The night bells of Crown-Reach had struck nine before Tomas Reed was called back to the center of the well to answer the respondent’s philosophical challenge. The Great Hall of the King’s Bench was quiet now, the gallery hushed as the working men and women leaned forward, their faces lit up by the smoky glow of fifty wall sconces.
Barrister Brandon Keld stood at the far end of the table, his arms crossed over his chest. Having lost his procedural defenses, he had shifted his attack to the deepest nature of the Last Claim class itself. ‘The respondent contends, My Lords, that the petitioner Tomas Reed is not an officer of the law, nor a licensed land-mapper, nor an engineer of royal appointment. He operates under an anomalous, unclassified mandate known as the Last Claim—a class that possesses neither high-born charter nor guild sanction. He claims to have performed miraculous feats of public works recovery that defied the expert estimates of royal master builders. We put it to this court that his operations rely upon unlicensed, dangerous arcana or fraudulent exaggerations of labor designed to subvert the established craft guilds of the metropolis.’
Tomas stood before the twelve Chief Justices. He wore no robes, no lace, and no gold-trimmed chains of office. He wore only the dark wool tunic, the scuffed cart driver boots, and the ash pack frame resting beside his feet. He raised his left arm, deliberately drawing back the coarse wool sleeve to reveal the stiff calfskin…
