So, I’ll be Examined too. Her words tested for truth or lie like a defendant’s. Her hands, tremulous on the best of days, had jolted at the thought. She’d quickly moved them to her lap, but the slight crease in his brow said he’d caught the movement.
“Won’t you let me come?” The whimsical note in his voice had shredded her arguments more effectively than reason could have. “I’ll quietly observe. No more.”
She gaped at the wistful look on his face. On a man who looked like the epitome of Wrath most days, the effect was shattering. And godsdammit, his robe was slipping off his left shoulder.
“Well…” she cleared her throat when the robe slid down further and bared a muscled deltoid, “perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if you were there.”
“The capital would talk if I didn’t show,” he agreed, leaning in.
“And you’d only be sitting there.”
“An excellent idea.” He’d tilted her chin up, a hungry glint in those black eyes. “Now, Petitor Sarai, it’s past noon. What do you say to retiring?”
Still vaguely dazed, she’d let him draw her into his arms.
In the present, Sarai bit back a smile as it struck her that she’d been tricked.
Blasius seemed to be biting back something too, though it was likely less complimentary. “May our pleas bear fruit in the Bright Realms,” he finished the prayer through gritted teeth.
“As the Elsar will it,” Sarai mouthed the crowd’s chorus as everyone took their seats.
And then, it was only her, facing twenty priests and four Inquisitors intent on evisceration. She hid her trembling fingers behind her back.
Verentia steepled her hands. “Petitor Sarai of Arsamea, why did you agree to this Hearing?”
To once again offer transparency to people who prefer conspiracy.“To speak the truth.”
The nod one of the Clerics seated on the steps gave Verentia told her that Kadra had been right. They’d brought along a former Petitor. Her chest tightened at the insult.Zosta, the rune for “Examination,” glowed on the priest’s armilla, the rune-engraved bracelet allowing magic-users quick access to power without having to draw the runes in blood.
“Certo, you appreciate that an Inquisitorial Hearing is an extraordinary remedy,” Verentia tapped the arms of Cassandane’s seat to underscore the point. “Used only when the truth of a theological matter is so contested that we, who’ve studied and know the Elsar best, must provide clarity. We have been called to do so for the day now referred to as the Great Unraveling that occurred eight months ago here. Do you concur?”
Don’t lose your temper.“I agree that we’re here to discuss the Unraveling. However, if the events therein are being contested, it is by those who didn’t see them. The truth was clear to everyone who was there.”
“Truth cannot be decided only by those who experience it.”
Of all the havïd nonsense.Anger cleaved the restraints on her tongue. “Itmust, or it slips into hindsight and hearsay.”
Some in the crowd whistled. Her eyes narrowed at the glower that twisted Blasius’s face.An easy target.
“I see why the people of Edessa demanded this Hearing. Your belligerence in the face of the accusations against you is astounding.”
Belligerent. Bitter.Arsamea had thrown those words at her for eighteen years. “Those accusations are verifiably false, Inquisitor.”
That brought on a cacophony of protests from Aelius’s devotees. The priests smirked through the furor while the rest of the audience waited, torn between believing her and the allure of a scapegoat for their troubles. And it was the latter that hurt most.
How had so little changed after all she had done? She hadn’t expected fanfare but dared hope for peace. Instead, she drank daily of the bitter brew doled out to women in politics, required to pantomime serenity every day while the land tried to crucify her. If Harion had killed Aelius, would he have faced the same scrutiny?
Verentia spread her hands in mock sympathy. “Unfortunately, the populace disagrees.”
Sarai willed the blood pounding in her ears to slow. “Disagreeing with the truth doesn’t change it. Former Head Tetrarch Aelius was a supremely cruel, religious hypocrite and mass murderer.” She paused to let his worshippers bellow their outrage. “But I’ve since learned that he was quite generous with his ill-gotten gains. He earmarked a large portion of nationally collected taxes for his Quarter’s benefit. It seems that his people see reverting back to equality as ignominy.” Fury honed her voice to a knife’s point. “I have read all the petitions made against me. Thousands insisted that I was siphoning funds intended for Aelius’s Quarter. Unfortunately, it is their Quarter that has been siphoning funds intended for the nation.”
That injustice finally brought the quiet majority of the onlookers to their feet. She knew that if she turned, she’d find a smile playing on Kadra’s lips at her having turned the audience against each other.
“Silence!” Verentia snapped, gritting her teeth when the crowd ignored her. “I said—”
“By Wisdom,” the veiled Inquisitor’s voice broke in. Sarai cast around for his name. Silvus, the newest man to enter the Order’s fold. “How very easy it is to get you all fighting.”
The audience stopped cold in the same breath that she did. Silvus’s gray eyes raked her, sans lechery yet infinitely more disturbing for how much they seemed to see. She held his gaze, granting neither of them any quarter. His cheeks rose, the veil over his mouth shrouding what could be a grin.
