Chapter 65
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
The black-iron box operates on two principles: first, iron is a grounding metal, which nullifies spiritual energy; second, black-iron, drawn from the Endless Dark, silences the mind.
—Leonard Skeffington, Explications of Torture, a banned folio
The galleries of Westminster Hall erupted with shouts and gasps. All except the private schism box, whose occupants remained still, watching.
“You killed Henry,” I said again, though I could barely hear myself over the noise.
The chancellors looked at one another. Then Lady Boudica slammed her fist down on her table, and the gallery riffraff went quiet.
She stood up and turned a terrifying glare on me. “You make a dangerous accusation, Mr. Solomon.” Her voice was like grinding glass. “And you level it at one of the Strata’s firmest defenders. What evidence have you?” She paused. “Think carefully, as nothing less than your soul depends upon it.”
I froze. My evidence would be considered circumstantial at best. It had been a bad play. Just then, Church put a hand on my arm and pointed toward Cassius, who clearly wanted me to call for his testimony. I shook my head.
King Caswallawn leaned forward in his chair, swept back his long, black-and-silver hair, and smiled at me. “Lady Boudica is trying to intimidate you, son.”
It was working. London might never have had a fiercer revolutionary than Boudica. Our odds against Brach got plenty worse if she was backing him.
“Young man,” continued Caswallawn, “I was defending what was right long before any of our chancellors here were sucking on a teat, so trust me when I say . . . speak the truth and you’ll know gentle winds.”
That’s all I wanted—a chance to tell Henry’s story. I had to believe they’d help us then.
“And you”—Caswallawn pointed at Brach—“will let him speak without interruption.”
I thanked Caswallawn for his patience and told them about the shooting in the alley, Brach’s bindings on the assassin’s body, Henry’s imprisonment at Newgate, Brach’s various henchmen, and the summoning of Handel.
The galleries erupted again. “Muster for Muster!” some shouted. “Help us move on!” cried others. This was Brach’s army. Part of it anyway.
“Baseless accusations!” Brach shouted. “And he offers no proof.”
Chancellor Tyler pounded his fist on the table so loud it sounded like a gunshot. “Shut yer gobs, the lot of ya!”
The gallery rabble slowly quieted.
From the far side of the octagon, Purcell held up his hand. Tyler motioned him in.
“Esteemed chancery,” Purcell began in his officious tone, “for the record, I encountered Mr. Solomon in the Strata. Many of us did.” He gestured at Brach’s entourage.
“However, contrary to Mr. Solomon’s suppositions, we endeavor only to preserve the past from a topside influence that is already reshaping and erasing our history.
I would ask the chancery to bear in mind that as a thanatist Mr. Solomon is callow at best. And as such, the workings of the Strata are, no doubt, foreign to him. ”
The chancellors around the tables and people throughout the galleries muttered in agreement.
Lakshmi raised her hand. “May I speak?” Tyler frowned but waved her in.
She walked over and stood at my side. “I find Mr. Solomon impudent, reckless, and sometimes bothersome, but I can bear witness to the veracity of his claims, most importantly the summoning of a mature wraith, which—I needn’t remind the chancery—is by itself a high crime against Precedent Law.”
Tyler cocked his head. “You got any proof, Raptorial, that Muster Brach killed Henry Wilkinson? Or that he summoned this wraith, for that matter?”
“No, sir,” she said. “And Mr. Purcell, despite his artful testimony, is largely to blame for that. More than once he’s prevented us from collecting the necessary evidence.”
Purcell scoffed. “Is anyone surprised to hear an answer of such convenience?”
The cry “lies” started in the far corner of the gallery and spread across the hall. Cassius again caught my eye, and again I shook my head. They’d discorporate him if he confessed. And even if they let him testify, they might not listen to what he had to say. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
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 do anything for 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 there when 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 to his vision 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 killing us for 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 progress toward that 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?”
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, as my 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.