Judge, Jury and...

[Jirai]

"Would you," The words were slow, carefully formed. "Wish her silenced, Gloria Wynsee?" It could be easily done, of course - simply a matter of locking the bridle back around the woman's head. She could not then speak in her own defense, but what matter that? The woman was guilty, Rhaena knew that to be true.

"When the Governor and I set out in search of the children, this creature was following them. When we confronted her, she attempted to use her magic against us. When we defeated her magic, she then ran but she could not escape. The constables here can confirm that, of course.

Additionally, afterward I spoke with young Anton and Elzie Kaczmarek. The children told me that an old woman had told them a story of a fiddler who lured children into the woods and ate them." She spoke to Gloria but her gaze, such as it was, never wavered from the prisoner.

[Dulcie]

She laughed softly, turning her hands out to them palms up. "What magic did I use on you? If I were so strong would I not have already cast my spells and sent you all aside? You are reaching for facts where there aren't any m'lady, and I am at your mercy for it. Are you so desperate to see an innocent woman branded with guilt that is not her own? I never killed those children, nor do I control the creature that did so." There was truth there in that last sentence of course, not that anyone other than Rhaena might sense that.

"An old woman told a pair of children a story, but I am hardly old am I? Surely you must see the sense in my words Miss?" She'd ask imploringly, looking at Gloria now. The one who had the power to silence her if she chose.

"I've been given no one to plea my defense and now you try to silence me. Perhaps I could inform your court of how these proceedings should be managed. How they are managed in more civilized places."

[Rance]

When the Storyteller stopped talking, ceased imploring the seamstress to see the sense, and when Rhaena -- Rhaena, who'd plucked a Dream from out of her skull as if it'd merely been a rotten berry -- put the choice to her, the seamstress' breath grew loud. Rapid. They were looking at her.

I would not have asked you here if I did not think you able to handle it.

"No," the girl said, retracting her earlier plea. "I -- I do not want her silenced. With respect, I will have no part of that grotesque thing you saw fit to put her in." The contraption. The bridle. That awful crown that forcefully silenced the tongue and threatened pain at the slightest working of the jaw-hinge. The seamstress directed her attention toward the armored soldier nearby, his angular armor seeming to glimmer against the room's flickering light. "Should Menna McLochlan feel the need to speak curses against us without permission, we will trust main force and not some torturous device."

And this, this, from a girl who'd once known how to raise a braided-twig whip -- but that was well before Myrken Wood had lunged its progressive fingers underneath her skin and had started to massage and alter her perceptions of the humane.

Abruptly, she stood, leaning on the familiar comforts of her lessons. Her hands were crossed palm-to-palm in front of her belly as if she were near one of the hearths within Darkenhold, reciting for practice, for grades.

"She was -- was a friend," she said to Rhaena, though her gaze was finally brave enough to examine the Storyteller. "She brings stories to life. We know this now. I know this, better than I would ever wish to admit." She smoothed her dusty skirts. Along her bronzed skin she could feel the stares of every witness in the room crawling underneath her sleeves and scraping with earnest at her sand-scarred flesh. On one of her fingers, a metallic ring had been squeezed to the knuckle, meant for a more slender digit than her own. The girl twisted the trinket, the hem of her dress shaking across the tops of her clogs with every shudder of her hips.

The seamstress looked over at the silent soldier and his carapace of sleek steel, wordlessly enlisting his aid, his readiness, before looking back to the Storyteller.

"If I asked you to tell us a story, Menna McLochlan, would you be able to refuse? The Greatlady I knew offered perspective through fictions as if it were a natural compulsion. She yearned to -- to spin a tale. She couldn't help but do so when she was asked. And because she was my friend, because I looked upon her with reverence, I awaited her stories with excitement. My respect may have diminished, but my love for stories has not.

"I wish to know if you can control it at all -- your tongue, the making into real what was imaginary," the seamstress said.

"I want to hear a story."

[Jirai]

The Storyteller's questions were easily ignored. They were not intended for Rhaena Olwak in any case, even if the words were directed at the governor's lady. Both Rhaena and the Storyteller knew the answer to those questions.

