The Grand Assembly Hall of the Artisan Guild had been transformed into a military court of high hearing.
High vaulted oak beams, blackened by a century of forge smoke, arched fifty feet above the cold granite floor. Banners of the master blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and leather-tanners hung along the walls. He was flanked by fifty heavily armed guild militia fighters whose loaded crossbows and iron-tipped pikes were trained directly on the center of the hall.
Seated behind a massive oak frame stand table at the head of the room sat the Federal High Inquest Commission:
High Magistrate Thaddeus Sterling, an elderly, stone-faced jurist from the Capital High Court whose gold-stitched robes bore the neutral scales of the Federation. Senior Marshal Corvinus Brand of the Vanguard Border Guard, a grizzled veteran whose chest was covered in campaign medals. And Valerie Koslov, seated in full combat uniform as the acting military commander of Sector 7.
In the center of the room, held by heavy iron chains that pinned his wrists and ankles to the flat stone slabs, stood Gregory Vance.
The Iron Guard was fully stripped of his gold-trimmed vanity. His silk cape was gone. His ornate cuirass had been replaced by a torn, mud-stained linen tunic. His gray hair was matted with swamp muck. His face was pale and sunken, his eyes darting wildly around the room like a cornered animal searching for an escape vent.
