 BC, meaning it was then over four thousand years old. It was not a gentle gaze, to be sure. It had been set in an eye-shaped alcove high above the tall stone bench and seemed to stare down in judgment. The effect, I’m sure, was intentional. But it was impressive all the same. The spikes of the crystals were jagged and uneven, and they broke forth from the center in all directions at once, as if the eye were deranged, as if it belonged to a paranoiac who searched frantically for threats in all directions.
The rest of the hall was empty. The matters to be discussed were of the utmost secrecy. No one was to know of our trial, or our fate. It gave the proceedings an informal air, despite the deep and solemn setting.
I was taken first. Etude was left in chambers. After another twenty minutes of waiting, a door creaked and the High Arcane walked single file through the east arch, following the path of the sun across the sky. They moved up stairs behind the tall bench to take their seats. Beltran, Defender of the Art, led the way wearing that high fur hat and matching heavy coat, which hung laughably loose from his shoulders. He took the Caliph’s Seat, furthest to the left.
After him came Master Grimaldi, about whom I knew nothing except that he was Custodian of the Art, sort of like chief librarian—or perhaps minister of information. He had a gray beard and wore the robes of the Medici and a tasseled hat that sat lopsided on his head. He took the Imperator’s Seat.
He was followed by Master Okamoto from Japan, Keeper of the Flame, the master of ritual, wearing the stark black-and-white robes of a Shinto priest, complete with sleeves that stretched to his knees and a black cap that rose like a blunted cone from his forehead. He was clean-shaven, and at fifty-five, was the youngest of the seven. He took the Sun’s Seat.
At the center of the line, taking the lone chair that rose above all the others, was the impractically long-bearded Master Tresillian of Sutcliffe-Grange, who presided over the council from the Seat of Eternity. His father was English but his mother, I had heard, was Egyptian. I don’t think I’ve met a more pretentious man in my long life. He wore red robes with a pattern of gold thread and carried a large hooked staff that was taller than him. His bald head was half-covered in a flap of dark cloth that fell to a point on his forehead, like a widow’s peak.
After him, an old woman trundled. A hag really, like something out of a fairy book: fat, wrinkled, hook nosed, beady eyed. She was naked, including her feet. Her skin was like an elephant’s. Her vulva made a hairless knot like the exposed roots of an ancient oak. She hobbled barefoot holding a knotted rope. Her shriveled breasts swung back and forth. Her fingernails were thick and cracked and curved upward. Suna Yaga, great-granddaughter of Baba Yaga, whose stories had been told to scare me as a child, was the only one to notice me. She represented the witches and night maidens and took the Moon’s Seat.
Behind her came Masters Chang and Gupta. The latter was dressed the most humbly in a simple linen wrap and cord sandals. His skin was dark and his hair all but gone, but his eyes were kind. He took the Khan’s Seat, having recently replaced Master Imran, who had officially stepped down due to ailing health but who was rumored to have had been ousted by factions unknown.
Master Po-hin Chang from Taiwan was a pro tempore stand-in for the great Master Wu, who was thought to be imprisoned somewhere in China and who, being the eldest, would have presided over the council were he ever to be found, meaning there were more than a few people who suspected Master Tresillian had betrayed his elder to the communists. Master Chang was Keeper of the Stone—master of the physical arts—alchemy, potions, and feng shui—and he was widely known to vote opposite Master Okamoto, regardless of the cause, unless Okamoto voted with Master Tresillian, in which case Chang would fall in line.
Finally, the gray-suited American, Mr. James Thaddeus Morgan, Chief Executor of the Winter Bureau, came through a smaller arch wearing a sharp pinstriped suit. He took a seat that had been left for him off to the side. That was unknown in my time and did not bode well.
I looked up at the crystal eye glaring down at me from its angry perch.
There was ceremony. I had never seen any of it before, but I had seen plenty like it. It started with an invocation. Burning incense was swung from a chafing dish. The Masters issued a half-hearted chant, and so on. It was sclerotic in its stiffness, rigid with the accretions of centuries, more pomp than dogma. It ended with the passing of some colorful ribbons from one Master to the next. They were draped between the thumb and forefinger of both hands and passed that way as well. At the end, they were collected by an attendant who sealed them in a glass urn.
“So,” the elderly Master Tresillian began, looking down at me from the Seat of Eternity, “you are she.”
His voice echoed faintly in the long stone hall. He scanned the papers in front of him on the high bench.
“At your last stand before a tribunal magique, you were found guilty of the practice of forbidden arcana—namely, mizzenry.” He scowled at me. “As well as illegal profiteering from the practice of magic, and heresy as well. Is that correct?”
“Are you asking if I was found guilty of heresy or if I was a heretic?”
“Just answer the question,” Beltran barked.
I gave him a look. “Am I to be tried without counsel?” I asked Master Tresillian.
