The first public session began on day1661 in a room that had once stored empty water vessels.
People carried the vessels out, swept the floor, and set benches where the sound reached the back wall. The inquiry panel sat at an ordinary table. Venn sat beside his adviser under ward custody, his right forearm uncovered enough to remain visible.
He was alive.
The split knuckle had closed. His shoulder still moved stiffly. His graft remained healthy. No one had removed a pattern from him to make the room feel safer.
Iven sat among the witnesses, not at the panel’s table.
That arrangement mattered to him.
He had won the field. He did not intend to become the person who decided every life afterward.
The opening questions were narrow.
