Chương 79: Book 2, Chapter 18: A Dance with Lawyers

"Ledger?" Sellem repeated, wariness creeping back into his voice.

"What of any ledger?" Patience, dear prince. You have to build the cage before you close the door.

"We'll get to it, Your Imperial Highness," said Clara. She wanted to slam something, but a railing wasn't quite the same as a desk.

"If you'll allow me, I'd like to return to a few moments ago, when you offered the esteemed kadi your apologies for being absent yesterday. You mentioned you ought to have handed the day's affairs to someone else and come here yourself. Recep Bey, was it?" Sellem's frown was one of genuine puzzlement, as though he could not imagine the point of the question.

"Recep Tellyim Bey. My right-hand man at the treasury. What does he have to do with anything?" Clara kept her face perfectly still, but inside, her heart was thundering. R. T. Bey. Had Lord Pedro counted on everything going exactly this way, with the goal of making Clara say what she was about to say? Did he know Sellem and his aide were entangled in the slave trade? Had he been trying to tell Clara that Sellem was the true culprit?

"Recep Tellyim Bey," she said pleasantly.

"Forgive me, Your Imperial Highness, I only wish to understand his standing. You said you would have entrusted the affairs of the Imperial Treasury to him in your absence, so I take it you place a great deal of trust in this man?"

"Recep Bey has served the treasury capably for fifteen years." Sellem lifted his chin, on far surer footing now that he had the opportunity to gloat about his subordinate. It was, of course, just a more indirect form of gloating about oneself, as Clara had learned all too well during her time at Caine, Polis & Smith.

"He keeps my books, manages my correspondence, and oversees the hundred tedious matters unworthy of my attention. There is none in Istantinople I would sooner trust with the Empire's coin—at least among those not of the blood." Clara's hand drifted down to her satchel. Beside her, Warren noticed it. Their eyes met, and he gave her a sly smile.' Go ahead', he mouthed, before turning a serene expression toward the dais. She reached inside and pulled out the ledger Pedro had given her.

The cracked leather looked shabbier than ever beneath the colored glow pouring through the dome, terribly out of place in a hall of gold mosaic and purple cushions. It was time to turn this trial around. She raised the ledger for the room to see.

"Esteemed kadi, with the court's permission, I would like to show the witness something." Mikhaila's gaze flicked up to the high panel, found whatever she needed in its silence, and returned.

"You may." Clara stepped onto the carpet below the dais and held the open ledger toward Sellem, covering the contents of the pages with her hands except for the very bottom.

"Your Imperial Highness." She tapped the initials.

"Is this Recep Bey's mark?" Sellem leaned forward, and recognition moved across his face as his mustache twitched. He didn't answer at first, probably calculating whether he could somehow deny it. But this was something too easily checked—any other document signed by Recep would have borne the same mark. If Sellem lied now, he would be exposed before the day was out, in open court beneath his father's shadow.

"…It resembles his hand," Sellem said at last.

"R. T. Bey. Yes, that is how Recep Bey marks his official ledgers. How do you have a ledger from the treasury!? You must have stolen it!" Up in the accuser's enclosure, Justan watched. But he didn't object. He's definitely smart enough to know I'm up to something, and that it won't be good for his case. But he'll wait and see if it hurts Sellem more—a brother taken down is one fewer between him and the throne.

"Thank you for confirming this ledger belongs to the treasury, Your Imperial Highness. And I assure you, I have not stolen anything." Emphasis on 'I'." This was brought to me by a concerned party." Clara went back to the defense's enclosure, then turned to the princess.

"Esteemed kadi, before I say anything more, I have a rather humble question—one I confess I do not know the answer to myself, being a foreigner. How much does a sack of grain cost, here in Istantinople?" The ledger listed the price as two hundred dinars. But if a fish sandwich cost three—and that probably included a clueless tourist tax—grain should not be that expensive. Mikhaila tilted her head, caught off guard by the change of course.

"A sack of grain?" She frowned and considered it.

