Chapter Text
The prosecutor’s office was in a small building adjacent to the Lawmaster’s hub, made remarkable only by the massive stained glass window overlooking its lobby. The symbol of the Lawbearer painted irregular shadows on the tile floor. Caleb traced them with his eyes while Beauregard shifted into various perching positions on the chair next to him.
“He is late,” Caleb said.
“Not by all that much, right?” When Caleb didn’t answer, Beau dropped into her chair. “Hey. Hoffman’s got a good reputation. And the Assembly wants Trent to take the fall just as much as we do. They won’t stand in this guy’s way.”
Caleb tried not to think about the investment the Cerberus Assembly might have in the trial of Trent Ikithon. He tried not to think of the countless other times he’d found himself in a courtroom, or the particulars of the events that brought them here now.
A door near the receptionist’s desk swung open, admitting a tall human man with dark hair. “Professor Widogast and Expositor Lionett? Lucas Hoffman.” He shook Caleb’s hand, and then Beau’s. “It’s a privilege to finally meet you both in person. So sorry to keep you waiting. Please, come this way.”
Caleb studied the man as they rose to follow. Lucas Hoffman was tall. Beau had already told him the prosecutor was on the younger side of thirty, but he looked even younger. His hair wasn’t exactly short, but was combed into a wave that concealed its length, definitely requiring no small amount of time and product to maintain. There was a self-assuredness to the way he moved.
Ungenerously, Caleb didn’t like his confidence.
Hoffman led them down a short hallway to a large office lined with bookshelves and crowded with boxes of files. A quick scan told Caleb the books were almost entirely reference volumes. There were multiple full sets of the same collection of Dwendalian criminal codes, dozens of volumes each, accounting for at least the four most recently updated editions. An entire shelf was occupied by treatises on the incorporation of imperial laws against newly acquired territories. Hoffman sat behind a large wooden desk, the surface of which was cluttered with stacks of paper and three different empty but unwashed coffee cups, and gestured to a pair of smaller chairs on the opposite side.
“Please forgive the mess,” Hoffman said. “I’ve only just recently taken over this space since my predecessor’s retirement. It will take some time to get everything in its proper place. But that’s not why I’ve asked you here today.”
Caleb folded his hands in his lap and dutifully made eye contact.
“We’re just about ready to file charges against Trent Ikithon. I thought you both might like to know before it happened, and we may as well take the opportunity to go over the future of the case. Trial strategy, evidentiary issues, that sort of thing.” Hoffman’s eyes steadied on Caleb. “Your testimony will be the backbone of the Crown’s case against Ikithon. I can’t thank you enough for having the courage to do this.”
Unsure whether he should be giving or accepting gratitude, Caleb simply nodded.
“Once the indictment is finalized, the court will set a date for the trial to begin,” Hoffman continued. “I’ve been assured that we can work around a teaching schedule, so long as your course load this semester is light.”
“It is. I only have one class at the moment, on Grissen and Conthsen afternoons.”
“Perfect. We’ll likely have you plan to be in court full-time on Miresens, Whelsens, and Folsens, and just until lunchtime on your class days. All told, we’re probably looking at a month of time.”
Beau straightened in her seat. “A month? Of nearly full-time testimony? I’m having a hard time imagining Caleb’s experiences filling so many hours. Especially with such a smaller proportion of time for documentary evidence.”
“I don’t mean Professor Widogast would be continuously speaking for eight hours a day, every day,” Hoffman explained. “For one thing, it takes time to establish even the most trivial of facts. Procedure alone takes up a not-insignificant part of our time in the courtroom. Then factor in every time defense and I start arguing about rules, we have to kick the jury out, gripe at one another until the lawmaster makes a decision, and then bring the jury back in before we can continue. And if a juror ever has some sort of emergency and can’t be there, the entire court stops for a day.”
“A jury?” Caleb had been in plenty of courtrooms, but decisions had always been in the purview of the local lawmaster.
