By noon, the public square of Dry-Wells had become a vast, open-air courtroom. A heavy oak bench had been brought out from the courthouse and placed upon the limestone roofed porch, shaded by the green silk canopy of the royal trial. On the deal wood rested the Golden Mace, the Book of Statutes, and the Great Lion Seal.
More than eight hundred refugees and townspeople stood packed shoulder-to-shoulder behind the timber barricades. They watched the proceedings in deep, disciplined silence. In the front row stood thirty veteran wagon drivers in clean cart driver’s aprons, their arms folded, their weathered faces upturned toward the judge.
Tomas Reed stood at the petitioner’s bar, his master folio open before him. Step by step, with the calm, careful care of a dockmaster tallying cargo off a barge, he laid out the physical chain of evidence.
“Item One,” Tomas announced, holding up the framed thick parchment rubbing. “The approved impression of Caleb Thorne’s copper datum plate from Milestone Fourteen, recovered in situ at Coordinate West-North eighteen, on the high Green River bluff at height four hundred and twelve feet. The copper benchmark is intact, bearing the original royal cipher and the date of King Alden the Second.”
