The Lamia Hunt

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Trial

09:54 16/09/2015

Of course, Theodore wanted to be there for the hearing. Well, he didn't really want to, but he felt he had to; Ling was his friend, and he wanted - or perhaps needed - to support her during the procedure. Yes, his support wouldn't have any effect on the verdict - nothing would - but he needed to go there, to see her... And he was going to attend, because there was nothing that stood in his way, aside from his own objections.
However, those objections were stronger than he liked to admit. Though he wished he could side with her, and that he could believe her innocent, this was - as he knew - an impossibility, and yet even to consider her guilty... No matter what he thought, something sat uneasily with him about it, and so he was half of a mind not to attend the hearing at all, but he knew that, no matter his doubts, he was going to. It wasn't as if he had any other choice.
That said, just because he'd decided didn't mean that he was going to act on his decision until the last possible moment. He would attend the hearing, but he wouldn't leave his room to get there until he was on the brink of arriving too late, and so now had some time to kill by pacing nervously up and down the narrow bedchamber, all the while thoughts flickering in the recesses of his mind.
Thoughts about Ling. 
There was no denying that, from a purely technical point of view, she had broken regulation. In fact, she hadn't just broken it - she'd ripped it to shreds, and torn it down for all the world to see. That was a fact. It couldn't be disputed, and it couldn't be denied, and every single member of the Praedatori Lamiarum was aware of the penalty.
If the hearing was just, there was only one outcome for Ling Lu, Lamia hunter: death.
But Theodore wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about the breach itself - a breach for which he was to lose his only remaining friend - and he was puzzled. 
What exactly it was that had happened, he wasn't entirely sure, but he knew enough for it to confuse him; he knew that, just after Adeline's death - or rather, the death of the creature she had become - and Ling had been posted to Manchester, with instructions to slay a Fierus. In this, there was nothing out of the ordinary; yes, it wasn't the simplest task in the world, but this was Ling. Ling didn't do simple.
But then things got messy. Theodore hadn't heard what happened from Ling herself; after her return, she'd been confined, kept to herself in a cell fit only for the undead, and so he'd been left to pick up what little he knew from the dregs of others' knowledge, and now had before him an image which, though tattered, provided him with enough information to question whether it was real at all. 
Certainly, it didn't seem it; to do what she'd done... She must have known she couldn't get away with it - nobody could - but she'd gone and done it anyway. She'd known the consequences - she must have known the consequences - and yet she'd done the one thing all Praedatori had been trained never to do since they entered the society: she had attracted attention. Lots of attention. 
But then, nobody wouldn't attract attention when they dismembered a teenager on the roof of a listed building, so it wasn't as if it was unexpected - for that was what she'd done. In broad daylight, she'd chased the Fierus through the streets, weapons drawn, and, in a final battle atop the thatched roof of some building Theodore neither knew of nor cared about, had slain it, and then proceeded to hack its body into several (different accounts varied on exactly how many) pieces, each of which she threw down to the ground as she removed it.
Or that was what he'd heard, at least. He didn't quite know whether he believed it. He definitely should have, by all logical assessment, but then it seemed in itself so illogical that any rational thinking was made impossible by the sheer strangeness of what Ling had done - if she'd done it at all.
Theodore shook his head, attempting to drive the thought entirely from his mind - he had nothing new to think about it, and it was giving him a headache.
"You'll ask her when you see her," he whispered to himself, standing for a moment in the corner of his room, and then proceeding to pace anxiously to the other end and then repeat the process. "You'll ask her. You'll ask her and she'll tell the truth."
But then, he wasn't sure if the truth was something he wanted to hear, if the truth was what he knew it had to be. There was no way she was innocent; there were enough eyewitness accounts to convict her beyond certainty, and there was no way she could have done it through anything other than her own will. Yet that made no sense; it couldn't be her fault, or not entirely hers... 
But then, no matter what, she'd done it, and she was the one they would have to blame.

His reverie was interrupted by the peal of a bell, or what amounted to it, anyway; an electric clang in vague semblance of the original sound of the now abandoned centrepiece of the steeple above Principia's ceremonial chapel. Never before, however, had Theodore felt such a chill in hearing it as he did now; never before had the sound even bothered him in the least, but now that he heard its significance - its significance to him, and more importantly, to Ling - it seemed like the worst sound in all existence, more hateful than any thought that had flown through his head, or than any Lamia he had ever fought.
The bell marked the hearing, and the hearing marked the end. The end of Ling. The end of his friend - his only friend, now that Adeline was dead for good. It would be easier not to go, to pretend this was all a fantasy, and that she'd be fine. It would be easier, but it would be cowardly - more cowardly than he could bear, he thought. But then, no matter what he did, it wasn't going to help. Her fate wasn't in his hands, whether he wanted it to be or not; all he could do was watch as it unfolded.
But then, he thought, better to watch than to worry.
This in his mind, he left the room in a heavy, slow step, and let the door swing shut behind him.