Bram Ash stood on the crushed granite gravel of the Survey Office courtyard, his heavy wool court guard’s coat hanging open over his chest, his right arm secured in a clean black sling that smelled of carbolic soap and dried willow-bark.
The morning sun was clear, cold, and brilliant. It bounced off the lead-paned windows of the office wing with a dazzling, diamond-bright glow. Down the grand granite stairs that led from the archival vaults beneath the terrace, twenty-four quarry riggers from Geth Marr’s shift were carrying heavy oak record chests, two men to a box, their thick hobnailed boots ringing rhythmically on the stone treads.
Each chest was three feet long, built of seasoned, iron-banded swamp oak, bound securely with four turns of tarred hemp rope. Then it sealed across the bronze latch with a thick wafer of hot red sealing wax. Embedded into the cooling wax was the newly carved steel die of the Free Wards Coalition. A broken cog-tooth resting beneath an open, unclouded horizon line.
Four large, two-wheeled freight wagons—the heavy cart-carts usually reserved for hauling raw limestone blocks from the quarry floor—stood waiting in the center of the courtyard, their iron-tired wheels chocked with wooden wedges. Each chest was hauled up over the tailgates. Then, the oak planks of the wagon beds groaned under the dead, compacted weight of twelve years of office paper.
