Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(83)

Only, he did not speak a number. Instead, his tongue flicking between his lips, he glanced over at Adare, then up into the shadowy space of the rafters.

“As this trial has already shown,” he said, his voice quieter than the regent’s, but sly, snaking throughout the hall, “men and women are much given to folly. I will not be judged by them.”

For the first time, il Tornja frowned and Adare’s stomach clenched.

“If he will not be judged,” Adare began, half-rising to her feet, “then let us send for the headsman at once. Annur is nothing if not an empire of law. It is this law that separates us from the savages offering blood sacrifice in the jungles and on the steppe. If this so-called priest would flaunt that law, let us be done with him.”

Hundreds of eyes turned to her. Il Tornja, too, met her gaze, raising a placating hand and nodding that he already understood the nature of her objection. Adare let the words trail off, retaking her seat with as much dignity as she could muster. The ministers flanking the regent looked on like buzzards in their black robes. The men had no sympathy for Uinian, but they had not stopped looking for weakness in Adare, either. It is no slight to you, Baxter Pane had argued, staring at her with those rheumy eyes of his, but women are not suited to the Ministry. They are too … fickle, too easily transported by their emotions.

Adare swallowed a curse. And here I am, allowing myself to be transported by my emotions.

The priest paused, allowing the sudden buzz that had attended her outburst to subside, clearly enjoying the confusion of the crowd and Adare’s own discomfort. Her father had tried to teach her to control her emotions, but it was a skill for which she had little talent.

“If you refuse the trial—,” il Tornja began, but Uinian cut him off.

“I do not refuse the trial. I refuse this trial. The Chief Priest of Intarra, the chosen of the goddess on earth, is not subject to the petty minds and manifest error of men and women.” He spread his arms wide, as though inviting all assembled to consider the very contents of his soul. “I refuse the judgment of the Seven Sitters and call instead upon the goddess herself to render her verdict. I demand, as is my ancient right, Trial by Flame.”

Adare half rose to her feet once more.

Around her, the hall exploded into shouts and exclamations, dozens of arguments and questions kindled like fire. She had known, from the look on his face, that Uinian hoped to subvert the trial in some way, and yet this … The Trial by Flame was every citizen’s prerogative, had been ever since Anlatun the Pious walked into his brother’s funeral pyre to prove his innocence and emerged unscathed to take the Unhewn Throne. The fire had not burned him, Anlatun insisted, because Intarra herself had decreed his innocence. In the years that followed, there had been a spate of criminals demanding Intarra’s justice. Without exception, they had burned. Screamed and burned. The Trial by Flame quickly lost its appeal, fading from practice and memory until it existed only as a scribal note in manuals of jurisprudence.

Until now.

“Let the goddess judge,” Uinian continued, pitching his defiant voice to carry over the turmoil of the crowd. “Let the goddess judge,” he said again, raising a hand to draw all eyes to himself. “The Lady of Light and Goddess of Fire. My goddess.”

Adare drove her fingernails into her palms, but she refused to speak again, turning her gaze instead toward il Tornja to see how he would meet this new challenge.

The kenarang had risen to his feet, looking half-prepared to draw the long sword at his side. Instead, he gestured once to the slave at the gong, and in moments the deep reverberation silenced the chamber. With the crowd stilled, the regent reseated himself, then looked over to where Jesser and Yuel sat—one tall, one short, both skeletal in their ministerial robes, arguing heatedly but inaudibly, gesturing in the air with their ink-stained hands. The two debated a moment more; then Yuel rose to murmur something in il Tornja’s ear. He listened, nodded impatiently, then waved the man away.

“Well, this should cut down considerably on the time,” he announced at last, his voice too jocular for Adare’s comfort. “There will be no Seven Sitters, no reading of the facts, no disputation by the accused. Instead, according to the law, the Chief Priest will thrust his bare arm into the flame up to the elbow for fifty strikes of the gong. If his flesh remains unburned through all this time, it will be decreed that Intarra, who watches over all Annur, has judged him free of guilt. He will walk free.

“If,” he continued, a vulpine smile on his face, “the flesh or the hair upon the flesh singes or burns—” He shrugged. “—then the whole body will be consecrated to Intarra’s sacred flame and fire.”