At three bells on the twenty-fifth afternoon, Examiner Corvin Hest strode through the arched stone doorway of the Town Board of Works Annex. His dark academy coat was dark with rain across the shoulders, and laid the approved transcript of Special Engineering Directive 88-C directly upon Senior Auditor Varo Nenn’s desk. Five minutes later, Nenn unlocked the private stair leading to the second-floor committee chamber where Councilor Elna Vesk and Senior Civil Engineer Korr Var were reviewing the hourly river-stage dispatches from the northern watch-towers.
Pella Rook and Foreman Eren Tal, who had come up from the Ferry Turning Basin to file the afternoon completion report on the marsh-channel stop-logs, stood beside the map table as Auditor Nenn placed Corvin’s transcript before the councilman.
This was not a secret theft of a state defense secret, and Corvin Hest didn’t present it as the act of a conspirator. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, reciting the lawful breach in the dry, exact language of town law.
“Yesterday evening at five bells, Madam Councilman, Master Davin Sorell got Protective Custody Warrant Seventy-Three from the High court sub-committee on the sworn representation that Candidate Rook’s brass arch posed an uninspected deep ring hazard and needed passive, sealed storage in Vault Two,” Corvin Hest stated clearly. “At two bells this afternoon, I inspected Vault Two under my lawful power as the named technical witness. The fourteen brass members have been removed from their sealed crates, erected in Assembly Bay Four, and…
