He cleared his throat, more for attention than anything else, though he was aware from the quality of the silence that he had the attention of the room. He really did know audiences. This was just another one of those, he told himself again.

He said, “It is always pleasing to hear a learned advocate make reference to the Ancients. It shows that such knowledge is not dead in these times. But, as to Aristimedes, please, please let us remember that he also had an army, and allies, and could have caused a civil war for control of Rhodias.”

He paused. Let no one here miss the point of this for today, he thought, as to the Duke de Barratin and his threatened forces. He even turned and looked back at Denis Cassin, for greater emphasis. The advocate’s face had accomplished a shade one might have called white-green.

Thierry turned back. He said, “He did not summon an army, Aristimedes, nor did he flee the city. He yielded his person and his sword, submitted himself to justice, admitted the nature of the crime he’d done, the murder, and vowed by the gods the Ancients worshipped to accept the verdict of Rhodias and the judgment of history. He was tried, convicted, and executed.”

He paused. “This is why we honour him! When the past is twisted, as it has just been, before the noble people of this court and pious servants of Jad, when it is falsely presented, as it has been today by a man I once respected, then the judgment of those who come after—that is us, here, today!—cannot be fairly rendered. Whether concerning the Ancients, or as to a savage killing in our own time, with a noble lord dismembered in the street, his head almost severed by a coward’s axe.”

He was used to improvising before listeners. It was a good thing, he supposed.

He had a thought, and was speaking it before he could weigh it. He did that all the time, but this was not a tavern poem, or a conversation with a girl in her bed.

He said, “Your grace, what happened, what brings us here today, was not a regrettable incident within a family, was not…something unfortunate. It was murder. Brutal and ambitious. Forgive me for reminding everyone here, but the Duke de Montereau was butchered in the street by a cousin who hated him, and wanted his powers. And so, too, were two of the victim’s aides. Innocent men, doing only their duty. Let us, today, not forget them, either, but commend them to Jad’s light and our justice.”

They would likely be forgotten, Thierry thought. But he himself was far more akin to those two than to anyone he was addressing. Let the tavern poet, at the very least, mention them.