4.28 Case Dismissed

Josie strode into the magistrate’s chamber to hear the verdict for her big case, trying not to let her nerves show. The summons had come too early. They were supposed to have another hearing next week to further debate the issue of Jori’s legal personhood.

Her heart sank when she saw that no one had marked out a spot for a summoning circle.

So, it was like that.

She’d heard the news, of course – it had been spreading like wildfire since yesterday – but she was still disappointed. A man as powerful as the magistrate of Teres, the foremost legal authority in the country, should be above base intimidation. Seeing this, though, she could guess what was about to happen.

Some elements within the Invigilation had accused Besermark – specifically its ruling nobles – of betraying humanity and even the gods themselves, to hear some tell it. They were allowing human civilization to be washed out and replaced by the “godless” dwarves and monstrous races like the orcs and goblins. She’d even heard someone at a tea shop earlier suggest that the dwarves had spent all these centuries assimilating into human society just to finally bring them down when the time was right. As if they and the Duergar had ever gotten along.

That wasn’t the part that concerned her today, though. The real problem was that they’d accused Besermark of consorting with demons directly in hopes of turning them against the Duergar. That their military was working to make a pact with a demon lord of their own. That wasn’t true, of course, but it sounded uncomfortably like someone high up in the Invigilation had heard about her petitions. Worse, word had gotten out and the public wasn’t having it. It had only been a day and protesters were already hammering on the doors of both the local Solicitors’ Office and the magistrate’s residence.

Some said the Madzhuris were just looking for an excuse to seize some territory, or that the Temple of Noruk might be taking a shot at seizing political power. In the end, it didn’t matter. People had already been afraid before all this. They feared the Duergar and their demons and, more concretely, they feared for their livelihoods. Losing a major city hadn’t done Besermark’s economy any favors – Loamfurth had been Besermark’s largest supplier of lumber, but prices were rising on almost everything. The tension was palpable out in the street, especially at the market.

With this new threat, the city had begun to boil over. There hadn’t been any riots yet, but Josie knew it was too much. And every solicitor knew that when the public got scared, governments got stupid. Stupid and vicious.

The room was fuller than it had been the last time. The typical crowd was just a few solicitors, a few nobles who’d been following the case, the magistrate, and a guild mage with an intricately structured spirit. Maybe Iriala had sent someone to observe the proceedings. She settled into her seat, front and center. This was her case, even if she was about to lose it.

Magistrate Sarros, who’d been self-importantly shuffling papers around and pretending to read them, looked up and the room quieted.

“Solicitor Josie of Halfbridge, representing the Underkeepers organization,” the magistrate recited in a bored tone, “present to hear our determination regarding the legality of the deportation of its contracted employee, one demon Dzhorianath, by the Solicitors organization. Please stand.”

Josie let out a slow breath and kept her expression carefully neutral as she rose. She’d expected to hear about both this case and the petition to integrate Jori and her followers into the war effort to bring the fight to the hells. Instead, the magistrate picked up his stack of papers and squinted at it unnecessarily.

“Plaintiff states that intervention by the Solicitors organization illegally interfered with a government employee in performance of her duties. Is that right?”

“That is correct,” Josie replied.

Magistrate Sarros nodded self importantly and held up another stack of papers, showing it to the room. “Yet you also submitted a petition together with the Mages’ Guild, requesting a formal cooperative agreement with the Beseri military for the Underkeepers to take the war against the Duergar to the hells with the help of this selfsame demon, citing work done by Underkeeper Dzhorianath as a proof of concept.”

Josie frowned. She could see where this was going, and she didn’t like it one bit.

“She can’t perform her duties as originally assigned by Archmage Thurdred. That’s still interference!” They’d known about all this for weeks. The defending Solicitors hadn’t even tried this argument, because they knew it had no legs. There was only one reason it might be a problem today when it hadn’t been one yesterday, and it had nothing to do with the law.

“Nevertheless, it is our ruling that underkeeper Dzhorianath has not been prevented from serving her role in the Underkeepers organization. Therefore, there is no conflict and nothing to arbitrate.”

“You can’t do this!” Josie protested. She knew it was pointless, but she couldn’t help herself. The asshole couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a solid reason for dismissing her case. “Jori is a properly contracted employee – she has legal, contractually protected rights.”

“Ah,” the magistrate held up a finger, flipping a few pages over in the second stack. “Excuse me, I got ahead of myself. With respect to the contractual binding of monsters – including demons – the court hereby clarifies that while monsters may be contractually bound to service, they shall not be granted the status of legal persons under Beseri law. To do so would open the door to unconscionable risk to both Besermark’s safety and moral character.”

Josie’s mouth hung open in disbelief. What was the point of having a contract at all when one of the signatory parties had no legal recourse? It was pure, unadulterated nonsense. Worse, it meant that her second petition – the one that would make Jori an integral part of the Beseri war effort – was dead in the water. The government could offer everything Jori asked for, and it wouldn’t matter if there was nothing to force them to hold to their word. They hadn’t thrown it out, but at this point, would it matter? No demon would ever accept a fundamentally broken contract – it went against their very natures.

“Both parties will receive a copy of this verdict and its reasoning. The original will be archived and made available for public review at the Hall of Records.” He rose and collected his papers. “This meeting is adjourned.”

Josie looked around as Magistrate Sarros left. The defense, led by Solicitor Zarine, looked nearly as troubled as she felt, though her apprentice was practically giddy. The novice was blinded by the thrill of victory, but the rest of them knew what this meant. Winning a case was one thing, but this “clarification” had dangerous implications.

The wording of statements like this had to be considered in terms of how they could be interpreted in the absolute worst case, not in terms of their original intent. It was a mindset that anyone who summoned demons had to master early in their career. That, more than anything, was what had made the Solicitors the premier legal advisors in Besermark.

