The wind sweeping through the great granite gate arch tasted of wet hemlock, freezing drizzle, and ancient iron.
Prit stood with his boots planted upon the raised threshold curb, his narrow heels aligned with the dividing line where Noll’s claimed masonry ended and the wild mountain track began. His moth-eaten coat of clerk’s serge was buttoned to the chin, the frayed cuffs tucked back to keep the wool from snagging on the rough edge of his portable audit desk. In his right waistcoat pocket, his three chalk stubs—white for daily filing, grey for unsettled balances, and red for active metaphysical hazard—rested in their separate leather sheaths, ordered by density and age.
In both skeletal hands, he held the open visitors’ log, its heavy vellum pages bound in calfskin and stiffened with birch paste.
“Section Fourteen, Subsection B,” Prit said, his clicking voice dry as birch bark in an autumn chimney. “Clearance of technical personnel following non-destructive inspection. The date, the precise hour of departure, and the guild license number must be entered in permanent ink before the portcullis pin is drawn.”
Ossa Flint stopped three inches from the threshold line. Her heavy canvas traveling coat was cinched tight with a brass-buckled belt, her rosewood instrument case hanging square against her hip. She did not reach immediately for the brass dip-pen resting in the desk’s ink-trough.
