Ilyra leaned low over the cedar reading frame stand, her freshly stitched right shoulder held square beneath its figure-eight linen harness as she read the vermilion-bracketed entry at the bottom of Cell Fourteen’s siege column aloud.
“Needle Three (center groove of horn case, crown-gold-trimmed. Three-inch spirit-gold shaft),” Ilyra read, pausing a beat as she matched the four workshop-object glyphs in the margin against the wax cipher-slate. “Object mark: Net-twine, Ash-wedge, Reed-mat, Ash-wedge — Slate-bowl, Oil-cruet, Tallow-wick, Hemp-cord.”
Archivist Vel’s iron metal pen scratched rapidly across the wax tablet, joining the eight phonetic root-sounds into two short, ringing words: “Na - ra So - th. Nara Soth.”
“A Crown-realm fighter,” Seyun murmured, his eyes fixed on the words crown-gold-trimmed, three-inch spirit-gold shaft. In the entire history of the river province since the signing of the First Charter, fewer than half a dozen martial practitioners had ever crossed above Mature Jade into the Crown realm. The summit where a fighter’s intention no longer merely governed an external space like Soran’s spear. But lined up directly with the load-bearing pressure of the earth and sky.
“Read the disposition line after the name, Ilyra,” Seyun said.
Ilyra traced her index finger across the double vermilion bracket. She turned each phrase of the scribe’s camouflage slowly and exactly:
