Ninety Days

The public gallery of the Open Hearings Court was not even half full, yet the board listing the hour of execution had already been hung.

Lydia looked at that board first. Gerard Avern, second hearing after the first bell, summary judgment permitted. The word permitted was courteous, but it was the courtesy of someone who had time. Beside the defendant's box a royal guard was sorting the chains, and on the judge's desk lay a thick bundle: the asset freeze list.

Cassian stepped half a pace ahead of Lydia, then stopped. "I petition for the joint hearing right of a royal spouse."

After that one sentence he stepped aside.

The judge looked at Cassian as though waiting for more. Cassian said nothing further. Lydia carried the sealed copy of the contract forward to the record stand. Mireille stood at her right. Her sister held the guardianship order in her hand, unfolded.

"I will read the grounds of the petition," Lydia said.

Oswin sat in the front row of the gallery. Today, too, he did not raise his voice. "This contract was registered less than eight hours ago. We all know what pressure the duke's daughter was under at the Audit Office. If the marriage was coerced, then the joint hearing right must be contested as well."

Lydia set down the resonance stone transcript. "A resonance stone cannot determine coercion."

"Then it is all the less trustworthy."

"Which is why we will look only at the clauses." Lydia opened the annex. "Clause thirteen was added by me. A refusal from the other party shall never be counted as betrayal. In a coerced contract there is no reason for me to insist on my own right to refuse."

Oswin tilted his head slightly. "A person under coercion sometimes writes clauses that favor the one doing the coercing. If the duke's daughter feared His Highness Cassian, that clause could just as easily be a device that lessens his liability."

Cassian's hand moved toward the glove at his waist, then stopped. Lydia spoke before he could step forward.

"That is why I will not rest on clause thirteen alone. The registry ledger records the Avern name alongside his. Day to day command of the fleet remains with me. There is a clause stating no obligation of an heir, and a separate bedchamber clause. These are not clauses a man applying force has much reason to give me."

The judge signaled the scribe. The scribe wrote down the clause numbers Lydia had named. As the clauses moved out of argument and into the record, Oswin's expression slowed, very slightly.

"They were written inside two hours."

"Confessions have been torn up inside two hours as well."

A low murmur rose from the back of the gallery. The judge struck the gavel once. Lydia read her next sentence before the sound had finished.

"The joint hearing right is not a petition for a verdict of innocence. It is a petition to suspend the summary procedure and grant time to prepare an open hearing. If the charges against my father are true, the Crown can prove them in open hearing. If it cannot, then today's execution is a judgment rendered by the clock rather than by evidence."

Oswin asked gently, "And Miss Mireille. Will the duke's daughter refuse the guardianship order on her behalf too?"

Mireille stepped forward. "I will speak my own name."

Lydia's hand started to move on instinct, then stopped. Mireille saw the hand, and did not hide that she had seen it.

"A royal guardianship order takes my laboratory access and my channel light calculations along with me." Mireille's voice ran a little fast at first, but it steadied once she reached the numbers. "If this is an order to move me somewhere safe, then explain why it comes attached to a guard escort clause and a seal on my data. I am not refusing protection. I am refusing a method that carries off my work without me."

Oswin said, "Miss Mireille's expertise is an asset of the kingdom. In a war crisis, public safety comes before one person's unease."

"Then summon me as an engineer." Mireille unfolded the lower half of the guardianship order. "This document writes, beside my name, prospective minor ward. I am nineteen, and I have passed the channel light calibration trials three times. If you need my calculations, call me as a witness. If you move me like luggage, who explains the data?"

Someone in the gallery laughed quietly and stopped at once. Mireille did not look that way. Instead she laid a finger beneath the second seal on the order.

"And this seal was stamped at dawn today. The ink is not fully dry. If the danger I must be protected from has existed for a long time, why was the enforcement document made in a hurry this morning?"

The judge's eyes dropped to the order. Cassian looked at that part too. Lydia knew how her sister pretended not to tremble. Mireille hid her fear behind numbers. Today, in place of numbers, she had seized on how dry the ink was.

The judge looked back and forth between two documents. The joint hearing petition and the guardianship order. Both carried a royal seal, and both were reaching for someone's time.

Oswin turned to the judge one last time. "If House Avern is given time, it can destroy evidence."

Lydia did not rebut it at once. There was some force in the claim. She did not know what her father had hidden either.

"I acknowledge that risk," Lydia said. "Which is why, during the preparation period for the open hearing, I will accept a seal on the port records. But a joint seal, not a Crown seal alone. A Crown scribe, an Avern scribe, and a third inspector must all leave a record of every inspection."

Behind her, Elias began writing quickly. The condition was not perfect, put together on the spot as it was. But it was better than asking for time with no condition at all.

The ruling was not innocence.

"The summary procedure against Duke Gerard Avern is suspended. The preparation period for open hearing is ninety days. Forfeiture of property is deferred, but the freeze on port assets is maintained. The royal guardianship order concerning Mireille Avern is stayed until the conclusion of this hearing. The obligation to attend the palace and the order preserving her technical data are maintained."

Lydia did not let out a large breath. Not because a breath might look like victory. Because the last line of the ruling was already the next shackle.

Mireille folded the order. "If it is stayed, then it is still mine."

"It is still yours," Lydia said. "And it is still tied down."

