Chapter 777: POV Accused

“It’s time.”

Time?

Time…

Time.

Ah. Time. The period of time had come wherein she would be taken before her friend to be judged by the law of the collective. She would have to speak about the action she had taken and accept whatever punishment her friend deemed appropriate. There would be a great deal of speaking. Talking. Communication between her friend and her other friends and those who were not friends but were not enemies, and also some who were her enemies. She would not have to talk much. Vraekae had told her so. She had explained what would happen slowly and carefully so that Cobbler would understand. She was a good friend.

Cobbler hoped there would be shoes for her to fix at the place they were taking her to be judged.

“Leave the boot,” Clem told her.

Cobbler did not want to leave the boot she had been working on. It was not finished. She had made everything herself. Sole, heel, toe box, collar, eyelets, gemming, lining, and backstay, and more. She had sown most of it together. There were a few spots left that needed to be attached properly. The tongue was too loose. The insole was imperfect, lumpy, out of line. Cobbler needed to correct the mistakes, finish the pattern.

Almost done.

Almost perfect.

Almost.

“Cobbler,” Clem spoke, his voice changed. “Please, we need to go, and you can’t take that boot with you.”

He was not angry with her. The tone was similar. Not the same.

Frustration.

That was the emotion conveyed by the tone he was making. Cobbler understood frustration. She felt it often. She did not want to frustrate Clem. He was kind to her. And he took good care of his boots, so he was deserving of extra consideration.

“Thank you,” Clem said as she set her most recent work aside and followed him out of the small room she had been living in since leaving the other place. “Are you nervous?”

No.

“That’s good,” Clem made his face move in an odd way. “Nothing to be nervous about. Now, let’s get going.”

Clem was always kind to Cobbler. Polite. Helpful. Clem was also always nervous around her. Anxious. Concerned. She could smell the worry on him. Cobbler did not think that he trusted her. He did not fear her. He did not hate her. But he did not trust her.

At the other place, most of the ones who stood guard over her were not kind. They had hated her, though Vraekae had insisted that they were not her enemies. Troublesome. Vexing. Confusing. If they hated her, then they were enemies. A simple thought. Reasonable. Logical. Vraekae had said the thought was wrong. Others can hate without being an enemy. Vraekae had called them “allies in potential” and had told her not to think of them as enemies. She had explained slowly and patiently.

Cobbler had still not understood.

Alex had helped her understand. Alex was smart. Clever. Intelligent. She observed. She studied. She asked questions and found answers. She understood the others, the ones who were not Demons, so much better than Cobbler. She explained things in ways that Cobbler could understand. The “allies in potential” were broken shoes. They could be fixed by Cobbler’s own actions. Or they could be destroyed. Or, through no action of her own, they could still be fixed or still be destroyed, either from their own action or the actions of others. There was only so much that one Cobbler could do, after all. But, as Alex had explained, there was a better chance of the shoes being fixed if Cobbler did her best to be kind, to be polite, to be helpful. If she tried, they might become allies.

Which, when Cobbler thought about it, explained why Clem was always kind, polite, and helpful, and yet he was also nervous. He thought Cobbler was his enemy, because she was a Demon. So, he was kind to her, to try and fix her, so that she would not be his enemy. Except, he did not realize that he did not need to fix Cobbler. She already liked him, because he had always been kind to her.

Maybe she was doing something wrong. Or maybe Clem was doing something wrong. Cobbler wasn’t sure. But Alex had said that she had to be patient to convince the others of anything, so Cobbler would be patient as well. Vraekae had also said she should be patient as well as polite, and Vraekae was very smart and a good friend, which were too strong reasons to listen to her advice.

Jadis had also said that she should be kind, and she was extremely powerful. If one as powerful as Jadis told her to be kind, Cobbler thought it was a good idea to listen to her.

“Hey Cobbler!”

Hello, Cobbler.

Cobbler froze, confused. Had her thoughts summoned Jadis and Alex to her? No. She had been walking, following Clem, and she had been thinking too deeply. She had not paid attention to where he was taking her. They were still in the same place, the same building, but elsewhere, in a large space that was bright and shiny. Jadis and Alex were there, and there were others, too. Friends. Allies. Those who were kind to her.

Some of them needed to take better care of their shoes, but Cobbler could overlook their mistakes because they were kind in other ways.

“Sorry, I know we can’t talk much right now,” Jadis said, speaking through the body that was standing between the other two of her bodies. “I just want you to know that we’re here to support you.”

Cobbler looked down and saw that all six of Jadis’ shoes were very clean. Polished. No scuffs. No damage.

Thank you. I appreciate you.

Cobbler motioned the words with her hands, wishing that she knew how to make the feeling in them stronger. She did not think that the others understood all that she meant. They could not taste her intent.