But Gloria Wynsee is wonderfully naive.

Almost, Rhaena Olwak laughed.

In the end, though, the gowned woman simply listened to the young seamstress. And at the last of the younger woman's words, she released her hold on the Storyteller's mind.

[Waldemar]

At the back of the room, a severe-looking gentleman of middle years - respectably dressed, neatly groomed, quiet, unremarkable. Easy to overlook among the bustle of the Constabulary and the finery of Lady Olwak and her knight.

He watches, listens as accusations are levelled and, free of her iron bridle, the green-eyed woman answers; as the girl in her shabby skirts and stained bonnet is allowed to speak, as if she serves as an advocate in this farce of a trial.

When she requests a story, however, the man leans forward a touch, frowning; looking first to the girl, then to the accused, a breath drawn as if resolved to speak, to interrupt this foolishness. Instead bows his head as if whispering to himself in prayer; a hand lifts briefly to his face to draw the pad of his thumb over one eyelid, then the other, then down the centre of his brow. When he looks up again his gaze is perhaps more intense, piercing, and he turns his attention not only to the woman but to the space around her. Alert, focused, watchful for... something.

[Dulcie]

Gloria assured Rhaena that there would be no need for the bridle and for a moment the green eyed woman would look towards Gloria, speaking two words with an intensity that they are rarely spoken. "Thank you." Her tone, soft and kind, though there was something else behind it. A favor given, and a favor offered in return, though perhaps only Waldemar could sense the meaning behind it all.

She blinked a few times after Gloria's speech, her desire to hear a story, and she'd shake her head slightly, that red hair, flattened by the bridle's previous presence shaking and swaying with the motion.

"I can't." She'd say simply, though not even an instant later her eyes seemed to widen as she felt the hold release from her mind, the stories spilling over freely in her mind and for a moment her gaze was vacant as she tried to pull one from the ether of her mind. There was a right story for each particular moment, and there was certainly one for this moment. A gaze was given to Gloria, apologetic and sympathetic all at the same time. The girl had asked and the woman would respond, those green eyes brightening as she lifted her head proudly, and opened her mouth to begin her tale.

[Rance]

"Why," the seamstress asked the accused woman. "Why?"

Rhaena Olwak's pristine silence was not reassuring. The armored soldier's stoicism was the winter cold. In the audience, amid the witnesses gathered -- some of them looked primed to turn and flee in the event that a story would be spoken -- the miller's gaze was a clothing pin thrust between her ribs. And for that, this Maggie, this woman accused of being an accessory to such unforgivable crimes, was an unorthodox comfort; there was no condemnation in her eyes, but only a sliver of gratitude--

(Cherny had been there, and Cat-Talon, and more, all afraid; there had been eleven funerals, the sky had been dyed black in the afternoons by the smoke from their corpses)--

But then the woman began to speak. With her hands shaking, Gloria hoisted the Mathymatics with its leather cover and its stern wooden spine. She would throw the book if she must. She would bludgeon with it, shatter teeth from their roots if that story angled itself toward something too fierce, violent, unnatural. She could abide by no wretched bridle, no, but she had asked for this. The seamstress took careful and unwilling strides toward the Storyteller, the book clutched like a shield in her hands. Ready, with trembling arms, to swing if she must.

It was the Storyteller, then. And she wielded no dominion over her own tongue.

The seamstress had her proof, and so did the rest of the witnesses. Rhaena Olwak could say what she wished, but the governor's lady was not every eye and ear in Myrken Wood. Some people only knew shoe-cobbling and child-rearing. Others only knew bridge-raising and seamwork.

It was the Storyteller.

[Glenn]

It was the storyteller.

Gloria's plan was clever. Gloria's preparation was sound. Gloria had taken a risk for all of them and the Lady had allowed it.

The Lady, however, was no fool. She almost laughed. Marek Waldemar tensed himself for what was to come. Gloria prepared. The Storyteller? She lit up with pride as she began to doom them all.

