Lord Auditor Orin Vane did not wave his papers in the air. He did not raise his voice to fill the dome, nor did he point an accusing finger across the ring. He simply read from the first sheepskin leaf with the dry, unhurried cadence of a clerk verifying timber shipments at an autumn wharf.
“Item the first,” Vane said, turning his wrist so the pale light from the roof slits fell across his ink lines. “The weaponization of municipal botany. Date, late summer. Location, the south battery ditch along the old survey line. The hill-fort core, having no lawful commission under the Crown and no military charter from the dukes of Orren, caused to emerge along the embankment a dense entanglement of briar, field-iron spikes, and barbed vegetation. Denominated in the core’s own ledger under the label Flower-Spear Thorns.”
High in the dome above the benches, the amber script shifted. The lettered ring carved into the limestone ceiling hummed like a wet finger circling the rim of a glass goblet, and three words flared brighter than the rest: D-08 FLOWER-SPEAR THORNS.
Vane lowered the paper three inches. He looked toward the third tier of army benches, where twenty line soldiers from the Fourth Infantry sat in their mud-stained garrison trousers.
