Lambert arrived at Notre Reine before dawn because sleep had not been a serious possibility and prayer had not been a productive one. The court would reconvene in three hours. He intended to use them.
The cathedral proper lay on the far side of the complex from the courtroom wing, separated by cloisters and a courtyard where, in better weather, theological arguments became fresh-air theological arguments. At this hour it held frost and silence and a single clerk hurrying between buildings who had been hurrying since yesterday and could not remember why.
? The Church of Invictus maintained that all arguments benefited from fresh air. It had not improved the quality of theological reasoning, but it had significantly reduced the smell.
Lambert had expected mourning; what he found was logistics. The Pontifex had been dead for fewer than twelve hours and the Church had already converted grief into agenda. Priests moved through the candlelight with purpose, their vestments catching the glow as they clustered, conferred, and dispersed into new configurations like cells dividing.
Lambert read the patterns: who was speaking to whom, who had been excluded, whose body language suggested they had received new instructions overnight.
Vaziri’s name moved through the cathedral like smoke. Lambert caught it in fragments: a whispered exchange between two Legates near the reliquary, a Primate who mentioned her three times in a single benediction, a cluster of junior priests who spoke her name with the particular reverence reserved for people who might soon be in a position to reassign them somewhere warm.
The consensus had solidified overnight. Not her candidacy; that had been expected. The speed of the alignment. As if the question had been settled before the bells had finished ringing.
Who arranged that?
Lambert moved through the corridors like a lost pilgrim. In the refectory, senior clerics had gathered near the warming fire. As Lambert approached, their conversation died mid-sentence. One priest glanced his way, then deliberately turned his shoulder, resuming in lower tones. The others followed, a wall of dark cassocks closing ranks.
Lambert kept walking as if he’d been heading elsewhere all along.
In the cloisters, two junior priests fell silent as he passed. Once he’d moved beyond earshot, or what they assumed was earshot, the whispers resumed.
“... contradicted the orthodoxy outright ...”
“... Euphrates called it irrational ...”
“... in open court, in front of ...”
He filed the fragments. The word irrational had spread faster than the Pontifex’s eulogy. In the Court of Reason, it was not a description; it was a verdict. None of the evidence mattered to the people in these corridors. What mattered was that he had stood before a Legate and claimed that Pontifical orthodoxy was wrong, and the Legate had told him to sit down.
He looked for Calderon. The side chapel where they’d met before was empty, the reliquary case reflecting candlelight to nobody. The refectory, the library annex, the vestry corridor where Calderon sometimes waited to be accidentally encountered. Nothing. His informant had vanished. Not carelessly.
Either he’s found courage, or someone’s found him leverage.
Something shifted. Calderon was a survivor. He always knew where he would reappear.
Everything had moved too fast. The vendetta, the tribunal, the expedited docket. Every mechanism that should have ground slowly had been greased.
The Pontifex’s death had created a strange legal lacuna, and the recess had been necessary to know how to proceed. Everywhere Lambert turned, Vaziri’s name was whispered. Eyes from the priesthood slid off him, deliberately not seeing him.
Calderon gone. The corridors closing. And the heresy charge that Lambert had raised in good faith, turned by Feresci into a doctrinal crisis that only the Pontifical seat could resolve. A seat that was, as of last night, vacant. A vacancy that everyone in this building already knew how to fill.
Lambert was treading water in currents threatening to drag him under, and he did not know how deep it went.
And I built the case for them.
He left counting the exits.
The court reconvened at the ninth bell. Euphrates took the dais exactly as she had the day before, surveyed the chamber, and addressed the absence that hung over the room like incense.
“The court acknowledges the passing of His Holiness the Pontifex. This is a moment of profound grief for the faithful, and the court shares in that grief.” She let the sentiment settle, then set it aside with the efficiency of a woman who had allotted it precisely the time it deserved.
“However, serious allegations have been brought before this tribunal against a member of the Gallian nobility. Evidence has been presented under compulsion. These matters cannot be left to linger unchallenged, unresolved, and subject to the erosion of time and rumour. Despite our grief, the work of reason and justice must continue. We shall proceed.”
She turned her gaze to the advocates’ floor.
“The court will also address the conduct of yesterday’s proceedings. This is a Court of Reason. It is not a forum for emotional advocacy, personal grievance, or theatrical disclosure. The court expects all parties to conduct themselves with the discipline this institution demands.” Her gaze rested on Lambert for a fraction longer than on Feresci.
“Passion is understood. It will not be indulged a second time.”
