The many-colonnaded throne room was alight with a hundred hundred candles, their miniscule flames dancing and sputtering despite the absence of wind. All of their collective shine however paled in comparison to that of the sun’s light cascading down onto Cinderella’s face as she raised her head up towards the high windows set into the vaulted dome above her.
It was well past midday, the time when the sun had been at its most merciless when she had been stuck high in her tower, but now, as Cinderella was being marched along the length of the throne room’s center aisle, she found that she did not mind its glaring, ceaseless heat. Strangely enough, it brought her some degree of familiar comfort.
On either side of the aisle had gathered a great number of nobles of the houses who had all come to turn in her direction the candle-flick she entered. The queen mother had found her a servant-maid’s gray kirtle with no frills to wear, cinched by the waist with cotton rope. It smelled of sweat not her own and was as sure a mark of disgrace as her riven hair that clung in tatters to her head.
Here and there in passing as she was marched down the length of the throne room she could catch snippets of what was being said, the contents of their whispers regarding her horrid state of appearance crueler than any child’s open barb.
Cinderella brought her gaze back down to her feet as she continued to shuffle her way barefoot along the length of the red carpet. She knew the exact amount of steps it took for her to reach the base of the dais as she had walked the way of it an untold times before. She stopped on the seventy-seventh step and clasped her hands demurely before her, keeping her eyes lowered as she waited.
Coming from her left, Cinderella heard the familiar sound of a large gong ring out twice, followed by the sounds of clarions thundering through the hall. The excited susurration of the crowd behind her fell silent almost immediately, giving the royal herald reign to speak. His voice began to fill the entirety of the throne room.
“On this day, the 17th day of Whimsy in the Authored Year of 1408, the queen-princess Ella of the court of Brightsilver has been summoned to stand trial and face judgment under the Author’s auspicious Pen for the accusation of heinous crimes put against her.”
Cinderella raised her head then, her gaze coming to lock with her husband’s sat upon the august throne above her. His handsome, youthful face which she had always found so boyishly charming was now pulled taut in an expressionless mask of serene nobility.
Prince Maximilian IV wore a crown that wholly hid his golden hair and was dressed in a red robe brighter than blood, its edges lined with flawless ermine fur. Sat upon his lap were the customary relics of royalty that marked him as the heir apparent of the kingdom of Brightsilver: the golden inkwell surmounted by a skywards quill and the heavy, gem-encrusted scroll case which was said to hold a page derived from the Author’s very own Book upon which were written all the names of those princes and princesses that had come before.
The herald unfurled a scroll held and held it aloft to read from it.
“Princess Ella,” he began loudly. “You have been accused of two counts of sororicide, the slaying of one’s own sisters, and a singular attempt at matricide, the tried slaying of one’s mother. What say you to these accusations?”
Cinderella’s knuckles whitened as she tightened the grip on her own hands, but managed to keep them neatly folded before her. Her deportment remained impeccable despite the anger beginning to swirl inside her mind.
Attempted? So she still breathes.
“They were not my sisters.” Cinderella replied calmly. “And she was not my mother.”
“They were perhaps not bound by blood to you, but certainly bound to you in family by the marriage of your father, Otto Wagner of the village of Copperton, to your stepmother Agathe Schmidt of the same village. Do you deny this?”
“No, this I do not deny.”
The herald shot a quick glance towards the prince on the throne behind him, then continued.
“And you were wed to our Prince Maximilian of the High House of Spades last year on the first day of Sleep, is this true, Princess Ella?”
Cinderella knew what was coming.
“Yes.” she replied calmly.
“And your marriage to the prince Maximilian ascended you to the rank of royalty within the kingdom of Brightsilver, that too is true, Princess Ella?”
“Yes.”
“And as you yourself were so elevated to royalty, your immediate family members were, as ancient writ dictates, elevated to the rank of high nobility, were they not?”
“Yes.”
“Including your step-sisters and your step-mother, is this not true?”
Cinderella said nothing, her gaze glued on her husband. She noticed a freshly red scab crusted at the base of his chin. He had never been good at shaving himself.
He always asked me to do it for him.
The royal herald cleared his throat and looked down past his scroll directly at Cinderella.
“Princess Ella. Your step-sisters and step-mother alongside were elevated to the rank of high nobility alongside your father-by-blood upon your own ascension to royalty, were they not?”
