The Great Throne Room of the Royal Citadel was a cave of white red stone marble and vaulted gold-trimmed cedar, eighty feet high and two hundred feet long. Down the center of the hall stretched a carpet of crimson velvet. It was flanked by sixty Royal Halberdiers in fluted silver plate. Their weapons were held at present-arms.
On the raised dais of black dark rock sat King Roderick the Fourth, a weary, hawk-faced monarch of sixty-eight winters whose heavy ermine mantle couldn’t hide the frail curve of his shoulders. Flanking the throne sat the Lord High judge, the Grand Admiral, and the Twelve Dukes of the Realm.
On the right stood Guildmaster Horace Vane. His purple velvet robes shone, supported by thirty master builders and solicitors clutching bound volumes of royal charters.
On the left stood Tomas Reed, Nessa Vale, Sile Rook, and Hester Quill. They didn’t wear silk or velvet. Tomas wore his worn charcoal wool tunic, his braced left arm strapped across his chest in a coarse linen sling, his cowhide boots stained with the dried gray volcanic cement of the crypts.
“Master Arbiter Reed,” King Roderick spoke, his voice thin, dry, and strained with royal tiredness. “The Supreme Court has granted you extraordinary emergency power over the Sky-Spire. Guildmaster Vane claims you have made a crisis to extort gold from the royal treasury and defame the stone-built glory of my grandfather’s reign. Show the Crown your truth.”
