Page 67 of Pocket Wife

He stares at me a long beat, then nods once. “My father kept delivery logs. I can submit those. No speech.”

“No speech,” I agree.

When he walks away, Rethan steps up beside me.

“That was costly,” he says.

“Letting him leave?”

“Letting him choose.”

I glance around the room. Nara is speaking with Celia. Torren is arguing with three farmers over transport alternatives. Jessa has ink on her cheek. The valley is not united in the clean, shining way songs prefer.

It’s messier than that.

More honest.

“I thought leadership meant keeping everyone together,” I say.

“Sometimes it means leaving a door open for those who cannot stay in the room.”

For one dangerous second, I can imagine him after the hearing too: at my table, on my porch, correcting my wording until I threaten him with a bread knife.

A future.

Not safe.

Not guaranteed.

But imaginable.

Before I can answer, Jessa calls from the recorder table. “Lucy. Rethan. Kaun’s office just confirmed tribunal officers arrive tonight.”

Every voice in the room drops.

Jessa looks up.

“Hearing begins at sunrise.”

I reach for Rethan’s hand beneath the lip of the table, where only he can feel the choice.

“Then nobody sleeps,” I say. “Not until the valley has a voice they cannot edit.”

CHAPTER 26

RETHAN

At 01:17, I find Lucy in the schoolroom, counting names.

Not documents. Names.

They cover the chalk wall in Jessa’s hurried handwriting: Hartwell, Venn, Marris, Pell, Ashby, Odell, Reeve, Om, and dozens more from settlements that chose to stand as witnesses despite Helix’s threats. Beside each name stands a mark—burial, trade, harvest, water, school, medical, flood shelter, oath. Proof, if the tribunal chooses to see it. Targets, if Helix strikes first.

Lucy stands before the wall with her sleeves rolled to the elbow and ink smudged on the side of her hand. Someone has brought her tea. It sits untouched. The twin suns are still below the horizon, but the room already holds the drained gray exhaustion that comes before dawn.

“You were ordered to rest,” I say from the doorway.

She doesn’t turn. “By whom?”