She found herself in a large, well-lit, barren room, empty of everything except a long table with three chairs behind it. In those chairs sat the Arbitrators, two men and a woman, all three of them the very image of the perfect soldier. All three sat as erect as if this was a parade ground, all three wore identical long-sleeved tunics of brown leather, and all three wore their graying hair close-cropped.

This third and final time she recited her entire story to the panel of three Guild Arbitrators, who all remained as impassive and unemotional as statues. She thought that was probably a good sign. This town of Selina was completely outside Ardana’s immediate reach, and had a strong town council of its own. And the administrative branch of the Guild here was well known for fair play. Their completely impartial attitudes let her know they would be weighing not only everything she said, but how she said it.

By now she was exhausted, and she greatly envied Hellsbane, safely and warmly installed in the Guild stables, fed and groomed and probably now asleep.

She tried to tell things simply and clearly, with as little emotional weight as possible; tried to act as impassive and neutral as her judges seemed to be. But she heard herself slurring words as if she was drunk; and so she was, but with weariness, not wine.

It wasn’t hard to sound impassive after all. As she did her best to make sure she kept all her facts straight, she discovered that right at this moment she didn’t care much about anything; all she was really aware of was her acute need to sleep and the hollow emptiness of her stomach. Too late, she thought perhaps that her approach was all wrong; maybe she should have been passionate and full of righteous anger—maybe she wasn’t convincing them. Maybe they read her stoicism as the facade of someone who was making everything up.

But it was too late to change now, and besides, she was too tired. It was all she could do to keep her narrative clear, and answer their questions with some semblance of intelligence.

Finally she came to the end of her story, and the Arbitrators came to the end of their questions.

They sent her out through a second door on the opposite side of the room, where she found a small chamber identical to the one she’d waited in before her “audience.”

It was a tiny, windowless box of a room, stuffy, and airless. There were three chairs, all empty, all equally uncomfortable, which was just as well. She wouldn’t have been able to resist the implied comfort of a padded chair, and once settled into something like that, she’d have fallen asleep for certain.