Inside the rosewood dispatch box, resting on a bed of faded green velvet that smelled of bitter pine-resin and dried lavender, lay two objects.
The first was an eight-inch key cast from heavy, cold-hammered bronze. Its shank was square, half an inch thick, cut cleanly with deep sharp-angled teeth that matched the heavy tumbler housings of the town water gates. The metal was dark with age. But the bearing surfaces were polished bright from decades of careful oiling.
The second object was a heavy oval seal of solid, hallmarked silver, four inches long by three inches wide. Embossed in high relief on its face was the three-tower gatehouse of Rookvale. It was surrounded by a border of laurel leaves and the crisp, Latin lettering of the First Municipal Charter: Porta Aperta Justis—The Gate Open to the Just. On the reverse, deeply engraved into the silver plate, was the signed name of the First Municipal Delegate and the country registry serial number: GT-001.
Len looked down into the velvet recess. He didn’t touch the metal. He had spent his youth handling official postal packets. He recognized the authentic physical weight of sovereign power when it sat before him in the mud.
