60

You launch into a measured speech explaining that, in light of Her Ladyship's recent claim of the fruit grove, your friends' actions are a misunderstanding and not evidence of irredeemably corrupt intent. Time in the stocks is a more measured corrective that will make the status of the new grove clear to all the community but without engendering unwarranted grief and resentment among her community of subjects.

"You see no alternative than to work within the strictures of power," she says with a nod.

You look from face to face. "Unless this hypothetical world is more different from ours than I realize, then no."

"At least you reason well," she says with a shrug.

Onward