Martha hauled Alice toward the sounds that radiated from the courthouse with her newly procured knife slung about her waist. Brentwood itself seemed to be convulsing, and they were trapped deep in its shuddering core.

  “Rear lane, courthouse side door,” Martha reminded herself, the plan snapping back into focus, the words now sharp and urgent in her mind. “Side door.”

  Alice just whimpered, a sound that sandpapered Martha’s already raw nerves. They weren't alone in their frantic scramble. Others pushed past, mostly moving against the tide, faces contorted by raw terror or a disturbingly bright, feverish excitement. A man, a crimson-soaked rag plastered to his head, slammed into Martha, the impact jarring her bones. No apology, just a spat curse before he stumbled on. Martha watched him go, a grim weariness settling over her. Let them run. It cleared the path for those with purpose..

  “Move, Alice!” she snapped, her voice edged with desperation. She hauled on the girl’s arm, a surge of pure frustration burning through her. But Alice was slowing, her steps faltering, her whole body trembling violently. Her skin, normally pale, had gone the color of curdled milk. Her eyes were wide, blank, staring through the world at some inner horror.

  They reached the alley’s mouth, needing to cross a small, exposed square to reach the courthouse. But the square was a churning vortex of bodies. Martha hesitated, a cold flicker of doubt piercing her resolve.

  Then, a voice, amplified by the close-packed buildings, ripped through the din, arrogant and booming. Belknap. That pompous, self-satisfied peacock, his pronouncements echoing even in the chaos. Martha couldn’t see him in the chaos, but his voice, thick with authority and disdain, sliced through the air.

  “...Hear ye! Hear ye! In the King’s name justice will be done! Taxes are the King’s due…” Belknap’s voice paused, then resumed, laced with menace, “…These rebels defy God and Crown they will face the King’s unwavering punishment!”

  The words shattered, fragments of pompous pronouncements lost and found in the rising swell of the crowd’s anger. Each phrase, even broken, was a lash, reminding them of the power arrayed against them. A growl started, a deep, collective snarl of outrage. Then, a rougher voice, closer, spat back a venomous reply, drowning out Belknap’s pronouncements.

  But Alice was collapsing. Shudders wracked her, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Belknap's words, amplified and threatening, seemed to have pushed her over the edge. She was going to scream, or faint, or shatter completely.

  Martha made a brutal, instantaneous decision. Dragging a paralyzed girl through this inferno, not while Belknap was still broadcasting his threats, was impossible.

  She shoved Alice, none too gently, towards a small alcove beside a boarded-up shop, a shadowed hollow in the storm. “Sit,” she ordered, her voice leaving no room for argument. “Sit here. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. I’m coming back. Understand?”

  Alice just stared, eyes vacant, uncomprehending. No nod, no word. Just that empty, terrified gaze, now glazed with a fresh layer of fear at Belknap’s pronouncements.

  A pang of guilt struck Martha, a sharp, fleeting stab of uncertainty. But there was no time for that. No other choice.

  “Stay,” she repeated, a harsh whisper, then turned and plunged into the chaos, pushing towards the shadowy bulk of the courthouse, leaving Belknap’s voice behind, a fading threat swallowed by the rising roar of defiance.

  Martha turned her back on Alice's blank stare and plunged into the churning square. The crowd was no longer just a crowd; it was a wave about to break. Bodies surged around her, no longer just jostling but pushing with intent, a forward momentum that felt almost violent. The air was thick with the stench of sweat and fear, but now also something sharper, acrid – the smell of roused anger. She kept her head down, pushing forward with a grim focus, ignoring the elbows and shoulders that slammed into her ribs, the shouts and curses that echoed around her. Her only thought was the courthouse, the side door, the records.

  She caught glimpses of a different kind of movement in the crowd – not just people rushing by, but clusters forming, surging, coalescing into something more threatening.

  Belknap’s voice, moments ago booming and arrogant, now sounded strained, almost panicked, amplified still but battling against a rising tide of noise. His words, instead of cowing the crowd, seemed to have ignited it. Fragments of his pronouncements still reached her, warped by the surrounding chaos. “…King’s authority… you defy… the King’s…” but the rest was lost in the growing cacophony.

  She fought her way further into the square, her heart hammering against her ribs. Then it erupted.

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  It wasn’t a single sound, but a sudden, terrifying shift in the whole atmosphere. A collective roar ripped through the marketplace, louder, more primal than anything before. It was a sound of unleashed fury, of restraints breaking. Shouts turned into screams, not of fear now, but of rage. The sharp cracks she’d heard resolved into something sickeningly familiar – the impact of wood on bone, the clang of metal on metal, the unmistakable sound of furniture and stalls being smashed apart.

