Chương 32: Inquisitor

My new quarters were pretty decent as prison cells go. Stone walls, no window. A very nice bed, a comfy chair, an area rug, and a commode behind a waist-high privacy screen. There was a vent for water when I needed a shower, and I could get a change of clothes from the guards. One whole wall of my cell was bars, and there were never less than two guards watching me. They did not bring books or snacks to ease their time, they just watched. The bars were scribed, the walls were scribed, bloody everything was scribed.

A lot of work had gone into their "NO MAGIC" precautions. The room was not small, at least thirty feet on a side. Warm, well-ventilated, not at all dank or mildewed. For being an underground prison of iron and stone, the "dungeon" aesthetic was actually kind of lacking. Anyway I immediately ditched the smock I'd been wearing for two days and took a long, luxuriating shower in water that was cold enough to hurt my skin.

I got a towel and some fresh clothes, which were a cut above my transit clothes- shift, chemise, skirt, bodice, shoes. Then I laid down, and let myself miss my brother again. I cried until my lungs hurt and my stomach muscles burned, and I passed out. When I woke, there were new guards. I had just spent ten restful hours probing everything within twenty feet of me, exploring the space, and thinking a whole lot. So I had some plans and plenty of energy already.

"Morning!" I said, sitting up and stretching.

"Hi, we've not met. I'm Natalie Harigold." The two guards nodded grudgingly. Two wiry women, cast from the same mold. One was silent, but the other said, "M'lady." They were seated in wooden chairs, with their backs to a stone wall. They and I were in one large stone room, all smooth cut from the cliffs themselves, with bars sunk into the floor and ceiling to keep me apart from them. Standard format: crossbars, a single door, big damn lock, reinforced hinges.

The door out of here was on the wall behind them, leading out to a hallway.

"So, I was wondering: do I, as the accused, have any rights that I don't know about, that I might exercise to my own benefit?" The guards stiffened up. Uh oh! They shared a brief glance.

"I'm sure I wouldn't know," said the talker.

"I'm not the person to ask about that."

"Who would that person be?" I asked.

"I'm sure there's someone," the talker said, glaring at me. Gonna be a long two weeks.

"Is it Inquisitor Pina?"

"You'd have to ask her."

"When will she be by?"

"I'm not her secretary." I'll bet these two are picked specifically as the most stubborn and recalcitrant guards they have. That way when the interrogation starts I'll be so eager for someone to talk to that I'll say more than I should.

"When's breakfast?" I asked. The quiet one got up, and knocked on the door. It opened, she had a brief exchange with someone outside, and then someone outside handed her an apple, a loaf of bread, a thin wedge of cheese and a finger-thick slab of pork belly, grilled, all on a tin plate. She brought it over to the bars, and held it out for me. So eating was awkward.

I could either bring each item into my cell and then turn the plate sideways to get it in and then put everything on the plate, or I could eat with my arms passing through the bars and my face pressed up against them. Annoying. Petty. Not nearly as bad as things could be. I recognized that I was being handled with kid gloves. After all, I'm currently twenty-ninth in line to inherit the throne of the kingdom. I ate everything but the apple stem, and scooted the plate back over.

I went back to my bed, and looked through my ring. The house was still gone. The ashes had been soaked down and dried out again, it looked like a kind of cement from here. I put my ring back on. I started walking laps around the room. Gotta get my legs back in shape after two weeks of convalescence, after all. I was sitting down to rest up for a few more laps when the door opened and Inquisitor Pina walked in. She was medium-height and heavyset, she looked muscular for a mage.

She kept her hood up, I had no idea what color her hair was. She clearly kept that hood up full-time, she had a slight tan line on her forehead from it. She took one of the guards' chairs and brought it over to the bars, and set it down an arm's length away.

"Good evening," she said.

"Early afternoon, isn't it?" I said, scooting my chair closer. That threw her off her stride a little. Was she trying to play some kind of mind game about the time of day? Why?

"Afternoon, rather," she said.

"I think we'd like to get started. First, why the foundry? It had no bearing on this at all." I huffed.

"I thought we'd discuss my options for the future."

"We are. How well you cooperate determines what options you will have."

"Ah. I'm curious, are there any rights that I have as the accused that I could exercise if I knew them?" Inquisitor Pina turned and glared at the guards. The talker shrugged.

"She just woke up like that," the talker said. The inquisitor turned back to me.

"You have the right to counsel. Your family or their representative will choose and assign that counsel. You have right to visitors. You have the freedom from physical coercion, and the right to minimum prisoner standards of care. Which, I'll point out, we have more than exceeded for you here."

"Ah. Do I have the right to not cooperate with your interrogation without my counsel present?" She stared at me, jaw dropped, then laughed.