“You are additionally charged,” he went on, “with disobeying a direct order in a time of war, in the case of the item in question.”
I had taken the book without orders.
“That was forty years ago!”
“The accused will be QUIET!” Master Tresillian glowered down at me from under the cloth of his widow’s peak.
He waited a moment of silence, as if to confirm I would obey.
“Dereliction of duty,” he went on, “for failing to report and for which you were dishonorably discharged from the Winter Bureau, in absentia, in 1958. To these charges we add desecration—in particular, of the ancient and noble forest—as well as sedition and treason.”
“Sedition?”
Beltran cleared his throat gently and I rolled my eyes and waited for them to complete their mockery of an indictment.
“However . . .” Master Tresillian said, studying me from afar, “a pardon has been entered in your name by Master Yeĉg, who surprised us all this week with news of his retirement. Due to the urgency of these proceedings, we have yet to complete the necessary ritual of severance, and so he joins us here in his prior role one final time.”
That was why Mr. Morgan was being allowed to sit in attendance. He was, for all intents and purposes, already the incoming Defender of the Art.
I looked at Beltran. He looked back, expressionless.
After everything, he was still protecting me.
Master Tresillian coughed once and wiped his nose with a handkerchief. “You will remain accused,” he said to me, “until the completion of that ceremony, at which time the pardon, already passed by unanimous vote in honor of the outgoing Master Yeĉg, will be confirmed by this chair. As a condition of that pardon agreement, you will be taken from this place to a domicile of Master Yeĉg’s discretion, there to remain under house arrest for a period of not less than thirty-five years.”
“Thirty-five years?” I scoffed. “How is that possibly a pardon?”
Beltran lifted a hand slightly as if to tell me to back off. The look on his face hinted there was more to the story, so I did as he requested.
The Masters, including Mr. Morgan, looked at me as if expecting another outburst at any moment. I crossed my arms.
“Ey-kwo-nobilium.” Master Tresillian lifted his hooked staff and brought it down hard on the floor. It was much louder than I expected, and I flinched.
“The accused will take a seat,” Master Chang growled in a heavy accent, “as she may be called upon to give testimony in the subsequent trial. She is otherwise to remain silent. Is that clear?”
“Yesss.” I pronounced it loudly and distinctly.
I sat in a chair that had been provided on the side opposite Mr. Morgan, but further back, at some distance from the bench. The side doors opened again and Etude was brought before the council of the High Arcane, bare hands still bound in metal behind him. He coughed. The sound echoed.
Master Tresillian began without ceremony. “Young man, we have no more patience for your trouble-making. This is your last chance. Where is the book?”
“I do not possess it,” Etude answered softly.
His words elicited grumbles from the council.
“Mr. Étranger,” Master Tresillian said with disdain. “You have been accused of blatantly and willingly subverting the authority of this council, of courting that which is forbidden, and of acting with malice aforethought to trespass the sacred forest. Do you deny these charges that have been brought against you?”
“The charges?” he asked. “No, I cannot deny the charges.”
“Then you admit guilt.”
There was a long pause.
Etude was looking at me when he answered. His eyes were blank and hollow. “I admit nothing.”
The harsh Master Okomoto was not amused. “We do not dance with words here,” he said in surprisingly unaccented English. “Continue to speak so and we will find you in contempt, at which point these proceedings will be suspended and summary judgment will be made.”
In summary judgment, an immediate vote would be called, likely resulting in my young friend’s guilt and imprisonment—and eventual torture at the hands of Mr. Morgan, the warlock who would soon bear the title of Master and who, as Defender of the Art, would irrevocably corrupt the High Arcane’s defenses.
I looked down again at the symbols on my hands. I rubbed them together. “Now would be a good time to go home,” I whispered.
“Masters,” Etude explained with a raised voice. “I do not deny the charges. I deny the law.”
“This is not the forum for such debates,” Master Chang grumbled impatiently.
“Am I the first to stand in judgment?” Etude asked. “Surely others have stood before you, accused.”
“Of course—”
“Then the law did not stop them from committing their crimes,” Etude interrupted.
“Denial of the law is not the same as innocence,” Master Gupta tried to explain patiently. “We are gathered here only to discuss the latter.”
“And if you will not provide for your defense,” Master Grimaldi added, “then we have no choice but summary decision.”
That so many of them spoke was a good sign. It seemed as if they were earnestly seeking some kind of fair resolution.
“But that is my defense,” Etude explained.
“And what defense is that?” Master Chang snorted. “That you are above the law?”
“Not at all. You say I am guilty of a crime, Master Chang, of breaking the law. But what injustice have I committed? Other than disturbing your rest? Masters tell me, what is the purpose of the law if not to seek justice? It is a tool, is it not? Warped and imperfect to be sure, but isn’t that its aim?”
