Senior Steward Osen Tal’s answer arrived at the apothecary shop in the lower ward two hours after noon.
It didn’t come in the form of city court guards or a street arrest squad. Once Volume Forty-Two of the Chained Civic Ledger was padlocked at the Independent Witness House and the four river-guild aldermen had been notified that Custodian Halen’s personal seal sat on a highway murder contract, even Osen Tal could no longer send armed clerks into the lower wards to seize Seyun or the cooled fire spirit without triggering a town riot.
Instead, a senior Hall herald wearing the silver-and-white tabard of White Heron Hall reined in his lathered mare before the herbalist’s door, stepped into the courtyard where Seyun, Ilyra, Mina. Daro Kesh were eating a midday meal of barley bread and salted river-carp. Then he presented a formal rolled summons sealed with two stamps. The red-wax crane of Hall Mistress Soran of White Heron Hall, and the grey copper-ringed counter-stamp of Senior Steward Osen Tal of the Aperture Court.
Ilyra broke the wax with her left thumb, unrolled the heavy thick parchment sheet against her knee, and read the text aloud to the courtyard.
Blocked from burying the highway ambush in the town street courts, Osen Tal had moved right away to pull the entire investigation uphill into the turf of a joint chartered trial at White Heron Hall on the high limestone ridge overlooking Oran. Custodian Halen had been placed under “protective office detention” inside the…
