The dawn that broke over Crown-Reach was pale, clear, and cold as river ice. Thin shafts of silvery winter sunlight streamed through the tall arched windows of the former High court, lighting up a scene that would have been unimaginable to the dynastic ministers who had ruled this palace for two hundred years. The gold-trimmed velvet thrones, the ornate marble side-tables. The armed guard barriers had been permanently removed. In their place stood eighty sturdy oak writing desks arranged in four disciplined rows, equipped with clean chalkboards, iron filing cabinets, and brass balance scales.
For eighty years, this hall had been the private clearinghouse of the Grand Royal Trade ring and the royal courtiers. Petitioners from rural parishes had been forced to wait for weeks in unheated outer halls, paying extortionate audience fees to liveried ushers simply to file a water-rights grievance that would be tossed unread into a coal fire bowl. Merchant lords had bought and sold exclusive canal concessions over spiced wine, while ministerial chancellors doctored budget deficits behind carved walnut screens. Today, the entire palace had been stripped of high-born ornamentation and converted into the central open registry of the Commonwealth.
At each desk sat a young man or woman—former weavers’ apprentices, wagon drivers’ sons, miners’ daughters, and country scholars—dressed in plain, durable woolen smocks. There was no whispering, no political maneuvering, and no fawning courtiers waiting for ministerial favors. The only sounds in the vast hall were the crisp rustle of thick parchment transport manifests, the…
