Elloven cautiously stepped through the opening the guards created for her. She let them lift her onto the scaffold, and from there she could finally see the size of the crowd. There were a hundred or more watching, their eyes narrowed in curiosity, distrust. She didn’t see Rhiain, Asterin, or Sesto. In the distance, Taven tried to grab her attention, but she ignored him and his unctuous scowl.
A young woman of perhaps fifteen stepped onto the dais wearing a long robe, dark as midnight. She raised her gloved hands and wrapped them around Elloven’s face, eyes fluttering upward before closing.
The girl’s touch was electric, a prolonged sensation of brushing the wrong thing on the coldest, driest days. It was startling yet familiar, and she felt herself drift away from the scaffold toward the skies.
Abruptly, Elloven was released. Her spirit crashed into her body, sending her to a knee.
“She is who she claims,” the girl declared and left.
“Indeed,” sang the announcer as he approached a stunned Elloven. “A stranger of the blood? What a rare day this is for us. Why did you raise your voice?”
Elloven’s breaths came in short as she glanced up, squinting against the sun breaking through the dense clouds. Jesstin agitatedly struggled to grab her notice. His eyes flared in caution when they briefly connected, and he shook his head firmly but carefully, his boots skating the top of the wobbly stool.
Elloven nodded that it was all right, but it only made him panic more. Did he want to die? Did he think she was going to sacrifice herself?
Am I?
“I...” Elloven cleared the blockage in her throat. “I speak for him because I was there. I was there for all of it. And what the Virtue has said happened did not. She was bribed to use her words against this man, and I won’t allow him to die for it.”
The crowd exploded in stunned gasps and whispers.
“I see.” The man moved toward her, his beady gaze swiveling between the people and her. “I see. But have you considered it may have happened when you were not there?”
“But I was there,” Elloven retorted. She ignored Jesstin’s signaling. Maybe he knew something she didn’t, but there wasn’t time. She saw they really would kill him, that Asterin’s army would arrive too late. The solution could only be found within the village’s own code. “Jesstin and I were there alone until the man who started this, Taven Considine, arrived and incited a fight. The two men tussled, but this Virtue was nowhere near us. I was still with Jesstin when the guards came to take him. I was with Jesstin the entire time. The first time I even saw the Virtue’s face was when she came with the guards to spread her lie.”
“That’s not what happened!” the Virtue, Sanja, screeched.
“But my word is as good as yours, no?” Elloven retorted. With each step toward the young woman, she backed away. “Did your prophetess not confirm I am who I say I am?”
“We approach a dilemma,” the announcer said to the crowd, though he seemed delighted at the complication. “For now, their words have canceled one another out. How shall we solve it?”
“Duel!”
“Trial!”
“The bond!”
More and more voices joined the ones shouting the last suggestion, until they drowned the others.
“Elloven,” Jesstin hissed, spitting his words through his teeth. “Go!”
I will not, she mouthed with a tight smile, which didn’t reassure either of them, and turned away.
“The bonnnnd,” mused the man with increasing amusement. He clapped his hands. “We have not had a bond in dozens of years! Shall we raise our hands in assent and make it so?”
A sea of hands shot up.
“We have spoken. The bond it is.” The man peered up at Elloven. “Do you consent to the bond as the breaker of the tie?”
“Elloven!” Jesstin screamed again. The crowd gasped when the stool nearly toppled.
“What is the bond?” Elloven asked. She watched Jesstin from the edge of her vision. He looked more horrified than he had when being arrested.
“The bond is one possible consequence of the neutrality created in competing testimony,” the man said. “The crowd has chosen the bond, and without it, our verdict in the man’s guilt and sentence stands.”
“But what is it?” she demanded.
The man laughed and everyone joined him. How naïve she is was the clear message. “How can a sister of the blood not already know this?”
