At the eleventh hour of the morning, the Great Hall of the Town Judges’ Court was packed to the vaulted rafters. everyone could feel the smell of wet wool, damp lime mortar, and the faint, rotten-egg tang of the coal-gas lamps burning in the high chandeliers.
Behind the towering bench of carved black walnut sat Lord Chief Magistrate Theobald Alden. A jurist of seventy years whose reputation for incorruptible legal severity had made him feared by merchants and aristocrats alike.
On the prisoner’s dock, surrounded by six armed spear guards in full steel harnesses, stood Director Tovin Crane.
The managing factor was unrecognizable from the arrogant baron who had strutted through the boardroom the last night. His fine beaver-fur coat had been taken away. His silk cravat was missing. And his hands were bound before him in heavy forged-iron manacles that clicked sharply against the wooden rail whenever his trembling knees gave way.
Spread across the clerk’s table below the bench lay the incontrovertible physical wreckage of his conspiracy. The twenty-eight-pound valve wrench, the mangled cold-chisel, the graphite rubbing of Tag #TAG-021-B4, Renn Tal’s hair-width affidavits. The signed thick parchment order bearing Crane’s personal signet ring.
Hester Quill stood at the advocate’s podium, her voice ringing clear, hard, and merciless through the packed chamber:
