Page 189 of A Weave of Lies
“So …” Tribunal Garza looked down at his hands. “Eloy Torqedan was only …?” A deep grief laced his voice, strangling the rest of his words.
Estevan bristled at his sorrow. “… A madman who would stop at nothing to keep a dying institution artificially alive,” he spat out. “That much seems clear to me. Is it not to you all as well, Your Honours?”
The tribunals didn’t answer him. They couldn’t. Even their old prejudices couldn’t justify their colleague’s madness.
“Your verdict, Tribunals?” Cardinal Velten asked with a smile kinder than ever.
“… Case closed,” Garza replied somberly, gesturing at the waiting sword-bearers.
They stepped closer. Semras tensed, then relaxed as they only removed the chains on her Wyrdtwined. Once they were done, another wave of the hand from Garza sent them out of the room.
Faces drawn and colourless, the tribunals stepped down from the high table. Cardinal Velten followed them with his ever-present smile.
Tribunal Garza stopped before Estevan and Semras. “Let us speak no more about this matter,” he muttered. “We will publish a heartfelt eulogy in the newspapers for the good Torqedan did in our name … and then quietly write his name off the record of the Inquisition.”
Estevan frowned. “You would bury this affair? You cannot possibly—”
“Yes, boy, we will bury this affair! If words come out of what he did, it will taint the good reputation of our holy Inquisition. It might even become the first step to our dissolution! It is one thing to rid ourselves of a rogue inquisitor; it is an entirely different matter to have a tribunal scheme like that to keep the Inquisition relevant! We will not risk the ire of the public. As such, this incident will never be spoken of ever again. Is thatclear?”
“Truly, it’d be a shame to tarnish such a stellar reputation,” Semras mocked.
The tribunal glared at her with indignation. “You, witch, better stay out of—”
Her Wyrdtwined stepped between them, shielding her behind his back. “That man wanted a war, and you would see his crime covered up by false praises? If the fate of inquisitors is to turn into old pricks more concerned with their reputation than justice, then you can have this back.” Eyes blazing with a cold fury, Estevan ripped the Inquisition’s insignia from his cloak, then threw it at the tribunal’s feet. “I would rather die a heretic than live to become a tribunal one day.”
The three judges stared at him in shock. Whitmore looked back and forth between Estevan and the insignia, his face paler than ever, while Pajov blinked his bleary eyes in disbelief.
Hand pressed over his curved back, Garza bent down to retrieve the golden sigil, then rubbed its patina with saddened reverence. Pain flashed in his eyes before they steeled back into aloof arrogance.
For a brief moment, Semras felt pity for the old men. They were fools, but fools who had chosen their path in life believing it to be righteous. Products of a dying era, they could sense its end coming, yet didn’t know how to face it with grace; fear and stagnation had entrenched them too deeply in their outdated ways.
In a way, so were witches. They had been enemies for so long, but, in the inexorable march toward modernity, the Covens walked at the far back of the line hand in hand with the Inquisition.
The cardinal cleared his throat. “There is no need to speak of dying, Estevan. I am sure the tribunals understand that people are now allowed to return to a secular life in this day and age.” He turned his kind eyes toward the elderly judges. “Do you not agree? If you have a different opinion, it will be my pleasure to discuss the Inquisition’s future with the other cardinals … orwith the head of the Church of Elumenra directly, if you would prefer.”
The veiled threat quelled any protest the tribunals could have had. They gave a small bow to the cardinal, then silently left the Chamber of Judgment one after the other, shoulders hunched over with more weariness than Semras had seen them carry before. Estevan’s glare followed them the entire time.
She smiled privately. He was free. From chains, from prosecution, from the Elumenra insignia that had stood between them so often—and now he was hers, entirely hers.
She wanted so badly to jump into his arms. Restraining herself felt torturous, but she had to. She had already made a terrible blunder of her first meeting with her mother-in-law; she’d do better with her father-in-law.
Her Wyrdtwined opened his arms for her, and her resolve crumbled at once. Semras ran into them, and he crushed her into his embrace, dropping his face into her neck and deeply inhaling the scent of her hair. Behind them, in a world that didn’t matter anymore, she heard a soft chuckle. After a brief—too brief—minute, they reluctantly stepped away from each other.
Estevan beheld her. His face went through a gallery of emotions, then settled on a frown. “This was not the plan,” he said, glancing at his brother.
Semras grinned. “I changed it. Your plans are always too complicated.”
He opened his mouth to reply, then stopped to glare at something beyond her shoulder.
Cael walked to them with an air of utter indifference. A few steps behind him, the cardinal was waiting patiently with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Debauched heretic,” he greeted his brother.
“Sanctimonious prick,” Estevan replied.
Semras kept her chuckle to herself. The brothers had their own peculiar way of apologizing to each other.
Cael cocked his head. “It appears we both suspected the other of our mentor’s death and acted accordingly.”
