At two bells of the morning watch, under the cold, gray dawn breaking through the high window row lancets of Crown-Reach, Senior Chief Justice Aldous Vance rose to pronounce the final judgment of the Supreme Court of the King’s Bench. Flanked by all eleven associate justices, Vance stood beneath the carved royal canopy. His scarlet robe swept the flat stone slabs, his reading glasses held firmly in his right hand. The twelve Chief Justices had deliberated for three hours in the underground robing vault, emerging with their ritual black hoods pulled forward over their wigs. The ancient sign that a judgment of total civic condemnation was about to be delivered.
Before the bench, High Chancellor Lucian Vane stood between two Crown Marshals with drawn shortswords. The minister’s fine velvet coat was ruined, his lace cravat torn away. His high-born hands were locked in heavy iron darbies that clicked against the dock railing whenever he breathed. Across the well of the court, Tomas Reed, Hester Quill, and Scribe Nessa Vale stood beside the forty-eight chests of black Morocco ledgers and seized bullion, their faces calm with the tiredness of five years of unbending struggle.
“In the name of the Sovereign King and under the deepest common law of this realm,” Chief Justice Vance began, his deep, ringing voice echoing off the stone vaulting with cathedral solemnity, “this court has heard the evidence on forty-two counts of high treason, grand embezzlement, spoliation of public records, and aggravated breach of trust against Lucian…
