The accountability hearing was not held in the Great Hall.
It was held in the council chamber, a smaller and more intimate room off the hall's eastern corridor, circular, with council seats on a raised ring and a central floor where those giving testimony stood. The intimacy was deliberate. Hearings were not designed to be witnessed by galleries. They were designed to be thorough.
Twelve council members sat in the raised ring. Maerik presiding. Aldris to his left with the specific alert attention of someone who had been paying close attention for longer than the assembly had lasted. An independent adjudicator from an affiliated territory sat in the neutral observer's chair, present to ensure procedural integrity.
Alaric stood on the central floor.
He had been speaking for twenty minute