“Yes.” Cinderella replied sullenly. She tried to read something in Maximilian’s face, but his expression betrayed nothing of his internal thoughts. “Yes, this is true.”
“Very well.” The herald nodded, then turned to address the crowd more so than the princess before him.
“Then by your own admission, Princess Ella, the crimes you have been accused of are crimes done directly against members of the High House of Spades, His Majesty’s very own family, the penalty for which is death.”
At that, the hundreds of nobles and courtiers gathered along the aisles and in the galleries began to murmur amongst themselves.
“Quiet!” the herald demanded loudly, but to little avail, his protestations quickly drowned out by the increasing volume of excited whispers.
Cinderella’s gaze never wavered away from Maximilian. As the crowd became more and more clamorous, she finally saw a shift in his features: the flash of annoyance, or perhaps pained regret. He leaned forward from his throne to whisper something directly in the royal herald’s ear. The latter nodded, raising his hand towards the group of trumpeters stationed behind the throne, and at his signal they began to blow their clarions again. The long, high-pitched shrill that followed keened through the noise of the crowd, quieting them enough for the herald to regain control.
“Princess Ella,” the herald continued as if he had not been interrupted. “What say you to the accusations brought to bear against you?”
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“From whom do these accusations come from?” Cinderella asked.
“They have been leveled against you by your father-by-blood, Otto Wagner.”
Cinderella’s choked on her breath, her heart gone cold. She cast her gaze about the dais, but did not see her mentioned father anywhere. The betrayal was unexpected, but not unwarranted.
I have taken two of his daughters. What is one more he has to sacrifice to see justice done?
She remembered her father’s face, wracked with grief at the mention of being the last of his daughters.
Some wellsprings never dry - but his has.
Cinderella looked back down at her feet, rubbing the sole of one across the surface of the velvety carpet. She muttered something under her breath.
“What say you?” the royal herald demanded.
Cinderella repeated herself, louder. “I do not deny them.”
“And you admit to these crimes?”
Cinderella exhaled deeply, then raised her eyes back up. Her eyes found her husband’s, neither looking away.
“I do.”
“Very well,” the royal herald rolled his scroll back up, bowed towards his prince, then stepped off to the side. Maximilian picked up the relics in his lap and held them up as he spoke.
“Princess Ella.”
His sonorous voice seemed to command the entire throne room and Cinderella couldn’t help but shudder at the familiar timbre of his voice.
How I have missed it.
“You have admitted to the crimes you have been accused of which amount to treason against the king, the penalty for which is death. As befits a member of your station however, you are entitled to a trial by Crown, Quill and Scroll to entreat the estates of our realm for clemency.”
One of the doors leading adjacent to the throne room opened, revealing a procession of six beautiful armored guards leading a pair of individuals onto the dais. The first was a tall and slim woman with long and perfectly combed brown hair wearing a miter shaped like the tip of a fountain pen on her head. Her hands, Cinderella saw, were wholly made of silver. Coming in behind her was a portly man with swarthy skin dressed in a fine burgundy tunic and accompanying pantaloons. Remarkable about him was the fact that he had a small, black cat sitting on his shoulders, not curled around his neck like a regular cat, but rather seated on his left shoulder like a small child might sit on an edge - it was busying itself playing with one of the curvy ends of the man’s bristly mustache, swatting at stray hairs as if they were tendrils of twine. Cinderella noticed that the black cat was wearing a pair of small, red boots, playfully kicking at the air in tandem with the portly man’s step.
“The king remains gravely ill and finds himself unable to appear.” the prince proclaimed loudly as both individuals were escorted before him.
“Therefore I, as first prince, shall see fit to adjudicate in the name of the Crown and the interests of our kingdom of Brightsilver in my father’s stead.”
The prince motioned to the woman. “To pass judgment of Quill in the name of the Authoritarian Church, the Stylus Adelaide of Millerton.”
The woman nodded wordlessly, bringing her silvery palms together before her in a display of humble piety.
“And for the Scroll to represent the people of the Empire, the margrave of Carabas.”
At the prince’s mention the margrave took off his feathered duster hat and bowed deeply towards the crowd. The cat did similarly with its own small hat, coming to a stand on the margrave’s shoulder to give its hat a proper flourish.
“I am the prince’s humble servant.” proclaimed the margrave boisterously. The cat leaned in to whisper something in the margrave’s ear at which he smiled broadly.
