At home, bank staff were called to court about once a year.
It was never for anything exciting. A customer's divorce. A dispute over an inheritance. A man who swore he had never signed a loan agreement that had his signature on every page. Someone from the branch had to go and stand in a witness box and say, under oath, that yes, this was the bank's document, and yes, that was the customer's signature, and no, they did not remember his face, because they saw four hundred faces a week.
I was sent once, in my third year. I wore my best blazer and my flattest face, and on the steps of the courthouse I discovered that I did not know whether to call the judge Yang Mulia or Bapak Hakim. I spent the whole morning in the corridor whispering both under my breath, so that when my name was finally called, I said both, one after the other, and the judge looked at me over his spectacles for a long time and said, "Either will do."
Either will do, I thought, on the morning of Day 427, climbing the steps of the Crown's court in Aubrelle. Either will do. What do you call a magistrate in Lorvane? Your Honor? Your Worship? Magistrate? Sir? My lord? If I say "my lord" and he isn't one—if I say "sir" and he IS one—
"Your Honor," said Corvin, beside me, without looking at me.
"I didn't ask."
"You were moving your lips."
The court was an old stone hall behind the Treasury, with a high bench at one end, a lower table for the clerk, a rail for witnesses, and three tiers of wooden benches for anyone who wished to watch. On its oak door someone had nailed a notice, and in front of the notice, with his finger on the first line and his lips moving, stood Ivo.
"The... Crown's... court," he read, very slowly, "sits... on... Day... four hundred and twenty-seven..." He frowned at the next word, which was long. "Mat. Ter."
"Matter," said Kit, from just behind him, helpfully. "In the matter of. It's a formula, they always—"
"I know," said Ivo, without turning round. "I was getting there."
Kit closed his mouth. Then he opened it again, saw Ivo's face, and closed it once more.
They've met, I thought. They've met, they have been standing beside each other for less time than it takes to read a notice, and one of them is already not speaking to the other. At home, this is what happened when two new trainees were put on the same counter. HR called it "team dynamics". The rest of us called it Tuesday.
"In the matter of Gerrit Pask," Ivo finished slowly, and stood back from the door with the look of a man who has carried something heavy a long way and put it down where he meant to. "Steward. Of Crane."
"Well read," said Kit.
Ivo looked at him for the first time. It was a short look.
"Shh," he said, and went inside.
They sat in the gallery together after all, because the gallery was small and there was nowhere else: Kit at one end of the front bench, in a brown coat that was not green and that he wore as though he had borrowed it from someone shorter, and Ivo at the other, with his slate on his knees. Gil Harker sat between them, which was the only reason, I think, that the bench survived the morning.
Lotte was not in the gallery. Lotte was at the witness rail, on a stool, with her hands folded in her lap, waiting to be called first. Her kerchief was on. Her curls were tucked away beneath it. She looked very small.
Gerrit Pask sat at a little table of his own below the bench, between two men of the Watch, with nothing in front of him at all. He had no folio now. His hands, with their bitten nails, lay flat on the bare wood, as though they did not know what to do without a column under them. At the end of the front bench, Anselm Voss sat with his satchel at his feet like a tired dog, and watched nothing in particular, very closely.
Then the magistrate came in, and everyone stood, and I stood a little too quickly and nearly knocked over Corvin's satchel.
He was tall and stooped and very old, with a long white face like a candle that has burned down on one side, a black skullcap, and a black gown worn shiny at the elbows. He carried his own papers. He did not give them to the clerk. He sat down behind the high bench, laid his papers out in front of him, set a pen beside them, and then, from somewhere in his gown, produced a small hourglass, no taller than my hand, and placed it at his right elbow, very precisely, as though it were the most important thing in the room.
"Sit," he said.
We sat.
An hourglass, I thought. An HOURGLASS. What is it for? The witnesses? Is there a time limit? How long is that? A minute? Three? Is that how long I get? My chronology is four pages. Four pages won't fit in an hourglass. Nothing fits in an hourglass. Should I cut a page? Which page—
"Magistrate Wyck," whispered Kit from the gallery, leaning over the rail toward me, to the great discomfort of Gil. "Forty years on the Crown's bench. He's never once raised his voice. The hourglass is for—"
"Shh," said Ivo.
