The silence in the washroom was broken only by the scrape of Eren Tal’s boots as he shifted his weight near the door, his hand resting casually against the ash handle of a heavy framing mallet.
Corvin Hest’s hand was still raised in the three-finger sigil of the Lesser Binding Circle. His knuckles shook with the strain of a spell that had nowhere to ground itself. His inkpot on the herring barrel had tipped slightly. It sent a thin black rivulet of dark oak-ink trickling toward the rim of the stave. The smell was sharp and vinegary, cutting through the damp chill of the river fog.
“Apprentice Rook,” Corvin said, his voice dropping into a register of cold, office malice. He didn’t look at Imran Bell. He looked at Pella, his eyes fixing on the faded, unpicked crest on her green wool tunic. “You’ll command this foreign subject to submit to academy supply order. If you fail to enforce the Sovereign Board’s prerogative within ten seconds, I’ll invoke Statute Seven of the Guild Discipline Code. I’ll seize this brass frame as contraband unchartered rig. I’ll place you under summary arrest for harbor of an unlicensed intelligence.”
Pella didn’t back away. For five years, the sight of an associate judge’s blue silk piping had been enough to make her drop her head, clutch her cleaning rags to her chest, and back against the damp hall walls until the academy masters had swept past. She had spent half a decade scrubbing grease…