“And the people’s, of course!” he added laughingly. He gave the crowd another wave and then turned to genuflect before the prince’s throne. The cat, Cinderella saw, took its own little knee upon the man's shoulder.
With an act of courtly ritualism the prince bequeathed the golden inkwell unto the Stylus.
“Stylus Adelaide, do you swear upon the Author’s own Words to write only the works of justice on this day?”
“I do so swear.” Adelaide said, clutching the golden inkwell between her silvered hands.
The prince then handed the heavily decorated scroll case to the margrave.
“And you, lord Carlo of Carabas, do you swear upon the Author’s own Words to write only the works of justice this day?”
“Yes, my prince,” the margrave replied as he pressed the gemmed scroll case against his chest like a baton. “I swear it!”
“Then rise not as yourselves, but as agents of church and land and see only good words written in the Author’s name on this day.”
Cinderella observed the ceremony of introduction with impassive sufferance, keeping her gaze fixated on the prince upon his throne.
Maximilian raised a hand to quiet the crowd.
“Let it be known to all that with this crown upon my head I shall dispense judgment not as myself, the husband of her,” and the prince made a sweeping gesture towards Cinderella at the base of the dais, “but as an extension of my father’s will. Justice shall be done today, meted out accordingly. By the Author’s Ink, I swear it.”
“Princess Ella.” the prince said, addressing his wife before him. Cinderella bit her lower lip in reply and gathered her courage. Her shoulders strengthened and her shoulders straightened.
Yes, husband. I am still a princess.
“On the 8th day of Oddity you were discovered on the grounds of the Tower of Brightness by the king’s men. The tower was burning in your wake with the tar still wet on your hands to prove that you had done it. Your sisters,” and for a moment, the prince seemed to hesitate, “were found dead in their chambers.”
Burnt down to the bones, Cinderella thought mutedly. Bound and gagged, as I made them wait for the fire.
“It was only by the Author’s own writing that your mother managed to get out alive.” the prince continued.
“She suffers greatly from her burns, but she is well-tended to. The royal physician has stated that she is to recover within the year.”
Anger shot through Cinderella like lightning, radiating outward from somewhere behind her sternum throughout the rest of her body. She almost bit through her lower lip to stop herself from screaming.
I must have not tightened her knots enough .
Maximilian seemed to have seen or sensed a shift in Cinderella’s demeanor and he leaned in forward, his beautiful face so cold it may as well have been marble.
“Tell us--tell me--what evil possessed you to enact such barbaric acts? Did a witch trap you in her web, force you to do her bidding? Or were you caught in the trappings of a curse?”
“No evil possessed me, husband. No witch had worked her wicked ways on me, nor did a curse’s cure require of me to spill the blood of a sister. Whatever wickedness had taken hold of my heart that day had always been there.”
Maximilian frowned at that, his face finally showing a hint of dismay.
“The people of Brightsilver have known you this past year as a kind and generous soul as befits a princess of our kingdom. And I, as your husband, have known you to be loving and full of grace since the day we first laid eyes upon one another. Are you to tell me that all that time, this capacity for evil lived in your heart?”
“Not just the capacity, husband.” Cinderella hesitated, knowing her next few words would break her husband’s heart forever. She breathed herself into her full frame, trying to drown out the happy memory of tolling bells.
“The Author writes that beauty is not just a virtue, but a mark of virtue. When I was born, my mother’s midwife told her that she had never seen a more beautiful child. And yet still, husband, I grew up to attain the desire. The desire to see them dead. Since the day of our wedding, all I could think of, all I could dream of, was to see my two stepsisters and my stepmother cooked down to char.”
The throne room behind her exploded with sound once again. Men began to shout for justice as here and there women began to faint, only few of them feigned. The Stylus Adelaide pursed her lips and even the margrave Carlo’s permanent smirk had been exchanged for a furrowed brow. The cat on his shoulders was staring intently throughout the erupting commotion at Cinderella, its tail swishing from side to side.
“Silence!” Maximilian shouted, his voice carrying louder than all of the clarion trumpets put together. The dozens of lit candles nearest his throne were blown out, leaving only wisps of smoke in the wake of their lights.
“The princess Ella shall be given a chance to explain herself!” he added, his voice still a shout that threatened to clear out the rest of the candles with the passing of each word. Maximilian made a motion of leave towards Cinderella and all the throne room fell silent and came to look at her. The prince’s voice was iron.
“Speak.”