Kit sat back.
Lotte spoke first, as Anselm had said she would.
She told it the way she had told me in the room above the strongroom, on the night of Day 247: in order, without a single blot. Her mother. The seed grain. The debt that doubled, and doubled again. Pask in her mother's kitchen, drinking her mother's tea. The rows. Every closing balanced to the bit. And Wat, under every count, every night, knowing that Wat could not read.
The magistrate wrote it all down himself, in a small, upright hand, and did not look up once.
Halfway through, her dimple came. It came in her left cheek at the worst possible moment, while she was saying the words my brothers, and sat there, bright and cheerful and completely wrong, for the length of a sentence. Two people in the gallery whispered. Lotte's hands tightened in her lap until the knuckles went white, and she went on speaking, and did not stop, and did not touch her face.
Don't look at it, I told the gallery, silently, in my most professional voice. Don't look at it. Look at her eyes. Look at her hands. It isn't hers. It's only a dimple. It has never once asked her permission in her life.
I know exactly what that's like. Mine's the other way round.
When she had finished, the magistrate put down his pen.
"Did you keep any of it, Miss Wren?"
"Not one bit, Your Honor."
He picked up his pen again, and wrote that down too.
Wat was next.
Wat stood at the rail with his round, shaven head and his enormous, patient hands folded in front of him, and the clerk asked him his name. Wat considered the question for a long moment.
The magistrate set down his pen, folded his hands, reached out with one long finger and turned the hourglass over.
The sand began to run.
It's for Wat, I realized. It isn't a time limit. It's a waiting glass. He measures how long he waits, so that he can wait exactly as long as a witness needs and not one grain less. At home we never had one of these. We should have. We had customers who took longer than Wat.
"Wat," said Wat, as the last of the sand ran out.
The magistrate wrote it down.
It went on like that. Did you hold a key to the strongroom? A long pause; the glass turned; "Yes." Did you count the coin with Miss Wren every night? A long pause; "I stood with her." Could you read the closings she wrote? The longest pause of all. The magistrate turned the glass twice, and the whole hall held its breath with him, and outside a cart went by on the cobbles, and somewhere in the Treasury a door closed.
"No," said Wat. "But I knew what they said. They said Wat."
There was a silence in the court that had nothing to do with the hourglass.
At the rail, Lotte put her hand over her mouth.
Gil Harker came next, to say that it was he who had found Wat, and that he would vouch for Wat to any man living, and he said it so loudly that the clerk dropped his pen.
"Master Harker," said the magistrate, without raising his voice. "The court can hear you."
"Sorry, Your Honor," roared Gil, and went on.
The second time was when he reached the part about his moustache. The magistrate did not explain what he meant by the second time. He simply lifted one finger. Gil lowered his voice to the level at which most men call across a field, and finished.
Then Corvin.
Corvin gave the count of Day 221 the way he gives everything: figures first, then more figures. Sixty-two crowns twelve marks on the shelves. One hundred and seventeen crowns four marks in the ledger. Short: fifty-four crowns twelve marks, the exact sum of the fictitious deposits. Drawn by the steward through the borrowed accounts: fifty crowns seven marks. He gave them in order, without notes, and he did not once look at Pask.
The clerk, at his low table, repeated the figures aloud as he wrote them, adding as he went.
"Fifty-four crowns twelve, less fifty crowns seven," he muttered. "Four crowns... six."
"Five," said Gerrit Pask.
Everyone turned.
Pask had not moved. His hands were still flat on the bare table. He did not raise his voice. He said it the way you say good morning.
"Four crowns and five marks," he said politely. "You have borrowed a mark you did not need. And that remainder was never coin at all. It was still sitting in the borrowed accounts as rows I had not yet drawn." He paused. "Every figure the keeper's partner has given is correct."
The clerk went red to the ears and crossed out his figure.
The magistrate did not need to. I saw, from where I sat, that he had already crossed out the clerk's figure on his own sheet before Pask spoke, and written the right one beside it in his small, upright hand.
