A head of pale blond hair appeared from the crowd, and Clove stepped onto the platform. My mouth dropped open. They were going to take Holland down for the very plot they themselves orchestrated.

“Well?” the Gem Guild master from the Unnamed Sea snapped.

“It’s true,” Clove answered. “I saw it with my own eyes. Holland ordered the murder of Zola in her study. Then she pieced out and sank the Luna in Bastian’s bay.”

“He’s lying!” Holland screamed, panicked now. She shuffled down the steps to the platform, her skirts clutched and wrinkled in her hands. “They’ve worked this out together. Both of them.” Her voice disintegrated.

“No.” The word fell from my lips heavily, echoing. I’d spoken without even planning to. I was intoxicated by the show of it. By the sheer genius design of it all. “They’re not. I was there.” Holland turned to me, her eyes wide and hollow. “It’s true,” I said.

Shouting erupted as a heaving man appeared in the open doorway of the pier, a gem lamp clutched in his big hands. He hobbled up to the platform, setting it down onto the table.

The Gem Guild master from the Narrows picked up the teacup and slammed it against the table. I flinched as she hit it again, working one of the stones free. The man lit the wick in the lamp and the guild master pulled off her jacket, setting the stone onto the glass. Everyone watched in utter silence.

The gem scraped against the glass as she turned it, the hard set of her jaw tightening. “It’s true,” she confirmed. “They’re fakes.”

A roar of protest broke out, enveloping everything in the room.

“That’s impossible!” Holland cried. “The craftsman! He must have—”

“They were crafted in your warehouse, were they not?” Saint raised an eyebrow at her.

She had no way out now. She’d lose her ring for commissioning work from an unlicensed merchant if she told the truth about where they’d come from. She was trapped.

Every one of the council members stood then, their voices joining in the chaos as they yelled at one another across the platform. It was a fall that would affect the whole of the Unnamed Sea.

Holland sank to the steps of the platform, her hands shaking in her lap as the Gem Guild master marched toward her. “Your ring has been revoked. And if we don’t find Zola by the time the sun goes down, so will your license.”

Holland fumbled with the ring, pulling it free before she dropped it into his hand. “You don’t understand. They … they did this.”

He ignored her, signaling the two men waiting behind him. They stepped forward, waiting, and Holland got back to her feet, pushing past them to the doors.