"What? Gods no! Why would the courts ever give up the right to question prisoners?!" The justice system here is due for a renovation. I sat back in my chair. She stared at me. I stared back. She cleared her throat.

"So, the foundry?"

"Don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"Plenty of witnesses saw you walk in there, and then there were explosions. A trademark of yours, loud explosions. You've shown them off quite publicly. And then the whole building caught fire, all around the edges first, just like your own house."

"Tragic," I said.

"Did the witnesses see me or did they see a girl of my height and coloration?"

"What difference would that make?"

"It's the difference between trying to find the truth or just trying to make the facts fit your scapegoat." She ignored that.

"We've verified the timeline, it's exact to within a few minutes. Only you could have done that, nobody else has ever traveled that fast."

"I am interested to know how you calculated that timeline. The methodology for that must be very complicated."

"Honestly none of this... this rampage makes any sense," Pina sighed, pinching her nose.

"It's all so random. Not one of your family's very publicly-declared enemies is targeted. None of the business competitors or political challengers, or the criminals and renegades that would hold a grudge against public justice. Instead... random businesses in faraway cities? Why?"

"Have you investigated from their side to see what connection they may have?" I asked.

"Or, does your entire case hinge on this interrogation?"

"Do you think we should investigate them?" she said.

"I still don't know what I'm charged with."

"We're still working on the list," she said.

"Wait, I'm confused," I said, leaning forward now, gesturing for a moment.

"Is your job here to try to get people to confess to crimes without telling them what crimes those are? I actually don't understand what you're trying to do here."

"Are you saying that you're innocent?"

"I'm not saying anything! And neither are you! We're just going in circles with this useless sophistry! If you're not willing to give an inch, I've got nowhere to meet you!" We had another very irritating hour before she left. And not at all productive. Still, I did manage to successfully invoke my right to counsel. An hour later my lawyer arrived.

"Hello," he said, leaning in through the door. He looked around as if there would be more than one prisoner in here.

"Looking for Lady Natalie Harigold?"

"Present," I said from the area rug. I was doing toe-touch stretches now, cool-downs. He glanced at the guards, and approached me.

"Lady Natalie," he said, standing by awkwardly.

"Ah, I understand you sent for me. Are you a solicitor yourself?"

"Not nearly," I said.

"Why?"

"Well, not many clients ask to speak with counsel before the trial," he said.

"Do most of the accused know that they have the right to consult with counsel?"

"Um. No."

"And so unless they ask for counsel, you cannot consult with them?"

"Yes." I peered up.

"So, what, you get assigned a client, you never see them, and at the trial you just try the best defense you can based on no information from your own client?"

"Yes?" he said. He was not sure what I was getting at. He was a tweedy little man with a fussy mustache and a hat that did not fit him.

"Have a seat, pull up some floor. Tell me what you've been planning."

"Well, your father sent word to his Hearstcliff representative by a fast rider, and they hired me on. I'm rather good with difficult cases, and this looks to be very troublesome. I was told you were well-read, but I did not expect you to navigate the legal system like a professional!" I chuckled.

"I'm well-read. I know a lot of laws, treaties, and guidelines. I've never read a single book about trial procedure, and I am just now starting to understand why there are none. You all just sort of make it up as you go along, don't you?"

"That's an unfair characterization," he sniffed defensively.

"All right, sorry, didn't mean to snip at you," I said.

"Now, the defense is going to be easy. All the evidence is flimsy. It's all circumstantial, the hearsay of rumor. They've got a what-could-have-happened that looks very big and scary, but there is nothing that actually connects me to any of these events." He was amazed.

"Are you saying you're innocent?"

"I'm saying it's your job to present me as innocent and attempt to convince the court of that." He considered this.

"An interesting challenge to professional ethics, for sure. I was just going to run with the Vendetta Defense."

"That sounds fascinating. What's a Vendetta Defense?" This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. In the Hearstwhile legal system, as it is practiced in Hearstcliff, the job of an attorney is not to prove their client's innocence, or to bargain down a sentence. In this city, operating independently of any duchy or lower vassal, the procedure was that the state presents its case, with as much trumped-up evidence as possible, which is often unnecessary.

The first assumption in trial here is "of course you're guilty, why else would you be on trial?" The counsel for the defendant then tries to prove that it was okay to break the law in this case. Defense of Need, Defense of Justice, Defense of Confusion, those are all on the table. But the main citation is Defense of Law, which aims to prove that the defendant was following the law when they broke the law.

That sounds ridiculous, but this kingdom has bills, proclamations, edicts, amendments, charters, contracts, treaties, ad hocs, de factos, policies, procedures, regulations and restrictions, which are all legally distinct, are enacted in different ways, are applied in different ways, and take precedence over each other in different way depending on circumstances.

