The Great Council Chamber of Haven-Hold was filled with the smell of fresh printer’s ink, calf-skin leather, and beeswax.
Giles Croft stood before an oak reading desk upon which rested a huge leather-bound volume sixteen inches thick.
The cover was bound in heavy oil-tanned steer hide. It was stamped with the bronze seal of the Unified Town Power.
Embossed in deep gold leaf across the spine were eight words:
THE UNIFIED Land-wide Public works AND Town CODE (REVISED).
Gathered in the gallery were four hundred delegates. Guild masters, town mayors, liberated village elders, and reformed feudal court guards from sixteen newly annexed provinces.
They looked at the massive book with wide, trembling eyes.
To the local lords, the law had always been the whim of the local duke, announcedfrom horseback and enforced with the hangman’s noose.