“Jury trials are rare in the Empire, but they can and do happen,” Hoffman said. “Ikithon has the right to request one, and I expect him to do so. Ordinary folks will probably have more trouble viewing an archmage with suspicion than a lawmaster. He’ll likely favor young professionals, former Righteous Brand, and older conservatives. Our ideal juror is a parent, preferably someone who’s seen at least part of the world outside the Empire, and who maybe harbors some resentment for the Assembly over the war.”
There was something a little off about Lucas Hoffman, Caleb decided. For as disheveled as the office looked, the prosecutor himself was entirely too put together. His hairstyle was labor-intensive but incongruously plain—he could probably have achieved the same basic look just by cutting it shorter and spending much less time on styling it. He was younger than Caleb but spoke as if from a lifetime’s experience. Despite the evidence of above average caffeine intake he appeared relaxed. But, no, relaxed wasn’t quite the right way to put it. Hoffman looked relaxed in the same way that a cougar hiding in the woods did. Relaxed like a hunter, unseen, setting his gaze on prey.
“...Which brings me to the question of our strategy. I’m afraid that with the evidence available, conviction will be a tall order.”
“What do you mean? The Soul gave you everything we have.”
“I know. The problem is that the rules of evidence make a great deal of the Cobalt Soul’s research inadmissible. Before we can use any documents, we have to prove to the court they are what we say they are. Without a full-fledged Volstrucker to authenticate those records, it’s much harder to get them in. That also goes for records pertaining to students other than Professor Widogast, or even records about him that only Ikithon would have handled.”
Caleb felt pressure rising in his throat. Beau pulled out a notebook and flipped a few pages.
“What about Trent himself? Could we get him to admit the records are his?”
“Dwendalian law recognizes a right against self-incrimination,” Hoffman said. “Ikithon doesn’t have to testify, and if he decides not to, the Crown has no authority to force him. Fortunately, it’s a little easier to admit records prepared by and for the government, so some of it will still get in. It’s just a matter of parsing out which pieces will self-authenticate and seeing how far we can stretch them.”
For the first time, Hoffman looked slightly uncomfortable as he considered his next words. “Another big hurdle is that much of Ikithon’s conduct that we’ll be able to prove definitively… it technically wasn’t illegal.”
The words hung in the air.
“You’re shitting me.” Beau stood up from her chair and circled around to lean on the back of it.
“This is one of the reasons people don’t like lawyers, unfortunately,” Hoffman said. “We have to take each of Ikithon’s transgressions in turn, and find exactly where they violate Dwendalian law. Corporal punishment is not banned anywhere in the Empire, and a great deal of latitude is given to both parents and educators. There is a line—it has to be ‘reasonable,’ a word you can imagine does a lot of heavy lifting—that means we have to prove Ikithon’s physical punishments were so severe they crossed that line. In turn, that means answering a lot of very detailed questions about what beatings occurred, how often, for which transgressions, and any implements used.”
Beau paced behind Caleb’s chair. “What about the torture? The executions? The whole, turning-kids-into-super-assassins business?”
“There might be something we can do with some of those individual actions. But the Scourger program generally? Perfectly legitimate under official imperial policy. A lot of folks aren’t going to see it as all that different from Bladegarden recruiting soldiers out of secondary schools. A big distinguishing factor would be the residuum experiments… but those have their own issues.”
“What could possibly justify strapping a kid down, slicing his arm open, and cramming him full of magic glass?” Beauregard was leaning her weight on the back of Caleb’s chair now.
“Consent,” Hoffman said gently. “As horrifying as the experiments were, there was nothing unlawful about them unless they were performed without consent. Or alternatively, words and actions on the students’ part that would have reasonably made Ikithon believe they consented.”
Beau went back to pacing. “It doesn’t matter that he fucking brainwashed them?”
“It does, and that’s why I think there’s hope for the case. We can argue that Ikithon’s actions on a day to day basis, combined with his authority as the students’ only teacher and custodian at the time, created an environment so hostile that consent wasn’t possible.” Hoffman’s eyes flicked from Beauregard down to Caleb. “I expect that will be the most important piece of the case. The lack of effective consent gives us a foothold to go after every outlandish training method. I don’t expect all of it to stick, but hopefully it doesn’t have to.”
