The three rapid clangs of the outer gate bell had barely faded into the pine gorge. Just then, the heavy, iron-shod hooves of an Aperture Court warhorse thundered up the stone entrance ramp. It scattered gravel and forced two village herb-sellers to leap behind the auction tally booths. Ignoring the carved stone stele that needed all visitors to dismount at the outer arch during the winter market, the rider drove his lathered roan charger straight through the main plaza and reined in sharply at the head of the outer herb court.
He wore the slate-grey and white enameled travel plate of the Aperture Court’s northern enforcement division, his cloak crusted with frozen mud from the upper valley road. Coiled at his right saddlebow hung ten feet of heavy hooked iron chain weighted with a central ring and barbed grapnels. Meanwhile, a consolidated, veteran Bronze pressure radiated from his shoulders with the blunt certainty of an officer accustomed to small sects bowing before he finished speaking.
Before the horse’s iron shoes stopped sliding on the frost-whitened stones, fourteen-year-old Lin slipped the three founding bamboo slips inside her hempen sash. Then he stepped back into the middle of the student rows. Meanwhile, Seyun rose smoothly onto his sound right boot and left heel beside the granite block. It slid his Account Book into Mina’s guild satchel. On the porch, Joren gripped the railing with one hand and his cane with the other, his face paling as he looked at the rider’s left…
