The hush that fell over the Great Round hall was thick, cold, and brittle as winter glass.
On the central dais, Grand Censor Malachai folded his hands into the wide sleeves of his black damask cassock. His reading glasses caught the blue-violet glare of the fire bowl. That turned his eyes into two blank discs of silver. Above them, in the tiered cedar galleries, five hundred scholars leaned forward over their writing desks. Their breath was held in collective suspense.
Ren Vale stood alone at the foot of the dais.
The boy didn’t kneel. He didn’t bow his head before the gold-silver metal Seal of Perpetual Accord. His ink-stained lambskin apron hung heavy against his woolen tunic, the hem stiff with dried burning acid and underground grime. In his right hand, the four-inch ivory bone awl rested loosely between his thumb and index finger, its dull silver metal ring pointed toward the red stone floor.
“Well, petitioner?” Malachai’s voice rolled across the hall. It carried the dry, pedagogical power of a judge who had dissected ten thousand legal briefs. “You have invoked Chapter Four, Clause Nine. You stand in the presence of the Solstice Full vote. Name your enemy. Inscribe your charge into the ear of the court. Or does the apprentice copyist possess no words to match his impudence?”
