Page 65 of Pocket Wife

Nara Venn stands near the clinic table with her son tucked against her shoulder. “Some of us have medical files they can touch.”

“And some of us have dead family under that hill,” Darin Om says from the Lark Hollow relay screen. “Do we take them back too?”

The hall erupts.

I stand at the front with my hands flat on the table, feeling each voice strike somewhere already bruised. Some people want to stand harder now that First Hall has opened. Others look at the notices and see school fees, medical transport, fuel agreements, cargo licenses, the thin threads that keep their lives from unraveling.

None of them are wrong to be afraid.

That is the cruelest part.

Rethan stands beside the evidence board, silent, restricted from directing the testimony effort but not from watching it fracture. His ruined formal coat has finally been replaced by a plain dark tunic someone found in council storage. He looks less like an Authority officer now.

More like a man who has chosen a side and is learning its weight.

I catch his eye.

The bond answers, steady and warm.

I want, absurdly, to walk across the room and put my forehead against his chest until the shouting becomes someone else’s problem.

Instead, I raise a hand.

No one notices.

I pick up a metal cup and strike it against the table.

The sound cracks through the hall.

“Enough.”

This time they hear me.

I look first at the man with the freight contract, then at Nara, then at Darin’s image on the screen. “No one is going to be shamed into bravery in this room.”

Torren opens his mouth.

“Not even by accident,” I add.

He closes it.

I pick up one of the Helix notices. “These are designed to make each of you feel alone with the worst thing Helix can reach. So we stop answering them alone.”

A woman near the door folds her arms. “What does that actually mean?”

I turn to Rethan.

He steps forward only halfway. “May I advise process?”

Mayor Alden Reeve, seated at the recorder table, nods. “Advisory capacity only. Record that.”

“Recorded,” Jessa says.

Rethan faces the room. “By sunrise, the tribunal will ask four questions. Is the covenant authentic? Was custody preserved? Are the translations reliable? Do the witnesses prove continuous settlement?”

The room quiets.

“If we cannot answer those clearly,” he continues, “Helix will not need to disprove everything. It will only need to create doubt.”