The Charter spread before we finished writing it.
Excerpts of key clauses were already being copied by hand and posted in bakeries, tailors’ shops, and the backs of ferrymen’s manifests. The ink was still damp in places when the first threats arrived.
A letter, unsigned, slipped beneath the door at dawn: Pull back, or there will be blood.
Mina found it and read it aloud with ice in her voice. "They waited until they felt the ground move beneath them. Now they’re ready to push."
I folded the letter and lit it in the hearth. "Let them push. But we answer in daylight."
That afternoon, we hosted our first public reading.
Ruel stood beside a teacher from Westpoint and a guild scribe. Together, they read the preamble and the first four articles aloud in the forum square. Hundreds listened.
