Vaska Ren stood at the foot of the center aisle between the eleventh and twelfth beds, his hands clasped loosely behind the small of his back as he looked across the bronze pillar at the four young people in the vault.
“Let’s dispense with the pretense that we’re strangers meeting by chance on a mountain road,” Vaska Ren said, his scarred voice rasping softly through the room. “When a judge spends twenty years managing the northern circuit, he reads the weekly relay reports from every ferry landing and guard post between Oran and the gorge.”
He inclined his iron-gray head half an inch toward Daro Kesh by the right-hand door.
“Captain Daro Kesh, formerly of the Black-Roof Escort Hall’s northern pike cohort,” Vaska recited without consulting a single slip of paper. “Resigned his commission and broke Commander Bren’s inner-yard orthodoxy after discovering that the guard post’s backup boundary posts were routing unexamined spirit vein pressure down into the river towns. Deeper Bronze realm, two active marks—one of them newly sworn four mornings ago at the lower ford.”
Daro Kesh didn’t take his hand off his broadsword handle knob. “You left out the names of the two Black-Roof pikemen your relay arrays crippled at the southern lock, Judge.”
