My world. It wasn’t just me who was on trial. It was the present. And a conviction would galvanize the Strata’s support for Brach’s war. This had been Brach’s strategy from the start. I was sure of it. And the hell of it was I couldn’t defend the present world; it was too big an argument, with consequences I couldn’t even begin to calculate. Besides which, I hated the idea that something we were doing was actually harming the past. Still, if I couldn’t stop this right here and now, there was no telling how many people would die, with the rest eventually bowing to Brach.
While I fought to find the words, footsteps echoed behind me. A hand came to rest on my shoulder. Cassius.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered. “I don’t . . . I can’t . . . we’ll find another way.”
Cassius squeezed my shoulder. “If it were only to save you, I would still ask to speak, because you are my friend. But this is about more than you or me. So,asmy friend, let me do this.”
I could have stopped him—he wore my bindings, after all. And Lord knows I wanted to. But as much as it tore me up inside, I let him say his piece.
In his deep, clear voice, he declared, “I murdered Henry Wilkinson. I was compelled by Mr. Brach to assassinate him by way of a handgun. The strategy consisted of moving my semblance into a gudgeon to perform the act, then back to the frame I now occupy. The handgun would, given Precedent Law forbidding firearm usage, obscure the fact that I was ordered by a thanatist to do so . . . by Brach himself.”
The gallery erupted in mutters.
“The chancery knows,” said Brach, silencing the crowd, “that the testimony of a vestige is unreliable, since we must assume it would be compelled to lie for its binder.”
“I’m afraid he’s right, Mr. Solomon,” said Mistress Wake, “and it’s still hearsay.”
Tyler knocked his table. “Mr. uh . . .” “Classicus, sir.”
“Mr. Classicus, I’m afraid you’ve failed to show any direct connection to Muster Brach.” Tyler smirked. “As such, I now call for a vote on the charge against Mr. Solomon.”
I was still missing something . . . some small but important detail. I quickly ran it down in my head.
While in the body of the corpse-paint man, Cassius had murdered Henry. The scar of that crime had burned itself into the corpse-paint man’s shadow, like a residue of Cassius’s choice. But a crime against the soul lived in the spirit, and so followed Cassius to the body he now occupied, traveling with him.
I’d seen other wounds resulting from crimes against the soul . . .
. . . the scar inside Madam, which her son now carried, because Brach chose to banish her . . .
. . . the scar inside Father Kincaid, from Henry’s killing of innocents in the House of God . . .
. . . Emaline’s primal moment, caused by Brach’s refusal to let her move on . . .
These wounds resulted from someone harming or being harmed by the people they loved.
But neither Cassius nor the corpse-paint man had ever known or loved Henry.
Maybe, then, harming a loved one wasn’t only about the person committing the act. Maybe the scar of that choice started further upstream. And if so, maybe it also existed in the person who gave the order in the first place.
Perhaps that’s what I’d been missing.
Because Brach and Henry had been friends. So, even if Brach had only ordered Henry’s assassination . . . he’d have the scar to prove it.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
When two schisms are anathema at once, a total breakdown of Precedent ensues, being called: Bedlam. This is because under such circumstances as much as forty percent of all thanatists have their lawful protections removed. The unanathematized then, unfortunately, abandon Precedent as a matter of self-preservation and opportunity, elsewise they’d function at a handicap relative to their anathemtized brothers and sisters.
—The Foundations of Bedlam: A Study of the Black Plague,Sir Thomas More
With all theeyes of Westminster Hall on me, I pulled out my lantern and bow and lit my ghost stone.
“I may be new to thanaturgy,” I said, “but one thing I’ve learned is that crimes against the soul leave a visible wound in the shadow.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “We hardly need a lesson in core thanatics.”
I took my lantern by its pistol grip and played the hardest revelatory stroke I’d ever played. Light flashed bright, and Cassius’s shadow fell dark across the tiled floor. I pointed my bow. “There. Supplicating hands were Mr. Wilkinson’s personal mark, and the tobacco leaf belongs to Mr. Brach. The chain, as you know, represents a compulsion binding.”
The Strata chancellors leaned out over their tables and peered into Cassius’s shadow, as did the schism leaders from their private box.
