Before the High judge could speak again, the sharp, bone-shaking ring of an iron sounding rod striking the granite floor echoed through the gallery.
Clank.
The sound was dry, metal, and total. It cut through the hiss of the steam chimney pipes with the cold power of a headsman’s bell.
Ivara Quill stepped out of the shadow of the western archive vault. She walked with her head held high, her faded land-mapper’s coat hanging open over a patched woolen vest, her empty left sleeve pinned neatly to her shoulder with two brass safety clasps. In her calloused right hand, she carried a five-foot six-sided rod of cold-rolled steel, its tip scored with measurement notches from thirty years of mountain three-point sighting. Her single gray eye was cold, hard, and fixed upon the High judge’s throat.
Seven years ago, in the turbine cellar beneath this very floor, Ivara had stood beside Deren Vey. Just then, the governor had failed. She had lost her left arm to a spray of white-hot salt water. She had watched Deren die beneath sixty tons of collapsed stonework. And she had spent eighty-four months measuring the slow, choking decay of the province. Meanwhile, Morn sat in his velvet chair. She knew the internal structure of this building better than the men who had poured its foundations. She had crawled through its water drops troughs. She had mapped every air draft with animal fat smoke. And she knew the ringing pitch of every foot of lead pipe…
