The third arbiter placed a hand on Braun’s shoulder to still him (which only annoyed him further), and sighed. “You are correct Master Prandell, but that’s not what the court means by ‘accused by the public’. When a person is accused of a criminal offense, it is said that they have committed the act against society itself… against all law-abiding citizens of the land. Therefore, all criminal acts are said to be brought forward on behalf of all of society, or in short, by and for the public.”
Prandell nodded once and eased himself back down to his seat. “Thank you much Professor Marxin. You always had a way of puttin’ things to make them make sense. I guess that’s why you’re such a good teacher.”
“If only I had been a little more diligent with some of my students,” Lowil Marxin sighed with a side glance to Kre, sitting in his position of abject despair.
Still seething, Braun shuffled off Marxin’s gentle hand, “If that’s all of the interruptions for today. I believe we’ve heard the entirety of the case from all possible angles and it is beyond time to levy the sentence. You know my stance on this matter and it remains unchanged despite the random acts of contempt that the populace has displayed to this court.”
“You ain’t seen contempt yet,” snarled more than a few voices from the crowd.
“Braun is correct,” Lowil admitted with a regretful look. “Talking about the situation anymore will only bring emotion to the place where logic is needed.”
Braun grinned, sensing that the trial would soon be over and he could hand deliver the case report to the Council and receive the accolades he would be due for handling such an important trial. “So what is your verdict?” he asked his companion with a voice as sweet and as oily as butterfat.
“If I may,” Art said with a raise of his hand. “While I agree that the trial has all but concluded, I ask that we offer the accused one more chance to relate his side of it all. It has been since yesterday morning since we’ve heard from the only witness and we’ve spent the better part of these two days discussing the finer points of the laws so much that my simple blacksmith brain is bursting so much that I never hope to sit on a trial again for as long as I live. I believe it would do us good to ground ourselves in the facts of the case before we pass sentence.”
For the first time since he had been sat down, chained to the floor in his little fenced-in box, Kre raised his head and looked at the arbiters, those who would decide his fate. Braun’s face turned a shade of red that bordered on needing medical attention while Lowil simply nodded in agreement with Art.
“Kre,” Art said gently in a voice he usually reserved for handling the most skittish of horses, “would you be so kind as to explain what happened this last Secondday?”
The boy nodded once and cleared his throat. One of the nearby townsfolk brought him a cup of water and helped him to drink. Kre cleared his throat again and took the entire room back two nights to the point where it all seemed to go wrong.