Inside the vaulted hearing chamber, the heavy bronze-studded doors settled into their iron frames, shutting Seyun into the outer anteroom and leaving Ilyra alone on the white chalk line. Above her head, the two rows of animal fat-and-mica lanterns burned with a clear, steady yellow light against the deepening mountain dusk outside the high window row windows. Three paces behind her right heel stood Senior Steward Osen Tal, his consolidated scroll still rolled tightly between his gloved hands. Meanwhile, Hall Mistress Soran sat motionless on the low limestone bench twelve paces ahead.
Ilyra grounded the iron-shod butt of her marsh-iron spear beside her left boot, squared her shoulders to the dais so the lantern glare fell evenly across her lips and jaw. Then she waited until Soran tapped the stone bench once with her knuckle.
“Speak from the funerary shrine on the burial road to the Oran witness house, Ilyra,” Soran said in her flat, uninflected voice. “Don’t give me your steward’s adjectives, and don’t give me the Ash Reed boy’s grievances. Tell me what your own eyes measured and where your own spear struck.”
“Yes, Hall Mistress,” Ilyra said clearly, keeping her rhythm unrushed and her chin level. “On the third morning after the Ash Reed winter check, I was tracking the unreturned young fire spirit along the old mountain burial road under Secretariat Writ Two. At the third funerary shrine below the ruined abbey, I met Seyun of Ash Reed. I believed then that he had stolen or…
