The tribunal chamber smelled like old wood and newer ambition.
Duncan had been in enough rooms to know when a space had been designed to diminish the people standing in it. Low ceilings despite the building's height. Chairs arranged so the five-person panel looked down at the accused from a raised platform. Lighting that pooled around the judges and left the defendant standing half in shadow. Whoever had built this room had understood something fundamental: the architecture of judgment mattered as much as the judgment itself.
He stood with his hands at his sides, watching Caldwell sort through papers with the particular unhurried deliberateness of a man who had already decided.
