The Saint Who Healed Everyone and the Knight She Couldn't novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: In Front of the Shield

The trial of Marshal Stahl and the Court Mage took place at noon the next day, in the drill yard, in front of the whole army.

Queen Adelheid had ordered it so.

"A secret was kept from the Royal Shield for nine years," she had said. "It will not be judged in secret."

Four thousand soldiers stood in the thawing mud in ranks, with the grey sky above and the black Fen beyond the wall.

The Queen sat on a plain wooden chair on a platform of planks, in her black dress, with the iron ring on her hand.

Behind her stood Brunhild, in her breastplate, upright and pale.

Beside her stood Yui, in her white tunic, with her notebook, and Greta with her limp.

Between them and the army, kneeling in the mud, were two men.

The Court Mage's grey robe was torn at the hem.

The Marshal's gold braid had been cut off his shoulders.

The night before, two of the Queen's guards had walked him to the ward doorway to be arrested, and he had said only one thing, in a thick voice: that he had come to apologise.

Nobody believed him.

Yui had not believed him either, and she had told him so to his face, from the bed, with a blanket held to her chest.

Now he knelt in front of the army, and she felt very little for him, except a nurse's tiredness at a sickness that would not heal.

"Hartwig Stahl," the Queen said.

"Majesty."

"You are charged with treating the commander of the Royal Shield as equipment. You are charged with ordering her confined for telling the truth. You are charged with ordering a healer to spend her life against the healer's will."

"I wanted victory," Stahl said.

"I know what you wanted."

"The Black Fen, Majesty. The north. I wanted what any Marshal would want."

"And you called her a cracked plate." The Queen did not raise her voice. "In front of her officers."

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