The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,59

anything?” muttered Leo, gripping his throbbing thigh as he sat forward.

“Order, my lords! Order!” bellowed the announcer. If the atmosphere had been hostile when Orso arrived, it was rapidly swinging towards outright rebellion. He had an unpleasant sensation that the wheels were already coming off his plan as it careered down a steep slope at high speed, and by no means towards a better politics. But he could hardly disembark now.

High Justice Bruckel sat forward, clearing his throat. “Fedor dan Wetterlant! You stand accused. Most serious crimes.” The wattle beneath his chin wobbled as he fired off phrases, the clerks’ pens scratching desperately as they struggled to record them for posterity. “As a member of the Open Council. You have requested and now receive. In the sight of your peers. The king’s justice. How do you plead?”

Wetterlant swallowed. Orso caught him glance up towards his mother. She gave him the faintest nod in return, her jaw clenched. A reassurance, perhaps. A nudge in the right direction. An urging to make the agreed-upon confession and take his agreed-upon punishment and—

“I am innocent!” shrieked Wetterlant in ringing tones. A collective gasp from the public gallery. “I have been dreadfully wronged! Fearfully abused! I am innocent of all charges!”

The hall erupted more angrily than ever.

“That fucker,” hissed Orso as he stared at Wetterlant. “That fucker.” He looked to his supposed new best friend in the Open Council, but Isher had brows raised and palms helplessly spread, as if to say, I’m as astonished as anyone.

In one moment, Orso’s carefully laid plans went up in flames and his hopes for a better politics sank into the depths. Now he realised why his father had always despised this place.

“Oh. Dear,” murmured Bruckel. Uselessly.

Leo had never seen so clear an injustice. He sat with his jaw hanging open.

“Are we to hear no evidence?” called out Heugen.

“Will there be no witnesses?” shouted Barezin, thumping a fat fist into a fat palm.

“Witnesses have been presented. Exhaustively interviewed.” High Justice Bruckel struggled to make himself heard over the anger. “The Closed Council is satisfied!”

Unsurprisingly, that satisfied no one, and Wetterlant’s mother was the least satisfied of all. “I demand justice for my son!” she screamed from the balcony. “The king’s justice!”

Glokta held up a sheet of parchment, an illegible scrawl at the bottom. “The accused has confessed! In full!”

“I was forced!” wailed the accused.

“Shut him up!” snapped Bruckel, and Wetterlant cringed as the two Practicals turned on him.

“There is no need to waste more of the Open Council’s time!” shouted Glokta.

“Waste our time?” whispered Leo. Isher had brows raised and palms helplessly spread, as if to say, What did I tell you? Behind him, in one of the great stained-glass panels, the Open Council rose up united against the tyranny of Morlic the Mad, and all because Arnault had the courage to stand first, alone.

“Waste our time?” said Leo. Everyone else on the Open Council might be too craven to say what they could all see, but the Young Lion was no coward.

“Waste our time?” shouted Leo, lurching to his feet. Damn it, his leg hurt. It was as if he were being stabbed again and he almost fell, had to clutch the back of the bench to steady himself as the announcer struck his staff on the floor for order.

“The Open Council recognises—”

“They know who I bloody am! This…” Leo floundered for words. Everyone was staring at him. Everyone in the whole great chamber. But this had to be done. For his father. For his country. “This is a disgrace!”

“What is he doing?” muttered Savine. Ladies were stuck to the rail all around her, staring down, eyes bright, fans fluttering like excited butterflies. Better drama than the theatre and all free of charge.

“I’m no lawyer!” called Leo, his Angland accent sounding particularly pronounced. “But… even I can tell this is a travesty.”

Savine watched with growing horror. A man who knows he is no lawyer should also know to keep his bloody mouth shut during a trial. But the Young Lion was not a man to keep his mouth shut.

“My father,” he bellowed, in an ever angrier and more broken voice, “always told me Union justice was the envy of the world!”

Orso frowned up towards the public gallery, looking angrier than Savine had ever seen him. She shrank back from the rail, wondering whether her own history with the two men might be aggravating things. But the Young Lion was aggravating enough without her help.

“My friends, I’m horrified. In