Ilyra’s words hung in the cold stone nook, sharp with the grief of a student who had grown up polishing the bronze rail below the Bell of the First Ford before every dawn class. For Ilyra, who had already watched her hall’s archive burn, her senior steward turn traitor. Her fellow students scatter like winter sparrows, the thought of Officer Vael parading the founding spear through Oran’s streets felt like the final erasure of everything she had sworn to vindicate.
Beside the dry hearth, Daro Kesh said nothing. Even so, his dark eyes rested on Ilyra with a quiet, knowing gravity. He had watched the Court’s court guards pry the painted wooden signboard off his own black-roof gatehouse a year ago. Osen Tal shrank slightly further into the corner shadow. Meanwhile, Instructors Venn and Tarn looked to their mistress.
Hall Mistress Soran watched Ilyra’s trembling lips until the young woman finished speaking. She didn’t reach out to pat Ilyra’s shoulder like a child, nor did she scold her for feeling the loss. Instead, Soran lifted the plain, hemp-wrapped iron spear and tapped its flat iron butt once against the frost-cracked flat stone slab between their boots.
“Look at this piece of iron, Ilyra,” Soran said, her level voice cutting cleanly through the whistle of the gorge wind. “Tell me what it’s worth in a river forge shop.”
