Case: People v. the "Other"
Trial type: Bench
Presiding judge: Auris Sunwolf Oretharos, Chief Justice
Charge: Unlawful and inhumane treatment of the changeling Valerian, including, but not limited to, brainwashing, physical and psychological torture, and mind control
Ruling and sentence: Guilty. A restraining order on the other to keep a minimum of 100 feet from Valerian. The other sentenced to permanent exile from the continental settlement, not to return under pain of death. A ban placed on any member of the Lunides from setting foot in the continental settlement.
Auris lays down her pen, sits back in her chair, and sighs. Exile here doesn't mean what it would in the tribes, and the sentence sits poorly with her.
Gwrtheyrn's consciousness brushes hers, growing more present as he focuses. Is something the matter? he asks. He's still at home, so far as she knows, keeping Valerian company—but the courthouse isn't so far away, and the mental connection is strong enough to reach without noticing the difference.
Only that I couldn't do more. The majority of the charges against the other are entirely outside her jurisdiction to begin. She can't possibly extend the town's laws to retroactively affect actions taken by someone so far outside the town as to be in another city altogether and in years past, before anyone had so much as considered settling the continent again.
...you think you could have.
Auris sighs quietly, glancing to the window. The evening sun catches the dust motes spiraling in the air, limning the space with gold. The empty bookshelves gaze at her, impassive. Alboba's crew only finished the building a week ago and was busy furnishing it up to an hour before the trial and the smell of new wood is abruptly distasteful to Auris. She looks down at the recording of her own pronouncement. The page is meager atop the great desk. Yes, she responds at last.
But...?
But the other's death could only invite the Lunides' ire. There's no point to keeping him here—he certainly won't reform, he made that clear in court if it wasn't already, and that would keep him too close to Valerian...not to mention the Lunides might try to rescue him.
We can face them!
Auris smiles. You and I are of similar mind—but it doesn't matter that we would. I cannot volunteer the entire town to take that risk.
Hm. His mental presence shifts to the pebbled feel of dissatisfaction, all in round pieces never fitting together.
I know. I like it as little as you—but this place is too young. The Lunides' power may well be enough to wipe it from the map.
Well, I think that's silly.
The message comes with such a sense of a defiant pout that Auris laughs aloud. Silly it may be, but it's what we have. And if we can't keep him here, and we can't kill him...all that's left is exile, in one form or another. Delivering him to his own doorstep.
Why can't you send him away, where he can't hurt anyone?
...That's as 'away' as I can send him. I can't tell Freeport what to do. And...it's Freeport. They wouldn't listen no matter who I was. The tribes would listen to each other. Exile from one is exile from all. She misses the simplicity. For now...it turns Auris' stomach, but she sees no alternative, and the deed is done.
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Auris of the Thousand Names: A Weaver's Chronicle
Fantasy[Updates Thursdays] They wouldn't let her save the world. Unable to keep patience with the figureheads and red tape of the city-state governments, Auris turned her attention smaller, to a new settlement, and to a bare handful of its inhabitants cau...
