Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

Perfidia

We found ourselves nearly crushed in the center of a mob. I recognized the robes. Only I was tall enough to see over them, but it didn’t matter. I knew where we were.

It seemed like the middle of a trial, or something like one. Liv’s pencil was moving inside the red notebook as quickly as it could, trying to keep up with the words that were flying all around us.

“Perfidia. It’s Latin for ‘treason.’ They’re saying she’s going to be tried for treason.” Liv was pale, and I could barely hear her voice over the clamor of the crowd surrounding us.

“I know this place.” I recognized the tall windows with the heavy gold drapes, and the wood benches. Everything was the same—the thick noise of the crowd, the stone walls, the beamed ceiling that was so high that it seemed to go on forever. I held on to Lena’s hand, pushing my way to the front of the hall, directly under the empty wooden balcony. Liv and John threaded their way through the robed crowd behind me.

“Where’s Marian?” Lena was panicking. “And Uncle Macon? I can’t see anything over all these people.”

“I don’t like this,” Liv said quietly. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

I felt it, too.

We were standing in the center of the same crowded hall where I stood the first time I crossed through the Temporis Porta. But last time, it seemed like I was somewhere in medieval Europe, in a place from an illustration in the World History textbook we never seemed to crack at Jackson. The room was so big I’d thought it might be a ship or a cathedral. A place that transported you somewhere, whether it was across the sea or to the paradise the Sisters were always talking about.

Now it seemed different. I didn’t know where this place was, but even in their dark robes, the people—the Casters, Mortals, Keepers, or whatever they were—seemed like regular old people. The kind of people I knew something about. Because even though they were crowded on the glossy wooden bench that surrounded the perimeter of the room, they could’ve been sitting in the gym at Jackson, waiting for the Disciplinary Committee meeting to start. On the benches or the bleachers, these people were looking for the same thing. Drama.

Even worse, they were looking for blood. Someone to blame, and to punish.

It felt like the trial of the century, or a bunch of reporters waiting outside South Carolina’s Broad River Correctional Institution when someone from death row was about to get a lethal injection. The executions were covered by every TV station and newspaper. A few people showed up to protest, but they looked like they had been bused in for the day. Everyone else was hanging out, waiting to watch the spectacle. It wasn’t much different from the burning of the witches in The Crucible.

The crowd rushed forward, murmuring, just as I knew they would, and I heard the banging of a gavel. “Silentium.”

Something’s happening.

Lena grabbed my arm.

Liv pointed across the room. “I saw Macon. He’s over there.”

John looked around. “I don’t see Marian.”

Maybe she’s not here, Ethan.

She’s here.

She had to be, because I knew what was about to happen. I forced myself to look up to the balcony.

Look—

I pointed up at Marian, once again hooded and robed, once again tied at the wrists with a golden rope. She was standing on the balcony, high above the room, just as she had been the last time. The tall Keeper who had come to the archive was next to her.

The people around us were still whispering. I looked at Liv, who interpreted. “He’s the Council Keeper. He’s going to—” Liv’s eyes welled up. “It’s not a trial, Ethan. It’s a sentencing.”

I heard the Latin, but this time I didn’t try to understand. I knew what it meant before the Council Keeper repeated the words in English.

Marian would be found guilty of treason.

I listened without listening, my eyes locked on Marian’s face. “The Council of the Far Keep, which answers only to the Order of Things, to no man, creature, or power, Dark or Light, finds Marian of the Western Keep guilty of Treason.”

I remembered the first time I heard those words.

“These are the Consequences of her inaction. The Consequences shall be paid. The Keeper, though Mortal, will return to the Dark Fire from which all power comes.”

I might as well have been the one sentenced to death. Pain gutted my whole body. I watched as Marian’s hood was pulled from her shaved head. I stared into her eyes, surrounded by dark rings as if she had been hurt. I couldn’t tell if it was physical pain or mental or even Mortal. I imagined it was something worse.

I was the only one prepared for it. Liv broke down sobbing. Lena stumbled against me, and I held her up by the arm. Only John stood there, unfazed, his hands jammed into his pockets.