I knew.
I knew this day would come.
Ever since that verdict was passed eleven years ago, I had known that this day would eventually arrive.
I had left home in my youth, renounced the family estate, and devoted myself to scholarship, seeking only to spend my final years in a study. I had never expected to have the fortune to apply what I had learned, to serve the world and its people. Luori had treated me so generously that I would spend my whole life grateful, without a single regret.
Yet human affairs were complicated and tangled, and the learning of the study could not explain them all.
For more than forty years, I had served as Grand Judge of Emerald City. I had endured war and witnessed peace. I had never dared slacken in my duties, nor dared conceal private interests beneath public service. Still, unease and suffering tormented me without cease. Whenever I set down my gavel and removed my robes, I could not help pondering again and again:
Whenever I reviewed a case, had I investigated every detail and left no omission?
Whenever I judged a case, had I remained detached and impartial?
Whenever I spoke, had I thought clearly and expressed myself appropriately?
Whenever I struck the gavel, had I lived up to my oath and original purpose? Had I protected the weak, restrained the powerful, upheld fairness, and remained true to the law?
Over all these years, had I ever judged a case wrongly? Wronged an innocent person? Encouraged oppression and exploitation?
Had friendship and loyalty, hatred and anger, gain and loss, ever clouded my judgment while I remained unaware—or pretended not to be?
Or had I spent all these years deceiving myself with righteousness, disguising myself with office, intoxicated by power, sheltering beneath