The attendance for Taumus Lahmer’s Blood Trial filled The Court and snaked down the street all the way to the Monastery of Law. Those too late to The Court settled for watching the parade of the monks and their monster. Nobody had ever heard of someone surviving three Blood Trials and everybody in the city knew the name Lahmer. The trial was going to be the event of the year.

            Empty Eyes spent the previous night in his room, agonizing over his moral crisis. The Law was The Law and it only allowed one sentence. If Lily’s father was guilty, he would be expected to cut the throat of his only friend in front of the entire city. He had killed children before. He had killed entire families before but he had never killed a friend. The Adjudicator made no progress and crashed onto his bed stuck on a singular thought: “Father Wisen called me a ‘Servant of Justice’ but I think only a monster could kill their friend. What am I going to do?”

            “Empty Eyes again!” the crowd noted with surprise as the gates of the Monastery opened and spewed forth the armored devil. Empty Eyes’ march to the square felt like being pushed closer and closer to the edge of a cliff. The bailiffs’ spears rattled as the procession moved and reminded him that leaping off the precipice was his only option. The Head Clerk had insisted on seeing the case through and carried the Blade of Law in its ornamental case between Empty Eyes and the detachment of bailiffs.

            All of Iratari showed up to line the path to The Court and yet the city was quiet enough to hear the wind flapping in shop awnings and whistling through alleyways. Empty Eyes’ head was pounding. The voices within had banded together and were banging on the walls of his skull. His teachings at the abbey were entirely secular and so Empty Eyes knew no god but as he walked into The Court, he prayed to anyone who would listen. “Let him be not guilty. Please. I don’t want to be a monster.”

            No answer came from within or above and so he pushed forward, onto the stage where a little girl and her dad awaited his judgment.

********

            Inrich Lazzet wore a tight fitting, black shirt without buttons and sat alone. Lahmer had dressed himself and his daughter in colors more suitable for Summer Festival. The impropriety of fashion meant to declare: this farce will not be my funeral.

            The Adjudicator ascended the stage and Lily looked at him with tearful eyes threatening to spill over at any moment. Until then, he would have sworn that she was incapable of fear. She had never shown him anything other than unending exuberance. For her part, Lily would have sworn that Empty Eyes was incapable of being the horror she was taught about his kind; But as she watched death approach disguised as her friend from the park, she considered for the first time that maybe she didn’t know everything about the world after all.

            The bailiffs flanked Empty Eyes and pointed their weapons at the stage. Head Clerk Wisen opened the box, careful not to touch the talisman within, and presented the blade to his Adjudicator who removed it and stood behind Taumus Lahmer. Georgio Wisen IV smiled at Lahmer then faced the crowd and remembered how good an audience felt.

            “I should do this more often,” he promised before reading from the warrant in his hands.

            “On this twenty-seventh day of the fifth moon in year 47 of the Abandoned Throne, the Monastery of Law has sanctioned a Trial of Blood to commence. The Monastery of Law, having been petitioned by the plaintiff Inrich Lazzet, a land owning citizen of Iratari,” the Head Clerk ignored Lahmer when he interrupted with a loud Ha!, “has agreed to investigate charges of Intentional Murder filed against the defendant, Taumus Lahmer. Is the defendant’s family all present and accounted for?”

            “Get on with this sham!” Lahmer answered.

            “Is the plaintiff’s family all present and accounted for?”

            “I am here,” Lazzet answered.

            “Do all parties understand and agree to the terms set forth by the Monastery of Law? Do all families agree to accept the honorable Adjudicator’s justice?”

            “I do,” said Lazzet

            Lahmer was busy whispering to Lily, making promises of fun and sweets to come as soon as he settled this nasty business. The Head Clerk coughed to say “Well?” and Lahmer’s temper overpowered his sense.

            “Yes, I agree!” Lahmer bellowed. “I agree to show your crooked order of hypocrites and my fellow citizens once again that try as you might, you will never make a liar out of the Most Honest—“

            Lahmer did not finish. For a foolish moment, the trader forgot about the monster to his rear and tried to approach Head Clerk Wisen during his tirade. The instant the man’s buttocks lifted from his stool, Empty Eyes forced the defendant back onto his seat with quickness shocking for a creature his size. In Lahmer’s world, a great Watchtower tree had come crashing down on his shoulder. He made a noise like a man caught unaware with a gut punch as his collarbone shifted unnaturally. Lily screamed. Head Clerk Wisen watched the glorious moment unfold and basked in his works.