Alex understood.

“Be good…” Alex said in sound as well as taste. “You are… Our friend… No harm… Will come… To you…”

Cobbler listened. She tasted. She saw. She understood.

There was danger here. There were those who meant harm to Cobbler. However, there was no reason for her to fear, as Alex and Jadis would protect her, and they were both extremely powerful. She did not need to be concerned. She would not be concerned.

After all, who could possibly cause her harm when she was protected by the Demon Lord?

There was more talking. Others came to speak with her, but only a few words. They were all kind, and polite, and were friends. The one called Kerr was a problem, though. Her boots were always damaged. Cobbler wanted desperately to fix them. Clem would not let her, though. Instead, when the talking was done, Cobbler was led into another room, a room where Vraekae waited for her.

This room was even bigger and shinier than the other had been. There were many others in the room, with enough chairs to more than double the number who had gathered. Cobbler was led to a spot that was near Vraekae, her friend, who politely nodded to her when she came close and sat in the chair she was told to by Clem.

Hello.

Good morning, Vraekae used her hands to speak back to her.

She did not say anything more. Vraekae usually had much to speak to Cobbler about. Not today. She had warned her that she would not be able to speak casually to her. This was her trial. An official event. Vraekae could not be casual. She had to be the Magistrate, the one who interpreted and enforced the law of the collective. Cobbler understood, so she did not press Vraekae with questions and she did not ask to look at her shoes, even though she really wanted to.

Patience. Kindness. Politeness.

Cobbler practiced all three.

The room filled with others and in time there were no empty seats. Most looked at Cobbler. Some tasted like enemies. She tried not to think of them that way, to see them as “allies in potential” as Vraekae had called them. It was not always easy. When more time had passed and no more others entered the large and shiny room, Vraekae stood up from the seat she had behind a large and heavy desk that concealed her lower body and spoke loudly, her sounds carrying so that all would be able to hear her.

“As the acting Magistrate of Eldingholt, as appointed by his Majesty, Emperor Somerulf, I, Vraekae Aedraheill, call this trial to order. Proctor Crestwood, please proceed.”

A human man with gray hair on his head and face that Cobbler had never seen before walked into the middle of the space between Vraekae and the rest of the others in the room. He held up a scroll and spoke loudly, even more loudly than Vraekae.

“On this day, the twenty-fourth of Late-Summer, Cobbler of no surname, a Demon spawn of Samleos, stands accused of murdering Karel Houben, a sailor from Fiddleport.”

The human, Proctor Crestwood, continued to speak for a long, long while. Cobbler did not understand many of the words that he used, but she did understand that they were important words. Legal. Official. Detailed. Proctor Crestwood was explaining why they were all gathered in one place.

Cobbler thought that he was saying far more than was needed. They were gathered in one place to determine if she had killed the man named Karel Houben. What more needed to be said? Did the others who sat watching her not comprehend unless they were given explicit instruction? Possibly. Cobbler often did not understand unless a thing was explained to her with great detail, so she would be patient and wait for these others to understand as well.

When the proctor was finished speaking and had sat back down, two other men stood and spoke in turn. One was named Inquisitor Silus. He was a Seraphim, and his boots were extremely well taken care of. Cobbler was impressed. The other was named Inquisitor Jurian. He was an elf, and his boots were also nice, but he had a small scuff mark on his right interior edge that Cobbler very much wanted to fix, but she did not move from her seat as Clem had instructed her. She would be patient.

The two men spoke at length, sometimes speaking to each other, but mostly they spoke to Vraekae. They read from scrolls and papers, some of which looked very old. Some were much newer. Vraekae would ask them questions and they would answer. There was argument. Debate. Discussion. Proctor Crestwood stood on four separate occasions and demanded politeness from the two men, and they would obey, at least for a while.

Again, Cobbler did not understand most of the words being used. Inquisitor Jurian spoke too quickly and she could not follow all of the noises he was making. He was agitated, though. He smell was agitated. So, too, was Inquisitor Silus, but his noises were calmer. Eventually, Vraekae held up a hand and the two sat down in their seats.

“I have heard enough of both arguments. It is my ruling that this trial will move forward as previously established in the same manner as any other trial. Cobbler’s status as a Demon has no bearing on these proceedings.”

Noise came from the many who were seated in the room. Not all of it was happy noise. Alex and Jadis were pleased, though, so Cobbler assumed that Vraekae’s words were good.

“The court calls the first witness to the stand!” Proctor Crestwood shouted, his voice raised to quiet the noises made by the others. “Cobbler of no surname!”

Clem touched her and she rose from her seat. She followed him to a place that was nearer to Vraekae but had her facing the rest of the room. Cobbler sat in the chair and waited. She would be asked questions, as Vraekae had explained to her. She would answer with the truth. Simple. Easy.