Cassian did not congratulate her. "Ninety days. The port freeze has not been lifted, and the attendance obligation stands."

"I know."

"What we gained today is time."

"I married because I had no time."

He looked at her for a moment. "That sentence would be better left off the record."

Lydia almost laughed, very briefly. The laugh did not come. The permit to visit Gerard came down from the judge's hand, and written on the permit was a span of thirty minutes.

As she came out of the court, the Three Ports agents who had been at the back of the gallery tried to approach. Royal guards blocked them. One of them lifted his hat to Lydia, another pointed at the freeze list. They too had heard only half of the ruling. The execution had been postponed, but the port assets were frozen. The dock workers' wages were very likely inside that freeze.

"We need a copy of the freeze list," Lydia said.

Elias was already moving. "I have requested it from the scribe. If he refuses, I will record the refusal as well."

Cassian looked toward the gallery exit. "The chancellor will convene the council with the port freeze still in place. Your vote is still tied down."

"That is why I have to see my father. If I do not know which ledgers he hid, then my vote and my house are both in someone else's hands."

In the underground visiting room, the sound of water came first. Water that had seeped between the stone walls ran along a narrow drain. Gerard Avern sat beyond the glass. The chains were on his wrists, but before them he looked at Cassian, standing behind Lydia.

"The terms of the marriage."

That his first question was neither a blessing nor a worry did not surprise her. Even so, Lydia folded her hands for a moment.

"One year. A petition for joint hearing rights. Mireille removed as a hostage. Fleet command retained. A few public appearances, and information sharing."

"So you gave His Highness Cassian consultation rights over the Three Ports."

"Thirty days."

Gerard tilted his head slightly toward Cassian. "I hear you are a man who makes short terms long."

Cassian did not answer. Lydia asked, "Father, I need evidence. What did Oswin use to bind you? Is there a grey ledger?"

The skin around Gerard's eyes tightened. "Do not trust the third seal."

"What does that mean?"

"Not every document bearing the royal seal carries the king's will."

"That is far too broad. Which document? Who stamped it?"

Gerard rubbed at a bead of water on the far side of the glass with one finger. The chain at his wrist rang briefly. He used the sound to push the answer away.

"Knowing it now would do you no good."

"Whether I can use it or not is mine to judge."

"You do not know even half of the port yet."

"And who made certain I would not know that half?"

Gerard's mouth set. It was the face of a man unprepared to be asked such a thing by his daughter. He sat like a man wronged, but he carried a silence that being wronged alone did not explain.

"For now, send Mireille out of the capital."

Lydia moved closer to the glass. "Father, Mireille just had her own guardianship order stayed, by herself. Whether she leaves the capital is a matter to settle with Mireille."

For the first time Gerard looked at his daughter. There was worry in his eyes, and the worry settled like another order. "You must protect the house."

"There are people inside the house."

"That is exactly why I am telling you this."

"No. You are hiding information and calling it protecting people."

A bell rang at the end of the visiting room. The thirty minutes had not run out yet. The guard checked the clock, flustered. That bell was lower and heavier than the end of visit tone. A second peal, and a third, pressed in through the underground walls.

Gerard's face changed. For an instant, an expression crossed it that said he knew something.

"Lydia."

"Father, what is the third seal?"

"Do not trust it. And do not trust the resonance stone too far either. Only the spoken sentence remains. The hand that made you speak it does not."

The guard announced the end of the visit. Gerard said nothing more. Lydia looked at the wrists beyond the glass. His silence was harder than the chains.

Just before the door of the visiting room closed, Gerard added, very low,

"The grey ledger is not the counterstroke you think it is."

By the time Lydia turned back, the door was already closing. The words were not enough as an excuse, and not enough as a warning. What they left in the room was the possibility that Gerard was not an entirely innocent victim.

When she came up the underground stairs, every person in the palace courtyard was kneeling. Lydia did not know what bell it was. Not on the king's birthday, not at a military send off, had a bell like this rung. The rain had stopped but the ground was still wet, and the hems of the kneeling people drank the water.

Someone was weeping, but no one asked aloud. In a palace, the largest question is usually the last one permitted. In that silence Lydia watched the thirty minutes on her worn visiting permit fold up into nothing.

Cassian stopped halfway up the stairs. There was no surprise on his face. Instead there was the stillness of a man whose list of things to calculate had grown all at once.

"That is the bell for the king's incapacity."

"Is he dead?"

"Not yet. Unconscious, or unable to carry out the affairs of state."

He changed direction at once. Before following, Lydia looked across the courtyard. Oswin's messenger was running toward them with a black envelope. On the envelope were two royal seals and one mark of the Delmar cabinet.

"The regent candidate and his spouse, to the council chamber at once." The messenger spoke without catching his breath. "The chancellor has convened a thirty day emergency council."

Spouse.

One line made at the registry office was already opening the door of another room. Lydia held the permit she had carried out of the visiting room, still unfolded. Gerard had told her not to trust the third seal. On the envelope in front of her there were two seals.

Cassian spoke low, only loud enough for her to hear. "Now it is not only Duke Avern's ninety days."

"I know."

"In the council chamber, an instruction will come for you to stand behind me."

Lydia kept her eyes on the wet stone of the courtyard. Between the people still kneeling, the runnels of water divided. "I will record that instruction too."

The two of them began to run toward the same council chamber. Neither could afford to be late, for different reasons.