The Great Office Hall of High-Arch was transformed from a castle wall of office privilege into a solemn court of sovereign justice.
The crimson velvet drapes had been drawn back. That let the cold, violet twilight of the mountain peaks flood the vast chamber. The carved dark wood desk of Director Moros had been pushed against the wall to serve as a clerk’s bench, replaced in the center of the hall by three long deal tables scrubbed clean with river sand and lye. Around the outer edge of the room stood sixty delegates representing every parish, village council, sheephold, and quarry in the High Karst. Their woolen coats smelled of fresh peat smoke, mountain rain, and cedar chips.
At the head of the center table sat Circuit Justice Carolyn of the High Royal Bench. It was flanked by the High Guard of the Province and two sworn court recorders in black wool gowns.
Justice Carolyn was a woman of sixty with steely gray hair bound in an austere linen coif, her sharp, hawk-like eyes missing nothing. Before her lay the six folios of Orson Vance’s signed confession, the metalworking assays of Master Mason Orrin, the three hard dark metal splitting wedges. The audited payback receipts of the forty-two thousand crowns disbursed in Split-Stone.
