Ilyra planted the iron butt-shoe of her spear on the wet flat stone slab three paces from Daro Kesh. Then she held up the engraved bronze heron token that marked a commissioned escort officer of the Hall. Even with her right shoulder strapped tight beneath her tunic and her face pale from three days of marsh water and bereavement, she carried the clear power of the mountain courts. The conviction that charters, seals, and public laws existed to separate order from banditry.
“Master Kesh,” Ilyra said, her voice clear and formal, “the parchment in your hand names a logistics custodian attached to a White Heron Hall caravan under which a civilian driver named Pel was murdered and two Hall guards were wounded. Under the Valley Escort Compact, that directive is material evidence in a capital hearing. You can’t barter a murder warrant for a private training stone as if you were trading hides at the river market. Deliver the order to my custody. I’ll enter your student’s medical grievance before White Heron Hall’s full trial over my own Bronze seal.”
Daro Kesh looked at the bronze heron token in her fingers, then up into her earnest, grey-eyed face. He laughed once—a short, dry bark without a trace of merriment in it that made the two caravan guards by the shed shift uneasily on their boots.
