They went out quietly and without interruption, ending at the corner of the south transept, where Luthien crouched behind a gargoyle, Oliver behind him.
The scene was much the same as the first time the friends had ventured into the majestic building. Red-robed Duke Morkney sat in a chair behind the great altar at the cathedral’s eastern end, appearing quite bored as his lackeys called the tax rolls and counted the pitiful offerings of the poor wretches.
Luthien watched the spectacle for only a moment, then focused his attention on the front pews of the cathedral. Several people were sitting in line, wearing the gray hooded robes of prisoners and guarded by a group of cyclopians. Only one was a dwarf, yellow haired, and Luthien sighed in relief that it was not Shuglin. Three others were obviously men, but the remaining three appeared to be either younger boys or women.
“Where are you?” the young Bedwyr whispered, continuing his scan through long minutes. One of the forms in the prisoner line shifted then, and Luthien noted the end of long wheat-colored hair slipping out from under her hood. Instinctively, the young man edged forward as if he would leap off of the ledge.
Oliver took a tight hold on Luthien’s arm and did not blink when the young man turned to him. The halfling’s expression reminded Luthien that there was little they could do.
“It is just as it was with the dwarf,” Oliver whispered. “I do not know why we are here.”
“I have to know,” Luthien protested.
Oliver sighed, but he understood.
The tax rolls went on for another half hour, everything seeming perfectly normal. Still, Oliver could not shake the nagging feeling that this was not an average day at the Ministry. Siobhan had been taken for a reason, and spreading the news about the arrest had been done deliberately, the halfling believed. If Shuglin had been arrested to send a clear message to the Crimson Shadow, then Siobhan had been taken to lure the Crimson Shadow in.
Oliver looked disdainfully at Luthien, thinking how much the young man resembled a netted trout.
The man calling the roll at the lectern gathered up his parchments and moved aside, and a second man took his place, motioning for the Praetorian Guards to prepare the prisoners. The seven gray-robed defendants were forced to stand and the man called out a name.
An older man of at least fifty years was roughly pulled out from the pew and pushed toward the altar. He stumbled more than once and would have fallen on his head, except that two cyclopians flanking him caught him and roughly stood him upright.
The accusation was a typical one: stealing a coat from a kiosk. The accusing merchant was called forward.
“This is not good,” Oliver remarked. The halfling nodded toward the merchant. “He is a wealthy one and likely a friend of the duke. The poor wretch is doomed.”
Luthien’s lips seemed to disappear into his frustrated scowl. “Is anyone ever found innocent in this place?” he asked.
Oliver’s reply, though expected, stung him profoundly. “No.”
Predictably, the man was declared guilty. All of his belongings, including his modest house in Montfort’s lower section, were granted to the wealthy merchant, and the merchant was also awarded the right to personally cut off the man’s left hand that it might be displayed prominently at his kiosk to ward off any future thieves.
The older man protested weakly, and the cyclopians dragged him away.
The dwarf came out next, but Luthien was no longer watching. “Where are the Cutters?” he whispered. “Why aren’t they here?”
“Perhaps they are,” Oliver replied, and the young man’s face brightened a bit.
“Only to watch, as are we,” the halfling added, stealing Luthien’s glow. “When thieves are caught, they are alone. It is a code that the people of the streets observe faithfully.”
Luthien looked away from the halfling and back to the altar area, where the dwarf was being pronounced guilty and sentenced to two years of labor in the mines. Luthien could understand the pragmatism of what Oliver had just explained. If Duke Morkney believed that a thieving band would try to come to the rescue of one of its captured associates, then his job in cleaning out Montfort’s thieves would be easy indeed.
Luthien was nodding his agreement with the logic—but if that was truly the case, then why was he perched now, fifty feet above the Ministry’s floor?
It worked out—and Oliver was sure that it was no coincidence—that Siobhan was the last to be called. She moved out of the pew, and though her hands were tied in front of her, she proudly shook off the groping cyclopians as they prodded her toward the lectern.
“Siobhan, a slave girl,” the man called loudly, glancing back to the duke. Morkney still appeared bored with it all.
“She was among those who attacked the mine,” the man declared.
“By whose words?” the half-elf asked sternly. The cyclopian behind shoved her hard with the shaft of its long pole-arm, and Siobhan glanced back wickedly, green eyes narrowed.
“So spirited,” Oliver whispered, his tone a clear lament. He was holding firmly to Luthien’s crimson cape then, half-expecting the trembling young man to leap down from the ledge.
“Prisoners speak only when they are told to speak!” the man at the podium scolded.
“What worth is a voice in this evil place?” Siobhan replied, drawing another rough shove.
Luthien issued a low and guttural growl, and Oliver shook his head resignedly, feeling more than ever that they should not be in this dangerous place.
“She attacked the mine!” the man cried angrily, looking to the duke. “And she is a friend of the Crim—”
Morkney came forward in his chair, hand upraised to immediately silence his impetuous lackey. Oliver didn’t miss the significance of the movement, as though Duke Morkney did not want the name spoken aloud.
Morkney put his wrinkled visage in line with Siobhan; his bloodshot eyes seemed to flare with some magical inner glow. “Where are the dwarves?” he asked evenly.
“What dwarves?” Siobhan replied.
“The two you and your . . . associates took from the mines,” Morkney explained, and his pause again prodded Oliver into the belief that this entire arrest and trial had been put together for his and Luthien’s benefit.
Siobhan chuckled and shook her head. “I am a servant,” she said calmly, “and nothing more.”
“Who is the owner of this slave?” Morkney called out. Siobhan’s master stood from one of the pews near the front and raised his hand.
“You are without guilt,” the duke explained, “and so you shall be compensated for your loss.” The man breathed a sigh of relief, nodded and sat back down.
“Oh, no,” Oliver groaned under his breath. Luthien looked from the merchant to the duke, and from the duke to Siobhan, not really understanding.
“And you,” Morkney growled, coming up out of his chair for the first time in the two hours Oliver and Luthien had been in the Ministry. “You are guilty,” Morkney said evenly, and he slipped back down into his seat, grinning wickedly. “Do enjoy the next five days in my dungeons.”
Five days? Luthien silently echoed. Was this the sentence? He heard Oliver’s groan again and figured that Morkney was not quite finished.
“For they will be your last five days!” the evil duke declared. “Then you will be hung by your neck—in the plaza bearing my own name!”
A general groan rose from the gathering, an uneasy shuffling, and cyclopian guards gripped their weapons more tightly, glancing from side to side as if they expected trouble. The sentence was not expected. The only time during Morkney’s reign that a sentence of death had ever been imposed was for the murder of a human, and even in such an extreme case, if the murdered human was not someone of importance, the guilty party was usually sentenced to a life of slavery.