None of the eight enforcement guards moved on Reth Mal’s first order. Because Chief Examiner Vaska Ren stepped squarely into the narrow three-pace gap between the doorway arch and the foot of Bed Two, resting his right hand on the plain iron handle knob of his narrow gray sword.
For a moment, the two Jade test judges of the northern province stood face to face under the humming shadow of the black bronze pillar. Vaska Ren in his worn, ash-dusted gray wool with the twenty-year burn scar pulling across his throat. Reth Mal in his spotless white-and-silver trial robes holding the inner council’s iron-sealed warrant.
“Stand down, Assistant Examiner Reth,” Vaska said. His rasping voice dropped half an octave as a trace of his unsealed late Jade weight stirred in the stones around his boots. “I’m still Chief Examiner of the Hollow Summit station. You don’t issue orders to my ward attendants over my shoulder. You’ll not re-wire a patient whose disconnection I approved under witnessed terms.”
Reth Mal didn’t flinch back from Vaska’s late Jade presence. Instead, he held the unrolled parchment warrant up between them so the five red wax seals of the capital council caught the yellow lamp-glow in full view of the eight enforcement guards.