Priest Solvi, a friend who helped teach Cobbler how to speak to others with her hands, also rose from his seat among the others and moved to stand next to her. He smiled and nodded to her but did not otherwise speak.

“Cobbler,” Inquisitor Silus addressed her. “Where were you on the fourteenth of Early-Summer?”

His voice and his expression were stern. He did not seem to like her. He also did not seem to hate her. Inquisitor Silus was like Vraekae, before she became a good friend. Cobbler took that to mean there was a good chance that Silus would listen to her the same as Vraekae had, and that would be a good thing. However, even if he did not, Cobbler had been told to answer his questions.

I do not know.

Solvi repeated what Cobbler had said, speaking her words with his mouth.

Inquisitor Silus looked upset at her words spoken from Solvi’s mouth, but then Inquisitor Jurian stood and asked two more questions.

“Cobbler, do you understand what dates are? What the names of months are?”

No.

Solvi again spoke her words and Inquisitor Silus calmed.

“The day that Karel Houben died. Do you remember that day?”

Yes.

“Where were you?”

Building four. The Demon Room.

There were some noises from the others when her answer was spoken by Solvi. Inquisitor Jurian asked more questions, and Cobbler clarified. She explained that she had been in the room where all the other hatched Demons stayed when they were not separated into other rooms. The others had called it the Demon Room, and Cobbler had no other word for the place. It was the Demon Room.

Inquisitor Silus then asked what she had been doing in the Demon Room. Cobbler thought it was a silly question, but she answered anyway, just as Vraekae had explained she must do. She had been repairing a pair of shoes that belonged to Senta of Red Tree. Senta had given her the shoes to repair. Cobbler had not taken them without permission. Senta wanted her to fix them.

“And what happened to interrupt your repairs?” the Seraphim continued to ask his many questions.

I tasted anger. Fear. Hatred. Blood. I left the Demon Room to find out why I tasted these things.

“What did you find?”

There were others fighting. Fire. Lots of noise.

“What happened then?” Inquisitor Silus spoke in a tone that seemed to press hard against Cobbler.

I saw Gert running from the greenhouse. Grape was in his arms. Five men were chasing them. They attacked Gert and he fell to the ground. They beat him with things in their hands. He was being hurt, but he was protecting Grape with his arms and she was not being hurt.

“And what did you do then?”

I ran to them and I attacked the men who were attacking Gert and Grape.

“How did you attack them?”

I threw myself onto one of them and knocked him to the ground. Then I jumped off of him and onto another and knocked him to the ground. Then one hit me with the wooden thing he had in his hands, and it broke some of my shell. I jumped on him then, but he did not fall to the ground. He was very strong. He used his hands to break more of my shell and my limbs. Then I used my hands to strike him in the face and the neck until he fell to the ground.

“Let it be known that the third man described by Cobbler is identified as Karel Houben,” Inquisitor Jurian called out.

“You struck his face and his neck with your hands,” Inquisitor Silus asked. “Why his face? Why his neck?”

Because they are vulnerable parts of a human’s body.

There was more noise from the others in the large room, but Proctor Crestwood stood and spoke, forcing all to be silent.

“Then what happened, after Karel Houben fell to the ground?”

I saw that the others who were attacking Gert and Grape had been thrown to the ground by others. I went to Gert and Grape and made sure they were both okay. Gert’s arm was broken. I walked with him to Cora, so that she could heal his arm. Then I fixed a torn seam in his boot. When I was done fixing his boot, guards came and took me away to the other place.

“The other place?”

Magistrate Vraekae called it the City Gaol.

“I see,” Inquisitor Silus nodded his head. “And during this time, did you at any point attack anyone other than the three men you state were attacking Gert and Grape?”

No.

“Did you resist your arrest when the guards came for you?”

No.

“When did you realize that you had killed Karel Houben? Was it later, after you were arrested?”

No. I knew as soon as he died.

“How did you know?” Inquisitor Silus looked at her in a way that reminded Cobbler of Vraekae again.

I received a system notification informing me that I had killed him.

Again, there was a great deal of noise from those who sat and watched. Cobbler did not understand why they kept raising their voices when it was clear that Vraekae and Proctor Crestwood did not want them to make noise. It seemed pointless and foolish to her.

“When, precisely, did you receive that notification?”

A short while after he fell to the ground.

“Please, be precise.”

Cobbler wasn’t sure how to be more precise, until she thought of what else had happened in that moment.

While I was checking to make sure Gert and Grape were unharmed.

“So, in other words, the death was almost immediate?”

Yes.

