TGoaW-12

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==Chapter 12 - The Glow of a Worm inside a Child's Eye==
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The ceremony was set for 19:30 hours local time...
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Duke Dinh Ngo used a walking stick of Elbar Bluewood, capped with silver. It wasn't entirely decorative, his ordeal left him weakened, and he chose not to avail himself of cosmetics for the holovids, so his pallor and shocked-white hair blazed over the conservative, blue business suit as he shuffled uneasily to the position before the throne.
When he had been taken, the suit was tailored to fit. Now it hung over rack-like frame, disheveled by the simple fact it was wrapped around the skeletal remains of the man arrested by Lohengrin three years ago.
Everything is a statement, from the choice NOT to conceal his injury, to the choice of the old "Lyre" symbol for his armband instead of the rampant fist. (both are authorized and legal, but the older symbol is usually associated with more...conservative...types.)
When he gave his oath, it was with a rasping, soft gasping voice. There would be no hiding that this was a man who spent three years being tortured, and held out. As a political move, Dinh couldn't have chosen a stronger indictment of the former Archon's rule without showing up in prison togs, with bruises and wounds on display.
His oath was short, an older formula of swearing allegiance to the realm and to the office of the Archon. A form that Katrina herself preferred over personal claims of fealty.
The ceremony lasted only a few minutes, the meetings after, would be done behind closed doors.
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