"It's grain. How much could it cost? A hundred dinars?" A low, warm chuckle came from Justan.

"Around thirty, esteemed kadi. Even fifty would be grossly overpaying," he said with the gentle tone of an older brother guiding his younger sister.

"Unless it were the most precious grain in all of Istantinople, grown in the Sultan-Basileus's own garden and blessed by the Matriarch. Then, perhaps, you might pay a hundred—if the merchant were a swindler." Mikhaila's cheeks reddened, and she cleared her throat.

"Oh. I knew that. I was only testing you." Around thirty dinars. That makes much more sense.

"Thank you, Your Imperial Highnesses," Clara said.

"So two hundred dinars for a sack of grain would be an absurd price, correct?" Justan nodded.

"It would. Though I do not see what the price of grain has to do with the poisoning of a man." This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Isn't it obvious?" said Sellem, sweat running down his brow.

"These Arcadians are wasting our time when the truth is right in front of our faces. Esteemed kadi, you must put an end to this!"

"Please bear with me for a moment longer, esteemed kadi," countered Clara.

"I am about to make my point." Mikhaila motioned for her to continue, and Sellem bit down on his lip.

"A short while ago, the honored accuser told this court of certain records he uncovered in the victim's office," said Clara.

"Records that spoke, on their surface, of ordinary trade, but which concealed a dark truth." She opened the ledger.

"Well, like the honored accuser, we did some investigation of our own. And it seems that Anis was not the only man in Istantinople keeping two truths inside a single set of books." Clara turned to the first page and read in a clear and loud voice.

"A sack of grain. Thalia Manaklis. Two hundred dinars." That was when Sellem coughed. He looked up at the high panel, then pressed his head into the carpet. But there was only silence from the Sultan-Basileus.

"Now, when I first read this, I had thought it to be a simple transaction," said Clara.

"Thalia Manaklis bought a sack of grain for two hundred dinars. Except, as we just established, that price is outrageous—and I wager you will find the values in every other line of this ledger similarly excessive. Lamp oil at three hundred. A bolt of linen for six hundred. Esteemed kadi, either the Imperial Treasury has been paying the most ruinous prices in the history of commerce, or the words on these pages do not mean what they appear to mean." She took a breath.

"The honored accuser said that Anis Clovos fed the Queen of Cities her spices with one hand and trafficked in stolen lives with the other. And here, in the books kept by Prince Sellem's most trusted man, we find the very same disguise. Goods that cost too much to be goods. Names beside them, which seemingly indicate a buyer." She lowered her voice.

"But Thalia Manaklis was not a buyer, esteemed kadi. Thalia Manaklis was the good being sold. And someone paid two hundred dinars to own her." Princess Mikhaila stood up from her divan.

"But Brother said that is a ledger of the Imperial Treasury! What are you implying?"

"I am implying nothing," said Clara.

"I am a foreigner, ignorant of imperial affairs. I am simply pointing out that Recep Tellyim Bey kept these books, and that he served at the pleasure of His Imperial Highness, Prince Sellem, who told this court that there is no man he would sooner trust. I would never presume to draw a conclusion between those facts." Though I very much hope you draw one, little kadi. Sellem rose, waving his hands frantically toward Clara.

"Enough!" His voice echoed off the dome.

"I will not stand here and be slandered by a papist commoner waving a stolen book! You forget yourself, Arcadian. By the law of the blood, any who offer an insult to the family of the Sultan-Basileus may be seized on the spot! Guards!" The soldiers glanced at the kadi, hands on the hilts of their weapons.

"İtiraz." The formal objection came not from Justan but from right next to Clara. Warren stood with his palms raised to the dais, and the clerk's staff struck in response. I have to admit it's good to have him on my side, for a change.

"Esteemed kadi," he said, unhurried.

"His Imperial Highness invokes a right of arrest. I would remind the court of two things. First, that my colleague and I were granted the full diplomatic protection of the Empire upon our arrival—a guarantee by His Imperial Highness Prince Justan himself. Second, and more to the point, my colleague has not insulted anyone. All she did was read aloud from a ledger and ask who signed it." Warren paused for a beat, glancing briefly at the high panel, then turned to Sellem with a smirk.

