"I am her husband—I demand she be killed!"
Baltasar Campos' voice broke the morning air like a decree. It did what a decree must do: it snapped attention to him, pulled the crowd's eyes, forced the dais to tilt.
"Order!" Irving Burton banged his ledger against the Judgment Lake's rail. His voice held the cold ritual of procedure. "Silence in the name of record."
"Silence?" Baltasar laughed. "You recorded her blessing the famine and the rumor of godless rites. You saw the pearl-smoke, Irving. You recorded the children fused into sunlight. She turned her lineage into a weapon."
"Read the verdict," someone from the front called, urgent and hungry.
"Read what you like," Baltasar said. "But I am her husband. I will not have the Sun Court be made complicit in hiding a monster."
"Present the record," Irving intoned. He slid his hand into the water of the Lake. The surface thickened, and a round, dark memory-plate rose. It burned no heat. It showed no faces until it wanted to. The crowd leaned. The gods leaned. The dais held its breath like a thing braced.
"You will not let me," Dahlia said.
Her voice came soft and small from the center of the dais. It made everyone look the way someone looks at a bell before it rings. She stood with her hands folded. Her hair lay like a quiet curtain. Her dress had once been spun of sea-reflect and sun-thread; now the
