A few moments later, Emaline slowly stood, quieting the crowd. “As both Mr. Brach’s daughter and urn-bearer, I have to say that it would seem we have little more than competing accusations.” She shifted to look at me. “Except that Mr. Solomon, who’s known Mr. Wilkinson only five years, has any number of motives for his assassination. While my father, a lifelong friend to Mr. Wilkinson, is widely known to have but one motivation, one conviction, and that is the protection of the Strata.”
Again the galleries and chancellors mumbled in agreement. Emaline gave me the slightest nod and sat. Damn, she was smart.
“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “Your father would doanythingfor the Strata. Which includes killing his friend to set off a war against the topside world.”
The folk in the galleries broke into a deafening roar this time. But for all their howling, I didn’t see a puzzled face or hear a word of denial from the chancellors. It surprised the hell out of me, to be honest. I was going to have to do more than call Brach out for murder; I had to expose the ugliness and scale of his crimes.
“I’ve seen the bodies,” I shouted, “the roundups, the propaganda, the plans.”
Brach slammed our table with both hands, silencing the hall. “Cease these lies.”
“He’s not content to merely defend the Strata,” I said, pushing ahead. “He means to kill thousands of topsiders, replace them with vestige puppets, and take control of London’s future the way autocrats always seize control, by changing its culture.”
“Which begins how?” asked Mad Jack.
I pointed at his bagpipes. “With music,” I said, and told them about the mummers, the new instruments and training, the venues, and all the rest.
Captain Burton knocked on his table. “Cultural drift is principally a matter of changing sexual mores, Mr. Solomon, much the way I influenced Victorian society to move from prudery to sexual exploration by translating the Kama Sutra for native English speakers. Music is simply a downstream manifestation. Therefore, I cannot believe in a conspiracy that hinges on the influence of music, regardless how compelling that music may be.”
“With all due respect,” I said, addressing Burton, “even when you look at sixties music, of all the downstream manifestations, attitudes towards sexuality were the slowest to broadly change. Hell, they’re still changing.”
Tyler wrapped his table. “Watch yer mouth, Mr. Solomon. And I take issue with the very notion that London is somehow a topside world separate from the rest of us. No sirree, it’s a cont— A contin— Ah, bollocks, Nancy, wha’d you call it last time?”
“A continuum,” Chancellor Nancy Wake said.
I jumped back in. “And the ward helps maintain the balance of that continuum. But now she’s dying. My friends and I dismissed Brach’s wraith before it could consume her . . . but she hasn’t got much time left.” Brach shot to his feet and shouted, “More preposterous lies!” Spittle flew in every direction. Grace O’Malley grimaced, and Caswallawn got up to wipe a blob of it off her table with his sleeve. Any other time, I would have laughed.
Lady Aethelflaed knocked her table to get my attention. “Are you certain of this?”
I nodded. “That’s why Brach’s accused me of killing Henry, to stop me from trying to save her so he can take her song.”
Even the throng in the galleries gasped. The chancellors shared grave looks.
Mad Jack curled a hand around his pipes.“‘The Lays of Resolve’ . . . dear me.” Caswallawn leaned forward. “I was therewhen the Ward first sang ‘The Lays.’ It would indeed make a powerful tool to galvanize an army.” “It’s more than that,” I said. “Brach plans to use her song to change education, government, policy. He’ll force the world to yield tohisvision of what it was and what it should be.”
Brach scoffed. “Even were these accusations true, who here isn’t weary of the topside world’s treatment of the Strata?”
The galleries muttered more agreement, and several of the chancellors nodded.
I knocked my table good and loud. “He’ll do it in the Strata, too.” The hall got deadly quiet. Tyler eyed me. “What exactly are ya sayin’,
Mr. Solomon?”
I looked around the octagon. “I think some of you know this has already started in the Strata. But it’s going to get worse. Brach’s whole plan is to strip away our choices. And those who dissent from his vision will be shouted down or placed in camps. It’ll begin with the public degradation of artists and other innovators . . . and end with the killing of anyone who doesn’t comply.”
Brach finally turned and stared at me. “Your world has been killingusfor years.” There was a long silence. “Why do you think the Strata exists, Mr. Solomon? We are a collection of souls who, for various reasons, aren’t ready to move on, but, because of the Strata, have the chance to progresstowardthat possibility.” He raised a hand, pointing at Bazalgette and the rest of his entourage. “But when your songs and books and films and historians ignore us, marginalize us, or refashion us to their own purpose, it changes who we are, just as it changes the Strata itself and impedes or prevents us from reaching that goal.”
I shook my head. “People above don’t know?—”
“The soul’s only real desire,” Brach continued, “is to rejoin family, find some peace. And most do it in the blink of an eye.But for those of us who wind up in the Strata it will take decades, sometimes centuries of slowly progressing toward that same opportunity . . . unless before we do, we are erased or changed by topside mortals who ignore or rewrite our history.”
Church tried to interrupt. “Even I?—”
“Then, not only do we lose hope of moving on,” Brach shouted, “but our souls will eventually expire to nothing. And the loss of those memories, Mr. Solomon, contracts the Strata itself, making it ever more difficult for the rest of us to reach the Meadows. My so-called war is nothing more than our effort to stop the topside world from stealing the simple hope we have of moving on.”
It seemed the entire hall was staring at me in silent condemnation. Tyler finally knocked his table. “What have you to say for your world,
Mr. Solomon?”
