Back in the days before the Eight Lands also encompassed the county the town was in, there was the threat of encroachment and rumors everywhere of imperial agents working from within to soften up opinion for occupation.
The first to denounce Bakshi the baker was Claude, a ferrier with an unusual but spotty education. Bakshi had come to town about two years before. He had married a woman from the community but no children had come. Claude’s primary evidence was a conversation he remembered with Bakshi, when talking about the incursions the Empire had made into the county, and its remodeling of a town in disputed country near the border, the baker had said that the Empire could at least fix broken pipes.
Afterward, others remembered times when the baker had seemed not to automatically detest every action of the Western Empire. Some of them multiplied occasions, ’tis true. Soon enough a mob was whipped up.
They chased the baker from his shop. He ran through the streets taking rock blows until he ducked between two older buildings. Making his way out of town, he was spotted on the corpse-road by Claude. A foot-race followed, in which Bakshi was tackled just outside of town and a few hundred feet from the tree.
Magistral took charge. For being an agent of the aggressive empire, we do justice to thee, he said. He had a long dagger. He pulled up the baker by his hair and two burly townsmen, unbidden, flanked the victim to support his arms against the tree trunk, to which they had dragged him. Holding his head fast against the bark, Magistral drew his dagger and cut deep through the baker’s throat.
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