Len watched from the tailboard of the staging cart as the town power of the Survey Office unraveled across six feet of wet cobblestones.
It didn’t collapse with gunfire, barricades, or shouting. It collapsed through the quiet, devastating power of checked paperwork held in a crippled court guard’s hand. In a province governed for twelve years by office directives, official registries, and stamped vouchers, the sudden appearance of an authentic royal document with an eleven-year-old date was more lethal than fifty pounds of blasting powder.
A young constable who had stood directly behind Captain Vane—a boy named Peter, who couldn’t have been older than Len, with pale freckles scattered across a nose reddened by the sulfur mist—took two hesitant steps forward. His eyes were wide, fixed on the heavy parchment sheet in Bram Ash’s hand. He held his ash heavy club with both hands. But his knuckles were slack, the leather wrist-strap dangling loose.
“Captain,” the boy asked, his voice shaking like a loose timber in a draft. “Is that the Emperor’s mark? On the blue ribbon?”
Tom Vane didn’t answer. The veteran officer stood frozen on the paving stones, his heavy boots sinking slightly into the gutter grease, his chin dropped toward his chest. His right hand remained hooked in his empty holster. His fingers shook with the hollow palsy of an old soldier who has realized that thirty years of honorable service were spent guarding a counterfeit gate. He looked at the cobblestones, unable to lift his eyes…
