A Lick of Frost(14)

Veducci asked the same question of Galen. Galen looked more uncomfortable than Rhys had, but he answered, "Yes, I was."

Abeloec's answer was simply "Yes."

Farmer whispered to Biggs, and asked the next round of questions. "Sergeant Rhys, were you here in Los Angeles on the date of the alleged attack?"

The question proved that our lawyers still didn't quite understand the quandary of time in faerie.

"No, I was not."

Biggs frowned. "But you were, all day. We have many witnesses."

Rhys smiled at him. "But the day in Los Angeles was not the identical day as the day that Lady Caitrin accused us of this alleged attack."

"It is the same date," Biggs insisted.

"Yes," Rhys said patiently, "but just because it's the same date doesn't mean it's the same day."

Veducci was the only one smiling. Everyone else looked like they were thinking too hard, or were wondering if Rhys was crazy.

"Can you clarify that?" Veducci asked, still looking pleased.

"This isn't like a science-fiction story, where we have traveled back in time to redo the same day," Rhys said. "We aren't truly in two places at once. For us, Mr. Veducci, this day is truly a new day. Our doppelgängers are not in faerie reliving this day. That day in faerie is past. This day here in Los Angeles is a new day. It happens to have the same date, so outside of faerie it appears to be the same day, repeated."

"So you could have been in faerie on the day she was attacked?" Veducci asked.

Rhys smiled at him, almost tsking. "On the day she was allegedly attacked, yes."

"This will be a nightmare for a jury," Nelson said.

"Wait until we get done demanding a jury of their peers," Farmer said, smiling almost happily.

Nelson paled under her tasteful makeup. "A jury of their peers?" she repeated softly.

"Could a human juror truly understand being in two places on the same date?" Farmer asked.

The lawyers looked at each other. Only Veducci didn't share in the confusion. I think he'd already thought of all of this. Technically, his job description made him less powerful than Shelby or Cortez, but he could help them hurt us. Of everyone on the opposing side, Veducci was the one I wanted to win over the most.

"We're here today to try to avoid this going to a jury," Biggs said.

"If they attacked this woman then, at the very least," Shelby said, "they must be confined to faerie."

"You would have to prove their guilt before you could get a judge to meet out a punishment," Farmer said.

"Which leads us back to the fact that none of us really want this to go to court." Veducci's quiet voice fell into the room like a stone thrown into a flock of birds. The other lawyers' thoughts seemed to scatter like those birds, flying up in confusion.

"Don't be giving our case away before we've even begun," Cortez said, not sounding happy with his colleague.

"This isn't a case, Cortez, this is a disaster we're trying to avert," Veducci said.

"A disaster for whom, them?" Cortez said, pointing at us.

"For all of faerie, potentially," Veducci said. "Have you read your history about the last great human-faerie war in Europe?"

"Not recently," Cortez said.

Veducci looked around at the other lawyers. "Am I the only one here who read up on this?"

Grover raised his hand. "I did."

Veducci smiled at him as if he were his favorite person in the world. "Tell these intelligent people how the last great war started."

"It began as a dispute between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts."

"Exactly," Veducci said. "And then spilled over all the British Isles and part of the continent of Europe."

"Are you saying that if we don't mediate these charges the courts will go to war?" Nelson said.

"There are only two things that Thomas Jefferson and his cabinet made unforgivable offenses for the fey on American soil," Veducci said. "They are never again to allow themselves to be worshipped as deities, and they are never to have a war between the two courts. If either of those things happen they will be kicked out of this, the last country on earth that would have them."

"We know all this," Shelby said.

"But have you considered why Jefferson made those two rules, especially the one about war?"

"Because it would be damaging to our country," Shelby said.

Veducci shook his head. "There is still a crater on the European continent almost as wide as the widest part of the Grand Canyon. That hole is what is left of where the last battle of the war was fought. Think about if that happened in the center of this country, in the middle of our most productive farming country."