It was all a lot to arrange. Sending someone to Mish's family with a note that she'd be out for a few days, but they needed to come and pick her up after her arraignment, as she'd been apprehended as the accessory to a grave crime... that was the easiest part.

Getting the dress made, the cosmetics in the right mixture and the Carriage away from anyone's prying eyes out behind the cabin, that was all fine as well.

I'd never realized the tax that stress took from ones' body when one was doing something... not monumental, but bigger than usual? In the public eye. Where everyone would look at you and judge you. And find you wanting no matter how you behaved or what you said.

Years ago, I'd decided not to care what people thought, but it's a different matter when they could quickly form a mob and kill you before you can even get into the safe embrace of your fortress. A fortress I've yet to even see.

"You look vaguely ill, Sceptarch," Melantha said from across the carriage. She was garbed in what could be called sneak-thief attire. Since I'd figured out she wasn't a maid, I asked that she not behave like one unless I specifically needed her to. I didn't like that she was wearing some weird stiff dress that would make it harder for her to fight, instead of her armor.

"Have you ever felt," I started. "That it's fine if you die, but you don't want to die that way?"

"Of course," she replied. "A death befitting oneself is one of the base dignities."

Right. Death Revering Elves.

"I don't think an angry mob befits me," I said.

"Have you ever fought anyone before?" she asked.

"Technically no, if we're talking about 'to the death'," I said.

"If you've fought but not with your life on the line," she replied. "Then the death befitting you is much lower than it would be if you had."

"What about battle makes me more befitting?" I asked.

We were riding down the road toward the center of town where the bandstand was. It was used for festivals and trials both. To announce sentences, rather than holding the whole thing. Mish's trial was taken care of just this morning when an interrogator was sent with a stone blessed by the Diadem of Verity. It was quickly and easily sorted-- though I was suspicious of how easily. After all, the Stones of Verity could only determine if one was telling the truth. It could not detect half truths or lies.

"Battle where one puts their life on the line," Melantha spoke with an even tone. "Is the place where you learn if you are befitting or not."

Ah, one of those... self-discovery things.

"I just think it's ridiculous I survived my mother literally poisoning me, only to get murdered by a mob," I said. "So I just hope it doesn't happen."

"Poison?" she tilted her head at me. "That is its own kind of survival skill. How did you live?"

"She was giving me very small doses. But not small enough," I said. "She wanted to make me throw up. I was too fat for her, you see."

"Disgusting," she made a face. "Making ones' children immune to poisons is a duty and she only did it for that stupid reason?"

Well, that answered some of my questions about child-rearing, I suppose. "Yes, she was a stupid and ridiculous person. She only ever picked on the weak and used whatever she could to disadvantage the strong so she could win. But not because she should've won, just because she couldn't stand to lose."

"You don't seem that stupid," she said. "I suppose her actions served a purpose, if only to teach you exactly how pathetic she was."

It felt weird, other people calling my mother pathetic. I'd always thought so, even if I'd never gotten any confirmation. That she was the type of person to scream and beg and cry, but then lord over you if she was given the higher position... and yet it was so odd. Like a shame I needed to hide. Like being raised by someone like that put some kind of black mark on my record.

Teaching me how not to be pathetic by giving me a terrible example. That was something I'd never considered before.

"We've arrived," she said as the carriage pulled itself to a halt.

The carriage itself was quite lovely, but obviously also old. The gilding wasn't flaking and the wood was well-polished, but the style was a century or so back. I knew because it had modifications to suit the new regulations and designs, it was not build with them. That much was obvious by the slightly lighter shade of the wood which hadn't been varnished and polished for a century or so, like the rest.

Blue and gold. Strange, considering she said they used Blue and Silver only. I thought, perhaps she meant for clothes-

"Are you ready, Sceptarch?" she asked me. There was a challenge in her golden gaze, I could feel it as much as see it. She wanted to know what I would do. What kind of ruler I'd be, I'd assumed.

"No, but who ever is?" I asked and stood from my seat just as the Blade opened the door and held out a hand to me.

The stair just below me was easy to navigate, but it did feel more secure when I took his hand to step down. They must have adapted to human norms. A woman not being helped out of her carriage by a man would be seen as disrespected. The man as rude or the woman as disreputable.

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When I stepped down onto the ground, just beside the bandstand, the Carriage was hiding me from view, as I'd told them to do beforehand. But then the Carriage was being moved and I had to walk up the steps, to reveal myself.

There were gasps of shock and surprise, most likely because no one would've really recognized me as of yet. They'd be reacting to the Diadem and the Blade escorting me. Shadowing my every step, while my actual shadow stayed out of sight.

"Sceptarch of the Vireld," the Mayor had been called and there he stood. On the other end of the bandstand, speaking with a booming effect through the amplification crystal he was using.

The Blade stepped behind me and fastened the necklace around my throat that held my own. It was on loan from the mayor's office. Until this was over, though, it was mine.

His fingertips were so deft, I barely felt him moving my hair and fastening the necklace at all. Just a brush of leather and then he stepped back, away.

"Mayor Agresse," I greeted him in return. "How has your investigation gone?"

"Oh it went well enough," he replied. Niceties to show we're not fighting, everyone is in agreement. "We used a verity stone to take her testimony, as you know. And we found she was lying about quite a few things. So after some pressing, we managed to get the real story."

I was intrigued, as he pulled a stele out of his inside pocket. They held information, but he could have simply memorized the story if it were short. Was he going to humanize... or demonize?

