Out in the center of the thirty-foot chalk square, Lodge Master Brus and Mother Renn stood beside a low wooden table where Master Uren’s cracked grey stone tablet lay on a square of raw, unwhitened linen. At a nod from Brus, both fighters stepped forward to the center line to witness the sealing of the prize.
Daro Kesh stopped three paces from the table. Just then, he had promised at the burial house, and leaned forward slightly to examine the stone in the bright afternoon sun. Then he reached out with his right hand. Then he pressed the calloused ball of his thumb once—firmly and respectfully—against the chiselled test-groove at the lower margin of the tablet where the fracture line cut across the stone carving. Even without sending a breath of training into the rock, a man who had spent twenty years reading grain in iron and bone knew ancient hand-cut stone from river slate.
“It’s Master Uren’s stone,” Daro said aloud, loud enough for the front rows of all four galleries to hear, and stepped back a pace.
Next, Daro reached inside the breast of his black tunic, drew out the folded square of oiled sheepskin parchment he had cut from the dead bandit leader’s shoulder lining. Then he held it up so both Brus and Examiner Vael in the eastern gallery could see the red wax impression of the Aperture Court’s Retrieval Office. He didn’t read Halen’s name aloud yet but he handed the sealed packet to Mother…
