Kane did not dispute the documents. He disputed what they meant.
The debt seals, he said, had saved the city. Confiscation gave the best beasts to the strongest beast tamers. The herd at the wall had been a necessary measure against collapse.
Some of those listening agreed.
The trial took place in the same academy dining hall. There was still no seat at the head of the table. Kane sat by the wall beside an ordinary metal bracelet, while the Chain Basilisk was left in the courtyard with the gates open. The beast did not leave, but neither did it approach its master.
Kane demanded to be called as the first witness. The Council refused.
"You're afraid to hear how many people my system saved."
"We will hear it," Lily said. "After we hear from the people it used."
The woman from the dye works did not deny the help the Li family had given her.
"Your money saved my son. Then the contract drained his strength every month. One does not cancel out the other."
Arden described how Styx had entered his body and I had used someone else's hands and memories.
"Rex stopped," he said. "But I still wake up and check whether my fingers move."
Kane asked permission to put a question to him.
"If Rex ever regains that ability, will you trust him to decide when your body matters more than the city?"
Arden looked at the court, not at me.
"No."
Kane smiled.
"Then you confirm my argument."
"I confirm that I don't want to belong to either him or you."
The hall went quiet.
When my turn came, I confirmed what Arden had said.
"It was a violation."
Kane smiled.
"Then how are you any different?"
"His fear doesn't prove me right."
The court recognised both violations without equating a single incident with thirty years of a system. I was forbidden from using neural abilities if they ever returned, and ordered to work with Arden on his terms.
I had to place every surviving fragment of his memory on a sealed record and use none of the details without permission. Arden could end a meeting at any moment. He ended the first after three minutes, when I named the colour of the tablecloth in his wife's house.
"I never told you that."
"I know."
He walked out. The next meeting did not take place until a week later.
Leon entered with the small dragon. The beast remained by the open door, and Leon sat beside the threshold.
He admitted that he had used his family's privileges even after he was no longer a child. He did not renounce the family name.
"If I remove it from the record, a few years from now I'll be able to say another family committed the crimes."
Kane lowered his eyes for the first time.
The sentence satisfied no one. Kane was stripped of his positions, assets and right to enter into contracts with beasts. He remained under guard and was required to take part in a public examination of every order issued by the Crown before those it had harmed.
The sentence did not change the fact that Kane understood the old seals better than anyone else. When one was found on the northern wall, the Council brought Kane there under guard and made him explain its workings before three independent observers. Every time, he tried to turn the consultation into proof that he was indispensable.
Sometimes they genuinely could not continue without his answer.
Each time, Cole recorded the decision, the reason for it and the name of the person who would verify it afterwards.
"You call this mercy," Kane said.
"Work," Cole replied.
After the trial, Arden asked for the boundaries around his memories to be recorded separately. I could keep an involuntary image of his wife, but could not share any details without permission. He did not forgive me.
But his pain no longer served as proof of my goodness.
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