The crowd outside the check pavilion had swollen to nearly three thousand people. Marsh folk from thirty settlements—wagon drivers, peat-cutters, reed-weavers, and lightermen—stood shoulder to shoulder along the gravel raised stone road under the clear autumn sky. They listened through the open pavilion walls.
Lord Justice Lucian Vane rose from the bench, his crimson robes cascading over the timber table. In his right hand he held the parchment roll of the Sovereign Decree of the King’s Bench. He was stamped with the Great Seal of the realm in scarlet wax.
“In the matter of the Salt-Fen Holding and the Petition of the Unfinished Claims,” Justice Vane proclaimed, his powerful voice ringing across the levee with total court power. “This court finds that the quarantine instituted in the Weeping Delta in Year 15 has been kept by criminal fraud, made medical assays, and armed extortion. The lawful condition of contagion ceased a quarter of a century ago.”
The crowd held its breath, thousands of souls suspended on the edge of the judge’s words.
“It’s therefore ordered, adjudged, and decreed: First, that the Quarantine Charter of Year 15 is declared void ab initio—null, fraudulent, and of no legal effect from the hour of its inception. No subject of this realm shall henceforth be detained, tested, or taxed under its power.”
