Chapter 25 #2
“The murder of a high-ranking police officer is not something that can be waved away, Ms. Walcott.” Bittenbinder fixed her with an iron glare. “No matter how much your boss might wish it so.”
“You want proof? Siphon my memory of communing with Lt. Potts and see for yourself. Though, I understand your hesitation, Master Bittenbinder, as some of it is rather incriminating for you.”
Cora couldn’t help the smile beneath her veil as the Master Memnomancer drew himself up.
“I have nothing to hide,” Bittenbinder said.
“Then take the memory and let's be done with this.”
“Your memory is not admissible evidence in this trial.”
“A Necromancer’s communing testimony is admissible evidence, Otto,” Master Carpathia said. “Isn’t that so, Samuel?”
The Master Necromancer rolled his lips in displeasure. “So it is, Virgil. Let the young lady speak, Otto.”
Bittenbinder glanced up without moving his head, nostrils flaring. “Very well. You are aware, Ms. Walcott, of the irrevocable memory loss from a Memnomancer’s siphoning?”
“Yes,” she said.
“The short-term amnesia?”
“Yes.”
“The elevated risk of death?”
“Y—wait, what?”
“Elevated risk of death,” Bittenbinder repeated as if he were speaking to an illiterate child.
“Now I’m aware,” she muttered. Then, louder: “Yes. I am aware that this could apparently kill me.”
Bittenbinder’s small smile was full of malice. “Then let us take a recess. I will siphon the memory and report to the other Masters. Our delegation, I believe, shall be brief.”
Cora shot Malachy a worried look as Bittenbinder led her out of the chamber. The Masters in their dark robes trailed behind like ominous clouds.
Brief was an overstatement.
It took longer for Bittenbinder to siphon her memory than for the Masters to delegate and reach their verdict. Less than an hour was all it took for the Tribunal to weigh Malachy Bane and find him wanting.
The Masters reentered the chamber, their steps echoing hollowly on milky stone, and resumed their perches upon the dais. Cora listened from the shadows outside the arched doorway, after she’d slipped her guard in the labyrinthine corridors.
Solemn faces gazed down at Malachy, seated in the lone chair. The Tribunal passed their final judgment.
“Mr. Bane,” Master Bittenbinder intoned. “The Tribunal finds you…”
Silence stretched, the breathless anticipation before the guillotine dropped.
“Guilty.”
The verdict was met with utter stillness.
Cora’s hope guttered like a candle. The evidence hadn’t mattered. The Masters had already made up their minds. This entire farce of a trial had been a prelude to Mal’s death.
“For your crimes, Mr. Bane,” said the Master Phytomancer Sakura, “you shall be executed.”
Cora scarcely heard the Master’s words over the panic roaring in her head. Her feet led her, unbidden, into the chamber’s mouth. She couldn’t see Malachy’s face, but by the bend of his shoulders, their judgment had settled heavy around his neck.
The Realmwalker had cheated death for a century, and now he was living on borrowed time.
While relief and joy were plain on some Masters’ faces—Bittenbinder and Lakwa, especially—a shadow fell over Virgil Carpathia’s features, and Kabir clenched and unclenched his fists. The Master Sciomancer exchanged a look with the Master Bestiamancer.
“A unanimous decision is required for execution,” Master Carpathia rasped.
“Green as the day they dragged you out of the Vatican, eh, Virgil?” Lakwa’s good-natured tone dripped with honeyed venom. “Just as when you were elected the new Master Sciomancer, only a majority needed to vote in favor. Unanimity is rare among so many unlike minds.”
Malachy, flanked by guards, found Cora’s eyes. The anguish, the weariness, etched onto his face, achingly beautiful and doomed. She couldn’t help it; she ran to him.
The gasps of Masters. The scrape of heavy chairs. The flurry of shouted orders. Guards were on her in an instant. A pulse of death magic took the fabric of her gloves and the metal of their armor along with it. The guards withdrew.
She met Mal’s gaze. He gave a single nod. He had anticipated the Tribunal’s treachery in their verdict. But if this plan didn’t work…
Malachy addressed the Masters and played his final hand.
“A predictable verdict, given the corruption that has festered within the Tribunal for generations. At best, you are complicit in the conspiracies of Ghose and the Protean Society mage supremacists. At worst, you are co-conspirators, infected by dark magic and darker ideologies. Proof of your corruption will soon be broadcast across god’s green earth. ”
The Masters exchanged heated words and worried glances.
Cora shook off her bewildered guards and stopped before the dais. From the enchanted pocket of her dress, she pulled out a lacquered box. She cranked the lever on its side, and a tinny recording of Malachy’s voice began to play.
