The trial, or whatever it ended up being, broke up fairly soon after that point. Most of the townsfolk spent the last two days sitting in the hall, sweating and fidgeting on the hard benches and wooden chairs. They shuffled off most of the chores to the teenage generation, all twenty-two of them, who weren’t allowed to be present at the trial. The exclusion of the youths wasn’t something written into the laws but rather simply the application of seniority coupled with the seating limit in the hall. The sun was already down by the time that the doors opened and people started filing out.
As Kre exited the hall after the large crowd, stumbling slightly as the blood starting working its way back into his legs, he scanned around to see if any of his friends were there. Though they wouldn’t have known that he was now a mostly free man, he had hoped that somehow they would sense the change in the winds of fortune. He couldn’t blame them for not being there though. They had plenty of work to keep themselves busy and to keep the town running.
“Gonna stand around with your wrists together all day or are you going to realize that you aren’t chained anymore?” The sing-song voice was at once familiar to Kre and he couldn’t help but smile. He also suddenly realized that he was, in fact, keeping his hands together in front of him as if they were still chained together.
“Sy,” he chuckled as he turned around to embrace his friend, “I should have guess that you would’ve heard the gossip by now.”
The shorter blond-haired girl ducked away from Kre’s arms and jabbed him hard on the shoulder. “Are you implying that I’m a nattering gossip hen?”
Kre massaged his shoulder and laughed, “Implying it? Everyone knows it’s true. You have nothing better to do with your day than to listen to and share rumors. How else could you have found out about the verdict so quickly if not for your hen information network?”
The young lady nicknamed Sy by her friends, short for Syonette, though none of her friends would ever dare use the word ‘short’ in her presence. While Sy was shorter than average height, her temper was more than a match for anyone twice her size and her smaller knuckles often found the tenderest parts of a body to hit.
Part of that was probably due to her upbringing though. Syonette was the older daughter of one of the Tehynshin military commanders for this region. While he was nominally headquartered in Sandort, he had the privilege of being housed anywhere in the region that he desired. This was primarily due to the fact that he was always away from his home for field assignments, typically along the Jayde line, so it really didn’t matter where his family was housed. Syonette’s mother had grown up in one of the nearby towns and heard that Mintas had more children in her daughters’ age ranges, so that’s where she asked for Commander Embrai to declare his homestead.
As a consequence of her father’s station and of not having a family business to run in the town, Syonette, her mother, and her younger sister often had more time on their hands than they knew what to do with. No one would ever call them lazy or wastrels. They were the complete opposite, often engaging with random townfolk and helping out with their work and never asking for any compensation of any kind except that which is normally given to friends. In fact, Syonette and her family had been helping Kre out on the farm along with Cooter for the last few months while his parents have been on their own assignment to the Jayde Line.
“I’ll have you know that I’ve been sitting in that stuffy hall since noon today, watching that bastard tear into you like a rabid dog on a lame rabbit.”
Kre wanted so much to ask whether she snuck in through a mouse hole or if she could see from the back, standing behind all of the people sitting in chairs, but given the beating that his arm had already taken, he wasn’t sure he wanted to tempt her anger again.
“Braun wasn’t so bad, he’s just trying to…” Kre started to say before Sy quickly cut off her friend’s weak defense of the Magistrate.
“He’s a tool,” she spat, jabbing Kre in the chest with her finger. “Braun is trying to use you and this whole situation to try and curry favor with the City Council and get himself promoted. I’ve seen worms like him all over Tehyn and they’re all the same. There’s no defending that kind of low-life.”
“I wasn’t going to… well, okay I was… but look, it all worked out didn’t it?”
Sy tilted her head down slightly and narrowed her eyes. With the height difference, it made her look deadly serious and she only used that look in two kinds of situations. Either when someone says something completely asinine, or when someone makes a joke about her height, though that could be interpreted as something completely asinine and therefore adds up to only one situation where that look is employed.
Kre hated being on the receiving end of that look. It was almost as bad as a look of disappointment on Cooter’s face when Kre made a completely poor move in Tehynji. Actually, it was sometimes worse since Sy usually accompanied her look with a punch or kick.
This time, thankfully, Sy didn’t hit Kre. She simply held her look for an extra long time. Finally, she sighed and shook her head, “Kre, it’s not over yet. This is just the middle of the hurricane.”