Page 133 of Swordheart
But things did not go badly. In fact, given the sheer chaos of their trip to and from Archon’s Glory, the judgment was almost an anticlimax.
The judgment was held in the church, that being both a large room and, given the proximity of the gods, presumably a better space for deliberation. Sarkis didn’t know if it would help, but at least the room was large enough that he didn’t need to sit too close to Halla’s wretched relatives.
He tried to remember what Halla had said. The priest who served in this church could belong to any god, as he recalled. That probably explained why the stained glass windows were generic scenes of the seasons rather than any particular deity. The wooden pews were sturdy rather than elegant, with marks on the legs where either small children or dogs had gnawed on the edges.
The stone floor radiated cold. Everyone was wearing at least two layers of clothes. Only Zale seemed unaffected by it, moving rapidly back and forth, presenting the case methodically to the three judges. The priest was finally in their element, and Sarkis wondered that he had ever thought them weak. Their long-fingered hands moved back and forth, sweeping gestures to underscore their words, their angular face by turns solemn and stern and amused.
Halla sat in a pew in the back of the room, clutching Sarkis’s hand. He wanted to put his arm around her, shield her from the glare that Malva was shooting in her direction, but he wasn’t sure how she would feel about it, or if it would bias the judgment.A respectable widow.He hated how much that mattered.
Alver’s defense was… well, even to Sarkis’s biased ears, it didn’t sound good. The old man should have left the property to his family. No, Halla wasn’t family. Well, she was sort of family, by marriage, so yes, maybe hehadleft it to family, but not therightfamily.
He tried to argue that Silas had not been in his right mind, whereupon Zale called Bartholomew up from his spot on the pew, and Bartholomew demolished that argument in a few well-placed sentences. Senile? No, he had not been senile, he’d driven a brutal bargain with Bartholomew for a set of old books and a giant snail shell a month before he died. And anyway, the will that Bartholomew had witnessed was six years old, so even if he had been getting on at the end, it didn’t signify. No, Halla had not had any undue influence over him. She was a housekeeper and a good one. Efficient, kind, respectable, but not what you’d call a seductress, and he meant no offense to her by saying so.
Halla laughed at that. Sarkis wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to go glare at the man until he agreed that she was beautiful.
He was braced for a discussion of the way that he and Halla had left the house, but Alver did not bring it up. Possibly the man had realized that it made him look at least as bad as Sarkis and had decided to simply pretend that it hadn’t happened at all.
That hired man can’t have died, or they would probably try to have me up on murder charges. Perhaps the dreadful woman turned him out after he could no longer guard her.
Alver fumbled his way through the statement until Malva apparently could bear it no longer, and then she stood up and pushed him out of the way. Sarkis watched the triumvirate’s reactions with amusement. The clerk visibly flinched, the priest’s lips thinned, and the bailiff’s small, bright eyes grew smaller and brighter as he narrowed them.
“Family comes first,” said Malva. “Silas knew that once. I don’t know what changed that, but clearly that woman had something to do with it!”
“But sheisfamily,” said the bailiff mildly.
“Her?” Malva dismissed this with a hand. “No one could believe that my dear nephew would have wanted his wife favored above his blood!”
“How long has your dear nephew been dead?” asked the bailiff.
Malva opened her mouth and shut it again.
“Twelve years,” called Halla. “Thirteen next summer.”
“Perhaps the deceased thought that he was doing a kindness, seeing that his nephew’s widow was cared for,” said the priest of the Four-Faced God.
“A pension would have been sufficient,” said Malva. “No one is claiming that she should be turned out into the cold.”
“This from a woman who shouted, ‘You’re dead to the family,’ as I was leaving,” muttered Halla to Sarkis.
Sarkis snorted. He might have said something, but then Zale astonished him by saying, “Ser Sarkis, please come forward.”
“Ah…” He rose to his feet. “Yes, of course, priest Zale, but I am not sure what good that I will do. I know nothing of the will nor the law.”
“You have been a guardsman for Mistress Halla for some weeks now, have you not?”
“I have.”
“You escorted her to Archon’s Glory and my Temple, did you not?”
“Yes.”
Zale smiled with the air of one going in for the kill. “And did she travel in wealth and comfort?”
“We slept in hedgerows. She had to sell her jewelry so we could eat,” said Sarkis. “I have nothing of my own but the armor on my back, or I would have forbidden it, but she insisted.”
“Not exactly the act of a woman who masterminded an alteration of the will in her favor, was it?”
Sarkis snorted loudly.
