The throne room of the Northern Palace had become a pressure chamber of refined anxiety.
For days, the silence from the provinces had been a physical weight, a suffocating fog that even the high vaulted ceilings couldn't disperse.
The tribunal members, usually pillars of legalistic stoicism, paced the perimeter of the dais. Nobles huddled in small, whispering cliques, their eyes darting to the heavy oak doors every time a gust of wind rattled the latch.
The atmosphere was unbearable when the doors finally groaned open.
A messenger stumbled in, his tabard stained with the salt of a hard ride, his breath coming in ragged, white plumes. He didn't wait to be announced. He collapsed into a deep, desperate bow before the throne. "Your Majesty," he wheezed, "the provincial responses. They have arrived. All at once."