Caleb watched Hoffman study him. Maybe he was trying to read his face. Maybe he was waiting for him to say something. Caleb found he couldn’t speak and couldn’t stand to meet Hoffman’s eyes anymore, so he looked at the floor instead.
“The one point where I do think we have him dead to rights,” Hoffman continued, “Is the memory modification. Altering someone’s memory without their consent is clearly forbidden under Dwendalian law, and unlike the training itself, there was no indication the kids knew about or agreed to the spell beforehand.”
Beau’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sensing a caveat here.”
“Indeed, the customary range of sentencing for that particular crime… it’s not long. Three to five years, usually. Maybe double with an enhancement due to the nature of the memory altered, and for using enchantment magic for solicitation of a serious crime, which I’m sure we could get. The law mostly contemplates that spell being used for fraud in business transactions. If we want Ikithon to be imprisoned for a good several decades, enough to comfortably account for the rest of his life? We’re going to have to get convictions on at least a few of the other charges.”
Beau collapsed back into her chair. “So long story short, we should have killed that fucker when we had the chance.”
Hoffman leaned forward. “I wouldn’t be pursuing this if I didn’t think there was hope. I won’t lie to you, we have a very long, hard road ahead. Put it this way, we haven’t been dealt a perfect hand, but there’s still a way to play the cards we do have. I might not be able to promise results, but I can promise that I will do everything in my power to see Trent Ikithon convicted. You have my word.”
Caleb took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “What do you need from me?”
“I have your depositions from Expositor Lionett. It might be a good idea for us to go over some of the details together before the trial,” Hoffman said. “But we don’t have to worry about that until later. For now, our priority is making sure you’re prepared to testify and know what to expect. I plan to ask the court to allow direct and cross examination to occur issue by issue instead of presenting our entire case first and then throwing you to the defense afterwards. It’s rare, but it’s happened before, in cases where a single witness had similarly long and detailed testimony.”
“So what does that mean for Caleb?”
Hoffman nodded in Beauregard’s direction but continued to address Caleb. “For each major topic of the case, I’ll ask you a series of questions, the answers to which will lay out our evidence. You’ll have to agree to be placed under a Zone of Truth spell for the duration. Then, Ikithon’s advocate will have the right to cross-examine you. They’ll ask more questions, probably trying to highlight weak points in our story, pieces of evidence we don’t have, or calling your credibility into question. After that comes re-direct. I get a chance to rehabilitate anything they did that managed to make you look bad.”
“How can they attack his credibility if he’s under a Zone of Truth?”
Hoffman sighed. “You’re right, it’s impossible to directly lie under the influence of Zone of Truth, but the spell doesn’t compel a person to tell the whole truth. I’ve seen juries hear enough unflattering history that they grew distrustful of a witness, even with the spell. They just found the guy so suspicious they were convinced he was somehow using doublespeak to circumvent the enchantment.”
Beau considered it for a moment. “Unflattering history… how unflattering are we talking?”
Caleb shifted in his seat. “I spent a nontrivial amount of time… shall we say… outside the law. I’ve been arrested almost more times than I can count.”
“Right, which is the sort of thing the defense will try to use to turn the jury against you. But there’s ways we can make it work for us. I understand the majority of these incidents would have happened in the years following your time in the sanatorium, while you were traveling alone?”
Caleb nodded. “And some with the Mighty Nein. We did good work, but we were not always aligned with the local Crownsguard. Not to mention we are scandalously well-liked among the Kryn.”
“Understood. Well, to be the best prepared we can, I’d like you to write down for me every incident you can remember—any infraction, whether you were caught, how you were treated by the authorities, and any consequences you may have received, whether official or unofficial. I’ll also need a list of any aliases you used during that time.”
“I can do that. It will be a very long list.”
