Osen Tal walked across the gravel with a noticeable hitch in his stride. His right hand was pressed briefly against the thick linen dressing under his ribs where Reth Mal’s guard had cut him in the northern chamber. For months after Seyun and Ilyra pulled him up from his cut rope in the Ravine of Unfinished Forms, the former senior steward of White Heron Hall’s Oran residence had clung to a stubborn, defensive pride. Insisting that falsifying trial findings and routing secret supplies to the Hollow Summit were unpleasant duties necessary to keep the mountain sky from falling on the city.
Now, Osen stood beside Vaska Ren in front of the pried-out bronze socket halves. He looked down at the dead scrap metal for a long beat before laying his two thick leather account books and a half-charred sheet of parchment on the stone table.
The half-charred parchment was the original transfer order for Nara Soth and the summit beds. The document Osen had tried to burn in his Oran quarters before Seyun plunged his already blistered palms into the fire bowl coals to save the lower half.
“I wasn’t coerced by rebel fighters either, Senior Judge,” Osen said, his voice stripped of the smooth, deferential polish he had once used in the Oran trial room. He turned slightly so Hall Mistress Soran could read his lips clearly alongside Venn. He opened the first ledger to the recruitment index. “For nineteen years, acting under secret vouchers from Chief Examiner Ren’s…
