Chapter 35: Curtain Call

“There were… whispers, Advocate. Among some of the household staff.” Felicity, to her credit, barely hesitated in her response.

Now that Clara thought about it, Iris had been the one who immediately suggested Felicity as the witness, not to mention Lochlann as the culprit. Could it be that the very moment Clara had suggested the play, Iris came up with all of this?

“Whispers.” Iris paced slowly, addressing the audience as much as the witness. “And did these whispers suggest that the senator spent his days lavishing attention and expensive gifts on these working women? And not only that, but that he was a frequent gambler at dice parlors?”

There was cautious laughter from sections of the auditorium—Clara wasn’t sure how much of it was because Lochlann’s reputation preceded him, and how much was because of the play. Either way, it was certainly a petty-but-effective way for Iris to air her grievances, full of plausible deniability for the audience. Clara would have honestly found it amusing if she weren’t so worried about the rest of the play.

Edward stood. “Objection! The advocate is straying far from the matter at hand. The senator’s romantic entanglements have no bearing on the murder of Legate Septimus.”

That was a good bit of prosecutorial improvisation. If everyone stayed in character, maybe things could still be salvaged.

“On the contrary,” said Iris, wheeling on him. “They speak directly to the senator’s character and to his financial situation. A man who would betray his sworn obligations so brazenly—and so expensively—is not only a man whose word this court cannot trust, but a man with a motive for evil.”

More laughter, louder this time. Someone in the faculty row let out a badly disguised snort. Helena had her hand over her mouth, and Warren, behind the scenes in the opposite wing, was shaking his head.

Lochlann stormed onto the scene. This was not his cue—his next appearance was meant to be three scenes away.

“The senator,” he said through gritted teeth, “does not dignify baseless gossip with a response.”

Iris turned to him with exaggerated surprise. “The senator has not been called to speak. But since he has so graciously inserted himself, perhaps the court would benefit from hearing him address these rumors directly?”

The audience was fully immersed in the heated exchange, with most of them turning their heads between Iris and Lochlann. The Crown Prince’s face had gone as red as his hair, and Clara thought the whole thing might derail then and there.

But Edward stepped between them, hands raised. “Your Honor, the prosecution requests a recess before the senator is subjected to further irrelevant provocation. It is no surprise that an advocate as young and inexperienced as Valeria has resorted to inflaming the proceedings.”

Helena, who looked like she was trying hard to stay composed, nodded gravely. “The court will take a brief break. Advocate, keep your questions relevant to the case!”

Smooth. It was almost the scheduled time for the intermission, anyway.

“Of course, Your Honor.” Iris curtsied with grace. “I shall keep my questions pertinent with as much diligence as the senator keeps his vows.”

This time the laughter was general. Duke von Rhenia pressed his gloved hand over his mouth, and even Conrad was grinning. Lochlann shot a glare at Ciarán.

Helena banged her gavel three times, and Charlotte signaled for the curtain, which dropped to mark the intermission. The audience applauded loudly. The moment the fabric hit the floor, Lochlann turned to Iris.

“That wasn’t in the script,” he hissed.

“Wasn’t it? I must have gotten confused. There were so many revisions.”

“You know exactly what you did.”

“What I did, Your Highness, was deliver a compelling cross-examination. The audience certainly seemed to enjoy it.”

Edward appeared at Lochlann’s shoulder. “She’s not wrong. The crowd loved it. They probably thought it was all planned.” He glanced at Iris. “Though maybe a warning next time?”

“There better not be a next time,” said Lochlann.

Clara decided this was the moment to intervene before the intermission devolved into an actual confrontation. “We only have a few minutes until we continue. Lady Iris, a word?”

Iris followed her behind the prop table with the air of someone who felt no remorse whatsoever.

“My lady.”

“Before you say anything, Clara, the audience loved it. And His Highness certainly deserves it after trying to discredit my scores.”

“Be that as it may, we still have half the play to get through, and you don’t know what the prince might do to get back at you.”

“Oh, please.” Iris waved dismissively. “The prince is far too rigid for improvisation. And if anything, I’ve given him motivation. A villain who’s been publicly humiliated will perform with far more conviction in the confrontation scene.”

Clara sighed. “Just… stay on script for the rest of the play. Please.”

“I shall take it under advisement.”

The curtain rose again, and the second half began.

