The crisp blue-black carbon paper snapped taut in Julian Vance’s fingers like a sail catching an offshore wind.
Across the narrow marble span of the Probate Bridge, three hundred hollow leather bailiffs held their ground in rigid military formation. Their iron escheatment pikes were leveled in a bristling hedge of rusted barbs, aimed dead at Clara’s transport cot. The freezing draft from the subterranean void whistled through the eyeholes of their stitched parchment faces, producing a dry, collective hiss like sand pouring down a galvanized chute.
At the head of the phalanx towered Magistrate Silt.
The seven-foot entity hung from his overhead monorail carriage, swaying slightly on his heavy iron swivel joint as sixty-pound electric motors hummed within his chassis. Beneath his white porcelain coroner’s visor, the brass Simplex time-stamp drum spun with a manic, rhythmic clatter:
[TICK-TICK-CLACK-TICK]
“WAVE YOUR PAPER, TEMPORARY CLERK!” Silt’s voice boomed across the chasm, an unholy splice of fifty dead probate bailiffs and the screaming scrape of a Stryker bone-saw. “YOU CANNOT QUASH AN ESCHEATMENT SUMMONS WITH AN UNFILED TRANSCRIPT!
“UNDER PROBATE STATUTE NINETY-SIX, EVERY CITIZEN ADJUDICATED AS AN ACCIDENTAL DROWNING OR AN UNCLAIMED SUICIDE BECOMES PERPETUAL PROPERTY OF THE REGISTRAR!”
The Magistrate raised his heavy brass gavel, pointing its square head toward the ranks of hollow bailiffs.
