"He's been sending his collectors to beat people," a young farmer shouts. "My neighbor couldn't pay last spring and they broke two of his fingers."
"The south road toll doubled under his oversight and none of that money went to road repairs — I can see that much with my own eyes?—"
"Who does it help to execute her?" Sorella's voice, cutting through the noise from the tavern side, direct and clear. "Ask that. Who benefits from Edria being dead? Not us. We lose our blacksmith. Only one person in this square benefits from silencing her, and he's standing on those steps."
The crowd looks at Malrec.
I scan the crowd.
And then I see them.
Papa is near the front, standing with the Pelley brothers, his broad shoulders squared despite the bandaging I can see beneath his open coat. Finn is beside him — too tall, too thin, his auburn hair catching the morning light — and he's not watching Malrec. He's watching me. When our eyes meet he raises his chin, just slightly, the same gesture he made at the forge door a hundred times when he wanted me to know he was paying attention.
My eyes drift to my father. He looks back, and his expression is the one he has when he's made a decision and is done arguing about it.
He's standing with the villagers pointing fingers at Malrec.
Around them, the accusers multiply. More voices, more names, more grievances aired publicly for the first time because the magistrate's authority has cracked and there's suddenly nothing to fear from speaking. I watch it happen the way a fire catches — slowly at first, then faster than you expect, until it's self-sustaining.
Even if this goes wrong for me, I think. Even if the court finds a way to move forward anyway.
He'll be here. He'll do right by Finn, by Papa, by Oxwood. He's already doing it. The tariffs, the reforms, standing in thissquare with his arm around me in chains in front of every noble who thinks he's lost his mind. He came here knowing what it would cost and he came anyway.
The peace that settles in my chest is unexpected and completely real.
A shout goes up near the platform — louder, angrier. Malrec has backed up two more steps. The nobles at the square's edge have gone very still. Thalen's expression has shifted from cold authority to something more careful.
Malrec looks at the crowd surging toward the steps. He looks at Nyrius, then at the ledgers in Cyran's hands and the villagers with their grievances and the guards positioned at every exit.
Something in his face closes.
He turns.
He takes three fast steps up to the platform, doesn't stop at the top, and keeps moving — away from the crowd, toward the back of the courthouse building, toward the narrow servants' lane that runs behind the square.
He runs.
34
NYRIUS
Malrec clears the platform before I finish turning.
"Dovan." I don't raise my voice. "North lane. Reth — the servants' passage behind the courthouse. Move."
They're already gone before I finish the sentence.
I hand Edria off to Cyran — "Stay with her" — and take the platform steps two at a time. The courthouse opens onto a narrow lane between buildings in the back, wide enough for a cart and nothing else. I can hear running footsteps to the right, heading toward the mill track.
Two of my men converge from opposite ends of the lane before Malrec reaches the turning. He pulls up short between them, breathing hard, his expensive robes tangled at the knees from the run. When I come around the corner, his eyes land on me, then at the guards, then back at me.
"You're under arrest," I say. "Pending full investigation into smuggling, tax fraud, and conspiracy against this region's governance."
He straightens his coat, a reflex, a man reaching for dignity he no longer has. "You don't have the authority?—"
"I have the ledgers with your name in them," I say. "And witnesses who will testify to direct contact. You're welcome to argue jurisdiction from a cell."
Dovan takes him by the arm. Malrec doesn't struggle.
