Inside the High Citadel, the air smelled of stale rosewater, heated machine oil, and the dry, bitter tang of old parchment. The grand entrance hall, designed two hundred years earlier to impress visiting royal legates with its eighty-foot marble columns and gold-trimmed plaster friezes, was choked with military defense clutter.
Master Davin Sorell stood at the center of the mosaic floor, his dark velvet ritual robes gathered up in one trembling hand to keep the hem out of the puddle of rainwater spreading from the door. His eyes were wide, bloodshot from four days without sleep. His lips were stained purple from drinking packed dried-thyme cordial to keep his exhausted brain from collapsing.
“Throw the second timber stay!” Sorell screamed, pointing his brass-tipped staff toward the massive oak doors. “Are you deaf, you clods? Throw the stay and wedge the shoes!”
Twelve academy beadles, their fine scarlet uniforms stripped of gold braid and soaked with sweat, strained against an eight-inch square beam of seasoned ash. They lifted the timber into place. They dropped it into the forged iron wall-cradles with a bone-shaking thud that shook dust from the carved capitals above. Two men with heavy iron sledges drove split-oak wedges beneath the door leaves, battering them tight until the timber groaned under squeezing.
