Chapter 22: The Penultimate Trial — A Debate on Civilisation

The debate was announced on a Thursday, which gave the remaining six tributes four days to contemplate the instrument of their own assessment, and the Court a full four days to enjoy watching them do so.

The formal notice arrived at breakfast — delivered not by footmen, as previous trial announcements had been, but by a junior member of the Mistress of Ceremonies' personal staff, which distinction Honoria registered and filed beside the note she had burned on the staircase two evenings prior. Someone, it appeared, was elevating the occasion's ceremonial weight before it had even begun. She found this either flattering or ominous and decided, by the time she had finished her toast, that the difference was largely academic.

The document itself was a model of Court prose — long sentences, impeccable subordination, a governing clause so carefully balanced that its meaning required three readings to locate beneath its grammar. The trial was officially designated the Rhetorical Presentation and Civic Discourse Examination. Subjects were to be assigned individually, again by sealed allocation, at nine o'clock the following morning. Tributes were reminded that the examination assessed not merely argument but deportment, structure, persuasive elegance, and what the document called — in a phrase Honoria spent some time with — the capacity to inhabit a position with conviction.