The sitting room has been stripped of comfort. Sofas and settees pushed against the walls to make space for the table, for the gathering. Even so, there are not enough seats. People stand in clusters, lean against pillars, perch on windowsills. So many of them…
This is not a council.
This is a reckoning.
My father has kept a chair for me. When I sit, the room quiets.
A man steps forward into the open space near the table.
He is silver-haired, and self-assured. His voice carries without effort.
“Thank you for coming,” he says. “All of you.”
I lean slightly toward my father. “Who is he?”
“Aileen’s father,” he murmurs. “Philipp.”
Sir Philipp inclines his head toward me. “And thank you, Fastrada, for allowing us to meet under your roof. Your presence here matters more than you know.”
A murmur of agreement ripples through the room.
“This is her first meeting,” he continues, “and we are fortunate to have her on our side.”
My throat tightens as he speaks of Verden, the massacre.
He speaks not with rage, just with the bare truth of it. How it has slowed plans, scattered networks, terrified allies into silence. How something was broken there that cannot easily be mended.
He gestures to a man near the far end of the table. “Tell us about the North.”
The man steps forward, he does not hurry. He sets his hands on the edge of the table as if grounding himself there.
“I was in the north three days after,” he says. He recounts his experiences with the steadiness of someone who has repeated this often and still does not believe it happened. “Not at the river itself. Further out. In the villages that depended on it.”
He swallows.
“There were no men left in the first village we reached. Only women, children and old people.” A pause. “They did not ask us who we were. They only asked if we had come to finish what the others had started.”
A low sound moves through the room.
“The river had changed,” he continues. “Not just in color. In smell. In taste. Wells fed from it turned foul. For weeks, the water ran thick. People tried to strain it. Boil it. Pray over it.” His mouth tightens. “It did not matter.”
Sir Philipp leans forward. “What happened to them?”
The man lifts his eyes. “They left, if they could. Those who couldn’t stayed and drank. They became sick.”
He straightens, as if bracing himself.
“Children first. Then the old. Then the women who had tended the wounded with bare hands.” He gestures vaguely, as though the shape of it resists language. “Fevers. Sores that would not close. Infections that took limbs before they took lives.”
Someone raps their knuckles softly against the table.
Then another.
The sound spreads—haunting and rhythmic, an acknowledgment of the atrocities.
“Those who survived the day of the killings,” the man goes on, “are dying still. From wounds that never healed. From what they saw. From what they were forced to clean from the riverbanks.”
His voice falters for the first time.
