was half-full when we entered. As Lucas looked around for good seats, a door at the front of the room opened and Benicio walked through. His timing was too perfect to be coincidental. He’d been waiting for us. Why, then, wouldn’t he meet us in the other room and escort us past the Cabal gauntlet? Because he knew better. Lucas would not have appreciated his father protecting him from Thomas Nast and the others, for the same reason that Lucas refused to slip in the back door. Luca his path, quite literally, and accepted the consequences of it.
Benicio caught Lucas’s eye and waved him to an empty row right behind the prosecution bench. When Lucas nodded, a glimmer of surprise crossed Benicio’s face. He hovered at the end of the aisle, as if not quite sure Lucas really intended to join him. We walked to the front and I slid in first, letting Lucas follow so he could sit beside his father.
“Good to see you, Paige,” Benicio said, leaning over Lucas as we sat. “I’m glad you could join us. You seem to be making a speedy recovery.”
“Not as speedy as she’d like,” Lucas said. “But she’s doing well.”
“It may be a long day,” Benicio said, and I steeled myself for a considerate “suggestion” that I forgo the trial. “If you need anything—a cushion, a cold drink—just let me know.”
As I nodded my thanks, the front doors opened again and Griffin walked in, accompanied by Troy and a man I didn’t recognize but could guess, by his size, was a fellow guard. Troy led Griffin to our row, where Benicio stood and ushered him in to sit with us. Troy and the other guard took seats on opposite ends of our row.
While Lucas and I talked to Griffin, both front doors opened almost simultaneously. Through one, Weber stumbled in, blinking at the sight of the crowded courtroom. He was dressed in a regular shirt and trousers. Although he wasn’t handcuffed or chained, there was a gag across his mouth. That might seem cruel, but a druid’s power is the ability to call upon his deities, so the gag was an understandable precaution.
As the guards led Weber to his seat, three sixtyish men walked through the other front door. The judges. Last night Lucas had explained the basics of the Cabal justice system. Cases are presented not to a single judge or a jury, but to a panel of three judges, and the majority vote carries. The judges work a five-year term and the same three are used by all four Cabals, in a circuit-court arrangement. The men—always sorcerers, therefore always male—are selected by an intra-Cabal committee. They are lawyers nearing the end of their careers, and are paid very handsomely for their term, meaning they can retire at the end of it, so they are not beholden to the Cabals for later employment. Fifty percent of their payment is withheld until after the term is completed, and any judge found guilty of accepting bribes or otherwise compromising his position forfeits that portion. All this is intended to make the judges as impartial as possible. Is it perfect? Of course not. But to give the Cabals their due, they’d taken reasonable steps to ensure a fair justice system.
To keep the trials short, they are a bare-bones affair in every respect. Opening and closing arguments are limited to ten minutes each. The lack of a jury means there’s less need to explain every step in detail. Expert witnesses are allowed only when necessary—no Ph.D.-whores being paid to claim that DNA identification is a faulty science. Even regular witnesses don’t always need to take the stand. Noncritical ones, like Jaime, have their statements taken beforehand and answer questions posed by each side.
Breaks were as basic as the session itself, with a single fifteen-minute morning recess. By then I was already feeling the effects of my rushed recuperation. Lucas insisted I take painkillers, and I had to agree. Without them, I’d have been done by lunch. As it was, let’s just say it wasn’t the most comfortable morning I’d everspent. To get through it, I concentrated on paying attention and taking copious notes. Lucas and I shared a steno pad, which we passed back and forth, marking down pertinent points, elaborating on one another’s notes, and exchanging written comments on the progress of the trial.
For lunch, a caterer delivered sandwich trays and we had thirty minutes to eat while standing in the lobby. Benicio