The iron composure showing its first hairline fracture. "Give me the chance to prove what you already suspect somewhere beneath all this ceremony. That I did not do this thing." Kosoha's eyes closed a moment. When they opened again, something in them had hardened back toward duty. "Suspicion is not proof," he said.
"And a council does not judge on hope alone, however much a father might wish otherwise." Wit's hand tightened on the Winchester at his side. He didn't raise it. Couldn't. Not against 30 riders. Not with the math so plainly stacked against them both.
But God, some part of him wanted to. Because standing here, watching this old man's grief war against his duty, watching Askala's careful mask hold steady even now, Wit understood exactly how close they'd come to none of this mattering at all. One wrong word, one misjudged silence, and every ounce of trust built over three careful weeks would count for exactly nothing against the council already primed to believe the worst. Think, he told himself. Except thinking wasn't producing anything useful.
Just the same circling dread over and over. "And then what would you accept?" Wit said aloud, forcing the words out before the panic in his own chest could finish talking him out of them. "As proof. Name it plain, and we'll find it." "Proof does not simply appear because a man wishes it to, rancher." "Sometimes it does," Wit said. "Sometimes it just needs somebody stubborn enough to go looking." Kosoha studied him a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his grief.
"You believe in her that completely?" "I believe a woman who lifted a fence log I needed a mule for," Wits said, "isn't the kind who needs to lie about anything. Strength like that doesn't require deceit to back it up." Something in Kosoha's expression shifted, not quite convinced, but no longer entirely closed either. Hooves sounded behind the gathered riders, fast, urgent, cutting through the tension like a blade through canvas. Every head turned. Taji broke through the loose circle at a dead run, Nizona I mounted awkward behind him, both of them breathless, dust-caked, having ridden clearly harder than either body was built to withstand.
Father Taji's voice cracked with the effort of the ride, but he didn't slow, didn't hesitate, swinging down before his horse had fully stopped. "I bring proof, proof that should have reached you weeks ago, if not for men working hard to see it buried." Kosoha's expression shifted, weariness and hope tangling together in equal measure. "Speak." Taji Tadru the wrapped hide bundle from his hip and unfolded it slow, deliberate, holding the small carved knife up where the growing daylight caught its blade clean. "This is Askala's," Taji said, "found buried near the river camp where our cousin died. Blood still dried into the seam near the hilt, old blood, the kind that does not come from an honest hunting accident, whatever story Askala offered when he claimed the blade lost." A ripple of shock moved through the mounted riders.
"That proves nothing," Askala said, too fast, the practiced calm from moments ago fracturing at the edges now. "A blade lost is a blade anyone might have found and used against him. "Perhaps," Taji said, "except I did not come with only the blade." He turned to Nizoni, who slid down from the horse on legs that visibly trembled, though her chin stayed lifted, her eyes steady on Chief Kosoha. Despite the fear plainly written across the rest of her. "Speak," Taji said gently, "as you spoke to us.
Say it now before all of them, so the truth cannot be buried a second time." Nizoni's voice shook at first, then steadied, word by word. The same account she'd given in the dark of her own shelter, the fever, the river water, Askala crossing the camp with his blade already drawn, the voices raised and then silenced, the walk back with hands wiped clean against his own leggings. By the time she finished, the whole circle of riders had gone deathly quiet. Kosoha's face had drained of color, aged a decade in the span of a single testimony. "Askala," he said, and the name came out of him like something being physically torn loose.