Chapter 206 The Breakfast
POV: Mordaunt | Parliament chambers, breakfast session
The breakfast before a trial is a Parliamentary tradition that dates back four hundred years and which has the specific quality of all very old traditions, which is that it continues because it has always continued, the original purpose having been absorbed into ritual so thoroughly that the ritual is now the purpose.
In its original form the breakfast was practical: ancient vampires who had traveled to Parliament from distant territories required feeding and rest before conducting business. The feeding was discreet, the thralls trained and well-compensated, the blood delivered at the correct temperature in the correct vessels. The rest was less literal for vampires than it would be for humans but the principle was the same, the need for something that looked like ordinary life before conducting something that was not.
Today the breakfast is theater. Twelve Ancients in a room with food most of them do not eat, performing civility over a decision that has already been made, because the vote happened last night in informal conversations rather than formal session and the formal session is the paperwork.
I sit at my position and I watch the room with the attention I always bring to rooms like this, which is the attention of someone reading multiple conversations simultaneously. Alteroni at the far end is not eating and has not spoken since he arrived, which is information. Two of the more conservative members are speaking quietly with the satisfaction of people whose position has been formalized, which is also information. Isolde is looking at the table with the specific quality of someone who would prefer not to be here and who has no alternative to being here, which is information of a different kind.
When the conversation turns to Valentina, as it does within twenty minutes because everyone in the room has been thinking about it since last night, it turns in the way I expected it to turn, which is with the formal positions already established and the argument being conducted for the record rather than for persuasion.
"Her crimes are documented," I say, when the charges have been read and Alteroni has made his first objection. "Parliament hunters, killed during escapes. The names are in the record. The dates are in the record. The evidence is in the record."
"Survival," Alteroni says. "They were hunting her."
"They were executing a legal summons," I say. "The distinction matters. The law does not permit killing enforcement officers because one disagrees with enforcement."
"These aren't crimes," Alteroni says, and he says it with the specific controlled intensity of someone who is doing the work of remaining controlled. "They're survival. The system that sent those hunters was wrong. You cannot prosecute someone for responding to a wrong system."
"We can," I say. "That is precisely what law permits and requires. The alternative is every individual deciding which laws they follow based on personal assessment of the system's validity. That is not law. That is chaos."
The argument continues. It has the quality of an argument that both parties know will not change the outcome, which means it is being conducted for reasons other than persuasion, which means Alteroni is building a record, which means he is planning to use this record later, which means I need the vote to be large enough that the record cannot be used effectively.
The vote is eight to four. The four are Alteroni's bloc, which is the same bloc that has been Alteroni's bloc for two years and which represents the reform wing of Parliament and which is not large enough to stop anything on its own.
Eight to four. Execution to proceed.
In the corridor after, Isolde stops beside Alteroni for long enough to say something quietly, something that I catch only in fragments from where I am standing, but which contains the phrase leverage on me too and I'm sorry, which is confirmation that Isolde's vote was not a vote so much as an absence of alternatives, which is exactly the outcome the leverage was intended to produce.
Eight to four. The trial begins at noon.