Master Tresillian raised his staff. “We are likewise not here to have a philosophical discussion on the nature of justice. Since the accused has not—”
“Tell me now!” Etude yelled at the top of his lungs. “On what authority you here act, if not on that pursuit! Murder has been against the law in all times and places where law existed. And still men murder. And where there were no laws, murder is wrong all the same. What then is the value of law? I ask you. Truly. Speak!”
“Would you have us abandon the law?” the patient Master Gupta asked before his colleagues could object. “What rule is there then? What order?”
“So the purpose of the law is to rule?” Etude asked.
“To govern,” Master Tresillian corrected, “for the benefit of all.”
“And all benefit from it, do they? None fall on the law in sacrifice? It is never abused nor misapplied?”
“You miss the point,” Master Grimaldi began, leaning forward in the Imperator’s Seat.
“The point,” Etude corrected, “is that there is injustice in the law. You have just admitted it. What then is a man to do when he encounters it? What is he to do when it falls on those around him? When it falls on his own head? Nothing?”
“And what is it you intend to do?” Master Okamoto asked.
“The most difficult thing in the world: the right one.”
Master Grimaldi laughed heartily.
“And what is that?” Master Gupta interjected with a raise of his hand. He seemed as if he genuinely wanted to know.
Etude looked to me then, sitting to the side. Then he turned back to his audience. “Masters, none of us can control the time and manner of our birth. You know as well as I that we enter the world fully laden with circumstance. Wealth. Poverty. Abuse. Privilege. Plenty. Pestilence. War. And yes, also Law, which is as much a coincidence of our time and place as any of those others. Just or unjust, we cannot control it. It rises like a mountain in our path and must be respected as such. We cannot ignore the law. As with any barrier, we must either respect or alter it as our time and resources allow.
“But my goodness . . . how those with resources seem so easily to slip its bounds.”
And with that, my young friend let his chains fall.
They clattered on the floor.
Master Tresillian stood, and the others did the same—all except Beltran. I could see the question on their faces. It was the same as mine. We all wanted to know how he had done it. I still couldn’t say. It should have been impossible. But then, Etude never much cared for possibility.
Without another word, he turned and walked away, leaving me to wonder who exactly had been on trial. He had given them a chance, I think, to show they cared at least an inkling for anything that mattered, that they were worthy to punish him.
“STOP!” Master Tresillian raised his hooked staff and held it. “STOP AT ONCE!”
But the accused did not, and Master Tresillian brought his staff down hard on the stone. The noise echoed through the hall, and a great power moved out from the Eye of Annemundu. I could see nothing, but I felt it roll forward through the hall like a tsunami.
I stood. “Etude!”
He turned and held up his palms, and the four-thousand-year-old power of the Eye, forged by the first high priests in their towers, met something older still—the four-billion-year-old marks of the earth-mother, which had returned to his hands.
There was a tremor. I would discover later that a volcano in the Greek isles rumbled. We felt its shock on the little island in the Adriatic. I felt it tremble in my chest, and as I looked down at my bare palms. I heard a loud crack. Everyone looked up to see the Eye teeter in its high perch. We all stood in shock. Except Etude. I turned and scurried after him as several of The Masters yelled behind me. But they weren’t yelling at us. They were yelling up. They were yelling for their own safety. I turned to see them diving from the bench, jumping in all directions as the radiant crystal fell and crashed into it, impaling the stone and shattering.
The High Arcane, their handful of attendants, even Mr. Morgan, could only stand in silence and stare at the spikes of the crystal that were embedded in the cracked stone tribunal. A thousand smaller shards were strewn about the floor like white gravel. Every last piece had turned opaque in the breaking, like the eyes of a blind man. Only Beltran could turn from the scene. He looked at me, his old face cracked with worry. I knew his worries.
Who would govern?
Who would enforce the traditions and treaties?
Who would call the dark ones to account?
Who would protect me?
But I had no answer. I just smiled. And he nodded. I turned and ran after my young friend, who had not stopped. He was, I realized, completely barefoot. There were guards beyond the massive doors of the hall, but only two. No one had contemplated a need for more. They shouted and ran as Etude clapped his hands. The heavy doors behind us swung shut with a shudder.
“STOP!” I shouted to the guards.
And they did. I don’t think they expected we would be able to flee anyway. We were on an island. Where would we go?
Etude pushed me to the side just as the stone doors shattered outward, knocking one guard back and forcing another to dive for cover. The floor shuddered as the slab fragments bounced and settled.
The High Arcane were coming.
We ran toward the front gate. Or rather I did. Etude merely walked swiftly with a scowl on his face, as if he were annoyed by the whole thing.
“Hurry!”
Standing atop the central staircase, which descended fifty feet to the courtyard, we saw the High Arcane waiting atop the walls and tower on the far side, staffs and wands in hand. Mr. Morgan was among them. Beltran was not.
I saw Etude’s fists clench. I touched his arm. “Come.”
He looked to me in confusion.
“You won’t win this battle.” I pulled him. “Come!”