The bit below the cut is a scene I wrote about half of and then decided I didn’t need for the current work in progress. Figured I’d share it here:

The Stormcrow elder appointed to defend my uncle in his trial began his final appeal to those who sat in judgment. “Your Majesty, I admit that Inquisitor Jerome erred in his judgment at Wolf Island, but it was an unstable situation on the verge of passing beyond his control. The Stormcrow in charge of Wolf Island claimed that one of the werewolves had attacked her,” said the elder appointed to defend my uncle in his trial.
The werewolves she was supposed to be healing, and instead was simply experimenting on, I thought, but it was not my place to interrupt the defender at this point in his work.
“She killed him in retaliation, and herded the rest of the werewolves onto the island’s dock. They were angry and restless, on the verge of forming a mob. Jerome only did what he deemed necessary.”
What my uncle had “deemed necessary” was to force the werewolves off the dock and into the water…when almost none of them knew how to swim. It was a cruel and reckless decision on his part, and I had accepted the kingship of our people because it was the only way Uncle Jerome would allow me to overrule him. Chloe had been one of the werewolves about to die that day, although she’d been freed from the curse since then. Would I have intervened if her life had not been at stake? I think so. I hope so.
The trial was being held in the elders’ preferred council chamber, deep in the bowels of the airship known as the Rookery. with three rectangular tables set up a horseshoe shape, with the Elders gathered around the outer edge and myself in the middle of them, at the top of the horseshoe curve.
My uncle and the two elders chosen as prosecutor and defender stood in the middle, in the space bounded by the tables. Uncle Jerome stared resolutely over my head, while the prosecutor stood silently, eyes shifting around the room as if taking in every change of mood among those who would judge this case. The defender finished his speech with a reminder of my uncle’s long career of service to the Clan. For my part, I thought that made his crime worse. Uncle Jerome was a hundred and forty years old years old, and had reached the stage of life where Stormcrows could see the spirit world more clearly than the physical world. He should have kept a cooler head about him.
When the defender finished, an expectant silence filled the room. I realized that they were staring at me, waiting for me to speak. In a way it seemed absurd that these men, so much older than I, should defer to me. But it was the custom of our people.
“You will want to discuss your opinions of the case. Please, take as much time as you wish,” I told them.
The elders turned to each other and began to talk to each other in soft voices. I had no wish to influence their verdict, so I ignored their murmured words and thought of Chloe. She had agreed to meet with the Storm Crow midwives. Chloe had faced jaguars and cattle thieves in her home country of Silberne, and since coming to Noricum she had encountered every kind of algomancer still in existence. The midwives were unlikely to intimidate her, but they might irritate her, and Chloe did not deserve any more irritation, after her adventures of the past few months.