Bernadette smiled graciously at the crowd, gave a small nod, and snapped her fingers. She and Danitz vanished into thin air, leaving behind nothing but the mess and the blood.
A few minutes later, the city's constables came rushing to the square. They'd gotten word almost from the start — but two streets away from the square, they'd mysteriously gotten themselves turned around, going in circles no matter which way they tried. By the time they finally found their way there, it was all over.
Danitz blinked and found himself standing more than a dozen streets from the square.
"Blazing Danitz."
He ducked his head with a smile that was equal parts amiable and craven. "Please, just call me Danitz. Little Dan, Little Nitz — whichever works for you."
His nerves had been running at full throttle the entire time. He'd been half-convinced she was going to put him on trial too — and for good reason. Setting aside the crimes she'd just prosecuted, he himself was guilty of everything except one of them.
The Golden Dream was an adventurer's crew at heart, but after long stretches without a find, they weren't above raiding the occasional merchant or passenger vessel. And killing... well, Danitz had a personal rule about not harming the innocent. But he was a pirate. The body count was not zero.
Vincent inside Bernadette couldn't quite suppress his amusement. Little Dan, Little Nitz. This woman has quite the flair for embarrassment.
Bernadette tapped a finger, and a quill and a sheepskin notebook appeared in Danitz's hands. "Write down every pirate you know who has a bounty on their head."
"Sure thing."
He sat down cross-legged right there and got to writing. Ten minutes later, he had a list that went on for nearly a hundred names.
"Next, I need you to narrow down the location of as many of these people as you can."
"Ah?"
Danitz stared at the list. He wished he'd written fewer names — especially the two dozen or so who were personal enemies of his or the Golden Dream.
He ran his finger down the paper and stopped. "Does it have to be Bayam? Or anywhere I know for certain?"
"Anywhere you know with certainty."
"...I understand."
He scanned the list again, then stopped on a name and tapped it. "This one's in Bayam right now. I saw him just yesterday!"
Practically walked right into each other — nearly got me killed.
"Blood-Thorn" Huntley. Sixth Captain of the Admiral of Blood's fleet. Let's see how keen our friend here is to pick a fight with the Admiral of Blood's people, Danitz thought to himself.
Bernadette gave him an amused look, and Danitz felt as though every petty thought in his head had been read like large print. He dropped the scheming expression and settled for a dumb, guileless grin.
"Lead the way."
"On it!" Danitz straightened up with genuine enthusiasm.
Huntley, your Uncle Danitz is coming to collect.
While Danitz was busy imagining his moment of glory, Bernadette and Vincent were having their own quiet exchange.
"Based on what we've seen," Bernadette said, "the Prosecutor's acting can function outside a courtroom, and the formal procedure doesn't need to be followed to the letter. But digestion is slower when those elements are stripped away."
Vincent mused, "The open sea never runs out of notorious pirates. But doing this sort of public trial too often and too recklessly will absolutely draw the attention of high-sequence powerhouses from the Church or the authorities, won't it?"
"Which is why," Bernadette replied, "the targets going forward will all be Beyonder pirates with an established reputation. That alone should accelerate the digestion considerably."
Vincent laughed. "See? We've gone all the way around and landed back at what I said from the beginning — if you want to digest the potion quickly, you still need to go out and arrest Beyonders!"
"It's not the same." Bernadette's tone was lightly reproachful. "Your idea was just exploiting loopholes. What we have now is a verified conclusion drawn from systematic testing."
"Fair enough, fair enough." Vincent turned thoughtful. "Still no real clarity on the acting method for the Prosecutor pathway, though. A lawyer exploits the rules; a judge enforces them. So what does a prosecutor do? It can't be as simple as 'uphold justice.'"
She was quiet for a moment. "Given our earlier theory — the Broker pathway is the grey space between the Black Emperor and the Justiciar. Black is exploiting the rules; white is defending them. Grey is somewhere in between."
"A Prosecutor doesn't just wield the rules to build a case against a criminal — we can see that from how evidence-gathering and formal prosecution both contribute to digestion. But they also have to oversee the rules — not enforce them, exactly, but monitor them — to ensure they're actually being upheld throughout the trial."
"Wielding the rules as a weapon. Overseeing the rules as a standard. That might be the Prosecutor's core acting method."
Vincent murmured quietly to himself: Wielding rules, overseeing rules...
He felt a pulse of resonance from his spirituality, subtle but unmistakable. That meant Bernadette's theory was almost certainly right.
Remarkable. I was still fumbling in the dark, and she'd already looked past the surface and found the shape underneath.
Having a wise companion is worth its weight in gold.
The moment the thought crossed his mind, Bernadette's cool voice arrived: "You just thought something very rude, didn't you."
"..."
Since when is her intuition this sharp?!
The colonial district of Bayam — the "upper city" where Loen settlers and expatriates lived — was an enclave of grand villas. Huntley lodged here whenever he came to Bayam. Not in his own property, but in one of the Rose School of Thought's holdings.
"BANG."
The enormous crash of a kicked-in door shattered the tranquillity of the wealthy neighbourhood.
"Huntley! Your Uncle Danitz is here to collect his due!"
Danitz swept his arm out, sending a volley of fire crows streaking into the villa. BANG. BANG. Mid-flight, the crows were snuffed out. A man in a local earth-brown tunic and a yellowish-brown straw hat, face pale as bleached bone, stepped through the door.
The moment his eyes landed on Danitz, he grinned slowly. "Danitz. You slipped away yesterday. Decided to come deliver yourself today?"
He said the words casually, but his eyes swept the surroundings in a quick, careful sweep. Danitz wasn't an idiot — showing up like this meant he had an ace up his sleeve.
Good thing I'm not the only one here today.
"Ha! You're the one about to be collected!"
Danitz laughed loudly and opened fire with his revolver — left hand snapping off shots, right hand lobbing fireballs and launching more fire crows. Internally, he was starting to quietly panic. Where did that lady go? She was right behind me the whole way here, and now—?
Huntley ducked and weaved, throwing out a spread of green leaves, flowers, and thorns in response. In an instant the petals and vines had grown to enormous size, merging together and sweeping toward Danitz like a living wall.
"Damn it! That trick again!"
At the same sequence, Huntley shouldn't have been a match for him in a straight fight — but that bizarre artefact of his made it a completely different equation.
Danitz had no choice but to run.
Then Huntley scattered a handful of powder into the air. It dissolved into a spreading frost and biting chill that crystallised around Danitz's legs, slowing him to a crawl. The vines were closing in—
A scream rang out. Huntley was snatched into the air by vines, dangling helplessly. Bernadette stepped out of the villa behind him, and in her wake, two more people came out bound and unconscious — dragged along by trailing tendrils.
Danitz immediately recognised both of them: crew members from the Admiral of Blood's fleet. Steel Maveti and the one they called "Composed" Scolere.
So she hadn't disappeared — she'd quietly gone around the back and taken out his reinforcements without a sound.
"Go find a carriage."
Bernadette glanced at Danitz. "The evidence-gathering is your job now."
"Understood!"
He was honestly a little nervous. Taking the Admiral of Blood's crew to a public trial was... an interesting life choice. The Admiral of Blood was widely understood to be, by a significant margin, the most dangerous of all the Pirate Admirals. And she had powerful backers to match.
Then again, Danitz thought, straightening his back, if word ever gets out that Uncle Danitz personally helped send Admiral of Blood's people to trial... who at sea would dare look down on me?
A man could dream.
To be continued…
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