Chapter 9
Sterling turned, looking down at Julian, his thin lips curving into a tight, merciless smile.
“I did not know,” Sterling continued, his voice hardening, “that Mr. Vance was harboring stolen War Office property in his satchel. Nor did I know that he intended to drag the honor of the realm through the mud to shield his own embezzlement.”
The gallery hummed with righteous murmurs.
Julian looked up at Sterling from the floor. His hands, still clutching the iron-bound casket against his ribs, shook with a violent, terrifying rhythm. His lips trembled, pale and flecked with spit.
“My Lord Sterling...” Julian whispered, loud enough to carry to the first three rows of the jury. “You... you promised...”
“I promised justice, Mr. Vance,” Sterling said coldly, turning back to the bench. “And justice this court shall have. If the quartermaster’s ledger has indeed survived the carnage of Blackwater Marsh, the court must not rely on the desperate claims of a panicked defendant or the ravings of an unhinged soldier. As an advisor to the Western Command, I am intimately familiar with the official registry marks of that division.”
Sterling placed his gloved hand over his heart, bowing to Justice Vance.
“I offer my sworn testimony to this court, My Lords. Hand me the casket. Let me examine the wax seal upon its clasp before this tribunal. I shall clarify once and for all who authorized those disbursements—and whose seal was used to consign two hundred brave men to their graves.”
The gallery erupted into furious applause, quickly silenced by a single raised hand from the Chief Magistrate.
“Lord Sterling,” Vance breathed, his old eyes shining with relief. “The bench is profoundly grateful for your public spirit. A peer’s word is the bedrock of English justice.” Vance looked down at Julian, his voice dropping into an icy growl. “Mr. Vance. Surrender the evidence casket to His Lordship. Now.”
Arthur thrashed against the bailiffs’ grip in the witness box, his chains screaming against the iron rings. “Don’t touch it, Sterling! You bloody spider! Don't let him touch it!”
A bailiff’s truncheon cracked down hard across Arthur’s shoulder, forcing the scout to his knees against the wood with a muffled grunt of pain.
Julian slowly rose from the flagstones.
He held the dark oak box in his hands, his knuckles chalk-white against the tarnished iron bands. He took one step toward Lord Sterling. Then another. He looked small, broken, a condemned clerk walking toward the block, his eyes wide and dilated with sheer, naked terror.
He stopped two feet from the aristocrat.
Sterling smiled down at him—a private, triumphant baring of teeth that only Julian could see. It was the smile of a master who had maneuvered both his unruly hounds straight into the slaughterhouse, using their own desperation to seal the door behind them.
Julian looked up into Sterling’s pale, icy eyes, his voice dropping to a fragile, trembling whisper that cut through the silence of the court:
“Will you swear upon your honor and blood that this seal is mine alone, My Lord?”
Sterling’s smile broadened as he reached out his gloved hands to take the stand.
