Chapter 74 - Chapter 74: The High Court Summons

The architecture of imperial justice did not accommodate the messy, blood-stained realities of the frontier. The Grand Hall of the High Arbiters at the Central Nexus was a cavernous amphitheater of polished white marble and cold, geometric brass rings that rose five stories above the echoing floor. The air inside was climate-controlled, stripped of the winter frost, smelling faintly of expensive cedar oil, beeswax, and the dry, stale scent of century-old legal filings. Here, the screaming wind of the high pass and the grinding ice of the southern harbor were reduced to neat columns of data points on the clerks' slates.