The Grand High court of Escrows didn’t belong to the city of mud and apartments. It belonged to an empire of dry stone and cold arithmetic.
It sat on the highest natural terrace of Crown-Reach, directly below the royal palace, its classical facade built from blocks of pale Portland limestone so dense and finely fitted that a land-mapper’s feeler gauge couldn’t find a joint. Twelve fluted giant pillars sixty feet high supported a pediment carved with allegorical figures representing Sovereign Prudence, Perpetual Order, and the Sacred Weight of the Coin.
Tomas and Hester Quill climbed the forty-eight marble steps leading to the Great Portal. The stone here was dry, swept clean of soot by a small army of liveried broom-boys who worked continuously from dawn until dusk to ensure that the dirt of the lower city never crossed the threshold of the King’s Bench.
Inside, the Great Hall of Rolls stretched for eighty paces beneath a vaulted ceiling decorated with faded gold-leaf stars. The floor was an expanse of black and white marble tiles polished to such a high, glassy finish that the reflections of the massive brass chandeliers seemed to float in a deep-sea lake beneath their feet.
Along the north wall ran the Marble Barrier. A four-foot-high stone railing of solid green red stone that separated the public from the scribes. Behind the barrier, eighty matching desks of dark Cuban dark wood were arranged in four parallel rows. At each desk sat a hereditary clerk dressed in a…
