WRIT OF OPEN COURT

The Founding Charter of the Meridian Dominion was a book of two hundred and eleven pages, bound in rotting calf and kept in a glass case in the Council chamber, and in ten years of sitting at the head of the table, Soren had never once seen anyone open it.

He opened it at six o'clock on the morning after the girl was taken. He did it alone, with the doors locked and the chamber lit by a single lamp, and he turned the brittle pages one at a time with the tips of his bare fingers, as though they were the wings of insects. The ink had browned. The handwriting was elaborate and archaic, full of long s's and flourished capitals, and the language was the dense, circular, self-protecting English of men who had expected to be sued. He read it all. He read the preamble, the articles on the succession, the clauses on salt and grain and the rights of the provinces. He read the Founders' oaths and the list of their descendants. He read for four hours, with his eyes smarting and his back aching and a cup of tea going cold at his elbow, until he found what he had half remembered from a lecture in his sixteenth year.

It was in the ninth article, under the heading Of the Rights of Subjects Accused. It ran to two sentences, and it had been written, so the old lecturer said, by a Founder who had lost a brother to a secret tribunal.

No subject of the Crown, of whatever condition or descent, shall be committed to any prison or place of confinement for an offense touching life or limb without a hearing in open court, before the Council assembled, in the presence of such of the public as may choose to attend. And the Heir of the Crown, being sworn to protect the subjects of the realm, may at any time demand such a hearing by writ, and the Council shall not refuse it.

He read it three times. Then he sat back in the chair and let out a breath that shook slightly.

Of whatever condition or descent, he thought. Not excepting the Blighted.

It had never been repealed. It had been forgotten, buried under three centuries of Acts and Amendments and Rescripts, because no Heir had ever had occasion to use it. But it was still the law of the Dominion, and it said, in the plainest possible words, that the Chancellor could not send Tamsin Reed to the Cistern without letting the Council and the public watch him do it.

…

He served the writ himself at noon.

He walked into the Chancellor's office in the Chancery without knocking, in his black coat and white cravat, and laid the document on the mahogany desk in front of Harlan Sterling with a small, decisive click. It was a single sheet, in his own firm hand, headed Writ of Open Court, and sealed with the Heir's signet. The Chancellor looked at it for some time. He did not touch it. His hands remained folded on the blotter, and his pale eyes lifted slowly to Soren's face with an expression of mild, interested surprise.

"I confess," said Sterling at last, "that I had not expected that."

"I imagine not."

"The Ninth Article. A charming relic." He took a pair of spectacles from his pocket and unfolded them, with a slow deliberate gesture, and read the writ through. "Your Grace is very well read. I wonder when you found the time."

"I have been reading a great deal lately," said Soren. "I find that it improves the judgment."

"So I see." The Chancellor set the spectacles aside. For an instant, so brief that Soren might have imagined it, something moved behind the pale eyes, a flicker of cold calculation, like a fish turning in deep water. Then it was gone, and the smooth courteous mask was back. "Of course, Your Grace is perfectly within his rights. The Council will convene, as the Charter requires. I shall make the necessary arrangements."

"When would the hearing take place?"

"These things take time. There are witnesses to be summoned, a courtroom to be prepared, the public to be notified." Sterling smiled gently. "A fortnight, I should think, would be a reasonable interval. We would not wish it to be said that the hearing was rushed."

"A fortnight is acceptable," said Soren, "provided that Miss Reed is kept in the infirmary of the Gaol, and not in the Ward, and that no harm comes to her in the interim."

"I give you my word as Chancellor of the Dominion."

Soren inclined his head, turned on his heel, and left the room. The word of Harlan Sterling was worth, he reflected, roughly what a sandcastle was worth to the tide, but it was all that he could demand, and he was well aware that he had purchased a fortnight at the price of showing his hand.

…

The evidence was assembled in the Archive, by lamplight, over three days.

