The Granite Hall was frozen in a tableau of total, military total numbness.
Thirty Templars stood locked in their armor around the scaffold. Fifteen arbalesters stood motionless on the balconies, their fingers glued to their triggers by the Iron Promise. And Praetor Vane-Justinian lay groaning at the base of the guillotine, clutching his fractured ribs.
Ren Vale climbed out of the prisoner’s dock.
The ascent up the black limestone stairs to the court dais was the longest walk of Ren Vale’s nineteen years.
With every step, the Ink-Rot in his blood-flow system pulsed with violent, searing intensity. The dark purple lines along his forearms were no longer mere discoloration. They were raised, corded ridges that throbbed with the heat of boiling gall-nut acid. His fingers were stiff, his breath tasted of iron, but his spine was straight as a straight-line.
He passed the two associate judges on the bench.
Justiciar Kroll had collapsed across his leather ledger, his mouth open, drool pooling on his precedent notes as he stared at the frozen Templars in the well in catatonic shock. Justiciar Vane-Justinian was cowering against the draperies behind the throne. He grabbed his golden clerical torque with white, trembling knuckles, unable to meet Ren’s gaze.
