Chapter Ten The Trial of Stewardship, Again
CHAPTER TEN
The Trial of Stewardship, Again
The Crown's idea of randomization involved forty-four numbered brass spheres spun inside a transparent drum while three auditors watched. Anya drew nineteen.
Section Nineteen turned out to be a dispute between two neighboring farming cooperatives over access to an irrigation canal during drought.
No broken pipes. No machinery. No obvious place for her technical background to save her. Perfect.
She walked into the mock village square determined to fail responsibly. Then she met the actors.
One group represented upstream orchard farmers. The other represented downstream grain growers. Both held legal permits granting "priority seasonal draw" from the same canal because the Crown had issued overlapping rights twenty years apart. Anya stared at the documents.
"This isn't mediation."
The evaluator blinked. "Excuse me?"
"This is a paperwork crime with farmers attached."
The public gallery laughed. Damn them.
She turned back to the actors.
"How much water is actually available?"
The evaluator said, "You may ask only the parties."
Anya looked at the orchard spokesman.
"How much?"
He gave a number.
The grain spokeswoman gave a different one.
"Measured where?"
Silence. Anya closed her eyes. Of course.
For the next hour, she refused to mediate until the simulation provided a flow measurement. When it finally did, the amount was lower than either cooperative believed.
"You cannot negotiate water that does not exist," Anya said.
The grain spokeswoman crossed her arms. "Then who loses?"
"Both of you."
The gallery quieted.
Anya drew a line across the district map.
"The orchards get enough to preserve root stock, not fruit yield. Grain gets rotational flow at night to reduce evaporation. Both cooperatives contribute labor to repair seepage in the north channel. Crown emergency stores cover half the lost harvest value."
The evaluator frowned. "Emergency stores are not listed among your available resources."
"Then the Crown can amend its mistake for free?"
"Candidate Serrin—"
"These permits overlap because the issuing authority failed. If the state creates the conflict, the state carries some cost."
Public confidence rose again. Anya nearly screamed. She finished third.
Mirel finished first after resolving a labor strike by giving workers voting representation on a freight board. Sela finished eleventh. Junia, to everyone's surprise, finished fifth by persuading a fictional town to convert an abandoned theater into winter housing. Tarin Vol finished forty-third.
At elimination, four women were Released. Tarin survived by one place.
The next morning, Anya found her alone on the palace roof terrace, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette in defiance of at least six regulations.
"You nearly went home," Anya said.
Tarin exhaled smoke toward the city.
"Nearly."
"You sound disappointed."
"I am."
Anya leaned against the stone rail.
"Want help losing?"
Tarin gave her a sideways look.
"You?"
"Fair."
Tarin's scar pulled when she smiled.
"I don't want to go home. I want Release. Those are not the same thing."
Anya waited.
"My home region doesn't want me back," Tarin said. "I was drafted from a military work barracks."
"What did you do?"
"Hit an officer."
"Why?"
"He hit a girl smaller than him."
Anya nodded. "Reasonable."
"Court did not agree."
"Courts lack imagination."
Tarin flicked ash over the rail.
"If I Release now, sentence resumes. If I make it past the fifth Trial, candidates gain protected Crown-service eligibility even if eliminated. Different statute."
"So you need to survive late enough to avoid prison but not so late you enter Forfeiture danger."
"Exactly."
"Who designed this system?"
"Probably someone with a chart."
Anya laughed.
More and more, the Trials looked less like a competition and more like forty-four separate hostage negotiations.
At lunch, the four-woman kitchen conspiracy expanded to five. Tarin joined without ceremony.
They spread rule packets across the table.
Mirel had highlighted financial protections. Junia had marked service clauses. Sela tracked elimination thresholds. Anya diagrammed all of it on the back of a linen delivery form.
"We need a ledger," Junia said.
"Of what?" Sela asked.
"What each candidate actually risks."
Mirel looked toward the camera above the door.
"That could be interpreted as collusion."
"Then don't put names," Anya said. "Just clauses and categories."
Tarin tapped the Forfeiture section. "You think the others will share?"
"If they trust us."
"They don't."
"Then we earn it."
Mirel studied Anya.
"You are building an information network inside a competition you want to lose."
"I contain complexity."
Sela pointed at her. "Thief."
Over the next two days, the ledger grew.
Candidates came quietly to the residence kitchen or left anonymous notes beneath the flour jar.
A widowed candidate had been drafted because the Crown did not recognize her rural marriage.
A merchant's daughter would lose family debt protection if released before Trial Four.
