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The venom in his tone answered the question she hadn’t wanted to ask.
“Good. You haven’t gone back to her.”
“No, I haven’t. Fuck you, madam. Fuck you and your whole rotten family.” Spinning on his heel, he darted off into the crowd. The nearest gasped that a senator had lost his temper.
Dixon gave Dubois the finger.
Lila grasped his hand and pushed it down. “Not in the capitol,” she whispered, “and pull up your scarf before someone gets curious.”
He did as she bid, cupping the back of her neck as they walked, giving it a light squeeze while they slipped through the crowd. The mob finally petered out before a door, all too well mannered to approach. Or perhaps the militia stationed outside it kept everyone away. Their ankle-length blackcoats, black uniforms, and tranq guns called for respect and a wide berth.
Lila stopped before a blackcoat. “This guest attends with my permission.”
The man patted them both down, his hands squeezing her arms and legs as though she might have brought a tranq gun. She’d left it in the truck, along with her boot knife. She hoped Dixon had done the same.
“You’re clear, madam.” His tone curled unpleasantly on the last word.
Lila and Dixon slipped inside the room. The disciplinary committee had been holding the trials in a smaller courtroom, likely to limit the number of spectators. Six benches with hard wooden backs sat in two columns, facing a long table with nine leather chairs. Between the table and the spectators sat a desk and two seats. A man occupied one, wearing a scowl of self-importance as well as the golden breeches and white coat of a Bullstow public defender. He pursed his lips as Lila entered, and did not get up to greet her.
Lila barely knew anyone else in the room. Just a few blackcoats she’d worked with in the government militia and Chief Sutton, still dressed as a commander in the front row. Her gray hair had been pulled into an elegant bun, and she had dressed in her formal officer’s jacket, a flash of blood red beneath her blackcoat. She followed Lila’s steps, her expression blank.
If they’d been alone, Sutton likely would have begun with a tongue lashing. Or perhaps Lila’s mentor wouldn’t have said anything at all. She looked away as their gazes crossed, as though she didn’t want to be there.
Lila’s mother hadn’t shown—not that she’d expected it. Her father hadn’t come, either. Chief Shaw had. He sat in the back, a telltale piece of lint on his collar. An audio bug, if she had to guess.
Her father listened in, then. Her mother too, judging from the little bump on Chief Sutton’s sleeve. Her matron had likely ordered her to attend.
That meant Lila’s mother and father weren’t on speaking terms; otherwise, they wouldn’t have needed two bugs for the same room.
Lila wondered how many more had been slipped inside.
Dixon headed to the back of the room and sat on a bench a few seats away from Chief Shaw. He studied each spectator as Lila sat beside her lawyer. The man had tucked his long white hair into a smooth ponytail at the nape of his neck.
“I’m Arron Marquez, a friend of your father’s,” he whispered. “Before you ask, no, I wasn’t able to get you a deal. No one accused has gotten one so far. I strongly recommend that you affirm the original plea of not guilty. I entered it on your father’s request. Take your chances with a trial this morning and the evidence against you. I’ll try to have the evidence thrown out
as prejudiced, try to force them to start their investigation from scratch, but no one has had any success with that approach so far.”
He leaned in closer, his expression matching Chief Sutton’s. “The good news is that the evidence against you appears to be somewhat circumstantial. My technical consultants have assured me that the press received no hard evidence tying you to anything but a fake ID under the name of”—he peeked at his notes—“Prolix. Of course, no one can reproduce that evidence. It’s as if the ID just vanished. The rumor is that Bullstow can’t find it in their logs, and certainly not on the night this anonymous source claims you were inside BullNet.”
Lila breathed a sigh of relief. La Roux hadn’t known everything she’d done when he set up the dead man’s switch, thank the gods. He’d never hacked into Shaw’s private records either, for Shaw kept the proof of her and her father’s investigations off BullNet, hopefully far away from prying eyes.
Luckily, cleaning up her ID had served her well.
“The other piece of good luck is that you’re an heir, at least unofficially. It also helps that the press has turned you into a somewhat sympathetic figure of late.”
He tossed his notes back on the desk. “The bad news is that Bullstow discovered a few anomalies in the BIRD database while searching for this Prolix account. Those anomalies, whatever they are, do lend some credence to the stories in the press. I have a few arguments against them, prepared by my technical consults, but the evidence for and against you is weak. To make matters worse, Bullstow issued a court order for your matron’s security tapes. They show you leaving the Randolph estate a few hours before the break-in last month. The committee’s verdict could go either way at this point. They might try to delay the trial, hoping they’ll have time to turn up more evidence of your actions inside BullNet, but what’s more likely is that they’ll force you to submit to the truth serum to clear up this entire mess, citing national security concerns. If that happens, there might not be anything I can do to stop it. Their rationale is shaky and would never fly normally, but what with so many other accused…”
He didn’t even have to finish.
Bullstow had resolved to clean up New Bristol. The senators before her would play on the strength of their performance, ambitiously campaigning for inclusion in the state senate next session. After all, these trials were being followed by the protestors outside, by the other senators, and perhaps by the country. If the committee could bend and stretch a rule to get a verdict, it would do so.
Lila worried the hem of her sweater. If the committee demanded she submit to the truth serum, she might keep talking after they asked their questions. She’d tell them everything she’d ever done in BullNet and implicate those who had hired her. Her father and Chief Shaw would sit in her place an hour later, and they’d be scheduled to hang. Tristan and Dixon would soon follow if they didn’t leave New Bristol, for she’d volunteer the things she had done on their behalf. The oracle might be called as well—not that the senate would have any authority over her.
“What if I change my plea to guilty?”
The lawyer’s face fell as the last senator trundled in. “Don’t even joke about that. They won’t give you any special consideration just because you admit to your wrongdoing. The trial will just go faster. You’ll be sentenced to hang and left to rot in a holding cell until your execution date. They’re executing everyone at the same time, if you can believe it. For the effect.”
Lila shifted in her seat while the row of senators glared down upon her, five burgundy jackets and pairs of breeches, the New Bristol city medallion on silver chains at their necks. Four other senators had joined them from Low House, their lowborn coats and breeches all cut in different colors. If not for the previous trials, she wouldn’t know much about them. The disciplinary committee had just been elected before the closing ceremony.
