"No." I turn back to my horse. "But today it is."
I mount and ride for Oxwood.
We hearthe crowd before we see the village.
The sentencing square is packed. At the far end, Malrec stands on the raised platform with his evidence table and hiswitnesses and enough self-satisfaction that you’d think he won already.
Edria is dragged from the prison entrance across the square when we come through the lane.
She's in chains, her auburn hair loose and tangled, her face pale from bad food and cold stone. She's walking under her own power despite the soldiers on each arm, chin up, eyes moving. She finds me across the crowd before I've reached the square edge.
Our eyes meet for a moment. Then I look at Cyran.
"With me," I say.
We push through the crowd toward the platform.
Malrec sees me coming. His expression doesn't falter, but his hands, resting on the evidence table, press flat against the surface — a small, involuntary weight shift. He knows what I'm carrying. He doesn't know yet if it's enough.
I reach the foot of the platform steps and stop. The crowd quiets in a ripple outward from where I'm standing.
I reach into my coat and produce the first document. Then the second. I hand them to Cyran without looking away from Malrec.
"Oversight council clerk," I say, loud enough for everyone gathered to hear. "I'm filing a formal challenge to these proceedings on grounds of fabricated evidence, corrupted witness testimony, and conspiracy to obstruct regional governance." I study the assembled crowd — the villagers, the council soldiers, every face watching. "I also have evidence that the magistrate presiding over this sentencing has personally profited from the weapons trafficking he's prosecuting this woman for enabling."
The square goes very still.
Malrec opens his mouth.
I speak first. "Velis's signed testimony. Ledgers. Account records tied to this magistrate's office." I hold up the documents. "All of it filed with the oversight council as of this morning." I look at Malrec and smirk. "The woman standing in those chains was framed because she was the most convenient way to discredit my investigation into you."
No one speaks aloud, but a few whispers ripple through the crowd.
Then, from somewhere from the town, a farmer I recognize says: "We knew it."
And the quiet breaks.
31
EDRIA
The square erupts all at once. It doesn't start with one voice — it starts with several, overlapping, pulling in opposite directions before the echo of the farmer's words has fully faded.
"He's been bleeding us dry for years?—"
"She brought this on herself?—"
"The taxes went up three times in two seasons?—"
"Consorting with a dark elf lord, and now look?—"
"Malrec's men took my grain stores last winter?—"
"She had weapons hidden in her forge?—"
I stand between my guards and let the noise wash over me. The chains on my wrists are cold. My feet are cold. The morning air smells of mud and torch smoke and too many bodies pressed together in a square that isn't large enough to hold all this fear at once.
Fear is what it is, underneath all of it. I can hear it even in the voices shouting against me — not hatred, not conviction. Fear that they chose the wrong side, fear that the dark elves will use this as cause to make all of them pay, fear that the fragile safetythey've built by keeping their heads down is about to collapse because of something one blacksmith did in her forge at night.
