High Justice Bruckel sat forward, clearing his throat. “Fedor dan Wetterlant! You stand accused. Most serious crimes.” The wattle beneath his chin wobbled as he fired off phrases, the clerks’ pens scratching desperately as they struggled to record them for posterity. “As a member of the Open Council. You have requested and now receive. In the sight of your peers. The king’s justice. How do you plead?”
Wetterlant swallowed. Orso caught him glance up towards his mother. She gave him the faintest nod in return, her jaw clenched. A reassurance, perhaps. A nudge in the right direction. An urging to make the agreed-upon confession and take his agreed-upon punishment and—
“I am innocent!” shrieked Wetterlant in ringing tones. A collective gasp from the public gallery. “I have been dreadfully wronged! Fearfully abused! I am innocent of all charges!”
The hall erupted more angrily than ever.
“That fucker,” hissed Orso as he stared at Wetterlant. “That fucker.” He looked to his supposed new best friend in the Open Council, but Isher had brows raised and palms helplessly spread, as if to say, I’m as astonished as anyone.
In one moment, Orso’s carefully laid plans went up in flames and his hopes for a better politics sank into the depths. Now he realised why his father had always despised this place.
“Oh. Dear,” murmured Bruckel. Uselessly.
Leo had never seen so clear an injustice. He sat with his jaw hanging open.
“Are we to hear no evidence?” called out Heugen.
“Will there be no witnesses?” shouted Barezin, thumping a fat fist into a fat palm.
“Witnesses have been presented. Exhaustively interviewed.” High Justice Bruckel struggled to make himself heard over the anger. “The Closed Council is satisfied!”
Unsurprisingly, that satisfied no one, and Wetterlant’s mother was the least satisfied of all. “I demand justice for my son!” she screamed from the balcony. “The king’s justice!”
Glokta held up a sheet of parchment, an illegible scrawl at the bottom. “The accused has confessed! In full!”
“I was forced!” wailed the accused.
“Shut him up!” snapped Bruckel, and Wetterlant cringed as the two Practicals turned on him.
“There is no need to waste more of the Open Council’s time!” shouted Glokta.
“Waste our time?” whispered Leo. Isher had brows raised and palms helplessly spread, as if to say, What did I tell you? Behind him, in one of the great stained-glass panels, the Open Council rose up united against the tyranny of Morlic the Mad, and all because Arnault had the courage to stand first, alone.
“Waste our time?” said Leo. Everyone else on the Open Council might be too craven to say what they could all see, but the Young Lion was no coward.
“Waste our time?” shouted Leo, lurching to his feet. Damn it, his leg hurt. It was as if he were being stabbed again and he almost fell, had to clutch the back of the bench to steady himself as the announcer struck his staff on the floor for order.
“The Open Council recognises—”
“They know who I bloody am! This…” Leo floundered for words. Everyone was staring at him. Everyone in the whole great chamber. But this had to be done. For his father. For his country. “This is a disgrace!”
“What is he doing?” muttered Savine. Ladies were stuck to the rail all around her, staring down, eyes bright, fans fluttering like excited butterflies. Better drama than the theatre and all free of charge.
“I’m no lawyer!” called Leo, his Angland accent sounding particularly pronounced. “But… even I can tell this is a travesty.”
Savine watched with growing horror. A man who knows he is no lawyer should also know to keep his bloody mouth shut during a trial. But the Young Lion was not a man to keep his mouth shut.
“My father,” he bellowed, in an ever angrier and more broken voice, “always told me Union justice was the envy of the world!”
Orso frowned up towards the public gallery, looking angrier than Savine had ever seen him. She shrank back from the rail, wondering whether her own history with the two men might be aggravating things. But the Young Lion was aggravating enough without her help.
“My friends, I’m horrified. In the Lords’ Round, of all places. Confessions got by torture? Is this Union justice or Gurkish tyranny? Styrian trickery? Northern savagery?”
“Yes!” she heard Lady Wetterlant hiss with fierce delight. There were loud shouts of agreement from the lords. One might almost have called them cheers. Isher shrank silently into his seat, lips pressed carefully together, making sure there was as much empty bench between him and Leo as possible.
“I would caution the Lord Governor to choose his next words carefully,” growled Savine’s father, and she found herself in total agreement. A representative from the Angland delegation was plucking at the hem of Leo’s jacket in an effort to pull him down, but Leo angrily slapped his hand away.
“Sit down, you bloody fool,” Savine forced through gritted teeth, gripping the rail of the gallery. But the Young Lion would not sit down.
“Call yourself a high justice?” he roared at Bruckel, leaning on the back of his bench with one hand and gripping hard at his thigh with the other. “This isn’t justice!”
“Your Grace,” growled Orso, “I would ask you to return to your seat—”
“I refuse!” snarled Leo, spit flying. “It’s plain to everyone that you can’t judge this man fairly! You’re a puppet of the Closed Council!”
You could almost see the jaws drop. A lady clapped a hand over her mouth. Another gasped. Another gave a kind of disbelieving giggle.
“Oh no,” whispered Savine.
Orso had always thought himself the most easy-going man in the Union. He had floated over the scornful glances, the frequent insults, the scurrilous rumours. Most of them had, after all, been more or less fair. He’d never imagined he even really had a temper.
But perhaps he’d never before had anything to be angry about.
Whether it was the ongoing frustration of the throne, the entrenched hostility of everyone in the chamber, Wetterlant’s barefaced gall, Isher’s two-faced chicanery, Brock’s naïve impudence or Savine’s forthcoming nuptials that infuriated him most, the combination produced a feeling of utter rage such as he had never felt in his life.
“Colonel Gorst,” he managed to choke out, his throat so tight he could hardly form the words. “Remove Lord Brock from the chamber.”
Gorst had no expression on his slab of a face as he pounded across the tiled floor towards Leo.
The Open Council didn’t rise united, as they had to support Arnault in the legend. Maybe he’d spoken better than Leo. Or Morlic had been madder than Orso. Or men’s principles had become so greasy, they tended to slip from their grasp at the worst moments. Or maybe the legend was balls. Everyone stared, but not one arse left its seat.
Leo took a shuffling step back and nearly fell onto his bench, grimacing at the stab of pain in his leg. “Now, hold on a—”
Gorst caught two fistfuls of Leo’s jacket.
Once, as a boy, he’d gone swimming in the sea near Uffrith and been taken by a sudden swell and dragged off his feet. He’d thrashed with all his strength, but the current had sucked him helpless over rocks, swept away by a force of nature far greater than he would ever be.