Anathema's Web

One

What is justice but a horrific dream to those deprived of agency?

The harshness of the gavel against the block awoke Kote from her perturbed sketching, her thumb flexing against the pencil in parallel brutality. The fragility of her sketching tool in her hand pressured upon the paper resulted in breaking the tip upon impact. Despite the echoes of relief from other Boston citizens readying to depart, Kote huffed under her breath and placed her fragmented pencil in her black reticule.

"Dear, that's the third one you have broken today," Lady Henriette remarked loudly. Her outburst reminded Kote of the old woman's presence, in which she had forgotten reality between her anger and art for a moment. To her luck, Kote appeared a professional artist upset at their craft rather than a concerned and exasperated woman of the court. Nevertheless, she had every right and freedom to react unsatisfied at this proceeding in contrast to all around her.

Another man reprieved of his consequences.

A false exemption of his deliberate choices laced with apathy and indifference.

"It is quite fine," Kote lied, tearing the paper from her book and removing all necessary items into her reticule. "I finished my work."

In truth, she held no remaining pencils unbroken by the strength of her contempt.

The crowd around her rushed off the wooden benches, a feverous air of justice beaming with the sun from the windows to the east. The young lady took her time, moving the silk drawstring of her bag upon her shoulder. Her fingers ached greatly, the long-lasting effect on the craftsmanship of portraiture- or perhaps something far more sinister reminding her of its existence.

"Goodness, let me see, Kote," her companion begged impatiently. "After all, you spent your time on such a project!"

With the urge to roll her eyes, Kote refrained and handed Henriette the sketching paper without remark.

"Oh my!" Henriette gasped.

Kote smirked undetected, acknowledging her time spent devising an unpleasant portrait of him. Batting her eyelids she watched the free gentleman rise off the stand, a gleeful man without a drop of sweat in his pretentious brown suit. While he appeared youthful and perhaps handsome, Kote did not deny the truth of her heart that she despised him. That disgust was bound to the thick pencil lines upon her sketching, threatening to ooze from the paper her companion held.

"It is...very detailed, young lady," Henriette murmured, holding the paper up as if to examine it side-by-side with the passing free man. Kote could not blame Henriette for holding her tongue, as her companion was a member of the Bhramin, the high society that many in this court found loopholes and perjury an exciting social game. Henriette in her profound status would not admit to Kote that her drawing was terrible in consideration of the criminal's features. This young lady understood well that her lines were woefully thick, his clothes mishap and unpressed upon the glance of the sketch, his hair uncouth and a disaster upon his youthful face. The sketch made him appear in his fifties, although Kote could not let her seething heart deter from the truth in her art, so most details such as his eyes and thick neck remained stoic and grand upon paper. The art was befitting the crime in Kote's obstinate mind.

The man on trial achieved freedom from his sentence of intentional neglect of his wife and children. With a dashing smile and perhaps a flash of money- ironic given his charge- and with the help of Kote's father Coriolanus, it was not challenging for the pair to succeed in court against such "outrageous" claims.

There was no intention of neglect, rather the man poorly offered what he had at the time while the children starved and house staff departed without pay. It was an oversight despite the fact this gentleman devised no limit to his spending for his mistress in New York.