The third bell of the High Court tolled with the solemn, bronze weight of a headsman clearing his throat.
Above the undercroft, five hundred spectators had packed into the tiered galleries of the Granite Hall of Verdicts. They were the cream of Val-Khorat society. Licensed notaries in stiffly starched linen ruffs, High Synod prelates draped in cloth-of-gold, and wealthy merchant factors wearing velvet mantles trimmed with ermine. They had come to watch the state crush a teenage keeper who had dared to tamper with the foundation of private property.
Before the trapdoor had been unbolted, the Void-court wardens had subjected Ren to a humiliating physical search in the holding pen.
They had stripped his wool coat, checked his teeth with a brass spatula, and run a silver deep ring rod along his collarbones to verify that he possessed no internal mana channels. The head warden had spat upon the flat stone slabs when the silver rod remained fully dark. Through Ren’s glamour-blind eyes, the warden’s grand black robes were cheap rough-spun wool stained with bacon grease and stale ale. The silver rod was crude pot-brass washed with a thin coat of tin that was already flaking near the handle.
“Dry,” the warden had grunted to the court guards. “Not a spark of spirit in his marrow. The boy is a common mortal clerk.”
