The Paragon looks like she could faint.

Or maybe throw up. Either way, she's paler than a ghost, strapped up in restrictive bits of livery and pomp that clearly cause her skin to crawl, scrawling a look of trapped horror that the careful slackness of her face can't manage to hide.

This is not her strong suit.

Hiran had suspected it on the ride through the city, suspected it in the sharpening of her jawline in the sunset, the fixed way she looked above everyone else, as if she didn't want to be there, as if she didn't want to be anywhere.

She'll need practice if she wants ease, lessons if she angles for charm, but Hiran thinks this could work for her—not the vague look of nausea of course, but the steeliness. The coldness.

Now that crowd looms again just beyond these double doors and Hiran steps forward because her cowl is askew and the Gods know that Lei Chaudri, with all his militant obliviousness, won't know how to fix it.

"Just remember," he tells her as he adjusts the fabric, "they're far more terrified of you than you are of them."

She glares at him, eyes narrowing in instantaneous suspicion.

Are you laughing at me? they seem to ask. Are you mocking me?

The Paragon is not a trusting person.

Hiran winks because he knows it will annoy her, because he knows it's expected. He's the charmer, the pig-headed, white-toothed blowhard more interested in glory than sense, looking for a thrill, not a purpose. It used to bother him, but he's coming to find this narrow viewing lens useful.

"You've got the words if you need them," he reminds her, tilting his chin toward the slip clutched between her fingers, the paper blotched with Ruben's words.

"Dynast Wren has ensured the three members of the Cabal will receive fair trial," it reads, the words she will have to form, speak out to the sprawling masses below. "I accept my part as mediator. I will do my best to uphold..."

Spelling out everything she has to say... everything he wants her to say, he muses, the High King's request still lingering in the back of his mind.

"I don't know why some announcer can't say them instead," she blurts out, tone clipped, knuckles white against the parchment.

"People need to be reassured," he answers. "They want to know what you are made of, what kind of person you are."

Her jaw clicks and tightens, and he sets a hand on her shoulder.

"They just want a show," he tells her.

He joins Tara and Finn on the side balcony, noting how they hover stiffly there, wearing identical, strangled expressions. Their arms are set slightly apart from their bodies, as if this will somehow free them from the livery they have been stuffed into. Hiran approaches the railing and feels the familiar turn of attention, the shift of eyes in the crowd toward their box, and he flashes a smile at the masses below.

"How soon will this be over?" Tara demands, shifting on the balls of her feet as her gaze flits to the balcony in the center of the square. It's bare right now, except for the two guards on either side of the door.

"The rulers should be entering their alcove soon. Allayria will walk out after that," Hiran replies, leaning against the rail so he can get a good view of the audience below. It's a mass—the majority of the city, if he can judge, and the voluminous crowd pushes out for long blocks down the road, oozing into side streets and up into the nearby buildings, a field of faces leaning out of windows and doors.

"Have you done this before?"

"Hm?" Hiran diverts his attention back to her. They've put Tara in Roften livery—red and gold—and she picks at the sleeve. He thinks she would look better in green, but she clearly wishes she were in black like Finn, to whom she keeps throwing envious looks.

"No, I can't say I have," he says in answer to her question and she scowls. He's used to these fleeting irritations, the constant annoyance at his social adeptness. It's not the first nor the last time he'll see it painted across another's face, though he does feel a ping of irritation that it's on Tara's.

"If I were the Jarles, I would just blow up the square," Finn says abruptly, staring out at the opposing balcony where Feuilles and the other rulers have appeared. "All of their enemies are here."

"We're well-protected," Hiran says in answer, sparing a half-glance around to ensure that no one aside from him and Tara have heard these words. "Let's not talk about such things too loudly, Finn. It makes people nervous."

"He has a point," Tara mutters mutinously and Hiran pushes back from the rail, leaning forward, toward her ear.

"And no one knows it better than the four people sitting up there," he murmurs in return, nodding toward the rulers, who have just seated themselves on four silver chairs. "The protection is poor only if you can see it."

She glances over at him, brow endearingly furrowed, but the door to their right opens and Master Ruben walks out.

"I thought your prestige would give you admission to the other box," Hiran says in way of greeting, cocking his head once more to the balcony across the way.

The Skill master smiles, but only shakes his head.

"Even a courtier such as yourself can understand growing tired of politics," he answers, halting next to them and turning toward the center balcony. "I have been settling Hai Sofo all morning. I need a break."

Just then the double doors open and three people walk onto the center balcony. Beinsho leads them and is the first to take the center stand while the Paragon and Chaudri sit on chairs to either side. Hiran is pleased that from back here it's difficult to see how close Allayria looks to vomiting.

Beinsho holds up a curt hand and the already quieting crowd silences. He speaks to the impending trial, to the charges laid at the feet of the three prisoners set down in the deep cells below, of the process of justice. It's pomp and frivolity for him, Hiran can see it in the clipped tone and short words. Men like Beinsho don't understand the importance of the theatrical in politics, the need to sate the fickle murmurings of a dormant crowd.

Ruben does though, Hiran spares the Skill master a quick glance, noting the way he watches Beinsho, but also watches Allayria. His hands are all over this—Hiran was around the Solveig court long enough to know the tell-tale signs. Ruben has always had a deft savvy that others have treated with caution and, perhaps, a touch of suspicion.

Both the rich and poor, Hiran muses, thinking back on when Chaudri and the others had delivered the trio this is all about, remembering the way the little ringleader had looked at the Skill master, all quiet fury and disgust. The non-Skiller had had, prior to that, an effective poker face so similar to Allayria's it had almost been eerie, but that blank expression had broken when the man looked at Ruben.

There is history here, Hiran had thought at the time, watching as Ruben said something that was only met with sullen silence in return. Now that man is somewhere below, in some dark corner of the tower, while his fate is decided in the light.

There's a shift in the crowd as Beinsho cedes the podium and Allayria, garbed in that deep burgundy, face ashen in the bright sunlight, stands.

Here we go, Hiran thinks with a surprising amount of trepidation, despite the fact that this has all been planned out, that it's now all a show, a theatrics of acceptance and concession. She will stand there, formally accept the council's appointment as the mediator of the Cabal's trial, and then exit.

She makes it to the center of the balcony and her hands look steady when she places them on the stone railing.

"Dynast Wren has had the great foresight to bring together the leaders of the four kingdoms here today to pass judgment on the trial," she says, her voice a cool assertion that cuts across the courtyard. "I have seen their choice of judges, heard their thoughts and concerns. The elected are, as much as any person can be, without bias or grudge, and they have all sworn to be fair and discerning."

Hiran watches as the fingers curled on the ledge of the balcony twitch, tightening for a moment, and he finds himself scrutinizing her expression.

"Dynast Wren has ensured that the three members of the Cabal will receive fair trial," she continues and he catches it, the way her eyes shift out, focused not on the recollection of memorized words, but pinned out on the uncertain crowd. Something prickles along his spine, something like foreboding, and Hiran finds his own hands tensing into fists.

"Any interference on my part would serve only as an unneeded distraction," she says suddenly and Ruben jerks next to Hiran, but it is too late:

"I recuse myself from this trial."

A/N: Everything is not going to be ok.