As You Are

Chapter Six

There was plenty of time to act—the High Court was dragging their feet on setting an appeal date for her dismissal. One of the lower courts was in charge of the defamation case, so the initial hearing for the case was scheduled in a couple of weeks. Emory didn't need to prepare for that case. It was the one she had been preparing for ever since that night in Xelor with Judith.

Her time was spent brainstorming with Eduardo. The story he wrote on her experiences had been brilliant and her approval had actually increased with Atrian women. The men, not so much, leaving her polling roughly the same it had been before she was accused of international terrorism. That didn't mean her media campaign had stopped there, although she did lay off using The Issue for a bit. They'd gone back to their focus on opinion pieces.

Unfortunately, Jakob was facing charges for his non-anonymous article that called Acosta a "snitch", although Emory was confident she could get it dropped. She paid his bail and she was right—his articles had risen in popularity since then.

Eduardo was running some sort of poster campaign. Emory, figuring it was best to leave him to his own devices, looked for any evidence of meeting between Acosta and the High Court causidii. She couldn't explain how she knew so deeply that the Court and Acosta were working together. The only evidence she had was Acosta's body language at the Trials. She couldn't exactly present that in front of the court, though. What would she say? That she had been watching the way his body moved for months to know exactly when to strike with her words, that even before the Trials she had seen him settle things in Court and she just knew. No. She found whatever evidence she could.

Emory's path led her to The Stag, a secretive gentlemen's club. Luckily, it was across the street from a beautiful coffee shop with an outdoor patio that she suddenly grew fond of. Most days, she could be seen sitting on the patio, surrounded with at least one copy of the Fundamental Constitution, legal pads filled with notes, a law book on a variety of topics ranging from evidence collection, treason, and defamation, a constantly refilled cup of black coffee, and one of her favorite pastries from Bilaria that her mom made when she was younger.

The legal pad wasn't just filled with relevant lines from the Fundamental Constitution. In it, she wrote the comings and goings of every High Court member. They thought they were unrecognizable, but their cars were a dead giveaway- nobody else drove with license plates like "JUST1CE". It was a bit ridiculous how easy their secrecy was to spot. Once Emory had found the place, it wasn't too hard to get the floorplan from the fire marshalls. Secrecy was second to the hell brought upon anyone who fucked with the fire marshalls, especially not with the drought they'd been in recently. Especially not in a building made entirely of wood with a wooden interior.

Another person stepped out of the building and Emory marked it on her second legal pad, placing it under the "Staff" column. She had cased many buildings for the Dawn after her dramatic exit from the castle left her jobless. The boredom was something she'd gotten used to but was not something she particularly enjoyed. Luckily, the person that just left happened to be the daytime manager, and Emory knew that it would be about thirty minutes until the nighttime manager clocked in. Unfortunately for the nighttime manager, Emory knew her baby sitter and made sure that he would be thirty minutes late for work tonight.

Her hand found its way into her open leather messenger bag. All her things except the legal pad had been packed away about ten minutes ago. There was only a short window of time from the manager leaving to the new one arriving, and Emory had to make sure she was in and out before that. She grabbed a hair tie and pulled her hair up into a ponytail, then tucked it in to the back of a baseball cap with the Stag's logo on it.
Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she stood up from her spot on the patio. Once she had crossed the street and was in the back parking lot, she put an apron on behind the dumpsters. Women in aprons rarely got a second glance, especially in places like these.