  The crowd around her surged forward, no longer aimless but directed, a river bursting its banks. Martha was caught in the current, swept along, stumbling, her feet barely touching the ground. She was pushed towards the very center of the square, towards the direction Belknap’s voice had been booming from moments before.

  Through the crush of bodies, she glimpsed it – the source of the eruption. A knot of men, surrounding a cluster of figures in finer clothes – Belknap and his retinue. The crowd was a maelstrom of flailing arms and angry faces, pressing in, engulfing them. She saw a flash of expensive cloth tear, the glint of metal as someone – a townsman, not a soldier – wrenched a sword from a startled guard. Belknap’s voice, now a desperate shout, was almost completely drowned out by the mob’s roar.

  The square was a whirlwind of violence.People were running, but not all away. Many were running towards the center, drawn by the violence, adding to the chaotic mass. The very air seemed to vibrate with the raw energy of the unleashed riot.

  Despite the terrifying chaos, Martha clung to her purpose. She had to get to the courthouse. Using the momentum of the surging crowd, she fought to angle herself away from the center, pushing against the tide, moving inch by painful inch towards the shadowed side of the courthouse. The violence was breaking out all around her, engulfing Belknap and his men in the heart of the square, but Martha had her own purpose.

  She finally broke free from the densest part of the mob and stumbled towards the relative quiet of the courthouse wall. The side door loomed, plain oak thick and dark with rust-eaten iron hinges.

  She ran her fingers across the oak, down its grain, and then her fingers snagged on something unexpected at the frame’s edge: iron. Not just the hinges, but brackets. Two of them, set deep into the cold stone on either side of the door.

  What were those for? Her mind began to race even as a tightening knot of panic clenched at her stomach. They were positioned too low to be hinge supports.

  Guides? She tracked the line of the door once more, from one bracket to the opposite, her mind’s eye sketching in the missing piece, imagining something connecting them horizontally, a solid bar at chest height spanning the wood.

  A bar. Of course. An internal bar, sliding into those brackets, securing the door from within. That suddenly explained why the visible latch felt so deceptively…superficial.

  Damn it, a system, not just a latch. Understanding the hidden bar sharpened her fear, yet also focused her. Beneath panic, a cold calculation stirred: bypass the bar. The outer latch, she now saw, must control the unseen mechanism. Rattling it proved useless, and as she shook it, seconds bled away.

  Think, Martha, think.

  Drawing her knife, the thin blade, suddenly appearing almost comically delicate in her hand, seemed laughably inadequate against the mass of oak and iron before her. Her eyes swept the shadowed ground at her feet, the rough cobblestones of the alleyway. Scattered like discarded bones. Yes, there. She snatched up a loose cobblestone.

  Hammer, then wedge, the plan forming quickly in her mind. Knife for the crack, stone to drive it home. With renewed purpose, she jammed the knife point into the hairline seam just above the unyielding latch, the cobblestone now clutched tightly in her fist, ready to hammer.

  She positioned the cobblestone against the knife handle and struck it sharply against the frame. The impact jarred her arm, sending vibrations up to her shoulder. Again. She hammered again, and again, the sharp cracks of stone on iron echoing in the alley, momentarily cutting through the distant roar of the riot. But the blade held firm, and the oak remained unyielding.

  Damn it. The stone hammering might widen the crack eventually, but she didn't have time.

  Cursing again, she changed her approach, shifting to a wedge, now targeting beneath the latch itself. Positioning the blade point upwards under the iron, she hammered the handle against the frame, to drive the knife tip under the latch, levering upwards to shift that internal bar.

  Her arm burned, and her muscles screamed in protest as the thin blade vibrated violently, threatening to snap.

  With a final desperate effort, pushing with her legs and shoulder, she delivered a last, weighted blow, slamming the knife handle against the stone beneath the latch. Muscles screamed in protest, her breath sawing in and out. Then, something shifted within the door with a low groan and a shudder ran through the heavy planks. Movement inside.

  Hope flared, fierce and sudden, a white-hot spark in the darkness of her fear. Pushing harder, knife wedged and levering upwards, wood creaked around the latch, and the iron scraped, grating against something unseen as the latch shifted, resisting then yielding further. Finally, with a wrenching heave on the knife handle, a clear, satisfying thunk echoed from inside the door, the sound of a heavy bar disengaging. The latch loosened.

  Freed now on one side, the door swung inward just a crack, a dark sliver of opening in the heavy wood – scant room, yet enough. Shoulder down, Martha rammed it wider, ignoring the screeching hinges and the raw scrape of wood on stone, squeezing through the gap and stumbling into the sudden dimness beyond, knife still tight in her hand; inside at last.