The Trial of Callan Sorrel – Part 2: Stand Down

The vigil was the hardest and best thing he had ever done. He knelt in silence at the tower gate, and the night passed over him in slow stages. The first hour, his mind raced. The second, his knees ached. By the third, the aching had become a quiet fact, and the racing had dropped away, and he could hear the sea in the distance and an owl calling from the keep.

She came at every half hour with a lantern, in the long black coat of the Tribunal, and stood in front of him without a word, looking. Then, in her level court voice: "Does the sergeant wish to continue?"

"I do, Your Excellency."

"Say it plainly."

"I do. Thank you."

"The Court does not require thanks." But the lantern light caught something in her face.

At midnight she brought a cup of water and held it to his lips with her own hand, and at one she laid the Treasury tray at his knee, and he counted out five hundred wooden crowns, one at a time, aloud, in the lantern light, with a slow burning relief. At two, she sat on the lowest step of the staircase and said nothing for a full hour, watching him, and he understood that she had set herself her own vigil.

Near dawn the sky paled to grey over the battlements. She stood and crossed the flags and stopped in front of him.

"Sergeant Sorrel. The Court has considered your conduct this night."

"Your Excellency."

"You kept your post."

He looked up. She was smiling.

"Stand down," said Ingrid, softly.

It was the word, and she spoke it for them both. The coat came off. She dropped to her knees on the stone in front of him, in her ordinary clothes, and put her arms round him, and he leaned his forehead against her shoulder and shook.

"How are you?"

"Relieved," said Callan, with a cracked laugh. "In every sense."

"You were magnificent." She helped him up, rubbed his knees and wrapped a blanket round him. "The best I have ever sentenced."

"Is the oath restored?"

"The oath was never broken." She kissed his forehead. "It was only tested. Come, there is a flask of coffee in the guardroom."

They sat on the bunk in the grey light, sharing it, while the gulls woke on the roof.

"Next trial?" said Callan.

"The charge is vanity," said Ingrid. "I have a very long indictment."

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