Lambert noted the empty seat in the third row. Isabella’s seat. No word had come overnight.
Laila had returned. She looked like she hadn’t slept. The seat beside her, where Isabella had been yesterday, was empty.
Feresci rose. His knives had been sharpened during the recess.
“If it please the court, the defence wishes to present its counterclaim. We call Legate Benedict Calderon.”
Lambert went still. The real thing: the body receiving information the mind had not yet processed. His eyes found Calderon entering from the side chamber, and something behind them closed like a door.
No.
He half-rose, mouth opening on what would have been an objection, then caught himself. Sat back down. Whatever Calderon knew, objecting would only tell the court it mattered.
Calderon picked his way to the testimony chair. He sat. The compulsion found him, and Lambert watched the warmth settle across his features, the faint tightening around the eyes that meant the theurgy had taken hold.
Feresci approached the way he always did: conversationally, as if they had simply run into each other in a corridor and he had a few idle questions.
“Legate Calderon. You were tasked with investigating the de Vaillant household. By whom?”
Calderon’s jaw worked. The compulsion did not permit silence when a direct question had been asked. “By the office of the Consistory. The specific directive was conveyed through intermediaries. I do not know who originated the order.”
“What were you asked to investigate?”
“The existence of a hidden chamber within the de Vaillant estate. Specifically, whether the household maintained facilities connected to practices outside orthodox worship.”
“And what did you find?”
“I was unable to complete my investigation through conventional means.” The compulsion pressed against something Calderon did not wish to say, and the chamber could see it. “I was compromised during a social engagement at the estate. Information I disclosed while under the influence of an intoxicant was subsequently used as leverage to compel my cooperation.”
Feresci let the sentence breathe. Everyone in the room was already looking at Lambert.
“Compel your cooperation with whom?”
“With Lambert sol Pallas.”
“In what capacity?”
“As an intelligence asset.” The words came out clipped and bitter, each one extracted by the compulsion like a tooth. “I provided information regarding Church politics, the succession, and the movements of senior clergy. In exchange, the materials gathered during my compromised state were not made public.”
The gallery had gone dense with the silence of people recalculating. Lambert kept his expression level. Every word Calderon said was true. The compulsion confirmed it. He had got Calderon drunk, extracted a confession, used the leverage to turn him into an intelligence asset. It had been efficient, effective, and what an Inquisitor did when the institution’s own channels were compromised.
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It sounded, in this room, like something else entirely.
Feresci turned to Euphrates. “The court will note that the petitioner’s case rests on evidence gathered through an investigation directed by Monsignor sol Pallas, using intelligence obtained through the coercion of a Church official. If the evidence is tainted at its source, the conclusions drawn from that evidence are unsound. The defence submits that the evidentiary chain is materially compromised.”
Euphrates made a note. Her expression gave nothing away. “The observation is recorded.”
Feresci was not finished. He returned to the centre of the floor, and Lambert saw the blade at the top of its arc.
“The court heard yesterday that Monsignor sol Pallas raised a charge of association with dragon cultism against Countess d’Aubigne. The court also heard the Legate’s ruling that this charge contradicts established Pontifical orthodoxy.” He paused. “The defence wishes to frame the logical consequence.”
Euphrates inclined her head. “Proceed.”
“The Church’s position, reaffirmed by Pontifical authority, is that the dragon cults were eradicated following the événement. The petitioner asserts they were not. These two propositions cannot both be true.” Feresci could have been reading a proof. “If the petitioner is correct, then Pontifical orthodoxy is wrong. If Pontifical orthodoxy is correct, the petitioner’s central claim is built on a falsehood.”
He spread his hands. “The defence leaves the resolution of this contradiction to the court.”
Lambert had built his case on the Church’s own framework, and the framework had done what frameworks do: it had followed its own rules to their conclusion, regardless of who those rules destroyed.
He looked at Feresci. He could recognise the craftsmanship, even when the blade was in him.
But Feresci had not sat down. He stood at the centre of the floor with the unhurried patience of a man who had presented his opening remarks and was now ready to begin. Calderon had been devastating. Calderon had not been the point.
What else do they have?
Euphrates had not called for a recess. The court was not finished.
“The court calls its final witness. Mirembe Ankhara.”
Lambert’s hands found the edge of the bench.
Laila was halfway out of her seat before Wylan’s hand caught her wrist and held. She sat. Her breath came back in pieces.
Ankhara. Not de Vaillant. She registered under her maiden name.