            “My child, you may proceed,” the Head Clerk said with affection.

            The Adjudicator pulled down on the collar of Lahmer’s shirt, jostling his freshly broken clavicle. Lahmer saw spots. The Adjudicator picked a target below two scars and drew the Blade of Law across the defendant’s flesh. Empty Eyes took a trembling breath and muttered to himself before he sliced into his own arm.

            The Head Clerk was the only soul in attendance to notice his Adjudicator’s hesitation. If he had known that during that pause, Empty Eyes had begged any available deity one final time for help, the old monk might have averted the disaster that would be talked about in Iratari for years to come.

********

            The magic burned through Empty Eyes’ bloodstream until it slammed into his brain. The impact of absorbing an entire lifetime of thoughts and emotions in an instant felt like having your head crushed beneath a rockslide. Any normal person would break immediately; All Adjudicators broke eventually. Empty Eyes held on and endured until the onslaught subsided and the transcription of every memory Taumus Lahmer possessed was complete.

            Sifting through memories to determine innocence could be a challenging task for Adjudicators. Proving the absence of a crime required casting a wider net to confirm that the infraction never occurred. However, when the defendant was guilty, the task was much simpler. The defendant’s mind would go through such efforts to hide the event in question that the memory shone like a town of lighthouses. Lahmer was no different. His attempts to conceal the truth practically paved a road in his thoughts that led Empty Eyes to the fatal evidence.

            The magic of the blade allowed Empty Eyes to dive into any moment of Lahmer’s life and observe through his eyes. The scene of the crime in question was a crisp night in the recent spring. Taumus Lahmer sat mounted on his favorite mare and watched the ambush that he orchestrated on Lazzet’s trade caravan. His hired thugs were volatile after a supper of beer. A wagon driver fought back. Men shouted. The driver fell from his seat and lay in the road. Lahmer shouted back. Frustration turned to anger and then panic when a mercenary pushed his knife into the prostrate driver.

            “You fools! Now we’ll have to kill them all!” Lahmer roared before pulling a short sword and charging into the chaos. “Leave no witnesses!”

            Empty Eyes had seen all he needed. Guilty. The moment the magic faded and he declared Lily’s father guilty, he knew what had to happen next. He was out of time and whatever gods existed had not been moved by his pleas. His training had rigidly taught him to ignore the man and study only the crime, but he was out of ideas and unready to sentence his friend to die. The Adjudicator dove deeper into Lahmer’s mind, desperate for a solution.

            Everywhere Empty Eyes peered, in every corner, nook and wrinkle of Lahmer’s mind, he found Lily. The trader’s daughter shone more brightly than any other subject. Empty Eyes was drawn like moth to the brilliance of the man’s heaviest memories:

            A difficult birth in a room filled with flowers. Hard truths spoken and promises whispered between old lovers and new parents.

            Sleepless nights filled with dread. Holding a baby burning and howling with fever.

            Mornings of laughter watching his toddler outrun her caretakers. Her curls bouncing like her mother’s.

            Diving in and out of Lahmer’s life like an aimless explorer wasn’t helping with Empty Eyes’ confliction. If anything, each new moment he observed felt like he were trying to smother a blaze with a new bucket of coals. The defendant was irrefutably guilty of murder and yet no thought or decision Lahmer had ever made was black or white; every scene was painted in an infinite palette of gray.

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            “Was this why the clerks taught to ignore the man and find only the crime?” Empty Eyes thought. “Was everyone I have judged like this?”

            Every question brought two more and before long, Empty Eyes was drowning in contradictions. What’s worse, he felt the sizzle of the blade’s magic fading and knew what The Law required of him when he came out of the spell’s trance.

            “Focus!” he screamed but he could not. Untangling the moral knots within Lahmer was impossible and Empty Eyes felt that if he continued to linger, he would break; but out of that graphic realization, an idea was born. A flicker of hope. The plan frightened him and felt dubious but what time was left to formulate another? Besides, the citizens of Iratari came to The Court to see magic and blood and whether or not his strategy worked, he would deliver what they desired.

********

            Someone spoke but to Empty Eyes, the voice sounded like it was mumbling from the bottom of a deep lake. The speaker shouted the sentence again and the lake drained a little more with each repetition.

