Oakhaven announced itself long before its walls did — a haze of woodsmoke visible from a full day's ride out, and then, gradually, the sound of it, a low, constant murmur of thousands of lives layered atop one another in a way the valley had never once approached in three years of careful growth.
Thomas had thought himself prepared for a city, having read of them once in an entirely different world, and found the reality considerably harder to absorb than any description could have managed — the press of bodies in the gate-lane, the competing cries of a hundred different merchants, the sheer relentless noise of a place that never, even for a moment, fell quiet the way the valley did each evening once the towers lit their small, patient lights.
Elias, riding beside him, took it all in with his usual flat, cataloguing calm, though even he seemed, for once, faintly overwhelmed by the sheer density of a place he'd never had cause to map. "I begin to understand why the Crown finds our valley curious rather than merely small," he said. "We built something remarkable in three years. This city required generations, and it still hasn't finished growing."
They were lodged, by royal instruction, in a merchant's guildhall near the castle itself — respectable quarters, though considerably plainer than Thomas suspected a proper noble summons would have warranted, a small, deliberate signal about exactly what standing the Crown currently extended to a chartered free town's founder. Alaric read the placement correctly within the hour of their arrival.
"They're curious about you, not yet convinced of you," he said, surveying the modest rooms with a practiced eye. "A guest housed in the castle itself is a guest already trusted. A guest housed respectably but separately is a guest still being measured. I would not read insult into it, Lord Thomas. I would simply understand that everything you say and do in this city over the coming days is being watched considerably more closely than you might otherwise assume."
The summons for the hearing itself arrived the following morning, specifying a date four days hence — time enough, Hamo's careful coaching had assured him, for the court's own gossip to work its usual restless magic, spreading half-true rumors of the valley's wonders through every noble household in the city before Thomas had even opened his mouth to speak for himself.
He spent those four days as Hamo had instructed — visible but reserved, answering honestly whatever questions reached him through the guildhall's steady traffic of curious merchants and minor officials, volunteering nothing beyond what was asked. A goldsmith wanted to know how the scrip held its value without gold behind it. A physician, skeptical and sharp-eyed, wanted to know exactly how a fever's spread could be predicted before its symptoms appeared. Thomas answered each as plainly as he could, and found, to his quiet surprise, that honest answers given without embellishment seemed to earn him considerably more genuine respect than any grander performance would have managed.
It was on the third evening, walking the guildhall's narrow gallery for air after a long day of careful conversation, that he encountered the one figure in the whole city he hadn't expected to find waiting for him.
"Lord Thomas." The voice was familiar, cultured, edged with the same careful diplomatic calm Thomas remembered from a scriptorium conversation three years gone. "I confess I did not expect our paths to cross again quite so soon, though I find myself less surprised than I might once have been."
Anselm stood in the gallery's dim lamplight, older still than his last visit, his scholar's robes marking him now, Thomas noted, with considerably more ornate stitching than before — a man who had risen in his own hierarchy since their last meeting.
"Brother Anselm."
"Not merely Brother, any longer, though the distinction matters less to me than it perhaps ought to." Anselm's faint smile carried the same dry, weary intelligence Thomas remembered. "I am here at the Archbishop's own instruction, to advise the court on matters touching the Church's interest in your affairs, which, given the design I still hold a claim upon, are rather more extensive than you might wish." He studied Thomas a moment, the old scholarly assessment sharpening. "You look tired, Lord Thomas. More tired than four days of respectable lodging and curious merchants ought to have made you."
Thomas thought of the anchor reading, checked again that very morning and fallen further still, and found himself unwilling, even now, to voice the fear properly aloud to anyone.
"It's a long way from home," he said instead, which was true enough not to feel entirely like a lie.
"It is." Anselm's expression, watching him, suggested he suspected there was more to the tiredness than distance alone, though he was too careful a diplomat to press further uninvited. "Rest while you can, Lord Thomas. I have seen the list of lords appointed to hear your case in four days' time, and I will tell you honestly, as I told you once before when honesty cost me less than it might now — you will need every ounce of composure you can gather before you stand in front of them."