Chapter 21
MARIS
The crowd outside the council hall is three deep before I even reach the steps.
Word traveled faster than I walked. The square is packed from the fountain to the hall's stone entrance, people spilling off the lane and into the gaps between buildings, the noise of them pressing in from all sides. Elin tightens her arms around my neck the moment we turn the corner and see it.
"I've got you," I say, low, near her ear. "Keep your face down."
She buries it against my shoulder.
I walk into it.
"There she is." The voice comes from somewhere to my left. "Witch. Brought the child to soften us up."
"Look at those ears." A woman, close, I can hear her disgust without seeing her face. "Devil ears on a devil child."
"Evil is what evil does." A man this time, older, the settled certainty of someone repeating a thing he's said several times already. "Should've driven them out."
I keep my eyes forward. The hall entrance is thirty feet away, then twenty. Elin trembles against me — not crying, not making a sound, just shaking with the stillness of a toddler learning that going quiet is safer than reacting.
Fifteen feet. Ten.
Someone reaches toward Elin's hair from the right side. I turn my shoulder into it and push through without stopping, and then we're through the door and the noise drops by half.
The hall is standing room only inside. Every bench is packed, more people lined against the walls than the last hearing.
The five council members sit at the long table, and Hestara's eyes find me the moment I come through the door.
She looks — not exactly uncertain, but careful.
The three members to her right are having a whispered conference that stops when they see Elin.
I walk the length of the hall and sit down in the wooden chair.
Elin doesn't let go. She stays pressed against my chest, face turned away from the room, one fist wrapped in my collar. I shift her weight to my left arm and keep my right hand moving in slow circles on her back.
"It's all right," I say quietly. "You don't have to look."
She doesn't look.
Hestara opens her mouth. Her eyes drop to Elin, and she closes it again. Orrin leans toward her and murmurs something. The council member on the far left — a woman named Devet who has spoken the least at both hearings — watches me with an expression I can't fully read.
"Mistress Alderwyn." Hestara finally speaks. "The child—"
"Was too frightened to be left behind." I say it plainly. "Three children threw rocks at her on our front stoop. An adult reached for her hair in the crowd just now. She is three years old and she asked me not to put her down." I look at Hestara directly. "She stays."
Before Hestara can respond, a voice from the benches cuts in.
"This is exactly what she wants." A man I don't know well, broad-shouldered, seated near the front, says. "Bring the child in, make us feel cruel for going on with it."
"Leave the girl home if you don't want her here." Another voice from further back says. "Or leave her out of it. She's the one killing the livestock."
"She should be afraid." A woman near the door says, sharp and certain. "Fear is what keeps things like her in line."
Elin's hand tightens on my collar.
I kiss top of her curls and keep my face toward the council table. The voices behind me don't stop immediately, and I let them run. I've learned something since the last hearing. Engaging the crowd gives them an audience. The council is who I'm here for.
When the noise drops enough for speech, I look at Hestara.
"I'm here." My voice is even and clear. "I came when summoned, as I said I would.
I've brought my daughter because I had no other choice this morning, and I trust this council understands what it means that she's sitting in my lap trembling.
" I glance at each member in turn — Hestara, Orrin, Devet, the two on the ends.
"I'd like the chance to speak to you. Without the accusations of people who decided the verdict before they walked through the door interrupting proceedings that are supposed to be conducted with some measure of fairness. "
Hestara straightens slightly. Orrin's expression is solid.
Elin lifts her face from my shoulder just far enough to look at Hestara from beneath her curls. Her silver eyes are red-rimmed and entirely steady.
Hestara looks at the child for an extended moment, then back at me.
"The council will come to order," she says.
Hestara's hand comes down on the table once, sharp as a crack of wood.
"This hearing will proceed in order." She surveys the benches with flat authority.
Her eyes stop on Geld, then move to the broad-shouldered man who spoke before, then to the woman near the door.
"The next person who interrupts will be removed. "
The hall settles. Not happily, but it settles.
"Mistress Alderwyn." Hestara folds her hands on the table.
"The council's concern is this — silver eyes, pointed ears, skin changing toward grey.
That is not a missing toe. It is not a face tick.
It suggests either otherworldly heritage or the influence of dark magic on the child.
The council needs you to address that directly. "
Elin has gone very still in my lap. I keep my hand moving on her back.
"Elin's appearance comes from her heritage," I say. "Not dark magic. She is a child of mixed blood. That is the whole of it."
"Mixed with what?" Orrin asks.
A frown pulls at my lips. "With someone who passed through this town years ago. Someone who is gone." I pause. "Elin's features are inherited, not inflicted. There is no curse. There is no ritual. There is little girl who likes horses and dolls and sorting pebbles by size."
"The father—" Hestara starts.
"Is not the subject of this hearing," I say in a steady voice.
"Elin is. And Elin is a child. She has nightmares and favorite foods and a doll she cannot sleep without.
She asks why the sky changes color at sunset and she cries when she skins her knee.
" I look along the council table. "There is nothing in her that warrants what has happened to her this week. "
Devet speaks, finally. "You understand how this looks to people who haven't encountered—"
"I understand how fear works," I say. "But I need this council to understand what evidence looks like.
No one has seen me or Elin anywhere near the livestock.
Not once. Not ever." I lean forward slightly.
"I bake bread. I sell it to the people in this room.
If my bread were enchanted, your animals would be the least of your problems — and yet every person in this hall ate a loaf of mine last week and is standing here perfectly well. "
A few people shift on the benches. Geld stares at the floor.
"The deaths at the forest edge have been happening for a while.
" I look at Hestara. "Before Elin's scarf came loose.
Before anyone in this town knew what she looked like.
What this town has is fear, and it has pointed that fear at the most visible, most vulnerable target it could find.
" I press my palm flat on my knee. "My daughter. Who is three."
The whispers behind me haven't stopped. They've changed pitch — lower, tighter, the murmur of people whose minds are already made up but who are waiting for permission to act on it. I catch fragments without trying.
"—council's taking too long—"
"—should have been settled already—"
"—don't need the council to tell us what we already know—"
I don't turn around.
Hestara is watching me with an expression that indicates she’s heard everything I've said and is weighing it against something I can't see. She exchanges a look with Devet, then with the council member at the end of hte table.
"The council will deliberate," she says finally. "In private."
"Now?" Orrin looks at her.
"Now." She stands, and the other four rise with her. "Mistress Alderwyn, you will remain in the hall. Orrin, you will stay." She glances at him. "In the hall. Not at the front."
Orrin moves back toward the benches without argument.
Hestara looks at me one last time before she leads the council through the door at the rear of the hall. It closes behind them with a solid, final sound.
I sit with Elin in the chair and feel the room settle around me in the worst possible way.
Not relieved. Not waiting. The benches are still full, and without Hestara at the table there is nothing between me and forty people whose patience has been thinning.
Orrin stands near the side wall with his arms crossed, his eyes on the crowd rather than on me.
"Mama," Elin says quietly. She hasn't moved her face from my shoulder.
"I know." I press my cheek against her curls. "I know."
The murmur behind me builds by degrees, a slow accumulation of voices finding each other, trading grievances back and forth across the benches. I watch the rear door where the council disappeared and I count my breaths and I do not look behind me.
The council could come back in five minutes. They could come back in twenty. And the longer they take, the more the room behind me sounds less like a hearing and more like the square this morning.
I keep my hand on Elin's back and I wait, and I do not let myself think about what happens if they decide to exile us, or if Kaedrin can’t find the evidence he needs.