The route to the Salt Ward Claimant Cabinet led through the central mixing court, where raw bitter salt, quartz sand, and crushed limestone powder were stored in three-sided stone bays.
The air in the mixing court was gray with airborne quartz dust powder, hanging like an unmoving fog beneath the low vaulted arches. For twelve years, the mixers had shoveled the dry bitter salt batch by the dim, yellow glare of animal fat dips, their lungs slowly filling with the sharp stone grit that the glassmakers called white-stone cough. Along the walls, wooden barrels of crude vinegar water stood open, used by the workers to sponge the skin-burning bitter salt dust from their arms and faces before the chemical burns could eat through the outer skin. Every surface was coated in a dry, powdery flour that crunched beneath boots like hard crust on snow.
As Len, Melli, and Corin Petch approached the raised brick dais where the cabinet was bolted into the foundation stonework, the heavy oak doors of the office banged open against the wall.
Four armed men stepped into the aisle, their iron-shod boots clattering upon the flat stone slabs. They wore the gray wool surcoats of the Provincial Treasury Guard, each coat stitched on the left breast with the three silver salt-measures of the city court. They carried heavy six-foot ash pikes tipped with leaf-shaped iron heads. Their faces were pale beneath greasy steel caps. Their leather cross-belts were cracked with age, the brass buckles green with…
