Liri’s hazel eyes fixed onto Osha’s. The violet pulse of the illicit gear in her hand thrummed against polished fingernails. Osha stayed rigid, pinning her palms beneath the table edge. Rovian, his face a mask of controlled fury, was already moving, striding toward the fallen satchel, his gaze fixed on the gear Liri clutched. He hadn’t yet fully registered its nature, only that it was a foreign object, out of place, perhaps linked to the disruption. He saw a piece of evidence, not a death sentence. Not yet.
“What is that?” Rovian’s voice cut through the ambient drone of the hall. His hand stretched out, intent on snatching the gear from Liri.
But Liri didn't flinch. Her eyes never left Osha’s. A slow, chilling smile spread across her face, thin and predatory. “Why, I believe this is what the Chief Inquisitor calls a ‘rogue core’,” she purred, her voice sweet as poisoned nectar. She tilted her hand, letting the violet glow illuminate the hard, cold calculation in her eyes. “And if I’m not mistaken, the bounty for its maker just increased… rather dramatically.”
Before Rovian could snatch the core, a violent shudder vibrated through the floorboards. The colossal doors of the Grand Hall slammed open with a groan of stressed brass and splintering wood. The crack echoed across the cavernous space, silencing conversation and turning every apprentice motionless.
A gaunt figure, cloaked in the severe black and polished steel of the tribunal, strode into the hall with precise, clipped steps. Behind him, a trio of clockwork quadrupeds, their multifaceted lenses glowing, clicked and whirred over the parquet. They moved like armored spiders, all sharp angles and gleaming obsidian plating, steel snouts twitching as if testing the draft.
The room fell dead silent. Apprentices froze mid-stroke, tools clattering against brass trays.
The official's gaze swept across the pale faces. He stopped below the towering projection of Rovian’s bounty poster, where the floral hair ornament hovered in midair. He lifted a hand, and with a soft hum, the image shifted. The romantic reward – the vast sum of currency and the marriage annulment – vanished, replaced by a stark, blood-red declaration: ‘EXCOMMUNICATION. EXECUTION BY SUNSET.’
A collective gasp rippled across the benches. Rovian stepped forward, his eyes fixing on the magistrate. Liri, still holding the cog, tucked it close to her chest.
“Hear me, artisans of Pellam!” the man boomed through a hidden brass amplifier. “This bounty, originally a private matter of a spurned lover, is now an official decree of the Sacred Office! The creator of this wild-tuned device”—he pointed a skeletal finger at the hairpin—“is an outlaw. The maker of this contraband will be found, tried, and executed by sunset today! No appeal. And anyone found aiding this criminal will share their fate!”
Osha pressed her chin lower against her folded arms. Sunset. Rovian’s petty search had turned into an execution squad.
“These constructs,” the magistrate continued, gesturing to the iron beasts, “are tuned to trace wild frequencies. They will scan every station, every storage unit, every individual. If you harbor this corruption, they will find it.”
The constructs spread out, steel claws clicking rhythmically on the flagstones. Their ocular units projected thin, searching needles of jade light, sweeping across rows of tables and cowering apprentices.
Osha remained slumped in her chair, head buried in her sleeves atop the timber desk, feigning sound sleep. Beneath her heavy grey cloak, her fingers worked swiftly inside a lined dampening pouch, adjusting a miniature frequency coil. She needed to hide the gear Liri still held, but how could she get it back? And then there was *her*—she herself was a walking beacon of wild resonance.
One of the machines, a bulky model with triple-jointed limbs, veered sharply. Its jade line snapped toward Osha’s desk. Gear teeth ground within its neck. Its obsidian muzzle twitched and flared, tracking an unseen vapor as it paced toward her.
The construct crept too close, and her bypass coil was still unaligned. Without lifting her brow from the wood, Osha channeled a razor-thin current from her knuckles, snaking it along the iron trim of the desk frame toward the receptor array in the beast's snout.
The beast stepped within an arm's length. Its jade beam flared across her crown. Then, with a sharp crack, acrid smoke poured from its faceplate as copper wire fused into slag. The ocular beam died instantly. The iron frame spasmed, joints buckling, and collapsed onto the stone in a heap of dead coils.
The crowd flinched. The inquisitor spun around, eyes settling on the smoking wreckage. Rovian moved in a single stride, stepping in front of Osha’s desk to interpose himself between her and the ruptured frame.
When he glanced down, his gaze dropped to the shelf beneath the desktop. Osha’s limp fingers rested on her knees, unshielded by her cloak, a faint pale luminescence fading from the tips of her nails.