“Ghose and Ikelas are not the only Masters turned demons on the Tribunal…”
Everyone stilled. Their gazes latched onto the talking box.
“Impossible,” gasped the Master Aeromancer.
Cora cranked the lever again.
“For five years as his apprentice,” Mal’s recorded voice continued, “I saw Master Ghose commit atrocities with the Profane Arts, if not with the Tribunal’s approval, then with its intentional lack of oversight.
Forbidden magic still runs rampant among the Masters.
They insist demons are vanquished while they become them. ”
The recording faded to crackling silence.
“You were supposed to gag him, Virgil!” Lakwa hissed.
“I did.” Master Carpathia lifted a shoulder.
“Then how is this possible?” Lakwa demanded. “What in the blue blazes is this device?”
The curve of Cora’s mouth was hidden under the black veil. The crux of Mal’s plan had been to find what the Tribunal wanted most—secrecy—and rip it out of their hands.
Before his arrest, Mal had told her, “Despite the blackmail and bribery, I have only coincidences and my own gagged testimony to support my claims. The Masters will all close rank against an outside threat. Without evidence, I need leverage.”
“There might be a way,” Cora had said.
The loophole to the gagging spell had been Cora’s idea, and Julian Morro of all people had provided the means. With his Hollywood connections through Laurence Bellamy, Julian had access to a treasure trove of movie equipment to tinker with.
“My latest obsession.” Julian had explained the enchanted sound recording device he’d invented.
“This will revolutionize the film industry. Once I work the kinks out, that is. An Aeromancer enchanted it for sound recording, and my Lumomancy manipulates the camera lens’s light for image capture.
With this, silent movies will have synchronized dialogue.
I humbly propose calling these talking movies—drumroll—talkies. ”
While Malachy could not communicate the gagged information to anyone beyond the Masters, he could, at Cora’s odd insistence, stand in an empty room and talk to himself about the generations-long demon conspiracy while unaware of the planted recording device, both its invention and its presence.
Mal had “felt like a fuckin’ idiot” as he did it, but when Cora had returned to unearth the hidden device and played the recording back, she had seen the gears of his mind whirring at the technology’s vast potential.
Even Malachy, eyeing the device with deep misgivings, had been filled with begrudging respect. “And what does Julian want in exchange for this miracle?”
“Well,” Cora had said. “Ari Razaq, that shadowy bastard, is sore about the sleeping-with-Sloane thing and kicked Julian out of the gang and the Protean Society. So Julian wants to join your gang.”
Malachy had raised an eloquent eyebrow. “Is that all?” he said lightly. Too lightly.
“What? You don’t like Julian?”
“I endure his presence.”
“Oh, come on, Mal. You know how useful a Lumomancer could be.”
“I don’t want to be indebted to an American,” he had said in a disgusted tone he reserved for the English. “I don’t trust Julian. Neither should you. Although.” He considered the device. “This almost makes the Yank tolerable.”
Cora cranked the lever again. More of the recording played, about Master Ghose’s private crusades, their demon hunting expeditions, Koschei’s Egg.
The Masters spoke over each other in a growing clamor.
“In one hour,” Malachy called over them.
“This recording will be broadcast on Aeromancer-enchanted radio frequencies throughout Europe. To human ears it will sound like static, but to mages it will sound like the truth. How much longer, Masters of the Tribunal, will you darken these corridors when word of your crimes spreads?”
Horrified understanding spread like night falling.
Lakwa motioned the guards. “Take that damned contraption from Ms. Walcott at once. Destroy it! Now.”
The recording box was pried from her hands and smashed on the floor. Metal scattered across stone. Relief rippled through the Masters.
Malachy smiled. “I had several copies of the recording made and shipped across Europe. There are too many radio towers staffed with too many of my people to stop it from broadcasting. Unless…” His words trailed off.
The Masters reluctantly quieted. “Unless I am acquitted of all charges. Then I will personally destroy the recordings before they are aired.”
“This is preposterous!” Bittenbinder thundered. “You cannot seriously consider caving to this—this blackmail.”
“Who would even believe some man spouting lies over the radio?” Lakwa said, then appeared to reconsider his words.
“Sowing dissent will not win you favors, Mr. Bane,” said the Master Phytomancer Sakura, her soft voice strained.
“You will not tip the scales of justice in your favor.” Perspiration laced Bittenbinder’s pale brow. “The Tribunal stands by its verdict. Guilty.”
“But, Otto—” Master Carpathia froze when a scream echoed along the travertine walls, followed by the heavy thud of boots.
A blood-splattered guard rushed into the chamber, panting hard. “We’ve been breached!”