Witness Forty-One

About this book

In Dannick, a city below the sea held dry by coal pumps, a sworn child's word is the law: children under thirteen cannot lie, so they cannot be questioned. Twelve-year-old Tobe Marrack has testified forty times, and he is proud of every one. His last testimony put lockkeeper Ansel Pryor on the gallows for drowning the Assessor of the Wall on the night of the March Surge. Now Pryor's appeal is nine days away, the day before Tobe turns thirteen, and Tobe must swear to it all again. Then Pryor's furious daughter shows him the dead man's water-swollen notebook, and a mudlark girl shows him a brass seal pulled from the wrong grate. Tobe knows what he saw. He has told it a dozen times. So why can't it be seen from where he stood?