Corin Petch closed the heavy brass ledger with a trembling hand, the lock-hasp snapping shut with a dull, shivering ring that shook across the cold steel counter. He didn’t look at his son. In the military border zone of Gate Three, where every sound echoed through the riveted steel water chute, an office clerk didn’t reach across the desk to embrace a traveler under the unblinking gaze of the guard post watchtowers.
The kiosk was barely six feet square, built of three-quarter-inch boiler plate painted in peeling gray lead. Inside, the air smelled of stale dark oak-ink, dried blotting sand, cold sheep fat. The bitter reek of damp wool drying over an unvented charcoal fire bowl. On the shelf behind Corin stood forty bound register folios. The complete archival record of every cart, wagon, and pedestrian that had entered Gate Three over the past four years. Each spine was labeled in white ink with the fiscal quarter, the manifest set. The initials of the chief land-mapper who had authorized the intake.
Corin kept his green eyeshade pulled low over his forehead, masking the moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes. His ink-stained fingers rested flat on the cool steel plate, white at the knuckles, as he fought to steady his breathing. Twenty feet away, Corporal Sorn was leaning on his axe-spear by the coal fire bowl. It scraped dried mud from his boot heel with a short hunting dagger. The other sentry was still watching the salt wagon driver…
