Vaska Ren walked across the gravel without guards at his elbows. His left hand—missing the fourth and fifth fingers where he had cut his pinned glove free of the northern guide-rod seam on the Twelfth Night—rested against his belt in clean oiled linen. When he reached the stone table opposite Senior Arbiter Venn, he didn’t salute the inner council banner.
Arbiter Venn leaned across the table, offering his senior colleague an immediate office escape route. “Chief Examiner Ren, the council is aware that rogue fighters infiltrated the Hollow Summit and seized the northern approach. You need only sign a statement that your actions over the past fortnight were taken under physical duress while attempting to preserve the testers as Court assets.”
Vaska looked at Venn with quiet, tired eyes. His throat—scarred twenty years ago shielding Soran and stripped of almost all its leftover vocal capacity. Just then, he shattered the lower shrine’s outer socket to save Reth Mal from becoming a fixed anchor. Could produce only a dry, whispered rasp. He didn’t try to shout over the yard. Instead, he laid a ten-page written settling on the stone beside the broken bronze sockets and placed his heavy bronze Chief Judge’s insignia squarely on top of the first sheet.