            “Honorable Adjudicator! Have you reached a verdict?” Head Clerk Wisen shouted at Empty Eyes; His tone betrayed his anxiety. The magic had never taken this long to reveal the truth.

            “Adjudicator! How do you find the defendant, Taumus Lahmer? Is this man indeed guilty of murder?” he pushed his vocal chords to their limit. The monster’s eyes fluttered open but the look he gave baffled the old monk; Wisen could swear he saw tears.

            The sound started as a foreboding thrum felt in the chest before heard. Empty Eyes fed the growl like a fire, shoving in all the fear and hate Iratari had gifted him. All of his frustration from searching for an identity only to slowly lose pieces of himself to the blade. All of his indignation for the cruel spin of fate which put him on stage to traumatize the only friend he would ever know. The fire raged and when unleashed, his roar shook the stage. Onlookers held out trembling hands to shield themselves. Those still in control of their bodies clawed through the crowd to flee. The rest were rooted to the cobblestone, stupefied with despair.

            Head Clerk Georgio Wisen’s ambitions of expansion and idolization blew away like dry leaves. “This cannot be,” he thought. Empty Eyes gathered an enormous breath and screamed again. This time, he reached his arms high above his head and shook like an enraged mountain bear. The Blade of Law glinted in his grip and Head Clerk Wisen’s instinct defeated his stupor.

            “It is exhausted! Save the blade!” he commanded the contingent of bailiffs behind the stage. “It is exhausted! Put it down! Save the blade!”

            Spears stabbed at Empty Eyes from all flanks; most of the thrusts slid off of his armor but others found the designed vulnerabilities and punched into the dense flesh beneath. Empty Eyes cried out and thrashed at the bailiffs’ weapons. Their spears cracked and the pieces flew across The Court. During the scuffle, Lily’s father received a rough knock on the head and laid asleep on the stage while Lily tried to shake him back to consciousness. By the time Empty Eyes had broken all of the spears, blood was pooling in his boots and squished between his toes. His armor had never felt heavier and he sagged beneath the weight.

            “We had a deal, Wisen! You swore to me!” Lazzet shouted at the Head Clerk and stamped his feet, adding to the chaos on stage. “Your monster was to kill them!”

            The old monk had no patience for the grown man’s tantrum and ignored Lazzet. The blade, and therefore the future of his order, was still held by his exhausted Adjudicator. Lazzet moved next to the Head Clerk and yelled again, his mouth pressed close to the old monk’s ear. Wisen had had enough.

            “Quiet, you petulant child! There are more important things at stake.”

            “I paid for a verdict! I paid for Lahmer and his brat to die!” Lazzet fumed.

            “There is no verdict! It is a mistrial! Now get off of my stage!” Head Clerk Wisen closed the case.

            Never had a man chastised the southerner in such a manner. Lazzet had also never conceded a dispute over money. It was bad business but Head Clerk Wisen knew little of business and even less about Inrich Lazzet. The trader elected to teach the old monk a little about both. He seized the Head Clerk by the shoulders and shoved the old man across the stage towards his flailing pet.

            Empty Eyes whirled around when he felt someone collide with his back, prepared to meet a bailiff delivering the final strike. What he found instead was a frail old man whose face was drained of color. Across Wisen’s sleeve was a cut in the fabric revealing a fresh incision in his bony arm. The Head Clerk and Empty Eyes looked to the Blade of Law in the Adjudicator’s hand, its edge still coated with blood. The old monk felt an excruciating burning sensation traveling up his arm as the magic sped through his body.

            “M-m-monst—“ the Head Clerk stuttered just before the spell crashed into his brain.

            The trauma caused by absorbing an Adjudicator’s mind was catastrophic and total. Wisen’s eyes bulged like ripe lemons as the force of the magic jellied his brain. He fell to the stage like a scarecrow knocked off his stake. Head Clerk Georigo Wisen IV died at the feet of his pet, blood oozing from his ears and adding its own unique hue to the thirsty planks of The Court.

            The distraction worked better than intended and Lazzet charged Lahmer and his daughter with a broken spearhead in hand. Empty Eyes saw the rush and stepped in front of the Lahmers as a shield. Lazzet’s attack screeched off the Empty Eyes’ armor like nails on glass and his momentum sent him careening towards the edge of the stage. But the southerner regained his footing and whipped around for a second attempt. Lazzet had been born into poverty and clawed his way to become the second largest trader in all of Western Cartia. Whether the foe was a stubborn landowner or a demon spawn excavated from the ground, Inrich Lazzet would not leave without getting what he paid for. He shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet and rushed again.