Inquisitor Silus seemed to be satisfied then. He did not ask her any more questions. Inquisitor Jurian asked a few, clarifying things that she had done and things that others around her had done, but then he too seemed to be satisfied, and he also took his seat. Then, with a word from Vraekae, Clem led Cobbler back to the seat she had been sitting on before. When she had settled on the chair, he put a hand on her again and leaned close, whispering next to the side of her head.

“Well done.”

Cobbler felt pleased at the praise. She wasn’t entirely sure why it made her feel good, but Clem’s words did, nonetheless. She liked the feeling, though, and tried to study it, to understand why she felt that way, so that maybe she could feel that way again in the future. It was similar to when she fixed a shoe and made it whole again. Not entirely the same, but similar enough to be frustratingly difficult to understand.

Others were brought up to the same seat she had just occupied and were asked questions. Gert. Lori. Anders. All were friends and allies from Alex and Jadis’ place. Cobbler listened to some of what they said, but most of their words were just repetitions of what Cobbler had described, except from their own perspectives. She did not find their repetition to be interesting, so instead Cobbler focused on the shoes that they were wearing. They were not wearing the shoes that they normally wore around the yard where there was mud and debris, but nice shoes that shone with wax and were obviously well cared for.

Cobbler entertained herself thinking of ways to fix the small issues and damages she saw, and also by imagining new shoes that she might make that were combinations of the ones she had seen. She was thinking about what materials it would take to make a boot that went all the way up to a person’s knee when she tasted anger in the air.

Anger.

Rage.

Fury.

So much fury.

Cobbler was frightened by the taste. She made herself small, as small as she could be, because she did not want to draw the attention of the ones who were so angry. They were all powerful. So powerful. And so angry. If they directed their anger onto her…

There was nothing Cobbler could do but die if Alex and Jadis were angry at her.

But their anger did not seem to be directed at her. When she looked, she saw that they were focused on the man who was on the seat near Vraekae. Cobbler did not know the man’s name, but she knew his face. He was one of the two men she had knocked to the ground but had not been killed. He was much paler than he had been before. Nervous. Sickly. Afraid.

Perhaps he could taste Jadis’ wrath as well?

“And where did you first meet this individual, this Rimantas?”

“In the tavern, the Leaky Bucket.”

“Where, if anywhere, did you ever see him before?”

“Never saw him before that night. Never saw him again since.”

“Yet you testify that he bought you and your companions drinks?”

“Yes sir.”

“How many?”

“Ah, six or maybe seven.”

“Six or seven for the whole group of twelve?”

“Ah, no sir… Six or seven for me, personally.”

“What made you so deserving of this generosity?” Inquisitor Jurian asked, his tone far sharper than Inquisitor Silus. “Did he favor you, specifically?”

“No, sir, he bought all of us the same number of drinks, in rounds.”

“Six or seven drinks, for twelve men? Individually? That would be either seventy-two or eighty-four drinks in total. Do you have any idea how much that would cost?”

“No, sir,” the man said in a miserable voice that Cobbler could practically taste.

“To the best of your recollection, how many drinks did you see him, this Rimantas, drink while he was sitting with you and your companions?”

“Maybe two, sir.”

“Maybe two. You are not certain?”

“I, ah, can’t say as I was paying that much attention to his mug after the first three or four drinks, sir.”

“But you were paying attention to his words, were you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what were his words, exactly, that you say started the conversation? Would you please repeat them?”

“He said,” the man tensed, his eyes drifting first to Cobbler, then to Alex, then quickly away from Jadis. “He said he couldn’t believe that the empire had fallen so low as to let Demons walk around free, like we were all cultists worshipping Death himself. He said we might as well start sucking the Demon Lord’s dick if we were going to be so fucking filthy as to let Demons live with us. Pardon my language, sir.”

“What was the general response from you and your companions?”

“None too happy, sir. We didn’t like the way he was talking about our empire. Wasn’t right to hear talk like that from a rube. We started yelling at him, telling him to worry about his own problem, which was when he started buying us drinks. To soothe us over, he said.”

Cobbler tilted her head to the side. She didn’t understand what she was tasting. The tastes that the others made, those that were not Demons, were not always easy to understand. They were not the same as Demons and did not always produce tastes to show their intent. However, she had been around these others from the moment she had hatched. She understood some of their tastes. Maybe not all, but some of them.

Which was why she did not understand why Inquisitor Jurian tasted so happy. How could he be happy when Alex and Jadis were right behind him, tasting so much of anger and wrath?

“You called this man a ‘rube’ just now, did you not?”

“Yes sir.”

“That is a derogatory term, correct?”

“Yes sir.”

“What does it mean?”

“It, ah, it’s short for Rubaline. It means someone what comes from the Rubaline Dominion, sir.”

Cobbler had no idea what those words meant. But going by the taste in the air, they were words that were very good at making the Demon Lord and her Jadis very, very angry.