The International Criminal Court was a cathedral of silence.
Every sound… The scrape of a chair, the shuffle of papers…. seemed to echo through the glass walls and high steel ribs. Hermes had never been in a courtroom before, but something about it felt heavier than any battlefield.
A row of judges sat behind the curved bench. Their faces were composed, weary, bureaucratic. No capes, no insignias. Just humans in robes, burdened with impossible questions. Cameras had been banned from the trial; only written transcripts and witness statements would leave this room.
At the far side of the chamber, a young woman sat at a narrow desk surrounded by towers of blank paper.
Cynthia Vandeberg.
Her fingers hovered over her keyboard, but the real work was in her eyes. Pale, sharp, darting across each speaker like radar. Whenever someone spoke, thin sheets on her desk filled with clean printed text, conjured from air.
