The Petty Court of the King’s Bench didn’t boast marble columns or gold-leaf ceilings.
It was housed in a low, barrel-vaulted stone undercroft beneath the northern bridge pillar of the Great Hall of Justice, a chamber built during the First Dynasty where the damp smell of underground limestone mingled with the sour tang of wet woolen gowns and cheap lamp oil. Water constantly seeped from the stone roof, dripping into wooden buckets placed strategically between the benches, each drop producing a hollow, rhythmic plink that punctuated the legal proceedings like a water clock.
Junior Magistrate Orlo sat behind a raised bench of scarred, ink-stained walnut, his powdered wig slightly crooked, his black robes patched at the right elbow with a square of velvet. He was fifty-two years old, with sharp, tired dark eyes and a face that looked like an unpolished flint celt. Unlike the high aldermen and hereditary chancellors who ruled the Great Hall above, Orlo had spent twenty years in the lower criminal and debt courts. He listened to petty larcenies, cart-crash disputes, and unbonded pawnshop fraud.
Before him stood Bailiff Garrow, his plum broadcloth mantle dry and brushed. His ivory-headed cane was tucked beneath his arm. Beside Garrow stood Advocate Thorne, a senior barrister of the Silk Chambers, whose gray silk gown and stiff lace cravat seemed absurdly expensive in the damp, dripping undercroft.
