The heavy oak doors of the western cloister slammed back against the stone reveal with a sound like a split timber under a falling derrick. Master Davin Sorell stood framed in the archway, his dark velvet ritual robes swept back over his forearms to reveal the silver thread stitched across his academy vestment. Rainwater dripped from the brim of his stiff scholar’s cap, spattering the dry flat stone slabs like dark grease. Behind him stood Senior Summoner Vane. He grabbed an embossed leather metal tube containing academy arrest warrants. He was flanked by four armed beadles carrying heavy ash staves shod with brass ferrules.
“Treason,” Sorell said. His voice was not loud. But it had the razor-edged tremor of a man whose sleep had been eaten by obsession for fourteen straight days. His eyes swept across the long oak table. He took in the stacks of slate tablets, the grease pencils. The wooden crate filled with inert, dull lead plaques. “Systematic, calculated sabotage of civic defense materiel on the very eve of the century’s greatest runoff. You sit here playing with chalk while the mountain weirs are groaning under five feet of floodwater.”
No one at the table jumped. Pella didn’t reach for her brass measuring tongs. Corvin didn’t stand up from his bench. Even young Marta, though her knuckles whitened against her slate frame until the tendons stood out like cordage, kept her seat. The four junior apprentices sat shoulder to shoulder. Their woolen gowns were dark with rain…
