The People of Dangria Force Piak's Release is the public confrontation in which Tiuri, supported by Iruwen and a gathering of townspeople, challenges the mayor’s detention of Piak. The decisive turn comes when the mayor admits that no charge has been made: under pressure from the crowd and the council, he orders Piak freed. The episode makes the right to public scrutiny consequential, converting a young stranger’s isolated appeal into a civic demand the authorities cannot quietly contain.

Background: A Grievance About Public Rule

Iruwen explains to Tiuri that Dangria’s mayor and council ordinarily meet in the town hall’s great hall. The meetings had once taken place weekly, with residents permitted to propose measures, ask questions, and lodge complaints. Lately, however, meetings were often cancelled or closed to the public on trivial grounds. Iruwen identifies that retreat from open deliberation as one of the community’s grievances against the mayor. Piak’s imprisonment therefore enters a wider dispute: the people are not only concerned with one prisoner, but with a governing practice that has made it harder to question those exercising authority.

The mayor’s building gives the grievance a concrete, unsettling image. According to Iruwen’s account, the town hall had been beautified with public money until it resembled a king’s palace, while the prison beneath it had been enlarged. He asks why a ruler who claims to govern peacefully needs more prison space, and whether the prison is meant for innocent strangers. His speech connects the visible grandeur above ground to confinement below it, turning the town hall itself into an emblem of power whose public-facing magnificence coexists with an expanding capacity to imprison.

Iruwen does not argue that government can never impose punishment. He acknowledges that a ruler may sometimes need to be strict and that imprisonment may sometimes be necessary. His stated limit is that nobody should lose freedom without reason or accusation; he presents this as Dangria’s law, which must be treated as inviolable. On that basis, he calls for the townspeople to support Tiuri’s demand that Piak be released immediately. The appeal is framed not as private loyalty alone, but as defense of a rule that protects everyone from arbitrary detention.

From the Market to the Town Hall

Iruwen gathers people around himself and Tiuri in the marketplace, repeating his complaints about the mayor, hinting at dangers to come, and telling the crowd that two young strangers have been deprived of their freedom. One has escaped and stands beside him; the other remains in the dungeon. Some listeners applaud, while others raise questions, and the mayor’s soldiers arrive to ask what the commotion means. Iruwen then invites anyone who agrees, or wants to learn more, to follow as Tiuri re-enters the town hall to demand his friend’s release.

Tiuri’s return is a public act of unusual exposure for him. Since accepting his mission, he has not appeared so openly before a crowd. His heart pounds, though he is not afraid; as he enters the great hall, he wonders whether Piak, held below, can hear the people and understand that they have come for him. Ardoc and Iruwen follow him, with many others behind them. The pressure gathering outside the council chamber is thus carried into the room, where the issue can no longer be handled solely by the mayor and his guards.

The hall is arranged to display official authority: about ten men sit at a large table on a platform before the stairs, with the mayor in the middle; scribes sit at a smaller table to one side, and armed men stand on the stairs and between the columns with spears and torches. As more townspeople enter, the man beside the mayor orders silence and calls for the hall to be closed, arguing that it is full. Someone answers that the meeting is public. The mayor then opens the session, after a trumpet sounds three times. The clash over whether the doors should close echoes Iruwen’s complaint about meetings being withheld from residents: even before Tiuri speaks, access to the proceedings is at issue.

Competing Accounts of Piak’s Imprisonment

The mayor attempts to define the dispute as misconduct by Tiuri. He claims that Tiuri had been invited as a guest, barricaded himself in an upstairs room, threatened him, and wounded a soldier. Tiuri answers that the mayor has omitted essential circumstances: the archers fired at him first, and he had shut himself in a room because of what happened there. He also demands an explanation for the arrest of Piak, who, he insists, had done nothing to justify imprisonment. The exchange makes the mayor’s account of hospitality contestable rather than authoritative; Tiuri asks the assembly to hear not only the accusation against himself but the reason for Piak’s confinement.

When a council member asks whether the mayor witnessed what Piak did, the mayor sits down and the mayor’s own scribe supplies the account. He says that Piak did nothing. The two visitors had arrived, and although a room was prepared, they said they could not stay long. The mayor pressed them to remain because he wanted news from the east. As they were leaving, Piak called back that he would take care of the mayor, then ran outside. The scribe’s testimony supports Tiuri’s central point: Piak’s attempt to leave, rather than an established offense, preceded his arrest.

The council then asks the mayor directly whether he has a charge against either young man. He answers no, at first so quietly that he can scarcely be heard, and calls the affair a regrettable misunderstanding. The distinction matters: the mayor has accused Tiuri publicly, but cannot state an accusation against Piak when formally asked. The crowd’s repeated demand for Piak’s release follows the testimony and the unanswered question of legal grounds, rather than merely Iruwen’s earlier appeal.

Release and Civic Consequence

Marmuc declares the meeting closed. When people protest that it has only just begun, he repeats the closure order and says that the boy will be released. Soldiers begin to enforce the dispersal, but the practical outcome is already settled: Piak is brought into the hall between two guards. He looks bewildered by the crowd until he sees Tiuri, whose face brightens. Tiuri reaches him through the people, takes his hands, and tells him he is free. When Piak asks what everyone is doing there, Tiuri begins to explain that they helped secure his release, but the crowd’s cheers drown out the rest.

The mayor and most of the councillors leave their places at the table and go up the stairs, in a movement that appears almost like flight. The people remain on the square, talking excitedly and ignoring the soldiers’ repeated calls for them to go home. Tiuri and Piak eventually slip away unnoticed. Piak’s freedom is secured, but the scene does not depict a formal hearing of every complaint against the mayor or a lasting reform of Dangria’s government. Its immediate achievement is narrower and concrete: public testimony exposes the absence of a charge, and collective attendance makes the release of a prisoner the price of ending the meeting. The episode gives practical force to the custom of open assembly that the mayor’s conduct had weakened.