The hall they led him into on the fourth morning was larger than any room Thomas had stood in since the anomaly first stranded him, its vaulted stone ceiling swallowing sound in a way that made every footstep, every rustle of parchment, feel deliberate and consequential.
Five lords sat in judgment, arranged behind a long table beneath the Crown's own banner, and Alaric had briefed him carefully on each — Lord Pevensey, elderly and openly skeptical of anything that smelled of novelty; Lady Ashcombe, whose own lands bordered a March not unlike Thomas's own and who watched him now with an expression of frank, calculating curiosity; two lesser barons whose names Thomas had memorized without yet learning to read their intentions; and, at the table's center, a royal justiciar considerably senior to de Vesci, a lean, silver-haired man named Corliss whose flat, unreadable composure reminded Thomas, uncomfortably, of Alaric's own manner during their very first meeting under a peace banner.
"Lord Thomas of Argenton," Corliss began, without preamble. "You stand before this court not accused of any crime — your charter is settled, your tenure confirmed twice over by officers of this Crown. You stand here because five people in this room, and a King who could not attend today but will read every word of this proceeding, wish to understand exactly what has been built in a valley that did not exist, by any account we possess, four years ago."
"I'll answer whatever you ask honestly, my lord justiciar."
"Then let us begin plainly. Your currency." Lady Ashcombe leaned forward, her sharp eyes fixed on him with genuine, unconcealed interest. "I am told it holds its value without debasement, without royal minting, without even gold behind it in the traditional sense. I confess I do not understand how such a thing is possible, and I have run my own lands' accounts for eleven years."
Thomas answered as plainly as he could, the way Hamo had coached him — trust, salt, the discipline of never printing more scrip than the valley's actual production could support, Victoria's careful discount rates. Lady Ashcombe listened with visible, sharpening interest, asking three further questions that revealed, by their precision, a woman who genuinely understood ledgers rather than merely tolerating them.
Lord Pevensey's questions carried a different edge entirely. "And this medicine I've heard whispered of. Fevers predicted before they show themselves. Wounds healed that would once have cost a man his limb, or his life. Where does such knowledge come from, Lord Thomas, that no physician trained in this Kingdom has ever possessed it?"
This was the question Hamo had warned him would come, and the one he had rehearsed most carefully. "From careful observation, my lord, and from a habit of writing down what works and what doesn't, rather than trusting inherited wisdom that's never been properly tested. I keep a book — we call it the Codex — recording every remedy my people have tried, honestly noting our failures alongside our successes. I'd be glad to share copies of its medical sections with any physician in this Kingdom who wishes to learn from it."
"You would simply give it away."
"I built it to be given away, my lord. Knowledge that only I possess dies with me. Knowledge that spreads outlives us both." Thomas met the old lord's skeptical gaze steadily. "I've already shared it with an apprentice physician from Whitcombe, and with the Church's own scholars, through Brother Anselm. I have no interest in hoarding what I know, only in making certain it isn't misused before it's properly understood."
It was Corliss, watching this exchange with his flat, unreadable composure, who finally asked the question Thomas had been dreading since the summons first arrived.
"You have built currency, medicine, a communication network now reaching toward Oakhaven's own road, and a private chemistry capable, by report, of breaking a private army in a single morning's fighting. I will ask you plainly, Lord Thomas, the question every person in this room has been too polite to voice directly. Where does this knowledge actually come from? Not the mechanism of it — I am told your Codex explains that clearly enough for any capable craftsman to follow. I mean the source. No man teaches himself the whole of it alone, in a single lifetime, in a valley that had no scholars, no library, nothing but a stranger's own claimed genius to draw upon."
The hall went very quiet, and Thomas felt every careful lesson Hamo had drilled into him over the winter narrow down to this single, unavoidable moment — the one question he had always known, eventually, someone clever enough would ask directly, and the one answer he had never once, in three years, decided how he intended to give.
He thought of Victoria, a full week's ride away, governing a town in his absence with a steadiness he'd never fully credited until forced to imagine functioning without it. He thought of Joan's small plot above the flume-race, and of an anchor reading falling further every single day he remained in this city answering questions he'd rehearsed for everything except this one.
"My lord justiciar," he said finally, choosing his words with the same careful, deliberate weight Victoria brought to her hardest ledger entries, "I will tell you the truth, if the truth is what this court actually wants. I ask only that you consider, before I speak it, whether this room is prepared to hear an answer that will not sound, to most ears in this Kingdom, like anything resembling sense."
Corliss's expression did not change, but something in the stillness of the whole hall sharpened, five pairs of eyes fixed on him with an attention Thomas understood, with a cold certainty, he would not be able to walk back from once he'd finally, properly, spoken it aloud.
"Tell us," Corliss said simply, "and let this court decide for itself what sense it makes."