Traditionally, monsters were treated as though they were outside the system entirely, like wildlife. They couldn’t make legal deals or agreements, which generally wasn’t a problem since most couldn’t read or write. But “monster” wasn’t a legally defined term.

Demons were widely and uncontroversially considered monsters, that much was true – but what about trolls or goblins? Josie doubted the magistrate or the king had any intention of turning this new bit of law against their own citizens, but that didn’t mean it never would be. It was incredibly sloppy work for the country’s top legal official. 

Or it would be, if it wasn’t intentional. They were throwing out her case for show – to try to show the public that they were serious about keeping demons out of the kingdom. Maybe the way they were doing it was part of that message – one meant to tell the Invigilation, or maybe the Madzhuris, that the Beseri nobility was, perhaps, being misrepresented in their allegations.

Solicitor Zarine tried to catch her eye as Josie made her way outside, but she ignored her. She needed to get to a summoning chamber. She needed to inform Jori and get word to Solicitor Radast. He would know what to do with this, she was sure.

***

“How could they possibly have known?” Jesra demanded as the stoic boatman, a man named Kavin, tied the boat up at a pier. They’d only traveled about an hour and couldn’t have gone much further than two leagues downstream, but it was obvious that they’d arrived.

Just ahead, barely two hundred strides away was a warzone. They couldn’t see the enemy, only the duke’s soldiers standing on top of a seamless stone wall and filling the field behind it. Enormous booming sounds rang through the air as force shields intercepted massive stone projectiles and siege missiles – the standard wall-breaching spell for mage artillery working in units. They looked just like giant magic missiles, and each time one struck the barrier, it caused the entire thing to flare up with bright light.

There would be far more magic at work here – scryers trying to spy enemy movements, geomancers and hydromancers on both sides fighting over the stability of the fortifications and the earth beneath them, aeromancers sending alchemical aerosols into the enemy ranks or dispersing similar attacks from the opposing army. Most invisibly of all, abjurers would be quietly warding weak points in the line and turning them into traps. And all of that didn’t include the active fighting, only revealed by distant shouts and screams until, suddenly, a man came flying over the top of the wall, whirling crazily around his own axis like a ragdoll. He came down in the midst of the Beseri reinforcements with a faint, sickening crunch. Bernt flinched.

“It could just be a coincidence,” Xul’evareg shrugged, ignoring the situation entirely. “They weren’t talking like they planned to make peace, right? Why wouldn’t they attack now?”

“No… I don’t like it either,” Dalbrand grumbled. “We’re missing something here. They’ve been a step ahead of us this entire time. It’s as if the scrying protections weren’t working at all.”

They disembarked, heading past a single warehouse that sat next to the pier and up a heavily rutted gravel road that ran parallel to the wall ahead. Both the pier and the warehouse buzzed with activity as workers and soldiers worked together to load the only other boat with crates of large clear crystals and smaller, broken geodes that glittered pale green on the inside. 

The mine’s entrance lay in the foothills of the Sunset Range, a half-hour’s walk to the east. The sounds of bombardment followed them all the way up, though a few sections were quieter than others.

“Could you do something like that?” Nirlig asked Bernt, rubbing at his ears after a particularly deafening boom. “With those big spells?”

Bernt shook his head. “Those are cast by war mages with siege augmentations. I don’t have the right investitures, and besides, my magic missile spell isn’t good enough.” He nodded forward at Dalbrand, who was quietly talking to Minister Jesra at the front. “He might be able to do something similar, though, if he used a stone projectile. Archmages are a lot more powerful than magisters.”

The archmage in question looked back at them over his shoulder, then over at the wall consideringly. He didn’t comment. 

“So… Ed could do it?” Nirlig asked more quietly.

“Maybe,” Bernt nodded, “but I don’t really know. He doesn’t talk about his military career much. He’s a sonomancer. I’m not really sure what he used that for, but I know he can fight. We’ll have to ask him.”

The mines, surprisingly, appeared to be mostly deserted. Mining carts lay abandoned outside the entrance alongside hastily dumped garbage, broken crystals, tools, and a single donkey that someone had apparently forgotten and left tied to a post. The wall, which extended past the mine into the distance, was manned, but not as heavily as he would have expected. A few bodies had been laid out nearby with cloaks laid over them, so there had been some fighting here, but nothing like the massive assault down by the river.

Maybe they didn’t want to risk collapsing the mines or damaging the crystals by fighting major engagements so close to it. Bernt didn’t know, and he doubted he was going to find out. Dalbrand marched directly into the entrance without a word, followed by Jesra and the goblins.

Bernt moved to follow but found himself hesitating as a sense of claustrophobia gripped his insides and squeezed. The tunnel was narrow – barely wide enough for a mine cart to pass without touching the walls. The ceiling was low enough that he would have to duck. The last time he’d been in such a tight space was in the kobold warren under Halfbridge, when he’d been trapped in the dungeon.

It was silly. He’d spent days underground without surfacing since then. Even his house was in the Undercity, though it was a lot roomier than this. Still, the feeling didn’t let up.

He looked back at Estrid, who was sorting little paper packets in one of the pouches on her belt – probably picking out the seeds that would still be useful to her underground. She stopped to avoid bumping into him, finally noticing his hesitation. The tall druid was nearly Bernt’s own height. She couldn’t walk through any more casually than he could.

“What?” She followed his gaze. “Oh, don’t worry, it gets better once you’re inside. I think they keep it like this for security reasons. Come on!”

She ducked into the tunnel, leading the way. Well, if it was only for a minute. He could do that, right? This was ridiculous anyway. He was an underkeeper, for the gods’ sakes. Bernt took a deep breath, gritted his teeth and followed her inside.