Haudh-Gwenn town hall

The town hall holds the council’s chamber and its offices, and it stands in an open plaza in Haudh-Gwenn where several roads come together, built for public gatherings and for market dealings. The front of it is the public chamber, tiered seating rising away from the councilors’ bench in the courtroom style Loshev uses. Behind that are the private meeting rooms, the small offices and the stairwell. The windows are set high and framed in iron, and they are stained glass.

Two brothers hired by Beltran Grayeras to burn the city’s meeting places set it alight. They poured accelerant down the front face and rolled burning barrels against the back door, which was the way anyone inside would have come out. A ring of onlookers gathered in the plaza to watch it go, some cheering, some appalled, none of them doing anything.

It was saved. Koa drank the company’s firebelly potion, heaved the burning barricade off the back door in one go and kicked the door in, then carried out the old councilor Elren Amin, who had stayed inside on one knee propped on a drawn sword, and went back for three more. Mikhail shouted the gawkers into a bucket line and held the fire off the rest of the building. Nobody died in it. The hall came out gutted by smoke and sound in the bones.