Chapter 30: The Hearing

The court sat on the fourth of December, three nights after the nursery line began stepping down at midnight on the first. The nursery lived through them on body heat, packed close by the slot where the hatch room's warm air breathed in, and on an hour a night of Ilan's own warmth through the wall. Rook's brazier burned at the gate every night, and nobody walked to it. Ilan had not laid the road in those nights, because an unwitnessed course was a Claimant's word, and he needed it laid before the bench with Sera's figures going into the record. The council voted on the rail at the head of the outer hall, hands up one by one, and the old one laid a river stone on the wood for its hand. Eleven, Ilan counted, and the doors opened for the court and nobody else. "Bailiffs search every bag,"…