By five in the morning, Corvin was not alone. He sat beside him on the hard benches of the Board office was Senior Apprentice Kel Dorr. The young man who had held the blacksmith’s tongs. Meanwhile, Master Davin Sorell drove the iron wedges into Gate Three. Dorr was twenty-two, his face smudged with soot, his knuckles scarred from ten years of fire labor, his azure apprentice robe stripped of its academy cords.
‘I held the tongs,’ Kel Dorr said, his voice flat and steady before the three town judges seated at the oak table. ‘Master Sorell told us the wedges were necessary to prevent ringing backlash during the dedication rehearsal. But when the hammer hit, I saw the rack teeth bend. I told him the bronze was yielding. He told me that if I spoke of it outside the chamber, my tongue would be branded with the academy seal and my brother would lose his cart driver’s license.’
He reached into his pocket and laid an iron object on the table. A three-pound blacksmith’s cold chisel with a mushroomed head and a blunted edge. ‘This is the chisel we used to seat the wedges. The bronze shavings from Gate Three are still stuck in the tool steel. Test the alloy against the gate casting. The marks will match.’