Dorian came every evening, grim and gray with fatigue, and sat at the end of the long table cleaning a pistol that did not need cleaning. He had said very little since the morning of the arrest. He had walked into Vandermere on the heels of his master, white to the lips, and he had stood in the hall while the Quorum took Tamsin away, and Soren had seen his hand close on his sword hilt and open again. He had not spoken of the Palace Watch, or the forged order, or the fact that he had been fifty miles from the door he was meant to guard. He had simply asked, on the second night, in a voice like crushed gravel, what he could do.

What he could do, it turned out, was very much. He went through the household with the quiet dogged persistence of a bloodhound. He found the footman who had unlocked the door of Tamsin's sitting room on the night of the poisoning, a nervous young man named Perrin, who after two hours and a bottle of brandy admitted that he had been told to fetch a trunk from the cellar and place it beneath her bed. He found the carter who had delivered the green vial to the Hall in a crate of medical supplies, with a manifest in Dr. Pell's hand. He found the apothecary's boy who had filled the order for the preparation, three days before the Duke left for the coast, and who remembered it because the purchaser had paid in gold.

Finch brought the rest. The little Archivist moved among the shelves with his lantern like a patient ghost, pulling out ledgers, bundles of invoices, and receipts that he said had been stored in places where no one would ever think to look. He produced the records of the Imperial Dispensary, the signed orders for the tonic, the accounts for the silverweed and the quicksilver. He produced a letter from Pell to the Chancellor, written six years before and discovered, by a miracle of dust, inside the binding of an old almanac. It said only The child's tolerance is increasing. I recommend a further doubling.

"It's not enough to hang him," said Finch, laying it down with a regretful sigh. "A clever advocate would call it a medical correspondence. But set beside the rest..."

"Set beside the rest, it is a pattern," said Soren.

"Yes, it is." The Archivist's mild eyes were bright behind his spectacles. "And a pattern, Your Grace, is what a jury cannot ignore."

…

The Princess lay in the great yellow bed with her face turned toward the window.

He had been permitted to see her. That was the first of the Chancellor's concessions, and the most bitter. The Council had voted on the morning of the arrest to place Lila's person in the care of Lady Delphine Sterling, as temporary custodian, pending the outcome of the trial, and Delphine had accepted the charge with a tremulous smile and a handkerchief to her eyes. But the Charter gave the Heir a right of access to his sister, and Soren had exercised it at once, over the protest of two Palace Watchmen who stood stiffly at the door with their hands on their sabers.

She was thinner than when he had left. Her face was waxen, and the veins at her temples showed blue, and her breath came in shallow little sips. A nurse he did not know sat in the corner, knitting. But the fever had broken, he saw. There was a faint pink in her cheeks, and her hands, folded on the quilt, were no longer cold.

He sat on the edge of the mattress and took one of them in his.

"Lila," he said softly. "It is Soren. I have come back."

Her eyelids fluttered. She did not wake, but a small frown creased her brow, and her lips moved. He bent closer, and heard, so faintly that he might have imagined it, a thread of breath that shaped itself into words.

On the windowsill beside the bed stood a row of small clay pots. He had not noticed them at first. They were Tamsin's: the calendula she had planted on the first day, the mint, the little chamomile in its cracked saucer. She must have set them there herself, on the evening before the arrest, and no one had thought to move them. All the winter long they had been small and pale, scrawny things struggling in the cold, but now they were vivid. The calendula had flowered in a blaze of orange. The mint had grown tall and fragrant, and the chamomile spilled over the rim of its pot in a froth of white and gold. Their leaves leaned toward the bed like a congregation, and a faint green scent, sweet and clean and damp, hung in the air of the room.

He looked at them for a long time. He thought of the green light welling between her fingers in the infirmary. He thought of the child on the floor, with her back arched and her eyes rolled white, and the thin rasp of a voice saying the roots were so loud.