To Clara’s relief, Iris kept to the script. The rest of the advocate’s cross-examination of Felicity proceeded as Vivienne had written it, with Iris proving that the senator had left Elysia City to console young Sextus before news of the murder could have reached him. Then she questioned the Chrysogonus household guards, establishing that two of them were missing from their posts during the days preceding the murder. Edward’s counterarguments were sharp and well-timed, leaning into the emotional weight of patricide and the inherent convolution of a conspiracy just as Warren had coached him.

Then Lochlann’s major scene arrived: the senator was called to testify again, this time by the defense. His clenched fists carried a fury that made it impossible to tell where the character ended and the prince began.

Iris started. “Senator Chrysogonus, you testified earlier that you departed Elysia City when you heard of the murder. Yet witnesses have placed your departure before news of the incident could possibly have reached the capital. How do you explain this discrepancy?”

He let the silence stretch before answering. Good.

“I may have been mistaken about the exact order of happenings. It was a time of great distress. I must have heard about the murder while on the road to my estate in the south.”

“Curious how memory fails only when it is most convenient.” Iris tilted her head.

The exchange continued through several more questions, each one tightening the noose around the senator’s story. Iris brought up the missing guards who’d conveniently returned after the murder and the possibility that the blood on Sextus’s hands could have been planted. Lochlann played the unravelling beautifully, making his answers shorter and more clipped as the questioning went on.

Iris slammed the desk with confidence. “We’ve established that Senator Chrysogonus suspiciously left his villa hours before anyone could have heard of the murder. We’ve also established that the senator’s guards had the means and the opportunity to commit the crime, and that the usual guards at the Septimus estate had suspiciously been absent from their posts on that very day.”

She pointed at Lochlann, mimicking the posture Clara had used in Marcella’s trial. “The truth is evident. The senator ordered the death of Legate Septimus. On the day of the crime, he rushed to the Septimus Estate so that he could pretend to console Sextus, while his true intention was setting up the scene to look like Sextus himself had committed the crime.”

Edward wagged his finger, and Clara felt she was watching miniature versions of herself and Warren. “Your Honor, I object. This is senseless conjecture. The Advocate regales us with a conspiracy theory, and yet she forgets the most essential element of all: motive. There is no discernible reason why someone like the senator would have done this. No record of enmity between himself and either Sextus Septimus or Legate Septimus, nor any notion of a benefit the senator would derive from the crime.”

Then Iris reached into her toga and pulled out a scroll. Lochlann gripped tightly onto the railing of the witness stand.

“I am so thankful you brought that up, honorable prosecutor. This is a petition presented by the senator immediately after the crime was made public. Its object: to proscribe the Septimus estate, preventing it from being inherited by the young Sextus and instead requesting its public auction.”

Then she took out another scroll. “And here are the records from that very auction, which took place mere days after the murder. Remarkably speedy, is it not? And it states that the property ‘was purchased by a servant whose master wished to remain anonymous’. I postulate, then, that the senator’s goal was acquiring the valuable Septimus estate, granted to the legate for his service in the eastern campaign!”

Edward flinched, and the audience gasped on cue.

Then came Lochlann’s monologue. “You think yourself clever, Advocate? You, who would resort to unscrupulous means—gossip, innuendo, the private failings of a man’s heart—to attempt to tear down a pillar of the Senate, to drag a patrician through the mud? All you have is speculation! Compelling conjecture, preying on man’s innate desire to favor Davina over Goliath!”

Even Clara had to admit it was the best performance yet. Just don’t get me started on that particular piece of biblical worldbuilding.

The crown prince laughed sharply, and the sound echoed across the room as if he’d been wearing a microphone. “Is this what passes for justice in Elysia nowadays? It is no wonder our society is rotting from its very seams when any overly ambitious advocate can bring mud into a sacred trial of law.” He turned to the audience. “Do you fancy yourselves spectators at a play, watching an honorable man’s reputation get torn apart by an unscrupulous upstart who forgets her place? Need I remind you of who I am, of where your allegiances should lie, by right and by law?”

Contrary to expectations, it seemed Lochlann was capable of improvising—nothing that came when he spoke to the audience had been in the script. Yet he’d delivered it with such conviction that even Clara found herself enraptured, and no one would have missed the double meaning.

Iris’s finger tightened around her prop scroll, but she held her composure. Duke von Rhenia was frowning almost as much as Conrad.

“If justice requires mud,” she replied coolly, exactly as written, “then perhaps the senator should not have built his house upon it.”