At least Maximilian wasn’t here. At least he wouldn’t have to hear this.
The letter to House Ankhara. The empty chair. That wasn’t grief. She was preparing.
Mirembe entered from the side chamber. Her attire was immaculate, austere, absent of the de Vaillant crest. She moved with the composure of someone who had already made the hardest decision of her life and found, on the other side of it, that the ground held.
She did not look at Laila. She did not look at Lambert. She looked at Euphrates, and at the chair, and she sat.
The compulsion found her.
Laila watched for the flinch. The warmth, the closeness, the gentle dissolution of anything that was not true. Every witness had fought it, even involuntarily. Let her fight it.
She settled into the compulsion the way she had once settled into evening prayer: willingly, gratefully, as though the removal of choice were itself a mercy.
When Mirembe accepted the chair gracefully she felt disappointed. I want her to suffer now? What is this proceeding doing to me?
Laila watched her former daughter-in-law welcome the instrument of her family’s destruction and could not even hate her for it. It was the worst kind of faith: sincerity.
“Please state your name for the record,” Euphrates said.
“Mirembe Ankhara.”
“You were formerly a member of House de Vaillant?”
“I was wife to Maximilian de Vaillant. I have resumed my maiden name.”
Resumed. Not ‘prefer to use.’ Resumed. Laila’s thoughts caught up with her stomach. Has she filed for annulment? Has it already been granted?
She looked at the empty seat beside her where Isabella had been yesterday, and then at Wylan, who was staring straight ahead and holding her hand too tightly. What happens when Max finds out?
Small mercies he hadn’t come.
“You have testimony regarding the household’s practices and beliefs?”
“I do.”
Euphrates glanced at Feresci, who inclined his head. The court’s own inquiry, then.
“Madame Ankhara. You are aware that this court has heard testimony regarding accusations of heretical practice within House de Vaillant. Please share what you have witnessed.”
Mirembe’s voice was steady as recitation because the compulsion clarified everything. Sentences that were true emerged whole. The rest dissolved before they reached her lips.
“Lambert sol Pallas, in the presence of the household, declared his intention to destroy the Church of Invictus. His words were: ‘The Church of Invictus is a corruption. It must be destroyed.’”
Laila’s eyes found Lambert. He sat very still. His composure was fraying at the edges, visible in the set of his jaw, the whiteness of his knuckles on the bench. He was hearing his own words repeated back to him under oath, in a room that would judge them as the worst thing he had ever said.
“He professed a devotion to Death,” Mirembe continued. “His words were: ‘I share a devotion to Death. Not as Alexios did, out of reluctance or compromise, but because I have seen it for what it truly is.’”
The chamber stirred. Euphrates raised a hand and the stirring stopped.
“Lambert claimed to have discovered a hidden chamber beneath the de Vaillant estate,” Mirembe said. “A dungeon, built by Alexios de Vaillant, concealed from the household for the duration of his life. He told the household it contained altars and artefacts connected to Death worship, and that it proved the Church’s foundations were false.” Her voice tightened. “The family chose to keep its existence from the Church.”
Calderon’s testimony from an hour ago, confirmed — by a member of the family, under compulsion, of her own volition.
“Lambert further informed the household that Seraphina de Vaillant, the family’s great-aunt, was undead. A vampire.” Mirembe’s voice held. “I heard the family discuss harbouring this creature as kin. They spoke of taking counsel from it. They treated its existence as natural and its presence as acceptable.”
The compulsion confirmed every word. Laila had been in the room when Lambert said those things. She had watched him come up from the dungeon with the light of certainty in his eyes, and she had recognised the pattern, and she had said nothing, because she had loved the man whose pattern it was, and she could not bring herself to name what she was watching in his stepson.
“How could you abandon your daughter?”
The words were out of her mouth before she knew she was standing. The composure that had survived the salon exposure, the testimony chair, and naming Isabella Ondine Marinelle did not hold through this.
Not over politics. Not over strategy. Over Aurora.
Euphrates turned. “Madame de Vaillant, you will—”
“I have no daughter.”
Mirembe’s voice was steady. The compulsion held her, warm and close, and the words emerged without resistance because they were true.
“Only a monstrous half-blood.”
Something had been said that could not be unsaid.
Euphrates looked at Mirembe for a long moment, and then at the quill in her hand, and then she wrote something down.
“The witness is released,” she said.
Mirembe rose from the chair. The compulsion lifted. She walked toward the side chamber as she had entered it. She did not look back.
