Four braided hemp lines dropped through the gaps in the fossil-root ceiling before Pip could scramble back to the raft.
Heavy iron lanterns descended first, swinging on hooks and cutting the damp gloom into harsh yellow wedges. Right behind the lights came soldiers in oiled leather coats and grey temple mail, their boots hitting the narrow gravel bank in practiced pairs. Within ten breaths, twelve troopers had fanned out along the water’s edge with ash-hafted grounding pikes leveled at Pip’s chest, cutting the creature off from the dark channel.
A thirteenth figure slid down the center rope without using a brake glove, landed squarely on the pumice raft beside the black-stone cage, and unhooked her harness with two brisk snaps.
Commander Veyt was a compact, broad-shouldered woman of fifty with iron-grey hair cropped above her ears and a puckered white frost-scar pulling down the left corner of her mouth. Unlike Edris’s temple scholars, she wore no embroidered stole over her breastplate. Her greaves were dented from northern border sling-stones, and she smelled of wet mule-grease and vinegar.
She gave the bronze clapper inside the cage one sharp, appraising glance—the way an artillery officer checks a siege engine after a river crossing—and then looked down at Edris sitting propped against the petrified root trunk.
