The arbitration chamber had one table, one chair, and a long bench.
It lay at the bottom of the lower stair below the shrine, behind a door that had been sealed so long its hinges shrieked when it opened. A small square room of grey alloy, very cold, lit by a single panel in the ceiling that had come on when the lock turned and flickered as if it had forgotten how. In the middle of the floor stood a table, alone. Behind it, a single seat: a high-backed chair of the same alloy, with arms. In front of it, against the wall, a long bench for witnesses.
The table had a plate set into it, like the keeper’s plate in the shrine. A reader slot along its edge. And beside the plate, a recess where a seal could be pressed.
One seat. One plate. One seal.
Mara stood in the doorway and looked at it. The cold came up through her boots. Her burned arm ached in the sling, a deep dull pain that the cold made worse.
Halvek was already in the chair.
He had come down from the Directorate an hour after Mara sent for him. She had sent for him because the exception needed a human who answered for it, and Halvek was the Director of Cinder, and his office was the authority Cant’s clauses recognized. She had sent for the guild too. And for the district councils’ representatives, the ones who had sat in the…