He checks the clerk, I thought. The magistrate checks his own clerk. He writes everything himself because he will not trust anyone to write it for him. Not even the court's own clerk.
I think I'm in love with this court.
No. Not in love. Professional admiration. Very strong professional admiration. Write that down. Do NOT write that down.
My turn came on the morning of Day 428.
I stood at the rail with my four pages and my flattest face, and the magistrate looked at me over the top of his papers and said, "Miss Halim."
Your Honor, I thought. Your Honor. Not Yang Mulia. Not Bapak Hakim. Do NOT say both.
"Your Honor," I said.
Then I read my Kronologi Kejadian.
I read it the way they taught us at home: in order, with the days and the bells, and without a single adjective. Day 96: officer appointed, authority five crowns a row. Day 140: the door opened at Aubrelle. Day 141: the ledgers paired. Day 147: the steward opened an account. After the Restday of Day 190: the first crown-sized deposits from down the road. Day 221, at dawn: the vault counted without warning; short. Day 247: the officer confessed; her stamp revoked; the steward taken. Day 248: every depositor at Aubrelle who asked was paid in full.
I did not say that I had read Lotte's rows every night, looking for the good. I did not say that I had written her name in my letter. I did not say anything that was not a day, a bell, a sum or a fact.
When I had finished, the magistrate put down his pen.
"Thank you, Miss Halim," he said. "That was very clear." He looked at me for a long moment with his long, candle-white face. "And how did you feel?"
What?
"I'm sorry, Your Honor?"
"On the morning of Day 221," said the magistrate, "when your partner told you the vault was short. How did you feel?"
He's asking for an adjective. He's asking me for an ADJECTIVE. In court. On the record. I don't have one. I took them all out. Corvin took out the last three. Think of one. Think of one now. Sad? Too small. Angry? Not true. Ashamed? Is that an adjective or a confession? Short. Short! Short is the only word I— no, short is a figure, short is not a feeling, short is a—
The hall was very quiet. Up in the gallery I could feel Kit leaning forward, and Ivo not moving at all.
"Responsible, Your Honor," I said.
The magistrate looked at me a moment longer. Then he picked up his pen and wrote it down.
Responsible, I thought. That isn't an adjective either. That's a job description. He knows it is. He wrote it down anyway.
Then he turned to Pask.
"Master Pask. The Office has given the court your folio." He laid one hand flat on the battered leather, which the clerk had brought up from a locked box. "You told the Inspector that every figure in it is correct."
"It is, Your Honor."
"Miss Wren says that against her mother's name there is a word. Marked." He opened the folio at a page held by a ribbon. "It appears against thirteen names. What does it mean?"
Pask looked at the folio for the first time that morning, the way Corvin looks at a column he has added before and is about to add again.
"It means what I told Miss Wren, Your Honor," he said, in his soft, polite voice. "That for each family who lent their name, I would mark their debt down." He turned his flat hands over on the table, palms up, as though offering the answer. "One mark. One silver mark, struck off, against each name. Every figure is correct."
Somebody in the gallery laughed, once, the way people laugh when they have been hit.
At the rail, Lotte made no sound at all. Her face did nothing. And her dimple, for once, did not come. I think even the dimple understood.
One mark. ONE mark. He told her he'd mark their debt down. He marked it down. By a mark. Every figure is correct. Gentlemen don't discuss terms because if you discuss the terms there's nothing left to—
Her brothers. Her brothers are still on the list.
My hands had found the edge of the rail. I made them let go. Then I took out my notebook, turned to the back, below Lotte's letter, and looked at the list I had copied off the mill door on Day 394, with the small marks in the margin beside some of the names.
Thirteen.
"Your Honor," I said. "May I add something?"
The magistrate looked at me. "A fact, Miss Halim, or an adjective?"
"A column, Your Honor."
There was a pause. Then, very slightly, something moved at the corner of his long mouth.
"The court has a slate," he said.
The clerk brought it. I stood at the rail with the slate propped on the wood and the folio open beside it at the Wren page, and wrote in chalk what was written there in Gerrit Pask's neat, correct hand.
