Court guard Captain Tom Vane stood at the head of his squad. His boots planted was wide on the greasy cobblestones. His brass speaking trumpet was held ready in his left hand.
He was fifty-five years old, with iron-gray hair cropped close to his skull and the thick, weathered neck of a man who had served twenty years in the royal infantry before accepting a town commission in the Survey Constabulary. Across his blue woolen coat ran two broad cross-belts of blackened harness leather, supporting an iron-shod truncheon, a pair of screw-lock handcuffs. A holster containing a short-barreled brass percussion pistol.
Behind him stood six younger constables. Their faces were pale beneath their leather visors, their fingers twitching on the ash handles of their cudgels. They had been marched out of the central precinct house on Sump Road with orders to clear the square and arrest the outside courier. But they reached the outer edge of the tram sheds. Then, the sheer thickness of the crowd made their formation falter.
“Scatter this assembly!” Vane shouted through the speaking trumpet, his parade-ground voice echoing off the brick walls of the tram interchange. “By order of Magistrate Halden Pell, this platform is declared a restricted security cordon! Any civilian leftover within forty arm-lengths of the staging cart after the sounding of the third whistle will be registered as an active seditionist and remanded to the punishment barracks!”