The Lady, however, was no fool, and she had lost eleven of her own, of her most precious possessions, the children of Myrken Wood. The Lady was no fool and in the face of this, the Lady knew no mercy. She nodded, one simple, relaxed movement, even as the words began to form.

He was a blur, gauntleted hand moving with a speed that should not have been. A knight was not known for speed, but instead for strength and durability, for bravery and skill. This was something else. Whatever this armored figure was, he defied expectations. The shining hand, artificial in a way that Lady and Seamstress' were not, darted out and reached, squeezed, pulled. The knight had come from nowhere, from silence and stoicism, and had grabbed the tongue of this 'Maggie" mid-word, holding it tight and squeezing mercilessly.

She was the Storyteller.

And Rhaena Olwak had seen enough.

[Dulcie]

The accused woman half choked, her eyes widening with startle as the man swooped in from nowhere and caught hold of her tongue, feeling the cold bitter taste of the iron gauntlet in her mouth. Anger flared in the woman's eyes and she'd try to shove the knight away, sputtering and making desperate noises as he kept her tongue captured in that merciless grip.

Had she but seen Gloria's face, there might have been another reaction, but survival was all that registered in the woman's mind now.

[Rance]

The story was in the glamoured woman's eyes. It was in her cheeks as if they were tree-rubbered bellows. The book was poised. The seamstress feared she might have wrought something unforgivable. But they must be sure, she must be sure, as they never had been in Jernoah--

The armored golem burst through the inevitability of that moment, a loud and gleaming, wildly-rattling statue of steel and sharp edges. She staggered back, barely keeping her balance as the Mathymatics tumbled from her hands and smacked against the floorboards. The gauntlet was a pincer, an insect-like extension of the soldier's shoulder and elbow. Those fingers meant for clutching sword-hilts and flails crushed down upon that tongue, seized it, threatened to crush. Throughout it all, the sigil of a tiara-and-vine seemed to gleam like a hot curse in the heart of that armor, laughing and teasing in metal silence.

She could have been satisfied, in Jernoah, to say nothing, to turn her head. But a Greatlady demanded more respect.

"No," Gloria said, and then shouted again, "No," like the word had some kind of subverting power.

She wanted to reach out for his hand, pull it down, away; she thought of pummeling him at the spine of the armor with a fist, but he'd feel nothing. The seamstress was no warhammer on a field of battle. Instead, she spun, eyes alive and afraid. "Call -- call him down," she pleaded of Rhaena. "Call your man away from her. Please. It was by my request that she spoke!"

You're not meant to, to wish people dead, Cherny had told her weeks ago. They had spoken of what was right and what was wrong. This was wrong; this was a place of order, or masqueraded as one. She wished the Marshall were around, for it seemed by steel and scar, she would reign without even a thought of violence. With a hand that in a Dream had wielded a schiavona, long and shining and brutal, the seamstress pointed to the struggling prisoner, but never looked away from Rhaena Olwak, who was always so collected, so calm, so lovely.

"Let me speak for her," Gloria said. "Let -- let me advocate for her. It would only be right. Not like this. Not like this."

[Waldemar]

The girl, suffered to make those accusations by the grace of the Governor's lady, plays a very dangerous game; inviting the creature to use its power here, goading it into revealing itself in a way that could yet bring carnage upon the pantomime courtroom.

The woman-shaped thing - Maggie McLochlan, as she let them call her, though that certainly was not her name, not her True name - opens her mouth to speak, and the miller's attention is absolute, sitting poised, fingers of his left hand splayed into an eager claw. Ready to grasp, to wrench at the threads of power the creature would soon weave -

Like actors upon a tawdry stage the players are in motion; the girl, textbook held like something between shield and bludgeon; the knight, faster than might be expected, pinching the creature's treacherous tongue between ironclad fingertips; the creature, the storyteller, its cool hauteur broken by that metallic touch struggling to break free, and a grin of mirthless satisfaction briefly splits the miller's features at that.

He does not speak, for all that he might wish to, for all that his gaze hungers to see the thing hurt, maimed and damned, to see it pay for its complicity in uncountable atrocities throughout its long life. Cut it with iron, he might call; Cut out its tongue, rob it of its power to weave stories and rework reality. Let it languish, let it starve until it is a faded, withered thing unable even to present itself in so comely a guise.

