Chapter 422: Public Trial
Shortly after winter arrived, a wooden stage went up in the center of the square.
The people of Border Town had never seen anything like it. Stages meant performances — traveling troupes, festivals, the occasional mummer’s show. This one was built for something else entirely. Two days before it was finished, notices had gone up throughout the town: there would be a public trial.
On the morning of the trial, the square filled long before the hour. It had been expanded twice now — Roland had approved the project himself — and still it wasn’t large enough. People spilled out along the side streets, craning for sight lines. Snowflakes drifted through the cold air, sparse and unhurried, and no one paid them any attention.
The noise changed the moment Roland appeared on the stage. It deepened, then broke into something that was not quite cheering and not quite prayer — arms waving, voices overlapping, a sound that carried weight. He stood at the front of the stage and felt it settle against his chest.
A year ago he had been a joke. The fourth prince, the useless one, banished to a border post to die quietly of nothing.
He was not that anymore.
Guards brought Campus up the steps. The Priest’s expression shifted as the crowd registered his presence — a flinch, a studied reassembly. Roland watched him recalibrate. Whatever the church’s hierarchy had trained these men to do with large audiences, Campus was reaching for it now, the old reflex of command. He found nothing to grab onto. These were not believers awaiting a blessing. They were something else.
The witches from the Witch Union filed onto the stage behind him. Their faces were composed, but Roland knew what this moment meant to them. They had been hunted, tried, burned, exiled. They had been the ones standing in the dock while audiences called for their deaths. Now the positions were reversed, and they stood as accusers, as witnesses, as judges — and not one of them looked surprised that the day had finally come, only that it had come so soon.
Roland raised his hand. The square quieted.
“Greetings, my people.”
He had spent two days working out what to say and what to leave out. The rebellion case at Fallen Dragon Ridge was too distant — a small town in the Southern Territory, a lord most of them had never heard of. The Battle of Divine Will was worse: centuries of history, demons, a war that had been grinding on since before anyone’s great-grandmother was born. Mention demons and the crowd would panic rather than focus. He needed something that touched them directly. Something that lived in their streets and their memory.
“The purpose of today’s gathering is to reveal a shameful crime.” His voice carried to the edges of the square. “The church has concealed the truth from its very beginning. I would never have learned of it if not for this man” — he gestured toward Campus — “a Priest of the Holy City, captured in connection with the events at Fallen Dragon Ridge.”
He let the crowd hold that for a moment.
“The church has claimed that witches are the devil’s servants. Corrupt. Unclean. A threat to every honest soul.” He turned toward Campus. “And yet both the Pope and the Archbishops have been sheltering witches — in secret, in great numbers, for many years. The Priest told me this himself.” He faced the man directly. “Am I correct?”
A long silence. The kind that has weight to it.
“Yes,” said Campus.
The crowd fractured into noise.
“Your Highness — is he truly from the Holy City?” someone called from below the stage.
“He is.” Roland gestured toward the small table beside the stage where Campus’s documents lay. “A Saint, sent by the church to the Kingdom of Graycastle. Priest’s robe, identification badge, sealed circular letter — all genuine. All on that table.” He had prepared for exactly this doubt — Echo had helped him anticipate every question the crowd might raise, and the answers were ready before the questions came. “Come see them afterward, if you wish.”
He waited for the noise to settle again.
“My people. I used the word sheltering. I want you to understand what I mean by it.” His voice dropped slightly — not softer, but closer. “The church gathers female infants and orphans from across the country and brings them to the monasteries of the Holy City. They are raised there like livestock. A fraction develop magic. Those, the church trains as its own. The rest — the ones who never awakened — become servants to the church’s clergy.” He paused. “The church calls witches abominations. Meanwhile, they are breeding their own supply.”
“No, these—” Campus raised his head, opened his mouth. No sound came out. He closed it again.
“To acquire more witches, the church also shelters wandering women under the pretense of charity — and in some cases colludes with criminal networks to take children directly.” Roland let that land before continuing. “Think about what that means here. If there were a church in this town, Miss Nana would not only have been slandered and driven out. She might have disappeared entirely. And she would not be the only one.”
The reaction was immediate and physical — a visceral stiffening that moved through the crowd like a wave.
“Miss Nana can’t be evil! She saved my life!”
“She was in school with my daughter. I’ve known her since she was six years old.”
“She’s healed half the First Army. She’s an angel.”
Roland let them speak. He gave them a full minute — people need to voice the feeling before they can hear what comes after it. Then he raised his hand again.
“So. Why would the church do this? Why would the highest authority in Graycastle’s faith deliberately lie to every person who prays in their name?”
Silence in the square, except for the soft sound of snow.
“Because they needed witches to hold onto power.” He said it plainly. “You know what witches can do. You’ve seen it here. Miss Nana heals wounds that would otherwise kill. Miss Lily eliminated the demonic plague that would have swept through this town. Miss Anna and Miss Soraya built the water supply system that brought clean water to your homes. The steam engine that hauls ore from the mine — another witch’s work. The flintlocks the First Army carries. The agricultural yields that have kept everyone fed through these winters.” He paused. “None of that exists without them.”
“And a sword,” he continued, “can defend a life or end one — depending on whose hand holds it. The church chose which hand. They used their witches against anyone who questioned their authority. Against lords who were inconvenient. Against believers who asked the wrong questions. The ones who obeyed were called God’s servants. The ones who resisted were called God’s outcasts.”
He let that settle into the cold air.
“Think of your own children. Taken. Trained to be weapons. Sent back to be used against the very people who loved them.” He held the pause one beat longer than was comfortable. “How sad would that be?”
He turned and walked to Campus. He unrolled a long paper — the written record of Campus’s confessions, each accusation formally stated — and held it up so the crowd could see that it existed, that it was real, that it had weight.
“Priest of the Holy City,” Roland said. “Do you have anything to say against what is written here?”
Campus’s eyes were too wide. He stared at the paper as if reading his own name on a headstone.
“These… are all true.” The words came out of him like something torn loose. “I… admit guilt.”
The square erupted.
Roland let it rise. The sound climbed and climbed, and then he raised his voice over it — not to quiet them, but to be heard through them.
“I give the right of judgment to you, my people! For this crime — your verdict is—”
“Kill him!”
“Kill him!”
“Kill him!”
The voices merged into one. Snowflakes drifted down through it, small and silent, as Border Town made its choice.