"Miss Mishrakala Vant," he spoke with authority. "Did knowingly take part in a violent crime upon the person of Celia the Scribe."

I didn't have a surname, as most commoners didn't. Already he was portraying me as underprivileged while Mish was storied and well-off. Compared to everyone here, anyway. He also made it a point to call her 'miss' and myself 'the Scribe'. It was funny. With that one specific move, he'd highlighted the fact that I was a worker and Mish was just the type to get married and be a homemaker. Which is admirable to most, but would make her look lazy compared to me.

A bit unnecessary, but I didn't really care.

"We investigated this matter as it was brought to our attention," he stated. "The prisoner was taken from the Sceptarch's custody, fully fed and unbeaten. She had only self-inflicted wounds from tearing at her bindings."

She tried to escape her rightful imprisonment. Look how guilty she is. Wasn't the Sceptarch so nice to have taken pity on her? That was the general idea, as I could see it.

"The Sceptarch has asked for Miss Vant to be placed back into her custody for sentencing," he said. "While I myself would prefer to keep her and charge her, she has offended the ruler of a subordinate state-"

Ah, that was the term I couldn't recall before! It wasn't a Kingdom or a Duchy, but a subordinate nation. The mayor called it a 'state' because Humans like to think they conquered the Vireld. Everyone knows that isn't true, but they like to pretend.

"So I have decided to grant this request," he said in a very sad tone of voice. "So as not to offend our friends who defend the borders."

Yes, can't have the brutal Elven soldiers recalled- how messy that would be.

"I called Mish's family here, are they present?" I asked.

"We're here!" a man shouted from the crowd and then shoved his way through. Three women walked behind him. I recognized all of them. Morrison, Kay, Elle and Greta. Mish's father, mother, aunt and grandmother.

As they walked up the staircase nearer the Mayor, I wondered something. Morrison was glaring at me, Kay looked terrified, Elle was frowning like she didn't understand or was irritated this was happening. Miss Greta was the only one who looked the appropriate amount of scared and respectful. She was aware of what kind of thing was about to happen and knew exactly what kind of power I wielded... and she seemed to know what Mish had done. But I couldn't be certain.

"Miss Elle," I said as they settled across from me on the platform. "Did you know about this plan?"

"What plan?" she demanded. "No one has seen fit to tell us anything!"

Ah, so Greta just knows that Mish is guilty, but most likely not of what... unless she confessed to her dear grandmother.

"Mish planned, with Brint, to have me forced into sexual relations with him," I said.

There were gasps, people shoved each other to get closer, some people started shouting something about it being 'bullshit' or 'not true'.

"I assure you, good people, we interrogated Miss Vant all last night and this morning," the Mayor spoke over the mutterings and random shouting. "She did indeed conspire to force the Sceptarch into a situation wherein she might be forced to marry Brint, the Scribe." Brint also had no surname. His family were just known as the Cobblers, for the most part, and he didn't take over the family business. "At which point, she was going to feed a medicine to the Sceptarch, to make her infertile. They would wait for two or three years and then eventually Miss Vant would be married to Brint the Scribe as his second wife."

So much disbelief. Not because they thought it was such a terrible thing to do, exactly. But because Mish was so vapid and weak. All she cared about was Brint's approval and how she looked and how Brint felt about how she looked.

I could hear a few of them speculating that Mish was taking the blame for Brint and actually had nothing to do with it. It was mostly because the crystal was amplifying sound around me, which was one of the 'side-effects' of amplification magic. Sometimes it amplified things for the user as well, like this. It usually means the product is low quality, produced by backstreet practitioners.

The Mayor should more effectively hide his embezzlement. You never take from what you show to others. Only your own creature comforts, if you need money that badly. Otherwise, someone could notice. I thought everyone knew that.

"My Daughter," Morrison spoke by grabbing the Mayor's shoulder and then lifting his crystal to his mouth. "Would never do such a thing!"

"I'm afraid the stone of verity-" the Mayor attempted to say.

"She only did what that skinny, limp-dicked little boy told her to do!" Morrison thundered. "He threatened her, I know it! My daughter knows better than to act like that!"

Indeed, I thought. You very obviously beat it into her.

It was something that the inhabitants of the village didn't really like to think about. Of course, no one really wants to think about such a thing, do they? Not just that it happens, but that you can't do anything about it. You can't, or you become a criminal and suddenly, things are worse than before.

Family issues are to be resolved in the family.

But that does give me... thoughts...

"I see," I said and the amplification of my voice cut right across Morrison's tirade. "So you're aware of the fact that beating and belittling your daughter her whole life, primed her to accept the same treatment from other men?"

Everything went dead quiet. Kay looked terrified, Elle was trying not to have a reaction and Greta simply bowed her head low. I thought Greta must have guilt over this. She became too ill and feeble to protect her daughter from her husband after she got married. Her body broke down after a lifetime of hard labor. And no one else in the family had the physical strength to stop him.

I'd only moved here a few years ago... when I was twenty-six or so. But I still managed to hear everything about everyone at the parties I was forced to attend.

As I stood there and watched Morrison's face get redder and redder as he seemed to be working himself into a lather, I covered the crystal with my hand and muttered, "Catch, don't kill." Because I knew he would pounce. A man like Morrison being questioned by a woman. The kind of person he'd been beating on completely uncontested for his entire marriage to Kay... talking back to him?

He just couldn't stand it. Even though the Mayor tried to babble some nonsense about 'who knows why she did what she did, we just simply know she did!' and things of that nature... he stared me down. He turned redder and redder. He leapt.