Dangria's Citizens Force the Mayor to Release Piak

The release of Piak becomes a public test of whether Dangria’s laws and civic customs can restrain its mayor. With Iruwen organizing residents and Tiuri demanding his friend’s freedom before the town council, a private imprisonment is exposed to public scrutiny—and the mayor is made to yield.

A city’s grievance becomes a public cause

On the way, Iruwen tells Tiuri that Dangria’s council once met every week in the town hall’s great hall. Any resident could attend, propose measures, ask questions, or bring complaints. Recently, however, meetings had often been canceled or closed to the public for trivial reasons. That retreat from open civic life had already angered the townspeople; Piak’s imprisonment gives their discontent an immediate and personal focus.

At the marketplace, Iruwen gathers a crowd and speaks fervently against the mayor. He links the town’s grievances to a danger that reaches beyond Tiuri and Piak: the mayor, he says, has deprived two young strangers of their liberty, and one of them is still in the dungeon. Iruwen also points to the town hall itself, made to resemble a king’s palace with public money, while the prison beneath it has been enlarged. He asks why a ruler would need room to imprison more people, and whether the facility is meant for innocent outsiders.

Iruwen does not argue that imprisonment is never necessary. His charge is that no one should lose freedom without reason or accusation, a protection he identifies as Dangria’s law. He calls on those who support justice to accompany Tiuri back into the town hall and support his demand for Piak’s immediate release. Many cheer, while others question or debate the appeal; the mayor’s soldiers arrive to find the gathering growing around Iruwen and Tiuri.

The demand enters the council chamber

Tiuri returns to the great hall with Iruwen and Ardoc, followed by many residents. His heart is pounding, though he is not afraid: since accepting his mission, this is the first time he has stepped so publicly into view. The room is arranged for authority and observation. The mayor sits at the center of a raised table with about ten other men; scribes sit apart, and soldiers with spears and torches stand on the stairs and among the columns. More townspeople press in behind them.

The mayor recognizes Tiuri and exchanges a look with him before whispering to the man at his right. That man orders the hall closed. The announcement meets a murmur, then a resident objects that the meeting is public. The mayor threatens to clear the room if it does not fall silent, but Lord Dirwin, rising from a chair near Tiuri, asks that the gathered people be allowed to speak as they once were. The exchange makes the dispute over Piak inseparable from the larger question of who is entitled to attend and be heard.

The mayor presents Tiuri as the offender. He claims that the two youths were invited to stay as his guests, that Tiuri barricaded himself in an upstairs room, and that he shot at the mayor’s archers. Tiuri answers that the archers fired first. He also insists that the mayor must explain why he ordered Piak taken prisoner and why the boys were kept against their wishes. Rather than accept the mayor’s account of an insulted host and an unruly guest, Tiuri brings the argument back to the captive who has not been accused of any offense.

Testimony and a concealed order

When one of the council members asks what Piak actually did, the mayor sits down. The mayor’s own scribe stands and says that Piak did nothing. He recalls that he had prepared a room for the visitors, who said they could not stay long. The mayor pressed them to remain because he wanted news from the east; Piak then said something about having Tiuri and ran outside. The scribe’s account supplies what the mayor’s accusation lacks: no wrongdoing by Piak that could justify his imprisonment.

Tiuri presses the point in front of the crowd, then discloses a more disturbing reason to question the mayor’s hospitality. He says the mayor had ordered gatekeepers to bring him every young man between fourteen and eighteen who entered Dangria. Tiuri urges the residents to ask whom the mayor’s carrier pigeons report to and whose orders he follows while governing in the name of King Unauwen. He admits, by his hesitation, that he is wary of saying too much; nevertheless, he makes clear that his own concern is narrower and urgent: he wants Piak freed, because Piak has done nothing to merit imprisonment.

The accusation leaves the mayor ashen and unable to answer. The crowd breaks into calls for Piak’s release. The scene establishes the reported order to seize young arrivals and raises the question of the mayor’s allegiance, but it does not provide an answer about the messages or the master Tiuri suspects. Its immediate force lies in turning suspicion into a public demand that the authorities must address.

Release and retreat

The council members confer uneasily. Lord Marmuc declares the meeting closed, and, when angry residents protest that it has only just begun, repeats the order while also directing that Piak be released. Soldiers move to enforce the closure. The decision does not resolve the wider accusations, but it secures the result for which Tiuri and the assembled townspeople came: Piak is no longer to be held.

Two soldiers bring Piak into the hall. He looks bewildered by the crowd until he sees Tiuri and his face brightens. Tiuri pushes through the people to reach him, takes his hands, and tells him he is free. Piak asks why so many people have gathered; Tiuri begins to explain that they helped win his release, but cheering interrupts him. The mayor and most of the council leave their places and go up the stairs in a movement that resembles flight, while soldiers continue ordering the crowd to go home.

Tiuri and Piak make their way out to the square, where residents are still talking excitedly and ignore the soldiers’ repeated calls to disperse. After a while, the two friends slip away unnoticed. The episode changes Piak’s immediate condition from prisoner to free companion, while showing how testimony, an open assembly, and collective pressure can check an official’s attempt to silence a complaint. It also marks Tiuri’s first public appearance since taking up his mission: his private demand becomes a cause the people of Dangria are willing to support.