Chapter 189: Mercer’s Row Speaks
Chapter 188: Mercer’s Row Speaks
The benches on Mercer’s Row had filled further as the morning stretched on — neighbours pulling chairs from doorways, children perched on barrels, a few older men standing with their arms folded at the back because all the seats had long been taken before they arrived.
The scrying veil hung above them, steady and bright.
Helen moved between the tables with her tray, though she had slowed considerably from her usual pace. Even she was watching.
On the veil, Marquess Corvin Hale stepped back from Princess Lyria with that smirk still on his face.
Jacob’s frown had been building since the moment the Marquess’s name was called.
Now it had settled into something fixed.
"Why," he said, "would he write something like that?"
Nobody answered immediately.
"Is he mocking her?" Jacob asked. "Is that what this is? He’s standing there mocking her in front of the whole kingdom?"
Helen said nothing.
She stood with her tray held at her side and her brows pulled together, staring up at the veil.
"He did it on purpose," she said.
Jacob looked at her then.
"On purpose," he repeated.
"Aye," Helen said.
A woman seated two benches over — stout, grey-haired, with the kind of face that had seen enough of life — shook her head at the veil.
"I’m pretty sure he can’t even read what he wrote himself," she said flatly. "It’s gibberish. Dressed-up gibberish. That’s all it is."
A few heads nodded around her.
"He knew exactly what he was doing," she continued. "Standing there with that face on him. Ought to be ashamed."
"He ain’t ashamed," Jacob muttered. "Look at him."
They looked.
The Marquess on the veil was precisely as Jacob had said — composed, smirking faintly, entirely unbothered.
Olly had been quiet through all of it.
He watched the veil with his elbows on his knees and his hands loosely linked, and when he spoke, his voice was low enough that only those nearest him caught it at first.
"Why would the royal family do this?"
They all went a little quieter.
Olly didn’t look away from the veil.
"Look at her," he said, pointing. "Look at our Princess. Anyone with eyes can see she’s down. It’s plain as anything."
On the scrying veil, Princess Lyria held herself very straight. Her face was composed. Her hands were still.
But Olly was right.
There was something in it — something that could not be entirely hidden even by composure — that made it plain she was holding herself together by will rather than ease.
Brianna, seated beside Olly, was watching the veil with her lower lip pressed together.
She sniffed.
"I don’t like him," she said.
"The Marquess?" Olly asked.
"Aye." She nodded firmly. "He’s ugly."
Olly looked at her for a moment.
Then he chuckled.
It was quiet and brief, but it was genuine.
"Aye," he said, voice low. "He is. Inside and out."
That drew a few sounds of agreement from those close enough to hear.
Then a man further along the row, younger, with ink-stained fingers, leaned forward in his seat.
"Hold on," he said.
The people nearest him turned.
"If Princess Lyria can’t read freely," he said, "whose fault is that?"
He gestured at the veil.
"She’s part of the royal family, ain’t she?" he said. "She’s the King’s daughter. Same as Jacinta. And they’re up there letting her be made a fool of for something she was never taught."
"She should’ve been taught," the man continued. "Same as her sister. If she was kept in the shadows all this time, that’s on them. That ain’t on her."
The silence that followed lasted perhaps three seconds.
Then the row erupted.
It started at the edges and built toward the centre — voices overlapping, heads nodding, people turning to their neighbours.
"He’s right."
"That’s the truth of it, ain’t it."
"They kept her hidden all those years and now they’re shaming her for it."
"Should’ve taught her same as the other one. She’s royal blood too."
"They knew what they were doing up there. That announcement about reading the poems out. They knew."
"Course they knew. They set it up."
"And now they’re using it against her. Their own kin."
Helen hadn’t moved from where she stood.
She listened to all of it with her tray at her side and her expression unchanged.
A woman near the front shook her head slowly.
"It’s their fault she can’t read freely," she said. "And now they’re letting her be mocked for it. In front of everyone."
Jacob’s jaw was tight.
"And that Marquess, I suspect he knew," he said. "He knew exactly what he was writing and why. He didn’t write that for the competition. He wrote it to make her look small."
"To make her fail," Olly said quietly.
"Aye."
"You all, the Princess is speaking," someone said.
They all turned back to the veil as Jacinta spoke.
She stood with her hands clasped before her and her posture without fault, and she explained the Marquess’s poem.
"The poem," she said clearly, "is, at its foundation, a definition. The Marquess has chosen to approach the theme of home from its most essential and structural understanding. Home as a building. Home as a physical space. A construction of walls and passageways and thresholds, made meaningful through repeated habitation."
She continued.
"He argues that home is not a sentimental construction but a tangible one. That its meaning comes not from feeling but from familiarity. From returning to the same space often enough that its layout becomes known to one without effort."
She inclined her head.
"It is, in essence, a precise and considered definition. One that strips away abstraction and grounds the concept in the physical world. Home is where one lives. Where one returns. Where one’s presence is recurrent and expected."
She smiled faintly.
"It is a rigorous interpretation," she concluded. "And one that reflects considerable thought."
Mercer’s Row was quiet after that.
Olly looked at the veil for a moment after Jacinta had finished.
Then he said, very drily, "That’s quite boring."
A woman near him laughed.
"Compared to what the others did," Olly continued, "that’s just... a building. He wrote about a building."
"Duke Aurelgrave wrote about people," Brianna said.
"Duke Thorncrest made everyone laugh," Jacob added.
"And that other one," the grey-haired woman said, meaning Duke Valenridge, "asked you a question you had to think about."
"This one," Olly said, gesturing at the veil, "wrote a building."
The woman who had laughed shook her head, still smiling.
"That’s all it was," she said. "His supposed intellect. Big words to make a building sound like something more than it is."
That set everyone off, and laughter flowed.
