In the grand executive chamber of the Regional Transit Guild in Highfield, the morning light filtered through tall, arched windows of leaded glass, lighting up a room lined with polished dark wood wainscoting and heavy oil portraits of past guild masters.
Cira Vey stood before the massive, four-inch-thick desk of Master Inspector Vance, the chief transit commissioner for the northern provinces.
She wore her dark blue stationmaster’s wool coat, brushed clean of road dust, with her hair pinned neatly beneath a black silk ribbon. Her spine was straight, her hands resting quietly at her sides. He refused the high-backed leather armchair Vance had offered her five minutes earlier.
On the dark green felt blotter in the center of the desk lay two items:
The first was the approved sheepskin cancellation certificate for Dispatch 418, bearing the slanted black line, the scarlet vermilion seal of the Free Wards Coalition. The signed names of Ivara Quill, Geth Marr, and Melli Dorn.
The second was a heavy linen sack containing forty silver marks in minted country scrip. The exact transit bond money that had been borrowed seven years ago to pay for Deren Vey’s first survey equipment.
Master Inspector Vance sat in his swivel chair, his gold-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his soft, high-born nose. He held a brass jeweler’s magnifying glass to his right eye, examining the red wax seal of the Free Wards with minute, obsessive attention. He turned the sheepskin to the light, checking the thick parchment grain…
