Chancellor Ves Morn sat slumped in the iron drafting chair beside the central side telegraph, his wrists secured to the curved armrests with three turns of braided courier flax.
The rope was standard Tern Road parcel webbing, three-quarter-inch flat hemp impregnated with pine pitch and beeswax to resist river spray. It had crossed the northern mountains eight days earlier in the bottom of Len Vey’s canvas courier pack, intended for securing wooden crate slats over glass medicine vials. Now the rough fibers bit deep into Morn’s pale wrists. That left angry red abrasions wherever he twisted against the iron frame.
Two defected guard post guards stood behind the chair, their wool uniforms dusted with lime powder from the breached quarry barricades. Their cutlasses were unsheathed. The darkened steel blades were resting across their forearms in the formal ready-rest of royal border sentries. Neither guard looked down at Morn’s face. Their eyes remained fixed on the spiral stairs that led to the lower chimney pipes, their knuckles steady on the leather grips. The power that had governed Rookvale for twelve years had shrunk to the width of a single chair, watched over by two men who had spent six hours listening to their children eating hot vegetable mash in the tram sheds below.
