تسجيل الدخول*Isla* By evening, the trial hall has been sealed from the inside. No delegates leave. No guards enter without the elder judge's permission. The broken ward circle has been swept clean, but the black scorch marks remain in the sand. They look like claw tracks around the basin. Veyr stands at the center table with the claimant register open before her. She has not lost composure. That is almost impressive. Caelen sits beneath the Nightshade rail with a healer binding his wrists. The curse marks have faded from black-red to a dull bruised gray, but his hands are still shaking. He has not looked at me since the hall was cleared after the command. I have not gone to him. Not yet. Sava stands beside Cedric at the evidence table. The cloth around her wrists has been removed. Her hands are bare. The old seal scar on the inside of her wrist is bright and raw from where she has worried it. Lark is at her shoulder, close enough to catch her if she falls, far enough that it is still S
*Isla* The ward basin is still smoking when Veyr asks for the claimant register. A clerk brings it from the judges' table. It is bound in black leather, thick enough to hold generations of names. The clerk carries it with both hands. He does not look at me. Nobody does, for a moment. They are all looking at the broken pins in the sand, the blue scorch marks along the basin rim, the blood soaking through the knee of my trousers. Sena has one hand braced behind my back. I am standing because I chose to stand. My left leg trembles beneath me. The pain has settled into a deep hot throb, no longer wild, no longer filling every corner of my body.MThe elder judge clears her throat. "The pain proving has been met," she says. A murmur rises from the benches. Veyr steps forward before it can become anything else. "Met under outside interference," she says. Liora laughs once from the witness rail. "You mean breathing?" Veyr does not spare her a glance. "The claimant relied on unaut
*Isla* At dawn, the trial hall smells of wet sand and cold iron. The wardkeepers have stripped the floor to bare stone and rebuilt the proving circle from scratch. Fresh sand lies inside the silver boundary lines. The old brass anchors have been removed under Cedric's supervision and placed in a sealed box at the judges' table. That is what everyone can see. Sena checks the brace beneath my trousers for the third time. Her fingers move quickly around the buckles. She has made me stand behind a canvas screen near the witness rail, out of sight of the benches. "Too tight?" she asks. "No." She gives me a look. I try again. "Not yet." "That is a real answer." "Do not get used to it." "I am writing the date down." The screen does not block the sound of the hall. Pack delegates filing into their benches. Academy officers whispering over papers. The scrape of Veyr's chair against stone. Somewhere, a torch is being lit. My hands are cold. The metal button at my collar has warm
*Isla* The trial hall is fuller than it was yesterday. News travels faster when it smells like scandal. Every bench is occupied. March delegates in dark formal coats. Academy officers in gray. Trainees pressed along the upper gallery until the wardens force them back from the rail. The torch bowls burn low, their smoke threading beneath the high ceiling. At the center of the hall, the silver lines in the floor wait. I do not step inside them until Cedric tells me to. He stands at the evidence table with his document case open and three ledgers laid out in front of him. His cuffs are neat. His hair has been tied back. A black ink pen rests between his fingers. It is shaking. Only slightly. Caelen stands behind the Nightshade rope with Tomas, Lark, Torven, Sena, and Liora. Sava sits at the end of the row between Torven and Lark, her wrists bound in front of her with soft cloth. She has not looked at me since the salt-store pier. Bran is there too. He is pale, still wrapped ar
*Isla* Sava sleeps in Lark's bed with one wrist tied to the frame by a strip of cloth. Not tight. Not cruel. Tight enough that she cannot vanish before dawn. Lark sits on the floor beside her with a knife across her knees and the brass trial pin wrapped in oilcloth beside her boot. She has not said much since we came back from the river. I do not blame her. No one in Nightshade is sleeping. The common room is lit by one low lamp and the red coals of the hearth. Tomas has taken first watch at the window. Torven is cleaning mud from the serving knife he used in the archive stairwell. Sena is bent over maps with Cedric, marking the trial hall's anchor points from memory. Caelen stands apart from all of us. He is by the closed shutters, holding a long narrow case made of pale wood. I have seen it once before, wedged beneath his field trunk. I assumed it held some kind of blade. It might as well. Cedric finishes comparing the brass pin to the copied trial diagram. He rubs at his e
*Isla* The salt-store pier crouches behind the Academy's eastern warehouses, where the river narrows under the old wall. No trainee comes here after dark unless they are hiding something, stealing something, or meeting someone they should not trust. The salt sheds lean over the black water with their doors swollen shut from rain. White crust stains the boards. The air tastes sharp enough to sting a cut. Lark found the trail. Not a trail exactly. A smear of archive wax on the broken window latch. A thread caught on a gutter nail. Bare footprints in the mud leading away from the administration wing, then vanishing beneath cart tracks. She followed what she could until the river wind took over. "I told you not to come alone," she says behind me. "You told me to wait for Torven." She nods, "Yes." "I considered it." "That is not the same as listening." We stand beneath the shadow of the furthest salt shed. Rain has stopped, but water still drops from the eaves in slow hard taps.







