Ferris and Caruthers shared a quick look. Keller stared up at the ceiling tiles.

“We don’t know that, and I can’t believe—”

“I mean, what can you believe? His tears on the witness stand? Who are they for? Peggy? Himself?” Anne flipped her notebook closed. “You know what we do know? That Peggy was strangled so hard it broke her vocal cords. She will never speak to her children again. That I know.”

Helen Klais, number eleven, a hummingbird of a North Dallas housewife, spoke for the first time. “Are we allowed to vote? I think we should see where we are as a group.”

They took a ballot on the first count of attempted manslaughter. Seven guilty, five against conviction. Split, but the women had heard what Anne had to say.

The old auditorium at Jesuit was a sunken canyon of moldy red seats cascading down to a long gray concrete proscenium. Below the truss of lights and before the immediate tumble into the shadows of the audience, Mr. Oglesby had assembled six tables and chairs in a U.

That Friday afternoon, the sophomores acting as heads of state in the Game sat at their assigned places. Dan Malone was perched on the far side of stage left, catty-corner to the Tribunal of Judges—Mr. Oglesby; Mr. Taliaferro, the Jesuit debate coach; and Father Dallanach, the principal. In the void of red seats behind them sat the Vox Populi, the rest of the honors English class. Their vote counted double, as a check and balance against the tribunal, unless, as Oglesby warned them, they acted like idiots and he had to overrule them.

The Game—and the claim to the all-powerful Blaireric—was down to the two final presentations with no clear favorite. Representing the monarchy, Rick had used his thespian skills shrewdly, pretending to be a bonny prince who promised that House Dowlearn would, by royal decree, offer shares in the Blaireric Trading Company to all in his realm. But when it came to why Prince Richard needed divine right to do this, Camelot didn’t quite carry the day.

Archbishop Rob McGhee, representing the theocratic state of Salem, gave a C. S. Lewis–inspired homily on the intentions of Our Creator, the voice and spark of human conscience, and declared that the moral good required the Blaireric be treated as a blessing. Even Father Dallanach, who may have nipped into the Cutty Sark at lunchtime, looked lost in these spiritual exercises.