Wren, widow. Seed grain lent, two harvests past: two crowns. Owed at the first harvest: four. Paid in grain: one crown. Owed at the second harvest: eight. Paid in grain: one crown ten marks. Marked.
"Under the Debt Edict," I said, "coin may not breed coin beyond one part in ten a year." I wrote the Edict's line at the top of the slate, because it is the kind of thing that ought to be at the top. "So. Two crowns. One year at one in ten: two crowns, four marks. Less what they paid at the first harvest, one crown. Owing: one crown, four marks." I wrote it. "Another year at one in ten. One crown, four marks becomes—"
Twenty-four marks. Times eleven. Divided by ten. Two hundred and sixty-four— twenty-six point four— twenty-six marks and four tenths of a mark, a tenth of a mark is five bits, four tenths is—is—TWENTY. Twenty bits. Twenty. Breathe.
"One crown, six marks, twenty bits," I said, and wrote it, and my chalk did not shake, because I would not let it. "Less what they paid at the second harvest: one crown, ten marks." I drew the line. "Owing—"
I looked at it.
"Nothing, Your Honor," I said. "Under the Edict, by the steward's own figures, the Wren family's debt was paid at the second harvest." I looked at the slate again, to be sure. "With three marks and thirty bits over. Which they are owed."
Nobody in the court said anything.
Up in the gallery, I heard chalk. I did not have to turn round to know whose it was. Ivo was adding it from the bottom.
The chalk stopped. I looked up. Across the whole of the court, Ivo met my eyes for a moment, and nodded. Once.
He checked it, I thought. He checked my column. In court. In front of the Crown. And it's right. It's RIGHT. Don't cry. Don't cry in front of a magistrate. There is no staff toilet in a court either. I asked the clerk on the way in. I'm not proud of it.
The magistrate looked at the slate for a long time. Then he turned the hourglass over, though nobody had spoken, and while the sand ran, he wrote.
"The Crown's writ," he said at last, without looking up, "does not run on Baron Crane's land. This court cannot follow a baron into his own fields." The sand ran. "But it runs on the Crown's roads, and in the Crown's towns. And within the Crown's writ, no court of this kingdom will hear any claim on the Wren family for one bit more than the Edict allows." He wrote the last line. "By the steward's own figures, that is nothing." He looked up. "So ordered."
So ordered, I thought. Two words. At home, documents always ended with "demikian", and it always sounded like a door closing. This sounds like one opening.
At the rail, Lotte did not move. But her hands, in her lap, had come apart and lay open, the way Pask's had, as though something had been taken out of them.
The baron's letter was read in the afternoon, because the court was thorough, and because, I suspect, the magistrate wanted everyone to hear it.
The clerk read it. He had a dry, careful voice, and he gave each word exactly its due, which turned out to be the cruelest thing anyone could have done to it.
Baron Ostrel Crane, of Crane, to the Royal Office of Fair Coin. His lordship has never employed any steward of the name of Pask. His lordship has no knowledge of any accounts at any house of deposit. His lordship is shocked.
There was a silence.
Then, from the gallery, Gil Harker made a noise. It was not a word. It was the noise a barge makes when it hits a pier.
"Master Harker," said the magistrate. "The third time."
"Sorry, Your Honor," said Gil, in a whisper that rattled the windows.
Shocked. He's SHOCKED. The man whose name is on every page of that folio, whose toll chain is still across his own road with a new boy at it, charging six bits a wheel for his lordship's expenses—his lordship has never heard of him. At home, this letter would have been laminated and pinned to the noticeboard in the legal department under the heading EXAMPLES.
The magistrate did not remark on the letter. He laid it to one side, squared its edges, and set the hourglass on top of it, as though to keep it from blowing away.
Then he gave his judgment.
Gerrit Pask had taken fifty crowns and seven marks of the Corrinford Trust House's coin by false rows, knowing them false. He would repay it. Since he could not, he was bound to the counting room of the Royal Office of Fair Coin, as a copying clerk, at the Inspector's direction, until every bit was paid, at a clerk's wage, less his keep.
