We six find ourselves under the unenviable job of deciding the fate of Lamentations Bean. One would render onto Caeser, but per the newspapers. ‘Mad Cutter’ Freestone and associates have fled the country, and any crimes without clear perpetrator in this tale are given to the men of Dee. Caesar has looked upon this dreadful gothic tragedy and chosen to ape Pilate and wash his hands of it. We have drawn polls based on our reasonings below and voted accordingly.

A prodigal son is still a son. He deserves death for the things that he’s done, but I will not make my first act upon being remade to take his life, even at his request. I recuse myself.

Theodore calls me Reynard. Are you all familiar with Isengrim the wolf? A full battery of trickery was levied against him, volley after volley, breaking him in body and spirit, until it would have been crueler to let him live. How long has the reverend lived in fear of this very day? How long have we all suffered from his stubbornness? If he has chosen this, then let’s toss him into the ocean the day after we leave port, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief while he breathes his last.

No synagogue I’ve ever set foot in would support a sentence of death for his deed, but it has been a long time since I’ve stepped foot in one. If I must use my own instincts, I have spent years sharing community with this man, knowing his wicked deeds and his cruelty towards a dying man, withholding my contempt because I’d lost hope of ever getting justice. Would his death, self-ordered, be justice? I have treated his wife, Judith, and his children - Zep, Mark, Song, Thessi and Charles. They have done no harm to me and I would not deprive them of a husband and father. I do not want him dead. I would allow the government to judge him but it seems to have washed its hands of this and we should not encourage it to dirty them again. I want him to go back to Henshaw and raise his children. What he deserves is to live the rest of his life knowing that the one thing he actually wants is gone forever - it is a great suffering from my experience but not one that must be eternal, and is therefore just. Even then, there is no way to prevent him dying by his own hand.

I’ll kill him. I don’t know a damn thing about morality, but he’s tried to kill more than half the people in this room. He says he’s given up on wickedness but men change their minds all the time. I’m here to help make the world better instead of standing on the sidelines, and I think a better world is one where he doesn’t walk free. We don’t have to kill him. Chuck him in a madhouse for all I care. But if we decide he has to die, let me do it, keep your hands clean. I want to know if last time was a fluke or not.

To my surprise and slight discomfort, we do have more options than execution, imprisonment or rejection. While in Henshaw, I discovered that thought patterns and memories can be altered by the craft with minimally more difficulty than flesh. We could rewrite him into becoming a better person, or eradicate his ability to self-terminate, or just have him forget any of this even existed in the first place, send him back to Henshaw and let him raise his kids in peaceful ignorance. I will not say I support any of these endeavors but it’s important to know all possible options. Personally I think the man is sick, but I know well enough that he’d refuse to let me treat him, so a judicial approach must take precedence over a medical one.

He was an uncle to me. I played with Zep and Mark before I got too much into books. He watched over me when I was sick as a child. He almost shot me and tried to shoot the two lovely people who got me out of Henshaw. He made the town eat human flesh. He made sure I was born marked by that horror. Even he isn’t immune to the disgust of his own actions. I’m good at figuring out how things work; I’m not as good at figuring out how things should work. I think he might accept the craft if I’m the one who uses it on him, but we do not have brainpainting down to a science yet, and I’m absolutely done with human testing. Give me two weeks with chickens minimum before I try anything new on a human being ever again.

Given these results, Lamentations Bean shall be confined under watch until Geraldine Macy is prepared to carry out the sentence, at which point he will be given safe passage to wherever he chooses to go, whether it is back to Henshaw or elsewhere. If our cause is just, may God see it forward. If we err, may God correct us gently.