These laws can be applied by the thrones, a duke, an earl, a march warden, a count, a baron, a lord, a sheriff, an alderman, a mayor, a governor, or just by common acknowledgement. All of these. The legal system here is bafflingly complex, and no effort is ever made to clarify it. Trials are won by whichever side argues the most passionately and the most cleverly. Evidence rarely gets discussed. I have been led to understand that it is considered tacky to bring up evidence.

People love witnesses though, because riling up a witness into dramatic statements and heated displays is considered good theater. I told him that I'm innocent of the charges, and that better be his defense of me, or I'd fire him. His plan was to avoid the trouble of comparing pages of laws against each other to construct some version of the law where I was compelled to blow up an ironworks, and instead present this as a crime of passion by the wrongfully victimized: the Vendetta Defense.

"Yeah, but that won't work because neither you nor the prosecutor has any evidence that the crimes being accused had anything to do with my family's tragedy," I pointed out.

"Oh, yeah, that reminds me, why did you attack those places? It just seems so random," he said. The two guards watching over us just smirked and traded a glance between them. My defense lawyer is asking me to make the prosecution's case for motive, for them, in front of the guards that answer to the prosecution. God dammit.

"Look, these events in these other areas, those are a coincidence," I said.

"Nothing to do with me. That's why nobody can prove that I did any of this."

"Yes, but you did do it," he said slowly, like I was a much younger child. I stared at him for long seconds, mustering patience.

"Is it possible for me to fire you and represent myself?"

"What?! Preposterous! It would be impossible for a layman to mount a viable defense! No, if you do not have your own counsel when you reach arraignment, the courts will assign a solicitor to your case."

"The court will?"

"Yes."

"And in whose person will the court do this?"

"The prosecution, generally."

"Inquisitor Pina."

"Yes."

"If I don't keep you, Inquisitor Pina gets to pick my attorney for me, during the arraignment?"

"Yes."

"I have deep concerns that you cannot adequately defend me in court, and that you may get me killed instead of freed." He sighed.

"Well, I'm sorry our meeting could not have been more constructive. I will send a letter to your father regarding your misgivings, but ultimately it is his choice whether to retain me, or the court's defense. I may or may not see you at your arraignment, I suppose."

"Wait, you're not coming back?" He blinked.

"Multiple consultations? I'm afraid it's just not possible."

"This meeting is all I get?!" He clucked his tongue.

"Now I understand why you were wasting our time with all those fairy-tales! Ah, I quite misunderstood! No, my lady Natalie, this is our consultation. Good day." My father did not fire him. I did not see him again. I waited. I was promised that I would be told when a date was set for my appearance. But for a trial this important, with such an important personage on trial, and for a case this complicated, I should not expect things to move quickly.

Meanwhile the Inquisitor came in every day to try to get me to say anything she could interpret as a confession. I got tired of fencing with her verbally. I asked her politely to stop doing this and let me rest. I told her that all the information she needed was available from evidence. I told her that I was not going to speak with her. I tried sleeping through her visits. Meditating. Tuning her out. Singing "Henry the Eighth". After thirteen days waiting for my trial, I asked one of the guards, "What day is it?"

"The fourth week of Autumnhigh, Thirdday."

"Thank you," I said to the guard.

"Now, I must do something, in the name of my family's honor." They shot each other very confused looks. They were going to get more confused. I went to the back of my cell, and I laid down on the floor. I stretched out, and got comfortable. I let myself fall asleep. And just a minute later, a gap appeared in the wall, crumbling outwards, letting in the fresh air and daylight. I clumsily rolled my body over until I was outside, while the shouting guards tried to unlock my cell door and come after me.

And a blazing-white portal opened up beneath me, swallowed me up, and then disappeared. Okay, so what happened was that I seeped out of my body, and spread myself about. I sank into the wall, and through the wall, to the open air beyond. In Lower Hearstcliff, this passed for "outside"- you could see the geode sky from here. And then, with one of my two mana, I started curving granite, and weakened the structure. From outside, there was nothing blocking the use of sorcery.

I could not affect the runes, but I could work the stone they were attached to. And when I had weakened them, worked them, I hauled them out of the way and created a door way. With my last mana, I curved iron, and broke away the collar around my neck. Outside the warded walls, stripped of the scribed collar: my magic was back. Then I moved quick but careful; I streamed into my body, as fast as possible.

I tried not to count the seconds, and I tried not to measure how close the guards were to opening the door and coming after me. They were slowed down because they were hurrying, I tried not to do the same thing. My fingers twitched, my eyes opened. My body was outside, the rest of my mana was at my fingertips. I could reach the void again, and teleport myself away.