Chapter 23: Drevka's Reckoning

The meeting happened in the market square, which was Drevka's choice.

Arthur had expected somewhere smaller — the inn's back room, perhaps, or the mill — somewhere that contained the conversation and its potential consequences. But Drevka sent her second-in-command to find him at half past nine with a verbal summons that was phrased as an invitation and functioned as neither. The square was her choice because the square was public, and Drevka had spent long enough in field enforcement to understand that public spaces performed a particular kind of pressure that closed rooms could not. Witnesses made men smaller. She had built a career on this.

Arthur arrived on time, which was itself a concession he had not intended to make and made anyway because being late would have felt like theater, and he was tired of theater.