But I could make sure that when the reckoning came, they were standing on the right side of it, protected, believed, and rewarded rather than ruined.

A case is a machine for producing a verdict.

But a case is also a set of choices about who you protect while you build it, and those choices are the part that tells you what kind of person is holding the wrench.

I wanted mine to protect the people who had been brave when it cost them something.

Everything else was just arithmetic.

By the time the night of the ceremony arrived, the board already knew everything.

The evening was not a coronation.

It had never been a coronation.

It was the final test before the board decided whether to confirm him — and Rupert had just failed it, publicly, with his hands.

Chapter 10 — Conditional Appointment