The earlier brutality still rang in my bones, but I ran toward the scream anyway.
The clay no longer behaved like earth. It rose in levels, lapped at foundations, pressed against walls as if testing for weakness. History, rewritten too many times, had learned to flow.
Just outside a house that had somehow remained standing, the Erinyes had cornered someone. Their whips were raised.
For a heartbeat I considered attacking—steel against divinity, instinct against inevitability—but—
"Hold!"
Victoria's voice cracked through the air like a gavel striking stone. She wrenched herself from my grip and stepped forward before I could stop her. The Erinyes did not halt, but they slowed—arms still lifted, wings half-spread, serpents writhing in agitation.
"This is an illegal seizure," Victoria shouted, walking directly into their shadow.
I moved without thinking, placing myself between the boy and his executioners.
He couldn't have been more than thirteen. Barely a teenager. His fist was clenched so tightly around the coin that his knuckles had gone white, as if money were not currency but ballast. Judging by his clothes, it was.
Victoria flinched when the snakes hissed inches from her face—but she didn't retreat.
"A verdict," she stammered, then steadied. "We will have a verdict."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Officer Ayaan and his men approaching at a cautious distance, weapons lowered but ready.
"There is no court for Blood," one of the Erinyes intoned, her voice a chorus of cracks and echoes. "There is only the Cry—and the Answer."
"But he was just found with it," Victoria argued. "That is possession, not guilt."
"There is now," she said, her voice suddenly brittle as ice.
A serpent slid close enough that its breath tickled her nose.
"Mr. Lucius," Victoria said to the empty air, "I request the provision of jurors."
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the alleyways exhaled.
From the mud-choked shadows emerged Ezra.
No—the Ezras.
A dozen in suits. A dozen in maid uniforms. They carried no weapons—only ledgers, pens, and bound volumes swollen with footnotes. They lined up along the shattered remains of a stone wall, their dual-toned voices humming a low, resonant chord.
The Erinyes turned, reassessing.
"The Jury is seated," the Ezras said in unison.
The boy clutched my coat like it was the last stable thing in the world. My dress—clean that morning—was stiff with clay and silver dust.
The mud crept closer, framing the scene like a closing parenthesis.
"The claim," Victoria said, hands shaking, "is that the soil demands thirty pieces of silver."
"That blood was paid for blood," she continued, swallowing. "That an eye must answer an eye."
She pointed at the boy.
"Defendant. You hold the silver—but you did not spill the blood."
"The Jury will deliberate."
Silence fell—not absence, but weight.
The Ezras did not speak. They did not confer. Their eyes—twelve-jointed, gold-ringed—passed from the boy, to the mud that promised annihilation, to Victoria herself. They were calculating precedent.
"The vote is cast," a suited Ezra announced.
Twelve hands rose for Execution.
Twelve hands rose for Mercy.
My heart sank. Of course. Balance—the cruelest answer of all.
"A tie," Officer Ayaan muttered, tightening his grip. "Which means the Furies prevail by default."
"No," Victoria said. She stepped forward until she stood inches from Alecto's bleeding eyes.
"I am the Magistrate," she said quietly. "I cast the tie-breaking vote."
She turned, gently took the silver from the boy's trembling hand, and placed it into the leather pouch on the ground. When she lifted it, I felt the weight—cold, ancient, dense with memory.
"I vote for Restitution," Victoria declared, "not Retribution."
"The silver belongs to the soil. It was bought with blood—and to blood it returns."
She emptied the pouch. The coins did not fall. They were absorbed. Each piece sank into the clay with a muted chime, and the furious red began to dull—cooling into something closer to earth. The screaming beneath the ground softened into a collective exhale.
"The debt is paid," Victoria shouted at the Erinyes. "Your mandate is fulfilled."
She took another breath.
"I issue a new contract."
"You are no longer the Erinyes."
"You are the Eumenides—the Kindly Ones."
The Law hesitated—then accepted the reclassification.
The transformation was violent, impossible to blink through.
The serpents froze mid-hiss, scales whitening to silver, entwining into wreaths that hummed faintly with old crimes. The soot-black wings stretched, folding upward into arches of pale dawn. Their eyes shifted—bronze, iron, pearl-gray—judging, not punishing. The copper scent ebbed, replaced by the smell of rain on stone.
Their claws relaxed, palms opened toward the coins. Each movement radiated custodial authority, not fury.
They did not depart.
Three colossal forms emerged at the district's edge—wings folded, serpents braided like wreaths, eyes reflective and unblinking. They were statues, yet alive, guardians of verdicts and precedent, permanent and silent.
The Court was adjourned.
The clay responded. The red tide recoiled inward, compressed by the weight of the Verdict. It spiraled upward, shedding heat and moisture, until it was no longer disaster. It was form.
The clay hardened into translucent, blood-colored glass. The voices of the dead were sealed inside its structure, archived rather than erased.
When the dust settled, a single vase stood at the center of the square. Polished. Exquisite. Through its dark crimson walls, thirty silver coins hovered—suspended like trapped stars.
"And beautifully filed," a voice said.
Mr. Lucius stepped into the square, his cane tapping applause against the cobblestones. He studied the vase, then Victoria, something like pride flickering across his face.
"You turned a homicide into curation," he said. "Most people try to wash away the blood. You put it on display."
He turned to the Ezras. "North Gallery. Between the broken oaths of the sixth century. It fits."
Victoria stared at her hands—stained with clay and silver dust.
"A consequence," she whispered. "Of law."
"And order," I added softly, drawing her close.
She leaned into me, trembling.
"Are they… gone?" I asked, glancing at the statues.
"No," she said quietly. "They're still here."
She looked at the Eumenides.
"They're just… on retainer."