Relvan Sorn looked smaller without his warehouse around him.
Iven noticed it when the merchant entered the hearing room. Not frightened, not humbled, merely a man whose expensive coat no longer stood among things he owned. The chair was the court’s. The table was the court’s. The guard beside the door would not move because he preferred another arrangement.
Sorn sat behind his representative and put both hands on the table.
Day four hundred and thirty had brought the immediate seizure application before the local bench. The full assault case would take longer. Today the question was whether the road could keep working without being bought at the point of another weapon.
Brell had given his statement under his own name.
The signed instruction lay in an evidence sleeve before the chair.
Iven sat with the site keeper, Kesh and the operator whose father had made the little wooden square. Mara had given her account that morning, then gone back to a paid firing lesson she had no intention of canceling for the pleasure of watching a rich man answer questions.
Jora stood at the side with the custody return.
