Edria
They come before the forge fire is lit.
I hear the horses first — too many, moving too fast for the hour, the sound of them cutting through the pre-dawn quiet before I've fully woken. I'm off my cot and reaching for my boots when the door comes in.
Four soldiers, men in uniforms I don’t recognize, filling the doorway with drawn weapons and the efficiency and practice of following orders. Behind them, two more move directly to the coal pile without hesitation.
They know exactly where to look.
"Edria, daughter of Oren." The lead soldier doesn't frame it as a question. "You are detained under authority of Magistrate Malrec pending charges of treason and illegal arms supply."
"I don't know what you're—"
"There." One of the soldiers at the coal pile holds up the oilcloth bundle. Three blades in various stages of construction, the ones I hadn't finished yet. The ones I should have moved two days ago.
Papa comes through the interior door in his nightshirt, Finn a step behind him, both of them taking in the soldiers and the weapons and me in the same terrible second.
"What is this?" Papa's voice is rough with sleep and rising anger. "What are you doing in my forge?"
"Papa." I shake my head. "Don't."
He doesn't listen. He never does when it matters.
The soldiers clamp irons around my wrists while I'm still looking at his face, and the click of them locking is the loudest sound in the room.
They lead me from the forge to where Malrec is waiting in the center of the main lane.
He's dressed for it — good robes, composed face, positioned where the early risers will see everything. Oxwood is barely awake, grey light just bleeding into the sky, but people are already appearing in doorways. Word travels fast when horses come through before dawn.
The soldiers march me forward and stop ten feet from where he stands.
"Edria of Oxwood." His voice carries easily in the cold morning air. "You are charged with supplying illegal arms to rebel factions operating against dark elf authority. You are further charged with conspiracy to incite violence against the lords of this territory."
"I was feeding my family." My voice is steadier than I feel. "The weapons were private commissions. I didn't ask who bought them."
"The buyers were rebel fighters." He opens a folded document and reads from it without looking at me. "Three separate shipments traced to attack sites in Ardenmere. One confiscated cache matching your forge markings exactly."
"I didn't know—"
"The village of Oxwood has harbored a traitor." He looks up now, past me, addressing the growing crowd. "This woman has put every one of you at risk. If dark elf authorities had chosen to hold the village collectively responsible, you would all be answering for her crimes."
The murmuring starts low. I hear it shift — not toward me, away from me. Aldric, who I've repaired three plow blades for this season alone, takes a step back from the crowd. The miller's wife turns to whisper to her neighbor.
I watch it happen and keep my face still.
"She's not a traitor." Papa pushes through from the thick crowd, limping hard, Finn right behind him trying to catch his arm.
"She fixed tools for every farmer standing here.
She patched roofs and sharpened knives and kept this forge running through two bad winters.
" He stops beside me, breathing hard. "Anything she did, she did to keep us alive. Every one of you knows that."
A few people look at the ground. Nobody speaks.
Malrec turns his gaze to Papa with a patient expression as if he’s been waiting for exactly this.
"Oren of the forge," he says. "You housed a criminal enterprise and collected income from it. That makes you complicit." He nods to the two soldiers nearest Papa.
"No—" I start forward and the irons snap me back.
They grab Papa by both arms. He tries to pull free and his bad leg gives under the torque — I see it happen, watch his face go white — and when he stumbles one of the soldiers shoves him hard into the mud.
He goes down on his hands and knees and doesn't get up fast enough, and the second soldier pulls him upright by the collar and drives an elbow into his ribs.
"Stop." My voice cracks on it. "He has nothing to do with this. He didn't know—"
"Take him for questioning." Malrec says it without looking.
Finn lunges forward and two villagers actually catch him, pulling him back — I can't tell if they're protecting him or containing him. He's shouting something I can't hear over the blood in my ears.
Papa is dragged down the lane. He doesn't look back. I think it's so I won't see his face.
Someone betrayed us.
The thought settles as they march me toward the magistrate's courthouse, cold and certain.
The soldiers went straight to the coal pile.
They didn't search — they retrieved. Someone told them the location, the timing, possibly the volume.
Someone connected to Velis's side of the arrangement, someone who knew my forge layout well enough to describe it.
Velis's network was raided. Men in custody talk when they have something to trade.
I run through faces in my head — the men at the exchange points, the ones who'd seen me move bundles in and out. Any one of them could have given a name and a description and a floor plan in exchange for a lighter sentence.
One of them did.
The lane seems longer than it ever has. Every face I pass is a calculation — sympathy, fear, relief that it's me and not them.
Old Perrin watches from his doorway with his hat in his hand.
Sorella's tavern shutters are closed, which means she saw the soldiers coming and made herself invisible before they arrived. I don't blame her.
I'm nearly at the courthouse steps when I see it.
All the way at the end of the lane, where the road bends toward the forest track, a banner catches the early light. Dark field, silver stag. Moving fast, the horse beneath it pushing hard.
Too late.
The soldiers pull me up the steps before the rider reaches the lane entrance, and the courthouse door closes behind me, and the grey morning disappears.
They keep me in the dim entrance hall with iron on my wrists and mud on my boots, and I breathe.
Papa is somewhere in this building being questioned with a bad leg and bruised ribs. Finn is in the street with no one to keep him from doing something reckless. And Nyrius just rode into Oxwood to find his banner's presence meaningless, because Malrec moved first.
I told myself I had it managed. I told myself I was careful.
Now, I’m alone in the dark and I won’t let myself finish the thought.