By order of Senior Justice Vance’s royal mandate, the private guards were forced to draw back the heavy gold-trimmed gates. The huge double doors of the mansion were unlocked, admitting the court party and as many commoners as the cavernous hall could hold.
The Great Ballroom was a cathedral of royal vanity. Its walls were paneled in three-tier Venetian mirrors framed in gold leaf. Twenty crystal chandeliers hung from a ceiling painted with mythological heroes. And the floor was paved with imported pink and white marble tiles polished to a mirror finish.
Into this palace of reflections marched the working class of the March.
Their iron-shod boots, caked with the greasy red clay of the frontier turnpike, left broad, gritty tracks across the gleaming marble. They didn’t look at the crystal or the gold leaf. They moved with the slow, crushing dignity of men entering a church to reclaim their dead.
Tomas Reed, Sile Rook, and four veteran wagon drivers carried the first three-hundred-pound lead plate through the tall French doors. With a low, timed together grunt of effort, they deposited the grey metal slab directly onto the purple velvet carpet of the court dais.
Thuuud.
The marble flags groaned beneath the dead weight. Three times the team made the journey, until all three plates—nine hundred pounds of cold, rolled naval lead—lay resting before the three high seats of the Court trial judges.
