“Daro Kesh of the Third Ward black-roof school in Oran,” Jade Retrieval Commander Keth Or said, his flat, unrushed voice cutting cleanly through the whine of the tilted overhead blade ring.
Five days ago in the rain-swept courtyard of White Heron Hall, Keth Or had seen Daro only as an unnamed Bronze-realm associate standing beside Hall Mistress Soran in the dark.
Here in the harsh violet glare of the Chamber of Permitted Shapes, with four paces of frost-coated slate between them and Daro’s thirty-inch broken Bronze sword held high in the light, the chief recovery officer of the northern circuit recognized the man’s face from the prefectural dockets.
For three in a row winters before Seyun had ever walked through the gate of White Heron Hall, Daro Kesh had traveled to the Oran Prefectural Registry every quarter with a neat leather folder under his arm. Petitioning for the restoration of his revoked teaching license and the un-sealing of his small black-roof sword school after he had refused to sign the High Court’s forced training list oath.
Those petitions had passed across Keth Or’s own office desk in the northern guard post every autumn and spring, each one stamped with the red ink of indefinite mid-air because Daro Kesh had refused to submit his senior students to the Court’s preliminary spirit vein-sorting examinations.
