Bram Ash stepped quietly down the aisle, his heavy boots making no more sound on the iron floor rails than a cat stalking a sparrow. He knelt beside the open safe, his weathered face bathed in the faint green glow of the dark-lantern. His gaze dropped to the heavy thick parchment certificate in Len’s hand.
The former court guard didn’t need to read the printed blackletter at the top of the page. He had seen three hundred certificates of that exact form during his nine years in the High District courts. He had logged them into the docket books. He had co-signed the inventory sheets. He had watched the dead-house carts rattle into the courtyard beneath the cold torches. He carried the pine boxes that held what was left of the men who had worked the deep channels.
He reached out with a thick, calloused forefinger. He pointed directly to the red wax impression at the lower right-hand corner of the sheet.
“Look at the countersignature, Len,” Bram whispered. His voice shook with a mixture of skilled recognition and deep revulsion. “Don’t look at the clerk’s script. Look at the seal.”
Len looked.
The wax was not the dull red shellac used by ordinary town clerks for commercial receipts. It was the deep, semi-clear vermilion wax reserved only for the Country High court. Stamped into the center of the wax was the private signet ring of the High judge. An unblinking human eye surrounded by seven cog-teeth.
