The golden bar beneath Tavi Rusk’s chest bone burned with a dull, sickening heat that made every rib in his small torso ache.
It wasn’t a fire that scorched the skin or blistered the gray wool of his shirt. It was an internal, systemic pressure. A deep, rhythmic ache in the marrow of his collarbones and the joint padding of his breastbone, as though an iron band had been clamped around his chest and drawn tight with a screw-turner. Every time he drew a breath, the air tasted of cold brass filings and sulfur dust, his lungs straining against the unnatural constriction.
He looked down at the paper Len Vey held before him on the cedar table.
The sheet was ten inches long and eight inches wide, printed on stiff, heavy thick parchment with blue security threads embedded in the rag fiber. Across the top, stamped in deep purple ink that had dried to a dull, metal sheen, was the royal eagle of the Boundary Concordat. He was flanked by two engraved columns of formal city court legal code:
TRANSIT PERMIT NUMBER: 8042 — REASSIGNABLE COURIER ASSISTANT ISSUED UNDER SECTION NINE: BOUNDARY CLEARANCE & OUTWARD DISPATCH ENDORSED: Judge HALDEN PELL, COMMISSIONER OF TRANSIT
