He looked at her then, truly looked, and the hall watched the Duke of Ravenshade take the full measure of his own executioner and find a footnote.
The first sound out of him was a cough. One dry spasm of disbelief, knocked loose rather than spoken, then another, and then Tharion Ravenshade threw back his head and laughed in the great hall of Vraven.
It rolled out of him in waves, enormous, unpracticed, doubling him over his own knees, the composure of a courtroom lifetime coming apart in front of six hundred witnesses.
"A BARONY!" He surfaced strangled, swiped at his eyes with one ringed hand, and went down again. "One dissolved border barony... a rounding error in a county ledger... THAT is what you are?"
His arm swept the wrecked case, the sealed floor, the throne, all of it.
"The audit! The trial! My house, my blood, my seat! All of it... All of it... over THAT?"