            In his condition, Empty Eyes knew that any defense was unlikely to last and he could not simply murder the man trying to hurt Lily. The Law was still The Law. The Adjudicator swatted Lazzet’s strike aside as gently as he could manage but the parry sent the trader tumbling off the stage. Lazzet hit the cobblestone of The Court and the air left his body. He wheezed and clutched at his ribs but the man possessed the tenacity of a starving predator. He spit blood and pushed himself onto his knees.

            Empty Eyes was out of ideas and running out of time as well. It was obvious that the crazy man would not give up until Lily and her father were dead. The Adjudicator scooped the girl up with both arms, careful not to pinch or scrap her with his armor and darted off the stage. Lily was pale and silent with shock and did not react. Empty Eyes ran out of The Court as smoothly as his size and injuries would allow. Lily was so still during their escape he wondered if she had fallen asleep.

            The streets of Iratari were eerily bereft of activity. News of the Monastery’s creature running unleashed had already reached every corner of the city and nobody wanted to be the first to peek out their door to check if the problem had been resolved. Empty Eyes huffed and pushed on. His feet felt like anvils and each step left a bright spatter of blood. He had to get his friend to safety and he only knew one place in the world to find it.

********

            The bark walls of Fort Mine wrapped around Empty Eyes and Lily and held them tightly. Empty Eyes used his last scrap of strength to squat into the tree trunk without dropping his friend. Once inside, the Adjudicator flung his helmet from the fort and sucked in a deep breath that ended in a fit of wet coughing.

            “Knotty? Are you ok?” Lily’s voice was as weak as morning ice on a puddle.

            “I’m hurt bad,” Knotty confessed.

            “I mean up here,” she pointed to his head.

            Empty Eyes labored for air. When retiring an Adjudicator on stage, the bailiffs were trained to target the lungs.

            “I’m ok. I had to pretend. It was the only way,” Empty Eyes rasped when able to speak.

            Lily deliberated for an unusually long time; Most of her decisions were impulsive and supremely confident but this time, she carefully considered the evidence available before delivering her verdict.

            “I trust you, Knotty.”

            The girl inspected her dress with a frown. Large swaths of what were once a brilliant pink were now soiled with red. She couldn’t help but think “Daddy is going to be furious!”

            “Knotty! My dad! Is he ok?”

            “I think so.”

            “Now what?”

            Empty Eyes did not answer. He did not need to. Lily had spent enough time at her father’s ranch to know death. If you stuck a hog just right, it would bleed. If it bled enough, it would die and Lily had never seen as much blood as what was pouring into the dirt beneath Empty Eyes. She thought that it looked as if the soil was sucking him dry.

            Soft streams of summer sun poured through the cracks in the canopy of the Watchtower trees and decorated the forest with curtains of light. The breeze outside Fort Mine felt like cool sheets on a soft bed. Even the birds, normally removed a prudent distance, gathered and filled the friends’ secret glade with music. Lily thought it cruel for such a beautiful day to be wasted with such horrible business. She wasn’t going to stand for it. She walked outside Fort Mine and sang to the birds. No words, just sound. The birds flew closer and tweeted back in harmony.

            “Listen, Knotty! They like it!” Lily exclaimed and resumed her tune.

            “She’s going to be fine,” Empty Eyes reassured himself. He could already see signs of the fearless girl that once ambushed a monster in the woods to demand half of his snack. For the first time in days, Empty Eyes didn’t feel yoked with dread of tomorrow. If he were to die as a murderous curiosity in the eyes of Iratari, at least the girl singing outside his hideout would remember him as a friend that tried his best to help.

            Lily had stopped singing but Empty Eyes did not notice. She was jumping with excitement and pointing but he couldn’t make out the words. His eyelids were so heavy and he was certain he smelled cinnamon. And just then, someone else was singing to him. The lyrics blurred together but the voice was full of love. The song stopped and the woman spoke to him. She cupped his face in her warm hands and called him by name; Not something horrible whispered behind his back but by the name she had given him. His real name. He bit into his cinnamon twist and smiled. In that moment, that moment that belonged only to him, he wasn’t Knotty or the Monster of the Monastery or even an honorable servant of justice; he was his mother’s son and that was enough.