"Of course, if a son of the blood hears an insult in the simple recitation of his own treasury's accounts, then I believe that speaks more about how he interprets the evidence than about anything my colleague said." Smooth. He's going to be insufferable about this later, isn't he?

"Evidence of what, exactly?" asked Justan. Unlike Sellem, he was still calm, his tone sharp but not panicked.

"Let us entertain, for the sake of argument, the notion that every word the friends of the accused have spoken is true. Let us suppose that my brother's man kept dishonest books, and even grant the darkest reading of them. Even if members of Sellem's staff, or perhaps Sellem himself, are entangled in something they ought not to be, what does that have to do with the case before us? A merchant lies poisoned. We are here to find his killer, not to audit the treasury."

It was a good argument, doing the double work of casting doubt on Sellem to damage his succession prospects but also solidifying the accusation's case. Trying to have your cake and eat it too, are we, Prince Justan? Clara looked up at the high panel. What's your game, Your Imperial Majesty? What do you want to come out of this trial? Of course, there was no answer. Not that it mattered. She was a lawyer, here to defend her client, even if that made the Sultan-Basileus her enemy.

Warren can deal with the aftermath later, anyway. Politics are more up his alley than mine. For now, Clara just had to press on.

"I'm afraid I don't agree with you there, honored accuser. We are not here to find Anis Clovos's killer. We are here to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to convict Pedro de Bragança, former Duke de Bragança, of murder." She faced the kadi. Mikhaila was watching attentively, her eyes focused in a way that made it easy to forget her age.

"Strip this case down to its frame, and what holds it up?" Clara asked.

"Not the spice merchant Secondos, who wasn't even an actual witness. Not the Arcadian Embassy, which denied ever having received Pedro de Bragança. Not the officers of the peace, who found residue of herbs that could have belonged to anyone and served any purpose. No." She raised a finger.

"The accusation against Pedro de Bragança rests upon a single foundation. The testimony that a dinner occurred. That the accused sat at that table and distributed the food. And there is only one person in all the Empire who has attested to that." She pointed at Sellem.

"Him." Warren picked up her thread without hesitating.

"One witness," he said, pacing slowly inside the defense's enclosure.

"An uncorroborated witness, who first hid behind a hired liar rather than appear in person. Who came to this court only when dragged. Who broke bread with a slaver. Whose own treasury keeps books that reveal highly suspicious conduct, whether he knows it or not." He stopped moving and turned to the kadi.

"Esteemed kadi, the honored accuser is asking you to take the gravest possible step—to convict a foreign high noble of murder, with a fleet at anchor and a war on the horizon—based on the unsupported words of a single man. And what is the worth of those words? Quite simple: a two-hundred-dinar sack of grain." A laugh from the gallery. Probably Bel.

"Consider the motive the honored accuser has so generously offered," Clara said.

"Prince Justan told us Anis Clovos was killed because he was a slaver. It is well known that House de Bragança is opposed to the slave trade, making this an elegant claim for his purposes. But I would suggest that a motive is a key, esteemed kadi. And a key can fit more than one lock." She let the silence stretch before continuing.

"Is an abolitionist the only one who might want to kill a slave trader? It is no stretch of the imagination that a partner in the same forbidden enterprise could want to remove a rival or settle a debt, taking the opportunity to lay the blame at the feet of a foreign nation. If there was a dinner at all, who is to say that it wasn't a fellow slaver who brought the poison?" The hall went into an uproar.

Sellem was shouting, Princess Mikhaila tried to demand silence, and there was even a gray cat which had somehow snuck inside the courtroom while a soldier chased it around. The clerk's staff hammered the floor repeatedly, trying to restore a semblance of order. And high on the wall, behind the carved lattice, the Sultan-Basileus's shadow listened, and said nothing at all.