The clear, metal ring of seventy iron-shod hooves striking stone echoed across the northern raised stone road an hour before midday. Through the thinning mist rode sixty Royal Circuit Lancers in blue-and-gold wool tabards. Their polished steel breastplates shone in the pale autumn sunlight. Their pennanted ash lances were held upright in stirrup boots.
In the center of the military escort rattled the great, black-lacquered travelling coach of the Supreme Court of the King’s Bench. The carriage was heavily built of seasoned upland ash, its door panels painted with the golden balance scales and royal sword of the High Court trial. The horses drew up before the dismantled timber platforms of Checkpoint Three. Then, a royal footman lowered the brass step.
Lord Justice Lucian Vane stepped down into the Weeping Delta mud. He was seventy years old, tall, lean, and straight-backed as a naval mast, wearing the heavy crimson wool robes of a Chief Justice of the Realm. His hawkish face was weathered by forty years of circuit assizes. His gray eyes were cold, piercing, and utterly devoid of fear or sentiment. He had hanged three corrupt dukes for tax evasion and broken four merchant monopolies on grain transit.
Justice Vane didn’t look at the mud that splattered the hem of his scarlet robes. He walked straight toward the long oak frame stand table where Tomas Reed, Hester Quill. Elder Maren stood waiting.
