Whispers from my Muse - "Be careful what you ask"

It was three days before the trial resumed.  There were federal guards outside the courtroom now, the crowd was much smaller and one juror had been replaced by an alternate.  The prosecuting attorney and I had exchanged a few words as well.  He'd been the one that had talked me into testifying, and hadn't been real happy with how I'd acted.  I explained quite clearly that his expectations were his problem, not mine ...

"Mr. Antoine, do you recognize either of the women in these photos?"

I looked at the exhibits to make sure nobody had switched pictures, then told him, "Yes, I do."

"Where do you recognize them from?"

"They were the two women standing near me when the bomb was detonated."

"Do you know them from anyplace else?"

"No."

The prosecutor paused for a moment, and I knew he was grinning inside as he continued.  "You were not hurt by that detonation, where you?"

"No, I wasn't," I confirmed.

"Why is that?"

"My defenses protected me from the blast."

"Defenses?"

"The magical defenses I have against the continuing attempts to assassinate me."

"And those defenses are?"

It was my turn to pause, and I gave thought to standing up and walking out of the courtroom.  I'd warned him that I would not answer questions that compromised the security or privacy of another Mage, or my own, and he'd deliberately asked anyway.  I could see him starting to worry as I finally answered, "Obviously adequate to the task."

"Could those defenses have saved those two women as well?"

Given that I wasn't happy with him again, I decided to make him work for the answer and information he wanted.  "No."  He almost started to ask the next question he'd had in mind before my answer sank in.

"You couldn't have saved those women?" asked the prosecutor while he pulled his thoughts together.

"No," I told him again.

"Could you have saved one of them?"

Ok, he'd figured it out.  "Yes."

"Why didn't you save one of them then?"

"Because in the time between my defenses activating and the time between the bomb detonating, I was unable to determine which of them was acting with the defendant in the attempt to assassinate me."  Yep, the defense attorney jump to his feet screaming objections.  The defendant just sat there and glared at me, since he and the organization he worked for had really hoped I didn't know how many layers there had been to their attempt on my life.

It took a couple of minutes for the legal bits to get settled, then the prosecuting attorney started in again.

"How do you know one of the women was involved?"

"Something about the whole setup seemed a bit too convenient afterward and I started digging deeper.  In my research, I uncovered the fact that Miss Hill had been a member of the same organization the defendant belongs to up until two years ago, then her name vanishes from their membership roles.  When I dug into her background, I discovered where she'd been trained for her part in the attempt on my life, and I confirmed her intent by magical analysis of the attack site and her remains."

The defense attorney was on his feet again, and the judge was just reaching for his gavel to begin pounding it in an attempt to bring order to his court as I finished my statement.  "The other women was an innocent bystander.  Miss Hill hoped I'd try to save both of them from the blast set off by her partner.  That would have left her inside my defenses where she could have poisoned me while I was distracted."

A mis-trial was declared later that day, since nobody was sure just how many crimes had been committed by whom and the judge agreed that my testimony, which the defense attorney convinced him to disallow, had probably tainted the jury beyond hope.

What I hadn't told any of them though was that my research had uncovered much more than they'd been told.  As I left the courtroom that day, I grinned at the defendant.  I'd found the clue I'd been missing until now and I'd followed it.  I now knew exactly who the people behind the fear campaign against Mages were and the next move was mine.