Weekly Writing – August 24 2024

Lana would have stood proudly and waited for judgment if it had come just one week later. One festival later, one chance for the city’s people to laugh and cavort and not be searched even if they brought their adulation within knife’s reach of the crown force’s beloved commander.
She would have faced down the adjudicator without any guilt for any blood on her hands. The only guilt she carried now was that she’d been caught early.
She should have used a kitchen knife. A kitchen girl buying something longer and sharper and surer, it turned out, drew suspicion. The adjudicator stared her down with eyes of the same cold, elegant silver as the confiscated blade.
A beautiful woman, in the same way as that blade. The judgment chamber was smaller, sparser stone than Lana had imagined, empty except for the two of them. But then, the guards had searched her thoroughly before leaving her there. No more knives, no more hope.
“You should have bought your weapon a week sooner,” the adjudicator said.
Lana held herself stiffer, straighter, as much like a blade as she could. She hadn’t told the guards why she’d been buying the dagger – it was the adjudicator’s job to make her tell.
And then to decide what she deserved for it. “What do you mean?”
“The laxity of the unification festival is only made possible by the weeks of vigilance before it,” the adjudicator explained. “A week sooner, your purchase might have passed without notice.”
She hadn’t known. Hadn’t known enough from the start, perhaps, to ever have a chance. Just a kitchen girl – she could never have slipped close enough to the crown commander for justice to be done.
“Why bother telling me so?” she asked. “It doesn’t matter now.”
She had already been caught, after all. Advice on how she could have avoided it was just cruel. Just bait, no doubt, meant to draw out her confession.
The adjudicator’s hands had been clasped tight and neat behind her back. When she broke their clasp, bringing one of them around into sight, Lana’s breath caught as tight, as clenched, in the back of her throat.
In the adjudicator’s hand shone the dagger she had tried to buy. The blade she would have shoved into the crown commander’s heart, spilling just a tiny fraction of the blood he had to unify that land.
“I would be willing to offer you a reduced sentence,” the adjudicator said. “In exchange for a service. One I believe you will be quite amenable to.”
Just bait. It had to be, just bait, but if it was, then she was already doomed anyways. She had nothing left to lose by hoping, except the hope itself. Nothing left to lose by licking her dry lips and saying, “You don’t mean…”
“It would be well within my power to arrange a private encounter. One you would be far more likely to survive than a marketplace assassination.”
Lana had never planned to live past the end of the festival. That wasn’t a bargaining chip with any real worth to her, but the rest…
“Why?” she had to ask, before she could truly hope. “Why would you do that?”
A smile like a blade slipped just free from the solemn sheath of the adjudicator’s lips.
“You cannot think you would be the only one to benefit from that service,” she said. “A sudden gap in a structure of power allows new pieces to be moved into place. That is all I will say. All you need to know – that, if you agree to my proposal, you will outlive him.”
That was all she had wanted, if only by seconds – enough to see the job done. If it was bait, even if she failed, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself for giving up the chance.
“Tell me what I need to do,” she said.