The hearing convened on a Tuesday morning in the duchy's formal council chamber, a room I had been in before under very different circumstances.
The last time I had stood in this room, I had been wearing a rough wool tunic and bowing my head to the Dowager while the assembled council enjoyed what they believed was my defeat. The room looked the same. The long polished table, the high windows, the torches in their wall brackets, the particular smell of old wood and institutional authority that accumulated in spaces where power had been exercised regularly for a long time.
The people in the room were different. This was not the Dowager's council of household staff and loyal allies. This was the duchy's formal administrative council, composed of the duchy's senior legal officers, three independent assessors appointed by the royal administrative office, and a recording secretary whose presence meant that everything said in this room would become permanent record.
