Edria
The noise is everywhere at once.
I stopped being able to track individual voices three minutes ago.
It's a wall of sound now — accusations, counter-accusations, the sharp crack of wood somewhere as someone overturns the evidence table, the stamp of horses at the square's edge where Thalen's men are trying to hold position without actually doing anything useful.
Nyrius's arm is around my shoulders and I am, quietly, leaning into it. Not performance. My legs are doing something unreliable and the chains keep throwing off my balance, and he's warm and solid and here, which is more than I expected when they dragged me out of that cell this morning.
"Stay upright," he says, low, beside my ear.
"I'm upright."
"You're leaning."
"I'm resting." I find my footing and straighten slightly, though I don't move away from him.
He doesn't argue. His grip doesn't loosen either.
I watch the square from inside the noise instead of trying to fight through it. The villagers have fractured into clusters — some still shouting at the platform, some shouting at each other, a few who have gone quiet and are simply watching, deciding what to believe.
Malrec stands on the platform steps. His composure is gone now, fully, replaced with something rawer. He raises his voice over the crowd.
"The evidence is fabricated." He points at Nyrius. "Every document, every piece of testimony — manufactured by a lord who wants his criminal mistress freed. None of it is real. He's turning you against your magistrate to save his harlot from justice."
A few voices in the crowd echo it. Fewer than before.
"His harlot." A woman's voice, sharp and carrying, from somewhere near the grain merchant's stall. "His harlot fixed the wheel on my cart last winter for two copper pieces and didn't complain about the rate."
"His harlot kept my father's farm tools working for years," someone else says, closer.
"Malrec's men took my pig." Flat, certain, from a man I recognize as the elder Pelley. "Told me it was partial payment on a taxes I'd already settled. I have the receipt. Where did my pig go, Magistrate?"
The crowd turns.
There's still noise and division and the dark elf nobles watching from their horses with expressions ranging from disdain to careful neutrality. But the weight of it shifts. I can feel it the way you feel a tide changing, not in one wave but in a gradual reorientation of everything.
Malrec takes one step back up the platform stairs.
"He's been sending his collectors to beat people," a young farmer shouts. "My neighbor couldn't pay last spring and they broke two of his fingers."
"The south road toll doubled under his oversight and none of that money went to road repairs — I can see that much with my own eyes—"
"Who does it help to execute her?" Sorella's voice, cutting through the noise from the tavern side, direct and clear. "Ask that. Who benefits from Edria being dead? Not us. We lose our blacksmith. Only one person in this square benefits from silencing her, and he's standing on those steps."
The crowd looks at Malrec.
I scan the crowd.
And then I see them.
Papa is near the front, standing with the Pelley brothers, his broad shoulders squared despite the bandaging I can see beneath his open coat.
Finn is beside him — too tall, too thin, his auburn hair catching the morning light — and he's not watching Malrec.
He's watching me. When our eyes meet he raises his chin, just slightly, the same gesture he made at the forge door a hundred times when he wanted me to know he was paying attention.
My eyes drift to my father. He looks back, and his expression is the one he has when he's made a decision and is done arguing about it.
He's standing with the villagers pointing fingers at Malrec.
Around them, the accusers multiply. More voices, more names, more grievances aired publicly for the first time because the magistrate's authority has cracked and there's suddenly nothing to fear from speaking.
I watch it happen the way a fire catches — slowly at first, then faster than you expect, until it's self-sustaining.
Even if this goes wrong for me, I think. Even if the court finds a way to move forward anyway.
He'll be here. He'll do right by Finn, by Papa, by Oxwood. He's already doing it. The tariffs, the reforms, standing in this square with his arm around me in chains in front of every noble who thinks he's lost his mind. He came here knowing what it would cost and he came anyway.
The peace that settles in my chest is unexpected and completely real.
A shout goes up near the platform — louder, angrier. Malrec has backed up two more steps. The nobles at the square's edge have gone very still. Thalen's expression has shifted from cold authority to something more careful.
Malrec looks at the crowd surging toward the steps. He looks at Nyrius, then at the ledgers in Cyran's hands and the villagers with their grievances and the guards positioned at every exit.
Something in his face closes.
He turns.
He takes three fast steps up to the platform, doesn't stop at the top, and keeps moving — away from the crowd, toward the back of the courthouse building, toward the narrow servants' lane that runs behind the square.
He runs.