The rain was falling in pouring sheets. That turned the open mud flats of the old Ferry Turning Basin into a vast quagmire of red clay, crushed shale, and gray river silt. Torches set in forged iron cressets hissed and smoked wildly in the gale, casting long, wild shadows across the timber stone retaining walls and the sixty men and women who stood gathered around an overturned heavy cart wagon at the head of the ditch.
Councilor Vesk stood on the wagon bed, his fine wool town cloak soaked through and heavy as lead, his beaver hat long gone, his gray hair plastered to his forehead by the storm. He held no ritual mace or chain of office. In his right hand he gripped a three-foot forged iron crowbar he had used to pry open a jammed gate latch on the way down from Municipal Hall.
Beside him stood Pella Rook, her canvas tool apron strapped tight over her soaked green tunic, Hal’s measuring tongs gleaming in the torchlight at her belt, her cart driver boots caked with red clay to the mid-calf.
“Citizens of Lowbank!” Vesk’s voice rang out, raw, hoarse, and powerful. He carried over the ear-splitting roar of the swollen Gray Rush two hundred yards away. “Master Davin Sorell has barred the doors of the High Citadel! He has cut his sound speaking tubes! He has refused the lawful writ of this council. He has abandoned the working wards of this city to the mountain flood!”
