“Sir?”
“You heard me. Summon them at once,” he repeated, then turned and stormed off.
The assembled group was abuzz, and Maria thought that more than one of their faces had drastically paled from of the chancellor’s command. Maddix was watching her, she realized, a sad look in his eyes.
This is not good. This is not good at all, she realized.And unless I’m really mistaken—and I sure hope I am—things just got a whole lot worse.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Maria was held in a cell, completely alone, sequestered until what was to be a very public hearing in two days. No visitors were to be allowed, and her meals were to be deposited in silence. No one was to speak with her, not even a word.
To most it would be torture. But after spending so many quiet days just sitting with Zepharos and listening to the sounds of the world, not speaking so much as a sentence for hours, comfortable in each other’s company, she found this wasn’t as much a punishment as her captors might have intended.
And while they weren’t talkingtoher, Maria did overhear plenty of snippets of conversation when her food was brought to her, as well as conversations out in the hallway. The thing was, the cells were designed to hold people during the games, and as such, there’d been no need to soundproof the room in which they were constructed.
The games were long over, but staff still wandered the halls, generally chattering away, forgetting there was a prisoner locked away on the other side of that surprisingly thin door. And as they talked, she learned a lot. Only in pieces, but it was enoughto give her a good idea what was going on, and it didn’t sound good.
She wasn’t entirely certain, but from what she’d been able to piece together, the delay was two-fold.
One, they had to wait a full day and a half for the Dotharian overseer to make the trip from wherever they were in the sector. She wasn’t quite sure how big a sector was, but it spanned at least several solar systems, if not more.
Two, the chancellor was making an example of her, and with public announcements made far and wide of the very rare visit from the sector’s overseer to deal with the troublesome human, spectators were flying in from all over to watch the spectacle, just as the chancellor had hoped. In fact, he’d reopened the arena especially for the hearing, to the delight of local restaurants, taverns, and, of course, the gambling halls.
What they would bet on, Maria didn’t really want to know. What she did know was the chancellor was making an event out of this, and between the five elite families ruling the city and the Dotharian overseer’s own private guards, it was going to be a massive show of force. A statement of dominance and control, cementing the chancellor in his role atop the food chain for many more years to come.
I wonder just how many people will show up, Maria wondered as she meditated away the hours in her cell.
In two days’ time she found out.
“Hoooooly shit,” she gasped as she was led out into the arena grounds.
This was huge. Far more than she’d expected, even in her wildest dreams. There were thousands upon thousands of spectators in the stands, all of them watching the elevated dais upon which the Dotharian overseer would direct the hearing, and the adjacent lower platforms on either side where the elitefamilies sat smugly, enjoying their position of importance in the presence of so powerful a figure.
As for the overseer, the purple-skinned alien was both slender yet bulbous in shape, wearing colorful and ornate garb that looked like it cost more than a citizen earned in a year. Behind them quietly sat another purple alien, but this one was more modestly dressed, covered from head to toe in a deep blue robe that seemed to drink in the sun’s rays and redirect them into a subtle swirl in the fabric. Maria thought they were both male, but she couldn’t be sure. Not all alien morphology was as obvious as others.
One thing that was clear, however, was that the Dotharian was not happy to be there. They’d been dragged away from other far more important duties to this world for a simple hearing for one lone individual. At least there were elites, politicians, and royals from all over the planet in attendance, all of them eager to get a look at this woman from a race calledhumanswho was on trial.
Official Dotharian-helmed trials were quite rare, given their strict adherence to the laws and their brutally efficient rulings. And more than that, these sorts of hearings were often followed by an execution, the possibility of which drew even more spectators, a great many placing all manner of wagers on what might unfold on the arena floor.
But no one could have imagined what would actually happen.
It began with a hearing, public and loud in the testimonies of officials who had been present when Maria had arrived, as well as one of the guards apparently from the transport that had brought her to the games, though she’d never seen his face, her and the others being locked up in the container the whole time. But she did recognize his voice, and it was him and the others who confirmed that she had indeed been found lacking allDotharian runes but the lone translation marking behind her ear.
One after another they were asked for details. Information. Things they had noted about her, the chancellor taking the opportunity to grill them himself, his every sentence and accompanying gesticulations full of grandstanding for the crowd. He was making a show of it, and the more he got rolling, the more he enjoyed the heady feeling of having all eyes upon him.
This went on for several hours. The testimonies were not particularly damning to Maria’s mind. In fact, hearing time and again how she had been found and captured after a Raxxian crash, a tidbit which drew gasps of shock from the crowd, she felt they were making her case for her as well as their own. She was a victim here, and they all seemed to know it. And when Maddix finally testified, he seemed to be trying to paint the picture that she was not the criminal they made her out to be.
But she had lacked the runes. Some stupid law that didn’t take into consideration if someone didn’t come from the Dotharian realms. It was simply beyond them to imagine such a thing. But here she was, living proof. Her and the woman she’d arrived with, though she didn’t know what ever became of Ziana after the games had ended. She’d been whisked away just as they were beginning, and since her return she’d been locked away without the opportunity to inquire of her.
Regardless, at the moment, she had more pressing matters.
This wasn’t Earth, and whatever this legal system was, a public defender wasnotprovided to her. As a result, after the lengthy testimonies of the witnesses were finished, Maria was ushered in front of the dais to testify on her own behalf.
The Dotharian overseer stared down at her, a very serious look on his face. It was a he, she’d decided after overhearing oneof the many guards comment something to the effect of the man being known for dispersing justice with an iron fist.
“Speak for yourself,” he commanded. “What have you to say in your own defense?”
Maria hesitated, spinning slowly and taking in the crowd. The scores of guards. The staring elites. This was it. This was her chance.
