The oak bar separating the well of the King’s Bench from the public gallery groaned beneath the weight of four hundred spectators who had stood in the rain since dawn. Outside the tall lancet windows, the autumn drizzle had turned the slate roofs of Crown-Reach into sheets of dark slate-gray. It sent streams of coal-tinted water gurgling through the lead gargoyles into the courtyards below. Inside the Great Hall, the air was dense with the smell of wet wool cloaks, melting sheep fat from the wall sconces. The cold, chalky dust of limestone pillars that had stood for three hundred years.
Tomas Reed stood at the center of the green baize evidence table with both feet planted firmly on the cold flags. He wore his working wool tunic, clean but frayed at the hem. The dark canvas coat he had carried across five provinces. Beneath his left sleeve, the stiff calfskin brace held his wrist locked in place, the iron buckle cinched tight against the third eyelet. The river damp always seeped into the deep furrow of his scarred left forearm. There, the rusted blade from the Bellwether water gate ambush had cut the tendon sheath years ago. The wound had healed into a thick, puckered cord of white gristle that never fully loosened. Without the brace, his left fingers tended to curl into a reflex claw, robbed of thirty-five percent of their natural grip strength. Every ten minutes, he quietly worked the fingers through their measured cycles. He pressed…
