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“Very well, then, Owen Palmer,” the head wizard said, “you stand accused of conspiracy to commit magical crimes, namely that you have engineered a variety of incidents around New York City in which magic has been used to cause trouble and create a state of fear among the magical population so that you can then come to the rescue and make yourself appear to be a hero. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty.”Advertisement

“On what grounds?”

“I thought that the way this court worked was that you had to have the grounds to charge me. We’ve had that in our law longer than it’s been the law of the land. After all, we’ve suffered too much from witch hunts to conduct them on ourselves. I don’t need grounds for anything. You have to present the grounds for the charges, and I must admit that I’m extremely curious to hear what you’ve come up with.” Owen sounded almost cocky, like Idris on one of his more annoying days. Merlin was fighting so hard not to smile that he ended up looking very stern indeed.

“That is true, Rudolph,” a woman at the opposite end of the table from Merlin said. “Surely you had evidence before you had Mr. Palmer arrested.”

“But we can ask you questions as part of these proceedings,” Rudolph said.

From the way Owen’s shoulders shifted, I got the feeling that he would have crossed his arms in front of his chest if his wrists hadn’t been bound behind his back. He did lean his weight onto one leg and cross the other in front of him, in a fair approximation of the way he might casually lean against a wall. “Then ask me a question.”

Ethan made a strangled noise, and I couldn’t help but glance at him. He looked like he had to bite his tongue to keep from shouting, “Objection!” My experience with the ordinary legal system was limited to jury duty a couple of times back home and watching the occasional episode of Law and Order, but even I could tell that there was something funny about the way this hearing was going. The low rumble of murmurs from the audience verified this.

Rudolph let the crowd mutter for quite some time, possibly because he couldn’t think of a good question to ask. After a couple of minutes, he banged his staff on the floor to demand silence. Merlin caught Owen’s eyes and held them, then leaned forward and said, “I have a question for Mr. Palmer.”

“Yes, Mr. Mervyn,” Rudolph said, sounding rather relieved.

“Mr. Palmer, have you ever used unauthorized magic?” Merlin asked.

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I was fairly certain that this was part of whatever Merlin had planned, and that Owen was somehow in on it. Owen’s head snapped toward Merlin like he was shocked, but his posture looked far too relaxed. Someone whose mentor was questioning him about a crime should have been a lot more tense. He should have looked like he was barely holding himself back from jumping at the man.

Gloria, on the other hand, went tense enough for both of them. “What does he mean by this?” she whispered, and she moved as though she was about to go after Merlin, herself.

“I think Merlin’s up to something, and Owen knows what it is,” I said. “Look at him.” She stared at Owen’s back for a moment, then turned ever so slightly back toward me, one eyebrow quirked upward.

Ramsay’s reaction was even more interesting. He actually twitched, probably from being torn between impulses. If Merlin went on the attack against Owen, it could undermine his attempt to make Merlin look like he was out of it, but if Ramsay came to Owen’s defense, that ruined his chances of setting Owen up to take the fall for killing Merlin.

“Could you be more specific?” Owen asked.

“You have used questionable magic in my presence. I don’t know that it is strictly illegal, but I suspect that is because no one believed it could be done, and therefore it hasn’t been included in the magical code of conduct. You have interfered with time itself.”

That set the crowd going again. If this was part of a plan, I thought they were heading into risky territory, since Owen had interfered with time, and I knew it made Merlin intensely uncomfortable when he did it.

“Nonsense! No one can do that,” the youngest-looking member of the Council said.

“I have seen him do it,” Merlin insisted.

Rudolph glared down at Owen. “Can you do it?”

Owen stared back up at him, and he must have given a glare worthy of Gloria, since Rudolph pressed himself against the back of his chair, like he was moving as far as he could from Owen without getting up and fleeing. “You mean you can’t?” Owen asked.

“Of course I can’t! It’s impossible.” Rudolph addressed the other wizards on the Council. “Can any of you?” pqdm.com