“I agree,” she said, giving him another case of whiplash. “Everything you did, you did under threat. Fine. You still did it. We’ve all seen what it meant for Gedda.”

“And you’re supposed to be my lawyer?” he asked. “Tits, why not take me out in the yard and hang me now? There’s a nice tree in the orchard. Branch the right height. Not that I’ve been looking.”

Higata’s expression remained placid as he ranted, faintly aloof, shaming him finally into sullen silence. When he had retreated to his cigarette and returned his gaze to the hearth she went on as if he’d never spoken.

“Now you have to tell them what the consequences meant for you. Nobody likes it when a traitor gains by their actions. But I have done my research. I have read the file the Ospies kept on you; after the CIS was dissolved they declassified many documents. You gained nothing, and lost much more than most of us. So mortify yourself. Show us how you’ve been hurt by what you did. You have suffered horrors, as your sister says, and you will continue to suffer every day you breathe. It is not worth their while to kill you; your life is your punishment.”

“And that’s supposed to convince me?” he said. “To work with you?”

“I didn’t say it was true. If we are lucky, this will play well with the judge and you will get a tough sentence, but not death. We can always appeal. What you put yourself through, in your own heart? That is up to you.”

Cyril flicked ashes into the tray on the side table. “So you want me to get up there and read a litany of every torture I’ve endured since the Ospies caught me running?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “You are thinking far too small. I want you to take the stand and recount how life has utterly crushed you at every turning.”

“No deal,” he said, and ground out the butt of his straight.

Of course, Stephen eavesdropped on the whole thing. Cyril had shown him which upstairs hearths had the best acoustics to overhear conversations carried on below. So after Higata went back to Amberlough—a pressing appointment early the next morning, so sorry she couldn’t stay for dinner, no matter what threat she had almost leveled earlier in the day—Stephen found Cyril smoking at the back gate, staring over the barren fields down toward the hidden village. The sun had mostly gone, and every so often the wind parted the trees in perfect alignment so that the winking lights of the shops and houses shone through.

“Is it true?” asked Stephen, folding his arms on the top rail of the fence.

“Which part?”

“Even if Frye doesn’t win, you’ll go up. And if they charge you, you’re looking at the gallows.”