After seven days of unbroken testimony—incorporating eighty-four sworn witnesses, two hundred and ten forged office dockets. The physical, careful check of sixty-four cut claimant cabinets. The Regional Appellate Trial reconvened on the eighty-second morning of the restoration calendar to deliver its final findings and sentences.
The granite tiered arena was more densely packed than it had been on the opening morning.
Quarry workers sat three-deep on the narrow stonework ledges above the upper tiers, their heavy work-boots dangling forty feet above the stone benches, their broad shoulders blocking the wind that whistled through the high granite crenellations. Hundreds more who couldn’t squeeze through the bronze gates stood packed along the outer terraces of the Star tower ridge. He listened to the proceedings through a timed together relay of three brass speaking trumpets manned by Tavi Rusk and his apprentice runners. The boy’s voice drifted down from the upper low roof walls every few minutes, clear and steady, repeating key announcements for the crowd gathered on the outer switchbacks.
The sky above was a vast, cold expanse of pale mountain turquoise, swept clean of clouds by a sharp northerly draft that made the linen canopy over the court bench snap like sailcloth. The sunlight fell across the stone tiers with unsparing clarity, lighting up every scar on the miners’ faces, every patched sleeve in the weavers’ ranks. Every drop of sweat on the foreheads of the clerks who had spent seven days transcribing the testimony.
