The light that bloomed in the high dome was not the warm amber of a hearth fire or the clear yellow of tallow lamps. It was the cold, unsparing blue-white radiance of the Hall of Witness when its ancient evidentiary wards lock upon a contested truth.
High above the tiered risers, where the six narrow light slits met the curved limestone ribs of the roof, the vault split into two glowing architectural projections forty feet across.
On the north curve of the dome, drawn in luminous lines of copper light, floated Ossa Flint’s original schematic: the master drawing signed in Morren three years ago, with its raw ink lines, its soot smudges, and the thick, unreviewed bypass siphon branching off the main collar bus directly into the Lord Auditor’s key chassis.
On the south curve of the dome, drawn in cold lavender light, floated the portable register’s live revision: the neat, mechanical lettering, the fabricated oversight clause, and the fictitious Crown Council inspection stamp that had tried to crawl onto the sheepskin thirty seconds ago.
Two versions of the realm’s law hung side by side above the heads of two hundred men and women.
The soldiers in the southern tiers stared upward, their forage caps in their hands, their breath frosting in the cold mountain draft. On the front army bench, Major Brek reached out with a trembling finger, tracing the glowing siphon line in the air. For two years, his company had escorted wagon-loads of silent, collared laborers into…