A teacher from the north had a younger brother in state custody because of her father's political offense.
Two noblewomen faced arranged marriages worse than Lucen if they returned.
The Trials did not recruit women into equal risk.
They weaponized whatever each woman feared losing.
Anya carried that thought into her next supervised meeting with Lucen.
They met in the winter garden, where cameras were easier to see and harder to cover.
"The scoring isn't the only problem," she said.
"I know."
"No, I mean structurally. Every candidate has a different punishment behind her."
Lucen's expression sharpened.
"How do you know?"
"We talk."
"Careful."
"Stop saying that."
"Stop doing things that make it necessary."
She stepped closer.
"Did you know?"
"Know what?"
"That candidate Release affects debt, custody, sentencing, ration priority. That the Crown uses preexisting obligations to keep women compliant."
Lucen looked away.
"Some. Not all."
"How much is some?"
"Enough to hate the answer."
Anya's anger changed direction. Not at him. That was increasingly inconvenient.
"The Trial is not selecting a wife," she said. "It's selecting the woman least able to say no."
Lucen went very still.
The sentence seemed to strike somewhere deeper than she intended.
"Yes," he said.
One word. No joke. Anya's throat tightened. She lowered her voice.
"Then why are you still participating?"
His eyes met hers.
"Because if I walk away badly, Senn gains more power."
"And if you stay?"
"He keeps the power he already has."
"That isn't a choice."
"Welcome to the Crown."
Anya hated how tired he sounded.
For a moment, she imagined him not as the face on station screens but as a boy raised inside clauses, watched from birth, taught that every refusal carried a body count. Compassion was dangerous. Attraction was worse. She changed the subject.
"I want access to Trial regulations before amendments."
"Why?"
"To compare what changed."
"That archive is restricted."
"You have a key."
"I have a title. Different thing."
"Use it."
Lucen smiled faintly.
"You are a terrible influence."
"You were already rebelling when I met you."
"I was doing it elegantly."
"No one noticed."
His smile widened.
The camera above the fig trees rotated toward them. Neither moved away.
Anya realized that was a mistake only when Lucen's gaze dropped to her mouth. The air between them changed. He did not touch her. That made it worse.
"This is not strategic," she whispered.
"No."
"We should stop."
"We are standing."
"You know what I mean."
"Unfortunately."
He stepped back first. Anya hated the relief. She hated the disappointment more.
? ? ?
Being first in public confidence came with gifts. Anya hated all of them.
Flowers arrived from Greybridge civic clubs. A jeweler sent a bracelet shaped like linked water drops. Someone mailed a cake with Lucen's face iced beside hers beneath the words FUTURE FLOWS TOGETHER. Sela ate his forehead.
"Disrespectful," Anya said.
"Delicious."
The worst gift was a basket of children's drawings. Not because they were bad. Because they were not.
Crayon Anya fixed pipes. Crayon Anya wore a crown. Crayon Anya stood beside a prince while blue water covered half the page.
One child had written: IF YOU WIN MAYBE GREYbrIDGE GETS MORE WATER.
Anya stared at that line for a long time.
Mirel found her in the common room.
"You look ill."
Anya handed her the drawing. Mirel read it.
"Ah."
"They think my marriage is infrastructure policy."
"Historically, royal marriages have been infrastructure policy."
"That does not improve it."
"No."
Anya set the drawing down carefully.
"If I lose, they feel like Greybridge lost. If I win, they think proximity to me means access."
Mirel sat beside her.
"Now you understand why my father wants me here."
Anya looked at her.
"You think winning would save your freight company."
"It would. Creditors would extend terms for decades to a family tied to the Crown."
"And if you lose?"
Mirel's face tightened.
"My brothers inherit obligations they did not create. My father may sell our eastern routes. Hundreds of workers could lose positions."
Anya frowned.
"That is not your fault."
"No. But consequence does not ask whose fault it is before arriving."
The sentence sounded like something Lucen might say.
Anya disliked how many different people had learned the same lesson from power.
That afternoon, the candidates attended a public garden walk. Crowds lined the palace fence. When Anya appeared, cheers surged. 47-18 ribbons waved above heads. She wanted to turn around. Instead she walked.
A little boy squeezed through the barrier before a guard could stop him. He held a tin cup.
"Anya!"
She crouched. The guard reached for him.
"It's fine."
The boy thrust out the cup.
"My mum says you shut off the palace water first."
"I did."
"Will you do it for real when you're princess?"
The crowd laughed. Anya did not.
"If the palace is wasting water while people don't have enough, yes."