Free Dark Haven by Gail Z. Martin

courtroom, where the crowd watched in awestruck silence.
    Four days of testimony, Tris thought wearily. Few of the defendants remained as defiant as Kalay once their victims stood in front of them. None of the men presented for trial had been exonerated. The testimony of their victims provided overwhelming evidence. Tris was emotionally and physically exhausted; serving as the conduit of power that made the dead visible and audible to the jury and onlookers. Few realized that while the rest of the assemblage heard the ghosts’ tales, Tris saw the images of their memories, felt their terror and pain, fresh and horrifying. He had found no way to blunt the impact of those images, nor did he fully desire to do so. It would be so easy not to feel. But if I stop feeling, if the decision of life or death loses 61

    its pain, then I’m no better than they are. Then it’s nothing but a bureaucratic process, and it demeans the price these people paid.
    The executions would come later. Tris dreaded them. As in combat, he could not help but see the spirits of the condemned men twist free of their bodies, to hear their final anguished pleas for the mercy that they did not grant to others. That would be the final judgment—
    whether to ease their passage to whichever Aspect came to choose them.
    Ten more defendants were brought for trial as the day wore on. In a few cases, living wit‐ nesses provided the damning evidence. More often, ghosts were the only ones left to tell the tale, and the stories were so horrific that some in the gallery fled the room sobbing or retching. Two of the accused men threw themselves on the king’s mercy, and Tris sentenced them to hard labor repairing what was destroyed. Most were like Kalay, still certain that their actions were justified.
    As the afternoon shadows stretched long across the courtroom, soldiers brought the last two defendants for judgment. Tris recognized the men from Bricen’s guard, although he could not have put a name to their faces without the warrants handed to him by the bailiff. Tris glanced down through the charges and felt his blood run cold. The two men, Cerys and Meurig, were charged with the murders of Queen Serae and Tris’s sister Kait.
    The crowd murmured as the charges were read, and Tris knew that all eyes were on him. He hoped his face was impassive. In a few nights, it would be a year since his family was murdered on Jared’s orders, and while he had made their passage to the Lady, the loss was still fresh.
    “Cerys of Alredon and Meurig of King’s City. How do you plead?”
    The two men stood to face the king. “Your Majesty,” Cerys stammered. “You’ve got the wrong men. We weren’t near the castle that night, we swear. You’ve got to believe us.” He was a short, wiry man just a few years older than Tris. Meurig, who stood beside him, was a large man, ox-62

    like with massive arms and a thick neck. Soterius and Harrtuck had told Tris privately that both men were among the troops who favored Jared’s aggressive talk.
    “I’ve made the passage for Queen Serae and Princess Kait,” Tris said, wishing that the formal language could distance him from the loss that still ached inside. It didn’t. “They can’t testify. But two guards also died that night defending my mother and my sister. Their spirits accuse you.”
    Tris was exhausted, both from the emotion of the day’s trial and from the energy it took to call ghostly witnesses. His head throbbed, and his neck and shoulders ached. He stretched out his power once more, and two ghosts became visible. These men Tris knew well. Ifan and Nye had been his mother’s personal guards for many years. The guards were men of unimpeachable integrity and unquestionable devotion to Serae and Kait. For that, they had been among the first to die in Jared’s coup.
    Ifan’s ghost clearly showed the slit across his throat that had taken his life. Nye’s wraith still showed the gash on his temple from where his