CHAPTER 57: THE LONG SHADOW OF YESTERDAY
We thought the signing of the New Charter would mark the end of the hardest work. We were wrong. Building something new is easy compared to unbuilding the habits of a lifetime. In the weeks that followed, old tensions resurfaced in places we least expected. Deeds that had been seized decades prior were contested by families who had never stopped fighting for them; former loyalists were shunned in markets and gathering grounds, even when they had given up their posts and turned over their records; and whispers began to spread that the new council was just as slow, just as divided, just as prone to favoring those who spoke loudest.
One afternoon, a delegation arrived from the western lowlands, led by an old man named Torin whose father had been exec
