Chapter 19
MARIS
Idon't set the bread to rise before I go to bed, which means I don't wake before dawn for the first time in years.
When I open my eyes the room is full of late morning light and Elin is pressed against my side, her face turned into the pillow, one hand fisted in the fabric of my nightgown.
I don't remember her coming in, which means she came in quietly, on purpose, not wanting to wake me.
She's been doing that every night since the kids threw rocks at her.
I watch the ceiling for a moment and listen to the house.
Quiet. No customers, because I didn't unlock the door. No bread smell, because I didn't make any. Just the ordinary sound of a spring morning through the closed window and Elin's slow even breathing beside me.
Then the voices start.
Low at first — the indistinct murmur of a crowd gathering, the sound I've learned to recognize while investigating like a change in weather.
I'm out of bed before I've thought it through, pulling my dress on with quick hands, not bothering with the braid.
I check Elin — still asleep, or pretending to be — and slip out of the room.
From the top of the stairs I can already tell it's worse than before. The voices are overlapping, too many to separate, and the register is higher than market gossip. I go down and cross to the front window.
The square is full.
Not a gathering. A mob, in the way that groups of frightened people become mobs — not organized, not led, just compressed and loud and moving as a single anxious body toward whatever it has decided is the source of its discomfort.
Thirty people, maybe forty. More watching from doorways and windows around the square.
The council — all five of them — stand in a line between the crowd and my front door, which is either protection or theater, and at this moment I can't tell which.
I can hear words now, coming through the glass in fragments.
"—more dead this morning, Geld's whole north field—"
"—caravan workers gone, nobody knows where—"
"—black magic, it's been black magic from the start—"
I unlatch the door and step outside.
The noise continues. If anything it sharpens, redirects toward me with waving arms and pointing fingers. Hestara turns and sees me and her expression contorts and then smooths over.
"Mistress Alderwyn." Her voice carries, practiced and controlled. "Please go back inside."
"This is my doorstep." I look past her at the crowd.
The faces are familiar and strange at once — people I know, people I've sold bread to, wearing expressions I've never seen on them before.
Geld is in the front row with two other farmers.
Pella is toward the back, not shouting, but present. "What's happened?"
"More livestock." The council member to Hestara's left speaks before she can stop him. A man named Orrin, fifties, always voted the loudest on everything. "Found this morning. Geld's entire north field. And now four of the caravan workers have gone missing."
"Missing," I repeat.
"Vanished overnight." He stares at me. "With no explanation."
"I've been in this building since yesterday afternoon." I say it clearly enough for the front rows to hear. "With my daughter."
"Nobody's saying you did it yourself." Geld steps forward, and Hestara puts a hand up to stop him. He stops, but his voice doesn't. "Whatever you've brought into this town, it's doing the work for you."
The crowd pushes forward a half-step, not quite a surge, the kind of collective movement that happens when a group has been standing still too long and something finally gives it direction. The council line holds, barely.
I look past all of them, scanning the square's edges, the gap between buildings where I know Kaedrin sometimes positions himself.
Nothing. The post is empty.
I look back at the crowd. Hestara has turned to face them now, arms out, managing the pressure with the deliberate calm of someone who's aware that one wrong word tips this from loud to dangerous. Orrin is still staring at me. Geld hasn't moved back.
The caravan workers going missing is Kaedrin's work — it has to be. Which means he's moving, which means the investigation is moving, which means there may be something on the other side of this morning worth waiting for.
I stay on the stoop. Going back inside feels like conceding something I can't afford to concede. Going further out into the crowd feels like a different kind of mistake. I stand where I am, arms at my sides, and watch Hestara work the crowd and wait to see which way the next five minutes go.
Brennor comes through the crowd like a ship through shallow water — steady, unhurried, large enough that people simply step aside.
Sister Anawyn follows in his wake, smaller and quieter, her healer's robes marking her as someone the crowd instinctively makes room for. She reaches the stoop a step behind Brennor and positions herself at my left, close enough that her shoulder nearly touches mine.
Brennor turns to face the crowd with the expression he uses when grain prices are being discussed and someone is saying something foolish.
"I've lived in Brindle Hollow sixty-two years," he says, loud enough to carry without shouting.
"My father before me. I knew this woman's grandmother.
I've known Maris Alderwyn since she was small enough to sleep in a bread basket.
" He pauses, letting that settle. "Not one member of this family has ever been accused of wrongdoing. Not one."
"Times change," someone calls from the middle of the crowd.
"People don't." He holds his ground. "You're frightened. I understand it. But frightened people make decisions they regret, and I'd rather we not spend the next ten years regretting this one."
Sister Anawyn speaks more quietly, but the crowd has settled enough to hear her.
"I've treated half of you for one ailment or another.
I know what illness does, and I know what fear does, and right now I'm watching fear do considerable damage.
" Her eyes move across the crowd. "The animals dying near the forest is real.
The explanation you've settled on is not. "
"Then what is it?" Geld's voice, flat and challenging. "If not the child, then what?"
"That's worth finding out," she says. "Before you destroy an innocent family."
The crowd doesn't quiet, exactly — it shifts, mutters, redistributes its energy without releasing it. Orrin is talking to Hestara in a low voice. Two women near the back have stopped shouting and are watching instead, which is not the same as agreement but is at least a pause.
I stand on my stoop and keep my face still and think about Elin upstairs. Whether she's awake. Whether she can hear any of this through the floorboards. I left her asleep on her side, one hand curled under her chin, and I pray she stays that way.
I think about the valley road, the horse in the stable two streets over, the money box under the floor.
I made the wrong choice. I know it now, standing here watching my neighbors decide whether to let the council handle this or take it somewhere the council can't control.
I should have taken Elin and gone, when I still could have left quietly.
The crowd's noise doesn't crest the way I'm braced for it to. Brennor's presence seems to be helping, or Sister Anawyn's, or the simple fact of the council still standing between the mob and my door. The energy holds at a high pitch but doesn't tip.
Hestara steps forward.
"The council has heard your concerns." Her voice carries the full weight of her authority, and the crowd gives it enough room to be heard. "We will act. Mistress Alderwyn." She turns to face me directly. "Your time has come. The council requires your presence at the hall for final hearing. Today."
The murmur in the crowd shifts to something almost satisfied.
"Today," I repeat.
"Within the hour." Her eyes don't move from mine. "The council will render judgment. That is what this town is owed, and that is what it will receive."
Final hearing. Judgment. Not more deliberation, not another delay — an ending, one way or another. She's fed the crowd just enough to move them off the street, and the price is that she can no longer afford to keep the case open.
I hold my breath. She holds my gaze with practiced steadiness.
The crowd begins to disperse, slowly, the way crowds do when they've been given something to wait for. A few people stay at the square's edge. Most move off, carrying the morning's grievances in whatever direction their day takes them.
I turn to Brennor. He's watching me with that particular look of his — the one that means he's worried and won't say so directly.
"Thank you," I tell him.
"Don't thank me yet." He glances toward the council hall. "Do you want me to come?"
"No." I briefly touch his arm. "Stay here. In case Elin wakes up."
Sister Anawyn touches my wrist lightly. "You argued well at the first hearing. You can do it again."
"The first hearing was a delay." I stare at the council hall at the top of the square. "This is the verdict."
Neither of them has an answer for that, because there isn't one.
I straighten my apron, go back inside long enough to check that the back door is bolted and Elin is still asleep — she is, curled tight around Pip, undisturbed — and come back out to face whatever the next hour brings.