Laila sat down. Beside her, Wylan’s hand found hers and held it, and she let him, because her own hands were shaking and there was no point pretending otherwise.
She had named Isabella Ondine Marinelle yesterday because the compulsion left her no choice. Mirembe had named Aurora a monstrous half-blood because she believed it.
Two mothers destroyed.
Euphrates called for a recess of one hour. When the court reconvened, she did not invite further testimony or argument. She rose, arranged her notes into the order she would deliver them, and addressed the chamber.
“This court has heard testimony and examined evidence over the course of two sessions. I will now present findings.”
The gallery stilled. Laila sat with her hands folded, her composure rebuilt like stonework after shelling. Wylan was beside her. Lambert sat at the advocates’ table, alone, in a position that had been designed for a petitioner and now looked like a dock.
“Regarding the first and second charges against Countess d’Aubigne.” Euphrates spoke without consulting her notes. “The evidence of conspiracy to attack the de Vaillant estate is substantial. The mercenary ledger, corroborated under compulsion, establishes financial connection between the Countess’s accounts and the operatives responsible for the assault. The testimony regarding the attempted abduction of the child Aurora de Vaillant is likewise corroborated. On these charges, the court finds the evidence sufficient to establish the claims.”
D’Aubigne did not move. Her fan lay closed in her lap.
“However.” Euphrates paused. The word held the chamber like a keystone. “The third charge, that Countess d’Aubigne maintained association with elements of dragon cultism, raises a question this court cannot resolve.”
The mechanism Feresci had outlined, now delivered in Euphrates’s measured voice, each proposition leading to the next.
“The Church’s established position, reaffirmed by Pontifical authority following the événement, is that the dragon cults were eradicated. The petitioner asserts otherwise. These are contradictory claims regarding a matter of canonical truth. Canonical truth is not established by evidence presented before a tribunal. It is established ex cathedra, by pronouncement from the Pontifical seat.”
“This court therefore cannot rule on the third charge. To find in favour of the petitioner would require overturning Pontifical orthodoxy. To find in favour of the respondent would require disregarding evidence corroborated under compulsion. Both outcomes exceed this court’s authority. The charge is referred to the Pontifical office for determination.”
Euphrates turned from d’Aubigne to Lambert, and the temperature in the chamber dropped.
“Regarding Lambert sol Pallas.” Just the name. No title. “The testimony of Mirembe Ankhara, delivered under compulsion and uncontested, establishes that Lambert sol Pallas has professed devotion to Death, advocated for the destruction of the Church of Invictus, defended the harbouring of a vampire within the de Vaillant estate, and concealed from the Church the existence of a hidden chamber dedicated to practices outside orthodox worship.”
Each clause landed separately.
“Whether these professions constitute heresy is a question of canonical truth, not empirical evidence. Canonical truth is established a priori by the Pontifical seat. This court cannot pronounce on the state of a man’s soul. That authority belongs to the Pontifical seat.”
She set down her quill.
“What this court can determine is a matter of institutional standing. Lambert sol Pallas is hereby divested of his recognition as a priest of the Church of Invictus. His authority as Inquisitor is revoked. His appointment as chaplain to House de Vaillant is dissolved. He retains no title, office, or standing within the ecclesiastical hierarchy.” She paused. “The question of formal excommunication is referred to the Pontifical office.”
Laila watched the titles fall. Inquisitor. Chaplain. Monsignor. Euphrates was filing him under the correct heading, and the heading was unresolved, which was worse than any verdict, because it meant someone else would decide.
“Regarding House de Vaillant.” Euphrates addressed the gallery now, or rather, addressed the space where the family sat in its diminished row. “The testimony heard by this court raises serious questions about the household’s orthodoxy. This court notes those questions for the record. It does not have the authority to act upon them.” She let that settle. “The standing of a noble house within the Church’s governance is a matter for the Pontifical seat, not a tribunal. House de Vaillant retains its recognition, titles, and standing pending pronouncement from that office.”
She gathered her notes.
“All findings are provisional. The conspiracy and abduction charges stand, but sentencing is deferred pending resolution of the heresy question, as the severity of the overall finding depends upon it. The heresy question, Lambert sol Pallas’s orthodoxy, and the question of House de Vaillant’s continued standing are all matters requiring ex cathedra pronouncement from the Pontifical seat.”
Euphrates looked up from her notes. Her gaze swept the chamber one final time, confirming that everyone was still present and accounted for and about to have a very difficult year.
“As such, these matters will be resolved by the next Pontifex.”