The high priest coughed into his hand and cleared his throat. ‘You will address me by my title, Abbess Glass. There are no ties of friendship here. Only the law.’ Seated, his robes rose about him, setting his head afloat on a sea of purple and gold. ‘We understand weakness, abbess: all of us are human. We lack the perfection of the Ancestor. A mother’s instinct perhaps overwhelmed you. It is not uncommon in women of a certain age, but you chose poorly when picking this one …’ he waved a hand towards Nona, ‘… to adopt.’
Abbess Glass straightened her back against the yoke’s weight and managed a wry smile. ‘I have many faults, high priest, too many to try to conceal. But even my enemies have yet to accuse me of owning a soft heart. I believe the word most often used against me is “cunning”. So it pains me to see you leap so swiftly to the conclusion that I stand before you yoked by my own stupidity.’
Nona noticed a smile twitch on the scarred lips of Archon Kratton on the far right, and a broader one spread on the wet lips of Archon Nevis on the far left.
‘Trials seek the truth, high priest. Something that singularly failed to happen during the conviction of the child beside me. Perhaps you might ask me why I acted as I did before you demand an apology for those actions? Certainly the men who convicted this small girl of killing a famed gerant ring-fighter should have asked that question before sentencing both her and the girl Saida Reeve to death.’
‘Saida didn’t do anything!’ Nona blurted the words, afraid that the abbess might try to lay Raymel’s injuries at Saida’s feet.
‘Hush, Nona,’ the abbess said in a low voice. ‘You’ll drown yourself with that mouth of yours.’
The high priest rose from his chair, staff in hand. ‘A lack of humility will do you no favours here, Abbess Glass—’
‘Even so, I would like to hear the why.’ Archon Kratton spoke with a tremor in his voice as if some powerful vibration were running through him. It struck Nona then that the high priest was less of a king than he might appear, and the archons were not merely part of his show.
Abbess Glass inclined her head towards the archon. ‘I heard about Nona’s case while in Verity to negotiate the induction of the Jotsis girl. The Argatha prophecy has considerable influence among the populace, and whatever weight we may or may not place behind the words it is certainly true that the belief of the common man has given the prophecy a power of its own. It could, for example, quite easily see any suspected two-blood killed or kidnapped as part of empire politicking.
‘I mention the prophecy because it’s an example of words gaining power because we let them. Two other words that have gained too much power because we let them are Thuran Tacsis. High Priest Jacob asked me if I really knew who Thuran Tacsis is? Well I know that he is a man whose eldest son has killed at least five young girls in acts of cruelty, on occasion as a result of his temper, and on occasion for his own sadistic pleasure, and has in each case been allowed to walk free without even an attempt at arrest or prosecution. Tacsis money has purchased the common law. Even in the higher courts where others of the Sis and merchant classes might seek justice, Tacsis gold often speaks loudest. Louder indeed than any of those charged with the duty to enforce the statutes set down by our ancestors.
‘So, curious as to how a small girl could fell a gerant ring-fighter, I enquired further. I found many whose reports of the event, at least in private, ran quite differently to those of the “witnesses” produced to support the death sentence imposed on Nona and Saida Reeve. It is certainly true that Nona inflicted the injuries on Raymel Tacsis. She did not, however, assault him by surprise and from behind but did so to defend her friend, also a small girl, from his attacks, having first warned him to desist.
‘In Nona we have a rare talent, the purest hunska I’ve seen in years, born with an instinct for battle and to defend the weak. A girl, innocent in youth, in whom the faith’s seed will find fertile ground. Sweet Mercy scours the empire for girls such as these … was I to let her be sacrificed to the unhealthy appetites of a murderer too rich to pay for his crimes?
‘The Ancestor directs us to follow the tenets of our faith and the church is our armour. I saw the common law fail and I have replaced it with the church law. We here, in this hall, are bound by duty and by faith to show that as sons and daughters of the Ancestor we cannot be bought and sold. Ancestral law is gold to the base metal of common law. We lead where others fall. I saved a child who will serve the Ancestor well, but more than that I struck a blow for the ideals that are written in the Ancestor’s own book. If we return Nona to this false justice that blow of mine will not strike against corruption but against the foundations of the church itself.’
Abbess Glass drew a deep breath and allowed her shoulders to slump in concession to the yoke upon them.
The fat archon licked his lips and nodded slowly to himself. Archon Philo, the sorrow-faced marjal, lifted his head from contemplation of his knees. ‘A better path would have been to demand a stay of execution while you sought a judge to hear the case.’
‘That is perhaps true, archon.’ The abbess nodded. ‘But the case would have had to have been made very loudly for any judge in Verity to hear it above the clinking of golden coins.’ She sighed. ‘I acted rashly. I saw that I could take Nona. The trip from could to should is short and allows little time for reflection. But I do not think that the result was the wrong one. Except that I should have found a way to save both girls.’
‘It is, as the high priest says, a dangerous game to play.’ Archon Anasta spoke for the first time, her voice deep and thick with age. ‘Invoke church law over common law outside our doors and with both hands you are taking the emperor’s power as your own.’
‘Also true, Archon Anasta. I could never argue politics against the woman who taught it to me in the first place.’ The abbess managed a smile, as if she were not yoked and bleeding, but instead discussing the finer points of academia over a school desk. ‘However, at no point in removing Nona from Harriton did I invoke one law above another. I made no mention of my office. I simply reminded the guards of my long friendship with Warden James and said that I was taking the girl. None of them attempted to stop me or even ordered me to desist, and so it seemed a perfectly reasonable assumption that they were happy for me to take her. I am more than willing to submit to any test of truth … I hear that there are graduates of the Academy who can deduce whether they are being told a lie, and—’
‘The truth is a very nebulous concept.’ Archon Philo took on a still more doleful look and returned his gaze to his lap.
‘Ha!’ The bark of laughter burst from Archon Kratton. ‘They didn’t even try to stop you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s their incompetence. If they let you take the girl that’s tacit permission!’ He smacked his fist against his thigh.
‘If you’ve nothing more to say.’ High Priest Jacob, realizing that he was still standing, sat heavily in his grand chair. ‘If you maintain your refusal to apologize, then we can move on to the sentencing.’
‘I move for the charges to be thrown out.’ Archon Kratton waved a hand dismissively above his head. ‘Who’s with me?’
‘Kratton!’ The high priest struggled back out of his chair. ‘You would be advised to give this matter serious con—’
‘I have my own mind, Jacob. Old debt and old secrets be damned if they mean selling my soul for Tacsis gold.’
Archon Philo raised his face to the room. ‘There seems no case to answer.’ He didn’t sound happy about it but Nona wondered if he had ever sounded happy about anything.
Archon Anasta fixed Abbess Glass with a stare so hard that Nona could imagine reaching up to find it a physical thing, an invisible bar of iron between them. ‘This could have been done better, Glass.’
‘I know.’
‘Cleaner. Sharper. Clearer. As I always instructed.’ The archon narrowed already narrow and bitten lips. ‘This … this is muddy, messy, unsure.’
Abbess Glass bowed her head.
‘But the child should not suffer your mistake. There is no case to answer here.’