He keeps his peace, respecting whatever pretence of order the proceedings might still hold; watching, waiting in case an intervention is required after all.

[Jirai]

Rhaena Olwak had, indeed, seen enough.

Her knight served as she knew he would - perhaps Rhaena was the only one in the room unsurprised by his swiftness. He had the Storyteller in his grasp. Gloria voiced her protests and Waldemar watched, as the governor's lady expected.

"You would do well to speak for her, sera Wynsee. Not many would make that choice." Rhaena said quietly, continuing to watch the tableau between knight and Storyteller as she spoke. "But I will not permit her the opportunity to use her magic here. I cannot. So. If you would continue this, if you would speak on her behalf, she must be kept silent.

"Or we simply end things now."

[Rance]

Or we simply end things now.

"This is -- is a trial," the girl said, her bronzed knuckles faded white as she clenched her skirts. "It is not a public flogging; it is not an opportunity to allow some ogre in polished armor to -- to maim a woman."

The words let me speak for her had come out with no premeditation or intent; they had been a reaction drawn up from her guts, some strangled knot of what respect she once had for the the Storyteller twisted together with all the words of law and emotion discussed in her scant correspondence with Lord Aubrey. But all of those things were black ashes and old shadows against the backdrop of this. This.

Some catastrophic mannequin of a trial. A lie. Rhaena Olwak had her gorgeous gowns and darling veils; this, too, with the Meetinghouse and its witnesses, had a gossamer exterior, but underneath the soft rind it was nothing more than an excuse to shed blood and drag a woman like a tangled mess of leather and skin through the streets.

Brutal. Primitive. Jernoan.

"Order him away from her," the seamstress said to Rhaena, no longer pleading, but demanding. "I am not an idiot, Menna Olwak. This woman has -- has assisted in horrific things, and Myrken Wood will have its corpse by the time we are done. I am preventing nothing. But we will not do this like we are dogs. I may not know so much about your -- your rosy bathwater or your One True Faith, but I am not an animal. The Storyteller may be; you, Menna Olwak, may be too. But not me. Not anymore."

With quivering hands, she sought out a leaflet of parchment from her satchel, along with a dulled nub of black charcoal.

"Might I have her write?"

[Jirai]

Gloria Wynsee is wonderfully naive.

Isn't that why she is here in the first place?

The words Gloria speaks might have infuriated another; Rhaena Olwak's smile did not falter in the slightest.

"You may, indeed, have her write, sera Wynsee. But if she speaks at all, she will have given up her right to these proceedings."

Words directed at both of the women, but the gowned woman's eyes were focused only on the Storyteller. She lifted her hand and the iron grip of the knight relaxed, freeing the woman's tongue. He stepped back to his previous position at Rhaena's side and the governor's lady waited expectantly.

[Dulcie]

The iron knight was given a great glare as the woman attempted to return herself to some semblance of dignity, her hand straightening her mussed hair and then tugging and straightening at her gown. She gave Rhaena a somewhat defiant look, as if the Judge and Jury herself was expecting the Storyteller to speak as soon as the opportunity presented itself. She would not. That cold iron had stolen that story straight off her tongue.

A piece of parchment and a quill was presented to her, and before any question was even posed she'd begin to write frantically lest someone stop her. A message, an important message meant only for Gloria.

Dearest Gloria,
It troubles me to see such hurt on your face. You think I have personally affronted you, tricked you, but there is so much more to this than what it seems, than what they will lead you to believe. Your taste my child is so wonderous, so beautiful. It was impossible for me to let you go. Despite what they think I had no choice over what happened to the children, and if you think closely never have I caused anyone such harm. I am sorry for your involvement in this, and the hurt that you feel, but I have no sorrows for us having met, and I wish you no ill will.

The signature was purposefully left blank and the quill would be set down with a splatter, her hand waving the parchment over in Gloria's direction, urging the young woman to take it before another would see what was written on the page.