Jonas marched the three condemned clerks out of the town hall while Toby held their cords below the fountain lamps. The grandmother returned with her feverish granddaughter, and Hajin kept the child well behind the prisoners and their waiting sentence.
Vella lifted her cloak beside the child's face as the grandmother turned into its shelter, "Look at the clinic, little one, stay with us, the lamps are lit."
The three prisoners knelt on the cleared stones, and nobody in the square made a sound.
"Documented extortion," Hajin said, drawing the Chain from his left hand while Marrick kept the sealed judgment beside his register, "the deaths it paid for, the claims you forged, and the provincial sentence for all of it is death,"
"the evidence stays in the archive, and your offices can't hide what your own hands signed."
