On the morning of the eighty-third day, the final session of the Public Court Hearing opened with Bram Ash standing alone in the witness circle of the granite tiered arena.
The morning was cool and clear, a steady mountain draft scouring the dust from the arena floor and rustling the edges of the heavy canvas awning above the court dais. The sun had just cleared the eastern peaks of the Guard, casting long, sharp shadows across the twenty-four tiers of stone benches where five hundred citizens from the Tram and River wards sat in watchful, stony immobility.
Bram wore no court guard’s uniform. His dark blue wool tunic with its polished brass shoulder-knots, his boiled leather service jack-coat with its stamped town crest. His ivory-handled copper was heavy club. His silver enforcement badge had all been surrendered to the Free Wards Council three months ago on the morning the sky shield broke. The metal had been stripped, cataloged as evidence, and melted into boiler fittings in the Salt kilns.
He stood in a plain, coarse smock of raw, unwhitened mountain wool, dyed a humble slate-grey, its hem brushing the tops of his worn work-boots. His right arm was bound securely across his chest in a clean black linen sling, immobilizing the shoulder where a musket ball had shattered the humeral head during the state oil depot raid. His grey-streaked hair was cropped close against his temples, revealing the deep, weathered creases of a fifty-year-old man who had spent thirty years…