From there, the play barreled forward without further deviation. The closing arguments were delivered with conviction, with both Edward and Iris making the most of every thread Vivienne had woven into the script. It was here that Iris gave a particularly compelling performance: for three uninterrupted minutes, it was as if she held the entire auditorium in her palm, hitting all the right notes with her tone.

“The truth,” she said, her voice reaching every corner of the room, “does not belong to a corrupt senator. It belongs to the citizens of Elysia. And by challenging each other in court, we fulfill our duty to ensure it is never silenced.”

Clara’s heart beat faster when she saw the nods and claps from the audience. Then Helena gave her verdict with a curious mix of levity and gravity, emphasizing the patrician duty to uphold morality and condemning the senator while acquitting the accused. The boy playing Sextus wept, and Lochlann maintained a dignified silence as the guards led him away.

The curtain fell. There was a brief silence, and then a wave of applause, much louder than before. The students of class 2A, regardless of their roles, lined up hand in hand—even Iris and Lochlann, though neither looked at the other. Edward went into the wing and pulled Warren’s hand into the group. The man resisted for a second, but then he sighed and joined them, and the curtain rose again.

When they stepped forward together, the ovation grew. Clara smiled from the wing, satisfied that she’d managed to spread the idea of an adversarial trial just a bit further in the minds of an influential audience.

Yet she couldn’t help but wish she could have joined Class 2-A on stage for the curtain call. That someone had come for her hand, as they’d come for Warren’s.

Of course, that would be inappropriate for a maid. Her mind wandered back to what Iris had said about Ciarán and his mother.

There was a small backstage celebration after the play, and the class seemed to be in high spirits. Clara leaned against the wall near the prop table, watching it all unfold from a comfortable distance. Emma had gone to serve water to the cast.

The students had formed a loose cluster in the center of the backstage area, passing around two bottles of sparkling cider that Edward had somehow smuggled in. Felicity was recounting her testimony scene with increasingly dramatic embellishments, while Charlotte corrected her on every detail. A group of boys was praising Lochlann’s performance, and the prince seemed to have thawed enough to even act a bit bashful in the face of it.

Iris was at the heart of it all, naturally, with most of the girls, even Helena, throwing her compliment after compliment for her closing. If she was still bothered by Lochlann’s reprisal, it didn’t show.

Clara was glad. Truly, she was—both for Iris and for what this could represent for the future of the Kingdom’s legal system. But…

She looked down at her hands. The same hands that had helped rewrite the cross-examination scenes multiple times. That had painstakingly ordered the costumes and props from local shops. That had supervised the backstage team, and spent an entire afternoon coaching Iris and Felicity on how to modulate their voices so the back rows could hear them without it sounding like they were shouting.

Nobody was talking about any of that. Why would they? She was the help. A maid who happened to be useful. If anything, they’d see whatever contributions she made as belonging to Iris.

Clara was never one who thrived on the approval of others. Even at Caine, Polis & Smith, when she got congratulations from the partners or glowing internal emails, she felt more embarrassment than pride. Yet this wasn’t simply a lack of recognition—what was bothering her wasn’t so much what she didn’t get, but why she didn’t get it. And the reason was simple: in a world of aristocrats, someone like her, an orphan from the lowest rungs of society, was simply lesser.

She breathed slowly. Whatever Clara Casewell might have once been, here she was Iris von Rhenia’s maid. Her contributions were worth four marks a month; nothing more, nothing less. She had long-term plans and goals, of course, but they would take time. For now, helping from the sidelines was the strategic play, and it was the right one.

Nevertheless, it stung.

Still, maybe it was for the best. If Clara wasn’t involved in the celebration, then she wouldn’t have to deal with her apprehensions or the looming dread that always struck her in those moments. She wouldn’t have to remember her parents, or ask more uncomfortable questions about what she was doing with her life.

Yes. It was definitely for the best. She was sure of it.

“Miss Clara.”

She looked up. Vivienne stood a few paces away, her braided pigtails slightly askew from running around the wings, holding a cup in each hand.

“Lady Vivienne. Congratulations on your script. It made for a wonderful performance.”

Vivienne smiled warmly, her cheeks slightly reddened by the drink. “Yes, it seems to have been a success.” She stepped closer. “Thank you. The story wouldn’t have been nearly as good without you.”

Clara’s throat tightened. “I appreciate that, Lady Vivienne.”

“My sisters loved the brigadeiros, by the way.”

The girl handed her a cup of cider. Clara took it. The drink was cool, and much sweeter than champagne. She swirled it in her mouth for a moment, savoring the fruitiness before swallowing slowly.