Remp told him. Told him everything. From how he had coerced people who owed him back rent into signing their children over to him as indentured labor, to discovering that people paid a fraction for the labor of a child of what they would have for the labor of an adult, to hitting on the notion of setting up a theft ring as soon as the Fair arrived in Haven. He described how he had thought about petty theft but realized pickpocketing was going to be much more profitable after consulting with an actual cutpurse—Shackle, the man he’d left in charge of the operation. He related how he had the man literally teach the children what to do, and when the first day of the Fair arrived, set them to work. Abi felt a little sick when she thought of those children. Now they knew how to steal, how easy it was. How many of them would go right back to stealing on their own once the trial was over? And they’d be caught, of course. When caught by the Watch, child thieves were generally sent away to a correctional school to learn a trade and pay back the people they had stolen from. But they generally weren’t caught by the Watch. They were generally caught by the people they were stealing from, and . . . that seldom ended well.

By the time Remp was done, sweat poured down his face and neck from the effort of trying to resist the spell. Abi wondered if the judge was going to have him describe the methods by which he’d frightened, bullied, or beaten the children into obeying—

But the judge did not, and after a moment of looking over the jury, Abi realized why. Other than the couple of Handmaidens in the jury box, these were not people who would be moved by Remp’s treatment of a few children whose parents were clearly no good, since they’d willingly signed over their own offspring to clear their back rent. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” they would tell themselves sagely. And it was entirely possible that Remp’s defense would be to muddle everything by pointing out that the children were probably thieves before Remp ever got to them.

So the judge was avoiding all that. Right now he was sticking to the facts; it was just incidental that those facts were going to outrage everyone on the jury.

“Do you have anything to say in your defense that relates to what you have told us already?” the judge asked, when the flow of words slowed to a trickle, and then stopped.

Is he going to—? she wondered.

But no. The Truth Spell still compelled him. He knew very well the children hadn’t been thieves before he had them taught to be. “No,” he said, between gritted teeth.