The Great Hall of the King’s Bench was packed to the ceiling timbers with four hundred citizens of Crown-Reach. Common weavers in wool smocks, wagon drivers in leather aprons, watermen from the river wharves, and apprentice blacksmiths pressed three deep against the carved oak railings of the public gallery. Their breath rising in was pale plumes into the cold, vaulted stone chamber.
Before the raised scarlet dais, standing isolated in the iron criminal dock between two armed court guards, stood Horace Vane. The former Chief Engineer and Guildmaster of the High Engineers was unmasked and stripped of his splendor. Gone were the flowing dark purple velvet robes, the sable-trimmed scholar’s mantle, and the heavy gold signet chains of office. He wore only a coarse, raw, unwhitened wool prisoner’s smock. His uncombed silver hair fell across his hollow cheeks. His manicured hands shook against the iron rail as he stared down at the flat stone slabs.
Around the bar of the court sat twenty junior advocates and guild solicitors who had once served Vane’s corporate trade ring. Now, they sat in scared, defensive silence, carefully tucking their law books into leather satchels to distance themselves from their disgraced master. Sir Giles Thornbury had tried to lodge a preliminary objection based on ancient guild immunity. Then, Lord Maren had silenced him with a single stroke of his bone gavel and a warning that any advocate attempting to shield treason would be committed to the Tower.