“Let me worry about that. While we’re on the subject, there’s another issue with the Zone of Truth that might lead a jury not to believe you. It wouldn’t prevent a statement that was untrue if the speaker genuinely thought it to be true. Humanoid memory is deeply flawed, more so than a lot of people realize. Often eyewitnesses to a traumatic event will be absolutely convinced about every detail they remember, only to find out it’s impossible for some of their story to have occurred. It’s not that they’re lying, their mind just didn’t record all of the details at the time of the event and coped by filling in the blanks later.”
“But Caleb has a perfect memory.”
“How do you propose we prove that? How could we identify a twenty-year-old memory, prove it exists exactly as Professor Widogast remembers it, and prove I didn’t coach him or refresh his memory in preparation? Any demonstration we could come up with would rely on more recent memories, someone else’s unreliable memory, or less than perfect evidence. I’ll ask about it on direct, but all it will show is that Professor Widogast believes he has a reliable memory.”
Hoffman turned back to Caleb. “Credibility battles are always messy and awful. I… I expect them to try to capitalize on your… experience in Vergesson Sanatorium.”
Caleb closed his eyes. They burned with tears as his throat closed completely. It would work. It had been foolish not to realize it earlier. They had taken such a risk leaving Trent alive that he might somehow evade punishment. How short-sighted they were to have thought it would most likely occur through physical escape rather than legal, when they were trying to bring charges against one of the most politically powerful men in the whole of the Empire with an escaped mental patient as their star witness.
Beau’s hand closed gently over Caleb’s. “You’re not actually crazy,” she said. “They’ll be able to see it.”
Caleb found he couldn’t speak. His entire body felt rigid, and trying to force movement in his face let another mortifying tear out of his eyes. Beau squeezed his hand. Hoffman produced a small basket of clean handkerchiefs from behind the desk, seemingly stored there for this exact purpose.
“I don’t pretend to understand the half of everything you’ve been through,” he said, passing a handkerchief across the desk. “Testifying in any trial… let alone one as high profile as this… it can be terribly retraumatizing. I can help limit the worst of it, to a point. Beyond that… I’m sorry.”
Caleb took a deep breath. “What can we do?”
“Try not to let it concern you. Don’t try to control the narrative, leave that to me. Just answer the questions asked, stay calm if you can. And if you can’t? It’s okay to get emotional. The jury might even relate to you more. Definitely don’t force it, but we’re talking about some very difficult times in your life. Just react naturally and let me handle anything that goes wrong.”
The rest of the meeting passed in a blur. Hoffman had a few questions about the deposition material, as well as plenty of coaching for the witness stand.
Dress professionally. Maybe a step above what you would wear to teach. It gives off a sense of gravity in the proceeding.
Speak exclusively Common, as much as you can. If you lapse into Zemnian, the lawmaster will ask you to repeat yourself in Common, even if it’s clear what you meant.
Generally, when I ask you a question, look at me. But if it feels right, you can make eye contact with the jury when you answer. Tell your story directly to them.
The rules of evidence are complicated and you won’t need to concern yourself with them. But whenever the defense attorney asks a question, take just a half second before you answer. It’ll give me time to make an objection if I need to, and you’ll have a moment to collect your thoughts. Try not to get thrown off balance if the lawyers and lawmaster end up arguing about evidence rules. It happens.
Don’t get flustered if the defense asks a lot of questions that feel like they make you look bad on cross. Just answer the question exactly as asked, and don’t volunteer anything they haven’t asked you. If you can’t give an honest answer in the confines of the question, just say so and the lawmaster will make the lawyer rephrase.
“I don’t like him,” Caleb told Beau as they left the office. He pulled his scarf a little tighter. It wasn’t truly late in the season yet, but Rexxentrum turned cold early. “He is… I’m not sure.”
Beauregard sighed. “I can see that. I won’t pretend I’m not… really fucking angry at how hard this is going to be. But he seems to be good at what he does. We’ve faced longer odds before. If he can help us make sure this works? He can be as I’m not sure as he wants to be, as far as I’m concerned. Just… sleep on it. See if you feel better the closer we get.”
Caleb nodded. They walked in silence until they parted ways to their respective homes.