The silence that followed Malvane’s collapse lasted for five heartbeats.
Then, from the shattered western entrance of the courthouse, the bronze drop-gates tore fully free from their stonework mountings.
With an ear-splitting roar of triumph, the five thousand citizens of Low-Khorat—tanners in leather aprons, river bargemen with iron gaff-hooks, scribes with inkwells pinned to their belts, and mothers wearing black mourning shawls—surged through the entry hall into the Granite Hall of Verdicts.
The sixty Iron Templars didn’t raise their axe-spears.
Their oath-lock under the Iron Promise had released the moment Malvane was declared an outlaw. They stood motionless, their axe-spears resting against their boots. They watched with grim soldier’s resignation as the tide of common people poured into the court well.
The crowd didn’t riot. They didn’t burn the benches or smash the railings.
They walked into the hall with the quiet, terrifying solemnity of a people entering a cathedral that had been cleansed of demons. They surrounded the raised dais. They looked at the broken Obsidian Gavel, at the weeping Chief Justiciar lying in his own rot, and at the unrolled thick parchment of the First Charter of Khorat resting beneath the Lead Scales.
In the jury box, Commodore Marcus Vance-Hale picked up his naval cane.
