Chương 181: CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-ONE: WHAT VANCE NOTICED

Vance came to the study on the second Tuesday in September and closed the door behind her, which she did perhaps four times a year and which always meant the same thing.

"Calla," she said. Marcus set down the report he had been reading.

"Tell me."

"I don't know what to tell you," Vance said.

"That's why I've waited three weeks." She sat down.

"She's working. She's working well. The case index is progressing, the advisory opinions are on schedule, the quality is what it has always been." She paused.

"And something is wrong and I cannot name it and I have been a lawyer for twenty-six years and I do not like being unable to name things."

"Describe it," Marcus said. Vance was quiet for a moment, assembling it.

"She has stopped arguing with me," she said. Marcus waited.

"For four years," Vance said, "Calla has disagreed with me approximately once a fortnight. Substantively — not on style, on reasoning. She has been right perhaps a third of the time, which is a very high proportion, and the arguments have been the most useful part of my week." She paused.

"She has not disagreed with me since she came back. Six weeks. She has read everything, she has produced everything, and every time I have said a thing she has said: yes, that's right."

"Has she been wrong to agree?"

"Twice," Vance said.

"Both times on questions where the old Calla would have taken me apart. Both times she said yes and went and did it my way." She paused.

"The second time I made the error deliberately." Marcus looked at her.

"I put a flaw in a draft," Vance said.

"A real one — a jurisdictional overreach in a provincial advisory that she would have caught in ninety seconds a year ago. I gave it to her for review." She paused.

"She returned it with three corrections to my citations and no comment on the overreach."

"Did she miss it?"

"No," Vance said.

"I asked her afterward, directly. She said: I saw it. I said: why didn't you say so. She said—" Vance stopped. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"What did she say?"

"She said: I wasn't sure enough to be certain, and I've learned what it costs to be wrong in front of people." Marcus sat with that.

"Vellenmoor," he said.

"She won at Vellenmoor," Vance said.

"She won on a twenty-second argument that the magistrate had already reached without her," Marcus said slowly.

"Kessling said so in open court. He said her argument was unnecessary because he'd got there from the text himself." Vance's face changed.

"He meant it as praise," she said.

"He did," Marcus said.

"He said she had it right and had it in fewer words than the court used and he wasn't too proud to say so." He paused.

"And she has spent six weeks with the thought that she stood up in a room where a woman's life was on the line and said something that did not need to be said."

"That's not what happened," Vance said.

"No," Marcus said.

"But it's a thing you can construct from what happened, if you are twenty and you have just been the person who carried it." Vance was quiet for a while.

"There's more," she said.

"The second thing is worse and I have less evidence for it." She paused.

"She has stopped taking cases where someone might die."

"There have been none," Marcus said.

"There was one," Vance said.

"Three weeks ago. A capital matter in the northeastern circuit — Holloway's territory, a man accused of killing his brother-in-law in a dispute over an inheritance. Holloway asked for a second advocate. It's the standard request; we've sent someone on four previous occasions." She paused.

"I offered it to Calla. She said her case index workload didn't permit it. Which was not true, and which she knew I knew was not true, and which she said anyway."

"What did you do?"

"I said: understood, and I sent Ferrick instead," Vance said.

"Because pressing her on it in that moment would have made it a confrontation and she would have gone." She paused.

"And she should not go because she has been pressed. She should go because she wants to. That is the entire difference." Marcus looked out the window.

"Have you talked to her?" he said.

"I have tried twice," Vance said.

"Both times she deflected professionally. She is extremely good at deflecting professionally — I taught her." She paused.

"I am here because I have run out of approaches and because I think this may not be a legal-mentor problem."

"What kind of problem is it?"

"I don't know," Vance said.

"But I know she came back from a capital proceeding where she stood ten feet from a woman who was going to be executed in three days if she got it wrong. And I know that she has never in her life been in a room like that, and I know she performed superbly in it, and I know that performing superbly in a room like that costs something that does not present until later." She paused.

"I have seen this in junior counsel. It usually presents at about six weeks."

"What did you do about it, with junior counsel?"

"Nothing useful," Vance said.

"I was a poor mentor at that stage of my career and I told them they had done well and expected that to be sufficient." She paused.

"It was not sufficient. Two of them left the profession."