Read The Schism (The Broken Prism Book 4) for Free Online Page B

audience.”
    Impressed, Hayden asked, “Do you also use magic?”
    “No, I’m just a regular person, or I doubt I’d be in my current professions. There’s really no benefit to having a magically-inclined attorney or accountant, unless you’re trying to shake down money from someone who is likely to fight back, in which case it would be just as easy to hire mages to accompany you.”
    Hayden considered that briefly and then nodded to concede the point. Magdalene pointed at the stack of books on the table.
    “Did you read the chapters I assigned you last night?”
    “Yes,” Hayden replied.
    “How much of it did you understand?” Edgar pressed him.
    “Maybe a third of it,” he admitted ashamedly. “It’s a little…dense.”
    Edgar chuckled and said, “Well, if you picked up a third of it then that’s better than most people, and time is of the essence. Magdalene tells me that she will train you on how to present yourself and all manners of your appearance, so you and I will focus entirely on making sure the Council of Mages are unable to talk you out of your rights.”
    Both of them looked momentarily like they had gotten the worst end of the deal. Hayden suddenly wished he owned a nice pair of clothing for formal occasions. The thought of walking into a courtroom in slacks and a t-shirt was embarrassing.
    “Okay.” He nodded in agreement, since he didn’t really have a choice, and Edgar began questioning him over the reading.
    “Tell me what you know about the Statute of Remittance.”
    Hayden scrunched up his face and tried to remember that part from the reading, while Bonk wandered idly through the library, occasionally stopping to examine the spines of books that were on the bottom shelf as though reading the titles.
    “Um, something about having five years to demand repayment on a signed loan, but only having two years to make a claim against an unsigned loan…but also only in Junir, right? The other lands all have their own laws about it too, I think.” He grimaced, wondering how much he had left out of his answer.
    Edgar favored him with a small smile. “Correct in essentials.” He nodded and continued. “In your case, the Council of Mages took—is still taking—an unsigned loan against your estate and using the funds for anything they can prove is even tangentially related to the reason for the loan.”
    “And what reason did they give for ‘borrowing’ my family’s money without permission?” Hayden turned to Magdalene Trout.
    “The funds are supposed to go towards reparations from the devastation caused by your father before his demise” she explained. “Towns had to be rebuilt, people had to be compensated for the murder of their family members, businesses had to be restarted, and so forth.”
    “Doesn’t the Council have its own budget for things like that?” Hayden frowned.
    “Yes, but it was not nearly large enough to fund everything that needed funding at that time. Since most of the major repairs have been made, our fund has had time to recover and is growing once more.”
    “But you still haven’t started paying me back.”
    “No, because you haven’t asked for anything back yet.” She shrugged. “Which is why we’re here now.”
    Edgar, who had been watching them in silence, now added, “There is still a little time for you to win your case against them, even if you lose during this first attempt. However, it will be more difficult for you to win in successive trials, because once the Council sees how serious you are about it, and that you’re being trained up in legal matters, they will get much more serious about their own tactics to outsmart you.”
    Hayden frowned at the thought of that and asked, “But how do we still have time? If they really took an unsigned loan from me—and I certainly don’t remember signing anything for them—then I only had two years to demand my stuff back, but they started taking the money when I was ten and I’m almost