At the end of the front bench, Anselm Voss inclined his heavy head, very slightly, as though accepting a parcel.
Pask listened with his hands flat on the table. When it was done, he inclined his head too.
"I shall try to be quick, Your Honor," he said.
He will be. He'll be the best copying clerk the Office has ever had. Every figure correct. Every column balanced to the foot. And Inspector Voss will read every one of them twice. That isn't a punishment for a man like Pask. It's a sentence exactly as long as the sum.
Then Lotte.
The magistrate looked at her for a long time, and turned the glass, and waited, though she had not been asked anything.
Lotte Wren had written false rows, knowing them false, for the steward's purposes. She had kept nothing. She had confessed before she was asked, in full and in writing. The court had read, and noted, the keeper's letter. She would repay the house ten crowns of its loss by her own labor, at a trade of her choosing, within the Crown's writ, a season's share at a time. And she would never again hold the stamp of any house of deposit in the kingdom.
"Do you understand, Miss Wren?"
"Yes, Your Honor," said Lotte.
"What trade?"
Lotte looked down at her inked fingers. "Letters, Your Honor. For people who can't write their own."
The magistrate wrote it down.
"Where?"
She hesitated. Then she looked at me.
Don't answer for her. Don't you dare. Don't nod, don't blink, don't move your face—you can't move your face anyway—don't move your EYEBROWS. It's her sentence. It's her choice.
"Corrinford, Your Honor," said Lotte. "By the fountain. If they'll have me."
"The court does not ask whether they will have you," said the magistrate. "The court asks only where you will be." He wrote it. "So ordered."
On the morning of Day 429, I found Lotte on the court steps, sitting on the cold stone with her writing board on her knees, not writing.
I sat down beside her. For a while neither of us said anything. It was one of the few things we had always been good at together.
"They're still on his land," she said at last. "Mother. The boys. The court's paper doesn't reach them there."
"No," I said. "But it reaches the road."
She looked at me.
"We leave on Day 432," I said. "Our road goes through your village, past the mill and over the brook. If your mother and your brothers are on the Crown's side of that chain when our cart comes back down it, the court's paper will be standing beside them."
Don't promise. Don't PROMISE. You have no authority over a baron's toll chain. You have a cart, a crossbow and a man who coughs at streams. Don't promise anything you can't—
"I can't promise anything at the chain," I said. "But I can stop the cart."
Lotte looked at me for a long moment. Then her dimple came, slowly, as though it were checking first whether it was allowed, and this time, I am quite sure, she meant every bit of it.
Behind us, someone sat down on the step above.
It was Ivo. He had his slate and Lotte's spare chalk, and the expression of someone who has been waiting at the top of a stair for a while, working out what to say.
"In there," he said to Lotte. "You said he wouldn't write it down for you. Three times."
"Yes," said Lotte.
"So there was nothing to read."
"No."
Ivo thought about that, frowning, the way he does when a column won't agree from both ends.
"Then it wasn't your fault you didn't read it," he said at last. "It was your fault you signed."
I opened my mouth. Lotte put her hand on my arm, very lightly, before I could say anything.
"Yes," she said. "That's right."
Ivo nodded, as though that settled something. Then he held out the slate and the chalk.
"Lesson," he said.
He still wants her to teach him. After all of that. He heard every word in that court, and he still wants her to teach him. At home, there's no module for this either. I think, if there were, it would only be one line long.
Day 429, I wrote that night. Court: risen. Steward: bound to the Office's counting room until 50 crowns 7 marks are paid. Officer: to repay 10 crowns by her letters, at Corrinford, by the fountain; no stamp, ever. Wren debt, under the Edict: paid, with 3 marks 30 bits over. Columns added in court: 1. Checked from the gallery: 1. Adjectives used: 1. Disputed.
Corvin read it over my shoulder. He took my pen, clicked it four times, and wrote underneath:
"Responsible" is not an adjective. It is a job. (C.D.)
"The magistrate wrote it down anyway," I said.
"I know," said Corvin. "So did I."