Chapter 17: Lord Aldric's Answer, and What It Costs Him

The Charter was still in her hands.

She had not quite decided what to do with this, or with the morning, or with the extraordinary inconvenience of standing at a window in the judges' corridor at a hour when reasonable people were asleep, holding documentary evidence of systemic corruption and feeling, against every rational instinct, something that was not entirely composed.

Lord Aldric Cavendish had apparently made no decision about any of it either. He remained precisely where he had been for the past several minutes — beside the window, not quite looking at the rooftops, not quite looking at her — in the manner of a man whose considerable social equipment had temporarily and inexplicably failed to provide direction.