The Grand Council Chamber of Lathmere was packed to the marble galleries. Just then, the seventh bell of morning struck. Thirty academy masters sat in their scarlet robes along the western tiered benches. Their faces were pale and rigid with defensive pride. On the eastern benches sat forty aldermen and guild masters of the city. Their fur cloaks pulled was tight against the mountain draft whistling through the unglazed Roman arches.
In the center of the hall, flanked by two armed town marshals, stood Master Davin Sorell. His ermine-trimmed mantle had been stripped from his shoulders, his sapphire-tipped staff was gone. His gray hair hung in greasy tangles across his forehead. Yet his chin remained tilted high, his eyes flashing with desperate, poisonous arrogance.
‘Citizens of the Senate!’ Sorell’s voice echoed off the gold-trimmed ceiling vaults. ‘You hold me in chains while the mountain snowpack prepares to wipe out this city! What happened yesterday was a never seen before sky surge. A ringing strange flaw in the elemental currents that no mechanic could anticipate! If you strip my command of the Hollow Crown, you doom three hundred thousand people to the flood!’
‘The ringing strange flaw has been analyzed, Master Sorell,’ Councilor Vesk said from the presidential chair, her voice cold, flat, and slicing like a diamond blade. ‘Candidate Rook, present the findings of the Courtesy Workshop.’
