“Hold your tongue, Hesh, and look out that window at the courtyard,” Senior Elder Tor Ves commanded. His voice low and shook with the heavy, defensive certainty of an administrator who believed he was holding up the sky.
Through the glass panes of the weights pavilion, the fifty village herbalists, river bonesetters, and town apothecaries stood waiting around the stone platform with their wicker baskets.
“Every winter for ninety years, three hundred farming households between the southern bend and the timber locks have depended on Ash Reed’s spring charter for affordable winter fever powders, bone-setting washes, and free apprenticeship clinics,” Tor Ves said. He turned his cold eyes from Hesh back to Seyun and Mina. “In twenty-one days, our decennial spring charter goes before the Aperture Court’s central registry for renewal.”
He tapped the watermarked recantation sheet on the dark wood table.
“Right now, Assistant Examiner Reth Mal’s office has flagged this valley for spirit vein subversion because of the turmoil you stirred up in Oran and at the northern shrine, Seyun. If I allow an expelled student to walk out of our winter market carrying four pounds of prime ash while claiming that a Court-supplied priming vessel poisoned our top inner student, the trial will revoke Ash Reed’s charter before the spring thaw.”
