From his high seat behind the clerk’s podium, Prit watched the dust motes drift through the cold light beams of the dome.
The podium was an ancient oak desk, black with age and oil, scarred with three centuries of ink spills and scribe marks. Before him lay six fresh tablets of grey shale, scored into the strict three-column audit grid he had devised on the pass-lane boards: Known, Inferred, and Feared. In his right hand, Prit held a fresh stick of soft grey chalk, its tip trimmed with his pocket knife to a clean chisel point. In his left hand, resting beside the ink horn, lay the brass gavel bell that would open the sworn testimony.
Below him on the swept sand of the arena floor, the two men stood separated by three paces of open space and the waist-high iron rail.
Noll Vey leaned his heavy limestone forearms upon the hammered iron bar. His stone face was tilted slightly upward, his carved jaw catching the slate-colored daylight from the dome. The blue sparks inside his hollow eye sockets burned low and steady, fixing Lord Auditor Orin Vane with an unblinking, patient gaze.
Vane remained seated in the carved walnut armchair, his sheepskin folio open across his dark wool knees, his iron stylus poised an inch above the clean parchment.
