When every one of the robe’s impossible buttons was finally fastened, Miranda sat down on her bed and took off each of her rings in turn. With great care, she rubbed each one with a soft cloth, waking and soothing the spirit inside before sliding them back onto her fingers. When the rings were done, she fished Erol’s silver-wrapped pearl from his place next to her skin and, after a cleaning coupled with a firm reminder of the dire repercussions of acting out, laid him on top of her robes. Finally, she brushed out her hair as straight as it would go and bound the red mass back in a severe braid so that her face was not obscured from any angle.
Ready as she could make herself, Miranda locked her room and walked down the stairs to the street where Gin was sitting beside the door, waiting for her.
“You know,” Miranda said, scratching his head, “since you’re not technically a bound spirit, you don’t have to come with me today.”
Gin gave an undignified snort and trotted off down the narrow walk between the buildings, leaving her to follow.
A group of Krigel’s red-robed guards met them at the side entrance to the tower. Miranda let them lead her and Gin up the low stairs and through the broad side hallways to the back door of the long, opulent room that served as the Court’s waiting chamber.
Like all rooms in the tower, the waiting chamber was built on a grand scale, which was good, considering she was there with a fifteen-foot-long ghosthound. Even with Gin, however, Miranda felt as though the room would swallow her up if she let it. It was austere, designed to impress the age and power of the Spirit Court on its occupants, usually minor nobles and representatives from the Council who needed help with flooding river spirits or petulant winds that tore up their crops. Since it was only her this morning, the lamps were dark, and the dim, gray light from the high windows made the room’s otherwise luxurious ambiance feel gloomy and cold.
Her guards, who hadn’t spoken a word since she’d met them, took their places at the many doors that led into the room, and Miranda, after looking around lost for a bit, took a seat on one of the cushioned benches across from the largest door, which led into the Court itself. She knew from experience that that was where they would come for her. She had waited here once before, the day she took her oaths. Sitting there, she felt the same nervous weight in her stomach. Back then it had felt exciting; now it just made her feel ill.
Through the heavy wood she could hear the shuffling as the gathered Tower Keepers took their places. Muted conversations washed in and out, and over them all rang a smug, laughing voice she’d heard only a few times in her life but recognized instantly. How could anyone forget Hern’s superior sneer?
Gin twitched beside her, lowering his head to whisper in her ear. “It’s not too late. You can still take the out.”
“No,” Miranda said. “I need only a majority vote to have all charges against me thrown out. Every person in that room is a Spiritualist, which means every single one of them, even Hern, has taken an oath to protect the Spirit World.” She folded her hands tightly in her lap. “What I did in Mellinor was not wrong or abusive, and I have the spirit inside me to prove it. For every ring in that Court, I have a measure of hope that their masters will see the truth and make the right choice.”
Gin shook his head as the muted conversations vanished and the room beyond the heavy doors fell into silence as the Court convened. “I hope you’re right.”
“So do I,” Miranda whispered, clutching her rings tighter than ever.
They sat in nervous silence until, at last, the great door opened and the bright light of the Court shone in. Even though she knew it was coming, the shock of the brilliant Court chamber after the dim waiting room threw Miranda off balance for a moment. Then she was in control again, and she marched through the doors and up the steep steps with her head high and Gin right behind her.
The Spirit Court’s hearing chamber was a circular room that took up the entirety of the tower’s second floor. High overhead, hanging from the tall, arched ceiling, white fires burned in silver sconces without fuel or heat, their sharp light blending with the sunlight that filtered through the tall, milky glass windows. Enormous rings of wooden benches ran along the outer edge of the room, spiraling down from the walls in a series of interlocking tiers, but only the bottom rings were filled. Tower Keepers sat primly in their formal robes, their ringed hands draped over the high wall that separated them from the open floor and the raised stand at its center, where Miranda would make her case.
Directly across from the doors where she had entered, an enormous bench loomed over everything else. It towered above the polished marble floor, carved from wood so old it had lost all its color and was now solid black beneath the layers of polish. Sitting behind the great bench on a chair as regal as any throne was Master Banage. He was dressed in a coat of pure white with a high collar that framed his face like a snowdrift, making him look ancient and distant, an infallible king of judges. Around his neck he wore the Mantle of the Tower, the regalia of the Rector Spiritualis. It was styled as a chain. Each link was a knot of heavy gold holding a great stone, and each stone held one of the spirits bound, not to any one Spiritualist, but to the Court itself, passed down from rector to rector, the living symbol of the Spirit Court’s pledge of protection, justice, and equality to the Spirit World.