She did not poison you, he thought. She gave you your life, and she knew what it would cost her, and she did it anyway.

"Tamsin said," whispered Lila.

He went very still.

"Tamsin said..." The small voice drifted, slurred with sleep. "The water sleeps, she said, and it sleeps underneath the floor." The thin fingers twitched in his. "Don't let it... wake up hungry."

Her breathing evened out. Her hand went slack.

…

He found the Emperor awake in the dusk.

The old man lay in the great bed with his face turned to the wall, and the lamp had burned low, and the attendant dozed in her chair by the fire. Soren sat down on the stool at the bedside and said his name twice before the pale gold eyes opened, vague and clouded, and wandered round the room and settled on his son.

"Soren," said Augustin. His voice was a breath. "You have come."

"I am here, Father."

"I was afraid..." The thin hand groped over the coverlet and found his. "I was afraid they would not let you."

"I have a writ of open court. The Council has agreed to a hearing. Tamsin will be tried in public, and I shall do everything in my power to see that she is not condemned." He hesitated for a moment. "Father, I need to ask you something. Lila said a thing in her sleep. She said that the water sleeps. Do you know what she meant?"

The old eyes closed. For a long moment he thought that his father had drifted off again, and he sat with the hand in his, watching the faint rise and fall of the thin chest. Then the lips moved.

"I gave her the key," said Augustin.

"You gave the key to Tamsin?"

"The copper one. The water sleeps where the key goes. I told her to hide it. I told her to..." A cough rattled in his throat. "I could not tell you. They watch me, Soren. They read everything. But she is clever, and she is brave, and she will know where to put it."

"Where is it, Father?"

"I do not know." The Emperor's face crumpled. "I asked her not to tell me. I was afraid..." His voice trailed away into a whisper. "I was always afraid."

He did not speak again. Soren sat for an hour in the darkening room, holding the withered hand, and when the attendant woke and lit the second lamp, he rose and bowed over the bed and went out.

He searched Tamsin's sitting room that night, with Dorian holding the lantern. The Guard had been there before them. Drawers hung open. The mattress was slashed. Her books lay scattered on the floor in torn drifts, and the rack of glass vials had been smashed against the hearth, so that the whole room smelled of crushed herbs. He went through it methodically, on his knees, lifting floorboards and tapping the backs of cupboards, and he found no key.

"Wherever she put it," said Dorian, "she put it where a Guardsman wouldn't look."

"Yes," said Soren. "That is rather the difficulty."

…

The knock came at dawn.

He had fallen asleep at his desk, with his head on his arm, and he woke with a start and the taste of ash in his mouth. The study was gray with early light. Finch stood in the open door, breathless, with his plum waistcoat buttoned wrong and his spectacles pushed up into his white hair. He had a folded paper in one hand, and he held it as though it were red-hot.

"Your Grace," he panted. "I have just come from the Chancery. I have a friend there, a copying clerk, who owes me a favor. He tells me that the notice has gone out this morning."

Soren was on his feet. "What notice has gone out?"

"The notice of the hearing, Your Grace. The Chancellor has revised the arrangements." Finch pressed the paper into his hand. "Citing, if you please, the danger of the accused to the public and the need for a speedy resolution, he has moved the date. It is not to be a fortnight, Your Grace. It is to be a summary hearing, before the Quorum, the day after tomorrow."

The paper crackled in Soren's fist. "That is two days."

"Three, by the notice, but the clerk says it will be two." Finch took off his spectacles, and his round pink face was haggard. "And there is a further matter. My friend overheard a conversation. It was not meant to be heard. The Chancellor and Magistrate Blythe, in the corridor. They were speaking of the sentence."

"The sentence will be hanging," said Soren. "It is the penalty for attempted murder."

"They did not say hanging." Finch's voice dropped to a whisper. "They said that the Chancellor wishes it to be Committal to the Cistern, on the morning of the Midwinter wedding."